Tesseracts Ten launch

I just got word that Tesseracts Ten from Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy, which contains my story "Closing Time," is on its way to store shelves in Canada. (It'll be released in the US in April.) There's a launch in November at Bakka-Phoenix Books I'll probably be at -- more on that soon. Meanwhile, here's the first bit of "Closing Time."

CLOSING TIME

Nep Gao stood on his tiptoes in the quiet garden to the back of the restaurant, working his small silver knife along the thinnest branches of the prickly ash tree, and wondered when his father’s ghost would leave the party. He had died five days ago and was still holding court, entertaining all his old friends and customers. It was just his luck, Gao thought, that his father had died in the middle of qinshon season, the few weeks when the tree’s buds had their best flavour. Already, chewing carefully, he could detect a bitter note in what he had just harvested. At the rate things were going his father’s ghost would still be around in a week, when the qinshon would be inedible. This was usually their most profitable time of year, but so long as his father was enjoying the food and company enough to stay on Earth Gao was bound to provide food and drink to anyone who came to pay their respects. So far there had been no shortage of mourners, most of them just happening to come around dinner time and often staying ‘til past dawn.