I’m very pleased to announce that a new short story has been published in The Siren’s Call winter issue. This is a dark fiction and horror publication, and my story is both of those things.
“To Loneliness” is the story of a vampire who has been groomed from a very young age by one much older than himself. It’s a story of manipulation, gaslighting and control as well as the search for revenge.
You can read it free in issue #56 of The Siren’s Call, available here.
My newest flash fiction (just 300 words) is out in the annual anthology from Queer Sci Fi, this year themed around ‘Ink’.
My story, called ‘Meet Cute’, involves a weapons expert meeting a soldier on the field of battle in a far flung future war. Beneath the business of war, there’s a surprising spark between the two women.
Read about the other anthology entries: ‘Abyssal Dark‘ in the ‘Innovation’ anthology. And ‘Starfall‘ in the ‘Migration’ anthology. Both from Queer Sci Fi.
The new anthology from The Great Void Books, Water Turns Red, is a collection of 21 short stories exploring the minds of killers and the detectives that are after them.
My story, Loose Ends is a little different because it is also science fiction. I took inspiration from film noir and crafted a suite of characters who fit into that genre, but who also subvert it in a variety of different ways. I really enjoyed the voice and feel of writing this and am very proud to see it up in print.
You can get a copy of Water Turns Red on Amazon.
Five years ago, I entered the OutStanding Short Story Competition and won with my story “A Jellyfish Daydream”, which is an achievement I continue to take great pride in.
This year, I entered once more and was awarded third prize for my new short story “Neon Lovers”. This is a story I wrote because I wanted to write about what I love, which is an LGBTIQ+, non-binary cyberpunk future in a city dripping with neon and night.
You can read the short story for free on the OutStanding website and check out a video of me reading it on the OutStanding Facebook Page!
After featuring ‘Starfall’, a flash fiction piece in Queer Sci Fi’s ‘Migration’ anthology, I have also got a short story in the new anthology, ‘Innovation’.
In a far-flung future, AI is a derivation of the human digital footprint and is now used to do the jobs humans don’t want to do. When an asexual AI is rebooted to clean the hull of spaceships, it tries to find itself in fragmented memories.
You can read ‘Abyssal Dark’ in the ‘Innovation’ anthology from Queer Sci Fi.
Over the years I have had short stories published in a number of genres and with a range of publishers. And three of these have been with Transmundane Press.
The first was Mischa and the Mermaid in the Underwater anthology. I wrote this story as an homage to childhood holidays in various coastal towns, memories of beach combing and rock walking and a fascination with creatures of the deep and pulp horror, even as a child.
The next story was a little later, with The Cult of the Hyalad in the In The Air collection of short stories. I wrote this because I have always loved thunderstorms and lightning and wondered what the elemental spirit of such an event might look like.
And the newest short story published with Transmundane Press is Chasing the 999 in their On Time publication. This is a thought experiment on the logistics of time travel with a few little twists thrown in as well.
Looking forward to seeing what the future will bring.
Transmundane Press have announced their upcoming anthology On Time, which features another of my short stories, Chasing the 999.
In my short story, the 999 is an almost mythical age predicted by an probability AI wherein you can enter stasis aboard a huge ocean liner and be transported to a parallel future in which you are immortal. It is rare and coveted, and Luke might just have cracked the code.
I’ve previously has stories published with Transmundane Press in their Air anthology with Cult of the Hyalad, and in their Underwater anthology with Mischa and the Mermaid.
This flash fiction piece is very clearly and almost too literally inspired by the phenomena of the bilateral gynandromorph butterfly. I am fascinated by and adore this natural occurrence in the wild, and so transplanted it into the world of butterfae.
For those not in the know, butterfae are fairies with butterfly wings. My story follow one such fae as they hesitantly join the migration, aided by two young friends. It’s a light, hopefully beautiful moment in a fantastical time.
You can get the ebook of “Migration” from Queer Sci Fi (with a whopping 120 stories in it) here.
My new short story, The Cult of the Hyalad is coming soon from Transmundane Press in the anthology, IN THE AIR. I have previously published work with Transmundane, in the form of another short story, Mischa and the Mermaid, which you can find out more about here.
The Cult of the Hyalad is a different beast, although shares a coastal theme. To quote myself from this interview with Alisha Costanzo over on her website:
This is a story set in Victorian times, in a remote island on the high seas. Five women – witches – arrive together with the aim of summoning the rarest of elemental spirits, the hyalad. Born of thunderstorms, in chance occurrences of lightning hitting sand forming nymphs of glass, each of the witches will try their hand at creating godlike hyalads to lead them into a new world.
You can also find out the convoluted way I finally settled on the term ‘hyalad’ to describe a glass elemental being in my follow-up piece, An Explanatory Note on Hyalads.
Get this book on Amazon here.
Adrik Kemp 