Sisters, change, and dealing with the past

This edition of the newsletter is very short, because it’s finals week here and that means three things: grading, grading, and procrastination grading. But I’m taking a quick break from two of those three to share some news.

Today my story She Blooms and the World is Changed” is free to read at Lightspeed. This story is personal to me. It’s about sisters, colonialism, the limits of a “leave no trace” ethos, and what we do with the wreckage of the past. 

It’s also a rarity for me. I don’t often write about siblings, despite being from a big family and loving my siblings. I’m not sure why they don’t appear more often. Maybe it’s for the same reason animals don’t occupy a lot of space in my fiction: I don’t want to put them through the kind of stress that characters are often facing. 

Which is pretty wild; if you’re reading this, you probably know that I’m not the least bit shy about putting my protagonists through some terrible times. I’m sure siblings and animals will start showing up more, though. I’ll do my best to keep the animals out of harms way. No promises for the siblings. 

*** 

All the Hometowns You Can’t Stay Away From received a lovely review from Maya C. James in Locus. I particularly loved this line: “I felt like I was traveling through a liminal space with little protection but tremendous wonder and hope.”

***

With the semester almost over, I’m preparing for a busy summer. One of my goals for the summer is to listen to a lot of audiobooks while I’m working around the house. So I ask you, dear reader: what’s a great book you’d recommend on audiobook? Recent books and those written by marginalized folks are ones I’d particularly love to see. 

I know of at least one book that I’m thrilled to see out in the world: Emma Törzs’s Ink Blood Sister Scribe. A story of two sisters and the magical library they protect, it features exquisite prose, amazing worldbuilding, and characters you’ll want to obsess over. I can’t wait for y’all to read it. 

2022 Awards Eligibility

Somehow it’s already (dramatic sting) awards season. I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of work come out this year, and I’d be honored if you’d consider it when you’re nominating. I’ve grouped them below by category.

Short Story Collection

The cover of All the Hometowns You Can't Stay Away From, picturing a group of characters who might or might not be the variations on the same person, against a background of black, deep purples, and pinks.
I’m biased, but I love this cover so much!

All the Hometowns You Can’t Stay Away From with Neon Hemlock Press

My debut short fiction collection contains 14 stories, 3 of them never before published.

“Across every genre and tone, Izzy Wasserstein imbues her stories with a unique power: to reach through the page and into your chest, where they hold your heart as if it’s the last of its kind. These are gorgeously-told queer tales of grief and love, fear and wonder, for people and for entire worlds, and they give comfort and strength to the exact parts of our souls that this moment in history relentlessly erodes. Dress your wounds with these words. Drink up their warmth in the dead of winter. They’ll take care of you.”

–Elly Bangs, author of Unity

Novelette

Shadows of the Hungry, the Broken, the Transformed in CossMass Infinities (9500 words)

Justine’s shadow watches her. It stands under the lamp post across from her flat, her smoky semblance, flickering and shifting under the gaslight. She’s at her window, tea cooling in her hands. Though the shadow has no eyes, Justine is certain that it stares at her, just as she is certain it is hers. She would know it anywhere.

This is my first published novelette, and it’s near and dear to my heart. If you’ve found yourself needing community in hard times, or struggling under the burdens of institutions that are supposed to support you, then please know I wrote this for you.

Short Stories

“Everything the Sea Takes, it Returns in Lightspeed (2700 words)

Everything the sea takes, it gives back in its own way and its own time. That was what Jess’s grandmother believed, what she’d told Jess as they stood in the shadow of the giant red cedar that had washed ashore, its severed roots thicker than Jess’s body. It must have drifted for a thousand years or more to return to them in that moment.

My ode to the Pacific Northwest, and a meditation on loss and how we keep going despite it. I’m hugely proud of this one, and if you only have time to read one story of mine, this is the one I’d recommend.

These Whispering Remains in Decoded (7500 words), paywalled

I pull myself up from the morgue table, from the fragments of bone that were once a young woman, then vomit bile and not much else into a trash can. I’ve long ago learned not to eat before communing with the dead. Jensen holds my hair back as I empty my stomach, and when I straighten, wiping my lips with the back of my sleeve, his brow is furrowed.

“Don’t tell me,” I say, but he does anyway.

“Worse than ever,” he says, meaning the shaking, the sweating, the pained cries that come along with the ability to share the dead’s experiences. Jensen calls communing my gift. If so, it’s a cruel one.

This story is about grief, burnout, and what we owe the dead. It’s also my response to the many deeply problematic elements of the “true crime” genre.

“Blades, Stones, and the Weight of Centuries,” “The Case of the Soane Museum Thefts,” and “Hopper in the Frying Pan” all appear for the first time in All the Hometowns You Can’t Stay Away From, and all are eligible for nominations.

Non-Fiction

The Necessity of Trans Joy in Uncanny (1200 words)

We deserve stories as rich and varied as the stories about cis people. We need stories like “Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue,” and stories of joy. When we write trans tragedies, they’ll be the tragedies we need to tell, ones that center us, that help us make meaning of this transphobic world. And we won’t limit ourselves. We’ll write comedies, romances, erotica, weird tales, thrilling space adventures, and stories of triumph.

Even in our worst times, we will find joy. We’ve always found ways to have it and we’ll keep doing so. And when those joys seem impossibly far away, fiction can help us hold on.

This one does what it says on the tin, or at least in the title.

The Grass Bows Down, the Pilgrims Walk Lightly

By Izzy Wasserstein

[Author’s Note: This story was originally published in the Jan/Feb 2020 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact.]

~~~

My mother kept an old faith, and when I was young she would tell me stories of the Aesir. She explained how, each day, Odin sends his ravens into the world. Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory, scour the globe for what they may learn. Perhaps they will help him uncover the secret to preventing Ragnarök, the death of all he has worked to build. Until the ravens return, the god sits motionless as a statue. For without them, what is he?

#

We crest the ridge, and the grasslands stretch to the horizon, each lavender blade as tall as my shoulder. The wild fields ripple in the wind, mottled by cloud-shadow. If I could, I would stay and watch the light and dark play over the wilderness, but Korvach starts down the slope immediately, and I must hurry to keep up. I am the guest of honor, or possibly the subject of a trial. Behind us extends a line of Klevish pilgrims. Once or twice I have looked back to see dozens of them, dressed in slate-gray robes, their angular faces dominated by protrusions that strike me alternatively as a nose or a raven’s beak, though they are neither. The effect of the whole is to make them seem like a line of plague doctors. An ominous association, but they have been polite and welcoming in their formal way.

At the bottom of the ridge, the rocky soil gives way to rich grassland. Korvach turns to me, though he does not break his stride. “You commune with us, Erika-Negotiator, by joining our pilgrimage. Now you may see something you have never seen before.”

The briefing documents I’d read commented on the Klevish tendency toward understatement and noted that it was “most pronounced among devotees of the Known Path.” Even so, I am not prepared for what happens. Korvach gestures casually with his hand and before us, the grass bows down.

There is no other way to describe it. The stalks all around sway gently in a light breeze, but the ones right in front of us each bend at the tuft that makes up the base of the blade and lie flat before us.

“We begin,” Korvach says as he steps forward. For yards before each footfall, the grass in front of him ripples and bends down. We walk easily on the path created for us, long grass on either side standing tall.

I have come to Kleva to seek the continued aid of the Klevish. They are more than happy to share their technology with humanity, giving us access to the stars, to advanced terraforming techniques, and much more, all at a very reasonable price. But in each negotiation, there is always a demand.

Through some method I do not understand, they choose a Negotiator from among human volunteers who must complete a task to seal the agreement. Our xenosociologists haven’t solved the riddle of what, if anything, connects the Negotiators they select, nor the tasks. One negotiation involved playing and winning an elaborate game played with tiny, exquisite moving figures. Another time a Negotiator was tasked with maintaining the health of a pond for a full year. One Negotiator composed poetry.

We have walked for kilometers when Korvach, moving at the  same unyielding pace as ever, breaks his silence. He does not take his eyes off the folding path before him. 

“Erika-Negotiator, I speak to you now as Korvach-Negotiator, not Korvach-First-Walker. Do you understand?”

“I think so. You now speak not for your religious order, but of our negotiation.”

“So it is. I have a task for you. Should you fulfill it, we will share with you the genetic reclamation technology your people request.” In typical fashion, he does not say: and if you fail, we will deny it to you. What else should I expect? The Klevish are the most advanced species humanity has encountered, and yet they also prioritize such things as pilgrimage across uninhabited islands and cryptic, puzzling negotiations.

“I understand,” I say.

“Your task is to discover why the grass kneels before our passing.” He walks on. For the first time in many years I feel a spark of excitement, and the desire to solve a mystery, to learn something new. I am surprised by joy. That joy pulls me forward, and brings with it echoes of the past.

#

I was packing for Venus when Maebh poked her head into the bedroom and laughed. I flushed with embarrassment.

“What?” I asked. I was sitting on the bed, surrounded by stacks of clothing, shoes, research notes, bio-scanners, transmitters, packing and unpacking them as I tried to make a year’s worth of gear fit into just one suitcase. Maebh had only a sturdy backpack braced against her shoulders.

“I’m laughing at you, silly,” she said so sweetly that I couldn’t hold it against her. “We’re not headed to one of the Far Colonies.”

“It’s always wise to be prepared,” I said, defensively.  “That’s one philosophy,” she said. “And it’s useful when putting together a research grant. But when it comes to the actual trip, I prefer a different one.”  I arched my eyebrow. “And what’s that?”  “Travel light,” she said.

I grunted. “Easy for you to say. You’re not responsible for the equipment, the logistics–“

“I know, I know.” She sat down next to me, put an arm around me. For all her talk of travelling lightly, her pack was heavy enough that the bed sank down where she sat, pulling everything, including me, toward her. “You are thorough and rigorous, and I appreciate it. But when we’re dealing with the storms on the equator, you won’t want to be lugging around extra weight.”

 “I just want the necessary amount of weight,” I said, and offered what I hoped was a playful pout.

 “I can help,” she promised. “We just focus on what’s essential and leave the rest.” Her grin was an admonition and a tease and a promise all at once.

“Focus on what’s essential,” I said, cupping her cheek in my hand. “I like that.”

Eventually, we finished packing.

#

Odin sends his ravens out into the world to gather knowledge, for he is an old god, and wise, and he knows that he must learn much if he is to prevent Ragnarök. Among the things he knows is that he likely cannot prevent it. The end is coming for him, for all the gods. But he continues to seek a way to change the future. While the birds are flown from him, it as if he is dead or never-born. When they return, his fate is one day nearer.

#

Korvach walks on through the bowing grass. I follow along with him as best I can. He never hurries, never shows any sense of urgency. He is implacable. I suspect that he could walk day and night across the entire pilgrimage if he had to do so. He stops promptly at sundown, though, and the pilgrims at the back slump to the ground. I join them, for I am even more exhausted than they are. They have no need to perform tests on the grass, then rush to catch up with him repeatedly as I do. I suspect their sleep is not haunted, as mine has been, with dreams of the past.

My bio-scanner develops analyses of the grass, the soil, the entire biome. It is of little use until I find the right questions to ask, however. Korvach must know this, just as he knows the answer to the riddle he has posed me. And I think he knows I am struggling. On the third day, when I catch up with him again from examining another sample, he does not speak until I catch my breath.

“How is your progress, Erika-Negotiator?” he asks, his stride never slowing.

I reflect on my struggles before answering. “Each day I test hypotheses,” I tell him. He tilts his head slightly. I am beginning to recognize the Klevish facial expressions. I think this means the answer suits him.

“If you wish to discuss what you have learned, I will always listen,” he says.

Currently my scanner is tracing the product of microprocessors I injected into a stalk, to see if there is some subterranean connection between individual plants I haven’t detected. If the signals spread to other plants, I will be close to an answer. In the meantime, I find myself happy to talk.     “First I checked to see if all the stalks are part of a single organism, as with some plants on Earth,” I told him.  “I see,” he says, inclining his head; he suspected I would try this.

 “They are not. Next I checked pheromone signaling.”

 “And?”

 “Nothing I can detect.”

“Ah, the smell of the fields,” he says. “Each year for a hundred and fifteen years I have made this journey, and each year the smell is a connection to my past.” The afternoon is thick with the scent of cut apples and roasted peppers. It is a smell to hold on to.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I say. “There’s no macroscopic fauna I can find on this whole island, and no other flora, either. Just the grass stretching endless.”

The place is impossible to discuss without slipping into something approaching poetry. As though it is opaque to science​ ,​ I think grimly. But the Klevish chose me from among many volunteers; surely they picked a biologist for a reason. Perhaps they know of my work with dolphins.

 “It is the practice of our faith,” he says. Such a strange way to put it.

 “I will run more tests,” I say. “If fortune is with me, each failure will bring me closer to success.”

“Each step takes us closer to the coast,” he says, and I wonder if he is chastising me, or urging me on.

#

A year after we returned from Venus, I came home to find

Maebh staring out over the sea. The view was spectacular, each Manhattan high-rise resting on reclaimed junk turned into a home for coral. Two hundred feet beneath us, life bloomed in the once-dead seas.

She looked out over the water, and for a moment I was completely content. The view was a daily reminder of the work we had done, the painstaking but rewarding process of healing the seas. Each day I taught enthusiastic students at the flotilla, and each night I came home to Maebh. What more could I ask?

That’s when I caught sight of her reflection in the glass. Her eyes were red, her cheeks slick. She paced away when I met her gaze, but I hurried to her. “What’s wrong?”

“A letter came for you,” she said. I rushed to the table. There was only one reason anyone would hire a courier to deliver a physical document. Sure enough, the letter was emblazoned by the seal of the flotilla. I felt Maebh watching me as I broke the seal and read.

When I looked up at her, she had twisted her hands into tight knots, and was working ineffectually to keep her face neutral.

“They’ve approved it.” I fought to keep the excitement out of my voice. “The whole grant.” I would be overseeing a team of students working on the next phase, the dolphin reintroduction program. That meant job security and a significant budget and a chance to play a major role in reshaping the whole of the Atlantic.

“Good,” she said, and I was shocked to realize she didn’t mean it. From the look on her face, she was, too. “I mean, I’m glad for you, Erika. I know how hard you’ve been working for it.”

“We’ve​ been working for it,” I say. Outside the sunset cast​ the sea in pink and gold.

She gave me a look that shatters me each time I think about it. “Anyway,” she said, “Congratulations.”

“What is this? I thought you’d be happy for me.”  She hesitated. “I thought so too. I told myself I’d be happy for you. For us. But sometimes–sometimes the world doesn’t unfold the way we hope.”

 I could feel my jaw hanging open. I forced it closed. “This is the opportunity of a lifetime.”

 “Yes,” she said. “And it will be your life. It will open project after project to you. They’d be a fool to let you get away.”

 “What’s wrong with that?” I felt anger bubbling up, anger I didn’t understand.

“It’s the endpoint,” she said, and paced over to the window. The city’s lights were burning against the last of the day. “It means you’ll never take a field assignment on Europa or a colony or…”

 “We could never hope to get an appointment this good off world.”

 “Probably not,” she said, and was silent so long I was surprised when she continued. “Do you remember that night on Venus when we watched the Erinaceus venaeus​        ​ foraging?”

We’d watched it for close to an hour, its small nose exploring the undergrowth, rooting through the rich loam, looking so much like its cousins on earth, save that it was slightly smaller and its coat was a shimmering green.   

“I could never forget it. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” I said.

“You told me then that you never wanted to stop exploring.”   

Oh. “I—-this is a kind of exploring. Rebuilding what we’ve​ lost.”

She ran a hand through her hair and turned back to me. “Earth’s going to be okay,” she said. “Even if you didn’t take the grant, someone else would get it and reintroduce the dolphins. Why does it have to be you?”

“Because I’m good at it, Maebh, and because it’s worth doing.”

“Yes,” she said. “And it means we’re staying here forever, rebuilding what we’ve previously fucked up, when there’s everything out there.”

I was still clutching the delicate acceptance letter. My hands shook. I could see the shape things were taking, and I felt something awful curl itself within me.

#

When Huginn returns and Muninn is absent, Odin is lost. His mind is alive with Thought, but with no Memory to guide him, he cannot plan for Ragnarök. He cannot draw on the wisdom of the past. He is useless, incapable of action, for his mind is as blank as and shapeless as a block of stone.

#

On the fifth night, the pilgrims camp just beyond a rise. While they settle in, I backtrack and sit on the bare rock at its peak. I watch the sky as the stars come out in their unfamiliar constellations. This is my first trip outside of the Sol system. For a long time I had no wish for such a trip, until restlessness or regret changed my mind.

The night here is darker than any on earth, with no moon, nothing but the stars and the rustling of the grass. It is a beauty as vibrant as any field of flowers, yet somehow as desolate as a desert.

I do not notice Korvach has come up behind me until he speaks.

“Is it a sight worth seeing?”

“Very much so,” I say. “I wish–there is someone I very much wish could see it.” Maebh would have loved it here. But if she were still with me, I would never have followed this path. Korvach is comfortable with silence. He does not press me, but neither does he hurry on. Finally I speak again. “There is no trace of a neural network, and no microfauna that would explain the grass’s behavior.” A team of experts with proper equipment would no doubt crack the case quickly. But whatever the Klevish want me to learn, I alone must discover it.

“I am told,” Korvach says, and sits beside me, “that on

Earth many people practice a meditation of stillness.”

“It’s true,” I say. “More than one of our faiths teach such things.” I do not see the connection, but it is a better topic than my failure to find answers.

“You would commune with me, Erika-Negotiator, if you would share whether you keep such a faith.”

“I do not keep them. Once I thought I could never be still, and then the time for movement had passed before I realized I had already halted.”

“A sad thing,” he said. “I too could not keep a faith of stillness. I must keep moving forward, for movement is life. And how else will the Path know us?”

“I thought ‘Known Path’ referred to you knowing the path.”

“One could not be true without the other,” he says, and stands. “Good night, Erika-Negotiator. We resume our journey at dawn.” It is a reminder of how little time I have left. In less than a day, the pilgrimage will be over, and I will have succeeded or failed.

I stay some time on the rise and then push my way toward camp through the grass: it has already risen behind us. When sleep takes me, I dream of Maebh, and of Ravens.

#

I did not need to check the time to know that Maebh’s ship would be leaving soon. Beneath me, the Earth spread like a familiar face. Each year she grew more beautiful, each year a bit more green. In my lifetime she would be as green as in the old images. And long after I am dead, perhaps Maebh will look down on a world so verdant one would not know it was the work of many generations to salvage it.

I turned away from the viewport to find Maebh watching me. For once, she stood still, her backpack thrown over her shoulder. The strap was ragged around the edges, and the seams were caked with dirt.

“The Captain wants me on board in five,” she said. Her eyes shone, though with sadness or excitement I couldn’t say.  On impulse, I took her hands. The last moments, the last of us, and I couldn’t find anything to say.

“It’s not too late, you know,” she said. “You can still come with us.” The colony ship would take a qualified biologist in a moment. They’d take almost anyone who was willing to head four hundred years to the ragged edge of human exploration.  “Or you could stay.” I expected anger, I think. I was so miserable I would have picked a fight just to be sure she felt something. But she looked at me with pity.

“There’s a whole universe out there, worlds where humans have never set foot. I can’t turn my back on that.”

“But you can turn your back on me?”

 That did it. “After all this, I thought you’d want me to be happy.” 

 “I want us​ to be happy.” Behind her was the embrace of the​ Milky Way and a moon-bright lance–a vessel accelerating toward relativistic speeds.

 “We don’t want the same things anymore,” she said, as though I didn’t know it keenly.

“You could be happy with me,” I insisted. “You don’t have to throw away everything we’ve built together.”

“I’m not throwing it away, Erika. The past is always there. It’s a tool for discovering the future.” It took me a very long time to make sense of that. “I have to go,” she continued after a moment.

We kissed, and she turned away. When she was almost gone down the corridor, I shouted after her. “Will you think of me?”  She glanced over her shoulder, flashed a smile. “You’ll always be part of me.” Then she turned the corner. I wasn’t right for a long time after that.

#

Huginn does not return, but Muninn does. Odin’s consciousness has fled, but guided by memory, he follows the path laid out for him. Each step enacts the promise of the one before, and each enables the next. Thus he faces the future.

#

Ahead of the pilgrims, a single point of light: a ship in the bay, ready to collect us and take us to civilization. I rush through the high grass, holding the sensor high above my head. I find Korvach keeping his steady pace. We will reach the bay hours from now, as the sun dips behind the waves.

 “Korvach,” I shout, then hold my side as I try to catch my breath. He does not slow.

 “Yes?” His tone is serene, but his face tilts in what might be a smile.

 “When you take this pilgrimage—-do you set out and finish at the same time each year?”

 “We do.” Definitely a smile.

  “Down to the minute, I believe.”

  “Yes, Erika-Negotiator, we do. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I think I’ve solved it.”

  “And what have you discovered?”

 “It’s prions.”

He does not stop, but he shifts his whole torso to face me as he walks, reminding me of a curious corvid. I push on. “Prion folding, specifically. Proteins that pass on their shape to other nearby proteins. In fauna, prions can be deadly—-mis-folding proteins in the brain, for example. It creates a cascade. A similar process in plants on Earth can allow them to react to changes in their environment. But nothing on earth rises to the level of information retention in your grass.”

“I see.” Of course he knew all this already; the test was to demonstrate what I had learned.

“The prions solve the problem that the plants don’t have brains or nervous system. They don’t need them—-they don’t need to interpret, to understand. The prions function as their memory, so they react based on past stimulus. They don’t think, but they remember.

“It is as you say, Erika-Negotiator,” Korvach says. “May I ask how you arrived at this insight?”

“I’ve been thinking,” I say, “of stories my mother taught me. And of words–words of wisdom from someone I love. About the use of memory. And then I realized plants could have a kind of memory, too.”

 “Your insight communes with the grass, and with me,” Korvach says.

We walk on together for some time, toward the beach. I have been lost for so long. It feels good to know where I am heading. The stars come out one by one.

“I think I would like to know more of your faith, Korvach,” I say.

He tilts his face up to the sky in a gesture I have never seen. “I very much hoped you would, Erika-Pilgrim. Let us walk together.”

The grass communes with us by bowing down; we commune with it by following its path into the future, by moving forward.

~~~

2020 Awards Eligibility

Writing anything about what occurred in 2020 seems impossible. What can I can said that isn’t already expressed in the Elmo on Fire gif?

I did publish several stories this year, though, and an award eligibility post is customary. So here goes:

If you read just one of my stories this year, I’d be honored if it would be “The Grass Bows Down, the Pilgrims Walk Lightly” (free PDF). It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact in January 2020.

If you’re looking for something more light-hearted (and who could blame you?) I recommend “A Hench Helps her Villain, No Matter What” which appeared in in Escape Pod in February 2020.

My other stories this year were flash fiction or nearly so:

Pattern Recognition” in Daily Science Fiction. (November 2020).

“From the Deep, the Music Rises” in Baffling Magazine. (October 2020).

“The Descent of Their Last End” in Glitter + Ashes(August 2020).

Five Reasons for the Sign Above Her Door, One of Them Unspoken” in Abyss & Apex. (July 2020).

“Seven Plans of the League Of Villainous Empowerment to Break Atomic Patriot’s Hold on Star City” in DecodedPride. (June 2020).

For Change is the Moon’s Domain, and Tonight She Watches” in Fireside Magazine. (May 2020).

A Dinosaur Without Feathers Is No Dinosaur at All” in Robot Dinosaurs!. (March 2020).

While this year has been a disaster in many ways, both for me personally and for the world, I’m proud of the work I’ve published. Thanks to everyone who took the time to read it. May 2021 be much better than 2020 was.

The Grass Bows Down, the Pilgrims Walk Lightly

In January 2020 (roughly 10 months ago in linear time, and approximately six million years ago in 2020-Subjective time), Analog Science Fiction and Fact published a story of mine, “The Grass Bows Down, the Pilgrims Walk Lightly.”

It’s a story that has a special place in my heart, and deals with science, faith, loss, and the ways we make meaning. Oh, and ravens. We must not forget ravens.

It was suggested that I make it available online, and I’ve done so. If you’re so inclined, you can read “The Grass Bows Down, the Pilgrims Walk Lightly” here.

I am Invisible: Trans Communities and the Cis Gaze

I have a new story out in Abyss & Apex, about trans bodies, trans communities, and responding to the cis gaze: “Five Reasons for the Sign Above Her Door, One of Them Unspoken.”

I can’t talk about this story without talking about what it means to be a trans woman viewed constantly through the eyes of cis people. In many ways I an lucky, in that I am about as close to invisible as a trans woman can be. I don’t mean that I pass, exactly, but that I am white, fat, middle-aged, and not conventionally attractive. I’m also privileged in that my transness isn’t immediately obvious to everyone who sees me.

I am, in short, the kind of person that who goes unseen: a white woman who men don’t desire.

And yet on occasion a tweet of mine will go viral, and with it will inevitably come men sliding into my DMs eager to chat me up. I don’t engage with them, but their presence signals a particular kind of interest. They want me, but they want me because I’m trans, because they imagine they know what my body must be like. This is gross, of course, but early in my transition it was also strangely affirming: straight men wanted to fuck me. What is a more fundamental experience of womanhood than that?

My tastes don’t generally run toward men, for which I am extremely grateful, for how could I ever know if it was me they desired, or if I was only an object to fetishize?

I am invisible. Except when I’m getting death threats. Except when I’m catcalled. Except when I put on my cutest dress and thick eyeliner and am called “sir.” Except in the way I can’t meet strangers’ eyes in restrooms. Except when I am an object of desire or contempt.

Even when I am invisible, the threat of the cis gaze follows me everywhere. Transmisogyny shapes my interactions, even with people who are neither transphobic nor misogynist.

I wrote this story to respond to the voyeurism of the cis gaze, but also to explore the spaces trans folks make for each other, the bits of ground in which we see, support, and protect one another. The spaces where we can hold each other (apart)/(up)/(together).

Such spaces are the other half of my story, spaces where I am neither invisible nor objectified. Spaces where I am seen.

The cis gaze is monstrous, but trans communities are beautiful.

2019 Awards Eligibility Post

It’s that time of year again where thoughts turn to holidays, winter or summer fun (depending on where one resides) and awards eligibility posts.

Okay, maybe not that last one. But it’s standard practice, so here’s mine anyway.

I’m in my second year of eligibility for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer (formerly the Campbell).

I’ve had the good fortune of publishing several short stories this year:

All the Hometowns You Can’t Stay Away From” in Fireside Magazine.

You Snap into the procedurally-generated shithole you call a hometown, and a moment later the stench leaves you gagging. So many universes and yet, in almost every one, South Topeka smells like a family of raccoons died inside a middle school locker room.

The Crafter at the Web’s Heart” in Apex

Out this far, Traverse is sparse, mostly open space and two-meter-wide strands of web, almost all of it exposed. I could see all the way back to the heart of the city, where money and power gathers, where the towers of the skyline are dominated by Lord Mayor’s spire and the great needle of the Wise Ones’ Chambers. Hishonor keeps the coin flowing, while the Wise Ones practice their magics and do whatever it is ancient mages do. Which is mostly not practice magic, unless they like the idea of completing their transformation to an eagle or ball lightning or whatever it is each of them studies.

The whole of Traverse builds to its middle—or almost to the middle. I can’t see the center from out here, but I can feel the place where the orb is empty, where there is nothing but the Drop. Where, if you believe Ma’s stories, the Crafter herself once sat and fed on some unfathomable prey. Then she climbed a line up to the moon and left her labors behind.

Might be it happened that way. I can tell you, the Wise Ones didn’t shape the web, nor did the Lord Mayor’s money.

This Next Song Is Called Punk Rock Valhalla” in A Punk Rock Future.

Like most of my tattoos, they seemed like a good idea at the time. On the back of my left hand, the Norse rune Algiz, life. On my right, the Hebrew word Maveth, death. What can I say? I was eighteen, playing guitar terribly for a local punk band, and trying to make peace between the traditions of my Jewish mother and my Nordic father.

They weren’t my most embarrassing tattoos, but they were the ones that got me killed.

The Vixen, with Death Pursuing” in Maiden, Mother, Crone.

When I turn around, the pestimancer is behind me. He stands at the edge of the clearing, his head and torso wreathed in a shimmer as if soap bubbles were made of filth. His fingers blur at the edges, and bloatflies buzz incessantly around him. A gold amulet hangs from his neck, incongruous.

“The rebels should have sent someone else,” he says with that tar-voice. I sense him staring at me, though I see no eyes in the caverns of his face. A tilt of the head, then a rasping that I think is meant to be laughter. “You’re no rebel, just a coward. I saw it in your eyes, when I broke her.”

Of Rabbits, the Boneyard, and the Other Place” in Then Again.

I call it the other place, but I’m pretty sure it’s just one of many, because things that don’t seem like they’re from the other place find their way to it. Maybe it’s like a subway station. You take tunnels to get there, and things seem to show up there from far away. Luggage with tags from foreign lands or from cities I can’t find in any atlas, exotic animals, even once a bottle floating down from the sky, a message inside written in a strange language I’d never seen. I’ve never found tunnels from the other place to anywhere else, though. Maybe I just can’t see them.

Requiem Without Sound” in Escape Pod

Evie is born into cold and silence. They know this, though they have only now gained consciousness, because their sensors report it. The memory of the station’s computer, which now forms part of Evie’s brain, tells them that their environment is very wrong. There should be movement. Sound. Life.

You can also find information about the stories I published last year and the ones that are forthcoming in my fiction bibliography.

All the concepts I can’t stay away from

Many years ago, I wrote a poem that included the following phrase: “home is the place you return to and find no longer exists.”

That concept, a variation on “you can’t go home again,” has haunted me. It haunted me in my early 20s, when all I wanted was to get out of my hometown and never come back. It haunted me a few years later, when a good job offer brought me back to my hometown. And it haunts me now, after more than a decade back “home”–or, anyway, someplace more-or-less like home.

I’ve never been a big fan of the idea that SF’s defining feature is literalizing metaphors. In the best SF, the metaphor is perhaps part of the whole, but only part. After all, we want stories that can’t be easily reduced, that whose complexity extends far beyond just the metaphorical.

That said, there is always going to be a certain pleasure in teasing out the metaphor and seeing where it takes us. On that note, I’m delighted to share with you that the most literalized-metaphor story I’ve ever written (or, likely, will ever write) is now available at Fireside.

All the Hometowns You Can’t Stay Away From” features a protagonist dealing with the fact that she (quite literally) can’t go home again. It’s also a story about grief, loss, and choice. Because I wrote it, it’s also queer AF.

I hope you enjoy, and I hope that the pleasures of the story extend beyond the literal. And if not, I’m sure there’s a reality where another version of me wrote a version of the story that another version of you prefers.

On superheroes, deification, and the relationship between writer and reader

Today’s the day! My short story “The Crafter at the Web’s Heart” is up at Apex!

I wrote the first draft of this story at Clarion West 2017, which makes it the second CW story to appear, the first being “The Good Mothers’ Home for Wayward Girls.” It started out as a challenge to myself to build a secondary world. I began with an image–a city suspended on a spider’s web–and combined it with some questions I’d been pondering about how to craft magic systems.

When my amazing classmates read the draft, they gave me excellent feedback on how to make it into a workable story. A few of them noted that it felt to them like a superhero origin story. I could definitely see that, even though it wasn’t what I’d intended. But then, readers often find things in stories we don’t intend. It might be that writers cannot fully comprehend everything that shapes our writing. Certainly, letting the critical part of your mind dominate too much early in the process can make writing impossible (at least for me; I don’t know how widely this is true).

So my classmates’ reading wasn’t wrong–in fact, all that was certainly in the story, given that multiple thoughtful readers had come to that conclusion. But only one, Robert Minto, articulated a reading that matched my own: that “Crafter” is a story not about becoming a superhero, but becoming a god. It’s a story about deification (or apotheosis, if you prefer).

What makes a god (and who makes a god) are fascinating questions for me, and that’s an question tied to how I think about this story. There’s only one kind of god that can be the deity of Traverse, and only one kind of person who fits the bill.

This is also, for me, a story about transition, and embracing your true self, but I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions on that point.

I don’t know whether other readers will see the story the same way I and Robert do. I rather hope that there will be a diverse set of readings, which is a sure sign that people are finding something to engage with in the work.

But for me, it will always be a story about gods and the situations that create them.


If you liked this story, then stay tuned: I have another story set in this world in the forthcoming anthology Maiden, Mother, and Crone: Fantastical Trans Femmes.

2018 Awards Eligibility Post

Though I can hardly believe it, awards nomination season is upon us. The Nebula Awards have begun accepting nominations (note that this year, both Active and Associate members can vote!). Others will follow before we know it, as time continues to behave in ways both inexorable and strange.

This year I had several works published that are eligible for awards consideration. In addition, this is my first year of eligibility for the Campbell Award.

Unplaces: an Atlas of Non-existence” – 1,750 word short story in Clarkesworld, March 2018.

Excerpts from the First Edition, with handwritten marginalia. Recovered from the ruins of Kansas City. Part of the permanent exhibit of the Museum of Fascisms.

(This story has been called Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Science Fantasy. Categorize it as you will.)

The Good Mothers’ Home for Wayward Girls” – 3,500 word short story in PseudoPod, March 2018. Horror.

Kate hangs back and stage-whispers: You’re not going to survive, new girl. The Mothers will punish you or you’ll slit your wrists. Kate is brave because there are Mothers watching us, one in the doorway to the kitchen, one clinging to the ceiling, leaving a puddle of ichor on the moldy tile of the hall. We will need to clean up that mess later.

No. We will make the new girl do it.

Ports of Perceptions” – 300 word flash fiction in Glittership 53, March 2018. Science Fiction.

Chase had come down with both kind of viruses, and worried Hunter had been growing distant, so Hunter suggested they indulge in some PKD. While the drug kicked in, they sprawled on the mattress in Hunter’s flat and exchanged.

Their Eyes Like Dead Lamps” –  3,000 word short story in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 37, March 2018.

If all this had happened two years earlier, I’d have accepted it easily. But the world starts to narrow, and by the time someone–your mother or your aunt or whoever–sits you down for The Talk, everything has calcified. If I’d been younger, I would probably remember all this as play, or as a trick my mind played to cover for what really happened. If I’d been older, maybe I wouldn’t have seen anything down by the bank besides Cassie.

That night I lay in bed, listening to the thunderstorm that swept in, as they often did, from the south and west, and thinking of those shapes along the bank, imagining sharp teeth, eyes like dead lamps. No one ever built a fort because the world was safe.

“Pelecanimimus and the Battle for Mosquito Ridge” – 4,100 word short story in Crossed Genres’ Resist Fascism, November 2018. Fantasy.

When I think of the look in your eyes, I feel as though I’ve been sliced open. But I believed in this cause then, and now I have seen proof with my own eyes: we must stop the Fascists here, or they will spread across Europe. There are German bombers overhead and Italian arms on the other side of the lines. I long for your arms, my Eli, but I fight to make the world safe for us, and I have seen soldiers (of all genders) fight on despite worse injuries. I believe we will triumph, and I will return to you. Should we fail, I take comfort in this, that the struggle is worth all.

I do not know when this letter will reach you. I cannot send it now, for fear of revealing too much to the enemy, and knowing that I have expressed my love for you in a way many of my Comrades would loathe. I will keep this letter to myself and, if G-d wills, find a way to get it to you soon.