N. R. M. Roshak's blog
I’m so pleased that an anthology I have a story in (“Orange Rope for Sale”) was nominated for an Aurora award! Nothing Without Us Too, eds. Cait Gordon and Talia C. Johnson, is one of the nominees for Best Related Work (which is, apparently, where the anthologies go to get nominated). Super proud of Cait and Talia. Voting begins on June 17th and closes on July 29th. Fingers crossed!
New poem out today! “Four Transformations,” a speculative horror poem, appears in the December issue of Polar Starlight, Polar Borealis’ sister poetry magazine.
Riding down from the altiplano
“Four Transformations”
(sword sheathed, his former captain’s head
bouncing from the saddle by his side)
the soldier stops at a keening cry
echoing across the pass.
Read the rest in this free PDF download of December’s issue.
Image: Aurora over Lapland, Finland, captured by Juan Carlos Casado. Astronomy Picture Of the Day, 2016 April 8th.
I have a flash story out in the latest issue of The Quiet Ones. Excerpt:
Read the rest in their latest issue, available for free download on wearethequietones.com .
My favourite thing about the virtualization of the Nebulas is that online conferences don’t have to end. SFWA’s still organizing writing dates and programming on the virtual airship. This past Saturday, I had a terrific time discussing cli-fi with Aya de Leόn, Premee Mohamed, and Octavia Cade in this panel moderated by Brandon Crilly. If you were at the 2022 Nebulas, you can catch the replay here (login needed): https://events.sfwa.org/events/climate-fiction-adaptation-to-a-new-literary-landscape/
I have a fun story in Nothing Without Us Too, out in September 2022 from Presses Renaissance Press.
The story, “Orange Rope For Sale,” is told entirely in Kijiji online sales platform posts and messages.
Dec 2022 update: R. Graeme Cameron reviewed Nothing Without Us Too in Amazing Stories. Graeme has an interesting and thoughtful take on my story as “a fantasy approach to the problem of extreme agoraphobia.” Not what I had in mind when I wrote it, but I can see where he’s coming from, especially given that I first drafted that story sometime in 2020 or 2021.
Every author knows the rush that comes from the unanticipated appearance of an acceptance letter in their inbox. Last month I got the next-level version: unexpected electronic copies of one of my fav French-language magazines, Galaxies SF, with my name on the cover!
Their July 2022 issue contains “La Recette du Bonheur,” P-A Sicart’s translation of “The Zest for Life,” which first appeared in Future SF in English in 2019. This story has also appeared in Estonian and, I’m told, Chinese.
C’est ma deuxième parution en Galaxies. Un gros merci au traducteur!
World Weaver Press has nominated “By the Light of the Stars” for this year’s Pushcart Prize!
Thank you to World Weaver Press for choosing this tale of Hawai’ian sea turtles, starlight and love as one of three nominees from their solarpunk antho Multispecies Cities.
I have a short poem out today!
The poem is “nice & easy in dock 43-b”, in American Diversity Report.
The art is a delightful montage by the editor, John C. Mannone.
hello artificial gravity
you can’t hold my me
from “nice & easy in dock 43-b”
My translation from the French of “Cousin Entropy” by Michèle Laframboise has been shortlisted for the 2021 short-form Rosetta Awards.
The Rosetta Awards are a new project, started in December 2020 by an international team of SFF writers and editors, “with the love of global SFF community and the anticipation of further communicating between different languages & cultures and of recognition of the great but underrated efforts of translators and those who endeavor to make the translation works come true.” https://sffrosettaawards.com/2020/12/26/birthday-of-sff-rosetta-awards/ What a great vision! I’m thrilled to be on their first shortlist. And still grateful to Alex Shvartsman and Michèle Laframboise for the opportunity to translate Michèle’s highly original, galaxy-spanning story.
The full shortlist is here: https://sffrosettaawards.com/2021/07/05/announcing-shortlist-of-science-fiction-and-fantasy-rosetta-awards-2021/
You (or I, or anyone) can now hear my story “The Zest for Life” on the latest StarShipSofa! I enjoyed TF Ahmad’s narration. His matter-of-fact delivery perfectly complements the story. TF Ahmad is a writer and narrator from Chicago.
“The Zest for Life” was originally published in Future Science Fiction Digest, Issue 2, March 2019, and has been translated into Estonian.
