Jonathan Olfert

If we pull this off, we'll eat like kings.

By day I crunch spreadsheets in the nonprofit sector. By night, I write paleofiction, fantasy, sci-fi, and the occasional horror. My short stories have appeared in professional markets like Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Dark Recesses Press, and Lightspeed. I hail from Alberta; I live in Atlantic Canada with my wife, our kids, and a cataclysmically dysfunctional cat.

  • I keep an up-to-date list of links to my published work, most of it free to read. Stone Age fantasy is marked with a helpful 🍖

  • One of my Stone Age stories, "Wreckwood," is out now in Other & Different, a charity anthology supporting Rainbow Railroad and Rainbow Migration.

A book cover labeled 'Other and Different Anthology'
A book cover labeled 'The Year's Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction.'
A book cover labeled 'The Little Cozy Book' and 'Wyngraf.'
A book cover labeled 'The Little Cozy Book' and 'Wyngraf.'

LEGEND

🍖 Stone Age fantasy
🧠 Neurodiversity and cognition
⚔️ Sharp objects
🐘 Pachyderms

NOVELETTES and NOVELLAS

SHORT STORIES

ODDS and ENDS

Several of my stories share settings or use recurring characters. This page is my sandbox to lay them out, shuffle them around, and share a little about them.

The Five Deserts

I spent a year in the California high desert, and many more in dusty southern Alberta. The Five Deserts, and the hardscrabble cities and towns around their edges, are my nostalgia writ very large. They're sword-and-sorcery strongly influenced by hanging out with horror writers.The main Five Deserts stories follow a dye-worker named Tyrra and a guard named Larkh through heartbreak, curses, bloodshed, and transformation.

Others take place in the Five Deserts but aren't part of Larkh and Tyrra's stories. Published so far:

  • "Acosar," Swords and Sorcery Magazine #140 (2023) ⚔️

Stone Age Stories

Much of my writing focuses on a Mesolithic/Neolithic secondary world. These pieces tend not to involve recurring characters or settings, but I'm not above the occasional cameo or paleocultural cross-pollination. Several of these stories involve nonhuman sapient characters, primarily the woolly-mammoth Blue Ochre People. Yes, I've absolutely drawn maps.

The Churchlands

In this secondary-world setting, which I've worked on in one form or another for a decade, a religious institution rules an ever-expanding territory. Local faiths and magical traditions are assimilated or forced to justify their existence. Gods are killed outright (or, in some cases, chopped down).These stories take place in the same world as the Five Deserts, and these two 'known worlds' are only starting to engage each other, in ways that won't end well for anyone.The modern incarnation of the Churchlands stories follows the disillusioned tithe collector Ander Carmora and his muse of sorts, a looter named Liste.

  • "Ninnagan Says Remember," Lightspeed (forthcoming)

  • "The Wrong Debt," TRIAPA #1 (2023)

  • "Crickets in Lost Light," Lightspeed (forthcoming)