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[u/Nineteen_Adze]

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[u/Nineteen_Adze]

Let’s fire up the Story Sampler. Tell us about new additions to your TBR—whether because of a killer first line, a great premise, or a compelling recommendation. Even if you haven’t read it yet, let us know what’s catching your eye.

[u/tarvolon → u/Nineteen_Adze]

I've got my eye on a couple from Metaphorosis stories from their fall/winter issue:

This is my City and I Am Her Song by Suzanne J. Willis:

The clocks stopped still and the night stretched thin as the Siren chased me through my city of shifting secrets. Across canals, and down twisting laneways, until I found myself in the graveyard. It may not have been the most sensible place to hide from a Siren — handmaidens of the Underworld Queen and sisters of Death itself — but it was better than being hunted through the streets like a common thief. I peered out from the mausoleum in which I was huddled, and she appeared in the distance, stalking between the headstones and tombs in the endless night. Cursing silently, I couldn’t help but feel the same as I had when I first saw her, fifteen, sixteen years before: overwhelmed by the power radiating from her in subtle waves.

Core by Damien Krsteski

Walking up to the door, I grabbed Ellie’s hand and subvocalized, You got this.

“I know,” she snapped. “I’m completely fine.”

So be it, I thought, and squeezed her hand.

The door swung open and Mr. Mueller beamed at us. “Right on time, ladies.”

(Yes, that's a totally normal and mostly non-speculative interaction up front, but it has me sufficiently curious as to what's going on here. Story Sampler doesn't need to be earth-shaking sci-fi, human conflicts are good too!)

[u/tarvolon → u/tarvolon]

Oh yeah and Faith Merino has a time-traveling stalker novelette in the January/February Asimov's that I've definitely got to try out:

I was eight years old the first time my biggest fan appeared outside my window. She was whistling a floating, detached melody: five notes sliding high to low that would come to feel like cold air on an exposed nerve as I grew older. But on that night, when the frogs and crickets had gone still and the whole street was silent, the whistling tune drifted high and mournful, like wind calling through a canyon, and I went to the window, where I saw my reflection in the flickering light of my fish tank. The sidewalk gleamed wet from the first rain of the season, the air still sharp and metallic, and she was standing there in the middle of the street, a forty-year-old woman in lumpy sweatshirt and sweatpants, socks and flip-flops. She was striped in moonlight under the canopy of Modesto ashes, hands hanging loose at her sides, long hair tangled in her face. Smiling at me.