Beyond Dreams is out!

Look what arrived in the post today:

It exists!

My fifth Flash Fiction Month collection, Beyond Dreams, is out at last! It’s a bit later than usual this year, because lots of things got in the way, but it’s finally finished and I can finally wash my hands of it. Not that I’m not happy with it: I’m just sick of working on it.

Here you can admire the cover art in more detail.

Beyond Dreams collects all my FFM stories from this year, in a conveniently portable and easy-to-read format. If this is something you want on your bookshelf, or constantly available, or as a gift for the fan of queer fairy tales among your kith and kin, you will definitely be interested. As with the last four of these, it is available in both print and electronic form; and as always, here’s a convenient line-up where you can find them all (and also admire the thematically cohesive cover art):

FFM 2018 Write-Up

FlashFictionMonth has come to a close, which makes this – for me – five years. July has become an indispensable highlight of my year, and once again I’m very pleased with what came of it: not quite every story was a winner, but close to it.

My biggest obstacles this year should, perhaps, have been the three extra challenges heaped on top of the official ones – but in fact they were the heat (which essentially limited my writing to nighttime) and a certain motivational problem around week 2. Of the challenges, I was surprised to find that the anonymously contributed “every character is queer” one made things hardest. Several reasons for that: 1) flash fiction is short enough that usually it just doesn’t come up, meaning that I had to write a lot of transition- or relationship-focused stories in order to make room for it; 2) its influence made the fairy tale challenge harder than it otherwise would have been: I had to select stories to rewrite that would work well with it; 3) representation is great and all, but burying one’s gays is not, so I was forced to write a number of stories just dripping with wholesomeness.

This is, of course, a good thing. Wholesome queer stories are very much needed in the world today, and expanding one’s boundaries as a writer is always good – I default to tragedy far too often, so all this sappy wholesome romantic happy-ending fluff was a really good thing for me.

I mean, not that the tragic ones aren’t in there too.

Teague-Drydan’s fairy tale challenge was fun and excellent, though it contributed to the tone of this month being much less varied than in previous years. Usually I try to go for a good mix of stories: this time, I totalled one humour story (the collaboration challenge) and two or three sort of silly stories (the official fairy tale / anthropomorphism challenge, written during my week of extremely failed motivation, and another tropes challenge or two). The good news is that the overriding tone is one that I very much enjoy, and apparently so do many of my readers. I’ve had people asking me to publish an anthology of fairy tale rewrites and/or original fairy tales, and I’m quite tempted to make that a reality if I can: partly because “publish a book of fairy tale rewrites/interpretations” has been on my not-quite-serious internal to-do list since I was about eight, partly because I love these things, and partly because it’d give me a chance to introduce more variety than I did for FFM. Due to time constraints for research, nearly all of the fairy tales I rewrote were either Grimm tales or ones from more recently collected, more specifically local folklore. Which is great and all, but not particularly diverse.

joe-wright’s All-Star challenge, which he talked me into taking on despite the will of the dice, was actually in many ways the easiest. Getting everything in there in very limited time on top of everything else was a bit of a struggle, but for the most part it acted more as inspiration than as a limit. So I guess I won’t be ruing that challenge after all.

Now that the month is over, it’s time for a break, sleep, and work on a bunch of other things that I’ve put on hold for the sake of FFM. Also, an upcoming vacation. I’ll get started on this year’s FFM collection when I’ve recovered a bit and have the time, but I will be out of the country, without a computer or internet, from August 17^th to the beginning of September. If you need me during that time, leave me a note or comment somewhere where it won’t get lost, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can (but not before September); and as for the collection, what with that break there’s a very good chance it won’t be out until sometime next month.

In the meantime, if you’d like to read some other FFM stories I’ve compiled a feature list over on my dA account – enjoy!

Review: The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal by K. J. Charles

I figure it’s good for everyone if I branch out into occasional book reviews, and I have recently read a book worth reviewing, so here we are: The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal by K. J. Charles.

I went into this book knowing absolutely nothing about it, except that I had bought it as part of a bundle and as such was damned well going to read it no matter what: which, as it turns out, was a good thing, because otherwise I doubt I would ever have picked it up. Here is a quick run-through of my impressions:

First impression: “I honestly can’t tell if this is erotica written with an eye to character, world-building, and humour, or if it’s speculative mystery with a lot of gratuitously explicit sex in…?”

Second impression: “All right, so this is basically Sherlock Holmes, if Sherlock Holmes were about ghosts and sex and, on occasion, sexy ghosts (try not to think about the incestual implications of ghostly sex scenes involving dead relatives).”

Third impression: “Haha this is awesome actually”

Fourth impression: “Right, having now read the entire book, I think I can safely put it down as a romance novel.”

Romance isn’t really my cup of tea, which is why I doubt I would have read it on my own, and this makes it difficult to compare it to its fellows. I suspect that most of the things I liked least about it (it was awfully sexy, a bit sappy, and ran slightly towards wish-fulfillment) are in fact staples of the genre. What is, however, my precise cup of tea is low-brow humour wrapped up in elevated Victorian diction, and if that’s what you’re into The Secret Casebook is a veritable goldmine. Large portions of the book pretty much feel like you’re sitting beside a Victorian man in a waistcoat who is nudging you in the ribs with his elbow, winking heavily, and going, “Eh? Eh??”

It’s also quite well-written overall, but the humour is why I’d recommend this book even to those who aren’t usually fans of romance as a genre.

Avoid if: you are a child or easily embarrassed by sex scenes.

Definitely read if: you enjoy some combination of Victorian diction, paranormal mystery, and/or romance; you’re interested in historical ghost stories; and/or you have always wanted for Holmes and Watson to hook up.

You can find a description and buy links here.