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So here's the second installment of the blog feature we started last month, in which I round up the latest projects from past SH contributors (and current staff). If you're a past contributor with news to share for November, please drop me a line about it. In the meantime, enjoy ...

Let's start with a round-up of new poems. The Fall issue of Goblin Fruit features contributions by several SH alums, including Sonya Taaffe's "Blueshift", Rose Lemberg's "A body that is bold to come", Virginia M. Mohlere's "Cardiomythology", and Alex Dally MacFarlane's "In the Sun-Sweet Desert", which was the seed for her story "Feed Me the Bones of Our Saints", which we published in July. Ann K. Schwader has not one but three poems in the new issue of the SFPA's online magazine Eye to the Telescope: "Wolves of Mars", "Mercy, Mercy", and "A Voyage(r) Too Far." David C. Kopaska-Merkel has poems in the new issue of Star*line and in the 2012 Dwarf Stars, both mailing this week. Liz Argall's "Casanova Clay" is in the latest Apex, alongside Cecil Castellucci's "Always the Same. Till it is Not." Danny Adams' "Flowers in Scorched Soil" is in the new Space and Time. And Peg Duthie's poem/photo combo "Hide" is in Unfold magazine.

New stories: James S. Dorr's near-future novelette "Peds" is available as an ebook from Untreed Reads. Lawrence Schimel's translation of Care Santos' short story "Still Life with Sea Monsters"and Lorraine Schein's poem "The Poem of the Damned" are both in Phantom Drift 2: Valuable Estrangements. Andrew Kozma's "Our New Benevolent Overlords" is in the October Stupefying Stories. Lavie Tidhar's "Strigoi" -- another of his Central Station stories, like this month's SH story "The Lord of Discarded Things" -- is in Interzone 242, as is Ken Liu's "The Message." And Hunter Liguore has two stories out this month: "Extinction", magical realism about an artist haunted by the ghost of an extinct asian cat, is in Slab 7, while "The Pine Man's Shed is at Forge Literary.

What next? Some reviews and essays, perhaps. Nic Clarke reviewed Mary Gentle's Black Opera for SFX: "It’s unabashedly larger than life – but it’s more convincing and engaging in its smaller, human scale moments." Aishwarya Subramanian reviewed Jeff Noon's new ebook-only novel, Channel Sk1n, as well as Lavie Tidhar's Osama, in her Left of Cool column for The Sunday Guardian. And a couple of blog pieces: Matt Hilliard considers Karl Schroeder's Sun of Suns in the context of the ongoing debate about sf's exhaustion (or lack thereof), and Nathaniel Katz looks at Robert Jackson Bennett's The Company Man (and argues with my review in the process. Elsewhere, Elizabeth Barrette has been discussing serial poetry at the Poetree Dreamwidth community.

On the reprints and remixes front, Carmen Machado's prose-poem "Road Trip" has been set to music by Henry Finch as part of his Lit Passages project. Jason Erik Lundberg has issued a revised edition of a 2001 chapbook, The Currragh of Kildaire, with proceeds going to The Jamie Bishop Scholarship Fund in Graphic Arts and The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Jamieson Ridenhour's "Singing in the Fire" was featured in the 5th October Pseudopod.

Moving into books there are a whole bunch of SH contributors, and a mix of reprints and original stories, in Ann VanderMeer's Steampunk Revolutions. Not least there's Samantha Henderson with her story "Beside Calais" from earlier this year in SH; but also included are Vandana Singh with "A Handful of Rice", Amal El-Mohtar with "To Follow the Waves", Carrie Vaughn with "Harry and Marlowe and the Talisman of the Cult of Egil", and Genevieve Valentine with "Study, for Solo Piano." The 2012 Heiresses of Russ is edited by Connie Wilkins and Steve Berman, and includes Sunny Moraine's SH story "The Thick Night", as well as Lisa Nohealani Morton's "And Out of the Strong Came Forth Sweetness", Amal El-Mohtar's "To Follow the Waves" (popular story, that one), and more; Brit reviewed the book at Tor.com. Chicks Unravel Time, eds. L.M. Myles and Deborah Stanish, includes essays on every season of Doctor Who written by women, including SH contributors Amal El-Mohtar and K. Tempest Bradford.

A couple of debuts that we also have as prizes in our fund drive draw, thanks to the authors: Samantha Henderson's first collection of poetry, The House of Forever, and Tina Connolly's novel Ironskin. The Creative Fire by Brenda Cooper, book one in a new social sf series inspired by the life of Evita Peron, is technically published next month but in stock and shipping -- as is Kameron Hurley's conclusion to her Bel Dame Apocrypha, Rapture. Notes From the Shadow City by Gary William Crawford and Bruce Boston is out from Dark Regions Press, and is a compilation of prose, poems and images set in an urban dystopia. Ekaterina Sedia's new urban fantasy anthology from Prime, Bloody Fabulous, includes Zen Cho's "The First Witch of Damansara" as well as stories by Genevieve Valentine, Sandra McDonald and others. And speaking of urban fantasy, Helen Keeble's Fang Girl, about a teenage fangirl who unexpectedly becomes a real vampire, was technically out from HarperTeen last month, but I meant to mention it then and forgot, so you get it now instead. You can read the first seven chapters here. Jamieson Ridenhour's novel Barking Mad is now available as an ebook (also via iTunes). Margaret L. Carter's erotic paranormal romance novella Calling Back Love is out from Ellora's Cave. Dark Duet is a collection of poetry co-written by Linda D. Addison and Stephen M. Wilson, available as an ebook now and in print soon. You can also pre-order Fungi, eds. Orrin Grey and Silvia Moreno-Garcia, for 20% off until November 16. The anthology includes a few past SH contributors, including A.C. Wise with "Where Dead Men Go to Dream", and Lavie Tidhar with "The White Hands".

And finally, another plug for the Outer Alliance podcast hosted by Julia Rios, which this month was recorded live at Gaylaxicon.



Niall Harrison is an independent critic based in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. He is a former editor of Strange Horizons, and his writing has also appeared in The New York Review of Science FictionFoundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, The Los Angeles Review of Books and others. He has been a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and a Guest of Honor at the 2023 British National Science Fiction Convention. His collection All These Worlds: Reviews and Essays is available from Briardene Books.
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