Well, the streak was broken. After six straight weeks of roundups I missed getting one done last week. I’m back now though with the 7th installment of the round up for the year and another five stories I read and enjoyed this past week. We’ve got all sorts of stories here. Selections from a travel guide, a horror story with a monster, a more adventure style storry with a monster hunter, a story of a new romance, and a story of trying to put an end to an unsuccessful one. Hopefully that range should mean everyone can find something here to like for themselves.

“Destinations of Beauty” by Alexander Weinstein from Lightspeed #129

This was an interesting piece that is the latest in a series of travel guide style entries “From the Lost Travelers’ Tour Guide” written by author Alexander Weinstein that have been published in Lightspeed since January of 2020. This was my first time reading part of this series but I’ll definitely be reading through the previous entries. This one focuses on, as the name says, destinations exemplifying beauty in some way, but not necessarily happiness by any means. In fact, there is much in these entries that feel filled with the bittersweet, the melancholy, the nostalgic. Many entries feel written by a very weary traveler finding glimpses of very weary people. Despite all that though, I also find myself feeling a bit of longing reading these. The longing for travel we currently can’t partake in, and the unique memories of finding a special place at the end of a too long and tiring day of exploration that will stay with you for the rest of your life. These stories are written by someone who has traveled and explored and they will resonate a bit more for that with readers who have as well.

“This Wet Red” by Marisca Pichette from Pseudopod #774

Here we have a horror story that does an admirable job of misdirection. It’s the sort I don’t like to say too much about because I don’t want to take away for the experience of the first read, because that first read is likely to send you back for a second read in whole or at least part. The story feels almost post-apocalyptic with a lone survivor wandering through abandoned homes and along lonely highways but, then again there is a monster out there and people have been warned to evacuate, so that feeling may not be an entirely accurate sense of the greater world beyond the story’s scope. There are, in fact, many questions that a reader may be left with at the end of this story, but I’m someone who has always felt that’s more than ok in short stories. If you don’t mind some gruesome death (it is a horror story) and unanswered questions and enjoy a well crafted story that shifts your perceptions of itself as you read then I think you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.

“All in a Day’s Work” by Jade Stewart from FIYAH #7

This is the kind of story I’m pretty much always happy to come across: fun adventure! Pretty much whatever my mood I’m always going to be glad for a story that gives me a cool and interesting protagonist being cool and interesting in a great setting. Make that protagonist a kick-ass freelance demon-and-ghost hunter and you’ll have me sold, grinning ear to ear and and wanting more. In this story author Jade Stewart gives us a glimpse of a world that felt like the show Supernatural, if everyone knew about the existence of monsters and being a hunter was a career path with schools, licenses and gig workers competing for jobs with more formalized collectives of hunters called covens. Our hero, Walker is a hunter who prefers to keep independent, more interested in the being able to help people and travel the country doing it than the extra money and respect coven work would bring with. Some jobs though, might just be too big to tackle alone, especially if they want to get back to Grandmon Gigi and New Orleans in one piece. It’s a fast fun story that will leave you wanting plenty more.

“Rose Kissed Me Today” by Cori Hull from Beneath Ceaseless Skies #323

This is a mostly sweet story of falling in love and it is a nice romance between our main character and the titular Rose. It’s young love and it’ first love and it’s sweet and kind and slow and nice. I called it “mostly sweet” though, because it’s also a story of our main character realizing their desire for a world bigger than the one offered by home and family. Some people seem content to never wander far. Some feel a calling to see and know what else there is out there. It’s more a matter of fact than right and wrong. No matter how you cut it though, there is something of a sadness to that realization and that drifting away from people who don’t feel the same need for something other than what they can have in the place called home. As someone who spent a long time answering that call to go and see and find more, but who is moving inextricably closer to my own child potentially doing the same I can’t help but see both sides of the equation presented in this story. I smile and feel happy for the narrator and their finding love, even as I worry for the poor mom. In the end though, this is more nice and sweet and lovely than anything else and I’m happy to have got to read and share a story like that. We can always use more such things.

“A Study of Sage” by Kel Coleman from Diabolical Plots #72B

Due to the way writing, selling and publishing short stories work there is a phenomena that happens sometimes, completely uncoordinated, where a writer will just happen to have multiple stories out at roughly the same time. There was a time some years ago where it felt like you couldn’t read a TOC without seeing Ken Liu’s name and Maria Dong, who I recommend a story by a few weeks ago, seems to be just everywhere right now. So, it was probably bound to happen that despite my trying to cast a wide net in my reading that I would have a repeat author not long after their previous appearance in the roundup. Such is the case here with Kel Coleman, whose story “Delete Your First Memory For Free” was the first story I recommend in the first roundup of this year.

That story gave us some near-future technology intersecting with people who were just so awkward in social settings, who could be plagued by thoughts of that one foolish thing they said that one time and who maybe needed the chance memory deletion could provide to help make a second chance at connecting with someone else work. This story definitely fits into that same milieu of writing about being tormented by the mistakes and difficulties of navigating relationships when we don’t know the right words to say and can be plagued for oh so long afterwards by the things we said or didn’t say and the mistakes we made when we were trying so hard not to make mistakes with another person. Here the near-future tech is a holodeck-like simulation where our main character can try again and again to find the right way to break up with a, frankly, not great girlfriend. Being about the end of a relationship instead of a nascent possible beginning this story certainly doesn’t have the same feel as “Delete” did, but they still fit together well and I don’t see myself ever getting tired of Coleman exploring relationships for the kind of people who can be awkward, and plagued by past things said and unsaid and who practice their conversations ahead of time. Probably because I am one. And if you are at all like that yourself, these stories will speak to you in special ways.

OK, and that’s it for this week and as always if you’d like to see the full list of previous Roundups and the authors included in each you can find that here. I hope to be back in a week with another roundup. If you find something you enjoy reading in my recommendations I hope you’ll shout that story out to people you know.