Catching up, "Gasps of the Scaled City"

Another story that came out earlier this year was "Gasps of the Scaled City" in Weird City #2. This story takes a very surreal image--a city that is built into (and out of) a gigantic fish, its scales teased upward into the houses and buildings of the city's residents--and treats it as a secondary fantasy of sorts. All is not well in the city, though the people who live there don't yet realize exactly what is going on...

I remember ten or fifteen years ago there was a mini movement of sorts of fantasy-ish/weird stories set in urban environments. Anyone remember Fantastic Metropolis? Pretty soon, "urban fantasy" came to mean something entirely different, and the movement, if it ever was one, seemed to fade away. But the images of those wildly inventive cities have stayed with me and definitely influenced a lot of my writing--Spire City, certainly. The fish city of "Gasps of the Scaled City" is very much in this vein.

Weird City makes both kindle and print versions of their magazine--the print version has beautiful artwork to accompany each of the stories. So definitely consider getting that version. Issue 2 has seven stories that examine death or resurrection in cities that are far from normal.

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