New Story: "Murder in A-Flat" at Black Cat Weekly

Without going back and looking at my records, I suspect it's been a while since I had two new stories released in the same month, but that's how 2026 is getting started!

My story "Murder in A-Flat" came out in issue 229 of Black Cat Weekly over the weekend. 

Pavel had nearly gotten the melody right for the opening moments of the Largo movement of his new quintet when the knock came at his door. He sighed and carefully put his violin away. Damn Novák and his eagerness to brag about Pavel to his fellow guardians of the law!  

Pavel opened the door to meet his visitor, Emil Hudec of the Pilsen police. Hudec’s jacket was wet from the chilly late-September rain, which pattered yet on Pavel’s window. 

The story features a composer and violinist as its main character with a pre-WWII setting in Prague. I'm fond of this story because it's one of the few stories I've written that I think fits firmly into the "mystery" genre. I've had a decent number of stories that I'd call "crime" stories published over the years, and maybe it's a subtle distinction, but it just has a different feel to me.

Cover art by Ron Miller

My COSine and ConFusion Schedules

I'll be attending two SF conventions in the next several weeks. First I'll be at COSine which is being held in Colorado Springs January 23-25 and the following weekend I'll be at Magical ConFusion in the Detroit area.

If you're attending either of those conventions, here's my schedule at each:

COSine:

• Friday 7 PM: "Dead Authors, Living Series" (moderator, Front Range Room)
• Saturday 10 AM: "Find the Time to Write" (Cripple Creek Room)
• Saturday 11 AM: "Prologues, Epilogues, Forewords, & Footnotes" (moderator, Front Range Room)
• Saturday 5:30 PM: Author Signing (Atrium)

ConFusion:

• Friday 4 PM: "The Art of the Short Story" panel (Leelanaw Room)
• Sunday 11 AM: Reading in a timeslot with Addie J. King (Manitou Room)
• Sunday 12 AM "Leveling Up Your Writing" (moderator, Leelanaw Room)

New Story: "Echoes of Your Father" at Every Day Fiction

I have a new story out this month! "Echoes of Your Father" was published in Every Day Fiction, my fourth appearance in that publication.

"They say the maze is haunted by echoes of its dead. You stand and watch the chitinous beast which waits patiently through every moment of every day at the maze’s entrance. No one has entered the maze today, so you still can. In your hand are the three coins the guard-beast demands — one copper, one silver, one gold."

I first wrote this story a little over thirteen years ago, for a flash-fiction writing competition in one of my writing groups. It's not the story of mine which went out on submission the most times before publications, but at a total of 48 submissions over the years, it's close. So perseverance definitely can pay off in the short fiction submission game! (In fact, I'll have a similar story to share later this year about another story once it's published...)

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database would list this as my 16th consecutive year of having fiction published, though their publication dates don't quite match mine for a few titles so I show a gap in 2019. Regardless, it's a nice way to start off 2026 from a writing perspective!

Recent Publications and Appearances

It's been a while since I put an update out here. I'm intending to work at being at least a bit more consistent about this, rather than saving up a bunch of news for one or two posts per year. But, for now, this post will cover various items of interest from 2025.

Easily the biggest news is the release of my second short fiction collection, Three Things Cameron Couldn't Tell You. I was so delighted to read Randee Dawn's generous blurb for the collection and had a great time doing a book launch at Worldcon with her for our respective books. (Richard Sparks, unfortunately, was unable to join us.)

Randee Dawn and I at our Worldcon 2025 Book Launch Party

Worldcon in general was a great experience. I was on one panel and also did a reading on Saturday morning, sharing three stories from my new collection. Thanks to Glen Engel-Cox for the photo of me at my reading!

Michael reading at Worldcon 2025 in Seattle

I've also had a couple of new stories published so far this year. My crime story "Prank Frank" was published in Black Cat Weekly issue #197 and my fantasy flash "In the Garden" was published in 3 Turns Widdershins. 

Neither of those stories is available to read for free online but one of my previously-published stories is now available for free online for the first time, though in audio, not text. "A Drink from the Doubtless Sea" was podcast by Manawaker earlier this fall; it had originally been published in 99 Fleeting Fantasies.

While we're on the topic of audio presentations of stories, just last night I was on Story Hour for the first time in about a year and a half and read my story "Carolina." The video is up on YouTube now, so you can check out my story and Natasha Calder's story which preceded mine.

And finally, a couple of notes about conventions past and future. Last weekend, I went to MileHiCon 57 and was on two panels and did a reading. One of the panels was the convention's annual "Flash Fiction Chopped" competition where authors are given prompts by the audience and have several minutes to write part of a story based on those prompts. They then read what they wrote to the audience who in turn vote on who they want to see stay on the panel and whose time in the competition has ended. To my pleasant surprise, I won the competition with my story which I titled (after the fact) "Vampires in a Sunoco Bathroom, I-10 Arizona, October 26 1986, 7:15 AM." I'm looking forward to returning to MileHiCon next year to attempt to defend my title. :)

Before that, I plan to attend at least a couple of other conventions, though I don't have details yet about whether I'll be on programming at either. COSine is being held in Colorado Springs the weekend of January 23, 2026. And just one weekend later, ConFusion will be in the Detroit area when I'll (genuinely) coincidentally also be. I'll update folks here with my schedule if I'm going to be on programming.

Okay, so I think that covers everything new for now! I'll try not to be such a stranger...

"Three Things Cameron Couldn't Tell You" Book Launch

Okay, this is a much-overdue post but better late than never...

As I write this, we're just a little over 24 hours before the book launch party at the 2025 Worldcon in Seattle, WA for my second collection Three Things Cameron Couldn't Tell You: Stories of (Mis)Communication.

For all the details about this book and to purchase a signed copy directly from me, you can go to the new page specific for this book.

If you're at the Seattle Worldcon, I hope you can join me for the launch party, which I'm doing in collaboration with Randee Dawn and Richard Sparks who are also launching new books this weekend.

The party will be starting at 4:30 PM on Saturday August 16th and be held in Room 2502 of the Sheraton Grand; we'll have cake and ice cream and lots of books.

My Blog Post for 2024!

So, yeah, that seems to be about the speed of things here these days... But, that's okay. Because there's news to share!

The big thing is that recently I sold my 100th short story! It was published just a few days ago: "Six or Seven Words Uttered by Marible Simpkins, While Unconscious After a Fall" at Wallstrait: A Literary Journal of Hard-to-Define Fiction. Something that this story shares with a whopping *twenty* of my other published stories is that it got its start at Liberty Hall. Among other things, Liberty Hall had a weekly Flash Fiction contest where you got two prompts and then had 90 minutes to write your story. Obviously, with that constraint, there were plenty of half-finished stories submitted and all of them were rough first drafts. But clearly it worked for me! According to my records, this one also looks to have been my last Liberty Hall story; which, if I recall correctly, means it was written for the last weekend flash fiction contest at Liberty Hall.

I had two other stories published earlier this year both in fantasy anthologies:

"A Drink from the Doubtless Sea" appeared in 99 Fleeting Fantasies. This one has one of my personal favorite last-lines from my stories. It also was the story that got me an entry in the Internet Science Fiction Database for the 14th consecutive year.

"The Gift of Music" appeared in A Little Fantasy Everywhere.

I also recently received an acceptance for a story of mine which had been submitted over fifty times before being accepted! More about that to come.

I've been spending a bit more time on writing recently; we'll see what that turns into as far as 2025 publications. After all, I need to get started on that second hundred...

"Awaiting the Captain's Ghost" at Story Hour

Last night I had the opportunity to do a live reading as part of the Story Hour series of speculative fiction readings which began in 2020. For October, Story Hour is focusing on spookier stories, so I decided to read my "Awaiting the Captain's Ghost." Previously this story had only been available in print anthologies (and my collection), so this is the first time this story has been freely-available online.

Also on the program is A. C. Wise with the amazing story "Death Is a Diner at 3 AM." If you check out the recording, I hope you enjoy it!