My new short story, “The Black Thylacine,” is now available in the anthology Gods, Memes, and Monsters: A 21st Century Bestiary. This book has a great line-up of more than sixty authors contributing short pieces about new and different creatures rooted in our contemporary anxieties, threats, and technologies. Editor Heather J. Wood at Stone Skin Press has put together a really fun and unusual book and it’s definitely worth checking out. I’m pleased to see that my Black Thylacine took pole position in the exquisite cover art by Rachel Kahn!
I’d be remiss in not crediting my daughter Vivian for helping to inspire this story. Although he’s not properly named, the protagonist of my story is the British naturalist David Attenborough. He’s my daughter’s hero and she’s watched dozens of nature programs over and over again for years. His work inspired her passion for the natural world and wildlife biology and while she’s only seven, she knows more about wildlife than I do thanks to him. I’m sorry I put him in such unpleasant jeopardy in my story . . .
Stone Skin also published another of my stories, “Footsteps in Limbo,” in their anthology The New Hero, Volume Two, edited by the estimable Robin D. Laws.