A quality I look for in speculative fiction is a feeling of "reader ownership". It is a special emotion that emerges when you read a story, and you feel like you own it just as much as its author.

It emerges at the intersection between world building and relatable characters, where you feel like you are at the conference table discussing the prevalence of alien life, or a detective following a trail of clues leading to a ghastly discovery.

Many great novel series accomplish this feeling. What is somewhat more rare is to feel it when reading short fiction.
I love C.L. Kagmi's "Twiceborn" for exactly this reason.

Get cozy, settle in, and in only a few short moments you've gone on an adventure through strange vistas and explored timeless concepts full of lore you would expect from much longer works.

You are hungry for more, but nothing feels incomplete. Fans of Tad Williams or Dan Simmons will love this collection, as it features a similar combination of world's you want to explore and characters that are complete people while still acting as a reader avatar.

You feel you belong to the worlds being crafted. There is a lot of variety here, from stories that explore classic concepts of alien life, to detective stories with a Lovecraftian flare for the science-paranormal.

There is something special about these tales that belongs to an oral tradition - as though they should be read allowed and shared. This collection will make a fantastic starting point for future work by the author, and I can't imagine any fan of sci-fi or weird fiction being disappointed with what they get.

If you've wanted to get on the ground floor of new worlds to explore and characters you feel are like family, if like me you've been chasing the high of past sci-fi classics from other great authors and want something new that you can sink your teeth into in a snap, C.L. Kagmi's "Twiceborn" is the sampler platter of the awesome and bizarre you've been craving.