So you might recall me mentioning that my Nebula-nominated story “The Last Novelist” is currently up for a Eugie Award. Well, I’ll find out if I win this weekend at Dragon Con in Atlanta*!

I’ll be attending Dragon Con from this Thursday, Aug 30th – Sunday, Sept 2nd, and I’ll be on several panels while I’m there. My tentative schedule is below. Hope to see you there!

*I used to go to school in Atlanta. I studied Computer Science at Georgia Tech, but I haven’t been back since ’99. It will be weird to revisit my old stomping ground to see how much has changed. If you happen to be at Dragon Con and want to connect, message me on Twitter at @mattkressel.

Title: Realms of the Dead: Ghosts and Spirits in UF
Description: Our panelists discuss the various types of ghosts and spirits found in their work, and in the genre.
Time: Fri 11:30 am Location: Chastain 1-2 – Westin (Length: 1 Hour)
(Tentative Panelists: Leanna Renee Hieber, David B. Coe, E.J. Stevens, A. J. Hartley, Matthew Kressel, Gail Z. Martin)

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Title: Faith in Science Fiction
Description: Many times authors create religions for their societies. Many times they use established faiths to inform their characters and their actions. Our panelists discuss when this works, when it doesn’t, and is it absolutely necessary to make a good story.
Time: Fri 07:00 pm Location: Embassy AB – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
(Tentative Panelists: Fr. Bryan Small, Damien Patrick Williams, Matthew Kressel)

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Title: Secondary Characters to Die For
Description: Developing extraordinary secondary characters that push the plot forward and create extraordinary fiction.
Time: Sat 04:00 pm Location: Embassy CD – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
(Tentative Panelists: Clay and Susan Griffith, Nancy Knight, Robert J. Sawyer, Zac Brewer, Joshua Palmatier, Matthew Kressel)

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Title: Tooting Your Own Horn: Marketing Yourself
Description: Indie writers and those who self-publish need to really market themselves to get their work known and out there. Our panelists discuss what they do and how they do it.
Time: Sat 05:30 pm Location: Embassy AB – Hyatt (Length: 1 Hour)
(Tentative Panelists: John G. Hartness, Cecilia Dominic, Gray Rinehart, Kal Spriggs, Courtland D Lewis, Quincy J Allen, Matthew Kressel)

If you’ve ever felt that too much of your personal, private data has made its way out into the net, then have I got a story for you. My story “Love Engine Optimization” appears in Rich Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2018 Edition. Lots of great stuff in this volume, including stories from Rich Larson, Charlie Jane Anders, Michael Swanwick, Kameron Hurley, Sofia Samatar, Linda Nagata, and many others. Check it out here.

The full table of contents:

“Time Travel is Only for the Poor” by S. L. Huang (Analog)
“Emergency Protocol” by Lettie Prell (Analog)
“Persephone of the Crows” by Karen Joy Fowler (Asimov’s)
“Cupido” by Rich Larson (Asimov’s)
“Winter Timeshare” by Ray Nayler (Asimov’s)
“Soulmates.com”, by Will McIntosh (Asimov’s)
“Red Bark and Ambergris” by Kate Marshall (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
“Whatever Knight Comes” by Ryan Row (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
“Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue” by Charlie Jane Anders (Boston Review)
“The Significance of Significance” by Robert Reed (Clarkesworld)
“The Secret Life of Bots” by Suzanne Palmer (Clarkesworld)
“The Tale of the Alcubierre Horse” by Kathleen Ann Goonan (Extrasolar)
“Marley and Marley” by J. R. Dawson (F&SF)
“The Hermit of Houston” by Samuel R. Delany (F&SF)
“Rings” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman (F&SF)
“Starlight Express” by Michael Swanwick (F&SF)
“The Sacrifice of the Hanged Monkey” by Minsoo Kang (Fantastic)
“ZeroS” by Peter Watts (Infinity Wars)
“Ugo” by Giovanni de Feo (Lightspeed)
“Love Engine Optimization” by Matthew Kressel (Lightspeed)
“This is for You” by Bruce McAllister (Lightspeed)
“One Hour, Every Seven Years” by Alice Sola Kim (McSweeney’s)
“Montreal, 2014” by Madeline Ray (Mothership Zeta)
“Sidewalks” by Maureen McHugh (Omni)
“Shoggoths in Traffic” by Tobias S. Buckell (Patreon)
“The Fisherman and the Pig” by Kameron Hurley (Patreon)
“Utopia LOL?” by Jamie Wahls (Strange Horizons)
“An Account of the Land of Witches” by Sofia Samatar (Tender)
“Extracurricular Activities” by Yoon Ha Lee (Tor.com)
“The Martian Obelisk” by Linda Nagata (Tor.com)
“Hexagrammaton” by Hanus Seiner (Tor.com)
“Though She Be But Little” by C. S. E. Cooney (Uncanny)
“And Then There Were (N – One)” by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny)
“Fandom for Robots” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Uncanny)

My horror / dark-fantasy story “The Words That Maketh Murder” * has been released as a podcast over at Tales to Terrify, narrated by Maurine McLean. The podcast also includes the story “Real People” by T. R. North. 

Kimmy, a former software developer for government black ops weapons projects, moves into a Queens, New York neighborhood and begins hearing strange voices coming from the old train yard behind her apartment. Parts of my story are true, and I’ll leave it to the listener to decide which!

Listen here.  

* Yes, it’s a PJ Harvey reference!

Photo by Scott Edelman

Scott Edelman has released Episode 70 of Eating the Fantastic, in which he grills interviews me at Pittsburgh’s famous Pork & Beans restaurant. I talk with him about my journey toward writing, what the Altered Fluid writing group has taught me, why I ended up writing science fiction, how I ended up co-host of the Fantastic Fiction at KGB series, and many other things. I’ve done lots of interviews, and I have to say that Scott’s questions were among the most researched and thorough I’ve encountered.

Give it a listen here.

The other news is that my Nebula-nominated story “The Last Novelist (or a Dead Lizard in the Yard)” has been translated into Romanian by Alexandru Maniu and appears in this month’s Helion SF online magazine. For my Romanian-speaking friends, the link is here.

I’ll be attending Readercon July 12-15 in Quincy, MA. I’ll be on one panel, and I’ll be doing a reading. Most likely I’ll be reading from the novel-in-progress. Here’s my schedule:

Futures That Feel like Home
Location: Blue Hills
Fri 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM 
Description Our panelists will discuss the fictional futures they find most appealing and would be happy to live in (maybe with some caveats). Does the work that depicts these futures provide a path or hints as to how humans might get there? What makes these futures worth rooting for and aspiring to?

Reading: Matthew Kressel
Location: Salon A
Sat 10:00 AM – 10:30 AM 

Hope to see you there!

My story “The Marsh of Camarina” will appear in the Canadian anthology Shades Within Us: Tales of Migrations and Fractured Borders,  edited by Lucas K. Law and Susan Forest. Proceeds from the anthology will benefit the Mood Disorders Association and Alex Community Food Centre. Here’s a description of the book from the book jacket:

Migration. A transformation of time, place, and being . . .

WHO ARE THE SHADES WITHIN US?

We are called drifters, nomads. We are expatriates, evacuees, and pilgrims. We are colonists, aliens, explorers; strangers, visitors–intruders, conquerors–exiles, asylum seekers, and . . . outsiders.

An American father shields his son from Irish discrimination. A Chinese foreign student wrestles to safeguard her family at the expense of her soul. A college graduate is displaced by technology. A Nigerian high school student chooses between revenge and redemption. A bureaucrat parses the mystery of Taiwanese time travelers. A defeated alien struggles to assimilate into human culture. A Czechoslovakian actress confronts the German WWII invasion. A child crosses an invisible border wall. And many more.

Stories that transcend borders, generations, and cultures. Each is a glimpse into our human need in face of change: to hold fast to home, to tradition, to family; and yet to reach out, to strive for a better life.

If you didn’t guess from the above description, my story is the one where “A college graduate is displaced by technology.” Graduating from a top school with a degree in computer science, she discovers that AIs have taken all the programming jobs, and so, with no other options, she heads up to an experimental community in Canada where she must decide what to do with her life.

Links to preorder the anthology are here.