Ancient Logic

I am pleased to announce my story " Ghost Notes " is now available at the Dime Show Review , free online to read! Ghost Notes by Morgan Crooks (2018) Despite the title, this is represents a bit of a change of pace from other stories recently published, as it contains far more youthful nostalgia and guitar playing than my usual monsters and robots. It is one of my favorite stories I've ever written and I hope you give it a try. While there, give the other stories at Dime Show a chance - they are fantastic! Thank you to Kae Sable for choosing this story! I will be putting together an author's notes post in the near future.

The print version of Lamplight Volume 6 Issue 2 is now available for order! This magazine includes my horror story, "Implicate Order," as well as fantastic stories from KL Pereira, Sarah Read, Haleh Agar, and many others. Maria Haskins, author of Dark Flash 1 and 2, said that the volume is a "must-read" and that my story is a "spine-tingling slow burn." Print copy of Lamplight Volume 6 Issue 2  To mark the print version's release, I've put together a few things from my writer's notebook that helped shape this story. First are a few images used as reference for the story that I think are wonderful in their own right:  Here are few pictures I took on Nantucket near Long Pond in 2016. The loneliness of these images inspired the atmosphere of the story.  Finally, I put together playlists for my stories while writing them and these songs are a few that seemed to evoke either the atmosphere or emotions of the story. PJ Ha...

In 2016, my wife and I took a short vacation in Nantucket. I'd never been to the island and we were looking for a quick getaway during one of my school vacation weeks. As I joked with friends afterwards, Nantucket was 'fine.' Everything about it was fine. The food was fine. The weather was fine. The views from its beaches were obviously fine. It did feel a bit like a Martha Stewart Theme Park but that's what I expected going there and wasn't much disappointed to find that confirmed.  "Denise" by Zhang Jingna (2010) There was, however, one moment that stuck with me. After renting a car, Lauren and I took a tour around as much of the island as we could. We reached the extreme western edge of Nantucket and pulled over to take in this wide stretch of marshy lake called Long Pond. While there I noticed a scrap of black trash bag caught in some reeds, flapping in this solemn, almost beckoning way. And that was it. I had the beginnings of a sto...

I am proud to announce my horror story, "Implicate Order" appears in the new issue of Lamplight Magazine (scroll down to Volume Six Issue Two). In the aftermath of a distant relative's funeral, a young boy learns unpleasant facts about the world's hidden ecologies. Of all of the stories I've written, I think this may be one of my favorites. I hope to post sometime this week story-notes on writing this piece. "Implicate Order" appears along side staggering stories from writers KL Pereira, Sarah Reed, Noelle Henneman, and Haleh Agar. There is also a classic story from the Dark Fantasy writer Francis Stevens. I am humbled to have this story appear alongside such illustrious company. Thank you Catherine Grant and the rest of the Lamplight team for choosing this story and for doing an amazing job putting Issue 6.2 together. How to read e-issue: Purchase e-issue directly from Apokrupha Purchase e-issue from Amazon   Purchase e-issue from Smashmouth...

"What Little We Know," started life with these two sentences: "A young man falls in love with a statue who he believes saved his life. He sacrificed everything to save and protect it in return." This synopsis is fairly typical, by the way, for my story ideas. One or two sentences about an image or concept I can't shake out of my head. There was something in this idea I felt interested me, especially after reading Thomas Ligotti's "The Medusa," which I found very inspiring for writing a certain type of 'cozy gothic.' Like the myth of Set's Coffin, the Medusa illustrates the dread of knowing someone is walking into a trap made bespoke for them. I already envisioned the statue as a monster, as something predatory. The idea sat unused for about half a year until the Spring of 2016. I researched a few ideas concerning statues and monsters which is when the egregoi and Atlantis stuff started to accrete around the edges. I finished ...

Stone God by Morgan Crooks (2017) Fantasia Divinity Magazine has released their December issue and I'm in it! My story, "What Little We Know," concerns a hidden glen in Upstate New York, two star-crossed lovers, and a carnivorous statue. I'd like to thank Madeline L. Stout, Amber M. Simpson and the rest of the team at Fantasia for choosing this story and giving it such a great home. Having read the other stories in the magazine, I can say the entire issue is terrific. Free to read (scroll to the last story): December 2017 Issue of Fantasia Divinity Magazine Purchase a copy of magazine: To be updated once available  I hope to release some story-notes to go along with this story, mostly concerning my process in developing the story from a very different idea into what it is presently.

Gehenna and Hinnom's "Year's Best Transhuman SF" anthology is now available ! This awesome collection happens to include my story "Machinery of Ghosts" which has a bit of an involved back-story. Here are a few notes on its inspirations as a story and its development over the years.  Hugo Station by Morgan Crooks (2012) I wrote this story more than a decade ago while working as a night shift guard in downtown Boston. Twice every night I had to leave my desk in the front lobby, take an elevator to the top floor, and walk all the way back down to that lobby. To make sure guards completed their rounds, each floor had two sensor stations that I had to check into with a black metal wand. For the most part, I didn't mind this part of the job. The upper floors provided a nice view of the city and it was interesting checking up on the various companies in the building. I did, however, mind the fifth floor. The fifth floor was in the process of bein...

Gehenna and Hinnom's "Year's Best Transhuman SF" anthology is now available! This awesome collection just so happens to include my story "Machinery of Ghosts," a story set on an abandoned space station years after a traumatic, system-wide nanological war. Long after peace has been declared, a different sort of war endures within the station, one threatening to claim the station and everyone inside of it. Purchase "Year's Best Transhuman SF" paperback Purchase "Year's Best Transhuman SF" e-book I am so grateful to C.P. Dunphey and the entire team at Gehenna and Hinnom for choosing my story for this collection. Seeing it along side such excellent authors as Julie Novakova, Jeremy Szal, and Sheldon Woodbury is an amazing honor.  Read Gehenna and Hinnom's press release I will release story notes for "Machinery of Ghosts" in the next few days, so stay tuned!

I am thrilled to announce that my short story, "Emissary," a weird-apocalypse take on love and betrayal, will appear in the first issue of the Selene Quarterly Magazine in their "Brides, Grooms, and Honeymoons," issue.  Darra knows her husband is no hero. He rose to power in Shepherd Falls as a bandit and a thief. They married as a convenience, a way to legitimize his assumption of power while maintaining the influence of a decrepit gentry. There is little love lost between them. And yet, in order for her home to survive, she must find a way to convince this coward and tyrant to fight for her home. To stand against an unspeakable threat even though it will almost certainly mean his death.  "Emissary" is a story about resistance and surrender in the face of the end of the world. It's also about a certain type of marriage that only exists because the people in it can't survive without each other. I don't yet have information about wh...

I have a few short speculative stories to recommend from the past month. Particularly this year I find myself drawn to stories that promise one of two things: gloomy, restless undead or enormous 16-wheel tractor trailers, flames painted down the side, horns blaring, riding down the venal and corrupt and flattening them into road-kill on the side of the road. I have three of the former listed and one of the latter. Parallax by Morgan Crooks (2017) Her Hands Like Ice by KT Bryski. ( Bracken ) This was very good. The central of the mystery of the story - what haunts the narrator - is spun out convincingly, mesmerizingly until the final line. The reader's ache to UNDERSTAND this mystery echoes the cold need of the narrator to keep ahold of her dead sister. Not so much a revision or reaction to the classic vampire set-up as a clever misdirection.  Infinite Love Engine by Joseph Allen Hill ( Lightspeed ). A great rollicking funny-as-hell, deranged, explosion of Afrofutris...

I'm thrilled to announce my flash piece, "The Green Rope," has been published at the online literary magazine " Subtle Fiction ." This is my first general fiction piece to have been published and to have it appear here is a great honor. The story is about fear and how it lingers. "The Green Rope," is one of the shortest works I've ever written so if you were inclined, you would have plenty of time to check out the other available works. Thank you, Jill Chan for selecting my story! From Subtle Fiction's "About," page: We are a new literary magazine which aims to publish the best short fiction online. We are interested in short stories and flash fiction pieces of no more than 3,000 words. Fiction which does not fit into a box. It must be lively, daring, and filled with subtlety, hence our name. Give us stories which surprise and move us. We are looking for beautiful, complex, and uncompromising work.

February was a bit busy. I attempted to finish reading the collection my story, "Killing the First Gods," appeared in "A Book of Blasphemous Words." At nearly thirty stories, I'm afraid I didn't quite finish the book in time but what I read gave me quite a few more names to follow. A Sack Race to the River by Chris Kuriata. ( The Book of Blasphemous Words ) This one left a mark. The story of a father who is attempting to save his sons from some awful apocalyptic fate by stuffing them in a burlap sack reminded me of that Bill Paxton movie, "Fraility," but the payoff here is a bit more epic and weird.  Youth Will be Served by Andrew Fox. ( Nightmare ) In Florida, a leviathan offers youth in exchange for the lives of a few sacrificial elderly. Wrapped up in this is the desire to help those in pain and the inevitability of decline and death. What really came through in this story is the sense of unspoken menace, the constant peril of al...

I am thrilled to share the news my story, "Promontory," will appear in an upcoming anthology of unusual possession stories published by the incredible Martian Migraine Press. The anthology, "A Breath from the Sky,"puts together a classic H.P. Lovecraft tale and twenty other atypical stories of possession. Judging from the cover and the list of impressive authors, I'm anticipating pure awesomeness. "Promontory" is a possession story and one of my more overtly horror tales, so I'm overjoyed that it found a host, er, home here. I am sharing the Table of Contents below, as well as a link to the announcement on the Martian Migraine website to provide a sense of what this collection will be about. The cover is amazing, the other authors selected for the collection are amazing, and I have to say, having a story appear alongside a classic tale like HP's "Colour Out of Space," feels pretty darn amazing. I hope to provide more information about...

January was a busy month for me, to put it mildly. I attended Arisia 2017 and sat on a terrific panel about short fiction. I received word of two story acceptances (one listed in a previous post and the other forthcoming). There were also all of the distractions of a world veering somewhere between the "Dead Zone" by Stephen King and a cyberpunk dystopia by William Gibson. And, of course, I read a whole bunch of awesome short stories, including a few I can recommend below. Wooden Boxes Lined With the Tongues of Doves by Claire Humphrey. (Beneath Ceaseless Skies). When considering stories that revolve around magic, I really respond to writers that can somehow conjure what that magic is and how it works within the tight confines of a short story. To me, magic should feel like magic. In other words, waving wands and intoning spells doesn't really cut it. When magic is done in fiction, the result should feel inevitable. Pull a trigger and a bullet flies. I pri...

This was a great year for speculative fiction, both novels and short stories and I had a little trouble narrowing down my favorites to just five. Which is part of the reason this post is running right up to the end of the year. Every story I'm listing below is one that is still sitting with me all these months later.  For the record, I have one more of these year-end posts left - a sort of wrap-up of everything else. In comparison to last year, which was nearly all science fiction (and one very Sfnal fantasy novel) I've got a slightly more eclectic list going here. The Fisherman by John Langan: This is the last novel I read in 2016 and the best. Langan's tale of two widowers bonding over fishing the streams and rivers of Upstate New York combines intensely personal tragedy, with scenes of compelling weirdness and terror. The story raises interesting questions about the nature of language and the responsibilities of those in grief.  Infomocracy by Malka Older....

As mentioned last week, I do have a bit of happy news to share. I am excited to announce that my story, "The Yuru-chara of Hector, NY," will appear in the next issue of the Electric Spec Magazine at the end of the month. I am tremendously excited about this for a few reasons: Electric Spec is simply awesome. I've been reading this magazine for awhile and never been disappointed by a single story. To have one of my stories selected is beyond humbling. I can only give an earnest thank you to Lesley L. Smith for choosing the story. I love this story dearly. It has one of my favorite protagonists and shows in the clearest way I've managed where I'd like to go with my fiction.  Electric Spec also gave me the chance to reflect on this story and its meaning in a guest blog which I am sharing below. Without being spoilery, this blog expresses some of what resonates about "The Yuru-chara of Hector, NY," with me.  Guest Blog at Electric Spec At the moment, ...

It's tough to believe that it's already November! I will be grateful to see the other side of Tuesday as my mood right now is cautiously optimistic. The polls have stabilized and the early voting patterns encourage. If you haven't already - remember to vote! Besides a few anthologies worth of short stories, I got to review about the expected number of current short fiction. I'm selecting a few that really stuck with me this month. A Diet of Worms by Valerie Valdes. The best Twilight Zone episodes, the scariest ones, revolved around worlds just slightly out of step with our own. They were like traps or snares. Take the wrong door or stop at the wrong town and there you'd be, stuck forever. That's what this story is like. The narrator keeps going to see a movie called "The Queen in Red" which somehow sucks the life out of the narrator. The terror here is of that dread that once time has gone it can't come back.  The Key to St Medusa's by Kat H...

Slightly better situation this month for reading short stories. I still didn't quite to as many as I'd like to but I can recommend a few stories without hesitation.  Scent by Maria Haskins (Flash Fiction Online) Another tale of the horrific perfumes. Here, a daughter administers to a frightful mother, a kind of demon who steals away the fragrances (and presumably souls) of unlucky mortals. There is something memorable about the intertwining of imagery and odor, and also the slow, twisting tension between a mother and a daughter; the mask of pleasant perfumes over something dark and predatory. All the Mermaid Wives by Gwendolyn Kiste. (87 Bedford) a couple of Kiste's favorite motifs intertwine here. Fairy tale creatures updated for a fraught present, sisterhood, and questions of empowerment. This story broadens her work in some respects. While still retaining a directness and unpretentious grace, more and more o...

Now, this was more like it. The great thing about having a month off is I could really dig into my favorite magazines and journals for the best of current speculative short fiction. That luxury has produced a list of a few stories I think worth your time. At the bottom of the post, I also have a link to the most recent chapter of "Agent Shield and Spaceman." "Ley Line" by Morgan Crooks (2016)  "Floodwaters" by Kristi DeMeester ( The Dark ). A ghost story is about the past, a ghost being the literal embodiment of something passed. This story hints and suggests, slowly filling in the gaps of a family's history until the flood waters submerge everything. The language here is simple, direct, and brutal while still preserving a dark species of poetry. One of my favorite works last month and that's saying a lot.  "Some Pebbles in The Palm" by Kenneth Schneyer ( Lightspeed ). A really excellent philosophical piece concerned with many of th...

As the school year winds down, my time for fiction grows a little short. But here a trio of stories well worth your time to track down. Left Behind by Cat Rambo. (Clarkesword) A melancholy and sober work about the nature of the singularity as lived by one down and out mind palace engineer and an old woman who is being forced into a virtual retirement by her awful kids. There should be more of these types of stories - not tech fantasies but not quite dystopias either. No Matter Which Way We Turned by Brian Evenson. (People Holding) Short marvelously creepy story about an alien abduction mishap. Apparently inspired by a photograph. The Universal Museum of Sagacity by Robert Reed. (Clarkesworld) I've read a few of Reed's elegant character driven works but this one really got me. Its vast and achingly personal narrative inspires in the way great SF does: spawning dreams as close and welcome as a first kiss. I hope to have a fe...