I’ve dabbled in horror before, though not at length, but this one came up and ate my brain. And I’m really fucking proud of it actually.
This one emerged out of some bits of trans community discussion on Bluesky crossed with some conversations I was having with a friend. And also, apparently, I started writing trans body horror while recovering from top surgery, so that’s also kind of a thing.
So into the pot goes trans monster discourse, a bit of Lovecraft, a spoonful of Shelley, something I described when starting to hash out the idea as “you must identify with womanhood, you must desire womanhood (both personally and intimately), this is mandatory, this will be enforced”, treatments of masculinity as intrinsically monstrous and common transmasculine mind-glitches about that, the idea of adolescence as both a crucible for identity and a time when the adults can try to enforce control over it, and the homophobia of the 90s for an added layer of claustrophobia.
What emerged from all that is… I love these kids so much. They’re doing their best in trying circumstances. They’re taking care of each other as best they can. They have a found family, despite parental interference, and they will defend it, and each other, with their lives.
I wrote it as a novella and then the kids came back to me and said “This is underwritten, you need more of these other characters and look how that fleshes out your thematics”, so, welp. (That’s why I’m talking about it now, I hadn’t for the first version and now I’m just. These boys! I love these kids. Also I should probably post here occasionally, shouldn’t I?)
I completely neglected to mention that I self-published “Ragdoll: A Monster’s Soliloquy” on the Trans Day of Visibility. This is up as a pay-what-you want available in epub and pdf. The illustration work is my own, and the formatting was done by my perpetual partner in literary crimes, Celia Lake.
I will warn you that Ragdoll is basically like nothing else I have written, it is intensely a niche piece, and if it’s not your cuppa that is absolutely fine. It is my most not-for-everyone story but the people it’s for it is pretty extremely for and it mattered to me to put it out in the world.
For content warning, uh.
“Ragdoll” is body-horror-adjacent, cosmic-horror-adjacent, is probably technically first person but is addressed to an unspecified ‘you’ who does not have any dialogue in the story but is occasionally reacted to, and is an extended rumination on transition, the monstrous nature of puberty, cicadas, terrible unicorns and their implications for AFAB-raised social trauma, and my obsession-since-age-seventeen with the Erasure cover of “River Deep, Mountain High”, originally a Tina Turner song. If you imagine the speaker as a polite, affable xenomorph who is gently baffled and exhausted by humanity you more or less have the vibe.
And I managed to update it in my published works page without ever mentioning it here, because I am a silly being with the executive function of a carrot, and I’m allergic to carrots.
I am, as always, completely on top of things, but this Kickstarter has four days or so to go and is $500 or so short of funding as of this post. I have a story in there – “The Meeting of the Branes”, a story about accessibility, autism, and aliens living in hyperspace.
But I have updated the website with links to two publications: Bioluminescent: A Lunarpunk Anthology, which contains “Neptune’s Due”, and the online version of Underland Arcana’s publication of “From or Belonging to the Spring People”.
For those who are familiar with Elise Matthesen’s Hugo-winning jewelry, “From or Belonging to the Spring People” is one of those stories that is based on, in this case, one of her necklaces, of eponymous name; for those who are not, this is the tweet that made it happen. For all your “fairies in a museum, to mutual incomprehension” needs.
Right then! A couple of announcements because I missed one and then I had two land near simultaneously and thus I have achieved three things make a post and am ready to roll. In chronological order!
First of all, my story “Seventh Page of the Heartwell Gazette” has come out in the second issue of Archive of the Odd, “A Supernatural History”. This is an ebook magazine and can be hunted down and dragged back to your lair for your own savage consumption from one of the links here, according to your preference. People tell me my monster story is very sweet, and I say I was trying to balance off appropriate amounts of “sweet” and “oh. oh no. oh no.”
Secondly! The Kickstarter/preorder for Bioluminescent is live and, as of this post, about half funded. (Neil Gaiman hasn’t tweeted about it yet.) My story in here involves an earnest autistic postdoc with a special interest in phosphorus reclamation from agricultural runoff, who is more than a little anxious about fitting in at his new job in the base on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico.
And thirdly! Queer Sci Fi‘s latest yearly flash contest book has been released! Somewhere in there is my “The Satyr and the Wishing Pond”, which manages in fewer than 300 words to pull off a transition story and an MLM supernatural romance. Here is a compilation of sources for the epub version, and hardcopies are available via Amazon.
When I saw the announcement for this book I really, really, really wanted to get something into it. I have some solarpunk stories written, and I like the idea of writing in ecologically sustainable futures, but the lunarpunk inclusion of the more mystical side of life is 100% absolutely my jam.
So I wrote “Neptune’s Due” — a chill little story about an autistic postdoc trying to figure out if he’s going to mesh with the culture of an ocean floor research base — and submitted it. And was absolutely delighted when they accepted it.
Recently Bioluminescent released the names of the authors I’m sharing a TOC with, and it includes not only some folks I know from Recognize Fascism but also Starhawk and Neil Gaiman. So I have a sort of amiable shy wave at folks I’ve seen before and also a whole heap of whoa that happened.
Yeah yeah I haven’t had a lot to say for a bit, I am tired and bad at updates but anyway. The wonderful nonbinary author interview I participated in way back when has been reposted at Reads Rainbow.
This was a great experience and I’m glad it’s available again.
My last sale of 2021 is now live at Escape Pod, “A Dragon In Two Parts”, narrated by Lalana Dara.
That brings me to four things out this year, three short stories and one poem:
“Of Winter and Other Seasons”, in Climbing Lightly Through Forests: A Poetry Anthology Honoring Ursula K. Le Guin
and
“Drain On Society”, in the We Cryptids anthology
“Like a Cat Needs a Bicycle”, in the C.A.T.S: Cycling Across Time and Space anthology
and “A Dragon In Two Parts”, in Escape Pod.
I should probably have mentioned this before halfway through the con but I am not equipped with that quantity of executive function and I am very tired because this has sure been a decade or two, this past year. I am commuter-conning Worldcon in DC. (In practical terms this means that I am not around for evening events and my arrival time is Variable depending on consciousness and the vagaries of the Metro, but I can be seen wandering around.)
I also did not have the executive function to fill out the “do you want to be on a panel” form so I am merely attending and being cautiously sociable and going to things. I have encountered a number of old friends from rasfc and other such places, chatted with folks at the Zombies Need Brains table, and briefly made gleeful blaseball noises with Mur Lafferty. (I was wearing my Flowers jersey today.)
On the off chance that anyone wants to find me I have a Recognizable Hat. It looks something like this.
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