Diabolical Plots Fiction

Aaaaand… a Happy New Year to you! I hope it’s a good one.

My story “The Osteomancer’s Husband” is now up at Diabolical Plots as the January 2016 story.

He warned his wife the villagers would come. With their pitchforks, their fire. Their hateful ignorance.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “We have to leave. They saw beneath my mask.”

The inspiration for this story were a couple of photographs used for a writing group prompt challenge. One image was of flowing water (“…the burbling mountain stream…”), the second was of a hand tossing what looked like tiny bones to the wind (“Like…tiny snowflake vertebrae…”), both by the talented Robin Cristofari. To me the bones looked like seedlings, so I immediately began to wonder what their origin might be.

If you like the story (or even if you don’t), please feel free to comment here or on the Diabolical Plots site. Any feedback is always welcome.

“Les Feuilles mortes 3” by Robin Cristofari.

No, the post title doesn’t refer to a vitriolic critique of the third instalment of Jeff VanderMeer’s excellent Southern Reach trilogy — my story “The Osteomancer’s Husband” has been accepted by Diabolical Plots for their inaugural year of publishing fiction. I am January. Or rather my story is. Yes, that’s next year. Here’s the ToC:

March: “Taste the Whip” by Andy Dudak
April: “Virtual Blues” by Lee Budar-Danoff
May: “In Memoriam” by Rachel Reddick
June: “The Princess in the Basement” by Hope Erica Schultz
July: “Not a Bird” by H.E. Roulo
August: “The Superhero Registry” by Adam Gaylord
September: “A Room for Lost Things” by Chloe N. Clark
October: “The Grave Can Wait” by Thomas Berubeg
November: “Giraffe Cyborg Cleans House!” by Matthew Sanborn Smith
December: “St. Roomba’s Gospel” by Rachael K. Jones
January: “The Osteomancer’s Husband” by Henry Szabranski
February: “May Dreams Shelter Us” by Kate O’Connor

Glad that my story was fished out of an anonymised slush pile by the folks behind the hugely popular and useful Submission Grinder. It’s a long wait until it appears, but the following image hints at the theme…