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“As the Shore to the Tides, So Blood Calls to Blood” Included on 2020 Locus Recommended Reading List

I’m surprised and honored to have my novelette, “As the Shore to the Tides, So Blood Calls to Blood” included on Locus Magazine’s yearly list alongside so many other brilliant authors.

This was an unexpected honor, I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about what works loved in 2020, though I fear that I couldn’t truly keep up with reading everything on the list. I also want to make sure I mention a few works not included in Locus Magazine’s round-up. This list also signals the opening of Locus’s 2021 Poll & Survey to the public. You can vote (or write in) your favorites to be considered for the Locus Award.

Novels

I recently finished reading The Blade Between by Sam J. Miller, and really enjoyed how he continued to add details to his own fantasy version of Hudson, NY by pitting old ghosts haunting the town against the new one: gentrification.

I also had so much fun with the funny, gross and utterly horrific Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Who would have thought a transplanted (quite literally) haunted English manor straight out of a Hammer Horror film could tackle the horrors of colonization?

Karen Osborne’s The Architects of Memory offered a grim future where capitalism has slipped the surly bonds of Earth to run headlong into the scattered weaponry of an alien race.

I’m currently reading Simon Jimenez’s The Vanished Birds and really enjoying the voice and story it’s telling.

I also can’t recommend Illimani Ferreira’s Terminal 3 enough — a pointed satire of immigration and transportation terminals.

Novellas

The only novella I’ve finished at this point is P. Djèlí Clark’s outstanding Ring Shout, which pits Maryse Boudreaux against the hooded monsters she knows as Ku Kluxes.

Novelettes

I’m still catching up on my novelette reading, but do yourself a favor and check out Sarah Pinsker’s Two Truths and a Lie and R.S. Benedict’s The Fairy Egg (in the Sept/Oct 2020 issue of F&SF).

Short Stories

I want to encourage everyone to read Hearts in Hard Ground by G.V. Anderson, Otto Hahn Speaks to the Dead by Octavia Cade, and The Mermaid Astronaut by Yoon Ha Lee.