Michael Haynes - Science Fiction & Fantasy Writer

I'll be attending two SF conventions in the next several weeks. First I'll be at COSine which is being held in Colorado Springs January 23-25 and the following weekend I'll be at Magical ConFusion in the Detroit area.

If you're attending either of those conventions, here's my schedule at each:

COSine:

• Friday 7 PM: "Dead Authors, Living Series" (moderator, Front Range Room)
• Saturday 10 AM: "Find the Time to Write" (Cripple Creek Room)
• Saturday 11 AM: "Prologues, Epilogues, Forewords, & Footnotes" (moderator, Front Range Room)
• Saturday 5:30 PM: Author Signing (Atrium)

ConFusion:

• Friday 4 PM: "The Art of the Short Story" panel (Leelanaw Room)
• Sunday 11 AM: Reading in a timeslot with Addie J. King (Manitou Room)
• Sunday 12 AM "Leveling Up Your Writing" (moderator, Leelanaw Room)

I have a new story out this month! "Echoes of Your Father" was published in Every Day Fiction, my fourth appearance in that publication.

"They say the maze is haunted by echoes of its dead. You stand and watch the chitinous beast which waits patiently through every moment of every day at the maze’s entrance. No one has entered the maze today, so you still can. In your hand are the three coins the guard-beast demands — one copper, one silver, one gold."

I first wrote this story a little over thirteen years ago, for a flash-fiction writing competition in one of my writing groups. It's not the story of mine which went out on submission the most times before publications, but at a total of 48 submissions over the years, it's close. So perseverance definitely can pay off in the short fiction submission game! (In fact, I'll have a similar story to share later this year about another story once it's published...)

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database would list this as my 16th consecutive year of having fiction published, though their publication dates don't quite match mine for a few titles so I show a gap in 2019. Regardless, it's a nice way to start off 2026 from a writing perspective!

It's been a while since I put an update out here. I'm intending to work at being at least a bit more consistent about this, rather than saving up a bunch of news for one or two posts per year. But, for now, this post will cover various items of interest from 2025.

Randee Dawn and I at our Worldcon 2025 Book Launch Party

Worldcon in general was a great experience. I was on one panel and also did a reading on Saturday morning, sharing three stories from my new collection. Thanks to Glen Engel-Cox for the photo of me at my reading!

Michael reading at Worldcon 2025 in Seattle

Okay, this is a much-overdue post but better late than never...

As I write this, we're just a little over 24 hours before the book launch party at the 2025 Worldcon in Seattle, WA for my second collection Three Things Cameron Couldn't Tell You: Stories of (Mis)Communication.

For all the details about this book and to purchase a signed copy directly from me, you can go to the new page specific for this book.

If you're at the Seattle Worldcon, I hope you can join me for the launch party, which I'm doing in collaboration with Randee Dawn and Richard Sparks who are also launching new books this weekend.

The party will be starting at 4:30 PM on Saturday August 16th and be held in Room 2502 of the Sheraton Grand; we'll have cake and ice cream and lots of books.

So, yeah, that seems to be about the speed of things here these days... But, that's okay. Because there's news to share!

The big thing is that recently I sold my 100th short story! It was published just a few days ago: "Six or Seven Words Uttered by Marible Simpkins, While Unconscious After a Fall" at Wallstrait: A Literary Journal of Hard-to-Define Fiction. Something that this story shares with a whopping *twenty* of my other published stories is that it got its start at Liberty Hall. Among other things, Liberty Hall had a weekly Flash Fiction contest where you got two prompts and then had 90 minutes to write your story. Obviously, with that constraint, there were plenty of half-finished stories submitted and all of them were rough first drafts. But clearly it worked for me! According to my records, this one also looks to have been my last Liberty Hall story; which, if I recall correctly, means it was written for the last weekend flash fiction contest at Liberty Hall.

I had two other stories published earlier this year both in fantasy anthologies:

"A Drink from the Doubtless Sea" appeared in 99 Fleeting Fantasies. This one has one of my personal favorite last-lines from my stories. It also was the story that got me an entry in the Internet Science Fiction Database for the 14th consecutive year.

"The Gift of Music" appeared in A Little Fantasy Everywhere.

I also recently received an acceptance for a story of mine which had been submitted over fifty times before being accepted! More about that to come.

I've been spending a bit more time on writing recently; we'll see what that turns into as far as 2025 publications. After all, I need to get started on that second hundred...

Last night I had the opportunity to do a live reading as part of the Story Hour series of speculative fiction readings which began in 2020. For October, Story Hour is focusing on spookier stories, so I decided to read my "Awaiting the Captain's Ghost." Previously this story had only been available in print anthologies (and my collection), so this is the first time this story has been freely-available online.

Also on the program is A. C. Wise with the amazing story "Death Is a Diner at 3 AM." If you check out the recording, I hope you enjoy it!

I've had a couple of short fantasy stories published in recent months and I wanted to share the links to them here.

"Blackwood Dragon Blues" is a fantasy caper story with a dash of humor.

The streets were clear, and I got there ten minutes early. Martha was already waiting, the red trench coat Jimmy had said she would be wearing precisely as unsubtle as it sounded. "What's the job?" I asked as I sat. "What do you know about dragons?" I stood up. "Enough to know that we're done here." She reached up, touched my arm. "Even if it's a tiny dragon?"

It was published back in May at Electric Spec, marking my third appearance there after their previous publications of "Corinne's Song" and "Waiting On a Sunny Day". This also gave me 13 consecutive years of having credited publications at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.

My second recent publication was "1-800-PROPHCY". I had fun writing this one.

Are you kept up at night, wondering about the meaning of a cryptic sentence uttered years before you were born? Do you find yourself constantly on the lookout for figures like “the man with twelve toes” or “the woman without a name?” Do you feel trapped, not by a dead-end job or burdensome student loans, but by Fate?

This story was published by Stupefying Stories and was another return appearance with a publisher for me. "Waters of Oblivion" was published in 2014 on another Stupefying Stories site.

A few other quick notes:

• I attended the North American Science Fiction Convention (NASFiC) this summer in Winnipeg, MB. The convention was fairly small but I participated in two well-attended panels, one on Data Privacy, and one on support for writers. I also gave a reading from my collection and had a couple of nice meals with some fellow members of a writing group.
• If you backed the 99 Tiny Terrors Kickstarter, word is that the print editions are being shipped now! I don't have mine yet, but I'm looking forward to receiving it soon. I've had a story accepted for the editor and publisher's followup 99 Fleeting Fantasies and there should be a Kickstarter for a print edition of that in the upcoming months.
• Finally, I'm planning to attend the 2024 Worldcon in Glasgow and hope to be able to participate on panels and do a reading there. I'll know more about that next year.