"Hidden Youth: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History" is now available, and totally worth it. I swear.

My first professional-rate short story is now available in print from Crossed Genres! "An Baile na mBan" is just one of 22 tales of fantastical diversity in the pre-1930s world, all featured in Hidden Youth: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History. (Perhaps not-so-surprisingly, mine's about pucas, Travellers, and abortion during the Irish Civil War.)

Publisher's Weekly said, "The offerings are solid, entertaining, and generally fascinating, conjuring up voices and experiences not often heard. This collection is well worth checking out for all fans of speculative fiction."

From the publisher...

“The sequel to the World Fantasy and Locus Award-nominated anthology Long Hidden, Hidden Youth focuses on children: underage protagonists marginalized in their time. 22 excellent stories ranging across nearly 2,400 years and spanning the globe, Hidden Youth reveals the stories of young people whose lives have been pushed to the margins of history.”

The Greatest Feminist Mermaid Horror Story Fairytale Ever Written

This is Alyssa Wong — or as I like to call her, Death Cupcake. Don't let her seemingly adorable exterior deceive you (or do — she'd probably prefer it if you do, as it gives her the advantage when she swoops in to devour your soul): Alyssa is a wonderful, wonderful person who writes some of the most brutal stories I've encountered. Alyssa's stories, much like their creator, are a perfect marriage of cutesy moments and grotesque, gut-wrenching horror. This seemingly incongruous combination is precisely what makes her and her stories so wonderful.

But don't let my biased voice fool you. Take it from SF Site, who just interviewed Alyssa about The Fisher Queen, her first professional fiction publication. I had the pleasure of reading the first draft of The Fisher Queen at Clarion in the summer of 2013, and it's one of the stories that has stuck with me ever since. The best way I can describe it is as a Feminist Mermaid Horror story. If that sounds weird to, well, that's part of the charm of Alyssa's work — she can write a feminist mermaid horror story and actually pull it off. I was legitimately squirming by the end of this story.

Alyssa was one-third of the affectionately named "Team Tiny Bonesaw" at Clarion 2013, alongside Isabel Yap and Gabby Santiago 

Again, don't take my word for it — you can download the entire story for free on Amazon in this exclusive sampler digest of Fantasy & Science Fiction. And yes, I would suggest you do so — if for no other reason than to appease the Death Cupcake Queen, so that she might have mercy on your soul once she rules the fiction landscape (which she will).

And lest I've frightened you too much, here's Alyssa posing with the UCSD Triton. She's get a weird thing for mer-people — but hey, I don't judge.

Let's Kill Hitler M. Night Shyamalan!

It's a classic time travel question: if you had the ability to change history and travel through time, would you go back and kill Baby Hitler to prevent the Holocaust from ever happening? But then, what has innocent little baby Hitler ever done — could you possibly raise him in a way to stop him from ever becoming the monster that he does, without killing him? It's a great thought problem, but I propose a better idea: Going back in time to kill M. Night Shyamalan, around the time that Signs was released. Because if you think about it, you'd actually be doing everyone a favor — including M. Night himself. He would be the victim of a mysterious murder, and remembered as a young auteur filmmaker who died before his time. He'd be remembered for such greats as Signs and Unbreakable, and the rest of us would never have to suffer through such insipid crap as Lady in the Water or The Happening.

This week on Five By Five Hundred, I explore this exact scenario.

"I Kill Dead People" on FiveByFiveHundred.com