Writing News!

I finally, finally get to share literally the biggest news of my writing life: my short story, “The Hidden Language of Flowers,” was selected for inclusion in Neon Hemlock’s We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2021.

Look at that cover.

It’s fucking gorgeous.

And that table of contents is…wow.

But the real achievement here is that I was able to keep my mouth shut for the past six weeks. Okay, that’s not the real achievement, but right now it sure feels like it.

Anywho, “The Hidden Language of Flowers” is about two witches in Cottage Grove, Oregon, who operate rival florist shops. They hurl insults and hexes at each other through coded floral arrangements until they decide their small town isn’t big enough for the both of them and enter a contest to determine who gets to stay and who must leave forever.

Oh, and there is a code within the code as well. I laid out everything in my Easter Egg post (massive spoilers).

If you want to read it now, it is available in its original anthology edited by the absolutely delightful Kelly Lynn Colby: Misspelled: Magic Gone Awry.

Or you can wait until this summer-ish, when We’re Here releases.

Seriously, check out We’re Here‘s ToC:

• “The Captain and the Quartermaster” by C.L. Clark (Beyond Ceaseless Skies)
• “A Study in Ugliness” by H. Pueyo (The Dark)
• “Mulberry and Owl” by Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny)
• “The Lake, the Valley, the Border Between Water and Wood, and the End of Things” by Watson Neith (Translunar Traveler’s Lounge)
• “Let All the Children Boogie” by Sam J. Miller (Tordotcom)
• “The Hidden Language of Flowers” by Laurel Beckley (Misspelled: Magic Gone Awry edited by Kelly Lynn Colby)
• “The Art and Mystery of Thea Wells” by Alexandra Seidel (Diabolical Plots)
• “To Rest and To Create” by LA Knight (FIYAH)
• “A Technical Term, Like Privilege” by Bogi Takács (Whether Change: The Revolution Will Be Weird edited by C. Dombrowski and Scott Gable)
• “Root Rot” by Fargo Tbakhi (Apex)
• “Twenty Thousand Last Meals on an Exploding Station” by Ann LeBlanc (Mermaids Monthly)
• “Blood in the Thread” by Cheri Kamei (Tordotcom)
• “Sutekh: A Breath of Spring” by Sharang Biswas (Unfettered Hexes: Queer Tales of Insatiable Darkness edited by dave ring)
• “To Rise, Blown Open” by Jen Brown (Anathema: Spec from the Margins)
• “To Exhale Sky” by Shingai Njeri Kagunda (Baffling)