Happy to have a new short story out in a special literary-speculative issue of Orca: A Literary Journal:

“We champion language that is erudite, beautiful, and thought-provoking and stories that are engaging and rich in their depth. We are NOT interested in polemics or stories that tell a reader how he/she/they should think. Instead, we appreciate work that is high concept, imaginative, thoughtful, even speculative, and open to possibilities. The world is shades of gray and our written word should reflect that.”

– An interview with Orca co-founder Zachary Kellian

“Proxies” is a Donald Barthelme-inspired epistolary tale about someone who reluctantly agrees to go on a date with a neutrino, that most elusive and mysterious of elementary particles. An excerpt:

“…I think it happened when she brought up Calvino. I had never met anyone who wanted to chat Calvino. I guess when you’re drifting through space and don’t have to worry about bumping into things you have time to mull over invisible cities and people living their entire lives in trees without ever coming down. After the yam tempura I asked how she enjoyed people constantly trying to pursue and define her. She said it was mostly exhausting but sometimes it’s nice when the right person asks the right questions. She talked about how she’s good Facebook friends with Janet Conrad over at MIT and wished more women researchers would do their own thing instead of hopping onto the Higgs-Boson hypetrain and by the way quarks are totally the mean girls of the subatomic world. Maybe that was when it happened. Or maybe it was when she touched on the John Updike poem and the gall of men to wax on about things they knew nothing about.

No mass my ass, she said while polishing off another Frank’s RedHot chicken wing.

But Nepal is nice, I pointed out, remembering the line, the honeymoon.

True, she said after a pause. One of the few places that touched me, actually…”

Orca also features some really practical craft blogs on creative writing, so be sure to check them out as well!