“Break the Vessel” is now published at Helix. This is the fecal matter story I keep threatening to read in public places, like supermarkets and child-care centers. There’s also some fine work in this issue from Jennifer Pelland, Ada Milenkovic Brown, C.A. Gardner, and Tina Connolly. If you enjoy the issue, please consider making a small donation to keep Helix alive. They publish the stories that other magazines are afraid of. That’s worth supporting.

Also, I didn’t post much about WisCon, but one of the coolest moments in my career so far happened during the Taboo reading. I read the first few scenes of this story. When I got to a certain sentence, I said, “And we’ll stop here,” –there was an audible gasp from the audience.

I can’t tell you how absolutely cool that was.

And as a bonus, we raffled off prizes at the end. My offering was a copy of Paper Cities and the reading copy of “Break the Vessel.” The winners could pick their prize. The first person whose name we drew came up and told me to re-raffle Paper Cities because he already had it, but he wanted the reading copy for my story. That was an awesome feeling. 🙂

Anyway, I hope you like “Break The Vessel.” I hereby promise that if I win an award for this story, I will include the word “turd” in my acceptance speech.