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Autumn 2005 Contents
Issue #1: Autumn 2005
Our debut issue! See how it all began. We kicked things off with nine stories and a book review from John Joseph Adams. “Nobody’s Fool,” by Edward Cox, received an Honorable Mention in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.
If I had seen Shimmer in a store, I would have snatched it up right away, because I am a book snob, and, to my shame, am too easily seduced by gorgeous cover art. However, had I indeed picked up a copy in a fit of unmitigated passion for its prettiness, I would not have been disappointed; this is an excellent magazine with high editorial standards, a tight, sure vision of what it seeks to accomplish, and a degree of success with that goal that’s decidedly gratifying. — Amal El Mohtar, SFSite.
Buy your copy today!
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Table of Contents
Valley of the Shadow, by Dario Ciriello
Joe slid into my apartment, wearing a filthy pair of jeans and an oversize olive tee with the word ARMY stenciled on the front; his stringy arms were peppered with tracks, and his dark eyes broadcast anger. Little Joe the Corsican, we used to call him. Hot-blooded and tough as a rat, he’d been with my squad in Sierra Leone and Bosnia and places you couldn’t talk about.
I didn’t even know he’d died.
Sour Hands, by Kuzhali Manickavel
Ezhil was betrayed by a mango when she was seven years old. It had yielded softly, staining her tiny thumb and forefinger with a promising scent of sweetness and her mouth had dimpled into a small but radiant smile. She promptly shut her eyes and took a huge bite.
Unfortunately, the mango had lied.
Nobody’s Fool, by Edward Cox
Franklin stood in the bric-a-brac shop, amongst shelves stuffed full of interesting paraphernalia. He paused to study a feather he found next to a set of ornate garden shears.
The shopkeeper appeared next to Franklin. “The owl’s feather interests you?” she asked.
White Burn, by Stephen M. Dare
The girl in the white Jetta began appearing during the fourth week of school. The first time he saw her she simply appeared from behind the trees at the sharpest of all the bends on Cedar Bluff Road. He stomped down on the bus’s brake, his guts sucking upward as he cranked the wheel away from her, toward the vanishing drop before he realized — with an aching death-fear lighting like a fire in him — what he was doing.
That was the first day he really thought he could die, and that the bus wasn’t as stable as he once believed.
Fiction reviews, by John Joseph Adams
An Interrupted Nap, by Richard S. Crawford
On the day of the Rapture, Jim and I sat on Aunt Francine’s porch, drinking beer. It was fun, watching people being pulled up into the sky by unseen Hands, but around noon it started to get boring. Most of the Christians in the neighborhood had gone up at once earlier that morning, and now there were just a few stragglers, folks God must have overlooked.
Jim elbowed me and pointed. “Hey, Simon, there goes Mr. Foley.”
Finders Keepers, by J. Albert Bell
Normally, I would have been the one handling this business for Mr. Fox. I was feeling left out of the loop, to say the least. But the old man had been adamant: this was not my affair.
We sat in the drawing room for hours without speaking. Outside, the wind howled and the rain pounded at the tall windows in sheets. It was one of those nights when you felt your mortality keenly, as if at any moment, nature might snatch from you what was rightfully yours–with a falling tree or a slide from a treacherous mountain . . . with a single crack of ragged lightning. I could tell from Fox’s pallor and demeanor that he was feeling it even more acutely than I.
The Shoppers, by Michael Mathews
I suppose I first noticed something different about them when I was making my way across Crown Court Shopping Centre, a sort of strange swaying motion to the crowd. It didn’t really register as being all that important then, but looking back I can see: that’s when it started.
At the time I was more focused on the ass of a young fawn-haired woman in a denim skirt walking a few paces ahead of me. I remembered her from the Park-and-Ride Bus; she’d been sitting a few seats in front of me. It was her perfume that first caught my attention; the scent of it was overpowering, sweet and musky. I could still catch the trail of it in my nostrils as I moved along the crowded street.
And Death Will Seize the Doctor, Too, by Jeremiah Swanson
Christian stood over the convict, whose execution had been carried out only
minutes before. He stared at the man’s eyelids, knowing the first
indications of consciousness would come from there.
“Won’t be long,” the warden said. “You ready, Christian?”
A Convocation of Clowns, by Mel Cameron
The tiny car appeared out of nowhere, right in front of me, and screeched to a halt. I slammed on my brakes as clowns piled out of it, bringing rush hour traffic to a standstill. One, two, three…dear Lord, how many were there? …nine, ten, eleven. As each one popped out, it strode through the honking cars like a heron wading through pond scum…seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. At about thirty-two, I lost count. And still they kept coming.
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Autumn 2005 Contributors
 photo by Ellen Datlow |
Fiction Review – John Joseph Adams is the assistant editor at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He reviews science fiction for Kirkus and audiobooks for Publishers Weekly. His non-fiction has also appeared in: Amazing Stories, The Internet Review of Science Fiction, Locus Magazine, Locus Online, and Science Fiction Weekly. |
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Finders Keepers – J. Albert Bell currently resides in northern Virginia with his ferret, “Stinky,” where he works as a full-time freelance artist, and a part-time professional poker player (or sometimes, vice versa). He enjoys gourmet cooking and daydreaming; has successfully raised a son as a single father, been ranked as one of the top twenty Poker Tournament players by Card Player Magazine in 2002, and is currently marketing 2 novels and various short stories. This is his first publication. |
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A Convocation of Clowns – Mel Cameron loves speculative fiction that produces an overwhelming sense of wonder. Recreating this feeling is her biggest reason for writing. She lives in southern Arizona with her husband and daughter. |
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Valley of the Shadow – Dario Ciriello works as a decorative painter by day to support his science fiction writing habit. He is a graduate of Clarion West, and can occasionally be seen at science fiction conventions, where he likes to wear ironed shirts and work out in the hotel gym. Dario maintains a website at www.dario1.com/sf.htm |
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Nobody’s Fool – Edward Cox is currently 33, a penniless student, and halfway through the second year of a three-year creative writing degree at the University of Luton, England. His previous writing credits are short stories, poems, and essays with: AlienSkin, Aoife’s Kiss, Aphelion, Between Kisses, Cracked Lenses, Dark Corners, Dark Krypt (Sept 2005), Hidden Corners, Illumen, Kenoma, Morpheus, Seasons in the Night (Sept 2005), The Wandering Troll, Whispers of Wickedness, and The Unholy Biscuit. Edward is also converting years of hoarded ideas into longer works of fiction, and his ongoing ‘Experiment’ stories can be read at Misanthropists Anonymous. |
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Interrupted Nap – Richard S. Crawford – After a series of career mishaps which involved a coffee shop, a video store, and a stint as an improvisational actor at the Renaissance Faire, Richard managed to end up as a professional web developer and writer in the depths of Sacramento, California. He and his wife and their five cats would like to live in a stately old Victorian home in either Seattle or San Francisco, but they don’t. |
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White Burn – Stephen M. Dare has a masters in English from Illinois State University where he taught writing for several years. Currently he is a school bus driver, stay-at-home dad, high school tutor, and substitute teacher. He is also returning to college to obtain his teaching certificate. He writes literary horror and poetry, constantly revising pieces even after they are published. He loves to read classic literature by authors such as William Faulkner, Hemingway, Poe, and H.P. Lovecraft. Mr. Dare’s work has appeared in Black Petals, Lost in the Dark, The Harrow, and Simulacrum. |
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Sour Hands – Kuzhali Manickavel lives in a small temple town on the coast of South India and shares her living space with a cursed mango tree and a rhinoceros beetle in a shot glass. |
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The Shoppers – Michael Mathews is a former zookeeper and computer programmer. Recognizing the shortage of struggling new writers in the world, Michael generously agreed to put aside his dreams of animal husbandry and automated machines in order to write short stories about things like automated animals and machine husbandry. He lives in England with his incredibly understanding wife and children. |
| And Death Will Seize the Doctor, Too – Jeremiah Swanson is a short story writer and aspiring novelist/screenplay writer. He has been writing for a little over three years and has several stories appearing or forthcoming in small press magazines. He currently resides in southern New Jersey. |
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Art Guidelines
What to send us: We’re looking for art that complements the stories we publish: speculative, original and compelling. For each issue, we’re looking for one color piece for our cover, and a few black and white or grayscale illustrations for the interior. We want art that tells a story and that pushes the boundaries of illustration in the same way speculative fiction pushes boundaries.
A few things to note that will improve your chances:
- Know where the light source is coming from in your piece.
- Please use a model or photo reference if you are trying for realism.
- It is not enough to have a well-rendered figure; figures must be part of a strong composition.
Payment and Rights: Cover, $90. All contributors receive a copy of the issue in which your illustration appears. We are purchasing the right to display your art on the Shimmer website and within the ebook edition. 4 months after purchase, most rights return to the artist, but we retain the right to continue selling back issues of the magazine and the right to archive your art.
Formatting: Acceptable formats are PC compatible .tif, .jpg, .gif, .pdf. 72 dpi with dimensions no greater than 400 pixels horizontal x 600 pixels vertical. If your art is accepted, the editors will ask for a larger file with 200 dpi resolution.
How to Submit: Submit art via e-mail to shimmersubs@gmail.com. Make sure the subject line begins with Art Submission. Please submit only one piece at a time. For portfolio review, please query or provide a link to an online portfolio.
Other: Please indicate in your query if you are interested in creating illustrations for a story or are only offering existing work for use.
Also, while we love photography, we rarely purchase it.
Questions: Still have questions? Use our contact form to get in touch.
To give you an idea of my taste, here are some artists whose work we love and use. You must be as good as or better than these very talented people for me to covet your work for Shimmer.
Carrie Ann Baade
Sandro Castelli
Chrissy Ellsworth
David Ho
Aunia Kahn
James Owen
John Picaccio
Shimmery People
Beth Wodzinski, Publisher
Beth’s fiction has appeared in Flash Fiction Online, Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest, and Fictitious Force. She tests software for a living and admits to a fondness for reality TV, knitting, and dinosaurs. She’s @bethwodzinski on Twitter, and you can follow her latest project at scribesandcrafts.com.
E. Catherine Tobler, Senior Editor
Among others, her fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, BCS, and on the Sturgeon Award ballot. Follow her on Twitter, if you must, @ECthetwit, where she sure is enthusiastic about baking, football, outer space, the eternally glorious Carrie Fisher, and the trebuchet. That’s right–she’s into siege weapons. Who isn’t, really?
Nicola Belte, Editor
Nicola lives in Birmingham, U.K, and is a part-time barmaid, part-time MA student, and an in-between time writer. Her work has been published in Spilling Ink Review, What the Dickens? Magazine, and Dogzplot, among others, and you can find her at her blog, here: http://nicolabelte.blogspot.
Sophie Wereley, Editor
Her Ladyship Czarina of All Sentences and Most Excellent Taster of Cake, has secluded herself in the mysterious hills of Washington, DC. She has a soft spot for feral cats and a great admiration for guerrilla gardeners. Her fiction has appeared in Daily Science Fiction and Intergalactic Medicine Show. You can find her all over the web, including on Twitter (@sayitwhirly) and her blog .
David Gilmore, Associate Editor
David is a renegade sorcerer who recently escaped a doomed alternate timeline. He’s assumed his doppelganger’s life and lives in St. Louis where he spends his time maintaining a day job in tech and writing when he can. He recently finished his MFA and has had his work featured in The Rumpus. Right now he’s shopping the black market for a Muse and plans to one day start that blog critiquing all things written.
Rajiv Moté, Associate EditorRajiv moonlights as a writer in Chicago, sunlights in software development, and seeks the dawn where sun and moon share the sky. His stories appear in Unlikely Story and Cast of Wonders, and he randomly generates words on Twitter as @RajivMote and on his blog at rajivmote.wordpress.com.
Suzan Palumbo, Associate Editor
Suzan is a writer, and the the Ignyte Award Co Admin.
Josh Storey, Associate Editor
Josh has only ever had three career ambitions: astronaut, Superman, and writer. Since he’s no good at math and (as far as his parents will admit) not from Krypton, he’s going with option three. Josh occasionally blathers about writing, comic books, and other geekery on twitter @soless.
Lindsay Thomas, Associate Editor
Lindsay is a writer based in Denver, Colorado. She can often be found playing trivia at her neighborhood brewery, competing in poetry slams, peering at the sky for funnel clouds, or serving as commissioner of her fantasy football league. Her work has appeared in The Skinny and The Fogdog Review. She tweets and retweets at @finstergrrrl.
Laura Blackwell, Copy Editor
Laura is a writer, editor, and journalist. Her publications include PCWorld, Strange Horizons, TechHive, and the Ocean Stories and Puzzle Box anthologies. You can follow her on Twitter at @pronouncedlahra and visit her website at pronouncedlahra.com.
Sandro Castelli, Minister of Art
Sandro was born and lives in São Paulo, Brazil. Working as a freelance illustrator, he collaborates with several national and international magazines and companies. The obscure and the fantastic are his subjects of choice, coupled with a deep obsession for human anatomy.
Sean Markey, Minister of Distribution
Sean’s fiction has been published in Strange Horizons and Fantasy Magazine. You can find more of his work at this site, or find him on twitter: @seanmarkey
To explore our former staff,
please visit our Staff Emeritus page!
Once a badger, always a badger!
About Us
Welcome to Shimmer Magazine!
Our first issue was released in the fall of 2005. Our last issue was released in the fall of 2018. Our stories have been reprinted in Best American Fantasy 3 and Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Fantasy and Science Fiction, and others.
Dee Warrick’s “Me, Waiting for Me, Hoping for Something More” was on the 2018 Tiptree Honors list. Fran Wilde’s “Only Their Shining Beauty Was Left” was on the 2017 WSFA Small Press Award ballot.
What made us start a magazine? Honestly? It seemed like fun, and we were too naive to know any better. Luckily, despite the challenges, it’s was an amazing ride. In 2019, Shimmer Magazine was a Hugo Award finalist, and though we did not win, we thank you all so much for that honor.
Thank you for taking this ride with us. Thank you for being shimmery.
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