It's a Jumble

  I have a new story out today! “Support Forum for the Care and Feeding of Your Personal Spirit-angel ” is a dark little piece about Internet forums, cult dynamics, and angels who promise to heal every wound in your soul. It’s my second publication in Uncharted Magazine, a wonderful venue for literary speculative and genre fiction. 

  Some wonderful stories that I read in Feb and March.    “ Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole” by Isabel J. Kim in Clarkesworld So they broke into the hole in the ground, and they killed the kid, and all the lights went out in Omelas: click, click, click. And the pipes burst and there was a sewage leak and the newscasters said there was a typhoon on the way, so they (a different “they,” these were the “they” in charge, the “they” who lived in the nice houses in Omelas [okay, every house in Omelas was a nice house, but these were Nice Houses]) got another kid and put it in the hole.   There have been so many response stories to Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” that they practically constitute an entire subgenre in themselves. But Kim’s latest riff stands above the rest: a brilliant, blistering, darkly humorous tale that updates Omelas for our current social media age. And fittingly for this age, the story beco...

  I have a new story out this week!  “The Bones Beneath” is now up at the wonderful Podcastle , and you can either read it there or listen to Tatiana Grey’s beautiful narration. It's perhaps the darkest thing I’ve published yet. I also think it’s one of my best. This story grew out of a lot of things. A slushy, dreary Midwestern spring, and a sudden image of glowing bones. A cloud of swirling thoughts and ideas from the last several years, struggling to find form. There are a number of real-world historical inspirations for the fictional world and history in my story. The Chinese Cultural Revolution is the heaviest and most obvious inspiration. But there are a number of others, from different countries and societies, and from different time periods stretching up to the modern day. And from all sides of the political spectrum.   For me, one of the key passages in my own story is this one, where the young protagonist is struggling to make sense of her world:   ...

  I have a new story out today! Actually, it came out earlier this month behind a paywall, but it’s now available to read for free. “An Address to the Newest Disciples of the Lost Words” is published at Lightspeed Magazine ! This story is about a magical language that can say all things. It’s about the power and limits of words. And it’s almost everything that I want to say about writing. I hope you give it a read. For more of my thoughts on this story, you can check out my Author Spotlight/Interview on the Lightspeed site. There’s also a podcast of the story available at the site. I haven’t finished listening to the whole thing yet, but narrator Stefan Rudnicki’s voice is a perfect match for my character, and I’m delighted by his narration.

It’s Thanksgiving holiday in America as I write this; snow is falling past my window, pies are on the table, and dinner will be ready soon. A quiet meal for just me and my husband and children. There is much to be thankful for, always. I hope that you, whoever you may be reading this, also has much to celebrate and be thankful for. Good stories are always worth celebrating, of course, and I am always thankful for them. Here are twelve that I read in September and October.  “How to Find Yourself in a Fairy Tale” by A.C. Wise in Daily Science Fiction Find clothes suitable for a fairy tale child. Stitch them from frost and leaves. Procure the skin of a donkey, or a barrel driven with rusty nails. If your child would be clothed in silver and gold, they will need to wish beneath a tree grown from your murdered bones. Plan accordingly.   It’s the beginning of many a classic fairy tale: a person (nearly always a woman) desperate for a child. Willing to do whatever it takes, wh...

My latest story, “Traces of Us,” is now live at GigaNotoSaurus. It’s a story about sentient spaceships and neuroscientists in love. It’s dear to my heart for a number of reasons, and I’m so gratified by the responses it’s been getting from readers. (Writer and critic Charles Payseur has an absolutely beautiful review--with spoilers!-- here ) The story is grounded in some very real science. I'd like to talk a little about that scientific grounding, and the inspirations (both scientific and not) behind this story. SPOILERS (I’d suggest continuing only after finishing “Traces of Us” ) _____________________________________________ The story seed The seed for this story came from a feature article I read in The New York Times back in 2015, “A Dying Young Woman’s Hope in Cryonics and a Future.”   It’s a beautifully written story about Kim Suozzi, a young woman who died of brain cancer at the age of 23, but who hoped to have her mind p...

I’m thrilled to announce that my latest story, “ Wild Ones,”  is now up at Bracken Magazine . I have loved this magazine since it’s first issue, and am so happy to be appearing there now, alongside absolutely lovely artwork, poems, and other stories. Bracken Magazine’s tagline is “lyrical fiction and poetry, inspired by the wood and what lies in its shadows.” “Wild Ones” indeed takes it setting from the woods. It’s the story of a mother and her teenage daughter, and of the wildness within us all. Some notes on inspiration: --Years and years ago, I read Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising and fell in love with its invocations of Celtic mythology and Old European legends. The scene where Herne the Hunter leads the Wild Hunt against the Dark has never left me. --There is a patch of woods near my home, a tiny scrap of forest hemmed in by suburban development. I like to walk there, especially in the fall. --The fall is my favorite time of year. And the sound of the...

A few weeks ago, my latest fiction story was published. It’s called "Taiya," and you can read  i t  here at The Future Fire.   It’s a ghost story set in an imaginary country. And it’s been getting some wonderful reviews. Maria Haskins included it in her September 2017 Short Fiction Round-up A.C. Wise featured it (and me!!) in her series, Women to Read: Where to Start: October 2017 post. The website Lady Business also has a lovely review (warning: spoilers! I’d suggest reading the story first before reading the very perceptive analysis here) As a writer, I am of course always thrilled by good reviews and attention to any of my stories. But this one is particularly dear to me. I wrote it three years ago, and it was the first story that truly scared me to write. It wasn’t the (named) ghost in the story that scared me. What scared me was the feeling of exposure, of revealing something about myself that I perhaps didn’t want anyone else to see. This is wh...

I got back a bit more than a week ago from a family vacation in the San Francisco Bay area. Glorious sunshine, lemon and orange trees, green lawns and flowers in bloom.  Drought? There’s a drought going on?  Oh, no, it’s going to RAIN ! the locals freaked out while we were there. I’m so sorry, but there’s RAIN in the forecast, too bad about RAIN while you’re here on vacation. Rain? That five-minute sprinkle? Ha! My family and I are Midwesterners—you call that “rain?” A hike by the sea, a stay at Half Moon Bay, and my husband and I were marveling at local flora like Dorothy dropped off by her tornado in the land of Oz. What are these trees? we wondered (wind-sheared cypresses on the coast). What are these orange wildflowers? (California poppies) And these flowering succulents on the beach? The Internet identifies these as "iceplants." Not actually native to California, although they grow all over the coas t. Iceplants on the beach at Half Moon bay ...

My science fiction story, “ Disconnected, ” is now live at The Future Fire! It’s a story about protein folding and optogenetics and cognitive augmentations. And it’s also about capitalism, and family, and the enduring need for human connection. This particular issue of The Future Fire happens to mark the tenth anniversary of the digital publication. That’s quite an achievement, and I am thrilled to be part of it. I haven’t finished reading all the other stories in this issue yet, but so far what I’ve read has been amazing—dark and lovely and sad and moving, original in form and content. I am so honored to be sharing space with this group of authors and artists. Speaking of artists--Miguel Santos’ illustrations for my own piece are wonderful, and showed me something about my story that I didn’t even realize. STORY NOTES BELOW    .................................................................................... The Science Protein Folding Gam...