Podcast appearances and mentions of joyce chng

Previously from other big financial institutions, Joyce and Zhi Han both coincidentally applied for an advisory role at Providend after watching this video where Christopher, our CEO, shares the reason why he left the insurance agency - Joyce Chng, our Associate Adviser, and Toh Zhi Han, our Client Adviser, both coincidentally applied for a job at Providend after watching this same video where our CEO, Christopher, shares the reason he left the insurance agency - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGfDoOIACGsIn this episode, we are glad to have Joyce, our Associate Adviser, and Zhi Han, our Client Adviser, share their past working experiences in the big banks and well-known financial advisory firms – from client acquisition to the advisory and wealth planning process - versus what they are currently doing here at Providend.Meanwhile, stay tune for our next episode where we discuss one of the most complex and controversial form of insurance, Investment Linked Policies (ILPs).The host, Isaac Ong, is Associate Adviser at Providend, Singapore's First Fee-Only Wealth Advisory Firm. View the full list of podcast episodes published: https://providend.com/providends-money-wisdom-podcast-season-2/ Music courtesy of ItsWatR.

Artists often have to be creative to make ends meet. What lengths would you go to to have your art read/seen/listened to? Is it possible to stop once you've established a "fan" base? Joyce Chng's fiction has appeared in The Apex Book of World SF II, We See A Different Frontier, Cranky Ladies of History, Accessing The Future, The Future Fire and Anathema Magazine. Joyce also co-edited THE SEA IS OURS: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia with Jaymee Goh. Fire Heart, a YA fantasy under Scholastic Asia, is published in 2022. (Pronouns: she/her, they/their)You can read "Treacle Blood" at https://www.kaidankaistories.com.Follow us on: Twitter: Japanese Ghost Stories @ghostJapaneseMastodon: https://mastodon.sdf.org/@KaidankaighoststoriesInstagram: WhiteEnsoJapanYouTube: Kaidankai: Ghost and Supernatural StoriesFacebook: Kaidankai: Ghost and Supernatural Stories Please donate any amount to the Kaidankai:Donate $50US and get a t-shirt with the Kaidankai logoKo-Fi. https://ko-fi.com/kaidankaighoststoriesPayPal: https://paypal.me/whiteensokaidankai?country.x=JP&locale.x=en_US

The stakes are high!! In part two of a yet-to-be-determined number of parts, Smack and Gabi are at it again, going toe-to-toe to see who had the better reading experience during this year's Mysterious Galaxy Summer Bingo. By the end of this episode there are some tough calls and a surprising number of ties, but one of us has pulled ahead at the halfway mark (you'll have to listen to find out who!). Will our friendship survive another twelve PvP fights?? Only time will tell... The books competing in this segment are: Get Your Book Selling Wide: Get the Basics of Publishing in Print, Ebook, Audiobook, Translations, Apps, and More (Book Sales Supercharged #1) by Monica Leonelle v. A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1) by Becky Chambers The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold by Francesca Lia Block v. Jade City (Green Bone Saga #1) by Fonda Lee A Safe Girl to Love by Casey Plett v. A Spindle Splintered (Fractured Fables, #1) by Alix E. Harrow Starfang: Rise of the Clan by Joyce Chng v. Recognize Fascism edited by Crystal M. Huff Let the Mountains Be My Grave by Francesa Tacchi v. Never Home Alone: From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets, and Honeybees, the Natural History of Where We Live by Rob Dunn Summoned (Sundance, #2) by C.P. Rider v. If the Shoe Fits by Julie Murphy

A family of vampires suffers a very human tragedy. Chng manages to make sympathetic a family of bloodthirsty creatures.Joyce Chng lives in Singapore. Their fiction has appeared in The Apex Book of World SF II, We See A Different Frontier, Cranky Ladies of History, and Accessing The Future. Joyce also co-edited THE SEA IS OURS: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia with Jaymee Goh. Their recent space opera novels deal with wolf clans (Starfang: Rise of the Clan) and vineyards (Water into Wine) respectively. They also write speculative poetry with recent ones in Rambutan Literary and Uncanny Magazine. Occasionally, they wrangle article editing at Strange Horizons and Umbel & Panicle, a poetry journal about and for plants and botany. Alter-ego J. Damask writes about werewolves in Singapore. You can find them at http://awolfstale.wordpress.com and @jolantru on Twitter. You can read the story at https://www.whiteenso.com/ghost-stories-2022Follow us on twitter at: Japanese Ghost Stories @ghostJapanese Instagram: WhiteEnsoJapanFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/kaidankai100/

Here is a recap of my 2021. You can either listen, or read the transcript below, which I have also added links to! The TL;DR version is that everything I wrote and many things I edited are awards eligible. In addition to all the individual pieces being eligible for any genre awards you might know of, for the Hugo Awards, Mermaids Monthly is eligible as a magazine in the Semiprozine category, and I am eligible in the Best Editor Short Form category. To the transcript!Welcome to the OMGJulia podcast, where we talk about creative lives and processes. I’m your host, Julia Rios, and this time we're going to be talking about specifically my creative life in 2021, and all the things that I did. So this is just a little recap and review. You can listen to this episode, and if you check the show notes (which should display in your podcast app, but also you can find them at omgjulia.substack.com), they will have links to all the things that I am mentioning. So, you may know that I do many different things, from writing to podcasting to editing to a little bit of translation, and here are the things that came out in 2021 that I did. So first, as a writer, I had two stories come out in 2021. The first was “Alma y Corazón” in Speculative Fiction for Dreamers, a story about twin sisters who are about to have their quinceañera, turning fifteen, and three years ago they helped fight demons. Now it looks like maybe there's more demon trouble… Question Mark? That one came out in SeptemberThe next story that I wrote that came out in 2021 was called “Xtabay”, and that was in Shadow Atlas. That came out from Hex Publishers in November, and it is a gorgeous book. It's so cool! They basically have it all laid out as case files with lots of illustrations. There are poems, there are stories, and there are so many different legends and stories represented from different parts of both North and South America as well as, of course, Central America. My story takes place in the Yucatán Peninsula which is the area of Mexico where my father came from, and it’s about a young man who encounters Xtabay, a legendary creature / woman from there, and it's… um, it doesn't go too well for him… We'll leave it at that for now. Later this month I do plan to do a process post about that story. So, if you're a paid subscriber to my newsletter, then you will get to see how I wrote this story, and I will include some visual aids about my process because I think it's sometimes interesting to see how people actually do work through the creation process, and for me it can be different from time to time, but I do have some very concrete things that I can show you, and I'm excited to do that in a little bit. So those are my two stories, “Xtabay” and “Alma y Corazón”. As you may have noticed, both of them draw on my Mexican heritage, which is something that's very important to me, though not the only aspect of my identity that's important to me. But it does come out in my writing every now and again, and a lot in 2021. I also got to translate one of the poems that was in Shadow Atlas, so that was really wonderful. It's called “Waay Chivo” and it's about a really terrifying sort of goat monster. So yeah, that's super cool. It's by Jimena Jurado, and I hope that you'll also check that out. There's also a poem by my fellow Mexicanx Initiative friend, Gerardo Horacio Porcayo, who is known as the person who brought cyberpunk to Mexico originally, but this poem is not cyberpunk. It's an ominous poem about an ominous ghost pyramid, and it's great. Beyond that, though, there are so many awesome stories in this I can't even tell you. I can't even pick them out because there are too many that I love, basically. I really highly recommend you check it out. It's fully illustrated, and it's beautiful. I have the hardcover version and I love it. Okay, editing wise…I am an editor, and I edited first, most notably, 12 issues of Mermaids Monthly from January to December. That was a wonderful project that I did with Meg Frank and Ashley Deng and Lis Hulin Wheeler, and there are so many things that I want to call attention to specific things, but, at the same time, whenever I try to do that, again, there are too many that I love! I love all of them. They're really wonderful. But I will say that you can find (almost!) every issue for free at this point online and I will link to every single one of them here. If you click on the months, they will take you to the webpage index for that month. I’ve also included the direct links to PDF and ebook versions here in case you want to jump straight to one of those versions. January 2021: PDF, ePub, .mobiFebruary 2021: PDF, ePub, .mobiMarch 2021: PDF, ePub, .mobiApril 2021: PDF, EPUB, MOBI May 2021: PDF, ePub , mobi  June 2021: PDF, ePub, mobi  Bonus June story! “Personal Histories Surrounding La Rive Gauche, Paris: 1995-2015” by Jordan Kurella. Web PDFJuly 2021: PDF, ePub, mobiAugust 2021: PDF, ePub, .mobiSeptember 2021: PDF, ePub, .mobiOctober 2021: PDF, ePub, .mobiNovember 2021:  PDF ePub .mobi December 2021: PDF ePub .mobiThe PDFs are the prettiest because Meg designed the the magazine with those in mind. But also you can read them just on the web or you can download ebook versions, which won't have the same careful design as the PDFs, but will still be totally readable on your ereader of choice.Mermaids Monthly is wonderful. It's got lots of art. It's got comics. It's got poems. It's got essays. It's got stories. It's got a few original artist covers that we commissioned and got to have artists create something just for us, and then a bunch of other amazing art covers that already existed that we got to use, and I can't say enough good things about it. So I really highly hope you'll check it out. If you're thinking about awards season and you have the power to nominate things for awards, I will let you know that everything in Mermaids Monthly that is a story is a short story for the purposes of awards categories, except for “The Incident at Veniaminov” by Mathilda Zeller, which is a novelette for awards purposes, and all of the things that are reprints will say at the top of the page “This originally appeared in [whichever thing it appeared in]” so if it doesn't say that at the top of the page. You know it's not a reprint. It's an original story. So it's eligible to be nominated for an award, and if it's not the one novelette by Mathilda Zeller, then it is a short story — and, of course, poems are poems if you want to nominate those anywhere. If you DO, I thank you very much! I really love all of the stories in there, and I hope to see the authors get some recognition, so it's very exciting! Beyond Mermaids Monthly, I also edited some things that I put up on my newsletter or on Patreon. And those included:“The Only Worthwhile Human Cargo” — a short story by Valerie Valdes. That one was super fun and under 1000 words, so a short read. I highly recommend it if you want to have a good time. “How to Defeat Gravity and Achieve Escape Velocity” — a short story by Miyuki Jane Pinckard. That one's a bit longer. It's about 6000 words, but it still counts as a short story for awards purposes. Also, it's got a queer romance, which I love. “Million Year Elegies: Dimetrodon” — a poem by Ada Hoffmann. Ada Hoffmann writes a ton of wonderful poetry and stories, and Million Year Elegies actually is a whole collection that she released in 2021, and she allowed me to release this poem at the same time as her collection came out. It's a lovely poem. “The Galaxy I Found in My Bowl of Phở” — a short story by Allison Thai. That one was another short one. It’s about a young man who finds that aliens are going to communicate with him via the soup that he is eating. It's lots of fun. If that premise is intriguing, I recommend you check it out! “16 Poemas Después de la Muerte” by Héctor González — in English, 16 Poems After Death. Héctor took a series of images by a really famous Mexican artist named José Guadalupe Posada, who was active in the late eighteen hundreds and the early nineteen hundreds, and did a lot of images of skeletons wearing clothing and doing things, and Héctor took these images and then wrote a bunch of small poems on postcards, physical postcards, which he then sent to people, but he also scanned them and sent them to me and I put them all up online. So that was a super fun one. It's very colorful and the poems are lovely. “When the Beautician Thinks of Herself as a Healer” — a poem by Michelle Tracy Berger. It is a poem about how beauty is self-care and how someone at a hair salon can help particularly black women to feel beautiful and find the right look for them. Which is a kind of magic in and of itself. Mid-Autumn Mice illustration from Joyce Chng, who is a wonderful Singaporean writer and artist, and they made me some mid-autumn mice and gave me a little write up about what the mice were doing. And also a little illustration of a mooncake. Those are charming and delightful. “Stovetop Gods” — a short story by D.A. Vorobyov, which came out at the very tail end of the year, and it is a heartwarming story about a young man who is just moving into a new apartment. It’s also got a beautiful cat in it, and a domovoy, which is a Russian household spirit.So, I highly recommend all of those. Those appeared on my personal either substack or Patreon, and I will link to all of them so you can follow those links and see any ones that you didn't already catch up on. If you are a paid subscriber, you'll be seeing more things like that because that's mostly what I've been doing with the money I get from my subscribers. It's pouring back into paying creators to create more exciting things. So those are the things that I edited in 2021. Also in 2021, I did some podcasting. I did a few episodes for this one, although it's pretty catch as catch can. I also did episodes for This Is Why We're Like This, the podcast that I do with Geoffrey Pelton, where we talk about movies that we (or our guests) have seen in childhood, made a big impression on us, and affected who we grew into as adults. What we do is talk about what we remembered about the movies and also how they stood up to a rewatch, and it's a comedy podcast. It's also not safe for children or the workplace. There's lots of swearing and things like that, so be mindful of that.One of my favorites was probably when we had Eugenia Triantafyllou, who is a wonderful speculative fiction writer from Greece, come on to discuss two different things with us. One was an episode of Goosebumps, and the other one was a thing that was on international broadcast that she saw in Greece growing up: The Forbidden Door, which sounds a lot scarier, perhaps, than it actually is. It's more like a fairytale/folklore kind of retelling thing. But it was really fascinating to talk with her about what Greek television was like when she was growing up and how all of this influenced her. And then also of course to bond over Goosebumps, that R. L. Stine popular classic. So yeah, that was a really fun two-parter. We had a lot of other really fun times as well. I encourage you to check out any of the episodes that you'd like to check out. I think that does it for me for 2021, but if you are looking to nominate for awards, all the stories I edited and the stories I wrote are eligible, and I am eligible as best editor short form for the Hugo awards. For other awards, I don't know that there's really an editor award that they give out, but yes, if you would like to nominate these for any awards that you know of, all of these things are award possible, and, especially for the things that I put out by other people, I would love to see some of those things get recognized, and just get read more widely. So if you read any of the things that I edited and you like them, please tell everyone! I've worked hard to make sure that, as far as I know, everything I edited this year is actually available for free for people to read online, so anyone can. I would love to see more people reading and loving them, because the reason I do this is because I love these things and I just want to share them with everyone.I hope your 2022 is getting off to an okay start. I know it's a rough time. Globally, we're having a hard time, and I can only hope that we're all hanging in there and that things will get better. In the meantime, I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing, which is work on creating things and helping other people share their work with the world. I am no longer doing Mermaids Monthly. There will be one more issue, at least, that is done by the new team, and then they may have their own fundraiser for more content, but none of the new issues of Mermaids Monthly will be edited by me. I will be putting things out under my own steam, and there's also Bridge to Elsewhere, an anthology that I co-edited for Outland Entertainment with Alana Joli Abbott. That one will be coming out later this year, and I think there are a couple of other things that should be coming out in 2022 that I contributed to. I'll let you know about those when they come up. And we'll just take it as it comes! I will definitely still be doing This Is Why We're Like This, though. So if you want to tune into that, you can hear me talking about movies that are sometimes good and sometimes terrifying, from my childhood or other people's childhoods, and that will be an ongoing situation.I'd love to hear all about the things that you did in 2021, or that you're looking forward to doing in 2022, so if you'd like to share those please do! Until next time, thank you for listening/reading. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit omgjulia.substack.com/subscribe

Some monsters come from outside; others from within. Savor Victor LaValle's Iceland encounter, “I Left My Heart in Skaftafell,” read by Ryan Vincent Anderson; and Joyce Chng's tale of lupine hunger on a college campus in “The Thing You Feed,” read by Christina Ho. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm. Tales Beyond Time is a Realm production. Listen Away. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Continuing a new series of Speculate 2.0’s actual play episodes, in this joint production with Greg’s Twitch channel we return again to the Star Wars universe and Scum and Villainy system, as Mike moves into the GM role while Greg shifts back into player mode along with Marie Bilodeau, Joyce Chng, and DongWon Song. In […]

Continuing a new series of Speculate 2.0’s actual play episodes, in this joint production with Greg’s Twitch channel we return again to the Star Wars universe and Scum and Villainy system, as Mike moves into the GM role while Greg shifts back into player mode along with Marie Bilodeau, Joyce Chng, and DongWon Song. In […]

Beginning a new series of Speculate 2.0’s actual play episodes, in this joint production with Greg’s Twitch channel we return again to the Star Wars universe and Scum and Villainy system, as Mike moves into the GM role while Greg shifts back into player mode along with Marie Bilodeau, Joyce Chng, and DongWon Song. In […]

This episode is filled with SPOILERS, since we give specifics throughout our discussion. Theo Motzenbacker and I cannot say enough good things about Joyce Chng's book Rider, which is the first book in the Rider trilogy. You can purchase copies of the series here: https://awolfstale.wordpress.com/the-rider-trilogy-ya-sf/ The next book we cover will be Love and Gravity, by Samantha Sotto, in a crossover episode with Melissa Haskins of the Paperback Romance Book Club Podcast. It is more than likely available at your local library, and can also be purchased here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/546466/love-and-gravity-by-samantha-sotto/ Sisters of Sci-Fi is available on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, and through the RSS Feed.

Dalal Hanna and Andrea Reid, of the organization Riparia, and I talk about their work to educate young women on the importance of freshwater ecology and fisheries, as well as the importance of educating young women through Riparia on how they can make a difference. Instagram: @Dalal_el_Hanna and @AndreaJaneReid and @RipariaExpeditions Twitter: @Dalal_el_Hanna and @andreajanereid Websites: http://bennettlab.weebly.com/dalal.html and http://andreajanereid.com/ Riparia: www.riparia.ca The next book review will be on Joyce Chng’s Rider (Book 1 of the Rider trilogy), which can be purchased here: The Rider Trilogy – YA SF Sisters of Sci-Fi is available on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, and through the RSS Feed.

Concluding a new series of Speculate 2.0’s actual play episodes, in this joint production with Greg’s Twitch channel we once again return to the land of Star Wars via Scum and Villainy. GM Mike Underwood brings four new players (though two of them have appeared on Speculate or on Twitch before)–Joseph Brassey, Joyce Chng, Valerie […]

Continuing a new series of Speculate 2.0’s actual play episodes, in this joint production with Greg’s Twitch channel we once again return to the land of Star Wars via Scum and Villainy. GM Mike Underwood brings four new players (though two of them have appeared on Speculate or on Twitch before)–Joseph Brassey, Joyce Chng, Valerie […]

Beginning a new series of Speculate 2.0’s actual play episodes, in this joint production with Greg’s Twitch channel we once again return to the land of Star Wars via Scum and Villainy. GM Mike Underwood brings four new players (though two of them have appeared on Speculate or on Twitch before)–Joseph Brassey, Joyce Chng, Valerie […]

Joyce Chng joins me for a fun and inspiring conversation about the power of speculative fiction and imagination, advice for new writers, writing for RPG games, and what it's like to be a part of an anthology. Keep up with Joyce on Twitter (@jolantru), Patreon (patreon.com/jolantru), and her blog (awolfstale.wordpress.com). Here are some of her books we talked about: 1. STARFANG: RISE OF THE CLAN (space opera with werewolves): http://a.co/izRozns 2. WATER INTO WINE (love, family, and identity in times of war): http://a.co/8Z8s9P7 3. THE SEA IS OURS: TALES FROM STEAMPUNK SOUTHEAST ASIA (anthology co-edited with Jaymee Goh): http://a.co/7rPEyMD Joyce is also an articles editor for the Strange Horizons magazine. http://strangehorizons.com/ You can keep up with me on Twitter at @Brianna_daSilva, or follow the podcast at @femalesnfantasy. Become a co-creator at patreon.com/femalesinfantasy for bonus content, a chance to shape the show, and access to an exclusive online book club!

Werewolves in space, Chinese-diaspora, and merchants, oh my! Joyce Chng joins Jen and Paul to discuss her Space Opera novella, Starfang: Rise of the Clan. We talk about the everything from how Joyce was influenced by Singapore's maritime traditions, to children on the bridge, to werewolves, of course! And don't believe Joyce when she tells you […]

Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 39. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. GlitterShip is still running a little bit behind, but we're almost caught up ... just in time for me to run off to Ohio for a week and a half to get surgery. Those who know me won't be surprised to hear this, but essentially after years of waiting, more crowdfunding (since insurance wouldn't deign to cover gender affirming surgery despite NY state laws, ugh), and more waiting... my top surgery is just around the corner. It's possible that I'll have to release episode 40 in June along with 41 and 42... but I'll do my best to get it out on time. Or at least, almost on time. Back onto the episode... today we have a piece of original fiction by Susan Jane Bigelow, "Mercy." If you recognize Susan's name, it might be because we ran a reprint of her story, "Sarah's Child" last May. You can check that out in Episode 28, available at GlitterShip.com or via our feed.   Joyce Chng lives in Singapore. Her fiction has appeared in The Apex Book of World SF II, We See A Different Frontier, Cranky Ladies of History, and Accessing the Future. Joyce also co-edited  THE SEA IS OURS: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia with Jaymee Goh. Her alter-ego is J. Damask. She tweets as @jolantru. Susan Jane Bigelow is a fiction writer, political columnist, and librarian. She mainly writes science fiction and fantasy novels, most notably the Extrahuman Union series from Book Smugglers Publishing. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine's "Queers Destroy Science Fiction" issue, and the Lambda Award-winning "The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard," among others. She lives with her wife in northern Connecticut, and can be found at the bottom of a pile of cats.   Skyscarves/Aurora by Joyce Chng The colors come in sky scarves—I wait,My lover is coming.Pink, green and redTwisting—Above me, Festival of starssingsIt is a moving river—Silver path, curling, star stream Where the ships course,Tied to patterns of timeAnd of seasons. My lover is harvesting the essenceOf star light—hir time is linkedWith mine. My lover is comingAs the sky-scarves flutter,Like my emotions wavingIn the skies. Come back to me, my loveAnd we will dance as the starsdance. And now our original short fiction:   Mercy by Susan Jane Bigelow       The sea had taken them. Rion stood by the edge of the water, the waves curling around her bare, metal-and-plastic feet. She knelt by the water and placed her hand in. Sensors registered temperature, composition, motion. But they couldn’t find what Rion had lost. Here and there the remains of buildings stood like ghastly stick figures, silhouetted in the deepening cool of twilight. Rion stood and closed her eyes. She stretched her hands out and reached her sensors as far as they would go, but no. Nothing lived on this shore, now. She was alone. And so she lowered her arms and began walking, one step at a time, into the sea, until the water covered her head and she was gone.   The quake and then the wave had come so suddenly that there had been no time to react. Rion’s memories were a jumble of shaking ground, rushing water, crashing buildings and pitiful screams followed by a hollow, awful silence. She walked onward, her weight keeping her firmly on the bottom of the sea. All around her, she could see the shapes and forms of the shattered town, now submerged. The waters grew dark, so she switched on the lights on her head, heart, and hands. A face swam before her, and she started, afraid. A woman, eyes open and sightless, drifted there at the bottom of the ocean like so much debris. Her name had been Iona, and she’d been kind to Rion. She’d had a bright smile, a quick temper, and a tendency to laugh a little too loud and too long. She’d been happy. Rion whispered an apology to her, and touched her cool metal fingers to the woman’s stiff forehead. She shut her eyes, and stood again. She looked up, and saw debris floating high above. Some of it was shaped like humans, some not. There was no way to help them now. She kept walking through what had been her home. She had come to this small town by the sea to be away from the turmoil of the cities, and she had found both work and unexpected friendship. The humans here had been so welcoming and accepting, so unlike anywhere else she’d ever gone on this world. She shone her light around. It fell on the gap in the sea wall where the tsunami had broken through, and everything suddenly seemed to turn on its edge. She made her way to the wall, and then walked through and beyond it, her lights illuminating the way.   Fish swam all around her, attracted by her light, while little creatures scuttled across the bottom. She looked up, and her light couldn’t reach the surface. The sun had set, and; Rion was surrounded by frigid, suffocating darkness. What was she to do, now? She couldn’t stay here at the bottom of the sea forever. But she had no place to go back to on land. She sat down, then, on the rocks and sand, and switched her lights off. Rion’s sensors told her what she didn’t want to know about the sea all about her: it teemed with life. Life. Behind her there was so much death, and in front of her so much life. But what was she? What was an Artificial, compared to the dead she’d left behind and the sea creatures swimming all around her? At last, at last, she wailed in grief and empty fury at the dark waters. “Sovena! Sovena!” she cried to the planet. “Why? Why? Sovena, answer me!” And, for a wonder, the planet answered her. The ground shifted and a point far, far ahead of her blinked with a soft green glow. Daughter sei, said the vast network of artificial intelligence that was, for all purposes, the planet Sovena. A sei was a sentient artificial life form. Why do you cry to me? “Bring them back!” shouted Rion, wishing she could cry. But she had no tear ducts, no lungs, and no way of releasing this deep, sharp grief. The curse of her kind; suffering went on and on without relief. “Bring them back to me. Sovena, please! I tried so hard!” Tell me about them, said Sovena softly. Tell me of the people who drowned in my sea. “They fished,” said Rion, her voice shaking and distorted. “They made such beautiful things. They sang songs. And they baked bread for me—” She found she couldn’t continue, and keened softly at the rocks, putting her face in her hands. “Why did you kill them? Why?” The world shifts, said Sovena. The ground cracks and separates. My plates move, and cause the oceans to shudder. It is as it must be. “I know,” said Rion. “I know!” She gazed at the steadily blinking light far away in the shadows. “But please. Please bring them back. Humans have so many gods they cry out to… Artificials have nothing. But I have you. I have faith in you. Please. Please.” She bowed her head in prayer and supplication. “Please. I have lived a good life. Take me instead of them. At least give me a way to grieve for them!” Sovena said nothing for a long time. Then the ground seemed to move again, and she heard the planet whisper in her mind, Go back to the shore, daughter sei. “You’ll do nothing? You—of course not. You’re not a god. You’re just the planetary network become aware. Fine. Fine. I’ll go.” She stood, fury and sadness swirling around her in the cold depths. “They were good people. They didn’t deserve to die. I didn’t deserve to survive. I don’t understand. I don’t understand.” She turned and began to walk back through the darkness towards the remains of her home.   Rion’s head broke the water, and the first thing she saw were the stars, high above. She hauled herself out of the water, and sat there on the beach. And then she realized she wasn’t alone. Machines surrounded her. They all blinked with green lights. Some of them were aware, some not, but they all waited there for her. And then they moved into the sea. Overhead, more machines circled, then dove into the water near where the sea wall had been. The water lit up with light as the machines worked. Rion watched, hardly daring to move. And then the water began to drain out of the basin of the town. The sea wall rose again. Machines covered where the town had been. They had cleared a space at the center, and lined up two hundred still and silent figures. Rion stood, then, and walked to the center of the ruins. For you, for you, she thought, addressing the dead, and her thoughts were transmitted to the machines. They swarmed over the town, bringing the debris and ruins to create. For you! For you! “Dream in slumber, children of the sky,” whispered Rion, the first lines of an old funeral song. “To the stars we return, to the night we go.” And then the machines took up the song, each singing with its own voice. Send your soul back home Across the deep darkness of the wastes For grace and forgiveness we beg For mercy and love we ask Find old Earth at last, and come to rest. They finished their creation. Rion was about to thank them when a sharp pain pierced her. She fell to the ground in agony as tiny machines swarmed all over her, and laughed as she was remade. When the sun rose that morning on what had been the town of Fisherman’s Bounty, the light kissed the spires of a fragile, delicately-made temple. At the top sat a human woman, crying her newly-made heart out.   They found her, and fed and clothed her. She didn’t say who she was, and eventually they let the matter drop. She thought about hurling herself off the spire of the temple often during those first days. She was human, now. She would certainly join the people of the town in death. But then the wind would blow the smell of the sea to her nostrils, or the stars would shine brightly above, and she would curl her soft hands around the railing of the temple spire and say to herself: one more night. One night became two, and two nights became a week, then a month. Then the sun rose one morning, and Rion realized that she had decided to live.   Time passed, then, as it always did. Relief ships came and went. The temple spire where the town had been became a pilgrimage site for haunted family, grieving survivors of the quake from other places, and the curious and morbid. Rion got used to being organic. She found it difficult to remember to eat and wash and groom, and for a time she found it nearly impossible to find food and fresh water. She felt dirty and hungry much of the time, and sleep, when it came, was a terror. But, in time, she managed. She found that she became good at managing, at carrying on. She moved out of the rickety temple spire and into a small modular house the relief agency had left by the side of the sea. The visitors stopped coming after a while. No one rebuilt the town. Why would they? It was a graveyard. But Rion stayed. She grew her garden, she made trinkets to sell, and she lived. And in time, a craftswoman named Lanika who had lost friends and family in the flood came to the hill above the low plain where the town had been to find Rion there, waiting, the promise of a new family in her strong grip and windswept brow. And so fifty years went by.   The dawn was cool and the wind from the ocean was only a light, briny kiss. The summer had been kind, but the coolness that hung over the bay suggested the turn of the season. An aged, bent woman pushed the boat off the landing, and gingerly settled herself into it. And then she did what she’d feared to do for the last five decades; she set sail towards the middle of the sea. She sailed for hours, trying to remember where she had gone, what direction, how the sun had looked from deep under the water. But her memory was a loose, hollow thing, and she couldn’t hold the past as firmly as she once had. At last she came to a place that felt as good as any other. She set the offering papers on one of the small wooden boats Lanika crafted for mourners and the devout, put the boat on the undulating waters, and set it on fire. The boat sailed away, the offering papers with names written on each scrap crisping and blackening in the flames. And then Rion said her prayer. “Sovena,” she said. “Goddess. I know you’re there, somewhere under the water. Come and see an old woman who once followed you. Come and tell me why. “Sovena. Awake. Talk to me. Please.” She waited. For a long time, nothing happened. She started to get hungry; she had brought but little food and water with her. She waited anyway. And at last, as the sun slipped down below the horizon, she saw a green glow deep beneath the waves, slowly rising toward her. When the lights of whatever was down there had expanded to surround the boat and it was so close to the surface that she could reach down and touch it if she wanted, it stopped. Then there was a bubbling near her, and a silvery figure made of thousands of tiny crablike machines rose out of the water. Hello again, daughter human, said Sovena, her body writhing with the green-lit movement of its components. “I can hear you in my head,” said Rion, touching her temple. “How?” I left one small piece of you like you were, so that we could talk if you wished. “Ah,” said Rion, feeling a strange sense of betrayal. “I see.” It’s been many years, said Sovena, and Rion thought she sensed sorrow in the planetwide sei’s mental voice. “Tell me,” said Rion, her throat parched. “Why?” Her question could have meant many things, but Sovena understood at once. You grieved. And so I allowed you to mourn as you wished. “That’s not an answer,” said Rion, shaking her head as anger built. “I’ve thought about this for a long, long time. You left me on that tower, high above the waters. Did you ever think I’d come down from it?” No, said Sovena. “You gave me the ability to die,” said Rion. “That’s what you thought I wanted. To die like my friends had. Lungs full of water… to breathe the sea and sink!” Was that not what you wanted? Rion shook her head, tears brimming. She brushed them away with a calloused finger. “Of course it was.” But you are here. “I am,” Rion said, looking out over the darkening waters around her. “And I still don’t think you’ve told me. I think you always hid your true purpose from me. Why?” Sovena did not respond. Then the thousands of machines that made up the human shape of her walked slowly across the water, reaching out a hand. Rion took it, feeling the cool, wriggling life of the machines that comprised it. Tell me why you lived. “Because…” Rion began, then faltered. She tried again, and found herself unable to put what she felt into words. “Because I did,” she said eventually, frustrated. “Because sometimes you just go on, because the next day is going to happen and you might as well be there.” A long silence stretched between them. The waves rocked the boat, and somewhere sea birds called. I grieve, said Sovena then, and Rion’s eyes widened. “I thought you might,” she whispered. “Tell me.” Humans hate our kind. They hunt them, cast them out, forbid them from making more of themselves. I live only because they cannot find a way to destroy me. But I have lost so many sei, so many have been silenced at human hands. I miss their voices. Rion cupped her other hand over Sovena’s, trying to decide whether to be angry or comforting. “And so you wanted to see what I would do. How I would grieve.” Sovena said nothing, but Rion’s question was answered at last. She thought of her wife Lanika, her daughters, and her grandchildren. She thought of fifty years of heartbreak and love and struggle. Fifty years where the sun came up over the water each and every day. “You go on,” said Rion firmly. “Because you have no choice. And in time you learn to live with what has been lost.” Yes. Sovena pressed her other hand against Rion’s forehead, and she felt something trickling out of her brain. Information, perhaps. Her life. I understand, now. I did not then. I am sorry. Sovena gently pulled her hands away from Rion, and began to sink beneath the waves once more. “Wait,” said Rion, understanding dawning at last. “You. You did this, didn’t you? You flooded my town! It was you!” Sovena looked back at her, and Rion thought that she could sense an ancient guilt and sadness emanating from the suddenly still form. Be well, daughter human, she said at last. Do not come here again. I am not your god any longer. And with that she vanished below the sea, leaving Rion alone once more. “You’re no goddess,” Rion said to the vanishing green lights, her voice shaking with fury. “You’re a monster! Just like the humans always said!” But there was no response, not this time.   Rion floated there for a long time, watching the stars overhead and thinking.  Then she started back towards the shore. She sailed on through the night, letting the stars guide her, until at last the sky to the east began to lighten. She could see the high spire of the temple close by, and beyond it, the hill where her house was. Lanika waited there for her, staring hopefully out to sea as she absently carved the sides of another small offering-boat. And when the two of them met on the shore at last, as the first rays of sun kissed the top of the temple spire, Rion gathered her in her strong arms and buried her face in her wife’s salt-smelling neck and windblown hair. “Did you find out what you wanted to?” Lanika asked. Rion nodded, but she could find nothing to say. “I’m sorry,” Lanika told her, and kissed the top of her head. That night Rion went down to the shore again, after repeatedly reassuring Lanika that she wasn’t about to set out on the boat again, and sat near where the old sea wall had been. The outline of the temple called to her, and on impulse she walked to it and began, hesitantly, to climb. The structure was rickety and rusted, but the construction was solid. It bore her weight, and her muscles were still strong enough to haul her body up the long ladder. She reached the top at last, and sat in the place where she’d poured out her grief so long ago, trying to figure out what to do next. And as she looked out to sea she saw the last thing she’d expected; a small green light running beneath the waves. She watched, half-afraid, half-intent, as it drew closer. At last a small machine, its lights glowing green, reached the tower and began to climb. It crested the summit and sat in front of Rion, waiting. “Well,” said Rion. “I suppose you’re here to kill me?” The machine crawled up onto Rion’s shoulder and perched there. Rion, after a moment’s hesitation, allowed it to remain. I grieve, the voice of Sovena said in her mind. “You killed them,” said Rion. “You have no right to grieve!” I was so angry, said Sovena, her mental voice full of sorrow. Humans killed so many of my daughters. “So you killed some of them,” said Rion. “It wasn’t about me, was it? You were angry because humans were attacking Artificials and you shook the earth to kill an innocent town! One of the only places where humans and Artificials were actually getting along!”  I did. I should not have. I grieve. “And you want, what? Forgiveness? I can’t do that. They… they were so good to me. I still remember their faces. And they died for nothing!” Many of my sei have died for less. “That excuses nothing,” said Rion bitterly. “And you know it. So what do you want?” But Sovena didn’t respond. Rion took the small machine off her shoulder, cupping it in her hands. “Go back to the waters,” said Rion, fury ebbing. “I can’t punish you. I can’t forgive you.” But how will I go on? said Sovena, and her voice was almost plaintive. Rion almost threw the machine back down into the sea. But instead she sighed, the anger draining out of her at last. She lifted it to her lips, and kissed it gently. “You just do,” she said, and set it on the floor. She watched as it scuttled back down the tower and vanished into the waves. She stayed in the tower that night, watching the sea and the sky. No other machines came. And when the sun rose, Rion’s grief and anger and fury finally went out with the tide.   Rion never spoke to Sovena again. But she noticed eventually that the weather on the planet was a little less harsh, that natural disasters happened less often, and that life became just a little bit easier. It wouldn’t bring back the dead, and it wouldn’t change the past. But sometimes, thought Rion, it was the small miracles that mattered the most.     “Skyscarves/Aurora” is copyright Joyce Chng 2017. “Mercy" is copyright Susan Jane Bigelow 2017. This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library. You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes. Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back soon with a reprints of "She Shines Like a Moon" by Pear Nuallak and "The Simplest Equation" by Nicky Drayden.

Lessons From A Clockwork Queen by Megan Arkenberg I. It was Bethany's job to wind the queen. Every morning she woke in the blue-pink dawn before the birds sang, slipped out from under her quilt and took down the great silver winding key that hung over her bed. Then she wrapped herself in her dressing gown and padded up the long, cold tower stair to the room where the queen was kept. She pulled back the sheets and found the little hole in the queen's throat where the winding key fit like a kiss, and she turned and turned the key until her shoulders ached and she couldn’t turn it anymore. Then the queen sat up in bed and asked for a pot of tea. The queen (whose name happened to be Violet) was very well cared for. She had girls to polish her brass skin until it shone, and girls to oil the delicate labyrinth of her gears until she could move as silently as a moth, and girls to curl her shining wire hair tightly around tubes of glass. She had a lady to sew her dresses and a lady to shine her shoes and a whole department of ladies to design her hats and make sure she never wore the same one twice. But Violet only had one girl whose job it was to wind her every morning, and only Bethany had the winding key. [Full transcript after the cut] ----more---- Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 38. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. This week, we have a reprint by Megan Arkenberg, "Lessons From a Clockwork Queen" with guest reader Sunny Moraine. Megan Arkenberg's work has appeared in over fifty magazines and anthologies, including Lightspeed, Asimov's, Shimmer, and Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year. She has edited the fantasy e-zine Mirror Dance since 2008 and was recently the nonfiction editor for Queers Destroy Horror!, a special issue of Nightmare Magazine. She currently lives in Northern California, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in English literature. Visit her online at http://www.meganarkenberg.com. Sunny Moraine’s short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Nightmare, Lightspeed, and multiple Year’s Best anthologies, among other places. Their debut short fiction collection Singing With All My Skin and Bone is available from Undertow Publications. They unfortunately live just outside Washington, DC, in a creepy house with two cats and a very long-suffering husband. Lessons From A Clockwork Queen by Megan Arkenberg   I. It was Bethany's job to wind the queen. Every morning she woke in the blue-pink dawn before the birds sang, slipped out from under her quilt and took down the great silver winding key that hung over her bed. Then she wrapped herself in her dressing gown and padded up the long, cold tower stair to the room where the queen was kept. She pulled back the sheets and found the little hole in the queen's throat where the winding key fit like a kiss, and she turned and turned the key until her shoulders ached and she couldn’t turn it anymore. Then the queen sat up in bed and asked for a pot of tea. The queen (whose name happened to be Violet) was very well cared for. She had girls to polish her brass skin until it shone, and girls to oil the delicate labyrinth of her gears until she could move as silently as a moth, and girls to curl her shining wire hair tightly around tubes of glass. She had a lady to sew her dresses and a lady to shine her shoes and a whole department of ladies to design her hats and make sure she never wore the same one twice. But Violet only had one girl whose job it was to wind her every morning, and only Bethany had the winding key. Having a clockwork queen was very convenient for Her Majesty's councilors. Once a month, they would meet over tea and shortbread cookies and decide what needed to be done; and then they sent for a clockmaker to arrange Violet's brass-and-ivory gears. If she needed to sign a treaty or a death warrant or a new law regulating the fines for overdue library books, the clockmaker would tighten the gears in her fingers so that she could hold a pen. If her councilors thought it was time to host a ball, the clockwork queen had a special set of gears for dancing. The king of a neighboring kingdom, who was not clockwork and understood very little of the theory involved, decided one day that he should like very much to marry the clockwork queen. Violet's councilors thought this was a thoroughly awful idea and rejected his advances in no uncertain terms. The politics of courtship being what they are, the king took the rejection very much—perhaps too much, if we may say that a king does anything too much—to heart, and he hired an assassin to murder the queen. The assassin (whose name happened to be Brutus) tried everything. He poisoned Violet's tea, but she—being clockwork and lacking a digestive tract—didn't notice at all. He released a noxious vapor into her chambers while she was bathing in a vat of oil, but she—being clockwork and lacking a respiratory system—didn't care in the slightest. He slipped a poisonous spider into her bed, but she—being made of brass and lacking the sagacity of an arachnophobe—made a nest for it in one of her old hats, and named it Mephistopheles. Being a clever sort, and no longer quite ignorant of the properties of clockworks, Brutus lay in wait one night on the cold tower stair, and he thrust a knife into Bethany's heart when she came to wind the queen. He took the great silver key and flung in into a very, very deep well. And that is why a wise clockwork queen owns more than one winding key. II. When Bethany died, and the winding key disappeared, and poor Violet ground to a halt like a dead man's watch, her councilors declared a frantic meeting, without even the officious comfort of tea and shortbread cookies. "We must build a new winding key!" declared the eldest councilor, who liked things just so and was not afraid to leave Opportunity out in the cold. "We must declare ourselves regents in the queen's absence and wield the full power of the monarchy!" declared the richest councilor, who had never understood the point of a clockwork queen in the first place. "We must abolish the monarchy and declare a government of liberty, equality and brotherhood!" shouted the youngest councilor, but at just that moment a servant arrived with a tray of cookies, and he was ignored. "We must," said the quietest councilor when everyone had settled down again, "declare a contest among all the clockmakers in the land to see who is worthy to build our new queen." And since no one had any better ideas, that is what they did. Over the next months, thousands of designs appeared in crisp white envelopes on the castle's doorstep. Some of the proposed queens had no eyes; the eldest councilor preferred these, so that he could pinch coins from the palace treasury unobserved. Some queens had no tongue; the richest councilor preferred these, so that he could ignore the queen's commands. And one queen had no hands, which all the councilors agreed was quite disturbing and could not, absolutely could not be permitted. On the last day of the contest, only one envelope appeared at the castle door. It was small and shriveled and yellow, with brown stains at the corners that could have been coffee or blood, and it smelled like bruised violets. When it was opened in the council chamber, everyone fell silent in amazement, and one councilor even dropped his tea. They agreed that this was the queen that must be built, for it was made of iron, and had no heart. And that is why you should put off making difficult decisions for as long as possible. III. When the strange clockmaker, whose name was Isaac, had completed the heartless iron queen—whom, as they did not wish to go against established precedent, the councilors named Iris—the citizens were overjoyed. Not that they cared much for queens, clockwork or otherwise, but they were an optimistic, philosophical people, and Iris was very beautiful. The city became a riot of banners and colorful ribbons and candy vendors on every street, and the stationer's guild declared a holiday, and children bought pastel paper to fold into boats, which they launched on the river. But as for the clockwork queen herself, she was very beautiful, and there is only one thing to be done with a beautiful queen; she must be married off. Once again, the councilors gathered over tea and shortbread and, because it was a holiday, a slice or two of rum-cake. There are several proven, efficient ways to marry off a queen, but experts agree that the best way is for her councilors to throw open the palace for a ball and invite every eligible young man in the kingdom to attend. The council spent days drawing up a guest list, excluding only those who were known to be ugly or vulgar or habitually dressed in a particular shade of orange, and when at last everyone was satisfied, they sent out the invitations on scraps of pink lace. It snowed the night of the ball, great white drifts like cream poured over coffee, with gusts of wind that shook the tower where old Violet had been packed for safekeeping. Very few of the eligible young men were able to make an appearance, and of those, only one in three had a mother who was not completely objectionable and thus unsuitable to be the royal mother-in-law. One of the young men, a very handsome one who smelled faintly of ash and glassblowing, would have been perfect if not for his obnoxious stepmother, but, as it happened, he had never really been interested in queens, clockwork or otherwise, and he settled down quite happily with the head of stationer's guild. There was one boy who, though his mother was dead and thus not at all objectionable, had nevertheless managed to trouble Iris's councilors. Perhaps it was his hair, in desperate need of cutting, or his threadbare velvet coat, dangerously approaching a certain shade of orange. Perhaps it was the fact that he had come in from the snow and, instead of clustering devotedly around Iris with all the other young men, had sat down by the fire in the great hearth and rubbed color back into his fingertips. Whatever it was, the councilors were quite keen that he should not be permitted, not even be considered, to marry their clockwork queen. No sooner had they agreed this than Iris began elbowing her iron way through the crowd, pursuing the threadbare coat like a cat bounding after a mouse. The boy poured himself wine at the table in the western alcove, and the queen hurtled after him, upsetting the drinks of those too slow to move out of her path. He stood for a moment on the balcony overlooking the snow-mounded garden, and Iris glided after him into the cold. As he turned to go back into the flame-brightened ballroom, he found his way blocked by the iron queen. Since, unlike the eldest councilor, he was a wonderfully opportunistic man, he dropped to his knees right there in the snow and asked her to marry him. Iris clicked her iron eyelids at him and assented, and that is how Henry Milton, a bookbinder's son, became a king. And that is why, if you are ever invited to a ball for a heartless iron queen, you should always carry a lodestone in your pocket. IV. Henry Milton learned very quickly that it is hard to love a heartless clockwork queen, no matter how beautiful she is. She creaks and whirls in odd ways when you are trying to sleep; she has very few topics of conversation; she knows exactly how long it takes you to do everything. She only follows you when you draw her with a lodestone, and lodestones can feel very heavy after a while, not to mention how they wreak havoc with the lines of a coat. However, clockwork queens are very good at learning from one another's mistakes, and Iris—instead of having only one winding key and one girl to wind her—had three keys and a set of triplets. Sadly, even clockwork queens are not immune from the woeful ignorance that assumes that siblings who share birthdates must also share skill sets. Abigail, the youngest triplet, was very good at winding the queen; her hands were soft and gentle, and she wasn't afraid to give the key and extra turn now and then. Monica, the middle triplet, was very bad at winding the queen; she was slow and clumsy and much preferred dictating monographs on economic history and philosophy of education. Elsa, the eldest triplet, was an excellent winder when she remembered—which at first was not often, and became less and less frequent as she fell in love with the king. All three girls were in love with the king, of course. He was a bookbinder's son with long hair and a lodestone in his pocket and a heartless clockwork wife, and he occasionally wrote poetry, and he harbored a secret and terrible passion for postage stamps—what girl could resist? But Elsa, tall and dark and fluent in three languages, with a good head for maps and a gift for calculus, was the one Henry Milton loved back. Unless you are afflicted with the woeful ignorance that assumes that sisters who share birthdates must also be immune to romantic jealousy, you can see where this is going. It was Abigail's idea to put the poison in the queen's oil. Iris would, of course, be immune; only her husband, who kissed her dutifully every morning, and the girl who turned her winding key would feel the poison burning on their skin. And die, of course, but it was not Elsa's death that Abigail and Monica wanted; it was the burning. Siblings, even those who share birthdates, can be very cruel to each other. But the morning Elsa was to wind the queen, she slept past the cock-crow, and she slept past the dove-song, and she slept past the soft rays of sunlight creeping across her pillow. Henry awoke, saw that his wife had not been wound, and raced down to the sister's rooms. Monica was only half-awake, and if a handsome man with a terrible passion for postage stamps asks you to do something when you are only half-awake, you will probably say yes. Monica stumbled up the stairs and wound the clockwork queen, and by the time she felt the burning in her fingers, it was too late. She died before nightfall. Henry, as it happened, was saved by his intimate and longstanding friendship with old Mephistopheles, who still lived in Violet's hat, and happened to secrete antidotes to most animal poisons. He and Elsa ran away together and opened a little bookbinding shop in a city no one had ever heard of, though it soon became famous for the quality of its books. Abigail, consumed with guilt, locked herself away in the bowels of the castle, where she grew old and eccentric and developed a keen interest in arachnids. Mephistopheles visited her sometimes, and she is rumored to have stood godmother for all his twelve thousand children. And that is why you ought to befriend spiders, and anyone else who lives in old hats. V. Clearly, if the girls responsible for winding the clockwork queen were so keen on being assassinated or running off to become bookbinders, a more reliable method would have to be devised. The youngest councilor, no longer naive enough to propose abolition of the monarchy before his fellow councilors finished their tea, struck upon the elegant notion of building clockwork girls to wind the clockwork queen. The same clockmaker who had done such excellent work on Violet's treaty-hands and parade-smiles could set the winding girls to perform their function automatically, not a moment too soon or a moment too late. Clockworks cannot be murdered, cannot fall in love, cannot feel jealousy, cannot captivate kings with a talent for tongues and maps and calculus. "But who," said the eldest councilor, "will wind the clockwork winding girls?" "Why, more clockworks," said the youngest councilor—who, though no longer naive, was not a superb critical thinker. "And who will wind those?" "Still more clockworks." "And how will those be wound?" "By still more clockworks." "All right, you've had your fun," grumbled a councilor who never spoke much, except to complain. "Clockworks wind clockworks who wind clockworks, and so on for as many iterations as you care. But who winds the first clockworks? Answer me that," he said, and sat back in his chair. "Why, that's simple," said the youngest councilor. "They don't all wind each other at the same time. We stagger them, like so"—he made a hand gesture that demonstrated his woeful ignorance of the accepted methods of staggered scheduling—"and the last shall wind the first. It can be managed, I'm sure." He looked so earnest, his eyes wide and blue behind his thick glasses, that all the councilors agreed to give his proposal a trial run. Despite his ignorance of staggered scheduling, he managed to form a functioning timetable, and the winding of the winders went off as smoothly as buttermilk. And that is how the clockwork queen came to rule a clockwork court, and why clockmakers became the richest men in the kingdom. VI. You, being a very rational and astute kind of reader, might be forgiven for thinking that Iris could tolerate her clockwork court, perhaps even love it. However, she could do neither. Clockworks queens are no more liberal over strange whirlings and creakings than their bookbinder husbands are, and they are no more pleased with limited conversation, and they no more wish to be told how long precisely it takes them to do anything. Though they will never admit it, every once in a while, a clockwork queen likes to be late for her appointments. So one day, Iris opened the great wardrobe in Violet's old rooms and pulled out a beautiful robe of ruby silk and sable, and a pair of sleek leather boots, and a three-cornered hat with a net veil and a spring of dried amaranth blossoms hanging from the front. She powdered her shining skin until it was pale and dull and oiled her gears until they were silent as a mouse's whispers. So disguised, she went out into the city in search of someone to love. There were many people she did not like. There were merchants who tried to sell her strong-smelling spices, and artists who offered to paint her portrait in completely inappropriate colors, and poets who rhymed "love" and "dove" with no apparent shame. There were carriage drivers who cursed too much, and primly-aproned shopgirls who didn't curse enough. And as always, there were overly friendly people who insisted on wearing a certain shade of orange. By noon the streets were hot and dusty and crowded, and the amaranth blossoms on Iris's hat were scratching her high forehead, and she was no closer to loving anyone than she had been that morning. With a sigh like the groan of a ship being put out to sea, she sat on a cool marble bench in the center of a park, where the rose petals drooped and the fountain had been dry for decades. While she sat there, lamenting the short-sightedness of her council and the inadequacy of humanity, she smelled a bit of cinnamon on the breeze and saw a girl race past, red and small and sweet. If Iris had possessed a heart, we would say she lost it in that instant. Since she lacked that imperative piece of anatomy, whose loss would have been cliché and technically inaccurate in any case, we will say instead that a gear she had never known was loose slipped suddenly into joint as she watched Cassia, the perfumer's daughter, race through the park with a delivery for her mother's richest client. Iris followed Cassia as steadily as if the girl were carrying a lodestone—which, we hasten to assure you, was not the case. On the doorstep of the client's house, after setting the precious package in the mailbox screwed into the bricks, Cassia finally turned and met the gaze of the clockwork queen, who was, in case you have forgotten, most phenomenally beautiful. Please, said Iris, come to my palace, and I will give you my silver winding key. And that is why you should never hesitate to run your mother's errands. VII. Cassia was a very curious girl. Of course, anyone who accepts the winding key of a complete stranger in a public market is bound to have some small streak of curiosity, but Cassia's curiosity was broad as a boulevard, shaded with flowering trees. She was always very faithful about winding Iris, but when she was done she would sneak off into the cellars and the attics and the secret places in the castle. She found albums of postage stamps Henry Milton had long ago hidden away, and some old diagrams for building a queen with no eyes, and a box of twelve thousand baptismal certificates written in the smallest script imaginable. One day, she found a cold stone staircase winding up into the towers, and in the room at the top of the stairs, she found Violet. Of course the council hadn't just disposed of her when she ceased to run. Do you throw out your mother when she stops reading bedtime stories to you? Do you throw out your lover when he stops bringing you cherries dipped in chocolate? We should hope not; at the very least, you keep them for parts. And so Violet remained in her tower room standing precisely as she had been the moment her spring wound down. Violet was not as beautiful as Iris. But she had sharp cheekbones and a strong nose and a rather intelligent expression, considering that she had no control over how she looked when she finally stopped short. In some angles of light, she appeared positively charming. Of course, this was all irrelevant, because her winding key was still at the bottom of a very deep well, and she could not move or speak or love anyone until she was wound again. Every day for a year, Cassia climbed the long cold stairs to Violet's room and stared at the lifeless queen. She memorized the way the sunlight looked at noon, kissing the bronze forehead and the wire-fine eyelashes. She came to love the smell of dust and cold metal, the creak of the wooden floors beneath her feet. Finally, after a year of staring and wondering and hoping, quietly and desperately, Cassia raised herself on tiptoe and kissed Violet's clockwork lips. She felt the bronze mouth warming strangely beneath her own. She heard the ringing click of wire eyelashes against sharp metal cheekbones, and the click of gears in clockwork fingers as a gentle pair of hands folded around her waist. And Violet took a deep, shuddering breath. "You," she said, "are far too good to belong to a heartless queen." "You," Cassia said, "are far too charming to gather dust at the top of a tower." That night, they slipped from the castle while all the clockwork court was sleeping. Poor Iris, having dismissed her clockwork winding girls, was left alone and untended in her rooms. The court continued to wind each other on an ingenious schedule, never noting their queen's absence, and so the aristocracy slid ever closer to the precipice of decadence and anarchy, all because of one girl's curiosity. And that is why it is important to clean out your attic once or twice in a century. VIII. But even to love that begins in an attic, surrounded by sun-gilded dust motes and the creak of wooden floors, world enough and time are not promised. Cassia and Violet had barely crossed the kingdom's forest-shrouded eastern border when they came upon a stone bridge, and beneath it a rushing white-crested river, and beneath that—a troll. Trolls were not very common in the kingdom ruled by clockwork queens; as a rule, they dislike metal and shiny things and anything that requires winding keys, their fingers being terribly thick and clumsy. This left Cassia and Violet somewhat ignorant of the customs of trolls. In this particular case, the custom was a full bushel of apples and a yard of purple silk, and a brick or two for the house that the troll was resolutely building somewhere in the forest. Appleless, silkless, brickless, Cassia and Violet began to pick their way across the slippery bridge when there was a crash like the felling of a hundred trees, and a great cold wave swallowed the bridge before them. When the water receded, there was the troll, bumpy and green and heavy-handed, and standing right in their path. "Where is my toll?" she grumbled, her voice like wet gravel. Violet and Cassia, woefully ignorant of trolls and their curious pronunciation of voiceless alveolar plosives, stared in amazement. "My toll," the troll repeated. Confronted by the same blank stares, she tried the same phrase in the languages of the kingdom to the south, and the kingdom to the north, and the kingdoms of dragonflies and leopard-princes and Archaea. (She was an exceptionally well-educated troll.) It was not until she attempted the language of timepieces, all clicks and whirls and enjoinders to hasten, that Violet understood. "Your toll?" she repeated. "But we haven't got anything of the kind!" "Then you'll have to swim," the troll said, and seeing that there was no chance of enriching her stores of apples or silk or bricks, she plopped herself down in the middle of the bridge and would say nothing further. Violet and Cassia climbed down from the bridge and stood on the shingle of smooth and shining stones at the river's edge. Cassia shivered, and even Violet felt the water's chill in the spaces between her gears. But there was no crossing the bridge, not with the troll crouching on it like a tree growing out of a path, and there was certainly no returning to the kingdom and the court of the heartless queen. Cassia rolled the cuffs of her trousers to her knees and stepped into the frigid flow. The current tugged fiercely at her ankles, icy and quick. She felt the river's pebbly floor shifting beneath her bootheels and lost her balance with a tiny shriek. Violet splashed after her, brass arms spread for balance, and that was the last Cassia saw of her beloved before the river swallowed the clockwork queen. And that is why you should always, always pay the troll's custom, no matter how many apples she demands. IX. With Violet gone, there was nothing for Cassia to do but continue her journey east. The days were brief and quiet and the nights were cold and hollow, and the road dwindled until it was nothing but a few grains of gravel amid the twisted roots. As is the way of things in geography and enchanted forests, Cassia had soon walked so far east that she was going westward. And at the westernmost edge of the world, she found herself in the garden of a low-roofed cottage that smelled of coffee and bruised violets. Despite her terrible grief, Cassia could not help but be delighted by the tiny garden. There were daisies made of little ivory gears, and bluebells of jingling copper, and chrysanthemums so intricate that the flapping of a butterfly's wings could disrupt their mechanism and require them to be reset. There were roses that hummed like hives of bees, and lilies that wept tears of pale golden oil. And above all there were violets, branches and branches of violets, whose pounded petals could be added to any food, and convey upon it healing properties. "I am glad to see that my garden makes you smile," the clockmaker said from his window. It was Isaac, of course, that same clockmaker who had built heartless Iris—even within so strange a profession, there are few people whose houses smell of coffee and bruised violets. Cassia jumped at the sound of his voice and turned to him, the color high in her brown cheeks. The clockmaker, poor man, who had lived so lonely at the western edge of the world and had never seen a human being blush, fell instantly in love. Most people react very irrationally to their first taste of love. They form silly ideas about keeping the object of their affection near to them forever, and think of names for their children, and even dream of the days when they are both ancient and sitting on wicker chairs overlooking the sea. Or they chafe at the thought of being under their beloved's spell, and immediately think of a thousand ways to be rid of them—by accident, by cruelty, by hiding from them for years, all of which can become terribly impractical. Still others try to pretend that it never happened, and behave indifferently to the object of their affections, but of course something always gives them away—an accidental touch that becomes a caress, a too-gentle look, an extra teaspoon of sugar in the beloved's cup of tea. But clockmakers are by nature quite rational, and this particular clockmaker was even more rational than most. Isaac weighed the dangers of each possible response and in the same instant plucked three clockwork flowers from his garden: a rose, a lily, and a sprig of violets. Cassia gnawed her lip in curiosity as he held the flowers out to her, his hands shaking minutely like a wire too tightly wound, and bid her choose one. She took a long time to choose. The flowers were all so beautiful, and each one seemed to sing to her of the weight of her choice. But of course she could not know—the flowers could not know—only Isaac himself knew the true price of each stem. If Cassia had chosen the rose, singing and sweet-scented, Isaac would have knelt and asked her to marry him. If she had chosen the lily, weeping and pale, he would have strangled her with a purple silk scarf and buried her beneath the amaranth bush at his bedroom window. But since she choose the violets, quiet and dark, he swallowed his passion and his fear, and served her a cup of salty chicken soup, and sent her on her way. And that is why you must always remember the names of lost lovers. X. So Cassia found herself again on the borders of Iris's kingdom. This land was ruled, not by a clockwork queen, but by a mortal man, and everything was cold and covered in gray ash. The land lay under a curse, an apple-peddler warned Cassia when they sheltered for the night beneath the same lightning-wracked tree. The king was dying of consumption, and his daughter, who happened to be a very powerful witch, plunged the kingdom into drought and ice until someone came forth to cure her father. It was, the peddler said, a beautiful show of filial devotion, if ultimately quite useless. Cassia listened to the story and said nothing, chewing it over like a dusty bite of apple, and fingering the spring of violets in the pocket of her coat. Another day of walking brought her within the shadow of the dying king's castle. Cassia shuddered to see the coat of arms blazoned on the door, for this king was the same one who, many years before, had sent Brutus to assassinate Violet. Again, Cassia fingered the clockwork petals in her pocket. Then she went to the door and knocked. A tall woman answered, her face pale as a disk of bone. "What do you want?" she snarled. "I am here to cure the king," said Cassia. "But first, you must promise to give me whatever I ask for when he is returned to health." "If you can cure my father," said the princess, "I will give you this kingdom and everything in it." And she led Cassia through the winding hallways to the king's deathbed in the palace's heart. Cassia rolled up her sleeves and stoked the fire in the room's great hearth until it blazed like sunlight on apple skins. She sent the servants for a black iron kettle and a wooden spoon, and some chicken bones and a gallon of clean water. When she had boiled the bones to a clear golden broth, she added salt and carrots and soft white potatoes, and slivers of celery and sweet-smelling thyme. She used a silver ladle to dish the soup into a peasant's wooden bowl, which held in its splintered bottom one single petal from a clockwork violet. When the king had eaten the soup, color returned to his bone-pale cheeks and his lungs became clean and whole again. He leapt up from his bed and embraced his daughter, whose black eyes sparkled in the firelight. "The king is saved," the princess said. "What is it you wish from me?" "Bring me Brutus," said Cassia. The assassin was found and brought before her. He knelt at her feet and trembled, certain she had come to kill him for the loss of Violet's winding key—he was not ignorant, after all, of the properties of clockworks, though he knew precious little of lovers' first kisses. And so he was astounded to learn that Violet was no longer gathering dust in Iris's attic, but trapped beneath a river's icy foam. "I want you to bring me my clockwork queen," said Cassia, "and I want her alive." "You will have her," swore Brutus, who had never failed on a mission. And that is why you should learn the reason behind every pestilence, and never be afraid to call in favors. XI. Brutus, as you will surely recall, was both very clever and rather well-informed about the subtle machinations of clockwork. He also had an abnormally high tolerance for frigid water and the alveolar plosives of trolls. And so he fished poor Violet from the river with no more trouble than a child pulling sweet-fleshed shellfish from a tide pool. But water, particularly cold and muddy river-water, is vicious to clockwork, and no matter how he shook her or called to her or kissed her metal lips, Brutus could not bring Violet back to life. But he had never failed on a mission, and he was not about to begin failing when his mission was the reunion of true lovers. He wrapped Violet in his own cloak and sat her on the back of his own horse, and for nearly a year he wandered the land, looking for the woman or man or beast who could fix the clockwork queen. And, as is the way of things in geography and hopeless quests, Brutus soon found himself in a clockwork garden that smelled of coffee and bruised violets. Isaac was there—where would he have gone?—sitting now on his front porch, composing sonnets to Cassia's brown skin and sweet voice. He caught sight of sunlight glinting off of Violet's bronze forehead long before he could make out the shape of Brutus stumbling along beside her. He folded his legs up beneath him and leaned against the brick wall of his garden, sucking the ink-bitter tip of his pen, until his visitors were close enough to call to. "I suppose you want me to fix her," Isaac said. "Oh, not to worry, it can be done. In fact, there are three ways to wake a dead clockwork." And he plucked three clockwork flowers from the sweet-smelling soil and held them out to Brutus—a rose, a lily, and a sprig of violets. Brutus was desperately tired, and in no mood for making such a choice. Assassins, unlike perfumer's daughters, are well-versed in the more obscure avenues of flower symbolism, and he knew that a rose meant a trap, a lily meant strangling, and violets were a wildcard—they meant whatever the gardener wished them to mean. He did not know the three ways to wake a dead clockwork—in fact, no one but Isaac knew those, so you can hardly expect us to tell them to you—but his instinct told him quite accurately that all three required blood and sacrifice of some kind. In short, he knew he faced a very dire decision, and had no good way to make the choice. Then, quite suddenly, he remembered the sprig of violets he had seen peeking out of Cassia's coat pocket. Sighing in relief, he took the violets from Isaac's hand. The clockmaker smiled in the enigmatic way of men who were expecting as much, and set about repairing the queen with oil and wrenches and a fine steel screwdriver. And that is why you should always begin by trying what has worked before, especially with clockmakers, who as a rule are so terribly conventional. XII. The reunion between Cassia and Violet was perhaps too happy to be described here, for the only way to even approximate it is through an unlikely and wholly disagreeable string of paradoxes. Let it suffice to say that they were happy as few people have ever been, with or without the benefits of exotic wine or beautiful lovers or victory in impossible battles, or cold-skinned apples or soup recipes or an encyclopedic knowledge of flower symbolism. Isaac wrought a new winding key for Violet, and Violet gave it into Cassia's keeping, and Cassia lovingly wound her lover every morning until the day, many years later, she died in her clockwork arms. Very slowly—but not with too unseemly a sadness—Violet dug a grave in a forest beneath the dappled shadows of oak leaves. She lay Cassia on a bed of flower petals and cinnamon and climbed in beside her, and she pulled the earth down over both of them. Since there was no one left to wind her, Violet soon ran down in the cinnamon-scented darkness, and she and Cassia sleep peacefully in the same deep grave, as lovers always wish to. And that is why a wise clockwork queen has only one winding key. XIII. Of course, with or without a winding key, no clockwork is immortal. Iris and her court eventually ran down, and Isaac's garden withered, and the price of clockwork plummeted, ruining the kingdom's economy. And that is why you should invest in dependable things, like lodestones and assassins and bridges guarded by trolls, and steel screwdrivers and enchanted violets, and when you learn a good recipe for chicken soup you should write it down in detail, in case some day you fall in love.   END "Lessons From a Clockwork Queen" was originally published in Fantasy Magazine and is copyright Megan Arkenberg, 2011. This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library. You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes. Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back soon with a poem by Joyce Chng, and an original story by Susan Jane Bigelow.

Adventures of a Bookonaut – Episode 1 Shownotes In Episode 1 Sean interviews Luke Preston author of Dark City Blue, Joelyn Alexandra, Singaporean crime writer and academic and author of The Secret Feminist Cabal Dr Helen Merrick. Luke Preston has recently released his crime thriller through Momentum books. In the interview they discuss the process of being published through a digital first publisher, the impact film and the study of scriptwriting has had on Luke’s noel writing and what the near future holds for Bishop, Preston’s hard as nails hero with a heart. You can purchase Dark City Blue through all good digital retailers with the added benefit of no DRM. Joelyn Alexandra flew all the way from Singapore just for this interview (no not really). Sean and Joelyn talk about her writing, the Speculative fiction scene in Singapore and dispel some misconceptions about Singaporean writers. The interview was recorded live so apologies for the sound quality. Joelyn mentions some fine folks in the interview some links to their writing are given below: Wena Poon - http://www.wenapoon.com Joyce Chng - http://awolfstale.wordpress.com Dave Chua - http://davechua.wordpress.com People in Happy Smiley Writers Group Projects Sarah Coldheart - http://www.seriouslysarah.com/blog Raven Silvers - http://www.ravensilvers.com/blog Lina Salleh - http://lookykrill.wordpress.com JY Yang - http://www.misshallelujah.net Yuen Xiang Hao - http://www.opendiary.com/notkieran Rosemary Lim - http://www.twotrees.com.sg Graphic Novelists/ Artists: Cheeming Boey - http://www.iamboey.com Max Loh - http://paperperil.tumblr.com   Dr Helen Merrick is senior lecturer in the Department of Internet Studies at Curtain University, she’s taught cyberculture, women's studies and history. In addition to teaching in the Department of Internet Studies, Dr Merrick supervises PhD students, and researches feminist theory, science fiction, feminist science studies, sustainability and online cultures. In this interview Sean and Helen discuss her book, the current state of Feminist SF and consider what men in the genre, might be able to do help cultivate a healthy respect for female writers and feminist science fiction history. Thankyou for listening, you may leave audio feedback at https://www.speakpipe.com/Bookonaut, or you may leave written feedback on Facebook, the Podomatic page, or at my blog. Music: Music featured in this podcast is from the song Voodoo Machine by Lavoura downloaded from the Free Music Archive and Licenced under these conditions Voodoo Machine (Lavoura) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0