Ursula

My bisexual assassin/starship princess story "Closer than your kidneys" is up now at Frivolous Comma!

I also wrote a little about where the title comes from and an unexpected influence.

My novelette "The Fifteenth Saint" is in the May/June issue of Asimov's! Right now you can also read the beginning on the Asimov's website.

This is a story about a man whose best friend is a book, in a city that's ever more hostile to machine intelligences--and the way life can simultaneously feel very ordinary and full of doom. There's an attractive spy, and a bus, and a standardized exam. If you read it, I'd love to hear what you think.

My newsletter now has a third issue!

This one contains a particularly energetic cat picture.

This year I published a short story, a novelette, and two speculative poems.

novelette

"The Last Tutor" was in Asimov's Science Fiction this spring. It involves a furious, isolated teenager hacking their way to great justice:

All of Ise’s tutors had this problem. They thought that because Ise was neither a girl nor a boy they would be obsessed with fucking mysticism and want to spend all their time reading poetry about the ineffable oneness of the universe. The Saint of Vines, if they existed, would not love Ise. No one did.

I wrote a little about the story's inspirations on the Asimov's blog.

short story

"The Spirits of Cabassus", a Byzantine ghost story, was on the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast.

A donkey had bitten Prisca's brother once, while he was trying to recollect a quotation of Plutarch, and he had nearly dropped a saddle-bag in the mud. Prisca found herself telling the story, which somehow led into the childhood game where her brother portrayed a martyr and she was all the lions. “We should have found a cat like your ship-friend, for realism.”

“I hope you had better friends than your brother and stray cats!”

Prisca, by and large, had not. She felt as if that might be changing—but this was an illusion born of Taesis' charm. The other woman would be off to the next holy site soon enough, no matter how much fun it was to trade stories of the impossibleness of brothers.

poetry

Going Up to Hanford, which was in Asimov's last summer, is about science, engineering horror stories, and my fraught relationship with rainbows.

Packing Up, at Polu Texni, started as half a dare from sovay about the unpoetic nature of moving, and became a thing of its own.

My poem "Going up to Hanford" is in the current issue of Asimov's, and right now you can read it on their website.

The May/June issue of Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, including my novelette "The Last Tutor," is officially out! Shout if you see it in the wild--I think it may be a while before my contributor copies and I are in the same place.

My story "The Spirits of Cabassus" is coming out on the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast later this year! Here is the official announcement.

"Spirits of Cabassus" is about ghosts, chronic headaches, and a radical intentional community in the fourth-century Byzantine empire.

My novelette "The Last Tutor" is officially scheduled to appear in the May/June 2022 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine! It contains a terrible teenager, a six-legged salamander, and the universe's worst solution to the trolley problem.

A velokab can more or less pilot itself. But machines can’t make moral choices. Or strategic ones either, supposedly. That’s why, if a kab ever crashes, its driver is supposed to pay the price.

When people talk about humans taking responsibility, they always seem to mean somebody else.

My story The Association of Twelve Thousand Flowers is now available to read for free at the Cossmass Infinities website!

My story "The Association of Twelve Thousand Flowers" is now for sale, as part of the January issue of Cossmass Infinities. The story involves unions, sex work, murder, ride-shares, elaborate descriptions of hair ribbons, exuberant bisexuality, and a planet that isn't ours.

( Here are some of the ideas braided into the writing... )

( I made two big changes... )

She stomped on the pedals. Her velokab lurched forward, straight toward a tourist hugging an overstuffed duffel. The tourist dropped their bag. I started to scream. But the velokab’s sensors cut in and jerked sideways, sliding the kab into traffic a hand’s-breadth behind a fat gray truck.

I watched the kab drive away, bobbing and turning through the traffic like a candy wrapper floating down the river. I made myself relax my toes and my fingertips. I thought about breezes on water. But my breath was still knotted up like a Company contract. I had almost stolen somebody’s life, because she hurt my feelings.

You’re shaking your head. You wouldn’t hold me to account. The judges wouldn’t either, no matter how smug they are, in their snow-white wigs. That’s what kab drivers are for: to be responsible. A velokab can more or less pilot itself. But machines can’t make moral choices. Or strategic ones either, supposedly. That’s why, if a kab ever crashes, its driver is supposed to pay the price.

When people talk about humans taking responsibility, they always seem to mean somebody else.

This story isn't actively about math, but it is about work. One of the characters has taken a job that keeps her away from her family for long stretches of time. One of the places I thought about, while writing that character, was Alberta. That's a place I've been for work. It's a place my dad worked in, too--he lived in a hotel for weeks at a time, doing engineering design for oil pipelines, in a year the US economy was struggling. We had dinner together once, when I was flying into Edmonton from one state and he was flying out to another, and traded paperbacks. I thought about the wide-open Edmonton sky, writing this story.