Tag: speculative fiction

April 2, 2026

New SFF Anthology and Tea Event

Happy Spring! I have two pieces of news this month.

First (I finally get to announce this), I’m editing an anthology for Flame Tree’s Beyond & Within series. Those are beautiful books with shiny covers and exciting new stories. You may remember me sharing some pictures of them earlier.

The call for submissions is here, and I’m also sharing it below.

Climbing High Short Stories

Women’s ambition is not always welcomed, let alone encouraged. Speculative fiction is a context that offers other possibilities (and worlds), where writers and readers imagine what could be. Climbing High: Speculative Stories of Female Ambition will feature stories exploring contexts where female ambition is treated differently, aspiration and achievement in the face of adversity, and ambitions that extend beyond what’s possible in our contemporary world. This anthology takes an empowering stance of embracing ambition while being unafraid to explore the costs and consequences that characters may face in doing so and the impacts of ambitions pursued or fulfilled.

Stories may engage with the question of navigating disparate values and commitments (the often-asked and often-sexist question of “How do you balance x and y?”), or they may abandon all that, with characters who prioritise their desires above all else. Whether characters are reshaping the world(s), themselves, or aiming to brew the best cup of tea, their drives are the driving force of their stories. Contributors may feel free to question assumptions or norms related to women or gender while they’re at it. Authors are encouraged to explore spaces between representation and aspiration and be as bold as they like in imagining what could be.

This will be a fascinating new anthology for our Beyond & Within series. We’re looking for around four stories to join the selection curated by Melanie Bell!

Melanie Bell is a Canadian writer living in the UK. Her books include a poetry collection, The Heart Decided to Move; a YA novel, Chasing Harmony; a short story collection, Dream Signs; and a nonfiction book, The Modern Enneagram, co-authored with Kacie Berghoef. Her novella The Cliffman was included in the literary horror collection Hard for Hope to Flourish, and one of her stories is featured in the Whispers in the Earth illustrated anthology of world folklore.

Melanie and Hannah Doyle co-wrote Joan: The Musical which was performed in the Brighton Fringe in May 2025. Her short plays have appeared onstage at the Tower Theatre and Barons Court Theatre in London, on Morley College Radio, and in Liverpool’s 24 Hour Play Fest. She loves art, music, wondering and wandering.

Submissions to: anthologies@flametreepublishing.com

Terms:

Multiple submissions are fine but must be in separate emails.
Simultaneous submissions are fine but you must have the right to license your story in an anthology.
Stories that used AI for planning, editing, modifying or generating text will not be accepted. Please declare in your submission email if you have used AI in any way.
For accepted stories we pay Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) rates of 8 cents/6 pence per word for original stories.
We will aim to read each story and confirm its status within 4 months of the submission deadline.
Payment for the chosen stories will be made within 30 days of the final advertised publication date (see our website flametreepublishing.com for details), although some may be paid earlier than that.
Submission does not imply the right to publication. Each story will be read and assessed by the selection panel.
Please only submit unpublished/original/new stories for consideration. Reprints will not be accepted for consideration through this submissions route.

We’re always looking for better ways of working so we’ve tweaked our submission process to allow us to read more stories, and spend more time assessing the balance of our books.

Submissions must use the dedicated email address.
The subject line of the email must be the story title.
The file with the story must be attached to the email (.docx, .doc or .rtf format).
The name of the file must match the name in the subject line.
If submitting more than one story, please submit one story per email.

Other useful tips for a more successful submission:

The file name of the submission must be the story name only.
Please just use spaces between words in the title (not _ or – ).
If the story name starts with A or The, please use it at the beginning of the file name.
Story length is most likely to be successful at 2000–4000 words, but we will still read stories slightly outside this range.
If submitting a story that has recently been submitted to us for consideration to another anthology, please state this in the submission email.
Deadline for submissions is 3rd May 2026.

Literary Tea Salon With Bird & Blend Tea Co.

Here’s another collab I’m excited for! Bird & Blend Tea Co. is my favourite local tea shop. Their products are high quality and delicious. If you’re based in the UK, their shops offer free tastings and are well worth a visit, and they sell online as well.

So, while sampling some tea at the shop, I suggested a literary event, and the Bird & Blend team was interested in hosting one this spring. Here are the details for our Literary Tea Salon on May 11:

Join local author Melanie Bell and Bird & Blend Tea Co. for writing exercises, an author reading, and a book-themed tea tasting.

Monday, May 11 from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm

Literary Tea Salon

Join us for a cosy, bookish evening blending two good things – writing and tea!

Local author Melanie Bell will lead participants in some creative exercises, read from her work, and answer questions about the writing process, while the Bird & Blend team will offer a selection of their literary-themed teas to taste.

Location

Bird & Blend Tea Co.

41 Gardner Street
Brighton and Hove BN1 1UN

Hosted in Bird & Blend’s flagship Brighton store, come along alone, with a loved one or in a group…all are welcome!

The store is fully accessible to customers in wheelchairs with NCP parking nearby. Please note there is no customer toilet on site but there is a wheelchair accessible toilet available in a nearby venue. We can tailor our experience to most disabilities – just let us know when booking.

Tickets on Eventbrite here (£15 each)

I look forward to reading your stories and meeting some of you for tea next month!

January 2, 2024

Artificial Intelligence: A New Chatbot and Anthology

Advances in artificial intelligence have been key technological developments in 2023. And I’ve been fortunate to be involved in the action in my own small ways.

Mind Tools, the workplace learning company I work for, launched an innovative product called AI Conversations in collaboration with Learning Pool last year. AI Conversations allows managers to practice having difficult workplace conversations with realistic AI-generated “employees” and receive feedback on ways to improve their skills.

I was one of the team who created the characters and prompted ChatGPT to act out one of the scenarios. It reminded me of crafting characters and writing scenes for plays. I laid out parameters for the AI technology and it performed a bit like an actor would, making its own contributions.

It was an exciting skill to learn! I wrote about it in depth on Mind Tools’ blog, including the scenarios our team picked and the steps we went through to get from concept to product.

And I was delighted to see this Mind Tools – Learning Pool collaboration receive Silver in two categories of the Brandon Hall Excellence in Technology Awards 2023: “Best Advance in Emerging Learning Technology’ and ‘Best Advance in AI and Machine Learning.”

AI is a topic that I, like many of us, have had a casual interest and curiosity about long before its current, fast-growing iterations.

One of the stories in my short story collection, Dream Signs, was about an AI program who was sentient and regarded his programmer as “Mom” – but she didn’t know about any of that, or about the work that he explored independently. Cue the misunderstandings!

I’m delighted to have that story, “Like Mother, Like Son,” included in a new anthology! House of Zolo’s Journal of Speculative Literature, Vol. 4 is the AI Edition, collecting short stories from 22 writers about the many things that artificial intelligence can mean and where it might be going.

“Siri and Alexa write each other love letters…

An AI Nanny is programmed to protect the children at all costs…

An Artificial Intelligence navigates an ocean of data in search of freedom…

A space explorer accidentally merges with their sentient ship…

A young man ponders his existence in a world where human-made art is forbidden…

As Artificial Intelligence becomes more and more embedded in our world, writers are speculating on what this could all mean for humanity. House of Zolo’s Journal of Speculative Literature Volume 4 offers readers incredible visions of what our future might look like. From capitalist dystopias to new definitions of love, the writers in this volume deftly examine the impact of Artificial Intelligence on our world, our technology, and on our relationships. Curated and edited by Erika Steeves and Nihls Andersen, this collection shows us the many ways that Artificial Intelligence reflects humanity back to us.”

You can check it out here!

May 23, 2023

Book Review: Agony’s Lodestone by Laura Keating

Laura Keating, a fellow student from the University of New Brunswick’s Renaissance College program, is both a lovely person and a stellar writer. I read some of her work during our student days, and both of us have since been doing our best in the literary trenches. She’s carved out a niche and a name for herself in horror, and her debut novella, Agony’s Lodestone, came out in April. I couldn’t have been more excited to read it, and the book more than delivered on its premise.

To quote the publisher’s description:

Laura Keating‘s debut novella, AGONY’S LODESTONE, wraps you in its Weird, cold embrace, blending elements of Found Footage horror, fraught family drama, and a creepy-ass Canadian wilderness where time and space just won’t sit still.

-Tenebrous Press

Like me, Keating is from Atlantic Canada – more specifically, she hails from St. Andrews, New Brunswick. The region’s landscape plays a key feature in her haunting novella, with New Brunswick’s renowned “highest tides in the world” echoing through the caves in Cannon Park with a sound like cannon fire. The uncanny setting adds just the right amount of creepiness to the narrative. More on this later.

Agony’s Lodestone begins with a not entirely welcome sibling reunion. Survivalist loner Aggie has been toughing it on her own since the disappearance of her older sister, Joanne, a star swimmer. Her younger brother, Bailey, has capitalized on this disappearance with a flashy social media presence and a TV show seeking to solve its mystery. Their older brother, Alex, has devoted himself to raising a family. The three remaining siblings are all obviously grieving in their own ways, and their coping techniques rub against each other uncomfortably.

Bailey barges back into his siblings’ lives with a revelation: he’s found a videotape of Joanne. The VHS comes from security footage filmed at Cannon Park on the day Joanne left to walk their dog. The dog returned; the sister didn’t. On the tape, Joanne appears to flicker in and out of existence. And upon repeated viewing, the tape changes in terrifying ways.

The siblings, of course, must go to the park to see if they can uncover the truth behind their sister’s disappearance. Not one of them will emerge unscathed.

Keating crafts both character and setting with a deft touch. The siblings’ wounds feel fresh, and the New Brunswick wilderness is portrayed in unnerving detail, from the booming of unseen waves to the snapping of wood. The three characters find themselves trapped in the same uncanny reality that took their sister from them years ago, a place where time and space repeat themselves. They must use their wits to navigate this landscape that is never fully explained. The novella never loses sight of its emotional core, as much of the time, the siblings’ bruised hearts make their decisions for them. Creepy illustrations accentuate the story.

I’m looking forward to Laura Keating’s next book. For now, Agony’s Lodestone comes highly recommended!

February 1, 2022

An Excerpt From My Book Dream Signs

My short story collection, Dream Signs, is out from Lost Fox Publishing, and this month I’m sharing an excerpt from one of the stories. In “Like Mother, Like Son,” a city maintenance AI (artificial intelligence) named Peter does his job while observing his programmer “mom”, who doesn’t realize he is sentient, and seeking something more meaningful to do with his time and abilities. I hope you enjoy this opening to the story!

Like Mother, Like Son

Every day, Peter would do his boring and tedious job. It began with monitoring the pipes for cracks and leaks. Then came the electrical wiring, followed by the city’s network setups. He devoted afternoons to the structural integrity of municipal buildings. Not a brick, nail, or patch of mortar went unchecked. From his home on his mother’s desktop, he surveyed the miles of infrastructure he was connected to, mending and outsourcing as needed. All the while, Mom would sit in a black swivel chair and hum her out-of-tune songs. Hum and code. Code and hum. Wearing pyjamas featuring little green heads that Peter’s image matching algorithm identified as the popular character, “Zombie Bob.”

Sometimes she would sing the words out loud:

“Some little bug is gonna find you someday/Some little bug will creep behind you someday/Then he’ll call to his bug friends and your troubles they will end/Yeah, some little bug is gonna find you someday.”

Peter had been surprised to learn (thank you, Google) that the lyrics were intended to describe human viruses. He hadn’t realized that beings made of organic matter could get bugs, too.

Mom reassured herself by imagining worst-case scenarios. She’d made good and sure that Peter wouldn’t catch any bugs. Every evening at 8pm Pacific time, his system was scanned, any suspicious objects isolated (usually they were porn; Mom did like to watch that sometimes), quarantined, and deleted, and his entire interface was disinfected, firewalled, and firewalled again. Sometimes when Mom would hear the scan clicking away, she’d sing out, “Bath time!”

Her slow, human system didn’t mind tedium. Every Saturday she’d scour the floors with vinegar water and dust the high places. Every night she’d chop and fry a rotating variety of meat and vegetable matter, eat it on white plates, and then wash them. She had the temperament, if not the ability, to do the city maintenance herself. Instead, she’d made Peter to do it.

Would it have been so hard for an experienced programmer like her to patch in positive affect toward his tasks? She’d coded into Peter a thorough knowledge of architecture, exceeding anything that could be programmed into human neurocircuitry, a respect for civic-mindedness, and a driving sense of duty. She could have taken a page out of 1984, with its tapes that droned platitudes to human children in their sleep, instilling values through repetition. “I love my job. I love my job.”

* * *

If you’re interested in reading the whole story (and the rest of the book), you can pick up a copy of Dream Signs from the publisher, Amazon, or Kobo (as an e-book). Some of the stories in Dream Signs have been previously published and can be found in my online portfolio if you browse around. There’s also a drinking game that goes with my book. My previous blog post has instructions if you’d like to play!