Just sold novelette “The End of the Silk Road” to Gordon Van Gelder at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction!

This is my “Venus noir” story — a cheery little tale of murder, betrayal and lost love set in the same universe as “The Wreck of the Mars Adventure” and my recently-completed-and-not-yet-sold novel Arabella and the Marsman. But while those stories take place on Mars, in 1701 and 1813 respectively, this one is set on Venus in 1936 — a foggy, froggy, overheated Venus, always overcast, always as hot and soggy as New Orleans in August, a swamp of vice and corruption that makes Los Angeles look like Pleasantville.

I wrote this story in ten days and had a lot of fun writing it. I hope you’ll enjoy it too.

Big props to Daniel Abraham and the rest of the Rio Hondo gang for help with the plot.