I have a new story out in the November issue of Clarkesworld magazine. You can read it here.
‘The Gift of Angels: an introduction’ was drafted in Paris last year, during my residency at Les Recollets. I finished the draft just three days prior to my departure – you could say the novelette takes place in real time. My return to Scotland was also an immediate return to work on the final draft of The Dollmaker and the then-current draft of the novel I am working on now, and so it was not until the end of this summer that I was able to complete the story and submit it.
Some readers might notice that ‘The Gift of Angels’ is a sequel, of sorts, to my 2016 story ‘The Art of Space Travel’, though the two works function entirely independently of one another. ‘Gift’ brings together elements of memoir, criticism and complete fiction in a way I had not quite dared to attempt before but that is coming increasingly to preoccupy me. I wouldn’t normally say this, but I love this story. I hope readers will enjoy discovering it.
My huge thanks to Neil Clarke at Clarkesworld for being open to the story’s possibilities, and to my French publishers and the wonderful people at La Maison de la Poesie and Les Recollets, to whom ‘The Gift of Angels’ is dedicated.