“The Sugarplum Favor” — a Christmas story by Tad Williams

I hope you are enjoying the holiday, Festivus, Winterval, or whatever you consider this period of time. I am spending it mostly unplugged, an important thing I do not do often enough, but I had to plug back in to share this with you. I have been an avid fan of Tad Williams since discovering his Otherland saga, a science-fiction series I regularly recommend while never being able to adequately describe it. So when Deborah Beale, Tad’s co-conspirator and wife, tweeted about a new short story of his available for bloggers to post, I was absolutely thrilled to volunteer. And through the magic of the Internet, here it is. Tad Williams’ new short story collection, A Stark And Wormy Knight, is available now, worldwide, as an ebook, $4.99 (or equivalent) for...

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Posted on 24 Dec 2011 | 6 comments

Tiger-eyed and Tinytown.

I rediscovered this wonderful literary community online called Fictionaut, and posted an older bit of flash fiction called “Tiger-eyed”. An excerpt: The tiger-eye beads around her neck would wink at me like a nervous uncle sharing a secret with a child. They roll on her sternum like marbles. At night, on her nightstand, they whisper my secret to the patchouli-scented room. How long have they known? Also, the first draft of my short story “Tinytown” is 28% complete. The new word-counting widget in the sidebar told me! Because I am encouraged by statistics, I hope to make that 100% by the end of the year. I would like to say that I found these bits of writerly motivation from within, but it’s all the slush-pile reading. There’s...

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Posted on 22 Dec 2011 | Comments Off