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story before i submitted it anywhere tim macie heather lindsey and jolene finally thank you to electric spec s audience for reading blood moonlight and poppyseeds interesting thanks julia be sure to check out blood moonlight and poppyseeds and the rest of the august 2026 stories posted by lesleylsmith at 5 00 am no comments 31 august 2026 awesome august 2026 issue live the awesome august 2026 issue of electric spec is live thank you authors thank you to our artist thank you to the whole electric spec team thank you readers we hope you enjoy this issue as much as we did posted by lesleylsmith at 5 00 am no comments 27 august 2026 from author k asok kumar we re excited to feature the color of waiting by k asok kumar in our awesome august 2026 issue of electric spec k asok kumar was kind enough to send us some comments i am k asok kumar a writer from chennai india i write between two worlds tamil historical fiction and english science fiction and the color of waiting lives somewhere between them what inspired you to write this story i ve always felt that science fiction doesn t have to be only about advanced machines or distant planets it can also hold very human questions the color of waiting grew from that idea even in an imagined future people will still love wait and miss those who matter to them i wanted to explore those feelings through a world that was unfamiliar but where the emotions remained recognizably human if the story can make a reader feel that science fiction can touch the heart as much as the imagination then i ve achieved what i set out to do did the story develop in any surprising ways as you wrote it yes while writing i realized that the most interesting part wasn t the futuristic setting but how the characters lived within it i imagined a species whose emotions appear as colors on their skin since every emotion is visible there is little room for deception then i began wondering how such beings would see us that question changed the emotional core of the story what began as an exploration of an unusual alien culture gradually became much more about trust vulnerability and the things people are unable to say openly is this story similar to your other writing or were you trying out something different this story reflects the kind of science fiction i feel most drawn to i enjoy imagining new concepts and unfamiliar worlds but i m even more interested in how ordinary human emotions survive inside extraordinary circumstances in that sense the color of waiting is very much like the kind of fiction i hope to continue writing even though its setting and characters are different from my other stories would you like to dedicate the story to anyone in particular i d like to dedicate this story to everyone who has experienced the quiet weight of waiting for someone they love and to those who found the courage to cross the distance even when they did not know if anything waited on the other side interesting thanks k asok kumar be sure to check out the color of waiting and the rest of the august 2026 stories posted by lesleylsmith at 5 00 am no comments 25 august 2026 from author riley we re excited to feature girl on the edge by kathryn riley in our awesome august 2026 issue of electric spec kathryn was kind enough to send us some comments first a confession i m a jigsaw puzzle addict i ve always loved word puzzles but the jigsaw habit started during the covid era when we were spending long days inside away from our usual activities i came across a website offering daily jigsaw puzzles including a huge archive and started doing at least one each afternoon most were landscapes or city scenes and they were a nice way to escape to other settings during a time when travel was limited i kept doing them even after life returned to something like normal as with many stories the key elements for girl on the edge drifted into my mind at different times percolating a lot before coming together in a final form i started by speculating about the people who create and produce jigsaw puzzles having done some work in the past with user testing of websites i wondered whether the jigsaw puzzle industry uses a similar process wouldn t that be a great job i imagined getting paid to do jigsaw puzzles and talk about your thought process while doing them maybe a great job but not a great story no struggle no conflict but then i thought what if you were forced to do jigsaw puzzles under pressure and all you ever got to work on were the edges suddenly not such a great job but a better basis for a story the missing piece forgive the pun came after my husband and i were fortunate enough to spend a month in vienna last fall when we returned the idea of user testing jigsaw puzzles under duress somehow came together with vienna i imagined a character stuck in a dismal setting a florida prison and then suddenly presented with an image of vienna the most beautiful city i ve ever visited i wanted to tell the story of how her imaginary escape evolved into something that she didn t expect interesting thanks kathryn be sure to check out girl on the edge and the rest of the august 2026 stories posted by lesleylsmith at 5 00 am no comments 20 august 2026 from authors vick and frishberg we re excited to feature occupy underhill by edd vick and manny frishberg in our awesome august 2026 issue of electric spec they were kind enough to send us some comments manny comments what inspired you to write this story edd and i had been working on collaborations for some time i was working on a novel involving irish deities so i had fairies in mind a lot of the time occupy wall street demonstration had happened several years earlier but still felt relevant in light of donald trump s administration did the story develop in any surprising ways as you wrote it we work differently when writing separately so i can only say for myself but writing first drafts my stories always arise organically and this was no exception edd was familiar with trap streets nonexistent streets add to a map to catch plagiarists i think i dug up the legend of the foot race to claim the fairy throne is this story similar to your other writing or were you trying out something different i have to say it was similar at least from my end we had already written other stories set in the secondary world of fairy lands i think this was our first fantasy collaboration that took place in both the real world and the secondary one would you like to dedicate the story to anyone in particular i ll defer to edd on that edd comments what inspired you to write this story manny and i usually take turns offering a seed and the idea of combining fairies with modern protests was his manny lived in new york for some time so he helped ground the story in its location we ve both taken part in protests and consider them a vital and necessary part of encouraging political improvement did the story develop in any surprising ways as you wrote it this was our 26th collaboration so by this time we had cemented our way of developing and writing a story we now live in separate cities but when this was written we would sit across from each other at the burien washington public library and trade scenes often the stories would take several sessions but this one came together quickly is this story similar to your other writing or were you trying out something different we definitely try our hand at a different approach for each story i keep a spreadsheet of our collaborations breaking each story out by location genre and setting our previous few stories had been sf and mythologically based so we were ready to tackle a fantasy one thing i like about our shared stories is that they are different from what i d choose to write on my own it s often a challenge to pick out which parts manny wrote and which i wrote would you like to dedicate the story to anyone in particular no one springs to mind but thanks for asking interesting thanks edd and manny be sure to check out occupy underhill and the rest of the august 2026 stories posted by lesleylsmith at 5 00 am no comments 18 august 2026 from author raymond we re excited to feature poetry planet by don raymond in our awesome august 2026 issue of electric spec don was kind enough to send us some comments this story began not surprisingly as a poem the central images were the falling pixie dust the wax face men and the idea that mountains would write poems of crystal the crystals for their part were inspired by my favorite poet sarah lindsay there were still people to look into the fire and sing until their eyes hurt and still sing sarah lindsay so were the animals primate behavior copper canyon press i ve always been fascinated by the extremes to which people will go to to express their given passion whatever that passion might be and i wanted to apply that concept to the natural world as well i tinkered with those images for a number of years before realizing they worked better as a story and the wax face men went from being a one off reference to the mib into the antagonists of the story poetry has been my first love ever since my sister loaned me her copy of where the sidewalk ends when i was about six or so my life has taken many a strange and convoluted turn since then from selling lightbulbs to running an egyptian museum but that s my origin story i read shel silverstein and knew i was going to be a poet but i also saw star wars when i was five and that exploded in my soul like a thousand double suns and so i knew i also wanted to write science fiction although honestly only because i couldn t be a jedi as a result many of my stories have poetry as a theme or structural element although that sounds much more planned than what my usual method writing method is which involves having to drag each sentence kicking and screaming from my subconscious onto the paper anyway i m glad i got this opportunity to share some of my favorite poets with you especially because i get so few opportunities to talk about them i try but when people see me at the store they turn and run before i can grab them by the shoulders and demand they read all the books on my recommended list right now this very instant which is hard because you can t usually find nona the ninth in the organic zucchini bin as far as my writing advice it s this if you ever need a little chaos in your story throw in an orange cat i m glad you got to meet silver and tabby too and the thing about silver falling in the toilet is true after all they say to write what you know poems quoted in this story which you really should read right now this very instant go on rummaging brushing off dust is from mount clutter by sarah lindsay from her chapbook of the same name once i decided to trade my body for a breath is from after the cliff psyche begins her story by rose solari orpheus in the park interesting thanks don be sure to check out poetry planet and the rest of the august 2026 stories posted by lesleylsmith at 5 00 am no comments 02 june 2026 from author oxford we re excited to feature ms mccrae s metaphysical cleaning agency by l d oxford in our marvelous may 2026 issue of electric spec l d was kind enough to send us some comments i m sure it s possible for some writers to pinpoint the exact origin of a story that s never been true for me i m a magpie a dragon collecting images sentences ambiance eventually after much wrangling some of those items come together into a beginning a middle and an end this particular story ms mccrae s metaphysical cleaning agency is a love letter to new york city when i was young i had a very clear vision for my life i was going to be a writer and i was going to live in new york only one of these has come true so far but still i m drawn to the rich stories of that storied city and apparently wanted to contribute my own small part it wasn t planned not really i didn t set out with the intention i want to write a story about new york but as ms mccrae and her brethren took shape it was clear that was their home stories in my experience have the tendency to grow in unexpected directions you don t know it s the right path until you ve tried it out this story also grew from grief from the process of having to wrangle it and figure out what on earth to do next for those of you wrestling with the same thing i wish i had any sort of advice but what works for one person doesn t necessarily work for another for me i just had to write my way through for a long time the story was only its protagonist jean mccrae bopping around in my head i knew she had ghosts beyond that it was blurry so i sharpened the cast of characters around her the story s antagonist mrs bardot was actually the last to coalescence into a somewhat solid form once she did the story followed if this sounds like many twists and turns some non sequiturs and nonstarters that s because it was writing creativity is not linear there are always surprises along the way and isn t that why any of us do it the joy of discovering what s next if we all knew how it ended we d never pick up the pen in the first place thanks to the journey it took to get here i d like to dedicate this story to those battling their own ghosts maybe try offering them a cup of tea interesting thanks l d be sure to check out ms mccrae s metaphysical cleaning agency and the rest of the may 2026 stories posted by lesleylsmith at 5 00 am 2 comments older posts home subscribe to posts atom subscribe to posts atom posts all comments atom all comments contributors grayson towler gremlin editor lesleylsmith links electric spec electric spec on facebook lesley l smith rocky mnt fiction writers followers blog archive 2026 14 september 1 from author raye august 5 june 1 may 2 february 5 2025 24 december 1 november 4 september 1 august 5 june 1 may 6 march 1 february 4 january 1 2024 42 december 2 november 5 october 1 september 1 august 6 july 2 june 3 may 5 april 5 march 3 february 5 january 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