QSFer Alex Kingsley has a new queer fantasy out (asexual, demi, nonbinary, trans ftm), The Bastion Cycle book 1: Empress of Dust.
There are monsters outside the city walls.
Harvard is small, anxious, and plagued by a constant tremor, which is not an ideal combination for a desert scavenger. He and his crew are under constant threat of desertwalker attacks, and Harvard is nearly useless against them.
When the biggest mistake of Harvard’s life separates him from his crew, he must learn the secrets of the desert beasts in order to survive the dangers of the dusts. Returning to Bastion with a surprising ally, Harvard is forced to choose between saving his crew or allying with the “monsters” who rescued him.
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Excerpt
Harvard had a tremor for all nineteen (twenty?) years of his life. He’d grown accustomed to always shaking a little—or a lot—when his mother was angry at him, or when he didn’t know the answers to a quiz, or when there was a monster trying to eat him.
He’d hoped after two years of facing desertwalkers of all shapes and sizes, he’d learn to face the crabs without fear, but still he turned into a quivering mess before the serpentine creature skittering toward him on spindly legs.
“Now, Harvard! Spray it!”
But Harvard’s body was useless. He fumbled for the canister of vapor he carried in his pack and aimed it at the charging beast, but his trembling hand hardly put any pressure on it. The nozzle only coughed up a pathetic cloud of gas into the dry desert air.
“Spray it!” Princeton commanded again.
“I can’t!” he cried as the creature closed in. A hand gripped him by the collar and yanked him backward, his feet kicking up dust. Someone wrenched the metal cylinder from his hands, scraping his fingers.
With a flick of his wrist, Princeton effortlessly turned the canister toward the encroaching beast and gave it a long, hard spray. The white mist shot forward into the gaping mouth of the reptilian monster. The beast recoiled, whining, scampering back on its insectoid legs. Its top half writhed in fluid spasms while its angular legs jerked around haphazardly. One more pathetic wheeze, and its legs collapsed under it. It twitched in agony, stirring up dust, and finally lay still.
Harvard looked on in horror. He’d seen the same sight many times, and it never became any less off-putting.
“I let you hold the canisters for two quaking seconds, and you let this happen!” Princeton snapped him back into reality.
“I— I tried!” Harvard said. “It came up behind me, and— and I didn’t see it—”
“Useless piece of garbage,” Princeton grumbled, shoving the near-empty canister into Harvard’s chest. He didn’t protest. He could delude himself, imagining Princeton had been talking about the faulty canister, but he had very little hope that was the case. It was not the first time one of his crew members had easily snatched him from the jaws of death, and if he were being honest with himself, it wouldn’t be the last.
“Leave him, Princeton,” Yale said. The two turned to see the captain of the Ivies approaching with Columbia trailing close behind, faces obscured with dustscarves and goggles. Columbia, as always, remained silent, keeping whatever judgements she was making to herself. And Harvard knew she was making judgments. He wasn’t sure which embarrassed him more—that Yale had to come to his aid, or that he didn’t have an inkling of what Columbia thought about him. At least Princeton made his opinion on the matter clear.
“If that thing tore through him, we’d be fending for ourselves without a vapor canister!” Princeton said, a little too comfortable with the prospect of Harvard’s death.
“Well, it didn’t,” Yale said matter-of-factly. “And be careful with those. We’re running low.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, should I have let it eat him?” Princeton retorted.
“Just don’t use so much.”
Yale turned their gaze to Harvard.
“You okay?” they asked. Harvard nodded, still clutching the canister to his chest like a talisman.
Satisfied, Yale turned away.
“We’ve got a long way to go before sunset. Get moving.”
Harvard looked back again at the corpse of the crabsnake. He couldn’t help but feel sorry for the thing. Had it been inches away from devouring him? Yes. But still…it didn’t deserve such an excruciating death. He didn’t know what it felt like to inhale scuttler vapor, but he couldn’t imagine it was pleasant. But if the creature wasn’t dead, then he would have been. A refined child does not draw attention, his mother had told him. A refined child knows how to handle himself.
Harvard had known how to handle himself, once. Not anymore.
Author Bio
Alex Kingsley (they/them) is a writer, comedian, game designer, and playwright. They are a co-founder of the new media company Strong Branch Productions, where they write and direct sci-fi comedy podcast The Stench of Adventure and other shows. Their short fiction has appeared in Translunar Travelers Lounge, Radon Journal, The Storage Papers, and more. In 2023 they published their short story collection, The Strange Garden and Other Weird Tales. Their debut novel Empress of Dust will be published by Space Wizard Science Fantasy in Fall 2024. Alex’s sci-fi play “The Bearer of Bad News” premiered in LA in 2022 produced by the Annenberg Foundation, and their sci-fi play Unplanned Obsolescence premiered in Philadelphia in 2023 as part of Cannonball Festival. Alex’s SFF-related non-fiction has appeared in Interstellar Flight Magazine and Ancillary Review of Books. Their games can be downloaded pay-what-you-will at https://alexyquest.itch.io.
| Author Website | https://www.alexkingsley.org |
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| Author Mastodon | https://podvibes.co/@alexyquest |