QSFer Matt Buscemi has a new bunch of shorts out on Amazon:
Rune-Driven Spellcraft
Mac is pissed off. Everyone around him is stupid, especially his teacher, Archmage Alwell. Mac can’t believe that someone so incompetent has risen so high within the guild. Recently, Alwell been insisting that Mac practice the rune-driven technique in his spellcrafting, but that’s obviously a waste of time. What an idiot. Mac supposes he will go home and craft just one stupid spell using the stupid rune-driven technique, just so he’s not kicked out of the guild. Or perhaps instead, he might just discover a discipline
Adaptive
Armen and Seyli escape north out of Portland as a rampant and bloodthirsty UI named Codex hurtles toward them, converting everything in its path into circuits and processors. What begins as an attempt at mere escape morphs into a life and death struggle to halt Codex’s homicidal rampage.
Lunar Eclipse
On another world, one not too dissimilar from our own, a Renaissance-era astronomer witnesses a large object approach the moon and then disappear behind it. Sixty years later, the leader of a merchants’ guild laments the infrastructure improvements that he recently commissioned for his city’s port will soon be made obsolete by rising tides. And into the future we hurtle, two generations at a time, watching as a society struggles with their increasingly turbulent world.
Right and Proper
Su Kailey Verillo is very good at her job. She always ranks near the top of the charts that track the performance of the Igi’s dozens of Su. And when it comes to collecting payments and cutting off delinquent townships, none are shrewder or more exacting than Kailey. Getting assigned to the routine task of welcoming an initiate worker seems like no great burden, until the new recruit, a young woman named Saga, does the unthinkable: she causes Kailey to consider the concept of beauty.
Shadowplay
In the wake of his boyfriend’s departure from his life, Adam discovers the unthinkable: his own reflection has taken on a mind of its own. Not only has it been communicating with him via written messages held up in the glass, it has also hijacked his computer and cell phone, sending communications Adam would rather weren’t sent. Can Adam convince his reflection that he should work on patching things up with his distant boyfriend, or will his reflection succeed in driving him in another direction entirely?
Temple of the Setting Sun
Something terrible has happened. I spent my life seeking calm, and I found it. Serenity is within my grasp. But what if… what’s happening back at home? Why are the temple elders behaving so strangely? One of them even spoke. I knew the world would be different when I was through here, but that was supposed to be because of me, because I’d changed. Something is going on beyond these walls and beyond this isolated island, beyond my temple of the Order of the Setting Sun.
We Were Here First
Bruce is a knight of the Kingdom of Jeia. Attacked and pursued, he seeks shelter in a tavern mid-flight back to his home country. His solace is interrupted by a group of performers, and he lashes out at them with all the authority afforded a man of his station. But he is in for a surprise when an unforeseen threat encroaches, and the tables become, very suddenly, turned.
Xenosociology
These have got to be the weirdest aliens I’ve ever seen. They hew down their planet’s mega-petals, construct pitted boxes from their corpses, and then live inside them. Initial surveys of the pitted boxes turned up nothing out of the ordinary–except for the pink bricks. What could their function be? Shortly, my colleague and I will enter one of the pitted boxes with the goal of finding and retrieving a pink brink. Expect a detailed report of our mission in the next communique. Coming 1/5/16
Buy Links
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Author Bio
Matthew Buscemi is a speculative fiction author and founder of Fuzzy Hedgehog Press. He grew up in Illinois, but left to explore the world. He has taught English in Japan and Thailand, and has studied linguistics in Hawaii.
Nowadays he lives with his partner in Seattle, Washington, where he types code by day and prose by night. He dreams of exploring the multiverse himself, but until humanity gets around to inventing a means of inter-dimensional travel, his imagination will suffice.