Swim away with story and let the enchantment begin with Dreaming Underwater by cover artist (and winner of the 2023 Magpie Award for Poetry!) Claire Lawrence.
Friendship carries us forward in ‘The Drink We Spill Out on the Ground’ by feature author
Claire Humphrey, ‘Summer Soup’ by
Kim Harbridge, and ‘Stella Ryman and the Curse of Youth’ by
Mel Anastasiou.
Meanwhile, ‘Marty’ by Kevin Sandefur, ‘When A Man Knows Much More Than We Ever Did’ by Kelli Allen, and ‘Mayflies’ by Liza Potvin remind us that family life offers its own kind of adventures.
Jennifer Lott, with ‘Thirty Minutes to Live’, and Beatrice Morgan, with ‘Six-Minute Quiz’, show us how to make wise use of our time. Matthew Nielsen’s ‘Then and Now: An ASD Comic’ and Soramimi Hanarejima’s ‘Vulnerability, Now and Then’ offer up a spectrum of possibility. And, with ‘The Golden Calf’, JM Landels shows us another side of friendship and duty.
Poetry by Elina Taillon, Haro Lee, and DS Martin takes us to the moon and madness. Then ‘Reap What You Sow’ by Alex Reece-Abbott and ‘Tourist Trap at the End of the World’ by KT Wagner land us back on (somewhat) solid ground..
Claire Humphrey's first novel, Spells of Blood and Kin, won the 2017 Sunburst Award. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Apex, Crossed Genres, Fantasy Magazine, and Podcastle. Her short story 'Bleaker Collegiate Presents an All-Female Production of Waiting for Godot' appeared in the Lambda Award-nominated collection Beyond Binary, and her short story 'The Witch Of Tarup' was published in the critically acclaimed anthology Long Hidden.
JM Landels is the author of the bestselling Allaigna's Song trilogy, and her spy novel, The Shepherdess, is currently serialized in even-numbered issues of this magazine. 'The Golden Calf' is a crossover of sorts between the two. Set in Allaigna's world of the Ilmar, it recounts a little-known history of her stepfather, Duke Allenis Andreg, and it is also about a herder - though of cattle, not sheep. JM herself stays away from ruminants but does keep a small herd of horses at her farm in Langley, BC, where she teaches mounted combat and wages an ongoing war against buttercups. You can find @jmlandels on most social media platforms, or at jmlandels.stiffbunnies.com.
Mel Anastasiou writes the Fairmount Manor Mysteries, the Hertfordshire Pub Mysteries, and the Monument Studios Mysteries. Winner of a Literary Titan Gold award and longlisted for the Leacock Medal, Mel is also the author of two illustrated thirty-day workbooks on story structure: the steampunk-themed The Writer's Boon Companion and The Writer's Friend and Confidante. For news on published and upcoming works, visit her website, melanastasiou.wordpress.com.
