Start with Joss Whedon as a background example: Boyfriend acts like jerk after having sex with girlfriend --> boyfriend loses soul and becomes a psychotic murdering demon after having sex with girlfriend.
From my own work: "A One-Way Trip" is dark science fiction in which someone uses a time-machine to rip enemy vessels into the distant future. When I wrote it, I was thinking of the soldiers who have dropped atomic bombs on cities. Only this is so much worse, because you're kind of bombing yourself, but YOU don't die. Everyone and everything else outside the nimbus of effect dies. And then you're stuck living with that.
"Within the Wolf's Jaws" is dark science fiction that pits a colony's dreams against another species' survival. You just want to find a nice place to settle down, but it all goes to hell and the people there don't want you. But instead of being a colonial argument within one species, one planet, the scope is a lot wider.
A Conflagration of Dragons is fantasy about what would happen if there wasn't just one dragon attack, but a whole bunch of them, devastating a civilization. I read this essay about the economic impact of Smaug and thought, wow, that's like what rich people are doing when they hog the wealth to the point nobody else can keep the lights on. So what if there were like 400 dragons, the way we have 400 uber-rich people? Watch the world burn.
"A Stranger Message" is fantasy dealing with the physical manifestation of mixed heritage that was previously unknown. It's hard enough realizing that your family tree has some unexpected fruit, some of it rotten. When that's written across your body in blood and feathers, and history starts talking to you, the result is much creepier. And "Picking and Pecking" is even darker, about Israel and Palestine, but that one hasn't sold yet.
"It Comes First and Follows After" is surburban fantasy about winter night. That's all. Cold, dark, hungry night. Personified. This is one of the pieces where people have told me they had to sleep with the light on after reading.
Re: Well...
Boyfriend acts like jerk after having sex with girlfriend --> boyfriend loses soul and becomes a psychotic murdering demon after having sex with girlfriend.
From my own work:
"A One-Way Trip" is dark science fiction in which someone uses a time-machine to rip enemy vessels into the distant future. When I wrote it, I was thinking of the soldiers who have dropped atomic bombs on cities. Only this is so much worse, because you're kind of bombing yourself, but YOU don't die. Everyone and everything else outside the nimbus of effect dies. And then you're stuck living with that.
"Within the Wolf's Jaws" is dark science fiction that pits a colony's dreams against another species' survival. You just want to find a nice place to settle down, but it all goes to hell and the people there don't want you. But instead of being a colonial argument within one species, one planet, the scope is a lot wider.
A Conflagration of Dragons is fantasy about what would happen if there wasn't just one dragon attack, but a whole bunch of them, devastating a civilization. I read this essay about the economic impact of Smaug and thought, wow, that's like what rich people are doing when they hog the wealth to the point nobody else can keep the lights on. So what if there were like 400 dragons, the way we have 400 uber-rich people? Watch the world burn.
"A Stranger Message" is fantasy dealing with the physical manifestation of mixed heritage that was previously unknown. It's hard enough realizing that your family tree has some unexpected fruit, some of it rotten. When that's written across your body in blood and feathers, and history starts talking to you, the result is much creepier. And "Picking and Pecking" is even darker, about Israel and Palestine, but that one hasn't sold yet.
"It Comes First and Follows After" is surburban fantasy about winter night. That's all. Cold, dark, hungry night. Personified. This is one of the pieces where people have told me they had to sleep with the light on after reading.