My short story “Wearing the Hat” appears this month, in the first issue of online adventure fiction magazine The Sockdolager. You can read the whole story, and in fact the whole issue, online, but if you enjoy it I urge you to buy it (using the links from the issue’s main page) and support this new venture.

I had an excellent experience submitting the story. The editors got back to me within 24 hours of my submission, they loved it, they sent me a contract the same day, the contract was clear and straightforward and fair, and they paid me – earlier than the contract said they had to – in advance of publication. All of these (apart, perhaps, from loving my story) are things that you’d think would be standard industry practice, but they’re very much not.

The story itself is typical of my short pieces. It takes place in the Gryphon Clerks setting, but a long way away from the big events of the novels. It isn’t about movers and shakers, but about the people who are moved and shaken, and deal with it as best they can. The hero isn’t young, isn’t a warrior, isn’t changing the world; she’s a middle-aged shopkeeper placed in an invidious position, who does what she has to do.

In keeping with The Sockdolager’s premise (“short genre stories in which Things Happen”), though, it’s more action-oriented than most of my stories. At the same time – and this, I think, is why they bought it – the action isn’t in isolation, or there for its own sake; it arises naturally out of the situation, and means something to the participants. At heart, it’s a Western.

If you enjoy it, there are another dozen like it in my solo collection Good Neighbours and Other Stories from HDWP Books. And don’t forget the current Kickstarter for the Hysterical Realms anthology, in which I also have a piece.

Mike Reeves-McMillan

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Mike Reeves-McMillan lives in Auckland, New Zealand, the setting of his Auckland Allies contemporary urban fantasy series; and also in his head, where the weather is more reliable, and there are a lot more wizards. He also writes the Gryphon Clerks series (steampunk/magepunk), the Hand of the Trickster series (sword-and-sorcery heist capers), and short stories which have appeared in venues such as Compelling Science Fiction and Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores.