What is Means to Be An Outsider

A wonderful review of my story “Am I Not a Proud Outlier?” in the truly exceptional anthology Sum Of Us.

Speculating Canada: Canadian Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy

A review of Kate Story’s “Am I Not A Proud Outlier” in Sum of Us: Tales of the Bonded and Bound (Laksa Media Group, 2017)
By Derek Newman-Stille

In a hive, dance is crucial. Dance is the way that decisions are made, but dance is also a way of expressing dissent. Kate Story’s “Am I Not A Proud Outlier” is a tale of a space hive with typical bee like characteristics. This hive is moving from planet to planet, and colonizing as they move, but something has gone wrong in the hive. A space that is supposed to be unified has become disrupted and violence has broken out between different factions leaving a Queen without support. This hive has a caste system like most bee hives do, with certain members specialized to fulfill certain roles like building, nursing, and cleaning. But, this hive also has a role that is meant…

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Speculating Canada reviews climate change stories

Check out this insightful and lovely review of my story “Animate” in Bruce Meyer’s CliFi, published by Exile! Derek Newman-Stille is working his way through this wonderful collection, so go to his site for more.
A Magnetic Environment

Through the Twisted Woods

And… this interview is by the lovely and insightful Derek Newman-Stille! Me, talking on about writing and faery. Thank you, Derek!

https://throughthetwistedwoods.wordpress.com/2016/07/20/an-interview-with-kate-story/

 

 

 

Airship Ambassador

Here’s another interview sparked by my Steampunk story “Equus” published in the EXCELLENT Clockwork Canada, edited by the redoubtable Dominik Parisien. This interview, for the Airship Ambassador, was a lot of fun. But I went on so long that Kevin had to post it in 4 sections. I am linking the fourth and last section here, because embedded at the beginning of it are links to the other 3 sections. It is such a pleasure to be asked insightful questions. Thank you, Airship Ambassador!

https://airshipambassador.wordpress.com/2016/08/04/kate-story-4/

Review of Equus

Here’s a fabulous review of my short story “Equus” by the Aurora-award winning Derek Newman-Stille. The story appears in Canadian Steampunk collection Clockwork Canada, edited by the wonderful Dominik Parisien. So lovely to get this level of attention and reading on something one writes!

Putting Monsters on the Map

Interview with the wonderful Rob McClennan

It’s always both exciting and nervous-making to answer questions about my writing life. But you know, as long as there’s a MST3K reference, it’s all right. Thanks, Mr. Rob McClennan!
http://www.robmclennan.blogspot.ca/2016/01/12-or-20-second-series-questions-with.html

Slippery Landscapes

Derek Newman-Stille makes writing worth it, with reviews like this. So honoured!

Speculating Canada: Canadian Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy

A review of Kate Storey’s Blasted (Killick Press, 2008).
By Derek Newman-Stille

Steeped in the rich fairy lore of Newfoundland and a sense of longing for home, Kate Story’s Blasted is a novel about dislocation. Story’s stream of consciousness style of writing beautifully enhances the sense of temporal and special dislocation represented by movement through and slippage into fairy realms. Her poetic use of language adds to the depth of the landscape, it’s history, and the people upon it, reveling in the simultaneous beauty and terror embedded in the land.

Cover photo from Kate Story’s “Blasted” courtesy of http://www.katestory.com/

Newfoundland, as an island landscape of harsh extremes, fog, snow, unclear edges… it is a perfect location for fairy stories and a tradition of wandering into the fairy lands and being lost. As a place that experiences a great deal of emigration – the loss of population to other locations out…

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Multiple Faces of Identity

Recently, the Aurora-award-winning Derek Newman-Stille reviewed my short story “Show and Tell” in Exile Edition’s Playground of Lost Toys (edited by Colleen Anderson and Ursula Pflug). It is an honour to have someone read so closely, and write so eloquently, about my work. Thank you, Derek! And Happy New Year to all.

Speculating Canada: Canadian Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy

A Review of Kate Story’s “Show and Tell” In Playground of Lost Toys (Exile Editions, 2015)by Derek Newman-Stille

School can be a horror story. It is a space where identity is controlled and regulated and where normalcy and conformity rein. Anyone who doesn’t belong is firmly aware that they are the school’s monster and those who enforce that normalcy treat those who don’t belong monstrously. In “Show and Tell”, Kate Story’s narrator was punished constantly as a child for daydreaming and was treated regularly as a social outsider. She was subjected to gendered expectations for women about “attractiveness”, having her facial features policed and told that certain facial features were unattractive and therefore inappropriate.

When Story’s narrator has to return to her school as an adult before the building is demolished, she collides with her own identity and the multiplicity of options her life could have taken. She finds her…

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Give A Book

It’s that time. It is that time of the year when many of us want to give from the heart. We want to show people we love them; we want to spread some goodwill in this torn and aching world; we want to believe, again, for a time, in magic.

Or we just want to run away to some place that has never spawned the hideous phrase “holiday giving” and be done with it forever. Can’t see me for dust.

However, if you are staying in this world and you DO want to give some things to some people, might I suggest…

BOOKS?

GUT WRENCHING, HILARIOUS, THOUGHT-PROVOKING, HOURS-OF-TOP-NOTCH-ENTERTAINMENT BOOKS?

I’ve had a wonderful year in publishing. Three new publications contain pieces I’ve written; and they’re collections of the short stuff, so even if you don’t like my story there’s lots of other stories to choose from, from – honestly – some of the best writers working today. And some of my oldsters are worth passing on. So, to make it easy, I’ve created a handy-dandy little reference with links and synopses and all that.

Happy times, and love, and books to all. That’s my chiefest wish.

xoKate

http://chizinepub.com/books/imaginarium-4-best-canadian-speculative-writing

Imaginarium 4: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing is a reprint anthology collecting speculative short fiction and poetry (science fiction, fantasy, horror, magic realism, etc.) that represents the best work published by Canadian writers in the 2014 calendar year. Put out by the fabulous CZPublications. Introduction by Margaret Atwood. That’s right. Margaret Atwood.

https://www.stoneskinpress.com/

WHO THE HELL DOESN’T LIKE A BESTIARY??? The magic of bestiaries, or dictionaries of mythological creatures, has been captivating the human imagination since ancient times. Now, Stone Skin Press brings a fresh take on these compendiums of the fantastic with its latest anthology—Gods, Memes and Monsters. Featuring over sixty authors, this stunning international volume offers entries and short stories that range from the horrific to the humorous. The bestiary shed lights on familiar beasts that are coping in our modern era, including gorgons, minotaurs, and mantichores. It also introduces newly discovered creatures such as meme mosquitoes, trashsquatches, and urbantelopes that are thriving in the cyber age.

http://www.amazon.com/Playground-Lost-Toys-Exile-Book/dp/1550965026

Playground of Lost Toys: a dynamic collection of stories that explore the mystery, awe and dread that we may have felt as children when encountering a special toy. But it goes further, to the edges of space, where the mind plays its own games. We enter a world where the magic may not have been lost, where a toy plays for keeps or computers and gods vie for the upper hand. Dolls, stuffed animals, wooden games of skill, ancient artifacts misinterpreted, and items that seek a life or even revenge; these lost toys and games bring tales of companionship, loss, revenge, hope, murder, cunning, and love, to be unearthed in the sandbox. Edited by Colleen Anderson and Ursula Pflug. A truly wonderful collection, people.

http://www.amazon.ca/Carbide-Tipped-Pens-Seventeen-Science/dp/0765334305

For the SF fans in your life: in Carbide Tipped Pens, over a dozen of today’s most creative imaginations carry on the grand tradition of such legendary masters as Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and John W. Campbell, while bringing hard science fiction into the 21st century by extrapolating from the latest scientific developments and discoveries. Ranging from ancient China to the outer reaches of the solar system, this outstanding collection of original stories, written by an international roster of authors, finds wonder, terror, and gripping human drama in topics as diverse as space exploration, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, climate change, alternate history, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, interplanetary war, and even the future of baseball. Edited by Ben Bova and Eric Choi.

http://www.creativebookpublishing.ca/en/index.cfm?pid=57&q=Blasted

Kate Story’s debut novel Blasted is an unlikely marriage of Newfoundland’s oldest traditional lore with the contemporary urban world of St. John’s and Toronto. The result is raw and strange and hilarious and affecting. Ruby Jones—itinerant waitress, sometime nude model, budding alcoholic—admits early on that tenderness and rage are her “heart language.” Blasted offers both in spades. – Michael Crummey

Honourable Mention for the Sunburst Award: Canadian Literature of the Fantastic

(Sadly, Blasted has been remaindered! Order it while you still can. And you can contact me directly for copies too!)

http://www.creativebookpublishing.ca/en/index.cfm?pid=57&q=blasted

Wrecked Upon This Shore: I fell in love with these characters: saintly and monstrous, wrecked but not lost —castaways all. Kate Story is one of those rare writers who can plumb the darkness and retrieve from the depths a jewel, a truth, luminous and redemptive. A magical and moving novel. Prepare to be transported. – Jessica Grant, author of Come, Thou Tortoise

 

Ad Astra!

This year will be my third time attending Ad Astra, a wonderful gathering that bills itself “Toronto’s premiere SF and Fantasy Fan Convention.” For me, it’s a place to meet friends, connect with new people, and have my mind utterly blown by the diversity and quality and sheer intellectual and imaginative power in our speculative community. I am on some panels (glancing over them, I notice a theme: how impossible it is to do what we do, writing other worlds and other futures… good, then, let’s get at it) and look forward to the parties. Hope to see you there!