Another New Story in On Spec

I had another new short story published over the summer. My tale "Oregon Shooters" appeared in the wonderful Canadian speculative fiction magazine, On Spec, in their July issue.

This is my fifth appearance in On Spec. Prior appearances included an Aurora Award winner, an Aurora finalist, and a recent finalist for the Alberta Magazine Awards for Fiction.

This story is a mash-up of a private eye yarn and an SF tale à la X-Files or MiB. It was written as a workshop exercise at a Master Class course put on by Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith. The goal of the exercise was to focus on setting. The place they took us to (for a wonderful lunch) for use as a setting in our stories was a seafood restaurant, popular with both locals and tourists on the Oregon coast.

Here the highlights of a review of the story in Amazing Stories:

“An unlicensed private eye is upset two people died while eating his favourite snack. He decides to help the restaurant owner out, since the authorities seem in no hurry. Odd, seemingly unconnected details begin to pile up. Then things get weird, really weird. ... I found this story quite entertaining. … Can this be the real reason H.P. Lovecraft was so terrified of sea food? I like to think so. Have the feeling he would wholeheartedly approve.”

—R. Graeme Cameron, Amazing Stories

You can order copies of the issue from On Spec.