Amanda C. Davis's Blog

Every year around the holidays, Rhonda Parrish, who is awesome, runs Giftmas: a month-long short-story fest that raises money for the Edmonton Food Bank. Yesterday’s offering was Spider by Jennifer Lee Rossman, a story about “orphaned kids who live in a junkyard, a girl with an awesome wheelchair, and FIGHTING ROBOTS!!!!” Which, I mean. Is so cool. Go read it.

This story originally appeared in 10Flash in July 2010, and is also about hardscrabble siblings, but it does not include fighting robo...

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Everybody Knows Vampires Are Dead

by Amanda C. Davis

You are so totally over vampires, you tell everyone, just totally over them, and then one afternoon, on a stone bench outside of the junior/senior parking lot, one of them promises to come to your room one night while you are asleep, if you want him.

“Say the word,” he whispers, one fang brushing the rim of your ear. “Any time.”

“Then what?” you whisper back–trying not to sound as awkward as you feel, but having trouble hearing yourself...

Here are some quick links to my most popular posts!

The Total Beginner’s Guide to Submitting Short Fiction for Publication

How to finish and format your stories, find markets that want to read them, and send them out in ways that make you look and feel professional.

Poetry and Prose Pieces for Forensics Competition

Stories and poems from serious to humorous, listed by category and reading time, for class, competition, or just reading aloud.

Magazine Art and Illustration Markets for Cover Arti...

First appeared in Not One of Us #47, 4/10/12

The Living Dead
Amanda C. Davis

We survivors bathe our skin in mud
To hide in shattered alleys
From our sharp-eyed conquerors.

We rend our parents’ bodies–
Flesh, fat, meat, marrow–
This gray hair
Will make a pillow
Or a fire.

We keep our women pregnant.

We eat dogs
With collars on.

Weep for us,
Our lucky brothers
Carried off at the start:
We, the damned victors,
You, the lucky failures!

Blessed are the poor in stamina,
For they elude the kingdom o...

First appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #57, 4/30/13.

Missed Connections Pocket Universe
Amanda C. Davis

At the time travelers’ ball,
You had a HELLO MY YEAR IS sticker
With a date just ten years from mine.

I was drinking very old wine
From the future, cached in the ancient past,
Aged for millennia, very pricey.
It went to my head.
Such things do.

I cornered you by the hors d’oeuvres.

“It looks like we’re from–”
I said in my mind,
“No–going my way?
“No–more like coming from m...

First appeared in Retro Spec: Tales of Fantasy and Nostalgia, 9/8/10; reprinted in Bull Spec #8, 04/23/13.

Sparks Between Our Teeth
Amanda C. Davis

I smoked a lot
In the Fifties.
Half a pack a day.
Helped with my nerves
When the job needed done.
We were shrewd and urbane,
Chronos cowboys,
And pretended we belonged to the era
And didn’t know better.

Killing spies and profiteers.
Keeping kinks out of the timeline.
Vintage smoke made it all go down easier.

I quit when they transferred me
To the...

I’m a writer; apart from assembling book covers out of stock photos, I don’t art. But I do keep tabs on fiction magazines (mostly fantasy, horror, and science fiction) who are looking for cover artists and illustrators. Below are some of the many markets out there for artists. They’re looking for cover art, banner art, and illustrations; some take reprints, while some are looking to commission original work. For more information, click the magazine name–all links go to artist guidelines.

If y...

It’s year-end writing-stats time!

Not my greatest!

Between starting a new job and a powerful, persistent Crisis of Writing Faith (TM) I went months without reading, writing, or submitting. Which is not a good strategy for achieving strong writing stats. That’s not to say nothing happened–I had a lot of cool achievements throughout the year, almost entirely thanks to work I did in 2014 and earlier–but I’m really hoping to get my submissions train back on the rails in 2016.

Amanda C. Davis and Megan Engelhardt are sisters. Their stories and poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies from around the world. They wrote Wolves and Witches to collect their fairy-tale retellings and because they wanted to create something together. The volume sold to World Weaver Press and the book was released in 2013. So far their stories have been performed in competition, adapted for podcasts, read aloud at conferences, and discussed in book clubs. Wow!

Wolves and Witches co...

First appeared in Phobos Magazine #3, 02/08/2015.

When I Am Eighty-Three
Amanda C. Davis

The autumn after I turn eighty-three,
If I am still sound of tooth and knee,
I shall move to a town where they don’t know me,
To the creepiest house, where the witch lives.

I will eat fish and onions and greasy meat
Cooked all day long, so it smells in the street,
And keep forty black cats on my porch and beneath
And teach them to glare into windows.

I will make my own clothing from vintage gowns
And hav...