Big News: “Carrion Birds” Published in Trace Fossils Review!

It’s official! My first of three publication credits is all grown up and saving the world. 😭

And by that I mean…

My short story “Carrion Birds” is officially live on Trace Fossils Review!

I am so ecstatic to have found a home for this short because it means a lot to me. I’ve been shopping it since 2021, after I wrote it all in one sitting well after midnight feeling like my heart was being carved out of my chest.

“Carrion Birds” was a semi-finalist for the 2021 Halifax Ranch Prize for Fiction and a finalist for F(r)iction Magazine’s Fall 2023 Short Story Contest. I knew this one was going places, and I’m delighted with the outlet that finally gave this short story a chance.

A warning: I am a total goober in real life and on this website, but this is a short story I wrote at a time when I was Going Through It. I also wrote it in response to a school shooting, although the circumstances of the story are very different. It’s very dark and the themes are difficult. But honestly, “Carrion Birds” feels like the most important thing I’ve ever written. I hope you all enjoy it.

“Carrion Birds” by M. Tyler Tuttle

That day, Huck raised his hands above his head and backed off the porch, terrified to lift his gaze from the planks, where the water seeped through the cracks to drip on some hidden darkness below.

At the last second, he looked up. Not at the wild-eyed woman, but at Phoebe. Her eyes met his, and he saw for the first time the look he’d seen every year since—gratitude, fear, exhaustion. A thread stretched between them that morning on the porch, a thread that never snapped no matter how roughly the vultures tossed it in the air, how they stretched it to the breaking point and past with their microphones and cameras…

Continue reading in Trace Fossils Review.

(CW: suicide, long-lasting trauma, violence, child endangerment/injury, death of an animal, police violence, mild gore)

Interview: M. Tyler Tuttle in Trace Fossils Review

Why is this piece your “trace fossil”?

“Carrion Birds” holds part of me, but not all of me. I wrote this piece at a time in my life when it felt like the world spun too quickly on its axis and left me behind.

My usual style is long-form fiction: elaborate worlds, vibrant settings, and bright colors. “Carrion Birds” is the shadow of the artist. It’s shorter, darker, and more desperate than my usual stories. It’s an echo of who I was when I wrote it, the person I’ve moved on from but still carry somewhere deep inside.

I wanted to know what happens to people when their souls hide under the snow. Tragedy is universal, but what happens afterward? Where do we go? What happens to the connections we forge in times of crisis, when that crisis has long since melted away?

I wrote “Carrion Birds” in one sitting, long past midnight, curled up in my office chair with a scowl on my face and pain in my chest. Writing this story felt like digging out after a long winter. It hurt, and it left me exhausted, but the end result was a break in the cold and a route to somewhere new.

— M. Tyler Tuttle, April 2024

Continue reading in Trace Fossils Review.

Finally, a note…

Thank you so much to the editors and team at Trace Fossils Review. I am so honored to be part of your inaugural spring issue and can’t wait to see what you do next.

Til next time,
Mags