News for the New Year January 2, 2011 – Posted in: Aberrant Normalcy, Sybil's Garage

I hope everyone had a happy new year.  I had a few friends over my place, and yes Blade Runner was watched.  I am not ashamed.  Though what happened before and after I cannot be responsible for.  😉

Anyway, surprisingly I have a lot of news today, considering it’s been a holiday.

First up is Sybil’s Garage, praised by Rich Horton in his year-end fiction round-up.  He says: “It’s a stylishly put together magazine, There’s plenty of poetry, art, and nonfiction in addition to the stories.  My favorite was Anil Menon’s “The Poincaré Sutra”, which I called (in Locus) “a perkily told but rather dark story of a 16-year-old Coptic girl in Israel, who falls in love with a Jewish boy while her father’s past pushes him in a different direction.” I also enjoyed stories by Swapna Kishore, Sam Ferree, Alex Dally MacFarlane, A.C. Wise, E. C. Myers, and Amy Sisson.”  I’m glad these stories are getting noticed because they are all really very good.  (Yes, I know I am biased, but I believe they all deserve wider looks.)

On the personal front, Lois Tilton reviews my story “The Suffering Gallery” in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and says, “Kressel’s piece is definitely a parody of sword-and-sorcery fiction, but it is otherwise true to the S&S conventions and winds up with a very satisfactory conclusion.”  It’s interesting in that I didn’t intend the overall story to be parody, but I did want the repartee between the antagonists to be darkly humorous.  In fact I had in mind the cartoon crooks Boris and Natasha from the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show.  I also wanted to play with point of view.  In a fantasy story, we usually expect the hero to succeed in his quest, and so I tried to play with those expectations.  It’s up to you to decide if it works.  You can read it here.  Or listen here.

And over on the Ordinary Day Anna the Piper reviews Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories, edited by JoSelle Vanderhooft.  Overall, they give the anthology 4 of 5 stars.  And of my story, she says, “Matthew Kressel, in “The Hands that Feed”, brings us a solid little tale of a shopkeeper with hidden talents, and the seemingly innocent young woman she comes to love. Our two heroines are Jewish and Hindu, as well as separated by thirty years of age, which makes for quite the unusual pairing indeed.”

So that was a nice way to ring in the new year!