New essay today in Uncanny! Failing the Marshmallow Test: On Not Saving Books for Later. I know that some amount of book hoarding is inevitable because nobody, not even me, reads instantaneously. But this is about deliberately putting off something you know you want to read for “later”–and why I think it’s maybe better not to.
Tag: publishing
Short stories of summer
Here are some short stories (and maybe a few poems, and some longer short works) I’ve enjoyed this quarter! Please feel free to recommend more in the comments, I make no pretense that I’ve gotten to everything good that’s come out this year.
Yours, Wickedly: A Story in Thirteen Letters, Stephanie Burgis (Sunday Morning Transport)
The Naming of Knots, M. A. Carrick (BCS)
The Sand Knows Its Way Home, L. Chan (Reckoning)
Merciful Even to Scorpions, Kay Chronister (BCS)
“Equal Forces Opposed in Exquisite Tension,” John Chu (New Suns 2)
“Between Truth and Death on the Murmansk-Saint Petersburg Line,” Zohar Jacobs (Sunday Morning Transport)
“Juan,” Darcie Little Badger (New Suns 2)
“Dragons of Yuta,” Rochita Loenen-Ruiz (New Suns 2)
“Bayanihan,” Maricar Macario (F&SF Sept/Oct 23)
The Kingdom of Darkness, Sarah Monette (Uncanny)
To Dust Returned, Rita Oakes (BCS)
“The Plant and the Purist,” Malka Older (New Suns 2)
SQUAWKER AND DOLPHIN SWIMMING TOGETHER, T.K. Rex (Reckoning)
Till the Greenteeth Draw Us Down, Josh Rountree (The Deadlands)
“Approved Methods of Love Divination in the First-Rate City of Dushagorod,” Kristina Ten (F&SF Jul/Aug 23)
What It Means to Love a City, Mo Usavage (Reckoning)
“Silk and Cotton and Linen and Blood,” Nghi Vo (New Suns 2)
The Three O’Clock Dragon, John Wiswell (Tor.com)
Nerd grief
My poem Object Permanence is in Analog magazine’s Sept/Oct issue, and also featured on their website for the next two months.
A lot of writing about grief, including my writing about grief, is inspired by the loss of our nearest and dearest. This is not that, this is the next circle out–my dear little old great-aunt Bets, my ex-boyfriend’s delightful father Marc, all those whose pathways through the world were joys just one notch more distant from mine…until the day they weren’t, and I miss them still, in their own way.
Which is, of course, still a very nerdy way.
You Are My Sunshine and Other Stories, by Octavia Cade
Review copy provided by the publisher.
I’ve heard a lot of discussion of climate horror in recent years. While the stories in this volume are plenty horrified, the dominant emotion is not mostly horror. It’s what I’d describe as anguish. There are so many animals, so many plants, so many habitats in decline or obliterated, and Cade is not looking away from it, she’s showing not just the devastated futures but the devastation from them. There are a few stories that are more upbeat, more whimsical, more of the places people are pulling up their socks and going on. But in order to get there we’re going to have to go through the hard years, and Cade is not flinching away from that part, not for a moment.
I think one of my favorite things about Cade’s writing has always been her grounding in both poetry and science. This is a work of prose, but the poetic language and the science grounding both inform it, both give it different kinds of precision, and I love that. I love that even when it’s ripping me to pieces. I love it perhaps especially then.
Making it up as we go along
For my third story of the month, I’m going to need a field of study, a type of being, and a mode of entertainment. Anybody?
I heard “anthropology,” “alien,” and “comedy improv”! Great! Here’s Yes And in Nature Futures!
Each little spark matters
New story out today! Translunar Travelers Lounge brings you Spark of Change, today’s new story about phoenix eggs, fraught sibling relationships, and a city on the edge of…whatever comes next. Go, read, enjoy!
Like the wee pots of jam, but with ichor
New story out today in Haven Spec! Monster of the Month Club returns to my old monstrous stomping grounds for a new tale inspired by, yes, my childhood obsession with the little cheeses or teas or jams or…anything of the month really. But this time monsters! So many monsters! Find out about them in this fairly short story!
Eschatological
New poem today! The Plural of Apocalypse is out at Strange Horizons.
I wrote this poem to my friend Ari when he was on the bus to work last summer. It was the 2022 I was having. Now it’s the 2023 I’m having too. So at least there’s a poem for it!
Ugh, humans.
I’m sorry to tell you that my new story in Nature Futures features humans. UGH, HUMANS. WHO CAN EVEN WITH THEM. But don’t worry, there are other species in it too. Read Tourist Season!
These five–three questions
I was interviewed as part of the lead-up to the launch of Reckoning’s Our Beautiful Reward issue (bodily autonomy themed issue), and you can read what I had to say over here!