2022 poetry and fiction

[ursula]

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.

Comments

[sporky_rat]

I enjoyed you discussing how you would always be able to smuggle pearls according to your great-aunt.

[ursula]

A key life lesson!