Category: Fantasy

My contemporary and historical fiction that tries (and I mean really tries) to sound like it really happened.

Fantasy, Writing

Drabble — “To Return a Library Book”

Posted on by Desmond White

A drabble submitted to Singapore Unbound’s 1st Flash Fiction Contest. The prompt was “The Infinite Library.”

Varis, in the gray robe of a peer, raises a torch. There is no need. Above are impossible stars hiding a vaulted ceiling. Between the shelves are lanterns white. Licking cracked lips, Varis scans spines and checks a tea-colored map. He’s close. Soon he will find a gap among dark covers, where he will place a book before sliding down in exhaustion. His thoughts will toss downward, past the tomes between the walls, to the black ocean. There are shelves down there. Books preserved against the cold and miry, against man’s finding, writ on something enduring, driftwood maybe, on water.

Fantasy, Scifi, Writing (Published)

Published — “Rona of the Els”

Posted on by Desmond White

Electric Spec picked up my short story, “Rona of the Els,” about a peasant witch who takes a noble girl on a tramp through the marsh.

“Quiet Reflections” by Yuri Magalhães (2020)

There’s an LGBT undercurrent here, as well as what I hoped was an interesting application of old fantasy tropes. This is meant to be a fun read, but maybe someone who’s looking at their future with a little less-than-hope might read “Rona” and feel inspired.

Electric Spec is a not-for-profit speculative magazine that publishes four times per year. “Rona of the Els” is featured in Volume 15, Issue 2, May 31, 2020, which also features a wonderful interview by Blogcritics Magazine editor Barbara Barnett.

Fantasy

Drabble — “Bird Lizard Coming On Strong”

Posted on by Desmond White

A story in exactly 100 words.

Jim scratched his groin, itching fierce since last week’s romp at Ophelia’s. With a squint particular to these plains, he muttered, “I’m telling ya, that there’s a wyvern.”

Turner pulled from her scope, rested the rifle on the blue ridge of the roof. “It’s a dragon. Release the flare.”

Jim spat. “Wyvern! See the tail? Got a stinger there. That two-wings couldn’t burn down a barn.”

That two-wings released a hot beam of fire that took out Ophelia’s Place. The critter swooped overhead, a stingerless tail whistling by.

“One of them fire-breathing wyverns,” Jim muttered stubbornly, reaching for the flare.

Fantasy

Drabble — “Baby’s on the Wall Again”

Posted on by Desmond White

A story in exactly 100 words.

Mother put down baby, avoiding kicking legs, all twelve of them. She wrapped a diaper around baby’s waist, whispering gently. Baby giggled, his mandibles clacking. Mother smiled. “He’s putting on weight. The diapers are getting tighter.”

Underwear secure, baby scurried up the wall.

Father was releasing torrents into the sink. “Another bite?” she asked. Father groaned, hurled, didn’t reply, raised an arm. Gauze barely hid where baby had bit freely. Mother came to the kitchen to hold her husband, to let the sense of wrong invade her, before the fog returned, before she pulled baby back down from the ceiling.

Fantasy, Life, Writing (Published)

Published — “Familiar Girls”

Posted on by Desmond White

My microfiction “Familiar Girls” was published by Blood Song Books in “Curses & Cauldrons.” Their witch-based anthology boasts “over 200 tiny dark tales of magic, mischief, murder, mayhem & madness” and is available as an ebook or trade paperback. I’m proud to be published alongside so many great writers, including my wife!

Oh, and here’s a great review of the anthology.

Fantasy, Life, Writing (Published)

Published — “The Other World Tree”

Posted on by Desmond White

My flash fiction, “The Other World Tree,” was published in Quail Bell Magazine. Inspired by stories set in Victorian London and the Upside Down in Stranger Things, I wrote a two-page story about a girl’s encounter with a dimension that’s not benevolent or wondrous.

Quail Bell Magazine is a literary magazine that finds and publishes seriously good writers (I should know, I’m one of them). Founded by Christine Sloan Stoddard, Quail Bell seeks “real and unreal stories,” especially stories that are “imaginary, nostalgic, and otherworldly.”

As they say in their motto:

Our go-to spell? Art + Ideas = Magic.

Fantasy, Life, Writing (Published)

Published — “Garden of Forking Palms”

Posted on by Desmond White

My absurdist flash fiction Garden of Forking Palms was included in the Spring/Summer 2019 issue of Mojave River Review. My title plays with Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Garden of Forking Paths,” but roads diverge from there. The story is about a man who wakes up to find a garden on his hand. And then he has to go to work.

I wanted to explore our universal experience of not-quite-fitting-in, of having something weird or silly to preoccupy our social discomfort. My argument is that weirdness, silliness, those things that fluster, they might actually be our most beautiful or interesting attributes. Dave doesn’t make the right decision in the end, but he might someday with time and maturity and that steady growth of self-knowledge.

Mojave River Media is a busy publishing center with books, anthologies, and review magazines. This includes Mojave River Review, a prose and poetry anthology produced biseasonally.

Fantasy, Life, Writing (Published)

Published — “Black Bear on White Paper”

Posted on by Desmond White

Literally Stories published my fantasy story, “Black Bear on White Paper.” The story takes place in a realm I’ve envisioned for some time: a forest world founded on an endless, underground library. Unexplained, and mostly unexplored, the library is attended by a small cabal of librarian-monks. The concept combines Borges’s “The Library of Babel,” Tolkien’s Mines of Moria, and the medieval monastery.

Literally Stories was started in 2014 by a wiggle of writers, including a bloke named Adam West (no, not that one). The magazine not only provides a platform for prose and poetry, but encourages reader feedback and author interaction. There’s even a comments section labeled “Your Thoughts” for criticism of the magazine itself. The hope is to give “each story its moment in the sun.” Naturally, this might provide a healthy tan; for others, a nasty burn.

Fantasy, Life, Scifi, Writing (Published)

Nominated — “And We Who Never Died”

Posted on by Desmond White

The Tishman Review nominated my story “And We Who Never Died” for Best Small Fictions.

BSF is an anthology that honors the “best short hybrid fiction published in a calendar year.” The Harvard Review wrote that the pieces in BSF are like a “splash of ice water in the face,” a wake-up call to “your life… unspooling.”

When I heard I’d been nominated, I was like cool beans and moved on to lesson planning and grading.

Then Coffin Bell posted this:

nomination

And I discovered that MY WIFE HAS BEEN NOMINATED.

As of this day, she and I are no longer friends. No longer best friends. No longer lovers.

But bitter enemies locked in literary combat.

THIS. MEANS. WAR.