JM Cyrus

Wordsmith, purveyor of tales, speculator of fiction, explorer of worlds uncreated, discoverer through the mists of imagination.I make things up and write them down.

Works

Free to read ✒️
Subscription/purchase needed 🌑Short stories
Novelettes (8000 words and over) 🌳
Short stories (1500 to 8000 words) 🪴
Flash (under 1500 words) 🌱🌑🌳"A Lantern and a Strawberry Leaf", Sally Port Magazine, Issue 5: Second Chances and Other Firsts (2026)
🌑🪴"A Winter Like We Dreamt Before", Aurora: Tales of Winter Dreams, the third Winter Lore book from Speculation Publications (2025)
✒️🌱"Submissions Guidelines for Refractions Thirdly", Close to the Bone Publishing: Short Stories (2025)
✒️🪴"Let Me Take a Look at You", Corvid Queen (2025)
✒️🌱"Most Beautiful of Them All", Hawthorn & Ash #113, Vol 7 (2025)
✒️🪴"A Kitchen Table for Eternity", The Pink Hydra: A New Magazine of Unreality, Volume 2, Number 1 (2025)
🌑🪴"A Bedtime of Fire, Alchemy and Ice", Luna Station Quarterly, Issue 062 (2025) (reviewed by SFF Reviews)
✒️🪴"A Solitary Walk", Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine: April 2025 (2025) (free download of whole issue)
✒️🪴"A Song Amongst the Prayer Ribbons" Springtime Fair, a special spring equinox issue from Hearth Stories (2025) (free to download)
✒️🪴"Cradled Amongst the Roots" Baubles From Bones: Issue 4 (2025)
🌑🪴"How to Cross the Cavorting Sea’s Wandering Islands During the Fourth Dance of the Widdershins Elliptical Cycle", Black Cat Weekly #161 (2024)
✒️🌱"All the Times I Thought I was Pregnant", Liar's League: Women & Girls #8 (2024) (watch on YouTube) (listen to the podcast)
✒️🪴"A Mouthful of Prayers", Carmina Magazine: September (2024)
🌑🪴"Lost in the Shape of You", Necronomi-Romcom: Where Mythos Meets Cute, Light Volume, an anthology from Transformations by Obsidian Butterfly (2024) (ebook and paperback) (omnibus hardback)
✒️🌱"Malus Domestica Aurum", Eternal Haunted Summer: Summer Solstice Volume, Gardens (2024)
🌑🪴"A Play Among the Ruins", Gwyllion: Rhifyn 8 / Volume 8 (2024) (digital download) (print copy)
✒️🌱"Honey for Breakfast", AntipodeanSF: Issue 307 (2024) (listen to the podcast)
✒️🌳"I Will Give You A Crown of Gems to Wear", Swords and Sorcery: Issue 146 (2024)
🌑🪴"A Star, a Stone, a Sculpture, a Sculptor", All Worlds Wayfarer: Volume XVIII (✒️ available on Wayback Machine) (2024)
🌑🪴"You and Me, Here and There, Now and Then and When", Luna Station Quarterly, Issue 057 (2024) (reviewed by SFF Reviews)
✒️🪴"Repercussions", Inner Worlds: Issue 2 (2024)
✒️🪴"The Heart Beneath the Soil and the Water", Aphelion Magazine (2024)
✒️🪴"Beneath the Light of the Gibbous Moon", CommuterLit (2024)
🌑🌳"By the Blades of Grass and Knife", Yule: A Collection of Yule Time Tales, the first of the Winter Lore anthologies from Speculation Publications (2023) (ebook) (paperback) (extract of my piece on Queer SciFi)
✒️🪴"Hum If You Don't Know the Words", Honeyguide Literary Magazine: Issue 7, October (2023)
✒️🪴"The Wind Will Call Me Over Land, Coast and Sea", Orion's Beau: Fall 2023, the Transformation and the Power of Love Issue (2023)
✒️🪴"The Traveling Fayre of Señor Monteluz Comes to the Occidental Archipelago", Swords and Sorcery: Issue 140 (2023)
✒️🌱"Let It All Melt Away", AntipodeanSF: Issue 300 (2023) (listen to the podcast)
"Like A Breath In Another Room", Flint Vol. 2: Wish, by Erro Press (2023) (publication closed)
✒️🌱"Jane is Called", AntipodeanSF: Issue 298 (2023) (listen to the podcast)
✒️🌱"Citizen Apparent", Sci-Fi Shorts (2023)Upcoming
"What I Learned as a Toad", BFS Horizons
"The Grab", Kaleidoscope: A Queer Anthology 2026 by Cloaked Press
"Feathers of Memory", Backyard Earth, an anthology from The Patchwork RavenA short story is a view through a keyhole in a locked door into a walled garden.

Poetry
🌑"As the Crow Flies" Space and Time: Fall/Winter #147 (2024) (available in audio)
🌑"Across the Line", Utopia Science Fiction: June/July (2024)
🌑"A Call To Arms", Anna Karenina Isn't Dead (2024), an anthology from Improbable Press, available in paperback and ereader - this one bears the title of my first ever submission, right at the beginning of 2023. It set the bar high in terms of my expectations of both acceptance rate and editorial kindness
🌑"Umbilicus Cosmicum", Star*Line Speculative Poetry: Issue 47.1 (2024)
🌑"First", Utopia Science Fiction: Oct/Nov (2023)
✒️"Let's go to the seaside", Medusa's Kitchen (2023)
✒️"Lend me a book", Medusa's Kitchen (2023)Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

Nonfiction
I publish a sporadic newsletter over on Substack
🍾🎉 Competition winner with "Night/Morning" for From The Cauldron: Women’s Voices in the 21st Century by Pen to Print, The Boathouse Studios and ByTheBook (anthology to be published in October 2026)
✒️ "On Optimism", for Creative Digest #19: Reflections (April 2026)
✒️"The Importance of Sound", creative nonfiction for Mouthpiece in the Mslexia email newsletter (June 2025) (Newsletter not stored on Mslexia, but piece can now be read on my Substack)
🌑Five recipes in Cursed Cooking: A Horror Community Cookbook and Food Horror Anthology by Cat Eye Press LLC (2024) (available direct from publisher in ebook and hardback, as well as on Amazon)

A D J A C E N TFirst Reader for the Parsec Short Story Contest and Youth Short Story Prize (2026)
Reader at the British Fantasy Society's (BFS) Online Event Language in SFFH (18 April 2026)
Mentee in the balloted Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer's Association (SFWA) Mentoring scheme (2024)

Contact

I don't use social media, so if you'd like to reach me, please send me an email.

jmcyrus dot writer at gmail dot comOr send me a tip!I've started a newsletter! Subscribe to my Substack