I’m thrilled to announce that my story, “A Time for Raven”, has been accepted for publication by Interzone.

That’s two sales inside three weeks–a personal best!

I know you’re not supposed to have favorites, and that you’re supposed to love all your children equally, but I confess that “A Time for Raven” has a very special place in my heart, and I’m stoked that it’s found such a good home as IZ.

“A Time for Raven” felt like a big break-through for me, craft-wise, when I wrote it (even though it had another title at the time that it turned out no one liked but me), and I still think its some of my strongest work. It’s set in British Columbia, and while I wrote it before I’d ever been to BC, I felt like I was returning to BC the first time I ever visited–I found that a pretty cool experience (though maybe I’d absorbed enough BC scenery and atmosphere watching all those sci-fi TV shows that have been filmed in Vancouver and environs over the last 20 years…)

“A Time for Raven” is also the most fantastical of all my stories, in that everything else I’ve published thus far has been some variation on science fiction (even “Borrowed Time”, which tried to dress up stealing time with quasi-rational pseudo-scientific explanations.) This story is straight-up fantasy, though hopefully not in the way you’d expect.

I’ve been a fan of Interzone for a long time: they publish fantastic stories (and I’m not just saying that because now one of those is mine…) and stuff that often has a very different sensibility from the kind of stories you find in the American magazines. It’s also an absolutely gorgeous magazine physically, probably the best looking in all SF (seriously–it’s measurements are 36-24-36.)

For those of you who don’t know, Interzone is Britain’s longest running science fiction and fantasy magazine, and since 1982 has published the likes of Brian Aldiss, Michael Moorcock, Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, M. John Harrison, Stephen Baxter, Iain M Banks, Jay Lake, Kim Newman, Alastair Reynolds, Harlan Ellison, Greg Egan, Geoff Ryman, Charles Stross, and (a personal fav of mine) John Brunner, amongst others. They’ve also previously published stories by friends and fellow WOTFians Aliette de Bodard and Stephen Gaskell, and it’s great to be in such company.

Not sure what issue the story will appear in, but look for updates here!

– S.