Author: OJ

Horror, SFF, Short stories

Cover reveal for You Are My Sunshine

OJ

My second short story collection, You Are My Sunshine and Other Stories, is out in September from Stelliform Press! I’m really happy to say that the cover is done by the wonderful Rachel Lobbenberg, who did my last Stelliform cover, for The Impossible Resurrection of Grief. I love Rachel’s work – it’s always so detailed and creepy, and the tentacular sunflower here is the perfect example of this.

You can pre-order the book here. If you like eco-horror and solarpunk and the journey from one to the other, this collection might be for you. Behold the blurb:

Sometimes change can hurt. This collection of short stories traces the growing pains of a new world, beginning with the death throes of our current way of life and ending with a world transformed by science and technology, and by grief, hope, love, and humanity’s will to transform. This is a collection that will both tear you apart and tend to your wounds. Cade’s stories are informed by science, tracing the biological and emotional threads that bind us, human and non-human alike. You Are My Sunshine and Other Stories is a promise of what worlds are possible if we allow ourselves to change.

Horror, Short stories

This World Belongs to Us

OJ

I have a story out in a new book! Not a new story, but I was pleased to get it in anyway. “Imago,” my creepy-girls-and-cicadas-in-a-dead-end-mining-town horror is out in This World Belongs to Us, a bug themed anthology recently published by From Beyond Press. Just look at that cover: it’s by Jacob Blanchet and it’s fantastic.

This is a horror anthology. Now, I like insects – most of them, anyway – so I’ll be one of the first to say that bugs don’t have to be horrifying. They’re still fun when they are, so when I saw the call for submissions for this book I knew that I had to send in something. I was working on a story about insects in a haunted house at the time, but eventually I had to admit that it was never going to be ready in time. (It’s still not ready. That draft is dreadful. There’s something wrong with it but I don’t know what, so it’s staying in draft form for a while longer until I know how to fix it.) Luckily for me, the anthology was open to reprints, and so I had a back-up ready to go. “Imago” was originally published in Three-Lobed Burning Eye, but I’m so happy that it’s now available in a book entirely devoted to horrifying bugs.

If you like your creepy things to crawl as well, you’ll like this anthology. Please go take a look!

SFF, Short stories

Happiness

OJ

I have another story out! “Happiness” is a choose-your-own-ending novelette that’s free to read in the April issue of Clarkesworld. It’s a bit of an experimental piece, as I’ve never done something of this format before – and it’s deeply, horribly cynical. It may be one of the most cynical things I’ve ever written, and that includes the bears story that was in Strange Horizons a while back.

When it comes to writing about climate, I admit that I bounce between flat-out dystopia and more optimistic stories. I think the optimistic ones may have more value, but there are times when I just can’t resist the former. This is one of those times. “Happiness” is a misnomer. Every ending you choose, you die. You also die happy. Yes, every time. That happy ending tends to be earned, and not in a good way. The unnamed protagonist – and this is a novelette told entirely in the second person, another experimental departure for me! – is honestly not the brightest. Their total lack of awareness, and sometimes even of empathy, means that they never quite realise what’s happening to them, and how their choices, choices that they’re completely certain of, seal their stupid fate. They’re basically a walking Darwin Award, and they never know it. And because they never know it, they die happy, still in the illusion that they’re doing the right thing.

I quite like the choose-your-own-ending format, which is a throwback to when I used to read those types of books as a kid. I think I’d like to try it again one day, but maybe not immediately. Still, it’s good to try new things, creatively, and I’m super grateful that Clarkesworld was willing to let me experiment in their pages.

 

SFF, Short stories

In(con)solation

OJ

I’ve got a new story out! “In(con)solation” is free to read over at Lightspeed. It’s barely more than a flash piece, but it’s also the first story I’ve managed to sell to them – not for want of trying! – so I’m pretty pleased about that.

The title, I’m sorry to say, is something of a pun. I was interested in the effect that sunlight (insolation) has on mental health, and what happens if you’re deprived of it. There’s all sorts of high latitude examples where people don’t see sunlight for seasons at a time, but because this is science fiction they’re all living underground in the aftermath of nuclear apocalypse. The downside to that – one of many, I’m sure – is that one of the possible consequences of exposure to high levels of radiation is cataracts… so what happens when staying in the dark makes you depressed, and the consolation of sunlight makes you blind?

It’s not a cheerful story, as you can imagine, but when I was writing it I found the layered imagery interesting, and it’s always a challenge to write a story that short.

SFF, Short stories

Ernestine

OJ

I have a new story out! “Ernestine” is in the March/April issue of Asimov’s; it’s wonderful to have a story in there again. They’re one of my favourite markets.

I actually wrote an early draft of the story back in 2020, when I was an artist in residence at the Christchurch Arts Centre. They were kind enough to give me a place there because the Arts Centre houses a museum about Ernest Rutherford, one of my scientific heroes. The Centre actually used to be of the city university, until many decades ago it got too big for the site and moved. When Rutherford was there as a student, however, he commandeered a tiny subterranean cloakroom known as The Den for his experiments, on the grounds that it was one of the only available spaces with a concrete floor, and therefore less vulnerable to the vibrations of passing trams. That mean his delicate equipment was disturbed less, and so he was left to get on with it. It’s a tiny, dim little space, and I suspect he might have hit his head more than once on the overhead pipes, but nonetheless: I was riveted. More than once I took my laptop down to that cramped little room to write.

“Ernestine” is a standalone piece that’s part of a longer work (still in progress!). The title character is a little girl left alone in a post-apocalyptic environment. She takes refuge in The Den and starts communicating with the ghost of Ernest Rutherford, who is rather more concerned with the practicalities of survival than he is in recreating old experiments. Ernestine, however, needs more than potatoes to survive, and the Great Hall of the Arts Centre is converted, via string and office supplies, to a facsimile of Rutherford’s Gold Leaf Experiment. Science, she finds, can make you friends, and in a post-apocalyptic world, friends are nearly as important as food.

I’m hoping to finally finish the novel version this year, but I’m happy to have this little teaser piece out in the world.