I’m thrilled to announce the publication of my latest short story! “Chutes, Slides, and Ladders” came out on June 30 in Issue #28 of Fusion Fragment. You can download it for free here!
The stunning cover art by Carly A-F was based on my piece. Seeing how Carly transformed my words into visual form has been another joy on top of publication.
In “Chutes, Slides, and Ladders,” Truss thrives in a gorgeous, chaotic world she loves—until Strut starts gathering all the kids up into an army to do his bidding, and Truss is next on his recruitment list. He has shadowy plans for her that put all the kids, and the world itself, at risk.
I’m up in my nest when they come, Strut and all his kids. Bad luck. I’m out scouting so much, days in a row sometimes, they should have missed me. I guess bad luck comes for everyone eventually, and I’m looking down from my nest at mine.
I conceived this story imagining an entire world built out of nothing but chutes, slides, and ladders. The ultimate McDonald’s PlayPlace, an infinite playground populated only by children—which inevitably becomes a Lord-of-the-Flies-adjacent situation. A friend has also said it reminded them of watching videos of professional tag players, and that is definitely the energy.
This story was an absolute blast to write, and I hope just as fun to read! Honestly, the entire issue is top to bottom brilliant writing. I’m stunned to find myself in such amazing company. Grab a free copy of the issue here!
Here we are, back again at the close of another year. Another revolution around the sun. Another strange period to be a human in society. Another whirlwind of hours that felt like weeks and weeks that felt like seconds.
This year, my publishing journey has been both slow and fast, more of the same and very unexpected.
No luck on novel-length work yet, though I did receive several highly complimentary rejections (“fan letters”) from fantastic indie presses I really admire. This was simultaneously amazing and soul crushing. Drama within indie and trad publishing continues to daunt. And, of course, the state of the arts in a post-capitalist content-consumer society is bleak, as always, with the added horrors of generative AI. I can only imagine what Our Lady Ursula K. LeGuin would have to say if she was still with us.
I did have luck with short (and less short) fiction! Several stories I was struggling to place last year were accepted, and late in the year, I got an acceptance on my first novelette, Unbound, which is my longest publication to date. (Check out this blog post to learn more about Unbound, what a novelette is, what it’s about, etc.) This feels like an important milestone, and (fingers’ crossed) a harbinger of longer work to come. My laptop knows there’s more where that came from.
The unexpected: I started submitting poetry for the first time, which opened a whole new world of journal titles, submission requirements, and possibilities. I burned myself out on submitting, actually, and moving into poetry probably contributed to that. I did have to take some breaks, and I slowed down a lot after the middle of the year.
BUT, I have *seven* sparkly published poems to show for it! No one is more shocked by my foray into poetry than me, but I’m really loving it.
And, honestly, I’m shocked at how much work I managed to write, submit, and place, given how little time I felt like I devoted to writing. A good reminder, maybe, that our perceptions of productivity, time, value, etc., are not to be trusted–or at least, being tainted by capitalism and shame, are highly suspect.
Here is a list of the work I published in 2024. I may update this list if/as things drop and I can link to them. I update the Publications page of this website regularly, but a tidy blog with all of the links for this year in one place is nice.
Allison Wall 