Coming Fall 2026! A new anthology from Inked in Gray
STELLAR PARALLAX: HUMAN HOPE IN GRIMDARK WORLDS.
Let’s not sugarcoat it — things are rough, and we don’t know what the next year or even month will bring. Stories can be a source of hope, inspiration for resilience, reminders of strength.
This anthology will feature gritty sci-fi with a hopeful message amidst immersive diverse worlds.
STELLAR PARALLAX sits at the place where seemingly impossible circumstances meet the inventiveness of human agency.
Cover reveal and pre-order coming soon!
Authors and Stories
A Map of Bruises on Her Smile by Fendy S. Tulodo
A Map of Bruises on Her Smile is set in a grim future where survival means sacrificing your humanity. Roya, a manipulative ex-assassin, seeks redemption while navigating a galaxy on the brink of collapse. As she crosses paths with Kaveen, her former victim turned unlikely ally, the two must confront their pasts and the darkness that continues to haunt them—only to realize that true freedom might come at the cost of everything they thought they wanted.
Fendy S. Tulodo is a writer who delves into complex emotions and the human experience, often exploring themes of manipulation, power, and redemption. His stories reflect his interest in the darker corners of society, with a focus on how individuals navigate through difficult choices and moral gray areas. You can follow Fendy on Instagram.
The Other Apocalypse by Aaron Timothy Ponce
In an apocalyptic future, Seymour is looking for one last thing to settle the misery of his existence. He is haunted by the ghost of a girl he killed in a life he’s abandoned but when a teenage boy, not yet broken by the world, comes into his life he sees a way to free himself and this child from the adults who tear at him from either side. Only problem is, Seymour’s mind was fractured long ago.
Aaron Timothy Ponce is a current masters student in English & Creative writing and an avid consumer and creator of stories across mediums and genres. He holds a BA in Writing from GVSU, in Michigan, where he also studied film theory and history. He currently resides in Middle Georgia with his family and chickens.You can find him on Facebook, Instagram & Bluesky.
Love Finger by Lancer Kind
Love Finger is a haunting sci-fi romance about an alien visitor who falls deeply in love with a photonic artist from another world. When faced with the biological reality that making love would irrevocably change her beloved, she makes a horrifying choice—killing someone who resembles her lover to conceive a child with his essence, while preserving the artist she loves in his original form.
Lancer Kind lives near Houston and is a 2003 graduate of the Clarion writer’s workshop and a 2006 graduate of the Odyssey writer’s workshop. He has a Masters of Science in Computer Science with which he puts to work in writing science fiction. As an active member of the science fiction community, he’s spoken at NorwesCon, CascadiaCon, Foolscap, ReaderCon, and WorldCon (Denvention). He is host and producer of SciFi Thoughts and has written two film scripts which have made it onto the big screen.
Find Lancer on BlueSky or the SciFi Thoughts Podcast.
Beans are Seeds and Legumes by Jason P. Burnham
In a climate changed near future Earth, Miles tries to carry on his father’s legacy, even though he’s not sure he wants that pressure as his burden to shoulder. After connecting with an unlikely ally, Miles sees the hope, literally and physically, that perseveres above all.
Jason P. Burnham (he/him) loves to spend time with his wife, children, and dog. He co-edits If There’s Anyone Left, a magazine of speculative fiction with C. M. Fields. He is working on a cosmic horror bureaucracy game for Choice of Games.
For Terra by K.M. Veohongs
Tommy is the only son of the engineer of a floating city when his stepmother gives birth to a sickly baby girl. Though Tommy’s father thinks the infant isn’t worth saving, her birth triggers Tommy to face up to his abusive father and seek help from the boy who broke his heart to save his little sisters from the terrible fate to which their gender condemns them.
K.M. Veohongs is a mixed race Thai-American writer of speculative fiction and poetry. As the daughter of an immigrant to the US, she’s often pulled to write about diaspora feelings and the harms perpetuated by colonialism. She is an alum of the Viable Paradise and Roots.Wounds.Words. writing workshops and won a 2023 Ignyte Community Award as part of the Flights of Foundry convention. Her work is featured in Translunar Traveler’s Lounge, Trollbreath, and multiple anthologies, including the Bram Stoker Award-nominated Mother: Tales of Love and Terror. You can find her on her website or on Bluesky.
Underworld Recognition by Lucy Zhang
Lucy Zhang writes, codes, and watches anime. Her work has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. Find her on her website.
Keeping Warm After the End by R. F. Daniels
Set in a relatively near future in which climate change has decimated large swaths of the world, Keeping Warm After the End follows a queer, disabled woman as she and her partner try to move forward after disaster. It focuses on finding family and hope in a time when all seems hopeless.
R. F. Daniels (they/he) is a queer nonbinary writer and software engineer living and working in Finland whose short fiction has been published in State of Matter and Club Chicxulub magazines. When they aren’t arguing with computers or getting lost in speculative worlds, they can be found painting, composing sad music, and spending time with their cats. Find them online on Bluesky or their website.
Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse by Joyce Frohn
In a dark world that seems too normal, three gray haired cat ladies are the secret weapon of a resistance. The resistance is In small ways of doing illegal research, mutual aid and small rebellion and in a larger plan, hidden in plain sight.
Joyce Frohn has been published in “The Lorelei Signal”, “Bullet Points” and the anthology, “Leadership Gone Right”, among many other places. She is married with an adult daughter. She also shares a house with two cats, a guinea pig and too many dirty dishes.
Second Growth by Marie-Hélène Lebeault
On the lowest habitable level of a failing orbital station, a mute teenage scavenger discovers a relic AI and a cryo-preserved seed—the last breath of Earth’s green past. When given the chance to sell the tech for survival or restore a forgotten grow-bed, she chooses to revive something the world has long forgotten: life that cannot be traded.
Marie-Hélène Lebeault is a Canadian speculative fiction author and former special education teacher who writes across science fiction, fantasy, and light horror genres. Her stories often explore identity, resilience, and quiet acts of rebellion against broken systems. She is the author of The Evers Series and The Blood Magick Trilogy, and her work has appeared in anthologies such as Of Storms and Stardust, The Expanded Universe, volume 10, and It Takes a Village. When not writing, she enjoys hiking, multilingual storytelling, and mentoring emerging authors. Find Marie-Hélène on her website, Facebook, or Instagram
A Mausoleum of Hand-Me-Down Memories by Em Harriett
A teenager in the psychic abberration program of a secret laboratory realizes the lab has tampered with her memories. A former subject who had escaped returns with backup to rescue those who’ve remained. Together, they bring those trapped below to the surface to forge new memories and leave the oppression behind.
Returning by Naomi Klouda
Groups of people move to oil rigs in Cook Inlet Alaska after a flood in the year 2033. Returning is told through the voice of a 15-year-old girl whose people are considering whether they can return to land yet.
Naomi Klouda, a longtime Alaska journalist and short-story writer, is author of Anna’s Whale, a novella set in a village during this time of climate change when a whale beaches. She’s also wrote The Alaska Glacier Dictionary, a guide to 700 glaciers and a collection of glacier essay. She lives in Homer, Alaska by the sea.
Screaming Against the Void by Jon Negroni
In an intergalactic future where sound is a weaponized plague known as the Howl, Sayla Numa survives only because her broken hearing aids render her immune to these lethal frequencies. When a signal from her future self cuts through the static, she defies orders and risks everything to follow it into one of the deepest dead zones in space. What she finds isn’t a cure, but a chance to connect the last survivors of the galaxy before silence becomes the universe’s final language.
Jon Negroni is a deaf Puerto Rican author based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His published books include The Pixar Theory (Slimbooks, 2015), a pop culture nonfiction, and his debut novel Killerjoy (5050 Press, 2017). His recent short fiction includes “Men Who Are Strong” (IHRAM Press) and “Upon a Dream,” an original fable published in The Fairy Tale Magazine. His upcoming anthology contributions include a cryptid horror tale, a sci-fi for Oddity Prodigies, and a queer speculative fiction piece for Neon Hemlock. You can find Jon on Instagram, BlueSky, and Substack.
Good Citizens by H.V. Patterson
In the future, every citizen is required to retire to the Pan-Global Orbital Retirement Center (The Center) at eighty. When Ian accompanies his eighty-year-old grandmother and his father to The Center, he learns what Final Retirement really entails.
H.V. Patterson (she/her) lives in Oklahoma and writes speculative fiction, poetry, and plays. Recent publications include Haven Speculative, Small Wonders, Flash Fiction Online, and Best Horror of the Year. She’s a cofounder of Horns and Rattles Press, and you can find her on Bluesky and on Instagram at her website.
Junker by Austin Lee
On a poisoned planet where survival means scraping tech from dead ships, a starving teen finds a crashed Alliance vessel and a wounded navigator with a secret that could change everything. Junker is a story about the persistence of hope, even when all that’s left is rust, blood, and violence.
Austen Lee has been spellbound by storytelling since childhood, fascinated by how a single tale can transport, transform, and haunt. They write stories that explore the strange and the unsettling. When not writing, Austen is immersed in tabletop games, teaching in the U.S. and abroad, and rarely seen without a briefcase full of notes, a dog, and a cat. You can find Austin on Instagram.
Island 23 by Roberto Cofresí Hopgood
Polo was prepared to die rather than let the usamerican investors appropriate his house without a fight. He expected to be shot down on his porch, but instead the police brought his daughter, Yuisa, to convince Polo to vacate peacefully. Now Polo is being forcibly exiled to Island 23, an island made of garbage that floats off the coast of Puerto Rico and Yuisa is escorting him there on an old airplane.
Roberto Cofresí Hopgood (he/el) is a Puerto Rican writer. Among other life affirming adventures, he survived being adrift on the Gulf of California, being lost without water in Barrancas del Cobre, being robbed by a one-eyed man with a pen knife in NYC and being yelled at by Werner Herzog in Texas. He is the author of “El sueño de la muerte” and “Bellows: Fables from the Musical Underground.” His stories (in English and español) have appeared in Uncharted, LatineLit, Smokelong Quarterly, The Write Launch, Enclave, Evento Horizonte, Drunk Monkeys, Claridad, and multiple anthologies. Find Roberto on his website, Threads, BlueSky, or Instagram.
The Orchard-Bay by Monique Cuillerier
When the social and political structure on Earth collapses, a small group find their way to a military space station to begin a new life. For one, that new beginning includes a child—and an orchard.
Monique Cuillerier writes about lesbians in space (and sometimes weird horror things) from Ottawa (Canada), where she lives with her cat Janeway. When not reading or writing, she is running or gardening. She spends too much time on social media (Bluesky) and not enough on her website although you can find links to her published short and flash fiction there.
The Slow Unspooling by Stuart Conover
When Elri wakes early from cryo to find their ship failing and the rest of the crew still frozen, survival becomes a slow, aching crawl through cold corridors and compromised systems. But when a distress signal from a long-lost ghost ship reaches them, Elri follows the echo into the dark . . . and finds something worth saving.
Stuart Conover is a father, husband, rescue dog owner, horror author, blogger, journalist, horror enthusiast, comic book geek, science fiction junkie, fantasy fanatic, and IT professional. With all of that to cram in on a daily basis, it is highly debatable that he ever is able to sleep, and rumors have him attached to an IV drip of caffeine to get through most days. He currently resides in the suburbs of Chicago with his family. Find Stuart on his website, BlueSky, Instagram, and Facebook.
The Space Between Bodies by Frank Baird Hughes
A courier escorting workers across a hash landscape helps an unlikely passenger. In the process, she confronts her own cycle of guilt.
Frank Baird Hughes is a teacher and writer based in Philadelphia. Find him online on BlueSky.
Elevated by Susan L. Lin
Ten years after surviving a violent attack on their boarding school campus, six friends travel to the moon aboard the world’s first space elevator. The groundbreaking voyage would never have been possible without each of their unique skills and talents.A courier escorting workers across a hash landscape helps an unlikely passenger. In the process, she confronts her own cycle of guilt.
Susan L. Lin is a Taiwanese American storyteller who hails from southeast Texas and holds an MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts. Her novella GOODBYE TO THE OCEAN won the 2022 Etchings Press novella prize, and her literary/visual art has appeared in nearly a hundred publications. She loves to dance. Find more at her website.
Fragment 610-A by Heather Zoppetti
In the underground city of PHL-4, memories are mined, processed, and erased to keep the population obedient. Aleta, a memory processor hardened by years of erasing joy, discovers an illegal shard showing the surface as green, alive, and untouched. With all she’s ever known now in question, Aleta risks everything to share the truth.
Heather is a Korean-American, Philadelphia-based technical writer, software engineer, and author. She loves coffee, cats, and the Oxford comma. Before embarking on a career as an engineer, she studied physics and computer science and harbors a deep love of science. Therefore, her stories have a firm lean toward sci-fi though, she would not classify them as hard-science.
Find Heather on Bluesky.