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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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

Travel and work obligations have kept me busy of late, and I’ve been remiss in not mentioning here that Crossed Genres’ micro-anthology Resist Fascism it out now! It features awesome stories from 9 authors, including me.

My story, “Pelecanimimus and the Battle for Mosquito Ridge,” takes place during the Spanish Civil War. An American volunteer in the conflict takes time to write home to his boyfriend even as he battles fascists. Oh, and did I mention there are dinosaurs? There are! And they’re cute.

This story also features my favorite last line in anything I’ve written to date.

Grab your copy now! If you buy the ebook, it’s less than $0.50 per story.