Daniel Ausema
Daniel Ausema writes lyrical tales of other worlds, stories of strangeness and wonder.
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Daniel Ausema's fiction and poetry have appeared in many publications, including Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, and Diabolical Plots. He is the creator of the steampunk-fantasy Spire City series, set in a city of chained singers and beetle-drawn carriages where the powerless fight back against those with wealth and influence. His latest novel is the first book of The Arcist Chronicles, The Silk Betrayal, published by Guardbridge Books--it is a story of magic and revolution in a caste-based society teetering on the edge of an industrial era. He lives in Colorado at the foot of the Rockies.
Fiction · Posts · Books
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Fiction
The Market of Magical Goods
Published Jul 31, 2020 · 110 words (1 minute) · 2 likes · 27 views
Fantasy serial Drabble fabulist
Welcome to the Market of Magical Goods, a serial of brief, fabulist visions of wonder, each exactly 100 words long. A shopkeeper offers you a tincture to drip into your left eye. Will you take it?
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Fiction
Tree Ring Anthology
Published Jul 10, 2020 · 2,067 words (8 minutes) · 94 views
Fantasy Horror Literary Fiction Trees
The rings of a tree tell a story. For some trees, that means a litany of horrors that have twisted its long life and haunt its space still, even after the tree is harvested. This story was written for the D. F. Lewis-edited Horror Anthology of Horror Anthologies as a twist on the theme to expand the image of what an anthology is and might be.
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Fiction
Orgood's Party (an excerpt from Spire City, Season One: Infected)
Published Jun 28, 2020 · 1,560 words (6 minutes) · 61 views
To understand the infection devastating the city, Chels goes to a high society party hosted by Orgood--the mad scientist who created the infection. Leaning into her immigrant heritage, she must pretend to be from her mother's homeland--not the poor street orphan she really is, but the exotic foreigner these wealthy people will expect.
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Fiction
Hometown Hero, Gone for Good
Published Jun 16, 2020 · 513 words (2 minutes) · 2 likes · 68 views
Canthis was a local hero, or a nobody, or maybe a symbol for justice denied. As the invaders approach, conquer, and pass on, the remembrances and rumors shift and adjust.
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Fiction
Seven Ways of Bringing Down the Regime
Published Jun 5, 2020 · 2,137 words (8 minutes) · 7 likes · 527 views
An artist uses all the tools at his disposal to defy an oppressive regime, no matter the cost.
Author Daniel Ausema lives in Colorado at the foot of the Rockies. His work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, Diabolical Plots, and many more, and he’s also the author of the steampunk-fantasy Spire City series.
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Fiction
Playing Kiwan (excerpt from The Silk Betrayal)
Published May 28, 2020 · 1,269 words (5 minutes) · 88 views
Kiwan is a game of strategy and skill. Pavresh must play the game against the man he wants to be his mentor in arcist magic. The scene is from early in The Silk Betrayal, before intrigue and revolution tear apart everything Pavresh had journeyed to find.
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Fiction
The Gunpowder Resistance
Published May 14, 2020 · 995 words (4 minutes) · 109 views
Fantasy steampunk flash fiction
In the fabled city of beetle-drawn carriages and chained singers, a man tries to find a way to resist the city's foreign occupiers. A brief steampunk adventure set in the same world as the Spire City series, some years after the events of those books.
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Fiction
The Ship of Silk on the Calmest Sea
Published May 2, 2020 · 1,162 words (5 minutes) · 149 views
Fantasy fairy tale Lyrical folk tale
Tima works magic with cloth, but it is a magic coveted by her sovereign. This is a fable that the people in the world of The Silk Betrayal tell of the land their ancestors left long ago.
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