I have a couple of stories that were requested, so I’m picking away at those. One’s a military fantasy piece that I’m setting at Hadrian’s Wall, right around the time it was built. Another’s for the Glitter and Madness anthology, and it’s a fun structure I’m playing with, through which a murder gets told, revolving around a lesbian were-seal. Im finishing the revision of “The Threadbare Magician,” which is a novelette I’d like to get sent off this week. I’ve also got some nonfiction stuff.
I’m also finishing up (hopefully today) the dark mermaid story. Here’s an excerpt:
When she got home, she went to the tanks, curious to see what progress had occurred. She’d put the coral seeds in them late last night. The seeds were globes now, made of a glossy gray material, almost two and a half inches in diameter. She could see something moving inside the globe. Its sides flexed and bulged as the thing inside it shifted. Even as she watched, it shuddered and wobbled. Whatever inside — presumably a mermaid — was eager to escape. Should she help it, perhaps poke a small hole in the side so it had something to work at? She consulted the pamphlet but it said nothing about the hatching process.
But by the time she came back to the tank, the question had resolved itself. A rent in the side was rapidly widening. Through it Petra glimpsed orange scales and pale flesh.
She checked the second tank. There the same thing was happening, although the scales were turquoise rather than reddish orange.
The globe convulsed and collapsed. In a flurry of scales the turquoise mermaid emerged.
Petra stared. She had expected Sea Monkeys.
This was very different.
The mermaid was tiny and perfect as one of the elaborate little fish that school in coral reefs, colored parrot bright. Her upper half was a tiny woman, complete with blue sea shell bra hiding the faint swells of her torso.
She called Leonid. “What are these? Are they intelligent?”
“Of course not!” he crowed, pleased at his creation having deceived her sharp eye.
“But it’s wearing clothing.”
“Look closer,” he said. “All natural coloration. Or engineered, to be more precise.”
Her fingers were tight on the cell phone as she leaned down to look into the tank. The mermaid coiled, long tail writhing in the water. It nosed among the plastic seaweed in the tank, perched atop an arch of rocks and groomed itself, running fingers through its long blonde hair.
“You’re sure?”
“They’re not even animals, really,” he said. “Think of them as little flesh machines.”
The flesh machines floated in their tanks. Petra pulled her eyes away from them.
“Very well,” she said.
That night she set two more seeds into their starting buds, one white, the other purple. It amused her to think that these were Suffragist colors, the same colors banner wearers of the 19th century had sported. She wondered what a suffragist mermaid would look like.
(As a side note, if you’re interested in the editing class that starts today, 4-6 PM PST and runs today and two additional Sundays, drop me an e-mail or a comment, because I’ve still got openings. It’s a class that’s useful not just to editors, but to writers wanting to enhance their own self-editing skills.)
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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In Celebration of International Women's Day: Feminist Futures Storybundle
I’m so pleased that my Feminist Futures Storybundle came out in time for International Women’s Day! This bundle celebrates some of the best science fiction being written by women today, gathering a wide range of outlooks and possibilities, including an anthology that gives you a smorgasbord of other authors you may enjoy!
This is my favorite bundle so far, although I’m already assembling one in my head for next year that will be even better and more diverse. Why? Because I used to work in the tech industry, and there I saw how diversity could enhance a team and expand its skillset. Women understand that marketing to women is something other than coming up with a lady-version of a potato chip designed not to crunch or a pink pen sized for our dainty hands. Diversity means more perspectives, and this applies to science fiction as well. I am more pleased with this bundle than any I’ve curated so far.
In her feminist literary theory classic How to Suppress Women’s Writing, science fiction author Joanna Russ talked about the forces working against the works of women (and minority) writers. A counter to that is making a point of reading and celebrating such work, and for me this bundle is part of that personal effort, introducing you to some of my favorites. Ironically enough this bundle idea started with a particular book, Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin, that fell through at the last minute sadly “” but that’s all the more reason to do this theme again next year for Women’s History month again. 😉 But don’t wait till then – you can find the Elgin book currently available online and it’s worth the read.
And in the name of expanding one’s knowledge and enjoyment of women writing SF, the majority of these books are first volumes of series, and I hope if you enjoy them, you’ll find the others as well as telling other people about them. The Kirstein series is the only one where not all the books are available; she’s currently working on book five and plans seven altogether. Many of them are independently or small press published, showing the depth and quality of work such publishing venues can yield.
I come to the task of writing these notes having just finished reading through a slush pile for an anthology I’m editing, If This Goes On, devoted to political science fiction. Some of the themes there are echoed in some of the works here, and it’s been interesting to note the resonances. Other books in the bundle are more lighthearted or escapist. I hope everyone will find at least a few they enjoy, and that many readers will join me in thinking they’re all swell.
I’ll be doing some video interviews with authors about their books – look for the hashtag #thefutureisfeminist on social media or subscribe to my Youtube channel or newsletter to make sure you get notified when they appear!
Here’s the bundle participants:
Athena Andreadis has produced multiple anthologies focused on women writers and I’ve had the pleasure of being in her anthology The Other Half of the Sky. Its sequel To Shape The Dark focuses on female scientists doing science in ways that move outside the traditional modes. This solid, intriguing anthology holds more than a few creative, inventive stories that you will enjoy.
L. Timmel Duchamp’s Alanya to Alanya is the first volume of her Marq’ssan cycle. Like the Gussoff book, it’s set in a near future Seattle and world that has become fiercely divided by gender, visited by aliens with very different ideas about such things. Political and intricate, this book pulls no punches in setting up a world that echoes that of The Handmaid’s Tale while remaining a unique vision. DuChamp is also a literary scholar and publisher; her Aqueduct Press is publishing great stuff.
Caren Gussoff’s The Birthday Problem is set in a near-future Seattle where a nannite plague has overtaken the world. It deals with issues of connection and mathematics in a multiple point of view narrative that showcases her ability with evocative, illuminating prose, and contains figures like former-WNBA center Didi VanNess and The King of Seattle, an ex-rockstar now living in one of Seattle’s iconic landmarks, as well as thirty cats named Ira.
M.C.A. Hogarth’s Spots the Space Marine features a military heroine who’s also a parent in a book that has aptly been called “Pollyanna meets Starship Troopers”. If you’re not familiar with Hogarth’s work, I urge you to check it out. If you’re a fan of furry fiction, you’ll particularly enjoy her Pelted Universe works, but another favorite of mine is Black Blossom.
Happy Snak by Nicole Kimberling is a fresh and funny romp detailing the travails of running a fast-food enterprise in space as unhappy proprietor Gaia Jones finds her life growing increasingly complicated. My only sorrow is that there isn’t a sequel, because Happy Snak is comfort food of the highest grade,
The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein is the first in a fantastic series by the same name. This is a terrific book with a landscape that fascinates and a protagonist exploring that world and its challenges carefully and methodically, to the best of her efforts. I was delighted to be able to secure this book for the bundle.
Louise Marley’s The Terrorists of Irustan deals with a world where women’s roles are severely limited “” and details the struggle as they begin to fight back. Louise writes under a variety of names, including Cate Campbell, Louisa Morgan, and Toby Bishop, every time with an elegance and empathy that is showcased in this early book of heres.
Vonda N. McIntyre is a favorite writer of mine, and here I’ve stuffed a little extra value in the bundle for you with not one but four books in this Starfarers omnibus edition from the Book View Cafe. When a group of scientists find their alien contact project has been cancelled, they go to extreme measures to keep it going. Also: intelligent squidmoths. Does it get better than intelligent squidmoths?
Kristine Smith is working in military sf and doing it with panache and grace in the Jani Kilian series. Tight and fast, Code of Conduct will pull you into one of my favorite series, with a set of characters and fascinating worldbuilding that will leave you scrambling to find the next volume in this five book series.
Like what I’m doing and want a special insider look that includes writing tips, market news, snippets from works in progress, the occasional story, class discounts, a weekly Q&A and more? Support me on Patreon.
Tiny things floated through the air all around him. He stretched out his palm and kept it motionless long enough that one drifted to be trapped in his palm. A seed, a brown seed. Attached to one end a tuft of hairs, fine and feathery, to carry it along. Carefully he raised his hand, examined it more closely. So small. As it neared his eye, it became no longer brown, ridges and swirls marked its surface in grays and greens and reds that somehow blended together to create the impression of brown from just a few inches farther away.I’m finishing up A Cavern Ripe with Dreams, the sequel to A Seed On the Wind. A version will undoubtedly go out to Patreon patrons before I start shopping the combined novellas around as a single entity.
Bill felt a rush of fear, but a kind that he had never experienced before, something like the fear you feel when someone tells you a frightening story that they believe is true. A terror that was convincing yet somehow dilute. A terror that was not his, somehow.
A fear that was enjoyable.
He realized that it was the creature. That he was feeling its emotions. That if he closed his eyes, he could still see the room like a ghostly overlay across the darkness behind his lids.
He wondered if it experienced the same phenomenon, this double life. He put his hand up and touched it with a fingertip, stroking along the coarse fur that was still damp with eggy fluid. It smelled like newly-split wood, rare and sharp. As he touched it, it shuddered but stayed still, like a woman whose innermost core had been touched, who feared and craved more. At the thought, he grew hard, and he felt it shudder again before it curled tighter around his neck.
He lay there with it around his neck, savoring the mental taste of it, dipping in and out of its perceptions. After a while, his bladder drove him into standing and using the chamber pot beneath his bed. As he pissed, he could feel the creature tasting his sensations in turn.
It made him curious. Settling back onto the bed, he took a syrette from the bedside table, already loaded with honeypain. He injected it in his wrist and lay back to feel the twofold sensation.
First it felt as though the back of his eyes had dissolved, only to be filled with a subtle warmth that flowed out from them, flowing through him until he was only a zone of temperature and sensation, as though he was warm water in a bath, only an outline. But always with that lurking presence perceiving him, keeping him whole. He had loved honeypain for its ability to take him outside himself, but now he realized that it was nothing compared to the creature.
He tried to think at it, to see if it would answer him, but all his thoughts were blurred by the honeypain. He could hear only his blood drumming in his veins, a hard and insistent beat that told him he was alive, as it had before, for sometimes when he was dipped deep in these reveries, he thought himself dead. Now he had that beat but more ““ the creature curled on his chest. Part of him but not part.
I have a couple of stories that were requested, so I’m picking away at those. One’s a military fantasy piece that I’m setting at Hadrian’s Wall, right around the time it was built. Another’s for the Glitter and Madness anthology, and it’s a fun structure I’m playing with, through which a murder gets told, revolving around a lesbian were-seal. Im finishing the revision of “The Threadbare Magician,” which is a novelette I’d like to get sent off this week. I’ve also got some nonfiction stuff.
