Check out my 3rd place winning tongue-in-cheek microshort “Literally” for Stupefying Stories here:
https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/p/literally-by-yelena-crane.html
The prompt for this was it must contain the sen: “his mother told him he should make new friends”
Let me know what you think the ending means and where I went with the prompt!
This short flash of mine is ALL about that. Give my story: “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA)” a read, you’ll never think of CAPTCHA’s the same way again: https://www.cosmoramaofficial.com/fiction/captcha
And let me know in the comments how many hydrants do you see?
To go with this story I also made a fun twitter. Follow @mygrammatizator
I am proud to share my horrifying drabble published with Hungry Shadow Press. TW: implied SA, human trafficking, rape
Why do I write dark? With the hope that writing can prevent reality. Can improve the future. I write dark hoping we don’t have to live it.
So give it a read: https://www.hungryshadowpress.com/deadly-drabble-tuesdays/ddt-call-for-help-crane
and let me know what you think. Also, do you get the title?
So proud to say this story of mine will be printed in this anthology all about subverting/place with tropes. Mine is a tropeception.
I play with the trope “it was all a dream” by exploring the idea of dreams as a desire, a fantasy, and a hope that keeps one going in a world where the dreams themselves must be purchased because I fear one day commercialization will bring us there.
I’ll let you all know when it’s available! I also have some other future publications to announce soon.
Ever wondered what I sound like?
Wonder no more. Check out my narration of this story “Ashes and Buttercream” by Malina Douglas here:
https://www.castofwonders.org/2023/07/cast-of-wonders-541-ashes-and-buttercream/
I had no idea how to submit anything for audio. What’s a girl to say in the recording? So I did the only thing I know best…I told a Soviet joke:
“A worker standing in a bread line says: ‘I have had enough, save my place, I am going to shoot Gorbachev.’ Two hours later he returns to claim his place in line. His friends ask, ‘Did you get him?’ ‘No, the line there was even longer than the line here.’ “
I laugh just typing it!
I never thought I’d get money to narrate or that people would WANT to listen to my audio. As a little kid, my parents used to turn up the car radio so they wouldn’t have to hear me sing. I’ll be honest, I couldn’t listen to the recording of myself.
It’s a different experience reading someone else’s work versus writing my own and not just because the styles are different. There’s a level of reinterpretation and recontextualization. I based the reading on my own experience as an immigrant from Ukraine (from way back) and imagining what it must be like for refugees lucky enough to escape now. I worry maybe I was more morose than the piece deserved? Let me know your thoughts.
In the old Slavic faith, domovois were house spirits that lived in old-school Slavic stoves/ovens. In return for bread and milk they kept the house and its inhabitants safe.
Old school stoves:
Can’t get enough of “A World Away and Buried Deep?” Want to know some of what inspired it and my writing process?
Ask no more. You can read more an interview with me and many of the other great authors featured in this anthology: https://blog.flametreepublishing.com/fantasy-gothic/immigrant-sci-fi-author-qa-story-inspirations
How do you prefer people to write? Sentences clean to the bone or with meat left over for scavengers?
One of the most personal pieces I’ve ever written, equal to A World Away and Buried Deep (published in Flame Tree) is out today in Metastellar: Where a literary creatures meets her audience and must make a decision. Do you think it was the right one?
Give it a read! My heart and hope is in it.
If you’ve ever watched Madmen there’s a scene where Rachel Menkin talks to Don about a country she’s never been to, doesn’t plan to go to, and yet still has a connection with because of her roots and she says to him “it just has to be. To me it’s more of an idea than a place.”
In many ways, belief in the coat’s existence is how I thought about Ukraine, the country of my birth. It was enough for me knowing the place is there. Where generations of my family lived and suffered. That maybe one day I would see it and if not that’s okay too because it’s there. And now… for me… the streets about which I’ve heard stories all my life are gone. Rubble. I’ll never get to see them, people’s lives–if they’ve survived–are completely upturned.
Lets always believe in the existence of good and manifesting it into reality. To Gogol’s overcoat, it continues to inspire so many years later.
Look at this beautiful cover! And my story is in it!!!
Indirectly this story deals with how I feel separated from my Ukrainian heritage because so much of it is overshadowed and completely engulfed by its occupation during the Soviet Union. And then immigrating to the USA very young on top of it all. As my MC alien learns the hard lesson that the stories she passes down to her son are true in their own right, I’m trying to accept the same for those stories I pass down to my littles.
“The stories explore the world from the perspective of the incoming, whether necessitated through war or oppression, financial or familial need, or with hope for a better future, examining visions of displacement and relocation in future and speculative settings.”
Available for purchase here after May (too soon to order them now and the ebook isn’t up yet): https://www.flametreepublishing.com/immigrant-sci-fi-short-stories-isbn-9781804172735.html
The future has arrived and it’s bleak. Fed up with streaming and subscription services not letting you “own” anything? You’ll want to read my short story “Subscribers Only,” available in this amazing anthology. It’s going to get worse before it gets better but there is hope in human resilience and search for connection.
I hope you like it! Let me know in the comments and we can chat about it.
Where to buy it?
Available for purchase landing page: https://darkmattermagazine.shop/…/dark-matter-presents…
Goodreads (leave a review): https://www.goodreads.com/…/134761477-dark-matter…
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Matter-Presents…/dp/1958598070
Amazon may take a little while the ebook.
If cost is prohibitive please message me through the contact page to let me know. I can help!
I am so happy to share my reprint with the world. It’s my 1st ever publication. My whisper to the world I’m here, I’ve something to say, take notice. If I wrote it today I think I’d go about it very differently. How amazing it is that every piece we write is a snapshot of ourselves at the time.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments!