Publication: “Gisla and the Three Favours”

My short story “Gisla and the Three Favours” is now out in issue #43 of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet (available in print and e-formats).

Cover monkey by Catherine Byun, who has WONDERFUL work — soft, dense, bright, and toothy

The story is about promises and gambles and memorable dresses. It began as a landscape illustration experiment for Light Grey Art Lab, and then turned back into a fairy tale (for clarity: this story is not illustrated in the magazine!).

As Gisla’s mother lay dying, she called her daughter to her.

“When you were only a hope and a happiness, Gisla, I begged three favours of three ladies. I have not lived to repay them. This you must do for me, else when I die, Gisla, my soul will fly up out of my body, as all souls do, and it will beat against the windows of heaven, but it will not get in…”

Here is the full table of contents of the issue, which is available from Small Beer Press:

• fiction
  • Alisa Alering, “The Night Farmers’ Museum”
  • Erica Clashe, “The Shine of Green Floors”
  • Leah Bobet, “The Mysteries”
  • Joanne Rixon, “Wires from the Same Spool”
  • Quinn Ramsay , “The House of the Gutter-Prince”
  • Jim Marino, “Acting Tips for Remaining Unknown”
  • Zack Moss, “If You Had Been Me Then What Would I Have Been?”
  • Kathleen Jennings, “Gisla and the Three Favours”
  • Gillian Daniels, “King Moon’s Tithe to Hell”
  • poetry
  • Anne Sheldon, “Three Poems”
  • Jessy Randall, “Four Poems”
• nonfiction
  • Ayşe Papatya Bucak, “Half-Papatya”
  • Nicole Kimberling, “Time Travel Self-Care System”
• cover
  • Catherine Byun, Cover & Interior Monkeys

The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars — pencil and watercolour (this is actually part of a draft of the story — the final is all in words)

Skull and Hyssop, or: A New Story and Some Old Drawings

Did I mention I have a new story out in issue 31 of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet? I do! It is called “Skull and Hyssop” and is an airship adventure, introducing the would-be-dashing Captain Moon, an enigmatic Weatherfinder, and Eliza Blancrose (who always wears a very smart hat). I say “introducing” because I have started a story about Eliza’s arrival in Poorfortune, and What She Found There.

Here is the full table of contents:

Fiction

Jessy Randall, “You Don’t Even Have a Rabbit”
Goldie Goldbloom, “Never Eat Crow”
Kathleen Jennings, “Skull and Hyssop”
Owen King, “The Curator”
Sarah Micklem, “The Necromancer of Lynka”

Nonfiction

Nicole Kimberling, “Crazy-Sexy Agriculture = CSA”
About the Authors

Poetry

Lesley Wheeler, “Four Poems”

Cover

Ursula Grant

The two pictures in this post are older drawings which date from the early drafts of the story, when I was still trying to work out the look and feel I wanted – from recollection it spun off a glimpse of the figurehead of the Cutty Sark, a girl with whom I used to work, and the idea of “steampunk but blue”.