Books
Read Works by IFP Staff and Volunteers Published in 2023
Works to Add to Your TBR Pile You May Have Missed from the IFP Crew, Plus Everything IFP Published in 2023
Interstellar Flight Press is not just an indie press; we’re a community. Behind every book and article we publish is a team of amazing volunteers who are writers in their own right. If you want to support what we do, then support our writers by reading or buying their work. (Or, you know, you can always become a Patron, too.) This is just a sampling of the awesome and cool works that our volunteers, staff, and writers have created in 2023. Plus, of course, a list of what IFP published too!
We ❤ our community!
The Bread Must Rise
by James Beamon and Stewart C Baker
The Bread Must Rise is a 450,000-word interactive comedy/fantasy/baking/eldritch horror novel by James Beamon and Stewart C Baker. It’s entirely text-based, without graphics or sound effects, and fueled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination.
Understudies
by Priya Sridhar
Novel from Hiraeth Press. The Stardust Sisters have always made their parody shows work. So what if they lost their third member to Hollywood? Does it even matter that they don’t have a new theater facility? Grad school should fix that, twin sisters Stella and Evangeline calculate, and they’ll get the funding, as well as a decent apartment in the city.
As if by miracle, an apartment with no rent opens up — in the Haunted Basilio Theater, where new management wants a fresh start after summer camp went wrong. All the twins have to do is perform a show scripted a century ago, and give up bits of their body heat. The show must go on, right? Right?!
Inside Job2
by Mel Grebing
In Tumbled Tales: An Anthology of Unconventional Stories from Wandering Wave Press. This anthology showcases 21 genre-busting stories to surprise even the most avid reader. Discover what talented authors can do with urban fantasy, westerns, romance, horror, sci-fi, mysteries, thrillers, and dystopian fiction. This collection proves that genre fiction doesn’t need to stay in one lane.
Ten Thousand Cranes
by Julie Reeser
In Bourbon Penn Magazine. “The whales had long ago sung their last song when humans discovered the mermaids washing up along the shores. Nothing could be done about one more White Rabbit decrying the late hour.”
The End of the Horror Story
by Patrick Barb
In AHH! That’s What I Call Horror: An Anthology of ’90s Horror. In the mid-90s, a film crew prepping a low-budget slasher in post-Cold War Siberia encounter a sinister, witch-y presence in the woods.
The Small God of West 54th St
by Alex Kingsley
in Translunar Traveler’s Lounge, August. “Another one of my brothers was killed today, which really spoiled my Friday afternoon. And I saw it, too, which made it even worse. He was sitting in the street, and of course they’re always waddling around in the street so it’s not like that was anything new. Usually my boys would fly out of the way in time, but this guy was beginning to lose his hearing. Too long spent around city traffic, I think. Taxi turned the corner and the rest of his brothers fled. He couldn’t hear.”
Mother’s Teeth
by E.L. Chen
In The Dark Magazine. “The shadow that wears his mother’s teeth appears at the window again. Noah, the shadow whispers from between lipless jaws, or maybe it is only the winter wind murmuring against the glass. Noah burrows deeper under his covers, hugging his teddy bear for protection and warmth. The chill has peeled back his skin and crept inside, wearing him like a blanket until his fingers don’t feel like they belong to him anymore.”
“Adding Up” in Kaleidoscope — A Queer Anthology from Cloaked Press 3)
“The Power Of” with Manawaker Flash Fiction Podcast episode (0825)
The Strange Garden and Other Weird Tales came out this year, and
https://www.patreon.com/posts/awards-2023-94743504
“Death Is Not A Marketing Tool” And Other Sentences We Shouldn’t Have To Say
by Priya Sridhar
Nonfiction essay on the author who faked their death. “Dead authors can’t write more because death is forever and final. That’s why it’s sad. No AI is going to recreate a new story from an author’s voice and have it be the same. Such a lie for any reason barring witness protection is hurtful to the living.”
Hollywood Animals
by Corey J White
In Interzone #295. A story about animal cruelty that Bogi Takács calls “really about animal mistreatment, in its entirety, so if you think in the slightest that it might be too upsetting for you to read, then please don’t. But I do recommend it if you can — it is a take on the topic that is both thoughtful, heartfelt, and the speculative elements are integral to it.”
How to Be a Ghost
by Annika Barranti Klein
In Worlds of Possibility, February. Julia Rios calls it a “poignant story about a grieving mother.”
“Most days I don’t miss having a body. I miss specific things, sure. The sublime pain of stepping into a hot bath, easing myself in slowly. The little surprise of biting into a sun ripe cherry tomato, the way the skin would burst on my tongue and the juice run down my chin … that was nice. When I miss those aspects of having a body enough that I can almost feel the ache of its absence, I float into a television and let the electrical synapses pop around me. It isn’t the same as feeling, but some days it’s enough.”
An Incomplete Record of Databank Deletions, in Alphabetical Order
by Mar Vincent
In Robotic Ambitions from Apex. Short story. Beautifully structured in the form of alphabetical entries from Asperity to Verisimilitude.
Whether striving to protect the family they’ve chosen, searching for meaning amid the chaos of the world, or questioning what it is that makes one alive, robotic ambition can mean many different things. Robotic Ambitions: Tales of Mechanical Sentience explores the nuance of sentience manufactured and evolved within mechanical beings. It peels back the metal exterior and takes a hard look at what is inside.
Within these pages you will discover stories of robots defying their coding for a chance at love, resisting societal norms so that they may experience art and pleasure, and searching for their place in a world that was not made for them, but rather was made to use them. These are stories about striking out on your own, building something new amid destruction, and doing whatever it takes to make sure you survive. Robots and AI are more than tools for humanity. They have their own goals, dreams, and aspirations,
I am Creating a New Drug
by J.C. Rodriguez
Prose poem in Phoebe Journal. “I need to believe in something again.”
Submerged
by Adria Bailton
Flash fiction. Available in Audio at Manawaker Podcast. Spooky, watery, and dark.
Epiphany
by Jules V. Gachs
Debut Novel from Off Limits Press. When pregnant Estela learns that her wife Eva has hanged herself from an oak tree, she can’t believe she would have done so voluntarily. Eva, a journalist obsessed with the crimes of the so-called Garden of Horrors, was about to release a podcast about the convicted killer, Coral, who always maintained it wasn’t her who slaughtered her family and her missing new born, but an evil forest spirit.
As Estela dives deep into the recordings, emails, and letters from Eva’s investigation, in Coral’s retelling of the murders, she will be forced to face a simple question that could cost her life as well as her unborn baby’s: “Do you believe in magic?”
The Green Man’s Wife
by Archita Mittra
In The Dread Machine, March. This tale blending South Asian customs with Celtic folklore, was published last year in Tasavvur and follows a non-binary witch navigating an ecological crisis.
Over the Dragon’s Gate
by Juliana Jones & Riley Sanderson
Treya has all he needs: food, shelter, other fish to swim with. But when a boy falls into his pond, Treya discovers he’s more than a fish. He can also become a boy, and now he has a friend: the irrepressible Eli. When Eli starts asking questions about who and what Treya is, they discover questions are dangerous, answers have a cost, and their fates depend on unraveling the mystery of Treya’s past.
Down Memory Lane
by Lisa Timpf
In The Bicyclist’s Guide to the Galaxy: Feminist, Fantastical Tales of Books and Bikes. The power of the pedal and the page shine through in these ten joyfully feminist science fiction and fantasy stories. Two strangers and their bike fall through a plot hole and into a fantasy novel, an author attempts to chronicle the solar cycling trend, a sixth grader’s beloved novel is stolen by a horde of bicycling fae, an interstellar book preservationist takes a bike to fit in and gets a wilder ride than she bargained for, and more adventures are set in imagined realities not so different from our own futures, pasts, and present-day lives. Take these stories for a spin and enjoy an escape from the perils of everyday sexism and fossil fuel dependence.
Works Published by Interstellar Flight Press in 2023
Beautiful Malady
by Ennis Rook Bashe
Queer Disability told through Fairytales, Folklore, and Fantasy
A siren song of queerness, disability, and myth, these poems reinvent love, life, and death. BEAUTIFUL MALADY is an exploration of pain, weaving speculative poems about fairy tales, folklore, fantasy, and the supernatural with the reality of chronic illness and disability. Ennis Rook Bashe deftly creates a world where the broken body is beautiful.
anOther Mythology
by Maxwell I. Gold
A Queer Poetic Retelling of Classic Myths
From Thanatos to Hades, Maxwell Gold’s book of horror prose poetry reimagines myths from a queer perspective. Gold’s poetry merges camp sensibility and cosmic horror in poems that are beautiful, bloody, and barbed. A poetic soap opera of gods and monsters.
Level Six
Killday Series
by William Ledbetter
The thrilling second installment in the Killday Series by Nebula Award winning Author William Ledbetter
Fifteen years after warring artificial intelligences nearly destroyed Earth, Abby, the daughter of Killday hero Leah Gibson, finds an artifact from that struggle, upsetting a delicate balance of power and dragging her into the middle of a new fight for humanity’s survival.
The Long Fall Up
And Other Stories
by William Ledbetter
From bestselling Nebula-Award winning William Ledbetter comes a groundbreaking collection of science fiction short stories that will bend your heart like a black hole. From AI to robot medics to life on Mars, Ledbetter takes real tech, blends it with hard science fact, and invents futures full of fantastic fiction. Includes 17 previously published stories and one original story.
Interstellar Flight Magazine Best of Year Four
Edited by Holly Lyn Walrath
Interstellar Flight Magazine is an online SFF and pop culture mag devoted to essays on what’s new in the world of speculative genres. With interviews, personal essays, rants, and raves, the authors of Interstellar Flight Magazine explore the vast outreaches of nerdom.
