My story “Keeli’s Ordeal” is now live at Crossed Genres magazine, in issue 15. Here’s the direct link.

The magazine looks quite nice! In addition to online text, it’s also available in paper format and in several ebook file formats–visit their web-store for all the options.

I’m sharing the TOC of this issue with Barbara Krasnoff, a good short story writer I met at ReaderCon last year, and my Homeless Moon cohort Jay Ridler. If you check out my story, be sure and check out theirs as well.

Over the weekend, one of my many stories wandering the wilderness found a home!

The story, “Keeli’s Ordeal,” is about a boy in a tribal society who goes on a solitary wilderness quest. It will be appearing in Crossed Genres, an online and print magazine that publishes issues with rotating themes.

One of their themes for this issue was “Child Fiction”–stories with child protagonists but intended for adult readers. That’s exactly how I intended this story–the protagonist is young, but the issues he struggles with and the concepts he sees but doesn’t understand are designed for adult readers.

Which is a very astute distinction. I had thought about it before, but I’ve never seen anyone except Crossed Genres articulate it. Their editors not only understood the story on that level, but they also enjoyed all the meticulous little bits that I built into the character and the world, and they found particular resonance in the ending.

(I did something different in the ending that I’d never done before–nothing revolutionary or uncommon, just a different approach (no spoilers) that I’d never taken. It worked for the story and it worked for them.)

This issue should be appearing quite soon! I will post the date and links as soon as I find out.

Over the weekend, my magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies got two wonderful recognitions.

First, SFWA, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, deemed us an official SFWA pro market. Because we’ve met the qualifications since our first issue, any story in BCS in the past or future can be used to qualify the author for membership in SFWA. The magazine of course was designed to meet SFWA’s requirements from the start, and now it’s great to have their official stamp of approval.

Also, reviewer and editor Rich Horton gave BCS a glowing review in his year-end summaries of F/SF magazines. He said we “routinely publish fine adventure fantasy” and “have become a really important source of fantasy.”

He also noted that BCS is “the fourth largest source of new fiction among magazines and webzines, behind only the traditional ‘Big Three'”, which are Asimov’s, Analog, and F&SF. That is really astounding. I knew we had published over 350,000 words of short fiction last year, but I didn’t realize how that compared to other magazines.

I am delighted at both of these recognitions. The magazine is a joy to run, but it’s also an immense labor, so it is great to see it getting more and higher-profile recognition.

The Internet Review of SF, perhaps the best review and non-fiction F/SF ‘zine going these days, has announced they will be ceasing publication in a few months.

I’m bummed to hear that.  Lois Tilton, their legendary short fiction reviewer, reviewed every issue of my magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and I really appreciated that.  Her reviews were sometimes a bit grumpy, as they are known among writers to sometimes be, but she was always fair and honest, and when she praised a story, you knew that that praise had been earned.

I hope that short fiction reviews in general and Ms. Tilton’s in particular will keep going in some form, in this age of unclear business models for online F/SF both fiction and non-fiction.  Non-fiction and short fiction reviews are a vital if less glamorous part of the field, and it would be a shame if they dried up.