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Aug. 2021 (Issue 70)

In the August issue of Fantasy Magazine: Short fiction by Eugen Bacon and Seb Doubinsky (“The Failing Name”) and Inez Schaechterle (“Ghost Riders at Hutchinson’s Two Pump”); flash fiction by Vanessa McKinney (“Shapeshifter”) and Sarina Dorie (“My List of Bedtime Bogeymen”); poetry by Shaoni White (“i find my body and my body”) and Yilin Wang (“The Reality of Ghosts”); and an essay by Vida Cruz.

We Are the Mountain: A Look at the Inactive Protagonist

Let me take you through the anatomy of an active protagonist, one that everyone can relate to. We’ll make our protagonist—we’ll call him John—young and healthy, male, of humble origins (perhaps he’s from a farming village). But his status will not be humble for long, for John is dreaming of greatness someday, or adventuring across the world, or perhaps winning the heart of the most beautiful princess throughout the faux medieval European continent he hails from.

Author Spotlight: Inez Schaechterle

For me, in this story, colonialism was a bigger issue. I live and teach college English classes on the edge of the largest reservation in the US, the Navajo reservation, and many of my students are from the nearby Hopi and Apache reservations as well. How could I have a story set in Holbrook, AZ, with no Native characters, and yet how could I, a white writer, create a believable and non-stereotyped Native character? Merlene is a woman and has depression because those are two things I do know about, and I tried to add a touch of reference (the ‘rez,’ her aunties) without overstepping.

Ghost Riders at Hutchinson’s Two-Pump

Clouds rolled across the evening sky, dark and low, dragging rain behind them. Desert washes ran dirt-red, and rocky mesas shone wet when lightning flashed. Rainwater frothed down the narrow slot of Sheep Drop Ravine, a chasm with overgrown edges that had claimed the lives of countless sheep and antelope, and of the entire “Handsome Jake” Jubles Gang as it had fled, on a similar night, from a posse of enraged Winslow, Arizona citizens.

My List of Bedtime Bogeyman Blues

1. I’m a grown woman. I do not believe in the bogeyman. 2. Okay, I believe in the bogeyman, but he is confined to nightmares. 3. The bogeyman is not allowed in my closet where I keep my sexy lingerie and aphrodisiac mothballs. Nor under my bed, nor in the real world.

The Reality of Ghosts

“Why do so many Asians believe in ghosts?” / Two white yokai scholars won’t stop gawking / at us like we’re aliens seen through a telescope. / They bait our deceased ancestors to rise up

Author Spotlight: Eugen Bacon and Seb Doubinsky

It was a wonderful collaboration. Eugen is first, very patient, and second, very dedicated. She sent me, I think, two or three versions of the first part in its growth, in which I could see the character and story develop. It was beautifully crafted and written, and I was very afraid of not being at her level! Then we discussed the homonculus/spirit role and identity and it became clearer and clearer, and I did my part.

The Failing Name

The oval fruit, uneven on all sides even when it’s ripe, is not just for eating. Spaces in the dust roads filled with reddish-brown wind are what she sees in her lost childhood. Jolainne wants to tell you, to tell anyone who’ll listen, of hiding in the leaves of a mango tree, witnessing what could have been the onset of an assault.

Editorial: August 2021

In this issue’s short fiction, Eugen Bacon & Seb Doubinsky take us through a frank and brutal emigration in “The Failing Name,” and Inez Schaechterle visits the Old West in the here and now in “Ghost Riders at Hutchinson’s Two Pump”; in flash fiction, Vanessa McKinney brings coming out to the celestial level in “Shapeshifter,” and in Sarina Dorie’s “My List of Bedtime Bogeymen” we may—or may not—want that bogeyman to stay away; for poetry, we have “The Reality of Ghosts” by Yilin Wang and “i find my body and my body” by Shaoni C. White. Plus an essay, “We Are The Mountain: A Look At The Inactive Protagonist” by author Vida Cruz. Enjoy!

Shapeshifter

At the Last Black Unicorn, no one is too much to too little; everyone is enough. Period.

I’ve had golden wings that glittered, making me a jewel of the sky as I glided through the air. Swam in pink and purple oceans on a nameless planet. Traversed the cosmos to witness the birth of a star. And yet none of that compares to the ecstasy I feel being loved by a Black woman.