Category: Short Stories

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. 

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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.”

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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. 

2021 Awards Eligibility Post

In 2021 I published four stories, all of which I’m quite proud of. They’re listed here in the order they were published. I’d be honored if you’d read any or all of them.

“Dead at the Feet of a God” in Beneath Ceaseless Skies (2900 words).

There is no avoiding it: your story will end with you dead at the feet of a god. Your divinations have told you this. There is no ambiguity. The portents float at the edge of your vision, haunt your dreams, shake themselves free with each throwing of the bones.

“Like Birdsong, the Memory of Your Touch” in Fantasy (700 words).

A few seasons is long enough to pull apart our roads, a few lifetimes to erase most signs of our passing, and if birds are still singing elsewhere, maybe the ravens will remember us and tell our stories, laughing at all we had and couldn’t keep…

“This Shattered Vessel, Which Holds Only Grief” in Apex (6500 words).

“I was part of the Free Zone downtown,” she tells him at last. “Kam swore we could hold the cops off if we stuck together, but they tore through our wards, bashed in the walls—and I fled. When my family needed me most, I ran.” She has never told anyone this. The words twist in her. Bile rises in her throat.

“To Reach the Gate, She Must Leave Everything Behind” in Lightspeed. (500 words)

Death takes much and in return it offers Susan P— only clarity. She finds herself in a great gray desert and knows her life has ended. Clad in a royal dress, she carries a bow and quiver, and a finely-carved ivory horn dangles from her throat. A tremor of fear shakes her. She’s not possessed such things in many years. Has she returned to His world?

Witches, Suffering, and (Possibly) Triumph

For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.

James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues.”

I’ll start with an admission: I sometimes wish I could write happy, feel-good stories. But that’s not my temperament, and the world seems to have taken from me whatever small gift I had for such tales. So instead I write about how bad things can be, and about how we can press on anyway.

Things are bleak, and almost certain to get much worse. But nihilism and despair serve the interests of the worst people, so in my writing I try to be face the truth without being consumed by it.

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All of which is to say, my newest story isn’t as grim as its title might suggest. “This Shattered Vessel, Which Holds Only Grief” is a deeply personal story for me, with origins in my obsessions with memory, community, and anarchism and anti-authoritarianism. It’s also shaped by my attempts to deal with the trauma of the Trump administration, the capture of democratic institutions by fascists, and the pandemic.

It also owes a massive debt to Andrea Martinez Corbin, whose gorgeous story “Raise the Dead Cobbler” is a direct influence on “Shattered Vessel.” Seriously, you should read it. It’s great. Andrea was kind enough to let me borrow her “Witch of _____” framework, and after several years, I finally found a story where my own witches were needed.

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I hope you like my story. But more than that, I hope it marks a small contribution to an essential conversation.

We can’t avoid suffering. But may survive. We may triumph. And whatever comes, we’ll need each other.

Good News

I’ve been remiss in not updating this blog with good news I’ve received of late (and one piece of good news I received a while back and forgot to mention here). Here goes!

“All the Hometowns You Can’t Stay Away From” will appear in a forthcoming issue of Fireside Magazine. It features simulated realities, uncomfortable mother/daughter dynamics, and a particularly unflattering portrait of my hometown. Also featuring: queerness.

“The Crafter at the Web’s Heart” will appear in Apex. A 2nd World fantasy story, this one features a spider god, unplanned transformations, a precarious city and queerness.

“A Dinosaur Without Feathers Is No Dinosaur at All” will be part of the wonderful Robot Dinosaurs! project. A hopepunk story about two teen girls rebuilding their friendship and building a dinosaur. Also: queerness.

“Pelicanimimus and the Battle for Mosquito Ridge” will be part of Crossed Genres’ Resist Fascism: An SFF Call to Action. If you’d like to read this story, part of 30,000 words of SFF against fascism, please consider donating. This story is set during the Spanish Civil War and includes dinosaurs, anarchists, and (IMHO) the finest final sentence I’ve ever composed. Also, naturally, queerness.

“This Next Song Is Called ‘Punk Rock Valhalla'” is forthcoming from the A Punk Rock Future anthology. It’s got a Norse god, antifascism, possibly-unwise tattoos, and unimpressed ravens. No queerness in this one, though.

I’m kidding, I’m kidding. It’s full of queerness.

That’s the good news, folks. I couldn’t be more excited to share these stories with y’all.

The Good Mothers’ Home for Wayward Girls

My horror story “The Good Mothers’ Home for Wayward Girls” is now available in audio and full-text from PseudoPod.

It’s a story that is dear to me, in part because I wrote the first draft at Clarion West 2017, so it will always be associated for me with my wonderful experiences there, and the amazing friends I made. Unlike Clarion West, though, the housing in my story isn’t very pleasant.

The narration by Tatiana Grey is amazing, everything I could have hoped and more. I found myself experiencing my own words in a new and breathless way.

What horror have you read recently that’s stayed with you, dear reader?

Unplaces: an Atlas of Non-Existence

I’m pleased to be able to share with you my story of Unplaces, antifa, queer love, and the importance of memory, “Unplaces: an Atlas of Non-Existence” at Clarkesworld.

It’s a story that brings together many of my obsessions, and includes references to two stories I love, Borges’ “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” and Theodora Goss’ “Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology.” You don’t need to have read either story to make sense of mine, but they’re both fantastic, so you should read them anyway. 🙂