Interstellar Flight Magazine Best of Year One

by Holly Lyn Walrath

  No time to bother with changing into something fancier; Triz ducked out of the office and fussed briefly with her hair. She wondered if she'd be able to find any of Casne's Fleet friends to follow around for the night. If nothing else she might be able to find them on the outskirts of the crowd of admirers the favored Captain Casne Vivik Veling had surely collected by now. They could hit Ganit's Pantry, and hopefully Ganit hadn't jacked up the price of boot gin by three hundred percent for the night—

  The lift flashed an alert: visitors incoming. Damn Kalo. What, did he decide to give it one more go for old time’s sake? Her heart lurched. But then a comfortably familiar scowl settled into her face, and she folded her arms.

  The lift doors parted, and Triz choked on the deep breath she'd held. Casne exploded out of the lift and picked her up in a hug. Triz's arms locked around Casne's back, and she gasped down a deep breath to keep from bursting into sudden, silly tears. Casne's tight curls carried the faint electric smell of the interior of a whaleship, but she still smelled like home to Triz.

  After several long moments that would never be quite long enough, Casne pulled back. "All right, greasemark," she shouted over the vacuum's roaring and laid a warm kiss on Triz's lower lip. "Are you going to buy me a drink, or what?"

  Continued in Local Star by Aimee Ogden

  Forthcoming in 2020 from Interstellar Flight Press

  Editors & Contributors

  Erin Becker is a freelance writer and MFA candidate at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives in the south of Chile, where she runs a small communications and translation business. She’s written reviews for MAKE Lit + Luz and Lambda Literary and is interested in all things forward-thinking and feminist.

  Andrea Blythe bides her time waiting for the apocalypse by writing speculative poetry and fiction. She is the author of Your Molten Heart / A Seed to Hatch (2018) a collection of erasure poems created from the pages of Trader Joe’s Fearless Flyers, and coauthor of Every Girl Becomes the Wolf (Finishing Line Press, 2018), a collaborative chapbook written with Laura Madeline Wiseman. She is a cohost of the New Books in Poetry podcast and is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association and the Horror Writers Association. Find her online at www.andreablythe.com, on Twitter @andreablythe, and on Instagram @andreablythe.

  Jeremy Brett is an Associate Professor at Texas A&M University. At Texas A&M’s Cushing Memorial Library & Archives, he is the Processing Archivist as well as the Curator of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Research Collection, one of the world’s largest of its kind. He received his M.L.S. and his M.A. (History) from the University of Maryland, College Park.

  Cassandra Rose Clarke's novels have been finalists for the Philip K. Dick Award, the Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Award, and YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults. Her poetry has placed second in the Rhysling Awards, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and appeared in Strange Horizons, Star*Line, and elsewhere. Cassandra graduated in 2006 from The University of St. Thomas with a B.A. in English, and two years later she completed her master’s degree in creative writing at The University of Texas at Austin. In 2010 she attended the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop in Seattle, where she was a recipient of the Susan C. Petrey Clarion Scholarship Fund. She is currently the associate director for a Houston-based literary arts nonprofit, Writespace.

  Kaylee Craig is the author of emotion-time continuum, an experimental free-verse poetry book jam-packed with poetry on a variety of personal and social topics, and All in a Seed (2019), a poetry chapbook that reflects on lessons of growth and healing that are inspired by nature. Kaylee also has works featured in Drunk Monkeys, Medium, and Thought Catalog. She enjoys writing magical realism and science fiction, poetry, and nonfiction about mental health, lifestyle, and society.

  Michael Glazner's writing has appeared in Literally Stories, After the Pause, and the daily newspaper of Tutrakan, Bulgaria. Southwestern University awarded him a B.A. in Communication, and he teaches high school English in the Houston area. When not reading, writing, or editing genre fiction, he enjoys time spent with his dogs and strong cups of coffee.

  Piper J. Daniels is a Michigan native and queer intersectional feminist currently living in the American Southwest. Her debut essay collection, Ladies Lazarus, won the Tarpaulin Sky Book Award, was longlisted for the PEN Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and was named a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Nonfiction. She is the founder of a manuscript consultation collective that serves POC and LGBTQ writers.

  Archita Mittra is a writer and artist with a love for all things vintage, gothic and darkly fantastical. A feminist, pop-culture geek, and sometimes gamer, she lives in Calcutta (India) with her family, rabbits, and a library of books she hopes to finish in the next life. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram @architamittra and find out more about her work at archita.666@gmail.com.

  J.T. Morse is a multi-genre writer/editor/photographer with a love of character-driven narratives and hybrid works. She likes to dig deep, find the magic in the mundane, and pry open doors with her wordsmithing super skills. Connection is her ‘why’ for life and creating. Morse’s work has been published by Balance of Seven Press, Texas Living Magazine, Paragraph Planet, Central Coast Poetry Show, Haiku Journal, Nightmare Press, Art Houston Magazine, and other publications. She’s a facilitator/instructor at Writespace Houston and is frequently a featured panelist/presenter at a variety of literary festivals and cons. Most of Morse’s work is penned in her garden balcony, perched high above her mystical ranch in the Piney Woods of Texas, where she lives with her husband, daughter, and twenty-three spoiled-rotten rescue animals. Her website is perpetually in a state of flux, but you should be able to find out more about her at www.jtmorsewriter.com, if the wind blows just right and the internet ghosts are feeling frisky.

  Aimee Ogden is a former science teacher and software tester; now she writes stories about sad astronauts, angry princesses, and dead gods. Her short fiction has appeared in venues such as Analog, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Fireside, and another novella, Sun-daughters, Sea-daughters is forthcoming from Tor.com. She also co-edits Translunar Travelers Lounge, a magazine of fun and optimistic speculative fiction.

  Caitlin Starling is a writer and spreadsheet-wrangler who lives near Portland, Oregon. Equipped with an anthropology degree and an unhealthy interest in the dark and macabre, she writes horror-tinged speculative fiction of all flavors. Her first novel, The Luminous Dead, is nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. She has two gothic horror tales forthcoming: Yellow Jessamine (novella, Neon Hemlock 2020) and The Death of Jane Lawrence (novel, St Martin’s Press 2021), as well as a novella in the upcoming Vampire: The Masquerade audio collection, Walk Among Us. Caitlin also works in narrative design for interactive theater and games, and has been paid to design body parts. She’s always on the lookout for new ways to inflict insomnia.

  Presley Thomas is a writer and teacher in Houston, TX. His work has appeared in Interstellar Flight Press and New Body.

  John Tuttle is a Catholic man from a small town in Illinois who has a passion for truth and beauty. A journalist as well as a creative, he has functioned as a judge for several Ageless Authors anthologies. His short fiction has been published by Zombie Pirate Publishing, and he has had articles published by Midwest Film Journal, The University Bookman, The Hill, and the University of Notre Dame's Grotto Network. His photography has been featured by Blue Marble Review and The William and Mary Review. His short film “The Amazing World of Insects” won first place in the youth category of the 2017 SkeenaWild Film Fest.

  E.D. Walker, a native of Los Angeles, is the author of The Fairy Tales of Lyond Series that begins with Enchanting the King. E.D.'s short fiction has appeared in the USA Today bestselling anthologies Pets in Space 3 and Pets in Space 4. You can find her online at www.edwalkerauthor.com and on Twitter @AuthorEDW.

  T.D. Walker is the author of Small Waiting Objects (CW Books, 2019).
Her poems and stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Web Conjunctions, The Cascadia Subduction Zone, Luna Station Quarterly, and elsewhere. She draws on both her grounding in literary studies and her experience as a computer programmer in writing her poetry and fiction.

  Holly Lyn Walrath is a freelance editor and author based out of Houston, Texas. She holds a B.A. in English from The University of Texas and a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Denver. Her poetry and short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Fireside Fiction, Daily Science Fiction, Luna Station Quarterly, Liminality, and elsewhere. She is the author of the Elgin Award winning chapbook Glimmerglass Girl (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and her chapbook in Italian, Numinose Lapidi (Kipple Press, 2020). In Houston, she collaborates with Writespace, Comicpalooza, writers, artists, and creative communities to make the writing world a more fantastical place.

  Kade Walton is an author and devotee of all things SFF. They hold a B.S. in Political Science and put it to work in twisted ways by writing speculative fiction and analyzing huge amounts of media across genres. They're also a food justice advocate and creator of the forthcoming indie serial Ain't No Way Back Home. They live in the mountains of Western North Carolina with their partner and overflowing vegetable garden.

  Interstellar Flight Press

  Interstellar Flight Press is an indie speculative publishing house. We feature innovative works from the best new writers in science fiction and fantasy. In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we need “writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.”

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  Find us online at www.interstellarflightpress.com.