Tag Archives: wildfires

My Short Story “Surtr and the Phoenix” Has Just Been Accepted by “Dastaan World Magazine”

dastaan

Screenshot of Dastaan World logo

Addendum, June 14, 2020: I just got an email from the editor reversing his decision and saying this story didn’t fit the Rebirth theme. This is the first time ever that I’ve had a story accepted and then subsequently rejected. Not sure what to think.

Original Announcement: My short story “Surtr and the Phoenix” has been accepted into an issue of Dastaan World Magazine, a Pakistan-based periodical, with the theme “Rebirth”

I’d originally written the tale as a charity submission to an Australian publication trying to raise funds for victims of the Australian Bushfires early this year. They rejected it, which is fine and dandy, since it’s a science fantasy tale and not your typical “wildfire” story.

I’ve submitted to Dastaan in the past, but the magazine went dark for many months. They finally put together a new editing team and…

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The Last Frontier

forest

© Sue Vincent

“What am I doing here? I wanted to get away from it all, but the smoke’s even worse here.” Gary Flowers didn’t hike often anymore, but life in the city and suburbs had been wearing him down over the last decade or so. Married, three children, two grandchildren, divorced, semi-retired, he had in his grasp what people used to refer to as the American dream. Of course, all those who didn’t have the opportunity to seize that dream resented people like him, or maybe they just weren’t in the right place in history he had been when he was up and coming.

Yes, he had grasped the American dream, but then slowly let it slip away. Life had become dull and meaningless. His children were grown and didn’t need him anymore, and besides his grandchildren, he couldn’t say that anything mattered to him these days.

And every summer there were these fires. The governor blamed global warming and the utilities company, and the news agencies blamed the governor’s poor wildfire planning, and his emphasis on social reforms over thinning the overgrown forests.

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