LIN DARROW
Ghosts that Go With Us
Short Story. Tales of Mystery: The Gravity of Death. 2023.
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"You’ve got to stay until you’re dead if you want to come back."
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Annie works for Wei Back Memory Extraction Inc., a company that ​solves cold cases by sending agents mentally spelunking into the victim's DNA-extracted final moments. As Annie completes seven memory dives for seven unsolved murders, she begins to feel her own identity eroding in favour of the victims whose deaths she experienced vicariously.
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The Shallow Street Séance Centre for the Permanently Bereaved
Short Story. Spirit Machine. 2022.
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"The ghost of Lily Doval lied about death every day, from 5pm to midnight, usually without coffee breaks."​
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Lily is a ghost who works at a grief support call center, comforting the living. To say she feels stuck in a dead end job would be redundant. A short predecessor to my novel, Dead New World.
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Sunshine Noir for Synthetic Lovers
Short Story. Upon A Once Time. 2020.
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"It is a jealous bloom. It will chase all other fauna from your body. No agriyet will take root in you, and you will play host to no other sun-drinking flower. This will decimate your synthetic body. The joints in your jaw, the vocal chip that allows you to speak, the power cells in your legs. The weight of this disguise is great."​
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In a world where gender is determined by the ratio of synthetic to organic material in one's body, Jin (88% synth, 12% organic) sets out to change his 'leaning' in order to pursue the person of their dreams--the synthetic syncopator, Octavia Rake (68% synth, 32% organic).​ Solarpunk genderfluid Cinderella.​
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Cry of the Hunger Fish
Short Story. Malaise (Jessamine), Reprinted in It Calls from the Sea (Eerie River). 2021, 2018.
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"The Comprehensive Deep Sea Oceanarium was seven levels deep."
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Elena is hired to clean the lowest levels of an aquarium designed to host the rarest deep-sea predators.​ Every night, she spends hours mopping the dark rooms, surrounded by churning pumps and sloshing tanks and the disembodied moaning of her wife--who has been presumed dead for years.
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Caro Cho and the Empire of Light
Short Story. Battling in All Her Finery: Historical Accounts of Otherworldly Women Leaders. 2018.
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​"For all her celebrity, Miss Cho’s greatest achievement—a perfectly accurate and wearable holographic double of Mayor Minerva Pill—was also her greatest secret."
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Tech genius Caro Cho must intervene when her greatest invention, the full-body double of Mayor Minerva Pill, is 'kidnapped' and held for ransom.
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Pyre at the Eyreholme Trust
Novella. Less Than Three Press. 2018.
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​In Temperance City, the streets are ruled by spelled-up gangsters, whose magic turf wars serve as a constant backdrop to civilian life. With magic strictly regulated, Eli Coello—whip-smart jewelry salesman by day, sultry torch singer by night—has always found it advantageous to hide his magical affinity for ink. All that goes up in smoke the day Eli is forced to use his magic to foil a jewelry heist, and in doing so unwittingly catches the eye of Duke Haven, leader of the fire-flinging Pyre gang. Seeing a useful asset, Duke promptly blackmails Eli into providing unregistered spellwork.
Duke needs Eli's ink-magic to help him pull a dangerous con against a rival gang. As the heist comes together, Eli finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into the Temperance underworld—and, perhaps most dangerously, to Duke himself.
