B. Morris Allen's Blog

If I recall correctly, I came up with the title first, and liked the idea of ambiguity in the use of ‘coping’. While it started as a story focused on language, style, and metaphor, it turned into an adventure along the way, complete with mad scientist. It was published by Farthest Star on 18 Sep. 2025.

In mid-2024, I was looking through my idea file and found a dragon story. And another, and another. In the end, I wrote about a half-dozen dragon stories of very different kinds. This one, about farm irrigation, was inspired by driving cross-country and seeing a type of vaguely dragon-shaped irrigator that to my delight is actually branded Dragon-Line. This story brings out the true dragon nature associated with that dragon form. It published in Trollbreath on 1 September 2025.

Years ago, I ran across a fractal image that looked just like feathers. I loved it immediately, and resolved to use it as a book cover (with appropriate licensing and attribution, of course). That eventually resulted in the anthology HOPE: The Thing With Feathers, published on 2 Aug 2025.

It’s an anthology of hopeful, feather-related SFF stories. I wrote my own contribution early on – “A Bird Afraid of Feathers” – and included it as the last story in the book.

Yesterday, I published new data on my own submissions, analyzed in part because of the TRUNK anthology project I’m planning, of stories that took a long time to place. I set criteria for submitted stories of at least 20 rejections (10 for novelettes because there are fewer markets) based on my  own experience and observations, using my own data drawn from The Grinder, a free and extremely useful submission tracking tool.

Because Grinder of course has thousands of other users, I asked its owner, ...

2025 is shaping up to be a banner year for me, story publication-wise. I’m on track for a total of twelve plus stories published this year, which easily eclipses my previous total of eight in 2017. Excluding stories published in my own magazine or anthologies, the figures are eleven and six, respectively. So, I’m pretty happy.

At the same time, as part of an upcoming anthology project (TRUNK: stories that took the long way), I took an overview look at my own submission figures, and they’re … dau...

2025 is shaping up to be a banner year for me, story publication-wise. I’m on track for a total of twelve plus stories published this year, which easily eclipses my previous total of eight in 2017. Excluding stories published in my own magazine or anthologies, the figures are eleven and six, respectively. So, I’m pretty happy.

At the same time, as part of an upcoming anthology project (TRUNK: stories that took the long way), I took an overview look at my own submission figures, and they’re … dau...

I was reading an H. G. Wells story – Mr. Britling Sees it Through – in which he said “And there is a book, I once looked into it at a man’s room in London; I don’t know the title, but it was by Richard Garnett, and it was all about gods who were in reduced circumstances but amidst sunny picturesque scenery.” The line about gods in reduced circumstances intrigued me, so I looked up Garnett’s story, In the Twilight of the Gods. I adapted elements of the story for my own, and stole Wells’ descripti...

I had a dream in which Fran Wilde had written a ghost story that I loved, but about which I had completely missed the ghost element. On waking, all I recalled was that the story had taken place entirely through notes passed between the ghost and a living person.

This isn’t exactly that story, but it is built along similar lines. I had fun building up a doomed romance between a shy ghost and a gentle man.

The story came out in In Another Time on 9 June 2025.

Much to my delight, this is my sixth story published this year, and it’s another turn in a different direction. As I recall, the genesis of the story was thinking about were-creatures and the fact that it’s almost always werewolves, with the occasional were-bear, etc. Almost always were-mammals. I thought I’d try a were-dragon. I don’t recall whether the word ‘wyrm’ emerged from that or I got to were-dragon via ‘wyrm’ > ‘were-m’.

The story quickly took a surprising turn with the appearance of ‘d...

My fourth story of the year is “After the Fall”, out in Daikajuzine yesterday. It’s one of four planned stories (two written) about Rezin Miller, a reluctant Attendant for the Observatory, whose job is simply to be present at the decline of a civilization. In this story, he’s tasked with watching the decline of a culture once famous for art and culture, and now reduced to writing advertising jingles. With any luck, I’ll place more of these Barren Witness stories soon and you can read more of Rez...