Sternus is a short story about a man getting swept up by a cult, somewhat based on my interactions I have at work with the sorts of people who write utopian texts. About half the people who read it think it’s funny, like intended, and the other half are taken aback by how dark it is. You’ll have to decide for yourself what it is! It was recently published as part of the Edmonton Public Library’s fourth Capital City Press Anthology. You can read it for free here: https://capitalcitypress.wordpress.com/2024/07/02/sternus/ 

I had not written a short story since university when one fateful morn I was stood up by a coffee date. While thumbing through the internet I noticed the CBC Short Story Prize would be opening a narrow application window, and to kill the time more than anything else started writing. I never intended to win, but see I’m at my most productive when I have a deadline, a bit of free time, and a bit of inspiration, and in that moment I happened to have all three things. 

I sent it into the CBC thing because that’s what I’d written it for and it wasn’t chosen, but outside that I’ve gotten a lot of milage out of it. I wrote it at just the right moment to share with a crop of new writer friends, and make it look like writing short stories is just something I do.

I managed to get it published in the Capital City Anthology, and fearlessly checked “er yeah, sure,” to a couple fun opportunities they had. So in addition to having the story published, I also read for the audio version, and also performed the story aloud for a croud of roughly seventy. 

I have written a couple more stories since. It’s been a fun realisation that the movie/book/play ideas I have that are be too ambitious to ever be made by myself all translate nicely to the short fiction format, and so in a way might actually get to exist!