I will be at ReaderCon, the literary spec-fic con held in Boston, this weekend.

I’ll be giving a reading of my own fiction Sat. at 11:30 AM.  I haven’t dicided yet which of my recent publications  to read from–“Very Strange Weird” in the recent Space and Time, “The Halberdier, by Moonlight” forthcoming in On Spec, which I read at Balticon, and possibly “Of Casting Pits and Caustic Salts,” in the current Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.

There is also a Beneath Ceaseless Skies reading Sat. afternoon at 2:30 PM.  It will include writers such as Mike DeLuca, Margaret Ronald, Matt Kressel, and more.

And as always, there will be great stuff in the dealer’s room and lots of cool panels.  One I’m really looking forward to is Liz Hand’s lecture on Tolkien elements in black metal, the Viking-influenced very dark-themed metal which is mostly from Norway and Sweden.  My metal tastes run more toward the technical side (Meshuggah, coincidently also from Sweden), but I am familiar with the black metal bands and their heavy Tolkien influence.

And, also as always, I will be in the pub rather frequently. :)  If you see me there or in the halls, or at my reading or the BCS reading, feel free to say hello!

…and what happens after your mentor is killed.

My story “Of Casting Pits and Caustic Salts” is now live in the e-zine Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.  It’s about a lady spy, in a land where giant insects are the beasts of burden, who must complete her sabotage mission after something happens to her mentor.

It’s the first of my “literary adventure fantasy” stories to see print.  Readers familiar with my ethos for Beneath Ceaseless Skies know that I see no reason why stories set in fantastical worlds can’t convey just as much about the human condition as literary stories set in the “real” world.  Giant beetles are awesome, and surviving after your mentor is gone is a very human struggle.

It’s also my first story to appear in an e-zine.  Ironic, isn’t it, for a guy who publishes an e-zine and says that online magazines are the future of short fiction. :)  I’m happy to be appearing online, where readers will be able to find the story for free and at their convenience.  I’m also happy to be appearing in HFQ, a stalwart semi-pro zine offering adventure fantasy short fiction for free online.

So check out HFQ and  “Of Casting Pits and Caustic Salts”.

I was recently interviewed about Beneath Ceaseless Skies–things like why I do the magazine as both text and audio, types of stories that I don’t get as much as I’d like, and things I see more often than I would like–by Margaret McGaffey Fisk of Vision: A Resource for Writers.

You can check out the interview here.  Thanks very much to Margaret for her interest.

Want to win a free copy of Space and Time Issue 114?  The one that has my story “The Very Strange Weird of Endart Sscowth” in it?

I’m going to give away a free copy tomorrow afternoon, on my Facebook page.   I’ll ask a question about something from the story (you won’t need to have read it to figure out the answer).

For the first person who leaves a comment with the right answer, I’ll send you a free copy of the issue.  Hell, I’ll even sign it if you like, but that might lower its value rather than increasing it. :)

So drop by my Facebook page tomorrow (Wednesday) around 2pm Eastern time.  Good luck!