My story “Liasons Galantes: A Scientific Romance” is out today in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #108 (in HTML, PDF, PRC, EPUB, and Kindle formats).

In conjunction with the story, they’re giving away a signed copy of Ann VanderMeer’s new steampunk anthology Steampunk Revolution. Enter to win!

I’m intrigued that they describe this story as steampunk. When I was writing it I thought of it primarily as a romantic fantasy, set in a fantasy world reminiscent of Belle Epoque Paris in which relationships are visible as living things. The electrical gizmos in the story, I thought, were just props. But of course all of these elements do add up to something steampunkish, especially given that I subtitled it “a scientific romance.”

This isn’t the first time I had no idea what kind of story I had written until it was published. I thought my story “Nucleon” was hard SF, an alternate-universe story about an atomic car. I even sent it to Analog. But it turns out it’s actually a fantasy, a variation on the well-known “mystery shop” trope, as David Hartwell pointed out when he bought it for Year’s Best Fantasy.