Podcast appearances and mentions of julia rios

Pig disposals, dirty feet, and yabba-dabba-doo, oh my! Shaun Duke, Julia Rios, and Daniel Haeusser join forces to discuss 1994's The Flintstones! Together, they chat about the history of the original show, tackle the film's nonsensical plot choices, discuss 1990s practical set design, and get grossed out by feet, plus much more! Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy the episode! Show Notes: If you have a question you'd like us to answer, feel free to shoot us a message on our contact page. Our new intro and outro music comes from Holy Mole. You can support his work at patreon.com/holymole. See you later, navigator!

Stallone's butt, fast food wars, and the three seashells, oh my! Shaun Duke, Trish Matson, and returning champion Julia Rios join forces to tackle 1993's Demolition Man! Together, they try to make sense of the film's timeline, discuss the innovation of Taco Bell, and unpack the extremes of radical freedom and radical control. Plus more! Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy the episode! Show Notes: If you have a question you'd like us to answer, feel free to shoot us a message on our contact page. Our new intro and outro music comes from Holy Mole. You can support his work at patreon.com/holymole. See you later, navigator!

The life of a chess player is often emotional. There can be huge wins and the joy of learning, but also painful losses and sluggish improvement. Helping me gain new insights into how to address these challenges is clinical psychologist and co-host of the ChessFeels podcast, Julia Rios.Julia combines her professional knowledge with her chess experience to offer some brilliant insights into “chess psychology.”In this episode, we discuss:Does chess offer more emotional challenges than other endeavors?Should you not care about your rating?Does the expectation to improve hinder our enjoyment of chess? Bonus: A chess genie offers Julia one wish but she insists on getting three.More From Julia:ChessFeels Podcast ChessFeels TwitterJulia's Twitter>> Join my official FREE club for The Chess Experience on Chess.com

Cults, pontificating academics, and not eidetic memory, oh my! Shaun Duke, Daniel Haeusser, and Julia Rios join forces to take down The Da Vinci Code (2006). Together, they untangle the film's nonsensical plot, question whether Langdon knows what words mean, get deep into religious folklore, and so much more! Thanks for listening. We hope you […]

Ono (⁠⁠⁠@TheOnoZone⁠⁠⁠) talks to Julia Rios of the chessfeels podcast about Chess Psychology, Chess Culture + Why Losing Hurts (so much), and more. On this episode: (01:18) What Julia loves most about chess (03:50) What Ono loves most about chess (04:32) How your psyche influences your chess (07:36) Julia's chess style + personality (10:26) Chessfeels on Ono's openings + sex life (11:16) Why honesty is key in chess improvement (13:06) Julia's update since chessfeels season 2 (16:05) Why Julia's playing (hyper)bullet now (18:33) If Julia feels social chess pressure (21:52) Julia's funny Twitter (22:59) How the chess community hooked Julia (23:40) Julia on being a woman in chess (26:06) The #1 priority to change chess culture (28:31) Why Julia never joined a chess club (32:45) Why speaking up is important (35:01) Why chess losses hurt so much (40:03) How we can respond better to losses (43:37) Chessfeels pregnancy + Ben admiration Come talk with Julia + Ono in the Zoom Hangout on Thursday, November 2nd @1800 UTC! Sign up to ⁠⁠⁠www.patreon.com/TheOnoZone⁠⁠⁠ to get the Zoom link (free 7-day trial). More info: It's Not You, It's Chess (TheOnoZone Blog) https://lichess.org/@/TheOnoZone/blog/its-not-chess-its-you/hYGoISXk chessfeels podcast episode 'what your chess opening says about your sex life' https://chessfeels.transistor.fm/episodes/episode-8-what-your-opening-repertoire-says-about-your-sex-life-with-nm-gopal-menon How To Be A Man In Chess (TheOnoZone Blog) https://www.theonozone.com/how-to-be-a-man-in-chess Ono Another Chess Podcast #1 Chris Callahan https://www.theonozone.com/1 Follow Julia Rios: Julia Rios Twitter @juliaxrios | chessfeels podcast Twitter @chessfeelspod | chessfeels podcast episodes https://chessfeels.transistor.fm/ Follow TheOnoZone: Patreon ⁠⁠⁠⁠www.patreon.com/TheOnoZone⁠⁠⁠⁠ | Twitter ⁠⁠⁠⁠@TheOnoZone⁠⁠⁠⁠ | Lichess ⁠⁠⁠⁠@TheOnoZone⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠info@theonozone.com⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠www.theonozone.com⁠⁠⁠ On the ⁠⁠⁠website⁠⁠⁠, you can download a free ⁠⁠⁠Study Plan Template⁠⁠⁠ + ⁠⁠⁠Wordy Chess Book List⁠⁠⁠, find out more about Ono's ⁠⁠⁠Adult Improver chess coaching⁠⁠⁠ + ⁠⁠⁠book a free trial lesson with Ono⁠⁠⁠. Thanks to ⁠⁠⁠TheOnoZone Patrons⁠⁠⁠ who supported this episode: Laura Holmes | Marcus Buffett | Dan Bock | Dawn Lawson | Glen G | Mikey Wells | Michael Shpizner | Michael G | Karen W | Gregory C | BowiE | Stefan K | Ché Martin | Andrew M | Ben Johnson Thanks to Julia Rios for coming on the podcast + the fun after-chat + editing the interview, my wife Yara for being the other half of TheOnoZone, Ché Martin for creating the legendary intro, and Zach Shpizner for applying his audio engineering skills to this episode. Make sure to follow Ono Another Chess Podcast on your favourite podcast app + give us a 5-star rating if you like it. Thanks for listening!

Julia Rios and Nadia Bulkin are the editors of WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST LEAVE, a haunted house anthology currently seeking funding via Kickstarter. On this week's episode of GHOULISH, we're talking about...you guessed it—haunted houses. Disclaimer: My story "AITA for setting my dad's trailer on fire?" will be included in this anthology, should it reach funding. WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST LEAVE on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cursedmorsels/why-didnt-you-just-leave  Buy GHOULISH TALES #1: https://perpetualpublishing.com/product/ghoulish-tales-issue-1/  Buy my latest book ABNORMAL STATISTICS: https://www.apocalypse-party.com/abnormalstatistics.html Connect with Ghoulish: https://linktr.ee/ghoulishbooks  Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/pmmpublishing Theme song by Heathenish Kid

Hey! Don't go in that basement....unless you really need to, then just ignore the monsters, it's cool. This week the Abyss gang is joined by Nadia Bulkin, Julia Rios, and Christa Carmen to discuss the Kickstarter campaign for Why Didn't You Just Leave. Before they explore the attic, they talk their favorite haunted house stories and movies, including Ghostwatch, Mike Flanagan's Haunting of Hill House, Kane Pixel's Backrooms, The Haunting of 13 Olúwo Street by Suyi Davies Okungbowa, and I Am A Ghost. Now, just accept the noises in your house and listen to us! Read The Haunting of 13 Olúwo Street Support the Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cursedmorsels/why-didnt-you-just-leave

Julia Rios is the co-host of the Chessfeels Podcast.Follow Julia on Twitter here and check out the Chessfeels Podcast, perhaps the most unique and fresh podcast about chess.64: A Chess Podcast is sponsored by Chessable -- if you want to learn more about Chessable & my favorite courses, check out go.chessable.com/64podcastIf you want to support the podcast, subscribe to my Patreon (for as little as $1 a month!)Don't forget to check 64: A Chess Podcast on Twitter and Twitch!Thanks for listening to this episode of 64!

Eugenicist werewolves, ridiculous Americans, and wolf nips, oh my! Shaun Duke, Becca Evans, and Julia Rios join forces to tackle An American Werewolf in Paris (1999). Together, they discuss why the film seems to hate Americans and the French so much, whether werewolves should have nipples, how best to get out of a cage, and […]

The October CU completes it's quest to seamlessly fuse with the Chessfeels Podcast, as host Pete Karagianis and Gopal Menon sit down with Julia Rios. As wholesome as a Stouffer's ™ Lasagna, the three discuss chess, wild horses, emo phases, and a hypothetical 24-game chess match between The Dude and Ricky Bobby.

This is part two of my interview with C. S. E. Cooney about her publishing journey for Saint Death’s Daughter, featuring questions from my patrons. You can listen, or read the transcript below, and in case you missed it, part 1 of this interview is here! If you have not already devoured Saint Death’s Daughter in one day, like I did, I encourage you to check it out! It’s available as a printed book, an ebook, and an audiobook, and Claire does her own narration for the audio version!JuliaWelcome to the OMG Julia Podcast, where we talk about creative lives and processes. This is part 2 of my interview with C. S. E. Cooney about her journey to publication with Saint Death’s Daughter. We’re picking up this conversation after Claire told us about how she loves to read her first drafts aloud. JuliaI love that about you! I love working with you, because I've done work at the same time and place as you, and even if I'm not super productive during those times, I always love hearing what you've come up with. Because I feel like I've gotten a lot out of just talking through plots with you, even if I haven't been writing. ClaireI Do. I Love that part. Yeah.JuliaBecause I think that writing is a lot of different things, and some of that is getting the words actually down on the page, but some of it is actually just being in a place where you can think through story structure, and what is actually happening. And one thing that I've learned about myself over years and years and years of basically feeling like I must be broken because I don't write x words every day… Which, there is so much advice out there that's like, “You're not a writer if you don't write every single day.” And I don't. I don't write every single day. ClaireYeah, it's so harmful. Oh my gosh.JuliaI have to have a long period of time usually before any project where I just kind of like think about it. And now that I've learned that this is how I work, it really has made a huge difference for me. Because I know that if someone has asked me to write a story for an anthology or something, I can tell myself very clearly, “You know we have to write a story for this anthology. So, let's start thinking about that.” And then I go about my business doing other things, but I'll be working through the problem in the back of my mind. And I will do research and I'll do other things, but the whole time, what I'm really doing is the hard brain work of invisibly creating something inside my head that I don't even necessarily really fully understand until I actually start writing. And I won't be ready to start writing until it's ready.ClaireI feel like I do that process, but I do it in drafts rather than in my brain first. But I draft a lot, like 4 to 8 drafts sometimes, so it's like I write before I even know what I want to write, before sometimes I have an idea. And that makes a whole draft before my draft starts, but sometimes it's just like this vague, you know, itch. Or a character, or even like a feeling between two characters. Like, what is that? How do you make that? Like, I wanted to write a theater story and I knew what the theater troupe did. And I kind of knew the world they did it in but I didn't have characters you know like the troupe was almost like an entity but somebody still has to tell the story. There has to actually be a plot. And these elements of this theater troupe that does this thing in a world that does this thing… those were like the tensions grinding against each other. So I had the 2 major tensions, but what are the pieces at play within those tensions? And I didn't know that until I started, you know, wrote the first line, which came out of nowhere.JuliaRight? yeah.ClaireAnd then I figured my way through from there. But it's funny how much you can do with 2 grinding tensions. JuliaI mean, yes, as the actress said to the bishop. You can count on me for that 12-year-old humor. ClaireLOL. Anytime, Julia Rios.JuliaNo, but I find that for me, I used to be the kind of person who writes a zero draft that's not a first draft. It's the draft where I try to tell myself what I'm even writing, and it's a giant mess and completely often unsalvageable. So I have many, many old stories languishing on hard drives that are just like a complete mess. It doesn't do anything for me, and many of them are such a mess that I've never come back to them. It's like, it's not worth it. Now that I know that I kind of have to do this percolating thing, my drafts come out a lot cleaner. Which isn't to say that I don't end up having to change them and edit them. I do! It's just that my rate of unsalvageable muck is lower.ClaireThat's cool. You can actually work on it because you're not shuddering away from it.JuliaAnd because there's something to work on. I literally, because I tried to do NaNoWriMo many years, and I had so many attempts at it that just came out as just a mess. Not a mess that you're like, “Oh, this could turn into a good story!” Just like, what is even happening here? No one knows.ClaireHave you over have you ever tried to do a NaNoWriMo where you've spent all year thinking and prepping for it the way you do for a short story for an anthology?JuliaI think, yes, I have, and that's probably the one that came the closest to actually being decent. This was many years ago, though, and I say close to being decent, by which I mean, like, had a full story arc. And I don't think I finished the word count during NaNoWriMo. I definitely didn't finish the novel during NaNoWriMo, but I had been thinking about it a lot before I started it, and I did do a big chunk of it during NaNoWriMo. I don't remember if I did 50,000 words or if those 50,000 words ended up staying. I think I still have that saved somewhere, possibly in a Google drive. But it's the kind of thing that also it was so long ago. I haven't attempted NaNoWriMo in many years because I finally figured out that like, hey, you know what? Trying to push myself in that particular way isn't actually productive for me. ClaireYeah, that's what Ellen Kushner once called the cult of word count, which, I have to say, I mean, all these years later: Saint Death's Daughter! But it is not really the story I wrote in NaNoWriMo, though there are many elements… Like, you could see the origins there. JuliaI don't think it's a cult of word count. I think that it's a really useful tool for some people. I think it depends a lot on what kind of writer you are. ClaireYeah, I always wanted to do it again.JuliaI know people for whom they have a great time and they come out of it with something that they enjoy. And I know several self publishers who, like, a lot of the people who really are successful in self publishing can just crank out stuff and they are very prolific. They have an idea of what they want to do and they just sit down and do it, and they do that over and over again. And if you're really fast, doing something with a bunch of other people and knowing that everybody's doing it at the same time can be a very powerful tool.ClaireI've always wanted to do it again, and I never have, and I wonder why. It was like that 1 year in Chicago, and, I mean, I was commuting an hour both ways to the bookstore that I worked at. I'd come home and I remember that I would read a chapter of Jane Eyre (which I've read an umpteenth billion times) right before writing, because I couldn't get started without having read something, but I couldn't read something that I would get into too much, because I didn't want to lose all my time to reading something that I found super fascinating, but it had to be really good. Because it had to feed the writing itself. So Jane Eyre was the book of choice, and I would set a timer. I'd read for a half hour, and then I would try to do 2,000 words, and it was really interesting, and it created a lot of cool things. And I feel like I was like, “This is cool. This works.” If I did that every month, oh boy. What a writer I would be! And it made it feel possible to to be that kind of writer, and yet I've never been able to duplicate it.JuliaWell, the other thing I wonder is, for you, if that isn't the kind of thing that you can sometimes do in a sprint, but can't do in a marathon setting. And often when you're writing as a career, you're doing a writing marathon. You're not doing a writing sprint.ClaireYeah. Yeah, maybe I'll do it this year, though who knows? It would be cool. You know, it'd be cool if I wrote the next two drafts of Miscellaneous Stones —sorry, of Saint Death's Daughter. I still do call it by its old title, or just by her name, really— if I did both drafts as NaNoWriMo to start with, to give myself, like, starting time motivation. You know, like, here's the seed… and maybe if I start out with 50,000 words and I don't give myself 12 years, it won't turn into almost. 200,000 words. Maybe I could just kind of keep it in… But, you know, usually a second draft doubles. So like 100,000 words is not bad for a novel, you know. We could maybe keep it at that that.JuliaSo you mentioned NaNoWriMo, and you said that this is what came out of it. Was this actually your NaNoWriMo novel?ClaireIt was, but it wasn't the beginning. The beginning is further back than that, though I often count the first draft of Saint Death's Daughter as the NaNoWriMo. I think it was 2006. But, before that, was a short story in Phyllis Eisenstein's science fiction class at Columbia College, where there was the idea of a girl raised in a family of assassins. But it was a sci-fi story, and the butler was not a housekeeper, and it was not undead. It was a robot, a robot butler named Graves. So, before that, though… Several years before that, either I was just in college or just before college, my friend Kiri took me out shooting in the Arizona desert. We were both raised in Arizona. She said, “You're going to be a writer. At some point you probably will have to write about guns, so you should definitely shoot a gun sometime during your life, and I want to be the one to take you to shoot a gun.” So we went out to the desert to shoot guns, and we had noise canceling headphones and everything, but either mine weren't working or my ears are very sensitive or bullets are just that loud, but it was so loud that after the first shot I was getting heart palpitations and my hands were sweaty because I didn't want to hear that sound again. I was like, “Oh gosh, if this had a silencer on it I'd be a badass assassin, but it doesn't and I'm afraid of the sound. Wouldn't it be interesting if there was a character who was supposed to be an assassin, but was allergic to violence?”That was the idea, and I remember when it happened, and it didn't show up in a short story for several years, and it didn't turn into a NaNoWrio novel. But the idea has always been appealing, especially throughout all the media and books I've read, and still am reading, where violence is such a problem solving tool on a micro and macro scale. There are so many TV shows where, if you don't agree with someone, you punch them in the face, which is not how my life works at all. And then like on an epic fantasy scale, if you don't agree with someone, you invade their country and you kill all of their orcs or whatever, you know? And I just thought like what if she doesn't have that option? What else can we do if you don't have that option? How many workarounds does somebody have to figure out in their life? In a world like ours that's full of violence, but you're incapable of it? Not that you don't want to sometimes, but that even wanting punishes you?I mean, I still think it's an interesting idea. Thank goodness, because it's still enough of an idea to create two more books out of, I think. And then trying to turn it and look at it from a different point of view. What does violence mean? What does history mean? What is, like, not only the violence of a physical violence, but the violence of your own history? The lies and the biases and the prejudices you've been told? The violence of your own education? How seeing the world and growing a little older and thinking about things differently, and learning another language changes your mind, you know? So, I mean, I still think that's interesting. JuliaYeah, I mean I think it's very interesting. I think that you really do dive into a lot of those questions, and it's very cool to see Miscellaneous Stones exploring them.Yeah, I think this leads into… This is a good place to dig into a question from Francesca Forrest.ClaireOh, I Love her!JuliaThat's because she's delightful! So, she says, “I know Claire's journey with this novel is very long. I'd love to hear what the most important differences are between the novel now and the novel she started so long ago, and which things have remained the same or very similar over all the years.”ClaireThe first novel, that was 50,000 words almost exactly, was very cheeky. It's very lighthearted, and the violence is cartoonish, and the consequences are surface. It's as funny as I could have made it at the time, which isn't very. But what has happened since then? Well, many things. Many drafts, many years, and also Carlos. And one of the wonderful things about Carlos—so he caught me at about draft four, so he's been with it for more than half the book, more than half of the drafts. It was about eight full drafts till it hit the agent and went on submission, and then a couple more drafts from the editor. So, Carlos did many, many things for me, but the three things that stand out are:The child, DatuThe father, Mac The Scratches, the Scratch family So, in the original, the child, Datu, is like one of those anime 6-year-old genius serial killers. Do you know what I mean? Like, cold stone killer, acrobatics, dance on the edge of a leaf. Really funny and witty, but also six years old. And he was like, “She's a child. She's six years old. She may have been trained. You know, like, you see children gymnasts who are capable of amazing things, or children Broadway performers, or child actors who've won the Academy Award, and they are amazing. They're still children, and that level of savant genius has a toll, generally.” He kept being dissatisfied. He's like, “We've seen cartoon death child already. Like, what else have you got?” So, I think Datu’s really different.Mac, the father, really different. Because he's one of the only nurturing, moral male characters in the in the novel. And I think Carlos was just like, You know, give me more than brooding male / potential love interest.” Earlier drafts, he definitely was Lanie's love interest, and I've moved far away from that. Because it is more interesting. Satisfying romantically is one thing, and what I kind of like to read and am inclined to write. But what is more intellectually and emotionally interesting now is different. And he's like, “I don't think if one's sister has enslaved a man, got her child upon him, abused him in many ways, that it's very likely that that man will end up falling in love with you, unless it's super traumatic and ugly, you know?” Like, he was just so repulsed by it in a way that was so different from every romance novel ever that takes a damaged man and puts it with your protagonist and by the end he's not as damaged because love has saved him, or whatever. Like all of those tropes that I grew up with. So he kept saying that. He kept being dissatisfied. And, you know, his best friend Maggie once told me, “You have too high of an opinion of his high opinion.” But the truth is I do want his high opinion so badly, and it tells me something when I can make him cry or laugh. Like, it's working. That's what I want. And when I make him make a certain face like, this just isn't right! This doesn't feel good. “Give me something. Mac has to be better than that. You have to make him better.”So he really turned into, in many ways, a moral center. He's wrong sometimes. But he thinks about it, comes back, and says, “I was wrong about that.” You know, he's actually capable of growth. He has such an interesting internal life. And he and Lanie become like brother and sister, true brother and sister almost in spite of everything that happened to them. Consciously, to make this decision to be family, that’s something that is a huge difference from brooding man who turns into a falcon, totally damaged, awesome, scarred, so hot, ends up being the love interest that lightheartedly, coyly flirts with you at the end sort of thing. I still have that Mac inside of me, but he doesn't fit anywhere in the future of Lanie Stones. What does fit in is an increasingly interesting intimate. Not sibling the way she and her sister are siblings, but like, will be there for you if you need me. Always, and in both physical and spiritual ways. And then, the Scratches… There's like the huge major villain, which is the Blackbird Bride, which, I actually am a little in love with her, and I feel deep pity for her. But she's also, like, she just needs to be shaken some sense into, and she's not capable of being shaken sense into. She was not born that way. But the Scratches are the villains on the ground, or at least the antagonists. They are definitely working against the Stoneses, for reasons that are both apparent and mysterious. There's the front reason, like, you owe us money. And then there's the deep-seated, like, your family versus my family a hundred years ago, feudal reasons.But the nature of the scratches… They were very much like cartoon villains, and in the first draft, by the end, Lanie had turned them into like neon colored bunny rabbits. That was what her magic did. They ended up being a bunch of neon bunny rabbits that she sold to a circus or something like that. That was that story. It is not that story anymore. There's no magic that turns anybody into neon colored bunny rabbits, and there are severe consequences to the Scratches doing things the way they do. Which is, you know, sometimes with violence, and sometimes with arrogance, or with coldness, or with an uncompromising vision. And not everybody survives that.And the Scratches, once they have enough power to do so, change their name back to their true name, and they start to live by their own standards. They'd been sort of subsuming themselves for so many years, but like the nature of of culture and language again like they kind of represent a lot of that and they are very reasonable and and yet have been part of a people who have been very oppressed and downtrodden for. Hundred years so like there's a there's like they occupy a whole different space. So I would say those are the 3 and I blame Carlos for all of them but also just like living in the world a little longer than 27 years Ah also helped.JuliaYeah, I mean, I'll say one thing that I noticed a lot, reading the final version versus the the draft that I read so many years ago… because I think it was probably ten years ago that I read a draft of this. ClaireYeah.JuliaFor me, some of the things that stood out were just how much more real a lot of the world felt. And I don't mean like I could imagine being there, because I feel like you always have drawn worlds that I could imagine being in. They're very vivid. And your writing voice tends to draw people in that way. So it's normal to think, “Oh, I'm reading something by C. S. E. Cooney and I feel like I could just walk into this world.”But the realness was more of this sort of like… The sense that all of this frivolity was happening in the harmony and contrast with oppression and suffering and what those things specifically meant and how they tied into each other and fed each other on multiple axes. And I don't know if part of that is just your deepening life experience or part of that is having feedback from different people. But I think, like, you were talking about the character of Mac, and how he changed from being just like a hot scarred hawk guy and into someone who has become in a lot of ways a moral center, and I think that I noticed that with Goody Graves as well. ClaireYeah.JuliaIn the draft that I remember first reading, Goody Graves was just sort of like a loyal retainer who was always there and liked Lanie. And that's great and cool, and it's also you know, unexpected that your loyal retainer is going to be an undead, stone, statue person. But in this draft you you learn a lot more about who she is and her backstory and what she is capable of doing or not doing, and it makes it feel that much more real and rich because you have a lot more — there's a lot more to chew on, I guess.ClaireYeah, Amal said when she read it —this will always stay with me, “It’s like I can see your stretch marks.” You know like she's read so much, like you, I feel like she can see all the layers. I don't think she ever read an earlier draft. And I'm very aware of the draft you read, because you were the one who gave me the language of the many gendered god of fire, and I remember changing that because of how you were very gently like, “I don't think we use those words anymore.” And then I started thinking about gender in a different way, because, at some point in our lives, we have to start. You know like if you don't know something, there's a point where you learn it, and that was the point where I learned like, oh, a fire god, a many-gendered god of fire makes it much more interesting and open and like less like, “Oh, I don't want to touch that…” You know, like, you gave me my god of fire, Julia.JuliaOh, that's so nice! I love the way that worked out, by the way. And I really love that the inn that she sort of ends up working at has a history of having been a brothel at one point, and it's still actually there and informs the present of it today. And I love the character that's clearly Patty Templeton.ClaireDread! Yes, I want to write the novella that's mentioned in the footnote about Havoc Dreadnought. Havoc: the life and times of Havoc Dreadnoought, and how she… like there's a huge footnote about it, and yeah, I want that to be the title of a novella someday. JuliaI guarantee you you will have a built-in readership for that.ClaireYeah, I love the school. So there's an inn, and on top of the inn is a bakery, and on top of the bakery is a school, and the the school part had been a brothel, but they leave a lot of the brothel trappings to sort of, the footnote says, to lure people into higher education. To lure the unsuspecting into higher education. I feel like some of the cheekiness of the first draft, when I really just wanted to be Terry Pratchett and failed constantly. I'd lost a lot of the humor in many of the drafts to come, and then I just missed it so much that, very late in the drafting process… There was so much world-building and backstory that I wanted that didn't fit into the narrative flow, and so many jokes that I wanted to make that delighted me, so that's when the footnotes happened.I was like, I have to cut all this, ooh, but I could put it in a footnote and then make it even funnier! So that's what I did and I feel like Jasper Fforde, Terry Pratchett Susannah Clarke, you know, I think they sort of give you permission to do footnotes.And when I was younger, if a story had footnotes in it, I would actually not read them. It just didn't occur to me to do so. And I feel like if a younger person, or somebody who hates footnotes, read Saint Death’s Daughter through, they'd still get it without having to read the footnotes, but the footnotes are the parts that made me laugh out loud. And I don't easily respond to my own writing like that. But some of the footnotes still make me laugh.And I have to say that's what Carlos says. When he's writing, if he can make himself laugh out loud, he knows it's working, because it's like tickling yourself. It's a lot harder to do.JuliaYeah, I 100% agree with that. Okay, so last Patron question is, “I would love to find out what it was like finding an agent and how your agent helps you in your career.”ClaireOkay, yeah, it's so hard. I thought when I was first setting out to find an agent, I'm like, “I'm going to submit to an agent a day. No, five agents a day!” It's a numbers game —everybody says it's a numbers game— if you can get to a hundred submissions, your chances are so much higher than if you do ten submissions, but so is dating, they say. I don't know how similar or dissimilar they are, but what I found when I was submitting….First of all, it's sort of like the cover letter and the synopsis takes a lot of eyes and brains. You definitely want to get some friends on it, especially friends who've already gone through the process. For doing the synopsis, if you have three friends who've read your book, basically what I ask them is, “Could each of you write your version of a synopsis of my book and send it to me?” My friend Caitlyn is really good at that. So I think Carlos maybe did, and Caitlyn did, and I had my synopsis. And Caitlyn's really good at making my book sound like something somebody would want to read. I wrote a very stilted like, “And then, she very formally did this thing in an elucidating sort of way, and you know there was a villain…” or whatever. It just was very stiff, and she'd be like, “Kapow! Kablam! Exclamation point!” I mean it all felt like an exclamation point. It felt like an actual back of a book, and by reading her synopsis, I saw what was important or what stood out, or like, “Oh that's what it feels like to write a compelling synopsis. I think she left a few important things out which I will slip in and try to do it more in her style…” And then again if you have a third view, it's even better because then you can have a pretty hefty, true to the story synopsis in a way that you, as a writer, may be too close to write initially. So I say cover letter, synopsis… And cover letter is much like a cover letter for a submission for a short story, where you give your credits. So you have to make yourself look like you're worth reading the first chapter of, I guess. Which doesn't necessarily mean that you have to have a bunch of credits to your name, but you just have to, I guess, be confident, or know who you are, or at least be polite and professional. So anyway. All of that to say that I set out with this very what Caitlyn calls Big Book Energy. You know, I'm going to do all of this because it's a numbers game! And I found that like after submitting one, I had this terrible headache. My stomach was a mess. I had to go lay down, and the whole day was shot, and I was like damn it this is not how you win a numbers game! But I couldn't, emotionally, make myself do more than one a day, very rarely more than one a week, so it was a very, for me, slow process. I Still don't know, if I have to do it again, how would I do it. Because it would just… I'd hope I'd be tougher now. And I'd hope I'd make better lists and do things better, but actually I think it will always be hard, and it's what mood people are in how overwhelmed they are, how much they might like the thing that you're writing. And, boy, like books are so personal and so intimate. So I would say that I sent it out to a lot of people. I got very few responses. Some of the responses I got quick were just, “This is not for me. Didn't catch my interest.” And you try to think, “Ah, I didn't catch their interest. I am boring. Nobody loves me.” Eventually, I got a great response from one of the submission editors at New Leaf, I think they're called. I loved every single agent bio that I read, I loved their mission statement, I was like, “Oh, these people! I want these people to read my book and love me!” And it got to the submissions editor or agent, the one who reads things before they send it up to the main agent, like kind of to get you past the slush pile, and she just wrote back with such enthusiasm! And she's like, “I'm going to set it up to my boss right away!”Even just that stage, even to get any kind of feedback of that tone of voice that I'd been waiting for… I want the people who represent me to have that tone of voice! And it did get passed up to her agent, and I think she even was reading it, but I think she had a baby and a lot of things.And in that interim, when she was reading it and having a baby and life was happening, Markus Hoffmann at Regal Hoffmann & Associates also read it. And he was a suggestion of a writing friend, who said, “This is my agent. I really like him. just tell him I sent you.” So that was a kind of a Who You Know moment. It was Audrey Niffenegger, who I had met once at Columbia College Chicago. We were on a panel together. She had been a teacher there and I had been a student. She wrote The Time Traveler's Wife. So we were Facebook friends, but we had had literally no interaction since that one panel we were on, where we were on a panel but didn't really talk to each other, we just talked with each other. And she saw on Facebook when I was like, “Oh, this agent quest, it's such a slog.” You know, how one does when one's on an agent quest. She private messaged me and she said, “Try Regal Hoffman. I didn't know you didn't have an agent.” You know, like, tell him I sent you… So Marcus got back to me and he wrote an email. He said, “I quite like the first 50 pages. May I see the rest?” And then he wrote an email saying, “I would love to talk to you to tell you about this agency.” When I talked to him, I just loved him immediately. He said all the right things, and in such a tone of voice, very European. He's German, and just gentle and warm and really incisive, and had great questions, and… It's like that kind of person you want on your team, that he'll be the editor before your editor gets to you. He'll be the editor who makes the draft that makes the the publication happen. So just on all of those levels, I really clicked. So I wrote to the people at New Leaf, who still had my manuscript. I was like, “I'm sorry, I'm going with another agency.” And that agent had just read it and said, “Oh, I just finished it! I was about to write to you.” So I feel this very warm radiant feeling toward New Leaf, and I think I feel like if I had gone a little further in the process, maybe would have not been so emotionally wrecked by it, I would have gotten better at it. I would have gotten a tighter and tighter synopsis and cover letter. You know, it might have taken 50 or 100 more, but I think eventually it would have happened. That it happened this fast, I think, was due to the shortcuts of going to conventions, being on panels, that whole networking web that happens that you think will never happen that it's really hard to make happen on purpose. But Gene Wolfe once told me, “You know, all networking means is making friends.” And you don't really make friends with this cold eye of calculation of what your friends will do for you someday, you just sort of make friends who all love the things you love writing and reading, you know, and then sometimes somebody knows somebody who knows somebody, and that's one way to do it. But I think the other way also works. It just takes longer and has a toll. So I would say, working with my agent is amazing. I sometimes like think of him as like a ninja elven prince. Yeah, that's the space in my brain he occupies. He's sly, he likes things like talking up my book, and making deals, and like, going to parties. Things that I don't really know how to do, and don't really want to know how to do. he has people who do the contracts like, “Markus, can you look at this contract because it's scary?” And then he'll look at it, and he does things that I can't. I don't have the tool set, and I'm so, so grateful. And as Carlos and I have done some collaborative projects, It's been really fun, because Carlos's agent is DongWon Song and mine is Markus Hoffmann, but they used to almost work together at one point. They knew each other! And they met at a house party at our house, and they're like, “What are you doing here?” So they get to work together sometimes on mutual contracts and it's really nice that they already had a kind of warm, friendly relationship.JuliaOh, that is nice. So how long would you say it took from the time you started sending queries out until the time you ended up with an agent?ClaireIt's it's really hard to say because, like at one point I had sent it to an agent and he suggested these edits, so that took me six months to make the edits and turn it back in. He suggested more edits, and at that point, I thought, “Ooh. I liked the first round of edits a lot, but the second set of edits sounds like the book he wants is not the book I want to write.” And so I gently backed away very amicably and then started submitting again.And then there maybe comes a time where it's like, “Oh, I can't believe I ever thought that draft was worth submitting. I think I need to just sit down and rework it.” You know? So it was a lot of stops and starts, and it was years. I think I started submitting it at the fourth draft and it wasn't until like draft eight that it got an agent. That's at least a draft a year, so I would say maybe four years for that one. Some people don't ever start submitting until they are totally sure they're done. Me, I'm like totally sure I'm done after my first draft, and then two weeks later I'm like, “What was I thinking?” And you know then twelve years later it's ready…JuliaOkay, well thank you so much for talking to me about this. We didn't talk about your career as an Audiobook narrator at all, which is a sort of a separate thing from your writing career. Except for when you narrate your own books. ClaireYes, thank goodness.JuliaAnd so I want to close this out by asking how was the experience of narrating this novel as a narrator who is also the writer of the book? Did you always know it was going to be you? Did you really want it to be you? And what was the whole experience like?ClaireThat's a great question, and it has a complicated answer, so forgive me beforehand. So, if I could have gotten a world class, phenomenal, powerful narrator like one of the ones I listen to all the time, like Kate Reading, for example. Or who's the really famous one? Simon Vance. You know, somebody of that caliber. Then I would totally have wanted somebody else to narrate my audiobook. But most narrators are like me, where we're pretty good. We make a living, or we would make a living if we lived in a small town and had two roommates. But since I'm married to Carlos, you know, I make a living as far as I'm concerned, but not like a New York City living. Anyway, so if somebody is just going to be very good, and I know I'm pretty good, and I know how to pronounce all my made up words. So that part of my narrating writing brain is like, “I should probably do it unless they get somebody extraordinary.” Which sounds… I don't know how it sounds, but that's how my brain works. Now, Carlos, and my mother, and a couple people who love me very much have agitated strongly from the beginning that no matter if they got Kate Reading or Simon Vance, I should still be the one to narrate it, which I fight against because there's a part of me that is not arrogant enough to think that that my text couldn't be improved upon by somebody else. I would be eager to listen to a different interpretation. It's easier to listen to somebody else's voice than my own, even though I like my voice just fine. All of that to say, when we made this deal, Rebellion seemed very excited. They like having authors narrate their own work and that had been kind of a handshake agreement. And earlier this year, as we're getting closer to publication, it ran into some snags. Like, it's pretty expensive to hire a US narrator. They have people in-house. They have deals going on. So it was almost that I couldn't narrate it and they had some pretty good narrators lined up, and I was like, “Okay, well just make sure that they call me so I can give them the pronunciations of the words I made up.”But I was unhappy, I think, in that moment because I had been looking forward to it. for two years I'd sort of had it in my head I was going to do it. I'd been prepping for it, and so that felt like a little like, “Oh it's not going to happen. Okay.” And I had to readjust my thinking.But over the pandemic, instead of commuting to Connecticut to do my studio recording for Tantor Audio, they have a working relationship with a small studio that's just three miles from me, which I can walk to. Three miles is a big difference from a three hour commute to Connecticut and staying overnight for three or four days, which is what I'd been doing for the two or three years since I'd moved here before the pandemic. So I told my agent and Rebellion. I was like, “Well, there's this little studio I work with. They do all this amazing professional production work for all of these different companies. Here are their rates. Here's their email. Maybe we could work something out.”And the next thing I knew, they're like, “Okay, you're recording next week.”So whatever they worked out, whatever my agent did, and whatever all of the powers that be… Because of the pandemic, and because of this relationship, and maybe because I wrote the right email at the right time, all of this worked out so that I could I could actually record my audiobook. So it was a bit of a roller coaster right at the end, and it was right up at the edge of time of when we could record it to have it out concurrently with the book. All of which to say that I didn't have as much prep time as I had wanted, and yet I have been prepping for twelve years at this point.I wanted to make every day in the studio more than usually special. I really wanted to say this is the end of a very long journey of many drafts and many despairs and a lot of leveling up. And yet it felt like another day. If I didn't pay super close attention, it would just be another grinding week at the studio, and I didn't want that. So every day I dressed up to match the section of the book that I was going to be recording. I wore like a different little perfume that had a note of citrus in it because citrus is the smell of necromancy in my book, and I wore a piece of jewelry that usually a friend or a loved one had given me that had to do with the book. I really tried to make it not just a recording, but a celebration of a decade and a half of work. And it was a blessing, in that sense, to record my work, and to look at it in its final form, and to say, “Ah, well, this was a thing, and this is what that thing looks like, and now it's in my mouth, and it's for you in your ears for all of posterity.” And that's something, because you know we still listen to W. B. Yeats at the beginning of the twentieth century reading his work in his own voice. There are probably better actors to read his work, but it is something to have his poems and his own voice. And so now we have this work in my voice, and I feel that in this human pageant, it's something that is super special. Very pleased.JuliaI think it's great. I loved it, and I think you're a wonderful narrator. I think you're not giving yourself enough credit.ClaireOh, but not British, Julia!JuliaWell, no, you're not British, but you are someone with a huge background in theater, and training, and also a large amount of experience at this point in narration, and you know your stories better than anyone, because you did spend all of your twelve years refining this particular book.ClaireThat's what Carlos says, so you and Carlos… if you and Carlos say it, I know that you're both more right than I am because I trust your brains.JuliaI thought it was a wonderful experience listening to you read it, and if you're listening to this podcast and you like listening to things, go ahead and pick up the audiobook of Saint Death's Daughter, because it is really wonderful. If you like to read things on the page, the text is also there for you, and that is also wonderful. But if you like listening to Claire's voice, get that audiobook. Thank you Claire and, thank you so much for taking all of this time to talk to us and answer all of our questions.ClaireThank you so much. Julia.JuliaI hope everybody goes out and reads your wonderful book, which is full of horrifying things, and also great bits of humor, and wonderful humanity. ClaireThank you.JuliaThanks so much for listening. If you want to have the chance to ask your own questions, or request specific kinds of posts from me, consider joining my patreon which is at patreon.com/juliarios, or my substack, which is at omgjulia.substack.com All patrons and subscribers get early access to every piece of creative work I commission from other creators in my Worlds of Possibility project, and your pledges and subscriber fees go directly to help pay for those stories and poems, and for the cost of my equipment and my labor, because recording these interviews, and then editing the transcripts and editing the recordings and making them podcast-ready for you takes a lot of time and effort! I am a little later on this one than I had intended to be because I got COVID again! Oops! So that’s why my voice sounds a little hoarse right now. Luckily, I was able to get antivirals, so that is fine, and I am doing better, but it kind of threw a wrench in things and it really made me realize how much time and effort this kind of thing takes. It takes a lot! So, if you have been enjoying this, please do subscribe. Please, any amount that you feel like contributing will absolutely help keep things going for me. And I’m in the middle of accepting all the pieces I am going to accept for this wave of Worlds of Possibility, and I have some GREAT stories to share with you, so I can’t wait to get into that, too. Thank you for listening, and I’ll catch you next time!Thanks for listening, and I’ll catch you next time. 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

I invited the amazing C. S. E. Cooney to talk with me about her journey to publication (a journey that lasted 12 years!) for Saint Death’s Daughter. We had a long talk, and she answered a lot of questions from my patrons and subscribers, who had the chance to send in their specific questions ahead of time. Here is the first part of the interview, which you may listen to, or read a transcript below!If you have not already devoured Saint Death’s Daughter in one day, like I did, I encourage you to check it out! It’s available as a printed book, an ebook, and an audiobook, and Claire does her own narration for the audio version!JuliaHello and welcome to the OMG Julia Podcast, where we talk about creative lives and processes. I'm your host, Julia Rios, and with me today is special guest C. S. E. Cooney. Welcome!ClaireThank you Julia! It's lovely to be here.JuliaSo C. S. E. Cooney, also known as Claire, is a wonderful writer of fantasy short fiction, long fiction, and, most recently, the novel Saint Death's Daughter. Claire, do you want to introduce yourself a little bit and tell people a little bit about your writing career as a whole?ClaireI feel like I have been writing fantasy since I was pretty young—fifth or sixth grade, I would go around in circles around the playground with the two friends that I had and just tell them stories that I would then fill notebooks full of. The first ones were like, one was called My World and the sequel was Animal World. And then, in high school, I would name all my friends ridiculous, long, elven names made out of all of the words they liked the best. Like, what's your favorite color? What's your favorite jewel? What's your favorite flower? And then I would Smush them all together and then they'd get names like Erazellalzenarayneraniananamavario. And they'd come from a house and they'd have this backstory, and they all thought that one day I would write this epic trilogy called The Elven Story. But what I guess I was doing is what most people were doing: playing D&D with their friends. But I didn't know about D&D, so I was sort of doing the same thing like with my own imprimatur. It was more like out loud oral storytelling, having adventures or like parallel lives to the lives we were leading as high schoolers. But I think when my father introduced me to the person who became my mentor, I was about 18. I'd, you know, been writing and rewriting two or three different novels throughout high school, and one of the gentlemen who was in my father's congregation—my dad is a director of music and liturgy at St. Anne's church—one of his congregation members was Gene Wolfe, who was a renowned science fiction and fantasy writer. But of course me at 17 or 18, I don't know from Gene Wolfe!Actually, that's not true. You know you’ve got the stack of books your friends lend you, and my friend Lydia had let me one, and it was on the top of my book stack, and I was flying out from Phoenix to see my dad in Chicago as I did periodically summers and winters, and I grabbed the first one off my book stack, read it on the plane, and it happened to be Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe! But at that time I never paid attention to authors because they didn't matter. The stories mattered, and the only time I tried to remember an author's name was if I liked the story enough and wanted to get more of that. Then it was sort of more like a tagging system, you know, but I never thought of them as people…So he introduces me to Gene and we go to dinner with Gene and Rosemary and my dad and my stepmom, and Gene made me feel so comfortable that by the end of the evening I was like, “Can I send you my novel?” Just like you do when you're 17 or 18, and I just remember the look on his face so clearly, which was like this minor hesitation, and then this warm, “How about you send me the first three chapters? And I can't promise I'll have anything to say about it.” Just like very gentle, and it had me back pedaling, like, “Oh, no, I could just send you one chapter!” You know? Or, “You don't have to!” And he's like, “Go ahead, send three chapters.”And then I think he only ended up reading one chapter, but he wrote me a five page letter about it. Or three pages. You know, it was a significant letter, and it was typed and it was it was chock full. And that started a correspondence when I went back to Phoenix, and when I moved to Illinois eventually to go to college, our correspondence kept up. We would go to conventions. He took me to my first convention. He taught me how to write short stories. You know, he's like, “You know, novels are great, but in order to build up your byline, you have to write a lot of short fiction. You have to get some credits to your name, and then you can get an agent.” Like, it was the kind of the old fashioned trajectory that he knew that worked for him that he was teaching me.And it took just about as long as you'd imagine—about 20 years of trial and error. But, you know, in 2015, Mythic Delirium published my first short story collection. Four pieces had been previously published, and one hadn't. It was called Bone Swans, and Gene wrote the introduction for that. And that was maybe I think 15 years after I'd met him, so.I would say maybe the publication of Bone Swans and the fact that it got the World Fantasy Award was the beginning of my career as it is now, though it took 15 years of doing a lot of different stuff to get to that point. Doing a lot of short stories, writing a lot of novellas, just going to college and going to school for writing and figuring all that out, reading a lot, failing a lot, you know. And then that small press success seven years ago. It's hardly like, hardly seems it could be seven years, on both ends, you know? Both too short or too long. But I think having having an award and having a collection was what got me, eventually, an agent who could eventually sell the novel I'd been working on for just about as long as I'd been writing anything else, and which is now Saint Death's Daughter. It wasn't then. It's too late now for Gene to read it. He passed away a few years ago, but he always liked the idea, and at one point several years ago he's like, “That's a good idea. Are you still writing it?” And I'd written a lot of things in the interim, but that one, I think partly because I started writing it as I was still teaching myself to write (which is an ongoing process), but there's a very big difference between you know, 26 and 36, or 40, as I am now.And you could write a book perpetually, but at least I think the final version of Saint Death's Daughter as it is—I just narrated it, so I now know beginning to end what it is, that it exists as a single unit and not as 16,000,000 ongoing fluid units—I thought, “Okay. This was the best I could do in all the years that I gave to it, and it constantly got better, and it's out in the world, and it is a good and fine work and I'm proud of it. Now, moving on!” So that's my career in a nutshell.JuliaI asked my patrons if they wanted to ask specific questions, if they were curious about specific things. So one of the reasons we're doing this interview is I allow my patrons to vote on the kind of content that I post and also, if I'm doing something like this, ask questions of their own. And when I asked them recently what would they like to see more of, they all said, “We would really like to see more writing process posts, and we'd love to see like you talking to other authors, or giving us your own stuff.” I had done a process post of my own recently, and they were like, “We'd like more stuff like that, and we'd love to hear you talk to other authors.” Well, I had your book pre-ordered, and I listened to it all in one day, and I was like, all right, this is clearly a good one. I'm going to see if Claire is willing to talk to me about Saint Death’s Daughter. I know that it has a long and complicated process leading up to it and this will be really interesting. So, I knew that, personally, but I was like all right, what do my patrons want to know? So one person, who doesn't know you at all, asked how you came up with the title of the novel. I thought that was fascinating because, of course, when I first read the draft of it that I read years ago that is not the final version at all, It was called Miscellaneous Stones: Necromancer [Note, after the fact: I think actually it was called Miscellaneous Stones: Assassin the first time I read a draft], and I don't know how many titles you've had, and I don't know how you landed on this one, but if you want to share the story of how this book came to have its title, I'd love to hear it.ClaireWell, originally it was called Miscellaneous Stones: Assassin, which was meant to be ironic. And the interesting thing I'm learning about ironic titles is that, well, I was never very good at irony anyway, but. I was like trying to be ironic and sophisticated, but you'd have to read the story first to know that it was ironic, and usually a title is part of what gets you to read the story in the first place. So I think that I was going about it a bit backwards in my desire to be more sophisticated and ironic. So, initially, it's the name of the character, Miscellaneous Stones, and the word assassin because she's from a family of assassins. But it's ironic because she's allergic to violence. So she thinks (this is in the early drafts) that she has to grow up and be like the rest of her family, a slick, awesome, sophisticated assassin, but really, she just projectile vomits anytime like somebody swats a fly near her. You know that was the idea like way back in the first draft the NaNoWriMo draft.In the interest of not being so obfuscating, I was like, well she actually is not an assassin and the way that the drafts turned out, everybody knows she's a necromancer from birth because of her allergy, so there's really no chance she'd ever think she'd grow up to be an assassin. So let's just call her what she is. She's a necromancer, Miscellaneous Stones: Necromancer. Of course later as I was researching the word necromancer, the mancy part of mancer is more about prophecy and oracles. And it's like it's prophesying through the dead, like you know some people scry through birds, and some people scry through cards like cartomancy. You know, there's all the mancies and it's really about like trying to tell the future. So necromancy is really about trying to tell the future through the dead, which I think she can do. It's one of her powers. But really, she's like a death magic. But in this world magic is is part of the religion. It's the more you pay attention to the gods, the more they pay attention back at you, and their attention is what magic is. It's what's called the panthauma, the all-marvel, and panthauma’s what makes good stuff happen. So there's like a give and take, so really, a really good magician is a saint, in that sense that they are devoted to their god and the god is super super devoted back. That god's just pleased somebody's paying attention, because a lot of people (like in our world) in that world, are like yeah, the gods. Whatever. We'll pay attention on the holy days, maybe. Mostly dress up and eat good food, but a true saint is as rare as it ever was, or as nonexistent. At least in this world, they actually exist. That they're devoted. It's like vocation. It's almost fanaticism in some ways. All of which to say, the truth is it went out on submission as Miscellaneous Stones: Necromancer, and I never even call her Miscellaneous! I call her Lanie because it's easier, and that was an edit that happened perhaps from my agent. It may have been either my current agent or an earlier agent who'd been looking at it was like, “These are mouthfuls. Why don't you shorten their name?” So really, Miscellaneous Stones, it's only when she's talking to herself or somebody's like being very stern who knows her very well, they might call her Miscellaneous Stones, but mostly she's talking to herself, and to everybody else in the text, she's Lanie. And I know this is a lot. Okay, but so it went out on submission when it was accepted, everybody was super excited, and the editor at the time at Rebellion. Kate Coe, who was a darling and just like would respond to me in all caps in her emails, which was exactly how I think so I was like, “Ooh all caps. We're best friends!” But one of her suggestions was like, “We're super on board. We like the title, but you really have to know what you're reading in order to understand it. Do you have anything else?” And I think that I probably had been prepared in some way, like, I had a notion for years possibly that this wasn't exactly the right title. But maybe I was too lazy, or you get really attached, so I had the title almost right away. Knowing that Lanie is a devotee of the goddess of death, Doédenna, and her nickname is Saint Death, and their relationship is that of like best friends, or acolyte and divine, or mother and daughter.Lanie has a very complicated relationship with mother figures. So. In this grand scheme of the idea of Lanie and her arc that hopefully will have other books in it. But even if it was just this one book, I wanted to give her in this book: she's a daughter. And when you're the daughter of a celebrity, like a god, for example, who you are is defined by who you come from. So it's like, “You’re Saint Death's daughter.” That's how people think of you. That's why you're important.And I feel like, in that sense, it defines her. It's also something to chafe against, like what else is she besides a necromancer? This is one of the questions. You know, who are you when you're not your vocation? But the the whole arc lends itself to the title. Saint Death's Daughter, Saint Death's Herald, Saint Death's Doorway is a progression of character and duties and power, I think, until you become the doorway through which the dead have passage basically into the god. That's her trajectory in my head, even if she never gets there on the page, which I hope she will. At least I know, and it makes sense, and I proposed that as a series of titles for a proposed trilogy and they leapt on it. And so there might have been even more titles out there, but that was the first thing that I thought, “Oh I think they'll like this.” And they did! And I didn't have to think about it anymore.JuliaOkay, so you said you have already future titles planned. Do you actually have book deals for those, or is it something that you're hoping might happen sometime?ClaireI don't have book deals. I think a few things are just up in the air and I kind of talk to my agent about it a little and he's like let's just see what happens, so it's sort of that. Also, Kate, who was the one who acquired Saint Death's Daughter, has since moved on from Rebellion to do her own thing. I think that I'm just going to see where this book goes. If Rebellion doesn't end up wanting it for whatever reason, and I'm not sure, I haven't written them yet, then I probably will still write them because I want to. And thanks to you, Julia, you have taught me of the wonderful wide world of self-publishing, which I have dabbled in mostly because of you. Also I have some really great connections with small presses that maybe if I made really big eyes at them and came like a small mouse skeleton with, you know, shiny, dead, undead eyes and blinked my bony eyelashes… Maybe they'd be like, “Okay, Claire I could just maybe do this for you.” Or at least or at least help me package it somehow. I'd probably hire a team or do a Kickstarter or something you know, um maybe not Kickstarter. Whatever is the least evil at the time. If it comes to that, I feel like I want to tell the story and so… but until I know I'm just going to wait a few months and then I'll ping my agent again see what he thinks. I'm also working on so many other things so it's sort of like, “But I've made a promise in Saint Death's Daughter. I've tried to do two things. 1) I've tried to give a full complete book that stands alone and that, if it leaves you wanting more, it also leaves you satisfied which is a trick, you know. Like, did I pull it off? Did I not? But I feel like I've told a whole story, and left enough threads that, if I never write them, then hopefully there's a team of like fan fiction writers who could take it and run with it. You know? But if I do write it, I've given myself a lot of threads into the future, which, in my head, I have followed out to many different conclusions.JuliaYeah, I mean, I think I definitely felt like the ending did tie everything up that really needed to be tied up, in that there weren't so many burning questions that I had at the end that I was like, “Oh no, and now I'm at the end of the book and there's nothing I can do!” Which I feel like happens when you have books that are a series that end in Cliff hangers a lot of the time. ClaireYeah I don't like cliffhangers because you know many of our beloved fantasy writers have had these long book deals and then life got in the way and people get bitterly bitterly angry. But there's nothing —you can't force somebody to write, and this one took, you know, twelve years. I don't think the other two will take twelve years, but how many more sets of twelve years do I even have, you know? And at what point will this story not be pertinent anymore? You know, as far as the one I need to be telling as a writer.JuliaGreat questions. So, you mentioned that you're working on a lot of other things, and I know that you're always working on a lot of things. Ah, but this is interesting. I don't know how you're going to answer this one. It's another Patron question. They ask, “What do you do when you're low on ideas?” and I was like I don't know that I've ever known Claire to be low on ideas… But do you get low on ideas? And if so, what do you do?ClaireI can answer that because up until 2019, I would say, maybe 2015 to 2019, I don't know if I was low on ideas, but it felt… it was that burnt out, like charcoal in the back of the mouth feeling that writing feels like sharpening your teeth on cement, you know? Like that terrible feeling of, “I don't want to, but if I don't, then all of my life to this point has been wasted.” That’s just a terrible place to write in. You know like the burnt out thing. Um, but once Saint Death's Daughter, which was not Saint Death's Daughter at the time, had been drafted to the fullness of its ability and turned into my agent... So, after eight drafts I sent it to an agent who finally liked it enough to say sure, asked me for two more drafts, took me another year and a half to do… So, that was turned in. And it was also at the end of 2019 when my novella, Desdemona and the Deep, came out. It always ends up that no matter how you try to space them, all your deadlines end up in the same week for projects you've been working on for a decade and a half, or five years, the last three years. It's like it doesn't matter. They just all end up due that same week.And so Desdemona had gone through its rewrites and its copy edits and it was coming out that July, and for a little bit, there was nothing impending on my plate that needed to be done that anybody wanted and that I had been working on for years already. So I was like, “I am not going to write again until I can do it in joy.” And I was seriously, like it had been so long since I'd felt joy or had been allowed to work on a new thing. “Allowed” you know in quotes, right? Because you have to finish what you started or else, again, you've —well this is for me; this is my voice in my head— you've wasted the last twenty years of your life and all of the money you spent on college. But it was a firm like, “I'm not going to sit down every day and try to be disciplined and try to write for the sake of writing. You know? just I don't want to do it. I don't. I don't want to waste my life in that way anymore.” And so I just kind of like didn't for a few weeks. You know, I can't remember how long, but I stared out a lot of windows, and I read romance novels and mysteries. And, you know, I alarmed a lot of my family who are like, “You can't stop writing! What will you do?”And I'm like, “Well, something that makes me happy, hopefully!” And then on the way to an event for Carlos —Carlos is my husband, and it was that was the year Sal and Gabi Break the Universe came out, I think. Either Break or Fix. I think it was Break came out in 2019 and Fix came out in 2020 because it was a pandemic book— it was a Disney event, and it was in the Bronx, it was the Bronx is Reading Book Festival, and I was staring out the window in this car that had been called up for him, very fancy-like, and we were passing rows and rows of houses and the thought came to me. It was a random thought. It was just like, “What if houses were people?” Like just very random, very gentle. And it was that what if moment that I hadn't felt it in so long. I was so surprised by it. I was so delighted. My brain, it was in that feeling of it was so hard to concentrate on anything else with the story that was building almost like a dam behind my eyelids.I went to bed, wide-eyed in the dark that night, fell asleep, woke up. We were getting coffee and tea in the kitchen, and I was like, “And then this happens in the buh buh buh buh…” But I told Carlos the whole story that had just occurred to me in the last twelve hours or so, and he asked me a lot of questions, and then I sat down and I started writing it longhand, which I hadn't done again for years. And took the time I wanted to. Stopped when my hand got tired. And in a few months, I had a whole novella drafted.Then I was like, “I'll type that when I feel like it.” And so was like, again, “I'm not going to write anything till I feel like it.” A few weeks later I had a really cool, funny romcom dream where a girl who was a severe introvert had to go to three different weddings in a single day, and she had to like change into a different bridesmaid outfit for each of them and they were all across town from each other, and I was like, “That would be a really fun plot for a novel if I could manage it.”And of course me being me, I write fantasy more than romance, though I often have romance elements. And so I was like, “Oh, I could set it in the world of Desdemona and the Deep and Dark Breakers! Ooh, but what if it wasn't in the gilded age equivalent that those stories are in? What if it was like in their 1980s? So what if there are like boomboxes and like space travel? But she's a goblin!” And then it just went on, and she's a severe introvert, and goblins are sort of —in that world— have a lot of spider-like attributes. So, it's like what if she's like a brown recluse? But like she's super, super introverted. She'll bite you if you come up on her unexpectedly. She's kind of a computer nerd. She grinds lenses. Like you look through the lenses and each lens does different things. So anyway, I just fell in love with her and I wrote this RomCom. Again, just typed it out. It was supposed to be very light and funny, and I did the first draft, and it was done in like two months or so. And that was 2019.So I guess that what I do now, if I'm feeling low energy —well, then the pandemic happened and a whole different thing happened— but I try to do a couple things, like 1) write when it feels joyful, but 2) since I often want to write but have low energy, what has worked for me lately is making writing dates with other writers to do a silent Zoom together, like a cafe. There are whole cafe kind of —like my friends in Chicago have this virtual cafe where people go and they are kind of like hosting for hour sessions and on the the top of the hour everybody chats for about 15 minutes, then they do a timed sprint for 45 minutes that's quiet, and then they'll do that. Maybe that will last 3 hours. And there's another one that some playwriting friends started, but it starts very rigidly 9:00 every morning and very rigidly closes at noon. And when I need more pressure than I give myself, just like constraint and pressure, I set my alarm for 5 minutes before 9:00, check my email for the link (it comes every day regardless of whether I sign in), and get my butt in the chair so that I'm kind of responsible to somebody. And then I sit and write for that time because those constraints, nobody's making me but the constraints in place, or this kind of social aspect, even though there's not a lot of interaction, have really given me the little energetic boost to get my butt in the chair —sitzfleisch— and to do to do some of that work.JuliaOkay, so I feel like all of this was amazing and fascinating. But if I boil it down to bullet points, what I've got is if you are feeling overwhelmed because everything has become too much and you can't find joy in your writing, the best thing to do is to actively take a break and not write. And then your ideas will start flowing again once you've actually allowed yourself to relax. ClaireThat's the hope, sure. JuliaBut that seems to be what happened for you?ClaireYes.JuliaBecause rest is part of the cycle, I think. I mean, that sort of goes along with the theory of fallow fields and crops. You need to not harvest every single season because if you do your field will just run completely out of rich minerals in the soil.ClaireYes, my father called it fertile boredom.JuliaOkay, so there's that, and then the second thing is: it helps you to have community accountability, and so having friends that are also writing at the same time as you is helpful.ClaireYeah, and that's a recent development. That was a pandemic development. I think it started a little bit before, but I didn't notice. It was when Carlos and I both had drafts due at the same time, and we started working together. So, suddenly to have two people and a deadline, it's almost like being in college where right after college it was really hard to write for a little while because there was no expectation of turning anything in, or a certain page number, but before college I wrote all the time! 8 to 10 hours, just for fun, and it was really hard. Like, how do you do that again? How do you want to do that again?And I never have gotten back to that level of desire and losing myself, except for moments, but like once you have the pressure and the deadline and the expectation. It's really hard to do it just for fun for me. But and with Carlos and I both writing together, it was so pleasurable and so much easier. And I recently learned a friend, not a friend, an acquaintance. A friendly acquaintance, who I was doing a podcast with through Rebellion, was telling me that she has ADHD and that when she sits with her partner and he's working and very focused and she's writing, she suddenly can focus a lot easier, and that her therapist called it body doubling. And I realized that's probably what was happening with me and Carlos. We were body doubling. And it seems to be what has been helping me the most now, in that kind of… this scattered, like, what day is it? What even is time? Who am I? I was like, “Oh. Other writers are in the world! Dee dee dee dee dee!” You know?JuliaThat's really interesting I find it's this is sort of the opposite for me, and I bring this up because I know that people listening to this are wondering about different processes, and I'm just here to tell you there are so many different processes! And the correct trick is just finding whatever works for you, and it might be different from time to time, but like don't feel like anything is how it always works and has to work that way and if it doesn't you're wrong. ClaireYeah.JuliaBut for me, I find that when I try to do group writing type things where it's, you know, 45 minutes of writing and fifteen minutes of chat, whether it's in person or in video or whatever, I am usually way less productive. It's hard hard for me to get into a good zone for work, and I kind of have to do stuff being on my own.ClaireThat's historically been true for me too.JuliaBefore the pandemic, I used to go to my local coffee shop, and I was a regular! The entire staff knew me. They all knew what drinks I liked! Like, I could walk in the door and they'd start making me a drink because they already knew what I wanted. That is how much I was in there. And I would just spend all day.ClaireI Love that.JuliaBut I would do it on my own, and I just kind of let the the roar of people chatting and drinking coffee around me be background, but I wouldn't have to pay attention to any of it. If I'm there with other people who are there for the same purpose, all of my focus goes out the window. And I don't know why. That's just always been the way it is. So like the body doubling thing doesn't—it's like a distraction instead of a.ClaireWell, it's so interesting because historically I never could write in a cafe or a library. Carlos is really good at that. But I look at too many people. It's really like I could do it if I put earphones on and made like ocean sounds and almost a shade over my eyes. It's too much and and generally, historically, I've always written alone, so this new development during the pandemic, like something else was happening that was even bigger than my need to isolate and focus, which was always a big need for me. So the other thing that I do, when I don't want people, is make it beautiful. So, like, light a candle, sometimes I do essential oils, or a smell, or like clear off my desk. Right? Handwrite, use a different ink, you know. Or like just something that makes it different. And make it beautiful. To make it ritual, almost, so that it's a different space. So that it's pleasurable, or sensual, to do the thing rather than drudgery.JuliaThat's really interesting. Do you find that the environment that you create for your writing affects what you put on the page?ClaireI don't know, but I would say that it's harder or easier depending on the environment to write at all. I like having a window to look out of. It's harder for me to pay attention if I'm looking at a wall. So, I would say all of the things that make it easier to get my butt in the chair. It's sort of like if it's attractive to be in the chair, then it's easier. But if it's sort of like, ehhh, I have to settle, and I have to be here, and I have to like shade my eyes and hide my ears, and like not pay attention to all the people around me. You know, I can get stuff done, but historically, I would say it's easier to do nonfiction blogging administrative work in that situation. Like, I can do administrative work at a cafe but fiction really really hard to do. I am audience motivated just like I'm food motivated. So if I know like my mom has heard the last chapter and she's like, “What's going to happen next?” That also motivates me to write because I've always read aloud my work. The instant I've written a sentence, I'm like, “Listen to this, guys!” So that's another thing that works for me, but some people would be… like I think for you, the idea of somebody immediately listening to your first draft would be so horrifying that it would stop you from writing, so that's where we're different, too. JuliaI'm a “not sharer” so I did the recent process post about one of the stories that I had written, and that was a really big step for me, because it was, “Okay, well, you want to know about what I was thinking, and I'm going to share with you things that feel very close and personal about like my process and my life.” ClaireYeah. Yeah.JuliaAnd my first drafts feel that way. I'm like, “What, you want to see… you want to like open up my insides and look at them? I don't think that sounds comfortable.”ClaireAnd for me, it's like, “Look at me! It's all sequins in here!”And that is where we’re leaving off for this episode. Next time we’ll get into how many drafts Claire typically writes for a project, what her agent search was like, how the final version of the book changed over time, and what it was like to narrate the audiobook version. Thanks so much for listening. If you want to have the chance to ask your own questions, or request specific kinds of posts from me, consider joining my patreon which is at patreon.com/juliarios, or my substack, which is at omgjulia.substack.com All patrons and subscribers get early access to every piece of creative work I commission from other creators in my Worlds of Possibility project, and your pledges and subscriber fees go directly to help pay for those stories and poems and things. I just wrapped up my first open submission period for that project, and there are SO MANY cool stories in my second round consideration pile. It’s going to be really hard to choose which ones I can actually accept, and I can’t wait to share them with you!Thanks for listening, and I’ll catch you next time. 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

This week Phil is still yanking around the US of A, so Robin and Jon welcome a couple of very special guests: JJ and Julia of the chessfeels podcast.  We kick off with some nonsense about names before talking about the psychology of chess. Julia gives Robin some chess therapy and… just how good are Robin's Rookbusters? Twitter Facebook Twitch YouTube Website

You can listen to this, or read the transcript below, which also has pictures. This is for paid subscribers only until the 15th of April, at which point it will unlock for everyone. Hello, and welcome to the OMG Julia Podcast, the podcast where we talk about creative lives and processes. I am your host, Julia Rios, and today this is a special for my paid subscribers. I'm going to talk about my own process in writing one specific story, and that story is “Xtabay” which appeared in Shadow Atlas: Dark Landscapes of the Americas, which came out from Hex Publishers in the autumn of 2021.This story was specifically commissioned as a story about Yucatán, which is where my father was from. The editors of the anthology had a concept for the book that was going to be an atlas of supernatural things and legends and folklore in different parts of North, Central, and South America. So when they asked me if I wanted to contribute, I said of course I would love to, and I thought that obviously Yucatán would be the best place for me to set my story. They thought this was a great idea, and then immediately I fell into a research hole. I thought, Okay, how am I going to do this? There's so much that I can do! I had spent literally days and days scouring the internet, books, YouTube, any kind of thing that I could find. Paranormal investigation websites, the travels of people who research bats… lots of things! And so then I thought, Okay, I need to narrow it down. So I sat down with a mind map, which actually in this case was just a blank piece of paper. And I'm going to give you a picture of it in the show notes for this podcast. So if you are listening to this, click through to the show notes, and you'll see the full picture of this paper, which I kept out for a long time and also spilled lots of things on. Don't worry. It's not actually blood even though it looks like it has a reddish stain I'm pretty sure that's just tomato sauce, probably. Not blood. This mind map: if you're not familiar with this concept, it's like you take a couple of things and then you try to come up with a web of connections to try to make them connect with each other. So, in this case I started with my father and Yucatán because my father was from Yucatán. So, I thought about things that connected to either of those. For my father, I thought of planes, I thought of exile, I thought of charm, and I thought of mamolas. Planes, because my father was a pilot and he liked to fly small planes. Exile, because he left Yucatán when he was 15 and he never lived there again. He did come back to visit, and he took me there to visit, but he didn't actually ever live there again. Charm, because he was very charming. And mamolas, which, as far as I can tell, are a thing that my father made up. He would tell us the story of the mamolas and the day the mamolas came to town, and their black leathery wings would cover the sky, and they would be looking for your uncovered necks so that they could come and like attack them and probably suck your blood, but actually what happened was his hands would descend from the sky and attack your neck by tickling. I've looked for it over and over again. I've done multiple iterations of the spelling. I've tried different phrases. I can't come up with anything. I did text one of my brothers and I asked him if he remembered it and he said yes, but all he remembered was the tickling, too. So we think that that's something probably our father made up, and I thought about trying to make a fake story about it, but I didn't really want to because I didn't know what he had originally thought of, where he had gotten it from, and I kind of just didn't want to mess with that. So I let that one be. But then I was like, Okay, mamolas: what are they like? They're black. They have leathery wings, black leathery wings. What else has that? Bats. Mosquitoes have wings and they're not leathery, but mosquitoes and bats and mamolas could all be tied to blood sacrifice, and so could an alux, which is a little protective spirit that maybe protects your land if you're a farmer or something like that. They can kind of be running around in the wild, but they can also be directed to protect specific places. And people argue over whether they're real or not, but there is a bridge that they had so much trouble building near the airport in Cancún that they eventually had to build an alux house to appease the alux. And after that there weren't any more accidents.And I thought that was a rich mine. I might go with that, but I was deep into Yucatán at this point so I was like, Okay, what else is in Yucatán?Cenotes, which are caves that you can swim in. Sometimes they're thought of as the door to the underworld. Jaguars, big cats in the jungles. There are jungles. There are caves—caves are where the cenotes are. Jungles also have the ceiba tree, which was a sacred tree to the Maya. There's the wáay chivo (sometimes spelled huay chivo), which is a kind of terrible goat demon who will wreak havoc and eat a lot of livestock and possibly you. Then of course the legend of Xtabay. Xtabay is a beautiful woman's spirit that you will see in the folds of a ceiba tree and then she'll lure men to their doom. Like she'll call them in, they'll have good sex, and then she'll eat them! Or she'll just do all kinds of things to cause trouble. You'll find occasional reports, like there's some guy who disappeared for like three to seven days and he says he doesn't remember anything about where he was, but he remembers seeing a beautiful woman by a ceiba tree, and then that's it. And then somehow he manages to come out of the jungle alive, so that's lucky for him. I thought, Okay, these are all good starts. So where are we going to go with any of these? We've got the alux. That may be a good idea. Got wáay chivo. I already knew there was going to be a poem by someone else with that idea so I was like maybe not that one. And then there is Xtabay. Xtabay is a really interesting story. So coming out of the Xtabay capsule, there's Xkeban. And Utz-Colel, which are the names of the two sisters that are central to this story. And xtabentún and tzacam, which are the two different flowering plants that are central to this story. So I started thinking a lot about each of these and basically from there, I went into thinking a lot about different things like the conversations that we have with folktales and what they mean, and I also thought about my father immigrating to the US, and some of the struggles that he faced with assimilation and the things that he kind of passed down to his children as an immigrant who wanted to assimilate fully. And so then I thought, okay maybe I'll make this story really embrace that struggle of assimilation identity.The struggle both at home where it's like are you in line with the colonial forces or the or the native forces? And then also abroad, are you trying to assimilate to your new place or are you trying to remember your old heritage? And the ways that there are lots of complicated webs of people and relationships.And so I kind of I used a few details from my father's own life like he did actually go to Southern Mississippi University, which I have the character in this story go to, and he did have multiple children with white women in the United States, and he did encourage us to assimilate. So I thought about how this all ties in. And then the interesting thing with Xtabay, in particular with this story, is that the quick rundown of the Xtabay story is that there are these two women a long time ago in a small village in Yucatán. They are sisters, and they're both beautiful. But one of them is kind of promiscuous, and the other one is very virginal and pure. And so everyone in the village thinks that the one is very pure and upstanding, but the other one is actually kindhearted and helps people. The pure and upstanding one is actually very cruel and bigoted. So then one day the impure one dies and they find her with like all these animals guarding her and she's got beautiful flowering vines of a specific kind of morning glory called the xtabentún flower kind of growing all over her and climbing all over the village and giving this beautiful scent. Then not long after that, Utz-Colel, the proper one dies and they find her because she smells real bad and she's only got a cactus on her that’s giving these terrible flowers that smell bad. They're like, but she's so good and pure! They bring fresh flowers and those flowers wither immediately and just die. But the story goes that Utz-Colel is so jealous of her sister, even in death, that she prays to evil spirits to be a beautiful woman and then just sort of takes over her sister's role and becomes a beautiful woman who lures men to their death. And she uses her name, Xtabay, because in the in life, Xkeban is not actually a name. It meant prostitute. So they were calling her a derogatory sex worker name instead of her name, which was Xtabay. But in the afterlife Xtabay is this terrible spirit who’s very beautiful but then will kill you. And I feel like this story is really interesting and has a lot of weird conflict about it. So I kind of twisted it a little bit when I used it and I made it that Xtabay was the actual spirit It wasn't Utz-Colel. It was actually Xkeban, and that she would be looking for a nice man. She was not actually setting out originally to be to be mean. But then when people don't do what she thinks they should, then she gets upset because she's been mistreated for her entire life and now she's also been mistreated for her entire death. And she's sort of like the voice of the old native ways versus the new colonial ways. She's sort of like, “You're not even embracing your heritage.” The more you deny who you are, the worse things will be for you is the curse that she imposes upon the character in the story. I really wanted to explore all of these really conflicting things and one of the ways that I did that was by taking this mythology and kind of twisting it a little bit so we didn’t have this narrative that Utz-Colel is the bad person, because it would make sense for Utz-Colel to be the bad person, but then why is she using Xtabay as her name? Why is the spirit that we see looking like Xtabay and not Utz-Colel? Yeah, so these were all things that I was thinking about. Then, once I worked out that I was going to do this story about this particular myth, I also wanted to try to to weave in modern stuff. And both modern stuff from now, and modern stuff from the early twentieth century, so that we could see kind of different time periods and how they might look. And then I also wanted to make sure that I — If you're going to play with something and kind of like turn it a little bit sideways, it's good to know every version that you can. So I spent just ages scouring every instance I could find of someone telling this myth. I listened to firsthand accounts from people translated from Maya to Spanish, that I would listen to the Spanish version. I would be listening to people reading children's books, because there are children's books. There's a children's book called The Legend of Xtabay and it's so funny because in that one they don't say anything about prostitute and they don't say that she's like basically having sex with everybody. Instead they're like she had a lot of boyfriends, which I thought was funny. Xtabentún, the flower, is now used to make a liqueur so there's also the origin story from that liqueur, which I read, and all kinds of other things. And at that point, after I was soaking in it for so long, then I felt like, okay now I'm going to make my own version and make it a little bit different. And the reason I want to make it different is so that I can ask what makes this beautiful person who was so nice to people in life turn “evil” in death? And is she evil? Who's evil in this? Who is the villain? If you say that you're good because you're following a certain set of rules that someone has prescribed, are you good? Or do your motivations matter a lot, and is being true to yourself more important than being someone who follows specific rules and standards? These are a lot of the questions that I was grappling with.So you can see basically all of the things that I spent ages thinking about. And I really did spend a long time, like I followed research trips of The Batman, who studies bats, and his trips with his grad students into the jungle to to study bats at temples and things like that. I mean, I watched full documentaries, I read articles, I bought academic journals so I could read more accounts of their trips. I really spent a long time digging into the bats, like maybe I was going to write about them, and then I totally threw all of that research right out, and there basically aren't any bats in my story. But that process was part of my process of researching the area and digging myself deep into it. I think I couldn't have written this story if I hadn't spent all that time researching bat stuff because I wouldn't know for sure that I wanted to go in a different direction for this one. Same with the alux, and with all the other things. You have to deeply sink into them to know what you're actually going to do. I say “you” as if this is a prescription, but it's not. It's just what I had to do in this specific instance. Part of me doing that was also trying to sink deeply into the area, and remember the landscape, and remember the people, and have a sense of how it feels to be there. And part of what I was remembering was my own memories of the time that I was there. I have the modern character there as a teenager who is in kind of modern times and I was there as a teenager in more modern times as well. So her experiences are somewhat drawn from my own experiences of hanging out with a big group of kids and going to the street fair, and swimming during the day, and things like that. My group of kids that I hung out with did not have evening storytelling time where we talked about aluxes and Xtabay, sadly, because that would have been awesome and I would have been super into it. But I'm pretty sure if we had done that, they would have all thought that I was a nerd for asking.So that's basically the story of how this story came to be. If you think it sounds interesting, you can read it in Shadow Atlas: Dark Landscapes of the Americas. I hope that it is interesting to you. I hope this artifact is interesting even if it's not a step by step how to write a story. It's just this is one way to kind of jog loose some ideas. I didn't know, when I started writing it, if I was going to write about my father being charming and maybe also secretly a mamola or a bat, or my father having flown planes. I didn't know if that would enter into it, but those didn't. They didn't enter into it at all. Just basically him having been a teenager who left Yucatán and coming to the US was the only thing that I really took from his life specifically. All of the rest of it is just sort of there as backdrop. Even if it doesn't make it onto the page, it's there in my head, and I know that this whole world that I've set this story in is rich and full of these other things as well.If you have questions or comments, or you want to talk about some of the themes that we discussed in the story, I'd love to hear from you, and I'd love to hear all about it. Thank you so much for supporting me and my work! I will talk to you next time. 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

Jenn and guest Vanessa Diaz discuss the Nebula finalists, that Ms. Marvel trailer, some favorite speculative poems, and more. Follow the podcast via RSS here, Apple Podcasts here, Spotify here. The show can also be found on Stitcher here. To get even more SF/F news and recs, sign up for our Swords and Spaceships newsletter! This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.f News That Ms. Marvel Trailer [Book Riot] Disney and the “Don't Say Gay” Bill [The Guardian] Nebula Award Finalists Martha Wells declines nomination [Publishers Marketplace] Interview with Evan Ross Katz about his Buffy Book [AV Club] Reebok is Making Power Rangers Shoes [Gizmodo] Poetry Discussed Clock Star Rose Spine by Fran Wilde  “All the Army Ghost Stories I Have Heard” by Natalie Wang, Strange Horizons “On Where to Find Strange Horizons, And How to Get There” by Julia Rios, Strange Horizons “Dancing Princesses” by Roshani Chokshi, Uncanny Magazine “Assimilation” by Valerie Valdes, Uncanny Magazine “Keening” by Valerie Valdes, Uncanny Magazine

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

Back the Mermaids Monthly Kickstarter!   We Make Books is hosted by Rekka Jay and Kaelyn Considine; Rekka is a published author and Kaelyn is an editor and together they are going to take you through what goes into getting a book out of your head, on to paper, in to the hands of a publisher, and finally on to book store shelves. We Make Books is a podcast for writers and publishers, by writers and publishers and we want to hear from our listeners! Send us your questions, comments, and concerns! We hope you enjoy We Make Books! Twitter: @WMBCast  |  @KindofKaelyn  |  @BittyBittyZap Instagram: @WMBCast  Patreon.com/WMBCast   Julia's Links: Their Website: juliarios.com @omgjulia @mermaidsmonthly Back the Mermaids Monthly Kickstarter!   Episode Transcript (created by Rekka, blame her for any errors) Rekka (00:00:00):Welcome back to another episode of We Make Books, a podcast about writing, publishing, and everything in between. I'm Rekka. I write science fiction and fantasy as RJ Theodore. Kaelyn (00:00:09):I'm Kaelyn Considine. I am the acquisitions editor for Parvus Press. Rekka (00:00:13):And this episode is a little light on the Kaelyn this week. Kaelyn (00:00:18):Yeah. we had this this great interview set up with Julia Rios and I missed it because I I ended up in the hospital the day before we were supposed to record the interview and that's Um interviews are a lot of fun, but unfortunately it's different than when it's just Rekka and I recording and she can say, okay, well just do this when you get home. So I I felt bad, I had to, didn't give Rekka that much notice she had to fly solo on this one. Rekka (00:00:47):Yeah, it worked out okay. Julia is a great person. Julia Rios is a queer Latinx writer, editor, podcaster, and narrator whose fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have appeared in Latin American Literature Today, Lightspeed and Goblin Fruit, among other places. Their editing work has won multiple awards, including the Hugo award. Julia is a co-host of This Is Why We're Like This, a podcast about the movies we watch in childhood that shape our lives, for better or for worse. They're also one of several co-hosts for the Skiffy and Fanty Show, a general SF discussion podcast, and they've narrated the stories for Escape Pod, PodCastle, Pseudopod, and Cast of Wonders. And it was the editing work that had us reach out to Julia this time specifically editing anthologies, which Kaelyn brought to me as a concept for an episode. And I was like, "Hey, we can bring someone else on. Cause you said you wanted to do more interviews." Kaelyn (00:01:38):Yeah. And we got this one lined up and then I missed it. Yeah. Rekka (00:01:43):Well at least I had someone to talk to. It could have been a rambly, messy, nothing, if it'd just been me. Kaelyn (00:01:50):Yeah. So anthologies are you know, something that I think a lot of writers see constantly, especially if you're active in social media, there's something that you're just constantly coming across, but they're a different kind of intimidating than a regular novel or short story submission. It's a different process. So I thought doing an episodeum it's actually gonna be two episodes now—on anthologies would be a nice topic to cover. So it was, you know, I, I wasn't on this episode, but I will say it was great that someone could come on and talk to us about this that actually has experience doing this. Rekka (00:02:31):And then I threw Kaelyn the rough cut so she could listen while she was in the hospital to see if she wanted to have another conversation, if I covered everything or—and obviously I failed because we're going to talk about it one more time. Kaelyn (00:02:42):Oh no, no, we're gonna, we're gonna talk about some different some different stuff. I can't, I can't let you have all of the fun with the anthropologies without me, Rekka (00:02:50):Julia. The reason that I reached out to them this time was because, well, I've always wanted to have them on the podcast—cause you know, in your mind, when you have a podcast, there's always a list of people you want to talk to. So this one got me the chance to shoot Julia up to the head of the line because Julia is currently, right this very minute, get excited, running a Kickstarter to support basically a year long anthology. And the anthology is themed entirely around mermaids. And you'll get to hear Julia's explanation of why that happened that way in the episode. So I won't go too far into it. Kaelyn (00:03:27):As if you need an explanation for mermaids. Rekka (00:03:30):Julia provides an excuse to write your mermaid story, the mermaid story of your heart, and then send it to them. So of course, first they need their Kickstarter campaign to be successful. So make sure that while you're listening to this episode, you also go to MermaidsMonthly.com and that will lead you to the Kickstarter page. So you can back that act fast, because. Yeah. Kaelyn (00:03:53):Yeah. I was going to say, when does the Kickstarter end? Rekka (00:03:56):The Kickstarter ends on December 12th. So act fast. You have the rest of the week, if you're listening to this on, you know, the week it comes out. And if you are catching up after the fact, cross your fingers and go check that URL and we'll see, we'll see what happens. Kaelyn (00:04:14):This is actually an excellent reminder for me, because I haven't gone to the Kickstarter yet. So— Rekka (00:04:18):[GASP]. Kaelyn (00:04:18):I know. Rekka (00:04:19):Go to the Kickstarter, Kaelyn! Kaelyn (00:04:22):I was in the hospital! Rekka (00:04:22):What! That's no excuse. You had plenty of free time just sitting in that room by yourself. Kaelyn (00:04:25):Yeah, but, like, you know what hospital wi-fi is like. Rekka (00:04:28):Yeah, I do. Okay. Sorry. So so yes, everyone, including Kaelyn immediately, while you listen to the music. Kaelyn (00:04:35):I'm actually going to just drop off this intro right now, so I can go over there and check out the kickstarter. Rekka (00:04:40):Good. All right. So while we listen to the music, go to MermaidsMonthly.com support this anthology because as you're about to hear it is extremely cool and extremely well-conceived. And it is in the hands of an excellent editor who has put together a team of people that they know can, you know, pull all this off and do it in a really, really cool way. So here comes the music. Here comes Julia Rios, and you are already at Kickstarter. I know it, so good for you back that shit and let's let's see this happen. Rekka (00:05:28):Okay, I am here today with Julia Rios, who is a personal acquaintance of mine. I would go so far as to say friend, and it's good to have you on the podcast, finally. I was searching for an excuse honestly, to invite you on. And then Kaelyn came up with this idea of, "Hey, let's talk about anthologies because they are a beast of their own when it comes to pretty much every aspect of them." So I said, "Hey, speaking of themed collections of writing, you know, I know somebody who might want to talk about that right now." So why don't I have you introduce yourself? You know, we gave your, your formal bio in the intro, but you know, what's, what's on your mind these days and and where is it taking you? Julia Rios (00:06:18):Right. Well, I think so talking about the theme of anthologies, I am a writer, editor, podcaster, and narrator. So I've done lots of different things in different ways. And I have edited anthologies in the past. I edited, Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories. And then I did anthology editing for three different years, best YA volumes. So those were reprint anthologies, which is also yet another different beast than themed anthologies that are original stories. And now I am working on a project called Mermaids Monthly, which is technically a magazine, but it's more of an anthology project in that it's only running for one year and probably there's gonna be a book at the end of it, collecting all the contents. It's very themed. It's not a general call. So it's, it's even more highly themed than for instance, Kaleidoscope Diverse YA. Julia Rios (00:07:11):Cause that was basically any science fiction and fantasy. That was YA as long as the protagonist came from a background that wasn't the default straight, Cis, white, et cetera. I also did edit, I was a guest editor for the Cast of Wonders, which is a podcast, why a magazine sort of thing. But every year they do a banned books week episode, or series of episodes. So it's for the full week. And that's basically an anthology editing gig as well, where you're editing, you're selecting stories based on the theme that are, in the case of the one that I edited, it was censorship turns out the lights, like let's, let's turn the lights on and see what happens. And so it was very much like, "okay, tell me for banned books weeks, what stories you have that are science fiction and fantasy that have to do with censorship and with like subverting censorship." So that's, that's the kind of different areas of, of podcast and magazine and book anthology editing that I have done or that I am currently doing. All of them were different formats because when you're doing it for a book it's different than when you're doing it for audio and it's different than when you're doing it for something that's going to be serialized. Rekka (00:08:35):Right. Right. And the difference between just the, like the nuance between those three different that you listed is even more than I was thinking about, you know, because— as soon as I invited you on it, it was like, you were going to talk about mermaids. This is gonna be so cool. And and I'm thinking about like the specificity of a magazine about mermaids and you're right. Like an anthology that has a theme can still be a very broad theme where that's open to a lot of interpretation. And I would imagine that you'd even invite people to open "mermaids" to a lot of interpretation, but it's like if I was going to, and I, and I don't mean this to like downplay the mermaid theme because there's, there's a lot of cultural and historical, you know, genre kind of stuff going on with mermaids. But like if I had an anthology, where I was like, "every story has to have an apple pie in it," you know, like that could be really, really broad if, as long as there's an apple pie in it, it can be about anything you want, you know? But would you say that, and we'll get more into the Mermaids Monthly specifically later, but like, are you, are you looking for like, no, I want to center the mermaid or you, you think you want, like, "I don't know. What does mermaid make you want to write?" Julia Rios (00:09:58):Yeah. Okay. So this is something that we've talked about a lot. So I'm working on mermaids monthly with Meg Frank, who is an artist and also has a background in marketing. Rekka (00:10:06):And may or may not be a mermaid themselves. Julia Rios (00:10:09):Yeah. They may be a mermaid, it's entirely possible. So we've, we've kind of conceived this as what I originally, my first idea, this, the whole reason Mermaids Monthly exists is because I've been editing professionally for, I think eight years now, seven years now, some long time anyway. And many times when I'm on panels at conventions, or if I'm teaching a class, people will ask me, "Do editors really have to reject stories they actually like? Does that ever actually happen?" Because I think people tell writers like, "don't feel bad. It doesn't mean your story isn't good." And then writers are like, "well then why would you possibly reject a story that is good?" Rekka (00:10:49):Right. Julia Rios (00:10:50):And it does happen. It happens so often. And it's, it's heartbreaking because as an editor, you don't want to have to reject stories that are good. And also like, as an editor, I know. I'm also a writer. I know how awful it is to be rejected. I don't want to have to tell people like, "Hey, I know you spent a huge amount of time and poured your soul into writing this thing, but guess what? I'm not gonna take it." Rekka (00:11:13):Yeah. Julia Rios (00:11:14):But that's part of the job. So it's an unfortunate side effect of the cool things that you get to do. But one of the reasons why stories that are good can get rejected, and it's not the only reason, is that if you're editing something for a non-themed thing, if you're like a general magazine or a general arm of a publishing company that is not specifically highly themed, you can take one item that is similar. So you could take like one mermaid story and that's fine. You can maybe take two and get away with it. The second you take three of those things, you run the risk of becoming "that mermaid magazine." Rekka (00:11:56):Right. Julia Rios (00:11:58):Or like "that imprint that only publishes mermaid books." Rekka (00:12:02):Hey, you know, some people want that, but it does. There are reasons why publishers don't want to do that. Julia Rios (00:12:08):Like there are some places where that's that's appropriate. This is fine. I would always like end this with, "this is fine if you're Mermaids Monthly, but it's not so great if you're Strange Horizons," which has no stated theme except for science fiction and fantasy. Rekka (00:12:23):Right. Julia Rios (00:12:23):And it's like, "I'm not Mermaids Monthly. So I can't take more than a couple mermaid stories." Rekka (00:12:29):Unless... Julia Rios (00:12:29):"Unless, what if I am Mermaids Monthly and I can, and all I do is mermaids for awhile?" So I originally thought I was just going to do some, you know, take, take stories for a while and do one year of mermaids. And then when I brought it up with Meg, we started talking and, and what grew out of this was something bigger and more visual than I was originally expecting because Meg's background is in art and that there is so much cool mermaid art. So we're going to have comics, we're going to have illustrations, we're going to have all kinds of little visual cues that are mermaid involved as well. And that's different from most of the other end biologies that I've done, because most of the other ones that I've done, haven't had illustrations. They have like cover art and that's it. Rekka (00:13:16):Yeah, yeah. Even, even some of the magazines that go further with artwork still have like a full bleed illustration that either separate sections or just, you know, is for the titles that they think are going to be the most impactful. Julia Rios (00:13:35):Yeah. Yeah. And I think that this is going to be much more integrated. We have one bonus issue that's already come out. And so you can kind of get a sense of it because it has one comic and it has a few poems and Meg has done some sort of interstitial art bits. So you can see that it sort of does incorporate that visual art element all throughout, which is great because mermaids is such a visual theme and like under sea life. So that's very cool, and that's one of the things that I've been thinking about, like how, how different this will be is that it really does then affect everything. When we made our submissions guidelines, I realized like we were going to have separate art and prose guidelines. And we realized that we couldn't do that because, because it was also intertwined, we just needed everybody to send us stuff at the same time so that we could consider all of it together. Rekka (00:14:24):And so that's one thing, you know, stepping back from the specific anthology or, you know, anthology year of magazine— it needs its own name because you're doing so many really cool things with it that like, it, it doesn't, it's not fair to call it either magazine or anthology. Julia Rios (00:14:43):I do think it's fair to call it anthology. When you think about the idea of a TV series can be an anthology. You can have a collection of, for instance, like Amazing Stories or the Twilight Zone is considered an anthology. Rekka (00:14:56):Right. Julia Rios (00:14:57):All it means is that you're collecting things of a similar type that aren't necessarily individually related to each other, but are related to a larger theme. Rekka (00:15:05):Right. So when you are the editor for an anthology, you're not always going to be completely autonomous with regard to the project itself. So I'm wondering how, as you see the submissions come in and you may also not get to be the art director on the artwork for them. So this is, this is very different from what you're working on, which is so exciting. (I'm, I'm going to say that like, over and over and over during this episode.) But you do have control, usually, over the stories that you accept. So what kinda goes through your mind as you create a call for an anthology, and then, you know, the world being what it is, you might get stories that have nothing to do with what you were anticipating getting. How do you like assemble these? Like what goes through your mind as you assemble these things into a single work, that's going to have your name on it? Julia Rios (00:16:13):That's a really great question. And I think that one of the things that has been true for me is that when I'm doing something for a theme and I'm thinking about it something that might happen is I get something that I love that is a surprise to me that I wouldn't have thought of myself, and that can become sort of a pillar and, together with a few other things, they can kind of hold together the theme and be sort of like different poles—if you imagine the whole theme is like a tent and they have different poles at different points. And then the overall thing kind of like folds over everything and drapes there. And I think that what I usually find when I'm coming to coming up with an anthology type thing, is that I know I have a set length that I'm ultimately aiming at. So I know that there has to be a balance within that length and that if I get a few things that are different from each other, or a few things that are very similar to each other that are going to be the tent poles that hold it up, then I can kind of build around that to create the balance based on those things. Rekka (00:17:24):Okay. Okay. That's interesting. So when you say you're limited to a length, we're talking about like the total word count because the authors are being paid per word, and there's a budget for what the content is going to cost. Julia Rios (00:17:37):Yeah. And it's not just because of that. It can be because of a budget, but it can also be because that's the length, the physical length of a physical book, that you want to in someone's hands. Cause like if you buy 200,000 words, it's going to be a much thicker, heavier book. Rekka (00:17:56):Yeah. Julia Rios (00:17:57):Than if you buy 100,000 words. Rekka (00:17:59):Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, at 100,000 words, you're wondering how you're going to fit everything on the spine. At 200,000 words, you're like, "should I throw some illustrations on the spine? This thing is enormous. What do I do with all this space? Maybe I'll put a recipe here. I don't know." yeah. So when, so when you, aren't the conceptual, you know, creator of the anthology, like if someone says, I want to have an anthology based on this topic, but I want to find an editor that is going to do it justice, and I decide that's not me. How do you work with the person who brings you the anthology? Julia Rios (00:18:39):That's interesting. So I think that anytime I've been hired by someone else to do an anthology, either I've worked with them... So in the case of Kaleidoscope, my co-editor was the publisher, Alisa Krasnostein. Alisa Krasnostein is an Australian publisher of a small press called 12th Planet Press. And basically she heard me on a recording of a panel that I had been on at WisCon about dystopian YA and like how heteronormative it is. And she was like, "would you like to work with me? And we could do an anthology of like dystopian YA." And that was her original pitch. And I was like, "I would love to work with you. This sounds fun. I think we should make it not limited to queer or dystopian." And so like, then we ended up with this idea of like diverse YA science fiction and fantasy. So it was a very broad thing, which meant that... I realized at that point that if we were going to do a very, very narrow theme, that it would end up feeling, to me, like a lot of the same story over and over again, queer YA dystopian is a very narrow theme. And I like to kind of play around a little bit more. So we talked to each other until we kind of came up with something that worked for both of us. And she got really excited about, you know, including other kinds of diversity as well, and including other kinds of stories. And we came up with an anthology that was a really lovely anthology with a lot of great stories and that were all very different and that was okay, because they could be very different and still fit with the broader theme. Julia Rios (00:20:14):So that's one example of what happened was, basically I talked with the person and was co-editing, but in another instance, like for instance when I did the banned books week for Cast Of Wonders, they, they know that they want to do a banned books week showcase every year, and they usually get someone to guest edit it. So they asked me if I would like to be that editor. And they told me what they generally wanted, which was, it has to fit with this "censorship turns out the lights leaves us in the dark let's turn on the lights." And then they said, "basically, you know, here's the budget that you have, you make it work." And so I'm like, you know, they were like, "we want at least X amount of episodes. So it has to be a mixture of like short stories and flash and whatever, but like here, here, you can have this submissions pile and you can do what you want with it." Julia Rios (00:21:09):And I did have access to their first reader team and I did actually talk to their first readers. So if their first readers really loved something, I would take that into account. And I think that's generally my experience, anytime I'm editing with a team, I will definitely talk to other members of the team, and if something hasn't grabbed me on first read, but it's really grabbed some other people, I'll then take more time to consider it cause, obviously things work differently for different people, and just because something hasn't grabbed me right off the bat, it doesn't mean that it's not a beautiful story that I will ultimately love to publish. Rekka (00:21:45):Right. Right. Yeah. And you can get to know the story as you work with the author and, you know, appreciate more about it. Julia Rios (00:21:52):Yeah. And just having the chance to ask the other readers, like, "why did this resonate with you?" can kind of also open up different aspects of it. Rekka (00:22:00):Right. Because as you're reading through a slush pile, I imagine there's a pressure to just respond to every one of them as quickly as possible, you know, to be fair that there's the, "I know what I'm looking for this, isn't it" kind of, you know, and then maybe you get through the entire pile and you realize what you thought you wanted wasn't in there, but now you have this sense that there was something else in there that you, you know, that was forming that you didn't realize until you get to the end of it or something. How is that slush pile experience with you as like the lead editor? I mean, I know you said you worked with the first readers, but what does that actually look like? Cause I'm not sure that everybody really understands how that process works. Julia Rios (00:22:45):Okay. So usually in places where there are where there's a team of first readers, basically all the slush comes in and sometimes, depending on the place the main editor won't read any of the slush that hasn't been filtered. Sometimes everybody is kind of like picking stuff out of the pile and reading it and then setting aside the ones that they like to show people later. Usually there's like a first pass that happens when I do these things where it's like, yeah, that first pass is reading things and setting the things that look good aside and setting the things that I automatically know, like maybe they aren't for the theme or maybe it just didn't grab me. It wasn't something that I felt was ready. It, whatever, whatever reason, maybe it's actually a graciously offensive, that happens sometimes. Those things will get like set aside to be rejected right away. Julia Rios (00:23:41):And then you'll go and do more passes, then with each pass. You're kind of your goal is to cut it down further because ultimately, you know, you're going to want a very small percentage of that stack. And then finally, after that, so if the first readers have been doing it, they'll be passing things up and I'll be reading them after they pass them up. Maybe I won't read them until we get to a second round. So anybody who has been pulled out by a first reader might get a second round notice that says like, "Hey your story made it past the first round, but you've gotta wait longer, sorry." Rekka (00:24:15):Good news, bad news. Julia Rios (00:24:17):Yeah. And sometimes those stories are stories that I read and set aside. So I'm sending the story and being like, like basically if you get that notice somebody loved your story. They loved your story enough that they were like, "this is worth looking at more carefully and seeing if it fits the overall balance." Rekka (00:24:33):Yeah. Julia Rios (00:24:33):And then, like I said, usually what happens for me is I'll find one or two things that I'm like, "I know for sure this thing is definitely in." So then it's like, "how do the other things match against it?" And I think with that one in specific, like I had asked a couple of people to submit things and knew that those would be in the pile, but also didn't know which ones they were, because the way Cast of Wonders does reading, they make it so that you can't see who the author is when you're first reading it. Rekka (00:25:08):Right. Julia Rios (00:25:08):So Anonymous, Anonymous Submissions from the point of view of the reading team. Rekka (00:25:14):Right. Julia Rios (00:25:14):And that was really interesting to me because I knew like one of the stories that I had asked a specific author that I really like, I was like, "could you please submit something? Cause I know you'll write something good for this." And I knew it was their story, even though I didn't know what they were going to send. And I didn't know whose name was on the thing I, reading it, I was like, "this is this author. And I already know I want it." Rekka (00:25:37):Yeah. That's very cool. So on that note, a lot of anthologies will solicit work. Especially for instance, if this anthology, you know, this hypothetical anthology is being funded through Kickstarter there's a tendency to say, "and we will have these names that you already know" so that people back it because they're, you know, familiar or a fan of with or of the author names that they recognize. So when, when do you get to say like tap someone that "you know, you love their work and say, I want you to write me something." And when do you only get to say, "could you submit something please? So I can consider it?" Or is that a personal decision? Like, "I don't know for sure that this is up your alley, but I want to invite you to participate because I believe you would do well" versus like, "no, I guarantee you you're in it if you write me a story" and is that guaranteed? Julia Rios (00:26:34):So that depends a lot on the context. And for me, if I'm doing an anthology and I ask someone to please submit something, usually usually I'm asking them, knowing that I would accept what they would write. So in the case of Mermaids Monthly, for instance, for the Kickstarter, we have a list of contributors and those are all people that I've worked with before, or have high confidence in the stuff that I've read of theirs. And we know that they are willing to do something. We ask them ahead of time, "Would you be willing to write something?" We believe they will turn the thing in. If they turn something in, we will absolutely plan to take it. The only way we wouldn't is if somehow, like they didn't have time, some life emergency came up, or I don't know, somehow it turned out that someone I'd asked had secretly been a horrible racist and wrote— like in that case, yeah. I'm not going to accept it, but I'm only going to ask people that I would never imagine would do that. Rekka (00:27:37):Right. Of course. Julia Rios (00:27:39):We had, I think, 30 names in our contributors before we— Rekka (00:27:43):Yeah that was the last count I saw. Julia Rios (00:27:47):Yeah. And the reason why was because we know all of the formats that we're doing involve a lot of like smaller things. So we were able to do that many names and still know that we'll be able to take like as many people again from the slush. Julia Rios (00:28:00):Yeah. Yeah, I had to remind myself like, "Oh yeah, this is running all year 30 names doesn't mean it's already full." Julia Rios (00:28:06):Well, it's also like, "are those 30 people all turning in a long story?" No, some of them are doing illustrations. Some of them are doing like flash pieces that we specifically asked for or poems that we specifically asked for. So it depends. And, and what you're asking people to do will depend as well. But for that, I definitely can make that call. For the Cast of Wonders one, I couldn't just solicit something and say, for sure, "I know I want you to write this and I will absolutely take it," because I knew that the process for choosing those was going to be the process that they already had in place. Rekka (00:28:42):Right. Julia Rios (00:28:42):Which is you get Anonymous Submissions, you read those, and then the team kind of makes a decision. Rekka (00:28:49):And in your case, you were lucky that this person was recognizable. Julia Rios (00:28:52):I told that person, like, "I'd really love you to submit something. Cause I know you write, well, I can't guarantee anything." And I will tell— I'll be very transparent with people ahead of time about whether or not I can guarantee or not guarantee something. But for all the people that have already asked for Mermaids Monthly, I specifically like said, "I would like you to do X thing. Would you do X thing? If you do it, I will put it in this magazine as long as it funds." Julia Rios (00:29:17):Yeah. And do you ask them to shoot then for a word count goal? Julia Rios (00:29:22):Yeah. I do. So I've— some of the people I've asked for specific word counts of stories. Whether it's a flash piece or it's a short story, some people I've said like, "you can go right up to the limit," some people I've said, "Hey, I'm looking for something that's like two to three thousand words." I've asked some people for poetry, I've asked some people for illustrations and comics. It just kind of depends. And with the illustrations and things like that, it's like, there's a difference between whether we've asked someone to do an interior spot illustration or a cover, which the covers are going to be way more expensive. Rekka (00:29:59):Right. The covers are more expensive. They take up an entire page and you've got to account for that when you're planning your books and your layout, the spot illustrations might be resizable depending on how the the resolution and how they flow with the words around them, that kind of thing. That's and that's so neat. I love the, the mix of art that you're going to have in this. I'm excited to see how that turns out. So when you are then considering story lengths, do you get excited looking through the slush pile when you find like lots of flash, does that make you go, "Ooh, I can buy lots of stories." Julia Rios (00:30:35):Yeah. Rekka (00:30:35):Or is it really a matter of how the, the themes fit in? Julia Rios (00:30:39):I love flash. I think flash is harder to do than a lot of people realize. I love it when it works. Well, I think that flash stories are such a great little break. Like it's a little hit. So if you only have a five minute break to do something and you want to just read a story during those five minutes, flash is such a great little thing to do, and a good flash story can leave you laughing, or it can give you an emotional gut punch, or you can just come out of it being like, "Whoa, I had this thought that I never had before" and you never know what you're going to get. So I really do love it when it works well. I also do think it's really hard to pull off. So I love it when people submit it and, like every other story it's still a hard sell, but statistically, because we can buy more of them, because they will fit more in the space that we have and with the budget we have, you're more likely to get an acceptance with flash. Rekka (00:31:38):Right. It does seem like, okay, everybody, that's your hint, that's your little trick. Cause otherwise of course, everyone's going to say, "how do I get my story accepted?" And we're still talking generally here. I haven't even gotten to the mermaid stuff, but like generally, what would be your advice for someone who says like, "I want to write short fiction and I want to sell it to markets or sell it to anthologies." because especially with anthologies, generally, there's kind of a small window of the submissions. So unless someone's got something in their back pocket that's perfect for that anthology that they've been workshopping and they've been editing and they've been revising and had beta readers and, and they've, you know, been staring at for 10 years or something. There... What you're going to see is generally like maybe a second or third draft, if you're lucky. Right? So what do you what would you say to somebody who's looking at anthologies, looking at the short window from finding out what it's even about to having to submit their story? How did, how do you approach that as a writer or how would you tell a writer to approach? Julia Rios (00:32:45):Well, I mean, I've approached it as a writer myself. Because I, so I also have we didn't talk about this at all, but I've also written stories that have been in anthologies. So I've done a couple of stories that have been in A Larger Reality I and II, which were Mexican and Mexican American anthology of writers that were collecting stories—I think there was one comic in the first one and the second one was all very tiny flash pieces that were up to 300 words—and then also like art. That one was mostly online. The first one was actually a physical book and also an ebook. And these were made by Libia Brenda, who is the person, I think now she's doing some editing for Constelación Magazine. I met her through the Mexicanx initiative, which brought 50 Mexicanx creators to World Con in 2018. Julia Rios (00:33:39):And she then later became the first Mexican woman to be nominated for a Hugo award, which is awesome. And that was because of her involvement with A Larger Reality. But for that, like she basically reached out to all of us, all 50 of us and said, "does anyone want to make an anthology that we can hand out to people at WorldCon so that we can show them what Mexican writers do?" And she was sort of expecting people to not really be that excited about it because it was going to be free, but she was like, "I will just make it, it'll be fine." And all of us were like, "yes, this sounds like a great idea. Let's do it." So we ultimately did and we made a Kickstarter for it. Even though like we'd given her all the, all the stuff, but we did a Kickstarter just to raise the funds to cover the printing costs. And then also overfunded enough that we could pay all the authors, which was great. Rekka (00:34:28):Oh, that's very cool. Julia Rios (00:34:30):But for that one, it was basically like I had a period of a couple of months." And she said, "you know, if you have something already, it doesn't have to be a new thing, it can be a reprint". But most of us ended up writing new stories and I wrote a new story for that one. And that one, it was like, okay, I know I have a couple of months and I know this is going to go to like anybody who attends WorldCon and the goal of it is to try to show what kinds of stories Mexican creators make." Rekka (00:34:54):Right. Julia Rios (00:34:55):So I was like, "I want this to show something that has to do with my feeling as a Mexican person." Rekka (00:35:02):In 300 words or less! Julia Rios (00:35:04):Well the first one was not, it was not limited to that. Julia Rios (00:35:08):Oh okay. All right. I was thinking, "wow!" Julia Rios (00:35:09):I think the first one had like a 5,000 word sort of guideline limit. And I think mine was like two to three thousand. I can't remember exactly how long. Rekka (00:35:18):I was going to say, to introduce yourself to the WorldCon audience, and you have 300 words. Do your, do your whole culture proud. Julia Rios (00:35:27):So yeah, so that one I really wanted to, I didn't have to, like, no one told me I had to, but I wanted to do something that kind of touched on my identity as a Mexican person and also as a queer person, because those are two parts of me and I feel like the, the ways they intersect are important. And I wanted to show that like, no one is one thing, no one is all one thing. And so I ended up writing this story that had to do with a woman who is kind of jumping from dimension to dimension and trying to fix a relationship problem basically. But she's running into the same people and she's seeing how she's connected to them in different dimensions. And one of the things that comes through in that is that basically all of these people are, they're different instances of themselves, but there's something intrinsic to them that makes them them and these aspects of their identity are still really strong. And for me, like that was, that was something I thought about. And I was like, "I think I'm thinking about this because I'm thinking about how this anthology reflects specifically my identity." And even though this, this person is not me, and this is not actually an autobiographical thing, that was the kind of theme I was thinking about. So that was really cool in a way to do that. Julia Rios (00:36:43):But one of the things that I would say to anyone who's doing anything for an anthology call is find that thing that you, that you resonate with, that speaks to you, that you want to write about. Don't just do it because you know that like so-and-so wants vampires. Like it's not enough for it to be vampires. The thing that's going to make it stand out is that it has something that you care about. Julia Rios (00:37:11):And so I think the reason why my story in that anthology did get some good, critical reception and ultimately got reprinted in Latin American Literature Today is because I cared about it and it had some sort of heart to it. But the good thing about that is that also if for some reason, Libia had not accepted it, which in this case it was a softball—I knew she was going to accept it, but that's, that's lucky. Rekka (00:37:37):Yeah. Julia Rios (00:37:37):But if for some reason she hadn't, it was a story that I could have sent somewhere else. Right. Like I could have, I could have submitted that to some other place. And ideally even when you're writing for a theme, it's something that if it doesn't work for that anthology, you can still send it someplace else. Rekka (00:37:55):And one thing to consider is that everyone else who was rejected from that anthology now has a new story that they're going to send everywhere else. So if yours feels like theirs probably going to have a lot of competition. Julia Rios (00:38:07):Yeah. So if you're just writing, whatever you think is the default vampire or a mermaid story for a vampire or a mermaid, and— Julia Rios (00:38:14):Hypothetical anthology... Julia Rios (00:38:16):Like, right, then, then you know that if you send it to fantasy magazine, fantasy magazine is also going to get everybody else's default mermaid story. But if your story has something that you care about in it, that somehow makes it stand out, it's going to stand out. Rekka (00:38:33):Right. So your advice, nothing to do with tricks, it has nothing to do with editing out certain words that bother editors. It has nothing to do with how to write your cover letter perfectly. It is write your authentic story. Julia Rios (00:38:49):Yeah. I'm sorry. Rekka (00:38:51):That's no, that's, that's so good though. Julia Rios (00:38:52):It's not the advice anybody wants. Rekka (00:38:55):No. Yeah. Okay. So people who want advice, that's going to shoehorn them into an anthology or make them a shoe-in to put more shoes in the conversation. Like they're looking for the answer of like, "Oh yeah, well, you know, for my mermaid thing, definitely makes sure that she's got green fins, because if that mermaid has green fins, I'm a sucker for green fins you're in." and you're not going to find that kind of advice because that is, that is not a guarantee, even if that was true for you, you know. Julia Rios (00:39:26):It's not the only time that that is true is if you have been asked for a specific tie-in media and you know exactly what that, that place wants, and you're doing, usually in this case, you're doing something that's like work for hire, which means that you don't own the rights to it. And you're going to get paid one fee. You're never going to have the right to sell that story again, or to reprint it or to get royalties. It's just going to be like, you write it and you give it to that company and it's theirs. Yeah. And in that case, like, there are definitely things that I've done before where if I'm doing that, I'm like, you know, maybe I'm adapting someone else's work for an app and I don't really have a say in it. And it's like, "you do this to this formula and you turn in the exact word count that we want. And it's supposed to, you know, she does have green fins and she has rainbow eyes and that's the end." Rekka (00:40:17):Right, right. But that's not that's not an anthology call. That's a, as you said, work for hire, like you, you play by someone else's rules in that case, you're, you're a contractor doing the work for somebody else who already had the idea and you, if you're lucky, you get to play around with things a little bit, but probably probably a totally different experience from writing for an anthology where it's an open submissions call or even a solicited. Julia Rios (00:40:47):I think It is in some ways, but like sometimes you'll see anthology calls from places like Wizards of the Coast. Rekka (00:40:52):Oh, okay. Julia Rios (00:40:52):And if they're asking for like a specific thing then, you know, there's probably a very specific D and D story that they want. Rekka (00:41:01):Okay. That's fair. I get that. I concede. We touched on budgeting for the anthology a little bit, but here you are like crafting Mermaids Monthly from the ground up. Julia Rios (00:41:13):Yeah. Rekka (00:41:13):Like what's the process for creating this project and finding the shape of it with regard to the budget and with regard to what you want it to be versus what's practical? Because, you know, I've seen anthology, Kickstarters go up and their budget like that, they're asking people to fund is like $5,000. And I realize, you know, that might be for single book and it's probably not for, you know, 12 issues' worth that might be close to 150,000 words when they're done—I don't know what your goal is total—but it always seems that people are afraid to ask for the right amount on Kickstarter to begin with. So how do you balance not coming up with a whopper of a number versus like, actually, cause I know paying the people who contribute in any way to this is important to you. So how do you create that budget when you haven't even seen the stories or the artwork yet? Julia Rios (00:42:06):This is really hard. And basically it involves sitting down and writing down a bunch of different projections of "what would happen if we did it this way, what would happen if we did it this way? What about this other way?"" And after you've got like 50 of those different scenarios, then it's sort of like, okay, what are the things that we think would be the most doable and the coolest that we'd be the most excited about?" so when I first started this, like I thought, "okay, I can do this. And I'll just ask for like some short fiction, that's basically it." And then I was like, "maybe I'll do short fiction and poetry because I really like poetry." and I think that there aren't enough poetry venues out there that pay authors fairly. So I was like, "okay, I'll do short fiction and poetry." Julia Rios (00:42:52):And then I asked Meg like, "do you want to get involved as my marketing person and maybe like help with design?" And then it sort of snowballed from there. But from there we talked about all kinds of things. We talked about audio, we talked about making the stories longer or doing other things and ultimately decided, okay, we don't want to have no stories that are not flash. We do want to have some stories that are longer stories. But it wasn't practical for us to ask for more than 5,000 words, because we were also committed to paying at least 10 cents a word. Rekka (00:43:27):Right. Julia Rios (00:43:27):So like that was one of those things where it's like, you can pay less, you can pay 8 cents a word, which I think 8 cents a word is now the SFWA minimum? Julia Rios (00:43:36):Yep, that is still the SFWA minimum. So your 10 cents is above that. You're definitely, pro-rate right here. Julia Rios (00:43:40):Just a little above it, but it's still above it. And for us, like I, we came up with that number because I was like, "what would I personally, as a writer be really excited about?" And the bottom line, there was 10 cents. So I was like, "I will, I will be committed to paying writers 10 cents." Rekka (00:43:54):Right. Julia Rios (00:43:54):Um for this reason also we have a thing where it's like, if we're doing reprints or any other things, and the amount would come in at less than $20, based on our per word rate, we will do a minimum of $20 because we don't want anyone to come out with less than $20. So like that's, that's just based on bottom lines for me where I'm like, ""okay, when I think about it as with my writer hat on, what would I be okay with? And when I think about selling a reprint, our reprint rate is low. It's 1 cents. It's 1 cent a word, but we're like excited. See your reprint stuff. The reason why I was like, it's going to be low. Is that,, for me reprints aren't the most important thing for this magazine. Rekka (00:44:40):Right. Julia Rios (00:44:40):We're going to be doing a lot of original stuff, but we're not opposed to them. And for an author, a reprint is just extra money. Rekka (00:44:47):Yeah. Julia Rios (00:44:47):It's like, you have already done that work, so you don't have to do it again. Rekka (00:44:51):Right. Julia Rios (00:44:52):And now, someone's just going to give you a little bit of extra cash and you get to keep it. Julia Rios (00:44:56):Yeah. Which is always nice. Julia Rios (00:44:57):Which is always nice. Julia Rios (00:44:59):Yeah. And it's cool to have, you know, both sides of the perspective on the project that you have edited before, but you are also somebody who submits and you know what is fair for both sides and you try to work so that everybody's getting as much of the fair experience as they can. Julia Rios (00:45:18):Yeah. And it's, it's tricky because it's also, like I realize that rates for... Going rates for science fiction and fantasy that are considered professional are really low compared to anything that people are doing if they're pitching nonfiction to mainstream magazines, for instance. Julia Rios (00:45:35):I saw somebody do the math recently that like if, if inflation had been applied to professional science fiction and fantasy rates, we'd be getting $75 a word or something by now. Can you imagine that world? Julia Rios (00:45:49):So it's not a large amount. Wow. I just know that in like in the 1950s and earlier, it was possible to actually make a living selling short stories to magazines. Like that was a thing that you could do. Yeah. So when you, you hear sometimes people saying like, you should do what Ray Bradbury did, which is like, write a story a week. Rekka (00:46:07):You should also travel back in time and live when Ray Bradbury did. Julia Rios (00:46:11):And I'm like, "yeah, if you live in the 1950s, you can do that. If you live now, it's like, well, that's not really where you're making your money." And honestly, like for most writers, even with novel length work, that's not where you're really making your money. Some people are lucky and they break out with these large advances and then they earn out and they get large sales and they get good royalties. Rekka (00:46:35):And then they get more large advances. But the rest of us... Julia Rios (00:46:37):Most of the time, it's like, this is going to pay a little bit, but not a whole lot and you should either have a day job or use this to create other opportunities for yourself. So like you can use it to then get speaking and teaching engagements. I think going back to your other question, like why people charge different rates at Kickstarter, it's because it depends too, what they're doing. So some people might already have certain things taken care of like either they've already paid their authors and they know that they only need to raise the money for printing a book, or maybe they have other investors somehow like supplementing things. Rekka (00:47:21):Or extreme optimism. Julia Rios (00:47:22):Right. So like you can, if you've already got a magazine that has a subscriber base, for instance, and you decide that you want to kickstart your next year of that magazine, you can kind of take some of the amount out of that, that building it from the ground up because you have that subscriber base. Rekka (00:47:40):Okay. Julia Rios (00:47:40):Um if you've got a press that's already up and running and you've already produced a lot of books, then maybe you have a clear idea already, if you're like a one person operation, that you know how you're doing your book design and you're not going to pay another person to design it. And that's labor that you're willing to just take as the cost that you're providing yourself. And then maybe like, if you're me, you're like, "okay, well, I'm working with Meg and Meg is designing and Meg needs to be paid for that work." and even though we're paying ourselves a very low amount of money, our Kickstarter is taking into account that we want to pair something because it's like, "okay, even if this cannot remotely count as living wage, I want to Mark that we are, we're doing a lot of work." Rekka (00:48:27):Right. And there's value in that. Julia Rios (00:48:29):And there's value in work. It's important to recognize that there's value in work. And if we won't recognize it, no one else will. Rekka (00:48:35):Absolutely. Yeah. Now what about the payment structure? Because authors who write for an anthology or a magazine get paid once. Julia Rios (00:48:45):Yeah. Rekka (00:48:46):So if a book completely pays for itself, like the profits of that go to the publisher usually, right? Julia Rios (00:48:55):Yeah. Rekka (00:48:55):Then the author would only expect to see more money for that story by reselling it as you were discussing. Julia Rios (00:49:01):Yeah. So generally it, it depends because sometimes when you have something with like a large publisher, if you have something with one of the big now for that exists in New York, they just had another buyout. So we've gone down from five to four. But if you have an anthology through those, so like maybe the ones that were done by saga press in the last two years, The Mythic Dream and The Starlit Wood those, if they earn out those authors might get royalty checks, that would be split between all of the authors and the anthology and the editors. But for most places, and especially in the small press world, you're selling it for one rate and you're selling it for that per word rate and you're not going to see royalties later. Main reason for me on this is that I am not an accountant. And—. Rekka (00:49:52):Yeah I was going to say, the bookkeeping! Julia Rios (00:49:55):Trying to split royalties between 25 or 30 or 50 or a hundred people is just it's— Rekka (00:50:02):Yeah. Because especially with the distribution to the online retailers for digital books, like it is impossible to know how, where that money is coming from sometimes. They make it so impossible to know like, okay, it was this many books and they made this much money. And okay, now you're going to divide that into how many words the book was and then pay out based on, you know, the word count for each. I mean, even if it goes well, that's a lot of work. Julia Rios (00:50:26):Yeah. Rekka (00:50:27):You know, like you might be able to write a spreadsheet to figure it out, but the way that you get reporting these days, Nope. Not gonna happen. Julia Rios (00:50:35):It's hard. It's a lot. And the truth is that for most anthologies that come out through small presses, they either don't earn out or like what they've raised for their Kickstarter is them basically paying for the cost of making the book. Right. Rekka (00:50:48):So they, they earn out by default and then that's probably it. Julia Rios (00:50:53):And then that's it. Maybe they make like a little bit over, but once you split that between all the contributors, it's like," does everybody actually want to check for 50 cents?" Rekka (00:51:01):Right. I mean, I would probably hang it on the wall. I can't even say I would cash that. Julia Rios (00:51:08):Yeah. So, so that's the reason why I think for most of the time, when you're selling to an anthology, you're selling it once. And that's a good reason to look at rights in the contract, because if an anthology is buying the right to then like exclusively, have your story forever and you don't get to do anything with it, that's a bad deal and you shouldn't take it unless you, for some reason really love it. Like, I guess if it's a Star Wars anthology, and you're a huge Star Wars fan, that's a different story. Maybe it's worth it for you, just so that you can have a book on your shelf that's a Star Wars book that has your name in it. That's totally fair. But that's a personal decision that you're going to be making. And like the great thing about this is that people are making lots of movies and different things based on short stories. So like Ted Chiang's Arrival, like the movie Arrival is based on a novella. Rekka (00:51:56):Yeah. In fact, I've heard advice that like they make better movies, generally, based on the source material than when someone tries to turn like, say, a 10 book series into a movie. Julia Rios (00:52:08):Yeah. Well, like a novel can make a good TV series and sometimes you can have a good adaptation of a novel into a movie, but when you're working with a short story length, it's easier to adapt that into, into one movie length thing. Rekka (00:52:20):Yeah. Julia Rios (00:52:21):And Hollywood gets excited about that. So if you can have your backlog of short stories and somehow you attract the attention of someone in Hollywood, then you're also like, by the way, I have these other ones. Rekka (00:52:32):As long as you make sure that anthology publisher did not take your media rights. Julia Rios (00:52:38):Which, ideally they would not have taken your media rights. And also like they ideally won't take exclusivity for a very long time. Like most places are gonna take it for maybe a year, maybe two, depending on like how their, what their publishing plan is. But like, most places are not going to say, we're going to hold onto your story forever. And you can watch out for that because then as soon as, as soon as those rights are back for you, you can sell that to someone else. You can republish it yourself. If you have a lot of stories, you can make your own collection and just kind of stick it up there as an ebook. Rekka (00:53:12):And first audio rights are good to keep track of too. Julia Rios (00:53:15):Yeah. Oh yeah. All of that stuff. So it's good to know what rights you have and to remember that, but like there are reprint markets out there, there are places like Pod Castle that will buy a reprint audio. They'll buy the audio rights to something that's already been published. Sometimes they'll buy the audio rights to something that's already had an audio version because they're gonna make their own. Rekka (00:53:36):Right. So how do you, because you've done this successfully wrangle all the cats that are involved? Because you've got editors, you've got authors, you've got contracted artists and designers and other contractors. That seems like a lot. So I'm glad to hear you're paying yourself for the mermaids because this is not a small job. Julia Rios (00:53:58):It's a lot. And I say that if you really want to make an anthology, that it is a management project, so you have to be ready to take on a manager role. And it's, it's good to remember that as much as there's fun stuff, there's also a lot of just like dotting the i's and making sure your contracts are all in and signed and that your payroll, like somebody is responsible for paying everyone and making sure that they were paid on time. Rekka (00:54:29):And that there's a record of it. Julia Rios (00:54:32):Exactly. That you have author approval on the final versions of the stories. That, that you have had a chance to see everything through a proofreader. And that you've, you've had someone double check that your layout works and all of those other things, there are so many different pieces of it. And I can't stress, that collaboration is very important, I can't stress that enough. Some people are able to do most things on their own. Like I think that think Mike Allen over at Mythic Delirium Books does most of it himself or with his wife Anita Allen, who's the other person who runs that. So they're like doing their own design and editing and everything else together, but it's a lot based on what you already know, you know, how to do. So I think the reason why Mike can do that, why Mike and Anita can do that together is because they started with a zine in like the nineties, I think. And it was like a paper zine that they would have made, you know, at home or from Staples or whatever. Rekka (00:55:39):Right. Julia Rios (00:55:40):They had a lot of time curating zines and putting them together and realizing how that worked. And then also Mike works for newspapers. So he has experience working in the newspaper publishing side of things. And he probably has experience through his job with things like InDesign. And, and because of that, he, he moved on to doing anthologies and he did like the Clockwork Phoenix series, which were all sort of self-made anthologies that he was doing himself. And because of that, he learned over the course of time, what are the things that he knows how to do and what are the resources he has available. Rekka (00:56:15):And what are the pieces that go into something? Julia Rios (00:56:17):Exactly, what are the pieces that go into something and what can he do himself? Whereas like for me, I know for instance, I know about myself that I am not a designer and I do not have that skill. I am not an artist. Visual art is not my strong suit. So, so one thing I've been doing during the promotional phase of mermaids monthly with the Kickstarter is like, okay, if we get to this number, like I will attempt to draw a mermaid." Rekka (00:56:43):And you did a very, very nice job. Julia Rios (00:56:45):"This Will be a fun exercise for all of us because I am not an artist." and yeah, I think it's a cute, fun drawing that I made of this mershark with like giant sharp teeth. But if you look at it and you look at anyone, who's actually an artist doing the same kind of thing, their version is gonna be much better. So I could make Mermaids Monthly myself, and it would be a very plain production. And that's fine. I could use something like Vellum for instance, which is basically a, what you see is what you get book designing tool that would produce a perfectly readable, simple book. And that is a totally acceptable path, but I know that I would love to have higher production values. So I have to pull in other people and Meg has major design skills that I do not have. So I was like, "Meg, do you want to do this?" And Meg was like, "sure, I'll do this." And everything that Meg has turned out is something that like, I didn't even know how to ask for it because I didn't know that's what I wanted. Rekka (00:57:46):Right, right. Yeah. Having the expertise on your team is so critical whether it's yours or whether you recognize that you need to find somebody else. Julia Rios (00:57:56):It is. And as for the rest of it, like making a list. So having like multiple spreadsheets with task breakdowns, having processes in place that you invent and recheck as you go along and revise. So for instance, with Megan, I, every time we do a contract, one of us puts it together. They send it to the other person for review. We go through multiple rounds of like, "Hey, I found this typo," or "I think this clause needs to change." But like our rule is we don't just send it to the author before it's gone through the, the two-person review system. Rekka (00:58:32):And then I assume you have, you know, spreadsheets of all the authors and what they've signed or what they've turned in or what they've gotten in terms of edits. And if they've gotten those back and if the final proof has happened and all of that, there are a lot of steps. And then you multiply that by however many authors you're going to have involved. Plus then, you know, the different processes for artists and their visual work. So that's, that's so much. So obviously, you know what you're doing. Julia Rios (00:58:58):[[Laughter]] Rekka (00:58:58):So now let's like, just get really excited over mermaids monthly because people who are listening to this live have until the 12th of December 2020, Saturday to fund help fund on Kickstarter. I'm sure by now it's already funded because it's going swimmingly. Julia Rios (00:59:17):Let's hope that your words are definitely prophetic and that will happen. Rekka (00:59:22):So at this point, it's, you know, you've got, I think the last count I saw was something like 8,600 to go of a very you know, I will say it was an ambitious goal because you were, you were planning to pay people fairly including yourself. So that's excellent and everyone's behind you, which is really, really cool to see that the funding is going well, it's consistently going up. I think everything I've seen has been really, really positive and a lot of people are really excited about this anthology. So tell me, aside from not wanting to reject more than three mermaid stories, like, what are you, what are you hoping for at this end, before you've seen any of the submissions? Julia Rios (01:00:06):Well. Okay. So I'm hoping to find things that surprise and delight me. I'm hoping to have fun. I know that some of the stories will be like sad or scary. That's, that's a thing that I'm sure will happen. Rekka (01:00:21):And you did invite people to, you know, do dark stories if they wanted. Julia Rios (01:00:24):Oh, yeah, I'm not saying we don't want those, but I'm also hoping that there will be some percentage of mermaid stories that we get that will genuinely just be delightful, mermaid romps. Because I think especially after this year that we've all just been through, like having some fun things to just sort of be a little beam of, not sunshine cause we're underwater, but you know, we just need those cute bioluminescent jellyfish to let us, say... Rekka (01:00:52):Oh, gosh, I'm like, you're going to get a submission from me that's going to end up being like a mermaid roadtrip story with lots of bioluminescing. Julia Rios (01:01:00):See, I love this! I love it. So I'm excited to see what we get and I'm excited to see all the different ways that people interpret it because I can think of lots of different creative ways to do it, but I know that all the things that I think of are not what other people will default to. Rekka (01:01:15):Which is what's so great about anthologies. Julia Rios (01:01:17):Yeah, I love that. I can't wait to see what we'll get. So one of the authors that I solicited a story from that I'm really excited about is Debra Goelz, who has written a novel that is published through wattpad and it is called Mermaids and the Vampires Who Love Them. Rekka (01:01:36):Oh that's excellent. This is very promising. Julia Rios (01:01:38):It's a YA novel about a mermaid who goes to like a special academy for supernatural creatures and gets a vampire boyfriend. Rekka (01:01:47):Nice. Julia Rios (01:01:47):Uh there's a lot of other stuff going on in the, in the plot of this book, but like that's the gist of it. And the title sort of gives you a sense of how ridiculous and fun it's going to be. Cause it's c

Collaboration Ooops! Our hosting somehow sped up the audio on release this morning but it should be back to normal in this version! Please, enjoy the normal speed Wizard Seeking Wizard To stay sane in his crystal prison, Chemistro the Match Mage has put out the call to wizards across the multiverse. Wizards that want to meet other wizards! This episode we have a visitor to the sphere, and we help wizards looking for collaborators to find a study buddy. Will Minefestina be able to close the book on her portal problem? Will Mashboo the Formerly Shifty find someone to trust him again? Will Clatelon the Gilded Wizard of Bindings be able to find a co-parent for his many large and skeletal sons? Will Meregund the Transfigurer be able to teach someone to transform him back from being a pot of flowers? And we hear how Impervion and Flora's rivalry date to the Big Wiz state fair went. Go to @wiz4wiz on twitter after the show or click here to vote on which wizards will date! Transcript here Our wizards this week are: Minefestina Rivenwobble, written and performed by Aidan Kezierski, Mashboo the Formerly Shifty, written and performed by Bibek Gurung (@illbibek) Flora Bunnyhop, written and performed by Julia Rios (@omgjulia), Impervion the Imprecise, written and performed by Nathan Comstock (@nathanacomstock), Clatelon the Gilded Wizard of Bindings, written and performed by David Fouhy, and Meregund the Transfigurer, written and performed by Marc Campesano Our ad was for Crowley Time with Me, Tom Crowley, an audio sketch show of the absurd, that we highly reccomend. Every wizard personal ad in this show was written, performed and recorded by a member of the community. There may be some explicit language and variable audio quality.

To stay sane in his crystal prison, Chemistro the Match Mage has put out the call to wizards across the multiverse. Wizards that want to meet other wizards! This episode we help wizards looking for Rivalry while we try to make some repairs to the old crystal prison. Will Idrubov the Meek assert his will and his new filing system? Can Flora Bunnyhop overcome their natural goodness to live a life of evil? Will Impervion be able to do the actual thing he set out to do instead of something that sounds beguilingly similar? And can Vladka the Victorious conquer her memories of her ex, in addition to the kingdom over which she rules? Not to mention, how did Hyacinth and Turpin's date go? Go to @wiz4wiz on twitter after the show or click here to vote on which wizards will date! Transcript here Our wizards this week are: Idrubov the Meek, written, performed and sound designed by Brad Colbrook (@holographicva), Flora Bunnyhop, written and performed by Julia Rios (@omgjulia), Impervion the Imprecise, written and performed by Nathan Comstock (@nathanacomstock), and Vladka the Victorious, written and performed by Leslie Gideon (@TheLeslieGideon) Every wizard personal ad in this show was written, performed and recorded by a member of the community. There may be some explicit language and variable audio quality. Special thanks to Tal Minear (@starplanes) for creation of a terrible schlorping sound in our hour of need

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Ciro Faienza presents the poetry of the 20th Anniversary Special Issue. “Stone Listening” by R.B. Lemberg. You can read the full text of the poem and more about R.B. here. “On Where to Find Strange Horizons, and How to Get There” by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Julia here. “He Should Marry the Daughter of the Angel of Death” by Sonya Taaffe. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Sonya here.

Julia Rios of the This is Why We're Like This podcast is back for our post-read discussion of Aliette de Bodard's wonderful space murder mystery novella, The Tea Master & the Detective (https://amzn.to/3aD8cOU). In this episode we discuss power structures within & outside of large organizations like unions or monasteries, the friendship between the main characters, and doing worldbuilding with non-Western cultures. It's a fun conversation, and we were so happy to have Julia on the podcast! If you haven't picked up this novella, I highly recommend the book as a nice corrective to our current crazy times.   Also, a quick note on scheduling: We've had to be a bit nimble this last month as both Matt & I adjusted to new life situations. It also turns out I published the pre-read a week early because I wasn't paying attention to the dates. So this episode is coming out on a highly unusual Friday. We'll have another bonus episode next Tuesday, and we have multiple bonus & book club episodes w/ special guests already recorded & ready to go for next month. So expect regular, frequent content from us after this, and thanks for sticking with us while the world got turned upside down!    --- As always, we'd love to hear from you! Chat with us on twitter at @spectologypod, send us an email at spectologypod@gmail.com, or submit the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast when we talk about your comment. And if you like the episode, subscribe at spectology.com or whever you listen to podcasts, and share it with your friends! To find links to all the books we've read, check us out on Bookshop. Many thanks to Dubby J and Noah Bradley for doing our music and art.

A quick bonus episode this week, with Matt & Adrian discussing their favorite Aliens in science fiction and beyond. We revisit some books we've read for the pod, talk about some classics, and hit on a few under-represented gems. We hope you like it!  A bit late, sorry about that! Quarantine time is weird. I'll try to get around to listing everything we talk about later but I want to get this out first: if there's anything in particular you'd like to get a link to, let me know at @spectologypod on twitter & I'll get it to you. We'll be back next week with our post-read of The Tea Master & The Detective with Julia Rios!  --- As always, we'd love to hear from you! Chat with us on twitter at @spectologypod, send us an email at spectologypod@gmail.com, or submit the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast when we talk about your comment. And if you like the episode, subscribe at spectology.com or whever you listen to podcasts, and share it with your friends! To find links to all the books we've read, check us out on Bookshop. Many thanks to Dubby J and Noah Bradley for doing our music and art.

This month we're joined by special guest Julia Rios! Julia is a Hugo-award winning Editor & Podcaster, host of the This Is Why We're Like This podcast (which Matt has been a guest on!), and can be found at @OMGJulia on twitter. She edited the Machina Serial Box series, and her fiction has been featured in the Mexicanx anthology A Larger Reality.  We're reading The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard (https://amzn.to/2Jqepmr), a Homesian mystery story told by a space ship. It's a lovely, warm, cozy, and short book at a time when all those things feel in short supply. And of course, it's about some big issues that we'll talk about in the post-read. This episode, we discussed what makes a mystery story, the different sub-genres of detective fiction, and how much we like ships with personalities.  We hope you enjoy the episode & pick up the book!    --- As always, we'd love to hear from you! Chat with us on twitter at @spectologypod, send us an email at spectologypod@gmail.com, or submit the episode to r/printSF on reddit. We'll reply, and shout you out in the next podcast when we talk about your comment. And if you like the episode, subscribe at spectology.com or whever you listen to podcasts, and share it with your friends! To find links to all the books we've read, check us out on Bookshop. Many thanks to Dubby J and Noah Bradley for doing our music and art.

Greasy chest hair, lasting 2 minutes, and animal abuse, oh my! Recorded (sorta last minute) in a hotel room in Dublin, Ireland, this special edition features Shaun Duke, Alex Acks, Julia Rios, Jen Zink, Brandon O'Brien, and special guest / friend of the show, Linnea! Together, our intrepid crew tackles yet another Nicolas Cage debacle, Next, […]

Rangers Trish, Brandon, and Daniel are back after their long break to tackle an anthology that is near and dear to our hearts. To be fair, our very own Julia Rios is part of it. Plus, we're big fans of John Picacio and his MexicanX Initiative, and some of the initiative's participants contributed stories to […]

Unicorn ninjas, terminology, and David Bowie, oh my! Cat Rambo, Cecilia Tan, and Matt Weiteska join Julia Rios and Alex Acks to discuss Bisexuality in SFF. To accidentally celebrate Bisexual Visibility Month, our hosts and amazing guests discuss how important positive representation was to them in discovering their own sexuality, the difficulty in portraying bisexuality […]

Magic circles, subverting Cthulhu, and preserving heritage, oh my! Lorraine Fryer, Vladimir Barash, and Carlos Hernandez join Julia Rios to discuss Inclusivity in Games! This discussion tackles the importance of representation, colonization of cultural folklore, and how these game designers have specifically worked inclusivity into the narratives of their games. We hope you enjoy the […]

Skaters in black practice outfits swerved around Shelly. Her music was playing over the PA system. She had right of way. A scattering of figure skating fans sat in the rink's hard, blue, plastic seats. Even to a practice session, some had brought their flags. Her mom sat near the boards and waved her US flag as though if only it had shook more fiercely last night, Shelly would have landed her triple Lutz-triple toe jump combination in the short program. | Copyright 2014 by John Chu. Originally published in Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories, edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Letty Valladares.

This is the podcast for the poetry released as part of the Strange Horizons 2014 Fund Drive special issue.  It includes: "Salamander Song" written by Rose Lemberg and Emily Jiang.  The spoken portions are read by Clare McBride.  The musical portions were sung by Emily Jiang with Mary Tusa on the piano.  You can see the original text of the poem and read more about Rose and Emily here. "Cloud Wall" by Arkady Martine, read by Julia Rios.  You can read the original text of the poem and more about Arkady here.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the November issues of Strange Horizons. "Mary Shelley Makes a Monster" by Octavia Cade read by Chris Galford. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Octavia here. "I Am Alive" by Lev Mirov read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Lev here. "Actaeon" by Alice Fanchiang read by Ciro Faienza. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Alice here. "Ranra's Unbalancing" by Rose Lemberg read by Rose Lemberg. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Rose here.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the September issues of Strange Horizons. "Hunger" by Alexandra Seidel read by Seidel. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Alexandra here. "Beneath the Wheeler Centre" by Jenny Blackford read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Jenny here. "Bodega Dunes" by Carrie Naughton read by Carrie Naughton. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Carrie here. "Crumbs" by Florence Lenaers read by Maxwell Singer. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Florence here. "Rainspeaking" by Mat Joiner read by Anaea Lay. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Mat here.

Seventh Day of the Seventh MoonBy Ken Liu“Tell me a story,” said Se. She had changed into her pajamas all by herself and snuggled under the blankets.Se’s big sister, Yuan, was just about to flip the switch next to the bedroom door. “How about you read a story by yourself? I have to … go see a friend.”“No, it’s not the same.” Se shook her head vigorously. “You have to tell me a story or I can’t sleep.”Yuan glanced at her phone. Every minute tonight was precious. Dad was out of town on business, and Mom was working late and wouldn’t be home till midnight. Yuan needed to be home before then, but if she could get her little sister to sleep quickly, she’d still have a couple of hours to see Jing on this, her last night in China.Full transcript appears after the cut.----more----[Intro music plays.]Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 15 for September 15th, 2015. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you.Our story today is "Seventh Day of the Seventh Moon" by Ken Liu.Ken Liu (http://kenliu.name) is an author and translator of speculative fiction, as well as a lawyer and programmer. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards, he has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons, among other places. He also translated the Hugo-winning novel, The Three-Body Problem, by Liu Cixin, which is the first translated novel to win that award.Ken’s debut novel, The Grace of Kings, the first in a silkpunk epic fantasy series, was published by Saga Press in April 2015. Saga will also publish a collection of his short stories, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, in March 2016. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.We also have a special guest reader this week, which is awesome.Our reader this week is S. Qiouyi Lu. You can visit their site at http://s.qiouyi.lu/ and follow them on Twitter at @sqiouyilu.Seventh Day of the Seventh MoonBy Ken Liu“Tell me a story,” said Se. She had changed into her pajamas all by herself and snuggled under the blankets.Se’s big sister, Yuan, was just about to flip the switch next to the bedroom door. “How about you read a story by yourself? I have to … go see a friend.”“No, it’s not the same.” Se shook her head vigorously. “You have to tell me a story or I can’t sleep.”Yuan glanced at her phone. Every minute tonight was precious. Dad was out of town on business, and Mom was working late and wouldn’t be home till midnight. Yuan needed to be home before then, but if she could get her little sister to sleep quickly, she’d still have a couple of hours to see Jing on this, her last night in China.“Come on, Yuan,” Se begged. “Please!”Yuan came back to the side of the bed and stroked Se’s forehead gently. She sighed. “All right.”She texted Jing: Late by half hour. Wait?The crystal cat charm, a gift from Jing, dangled from her phone. It twirled and glittered in the warm bedroom light as she waited impatiently for the response.Finally, the phone beeped. Of course. Won’t leave until we meet.“Tell the story about the Qixi Festival,” said Se, yawning. “That’s tonight, isn’t it?”“Yes, yes it is.”Long ago, a beautiful young woman, the granddaughter of the Emperor of Heaven, lived in the sky by the eastern shore of the Silver River—that’s the broad band of light you can sometimes see in the sky at night, when the air is clear.She was skilled at the loom, and so that’s why people called her—“You skipped the part where you describe her weaving!”“But you’ve heard this story a hundred times already. Can’t I just get it over with?”“You have to tell it right.”—as I had apparently neglected to mention: her works were displayed proudly by the Heavenly Court in the western sky at every sunset: glorious clouds of crimson, amethyst, periwinkle, and every shade in between. So people called her Zhinü, the Weaver Girl. And though she was the youngest of seven immortal sisters, we mortals addressed her by the honorific Big Sister Seven.But over time, Zhinü grew wan and thin. Her brows were always tightly knit into a frown, and she did not wash her face or comb out her hair. The sunset clouds she wove were not as lovely as before, and mortals began to complain.The Emperor of Heaven came to visit. “What ails you, my granddaughter?”“Haha, you do that voice so well. You sound just like Grandfather.”“I’m glad you approve. Now stop interrupting.”“Oh, Gonggong, I’m so lonely. Living all by myself in this hut, my only company are my loom—jiya, jiya, it squeaks all day long—and a few magpies.”The Emperor took pity on her and found her a good match. The young man tended to cows on the western shore of the Silver River, so people called him Niulang, the Cowherd. He was handsome and kind and full of funny stories, and Zhinü loved him, and he her, the moment they set eyes on each other.“See, I’m not such a bad matchmaker.” The Emperor of Heaven smiled as he stroked his beard. “Now I know you’re young, and you should have fun. But now that you have a companion, please don’t neglect your work.”Zhinü moved to the western shore of the Silver River to be with Niulang, and the two of them married. They had two boys, and there never was a happier family.“Oh, no, here comes the boring part. You can skip it if you want to.”“No way! This is the best part. You’ll understand when you’re older. Now pay attention.”Every morning, as Niulang got up before sunrise to take the cows to their favorite pasture, Zhinü could not bear the thought of being separated from him. So she would come along. She’d put the two babies in two baskets draped on each side of an old, gentle ox, and she would ride on the back of a pure white bull led by Niulang. They’d sing together, tell each other stories from before they met, and laugh at the jokes that only they understood.Zhinü’s loom sat unused back at the hut, gathering dust.Sunsets became ugly affairs. The few clouds that remained became tattered, wispy, colorless. The people laboring in the fields lost the beauty that had once lifted up their hearts at the end of a hard day, and their laments rose to the Heavenly Court.“My maritorious child,” said the Emperor of Heaven—“What does that word mean?”“It means loving your husband too much.”“How can you love someone too much?”“Good question. I don’t know either. Maybe the Emperor of Heaven didn’t have enough love in his heart to understand. Maybe he was too old.”—“I warned you about neglecting your duty. For your disobedience and neglect, you must now move back to the eastern shore of the Silver River and never see Niulang and your children again.”Zhinü begged for reprieve, but the Emperor’s word was as irreversible as the flow of the Silver River.At the Emperor’s decree, the Silver River was widened and deepened, and Zhinü forever parted from her husband. Today, you can see the star that is Zhinü on one side of the Silver River and the star that is Niulang on the other, their two sons two faint stars on each side of Niulang. They stare at each other across that unbridgeable gap, the longing and regret as endless as the flowing river.“Why did you stop?”“It’s nothing. My throat just felt itchy for a bit.”“Are you sad for Niulang and Zhinü?”“Maybe … a little bit. But it’s just a story.”But the magpies that once kept Zhinü company took pity on the lovers. Once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh moon by the lunar calendar, on Qixi, the day when Zhinü is at her highest position in the sky, all the magpies in the world fly up to the Silver River and make a bridge with their bodies so that the lovers can spend one night together.This is the day when all the young women in old China would pray to Big Sister Seven for love.Oh, I know you want to hear more about the bridge of magpies. You love this part. Well, I imagine it’s a lot of work for the birds. They probably have to go to magpie bridge-building school, and those who’re a bit slow have to go to cram school for extra study sessions …Yuan turned out the light and tiptoed out of her sister’s bedroom.On my way, she texted.She made sure the air conditioning was set comfortably low, locked the door of the apartment, and ran down the stairs. And then she was in the hot, humid evening air of Hefei in August.She biked through the streets, dodging an endless stream of cars beeping their horns. She liked the physicality of the ride, the way it made her body come alive, feel awake. She passed the sidewalks filled with people browsing past stores and kiosks filled with everything imaginable: discount electronics, toys, clothes, fancy European soups and cakes, mouth-watering sweet potatoes baked in tinfoil and fried, smelly tofu. The heat and the exertion stuck her shirt to her skin, and she had to wipe her forehead from time to time to keep the sweat out of her eyes.And then she was at the coffee shop, and Jing—slender, graceful in a plain white dress and a light jacket (for the air conditioning), a faint whiff of the floral perfume that always made Yuan dizzy—greeted Yuan with that bright smile that she always wore.As if this wasn’t the night the world ended.“Are you done packing?” Yuan asked.“Oh, there’s always more to pack.” Jing’s tone was light, breezy, careless. “But I don’t have to get to the airport ‘til nine in the morning. There’s plenty of time.”“You should dress in layers, with something long-sleeved on top,” said Yuan—mainly because she feared saying nothing. “It can get cold on the plane.”“Want to take a walk with me? The next time I walk around at night I’ll be in America. Maybe I’ll miss all this noise.”Yuan left her bike locked to the light post outside the coffee shop, and they strolled along the sidewalk like the rest of the crowd. They did not hold hands. In Shanghai, perhaps no one would have cared, but in Hefei, there would have been looks, and whispers, and maybe worse.Yuan imagined Jing walking about the campus of the American high school at night. Jing had shown her pictures of the red brick buildings and immaculate lawns. And the smiling boys and girls: foreigners. Yuan felt out of breath; her heart seemed unable to decide on a steady rhythm.“Look at that,” said Jing, pointing to the display window of a pastry shop. “They’re selling Qixi Lovers’ Cakes now. So overpriced. And you know some stupid girl is going to throw a fit if her boyfriend doesn’t buy it for her. I want to throw up.”“Not quite as bad as Valentine’s Day,” Yuan said. “I think the vendors are pretty restrained. Relatively speaking.”“That’s because people aren’t into Qixi any more. We Chinese always get more enthusiastic for Western imports, even holidays. It’s a national character weakness.”“I like Qixi,” Yuan said. She said it more emphatically than she meant to.“What, you want to set out an altar under a melon trellis, offer up a plate of fruits, pray to Big Sister Seven, and hope for a spider to weave a web over the offering by morning so you’ll get a nice husband in the future?”Yuan’s face grew hot. She stopped. “You don’t have to mock everything Chinese.”Jing cocked her head, a teasing smile in her eyes. “You suddenly getting all patriotic on me now?”“Your father has the money to pay for you to go to an American boarding school. That doesn’t make you better than everyone else.”“Oh, lay off that wounded tone. You’re hardly some migrant worker’s daughter.”They stared at each other, the neon lights from the nearby stores flickering over their faces. Yuan wanted to kiss Jing and scream at her at the same time. She had always liked Jing’s irreverence, the way she wanted to turn everything into a joke. She knew her anger had nothing to do with this conversation about Qixi at all.Jing turned and continued down the sidewalk. After a moment, Yuan followed.When Jing spoke again, her tone was calm, as if nothing had happened. “Remember the first time we went hiking together?”That had been one of the best days of Yuan’s life. They had skipped their cram school sessions and taken the bus to Emerald Lake, an artificial pond bordering several college campuses. Jing had showed Yuan how to set up her phone so that her mom couldn’t see the messages Jing sent her, and Yuan had showed Jing her baby pictures. They had bought a lamb chuanr from a street vendor and shared it as they walked along the lakeshore. Her heart had beaten faster with each bite of roasted meat off the skewer, thinking that her lips were touching where hers had touched. And then, as they strolled through one of the campuses, Jing had boldly taken her hand: it was a college, after all.And then that first kiss behind the willow tree, tasting the hot spices from the lamb kebab on Jing’s tongue, the calls of wild geese behind her somewhere…“I remember,” she said. Her voice still sounded wounded, and she didn’t care.“I wish we could go there again,” Jing said.The anger in Yuan disappeared, just like that. Jing always had such a way with her. Yuan felt like putty in her hands.“We can chat on QQ or Skype,” Yuan said. She hurried to catch up so that she was walking next to Jing. “And you’ll come back for visits. This isn’t like the old days. It will be okay. We can still be together.”They had wandered off the main thoroughfare onto a less busy side street. The streetlights on one side were out, and looking up they could see a few stars in the sky. Hefei wasn’t as polluted as some of the cities on the coast.“I’m going to be really busy,” Jing said. Her tone was calm, too calm.“We can text every day, every hour.”“It’s different over there. I’ll be living on my own in a dorm. I have to actually study if I want to go to a good college. My family is paying a lot to give me this.”“Americans don’t study that much.”“It’s not like watching American TV shows. There aren’t subtitles. I’ll meet lots of new people. I have to make a new life over there, new friends. I’ll need to be thinking, talking, breathing English all the time if I want to make it.”“I can text you in English,” Yuan said. “I’ll do whatever you want.”“You’re not listening,” Jing said. She stopped again and looked at Yuan.“What are you trying to say?” As soon as she asked the question, Yuan regretted it. It made her sound so weak, so clingy, like a girl from one of those Korean dramas.“I’m going away, Yuan. I told you this was going to happen last year, when we … started.”Yuan looked away so that Jing would not see her eyes. She pushed the image of Jing with someone else out of her mind. She cursed her eyes and told them to behave and stop embarrassing her.“It will be okay.” Jing’s tone was now comforting, gentle, and that made it worse. “We’ll both be okay.”Yuan said nothing because she knew she couldn’t control her voice. She licked her lips, tasting the salt from the sweat of her ride. She wanted to wipe her eyes so she could see clearly again, but she didn’t want to do it in front of Jing.“I want to make this night a happy memory,” Jing said, but her voice finally cracked. She struggled, but failed, to keep her calm mask on. “I’m trying to make this easier. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do for those you love?”Yuan looked up, blinking her eyes hard. She looked for the Silver River, and she remembered that in English it was called the Milky Way—what a graceless and silly name. She looked for Zhinü and Niulang, and she vaguely remembered that in English they were called Vega and Altair, names as cold and meaningless to her as the stars.Just then, magpies seemed to come out of nowhere and gathered over their heads in a cloud of fluttering wings. While they looked up, stunned, the flock swept out of the night sky, descended over them like a giant spider web, and lifted them into the heavens.Riding on the wings of magpies, Yuan found, was not like riding a magical carpet.Not that she knew what riding a magical carpet felt like—but she was sure that it didn’t involve being constantly poked from below by a hundred—no, a thousand—little winged fists.The magpies would fall a bit below where they were and flap their wings rapidly in an upward burst until they collided with the girls’ bodies. The combined force of all the magpies would push them up until the birds lost their momentum and began to fall away, and then a new wave of upward-thrusting magpies would take their place. The girls resembled two ping-pong balls riding on the water spout from a hose pointing up.In the maelstrom of wings they found each other and clung together.“Are you all right?” They each asked at the same time.“What in the world is happening?” Jing asked, her words jumbled together from fear and excitement.“This is a dream,” Yuan said. “This must be a dream.”And then Jing began to laugh.“It can’t be a dream,” she said. “These magpies carrying us: they tickle!”And Yuan laughed too. It was so absurd, so impossible; yet it was happening.Some of the magpies began to sing, a complicated, trilling, lovely chorus. There were magpies of every description: some with white bellies, some with white beaks, some with iridescent, shimmering, blue wings. Yuan felt as if she and Jing were enclosed inside the beating heart of some giant, flying, alien musical instrument.Arms around each other, gingerly sitting side by side, they peeked out at the world below from between the darting wings of the magpies.They were floating in a dark sea. The lights of the city of Hefei spread out below them like a pulsing, receding jellyfish.“It’s getting cold,” said Yuan. She shivered as the wind whipped her hair around her face.“We’re really high up,” said Jing. She took off her summer jacket and draped it around Yuan’s shoulders. Yuan tucked her nose into the collar of the jacket and breathed in the lingering perfume. It warmed her heart even if the thin fabric did little against the chill.Then Yuan berated herself. Jing had broken up with her, and she didn’t need to look so needy, so pathetic. It was fine to cling to Jing in a moment of weakness, but now they were safe. Gently, she took her arm from around Jing and shrugged out of her arm as well. She lifted her face into the clear, frosty air, and tried to shift away from Jing, keeping some distance between them.“Reminds you of Su Shi’s poem, doesn’t it?” Jing whispered. Yuan nodded reluctantly. Jing was the literary one, and she always knew the pretty words, suitable for every occasion.A half moon, like a half-veiled smile, loomed pale white in the dark sky. It grew brighter and larger as they rose on the backs of the magpies.Jing began to sing the words of the Song Dynasty poem, set to a popular tune, and after a moment, Yuan joined her:When did the Moon first appear?I ask the heavens and lift my wine cup.I know not whether time passes the same wayIn the palace among the clouds. I’d like to ride up with the wind,But I’m afraid of the chill from being so highAmong the jade porticos and nephrite beams. We dance with our shadows.Are we even on earth any more?The silver light dapples the window,Illuminating my sleepless night.Do you hate us, Moon?Why are you always waxing just when we’re parting?Like a dancer and her shadow, the two girls swayed, each separately, to a harmony as young as themselves and as old as the land beneath.“So, it’s all true,” said Jing.The magpies had lifted them above the clouds and leveled off. As they glided over the cottony mists, they could see a celestial city of bread loaf-like buildings, punctuated by spiky towers here and there, gleaming in the late summer moonlight in the distance: blue as ice, green as jade, white like ivory. The styles of the buildings were neither Western nor Chinese, but something that transcended them all: heavenly, the Palace of Immortals.“I wonder if there really are immortals living there,” said Yuan. What she didn’t say out loud was her secret hope: she and Jing had been picked by the magpies for this trip to the heavens because the immortals thought they were as special a pair as Niulang and Zhinü—the thought was tinged with both excitement and sorrow.And then they were at the Silver River. It was broader than the Yangtze, almost like Taihu Lake, with the other shore barely visible on the horizon. The rushing torrent roared past like stampeding horses, and giant waves as tall as the apartment buildings in Hefei pounded against the shore.“Hey, don’t carry us over the water!” Jing shouted. But the magpies ignored her and continued to fly towards the river.“They’re building a bridge,” said Yuan. “It’s Qixi, remember?”Indeed, more flocks of magpies appeared. Along with the flock carrying the girls, they congregated like rivulets coalescing into a mighty river of wings. The magpies hovered over the water, with newcomers extending the flock’s reach towards the other shore. They were forming an arching bridge over the Silver River.“I have to take a picture of this,” said Yuan, and she took out her cell phone.The crystal cat charm dangling from the phone caught the light of the moon and dazzled. The magpies immediately surrounding Yuan trilled and dashed at it, knocking the phone out of her hand. And then it was a free for all as more of the magpies forgot about building the bridge and rushed after the shiny bauble. Even when charged with a magical mission, birds were still just birds.Or maybe even the birds have realized we’re not such a special pair after all, Yuan thought, and the charm is more interesting.She gazed after her phone anxiously. If Se woke up from a nightmare, she might try to call her. And if her mom got home before her, she might wonder where she was. She needed that phone back. She hoped the birds would bounce the phone closer to her so she could snatch it.Then those worries were pushed out of her mind as the magpies that had supported Yuan dropped off to join the chase after the charm, and no new magpies replaced them. Her weight overwhelmed the few magpies that remained on task, and she began to fall. She didn’t even have time to cry out.But then a strong hand caught her right wrist and arrested her descent. Yuan looked up into Jing’s face. She was lying down on the bridge of magpies, and she strained as she reached out and held onto Yuan with one hand while fumbling in her purse with the other.“Let go!” shouted Yuan. “You’ll fall, too!” Her world seemed to shrink down to her hands as they clasped around Jing’s hand, around her warm, pale skin. She willed herself to let go, but she could not.“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Jing, panting.The magpies continued to fight each other for the shiny charm, causing Yuan’s phone to bob up and down over the flock like a stone skipping over water. They had stopped extending the living bridge over the water.Jing finally managed to free her own phone from her purse. She paid no attention as her purse almost tumbled over the side of the bridge, where it would have disappeared into the roiling waves below. By feel, she pressed the first button on the dial pad.Yuan’s phone came to life and began to vibrate and buzz. The shocked magpies backed off in a panic, and the phone stayed still in the air for a second before falling, faster and faster, and finally disappeared into the Silver River without a trace.Yuan felt her heart sink. That cat charm, the first gift Jing had ever given her, now gone forever.“Good thing I have you on speed dial,” Jing said.“How do we still have reception here?”“After all that, that’s what you are worried about?” Jing laughed, and after a moment, Yuan joined her.The magpies seemed to have awakened from a bad dream, and they rushed over and lifted Yuan up onto the bridge. Once the girls were safe, the magpies continued to extend their bridge to the other side of the Silver River, leaving the pair at the middle of the bridge, suspended over the endless water and mist.“We almost caused the magpies to fail to build the bridge,” Yuan said. “It would be so sad if Niulang and Zhinü don’t get to meet this year.”Jing nodded. “It’s almost midnight.” She saw the look on Yuan’s face. “Don’t worry about not being home. Nothing bad can happen on the night of Qixi.”“I thought you weren’t into Qixi.”“Well, maybe just a little bit.”They sat down on the bridge together, watching the moon rise over the Silver River. This time, Yuan did not let go of Jing’s hand.“She’s coming,” said Yuan. She jumped up and pointed down the bridge towards the eastern shore. Now that she had spent some time on the bridge of magpies, she was getting pretty good at keeping her footing over the fluttering wings.In the distance, through the mist that wafted over the bridge from time to time, they could see a small, solitary figure making its way towards them.“So is he,” said Jing. She pointed the other way. Through the mist they could see another tiny figure slowly creep towards them.The girls stood up and waited, side by side, looking first one way and then the other. Being in the presence of the annual reunion of this pair of legendary lovers was exciting, maybe even better than meeting TV stars.The two figures from the opposite ends of the bridge came close enough for Yuan and Jing to see them clearly.Out of the east, an old woman approached. Yuan thought she looked as old as, maybe even older than, her grandmother. Her back bent, she walked with a cane. But her wrinkled face glowed healthily with the exertion of having traveled all the way here. Wearing a Tang Dynasty dress, she looked splendid to Yuan. Her breath puffed out visibly in the cold air.Out of the west, an old man emerged from the mist: straight back, long legs, wiry arms swinging freely. His full head of silvery white hair matched the old woman’s, but his face was even more wrinkled than hers. As soon as he saw the old woman, his eyes lit up in a bright smile.“They’re not—” Jing started to say in a whisper.“—quite what we expected?” finished Yuan.“I guess I always pictured immortals as being … well, I guess there’s no reason to think they wouldn’t grow old.”A wispy tendril of sorrow brushed across Yuan’s heart. She tried to imagine Jing as an old woman, and the tenderness made her almost tear up again. She squeezed Jing’s hand, and Jing squeezed back, turning to smile at her.The old man and the old woman met in the middle of the bridge, a few paces away from where the girls stood. They nodded at Jing and Yuan politely and then turned their full attention to each other.“Glad to see you looking so well,” said Zhinü. “Da Lang told me that you were having some trouble with your back the last time he visited with his family. I wasn’t sure you were going to make it here this year.”“Da Lang always exaggerates,” said Niulang. “When he visits I don’t dare to sneeze or cough, lest he insist that I go to the moon to visit Chang’E for some Osmanthus herbs. This old bag of bones can’t really take any more medicine. I think he’s more upset than you or I that his brother didn’t want to be a doctor.”They laughed and chatted on, talking about children and friends.“Why don’t they kiss?” Jing whispered to Yuan.“That’s a Western thing,” Yuan whispered back. “Niulang and Zhinü are old school.”“I’m not sure that’s true. I’ve seen Internet posts arguing people in ancient China used to kiss—but anyway, they’re standing so far apart!”“It’s like they’re friends, not lovers.”“It seems that we have some curious guests,” said Zhinü as she turned around to look at the girls. She didn’t sound angry—more like amused.“We’re sorry,” said Yuan, feeling her face grow hot. “We didn’t mean to be rude.” She hesitated. It didn’t seem right at all to call this old woman “Big Sister Seven.” So she added, “Grandma Zhinü and Grandpa Niulang.”“We just thought,” Jing said, “that … um … you’d be more … passionate.”“You mean less laughing, and more tears and recitation of love poems,” said Niulang, a gentle smile in his eyes.“Yes,” said Jing. “No,” said Yuan, simultaneously.Zhinü and Niulang laughed out loud. Niulang said, “It’s okay. The magpies have been building this bridge for thousands of years, and they sometimes bring guests. We’re used to questions.”Zhinü looked from Yuan to Jing and back again. “You two are together?”“Yes,” said Jing. “No,” said Yuan, simultaneously. They looked at each other, embarrassed.“Now that sounds like a story,” said Zhinü.“We were together,” said Yuan.“But I’m leaving,” said Jing. “We’ll be parted by the Pacific Ocean.” And they told their story to Niulang and Zhinü. It seemed perfectly right to pour their hearts out to the legendary lovers.“I understand,” said Zhinü, nodding sympathetically. “Oh, do I understand.”At first I was inconsolable. I stood on the shore of the Silver River day after day, pining for a glance of my husband and children. I thought the pain in my heart would never go away. I refused to touch my loom. If my grandfather was angry, then let him find someone else to weave the sunsets. I was done.The first time we met over the bridge of magpies, Niulang and I could not stop crying the whole time. My children were growing up so fast, and I felt so guilty. So, when we had to part again, Niulang came up with a stratagem: he asked the magpies to retrieve two large rocks that were about the weight of my babies and carried them home in two baskets on the ends of a pole over his shoulder, the same way he had carried the boys onto the bridge. And everyone thought they had gone home with him. But unbeknownst to anyone else, I carried the boys home with me on my back.And after that, every year, as we met on the bridge, we passed the boys back and forth. They’d spend one year with me, one year with Niulang. They would not have their parents together, but they would have both of them.Each time we met, I told him again and again of the solitude of my hut, the desultory squeak of my loom. And he told me of how he took his herd to the same pastures that we had gone to as a family, to relive the happiness we shared. The grass had grown thin and bare from overgrazing, and his animals were just skin and bones.And then, one year, when the boys were a little older and could walk on their own, Niulang held me and told me that he didn’t want to see me sad any more.“We live a whole year for this one day,” he said. “We’re letting our lives pass us by. It’s not right that you should sit by your loom pining from morning ‘til evening. It’s not right that our sons should think our lives are lives of sorrow. It’s not right that we should come to believe that yearning for what we can’t have is what love is all about.”“What are you saying?” I asked. I was angry, and I didn’t know why. Was he saying that he no longer loved me? I had been faithful to him, but had he been to me?“We know we cannot be together,” he said. “We know that sometimes things happen to people that keeps them apart. But we have refused to look for new happiness. Are we sad because we’re in love? Or are we sad because we feel trapped by the idea of love?”I thought about what he said, and realized that he was right. I had become so used to the story about us, the idea of us living our whole lives for this once-a-year meeting, that I hadn’t really thought about what I wanted. I had become my own legend. Sometimes the stories we tell ourselves obscure our truths.“You’re beautiful when you laugh,” he said.“We’re beautiful when we seek to make ourselves happy,” I said.And so I went back to my loom and poured my love for Niulang into my weaving. I thought those were some of the most beautiful sunsets I had ever woven.And then I found that love was not a limited thing, but an endless fount. I found that I loved the laughter of my children, and the chatter of friends new and old. I found that I loved the fresh breeze that brought smells from far away. I found that other young men made my heart beat faster.And Niulang went and took his herd to new pastures, and he came up with new songs. Young women came and listened to him, and he found that conversation with them gladdened his heart.We told each other these things the next time we met over the bridge. I was glad for him and he for me. We had been clinging to each other as though we were afraid to drown, but in fact, we had been holding each other back from moving on.“And so we each went on and had other loves, joys as well as sorrows,” said Zhinü.“We still meet once a year,” said Niulang, “to catch up on each other’s lives. Old friends are hard to come by.” He and Zhinü looked at each other with affection. “They keep you honest.”“Are you disappointed?” asked Zhinü.Jing and Yuan looked at each other. “Yes,” they said together. Then they said “no,” also together.“Then, are you not in love anymore?” asked Yuan.“You ask that question because you think if we’re no longer in love, then that means the love we had was somehow not real.” Zhinü turned serious. “But the past does not get rewritten. Niulang was the first man I loved, and that would be true no matter how many times I fell in love after him.”“It’s time to go,” Niulang said. The magpies under them were getting restless. The eastern sky was brightening.“You were together, and you’re together now,” said Niulang to the girls. “Whatever comes, that remains a fact.”“You look lovely together, dears,” said Zhinü.Niulang and Zhinü embraced lightly and wished each other well. Then they turned and began to walk in opposite directions.“Look!” said Jing, and gripped Yuan’s hand.Where the old Niulang and Zhinü had been, there was now a pair of ghostly figures: a young man and a young woman. They embraced tightly, as if Yuan and Jing were not there at all.“They were such a handsome couple,” said Yuan.“They still are,” said Jing.And as the bridge of magpies broke up, carrying the girls down to earth, they looked back at the pair of ghost lovers dissolving gradually in the moonlight.Miraculously, Yuan found her bike where she’d left it.The sidewalks were still relatively empty. The first breakfast shops were just getting ready for the day, and the smell of warm soy milk and freshly fried youtiao filled the air.“Better rush home,” said Yuan. “Don’t miss your flight.”“And you need to go, too. Your mom will be worried sick!”Jing pulled her in, wrapping her arms around her. Yuan tried to pull back. “People will see.”“I don’t care,” Jing said. “I lied that day at Emerald Lake. I told you I had kissed other girls before. But you were the first. I want you to know that.”They held each other and cried, and some of the passers-by gave them curious looks, but no one stopped.“I’ll call you every day,” Jing said. “I’ll text you whenever I get a chance.”Yuan pulled back. “No. I don’t want you to think of it as a chore. Do it if you want to. And if you don’t, I’ll understand. Let whatever will happen, happen.”A quick kiss, and Yuan pushed Jing away. “Go, go!”She watched as Jing ran down the street to catch the bus. She watched as the bus pulled into the stream of traffic, a mighty river of steel like the Silver River, and disappeared around the corner.“I love you,” Yuan whispered. And no matter how the stream of time flowed on, that moment would be true forever.END“Seventh Day of the Seventh Moon” was originally published in Kaleidoscope, published by Twelfth Planet Press, edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios in 2014.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.Thanks for listening, and I’ll have another story for you on September 22nd.[Music plays out]

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the August issues of Strange Horizons. body,div,table,thead,tbody,tfoot,tr,th,td,p { font-family:"Liberation Sans"; font-size:x-small } "Kanchenjunga" by Ajapa Sharma read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Ajapa here. "Using Only These" by Merav Hoffman read by Merav Hoffman. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Merav here. "Loss Prelude" by Arlene Ang read by Ciro Faienza. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Arlene here. "Stars" by Snigdha Chaya Saikia read by Anaea Lay. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Snigdha here.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the June issues of Strange Horizons. "Reversed Polarities" by Nin Harris read by Harris. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Nin here. "Challenger" by Bronwyn Lovell read by Ciro Faienza. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Bronwyn here. "To My Creators" by Lore Graham read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Lore here. "Dronin'" by Peter Medeiros read by Amber Read. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Peter here.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the May issues of Strange Horizons. "Four Sea Interludes" by Kailee Marie Pedersen read by Marie Pedersen. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Kailee here. "Not With Flowers" by Deepthi Gopal read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Deepthi here. "Ghost Irises" by Jenny Blackford read by Ciro Faienza. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Jenny here. "Shadowskin" by Shveta Thakrar read by Shveta Thakrar. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Shveta here.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the January issues of Strange Horizons. "Scythia" by Marinelle G. Ringer read by G. Ringer. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Marinelle here. "Orthography in the Lands of Yahm" by Daniel Ausema read by Daniel Ausema. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Daniel here. "Retirement" by Samantha Renda-Dollman read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Samantha here. "Meatspace" by David C. Kopaska-Merkel read by Ciro Faienza. You can read the full text of the poem and more about David here.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the November issues of Strange Horizons."Incendiaries" by Jane Crowley read by Crowley. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Jane here. "Brass" by Erik Amundsen read by Ciro Faienza. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Erik here. "The rivers, the birchgroves, all the receding earth" by Rose Lemberg read by Ciro Faienza. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Rose here. "The Mermaid of Lincoln Park Lagoon" by Valya Dudycz Lupescu read by Valya Dudycz Lupescu. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Valya Dudycz here. "You Are Here" by Bogi Takács read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Bogi here.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, guest editor Ciro Faienza presents poetry from the September and October issues of Strange Horizons."Used" by Eric Otto, read by Anaea Lay. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Eric here. "Sea-Sweet" by Yoon Ha Lee, read by Ciro Faienza. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Yoon here. "The Daemon Lover" by Pamela Manasco, read by Emily Jiang. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Pamela here. "Gorgon Girls" by Saira Ali, read by Romie Stott. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Saira here. "Plato's Orpheus" by Catherine Butler, read by Anaea Lay. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Catherine here. "Even Robots Learn" by Penny Stirling, read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Penny here. "Seeds" by M Sereno, read by M Sereno. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Sereno here.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the August issues of Strange Horizons. "Note to the Caretaker" by Lisa Bellamy read by Bellamy. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Lisa here. "Helmets of the Future" by Jessy Randall read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Jessy here. "A Universe Collided" by Charles Bane, Jr. read by Diane Severson Mori. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Charles here. "A Pantheon of Madnesses" by Cory O'Brien read by Cory O'Brien. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Cory here.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the July issues of Strange Horizons. "La Muerte" by Randi Anderson read by Anderson. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Randi here. "A Self-Contained Riot of Lights" by Bogi Takács read by Bogi Takács. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Bogi here. "Metamorphosis" by Juan Martínez read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Juan here. "Grandmother" by Leslianne Wilder read by Anaea Lay. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Leslianne here. "VIMVIMRECOIL" by Heather Knox read by Amelia June. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Heather here.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the June issues of Strange Horizons. "Straw-Fitted Elephants" by Salik Shah read by Angelle Haney Gullet. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Salik here. "In Cellars, Monsters " by  Zella Christensen read by Ciro Faienza. You can read the full text of the poem and more about  Zella here. "Hierarch" by Laura W. Allen read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Laura here. "Two Children" by Tendai Mwanaka read by Tendai Rinos Mwanaka. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Tendai here.

The Unheard Voices of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror panel from Arisia. Catherine Lundoff moderated this panel, with K. Tempest Bradford (standing in for Nisi Shawl), Julia Rios, Trisha Wooldridge, Andrea Hairston, and Victor Raymond. Listening to this doesn't give you the visual cues that people in the room had, so a note up front: Nisi was in the audience, but wasn't up for sitting on the panel. There was an ongoing joke about Tempest being Nisi, and about Nisi being Nalo Hopkinson, who was not at the convention. Awards season!*Lambda finalists include lots of OA members like Nicola Griffith, Sacchi Green, Mary Ann Mohanraj, Alex Jeffers, Alaya Dawn Johnson, The editors and contributors to Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam Gay City: Volume 5, Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold, Richard Bowes, Lee Thomas, and more. Full list here: http://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/news/03/06/26th-annual-lambda-literary-award-finalists-announced/*The Nebula nominee list is also out, and lots of OA types are there too, including Sofia Samatar, Nicola Griffith, Ellen Klages and Andy Duncan, Vylar Kaftan, Catherynne Valente, Christopher Barzak, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Sarah Pinsker, Rachel Swirsky, Karen Healey, and Nalo Hopkinson. Full nominee list here: http://www.sfwa.org/2014/02/2013-nebula-nominees-announced/The Galactic Suburbia Award and Honor List is out now, and the joint winners are N.K. Jemisin and Elise Matthesen. Full Honor List here: http://galactisuburbia.podbean.com/2014/03/23/episode-96-19-march-2014/*Carl Brandon Society is a group for fans and writers of color. They give out the Kindred and Parallax Awards for fiction by and/or about people of colors, and also administer scholarships for students of color to attend Clarion.*Broad Universe is a group for women who write and publish science fiction and fantasy. They have a website, a podcast, and many promotional and support networking opportunities for members, including organizing group readings and book sale tables at conventions. *WisCon is a feminist science fiction convention held each year at the end of May in Madison, Wisconsin. The Carl Brandon Society and Broad Universe both have strong presences there. *Con or Bust is an organization that raises money to send fans of color to conventions. The Carl Brandon Society administers the funds. *Gaylaxicon and Outlantacon are conventions specifically for the QUILTBAG SF fandom community. Gaylaxicon is a roving con (like WorldCon), and Outlantacon happens each year in May in Atlanta. This year's Gaylaxicon will be hosted by Outlantacon.Work by people on the panel:*Filter House is Nisi Shawl's Tiptree Award Winning short story collection (Tempest joked that her collection would be called Filter House 2).*Redwood and Wildfire is Andrea Hairston's Tiptree Award Winning novel (for which she had also just received a Carl Brandon Award on the day of this panel).*Silver Moon is Catherine Lundoff's novel about menopausal werewolves*Catherine writes a series about LGBT SFF for SF Signal.*Julia is an editor for Strange Horizons, which is always interested in publishing diverse voices.*Kaleidoscope is an anthology of diverse YA SF and Fantasy stories Julia is co-editing with Alisa Krasnostein, which is scheduled to launch in August of 2014.*In Other Words is an anthology of poetry and flash by writers of color Julia is co-editing with Saira Ali, which is scheduled to launch at WisCon in May, and which will benefit Con or Bust.Other things mentioned: *Lorraine Hansberry was an African American lesbian playwright, best known for Raisin in the Sun, but Andrea pointed out that she also wrote a lot of science fiction plays. *The SFWA Bulletin incited a lot of pushback in 2013. Here is a timeline: http://www.slhuang.com/blog/2013/07/02/a-timeline-of-the-2013-sfwa-controversies/. It has since changed editorial staff and has just put out the first of the new team's issues, which seems to be a lot more favorably received, as evidenced here: http://www.jasonsanford.com/jason/2014/03/the-new-sfwa-bulletin-is-blowing-my-mind.html.*"The Serial Killer's Astronaut Daughter" by Damien Angelica Walters was written partly in response to the SFWA bulletin's sexism. *A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar came up as an example of a novel by a person of color put out through an independent (not one of the big New York houses--Andrea argued for calling these sorts of publishers independent rather than small) publisher, Small Beer Press. Since the panel, A Stranger in Olondria has won the Crawford Award and been nominated for the Nebula. *Crossed Genres, Twelfth Planet Press, and Papaveria Press are independent presses that publish diverse voices.*Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, and Apex are magazines Tempest sees publishing diverse stories. Tor.com is also publishing more diverse stories now, like "The Water That Falls on You From Nowhere" by John Chu. *The Tiptree Award celebrates work that expands our notions of gender.*Dark Matter is an anthology exploring a century of SF by black writers. *Blood Children was an anthology put out by the Carl Brandon Society in 213 to benefit the Octavia Butler Scholarship, which sends students of color to Clarion. *Bending the Landscape, Kindred Spirits, and Worlds Apart were brought up as examples of QUILTBAG anthologies from more than just a few years back. All of these were mentioned as early examples, but the panel agreed we need more. *Daughters of Earth is a collection of stories by women from the early 1900s to 2000 with accompanying critical essays. This collection is edited by Justine Larbalestier. Andrea wrote a critical essay about an Octavia Butler story in this book. *The Cascadia Subduction Zone has a feature where an established writer recommends and reviews an older work that might be obscure. Andrea and Nisi have both done this. *Lethe Press publishes best gay SF stories each year in Wilde Stories, and best lesbian SF stories each year in Heiresses of Russ. Nisi and Julia are both in Heiresses of Russ 2013.*From the audience, Saira Ali recommends Goblin Fruit and Stone Telling as diverse poetry magazines, and Aliens: Recent Encounters (edited by Alex Dally MacFarlane) as a good anthology.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the February issues of Strange Horizons."Ekphrastic 22/The Drowning Girl" by Jenn Grunigen read by Jenn Grunigen. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Jenn here. "The Paper Boy" by Mike Allen read by Mike Allen. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Mike here. "Food Diary of Gark the Troll" by Jessy Randall read by Tina Connolly. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Jessy here. "Una Canción de Keys" by Lisa M. Bradley read by Lisa M. Bradley, and Ciro Faienza. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Lisa here. "Rehearsal for When He Wakes" by Anne Carly Abad read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Anne here. "The Rotten Leaf Cantata" by Rose Lemberg read by Rose Lemberg. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Rose here. "Rebel" by Danielle Higgins read by Clare McBride. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Danielle here.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the January issues of Strange Horizons. "The Restoration of Youth" by Mari Ness read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Mari here. "Dermatoglyphics" by Stacie Taylor read by Anaea Lay. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Stacie here. "Architect" by Sharon Kretz read by Ciro Faienza. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Sharon here. "Roman Shade" by April Grant read by Dennis M. Lane. You can read the full text of the poem and more about April here.

Gillian Daniels, Emily Wagner, Adam Lipkin, Victor Raymond join Julia Rios talk about QUILTBAG YA in this panel from Arisia.Gillian blogs for New England Theatre Geek and the Analytical Couch Potato and eatyourbooks.blogspot.com.  Emily is a YA Librarian and the programming chair for Readercon.Adam reviews YA books for Publishers Weekly.Victor is a professor of sociology, activist, and founding member of the Carl Brandon Society. Victor Jason Raymond on Facebook. Material For Class Tumblr is coming soon.Julia is the host of this podcast, and is co-editing an anthology of diverse YA SF and fantasy called Kaleidoscope.Things mentioned in the panel:*Flying Higher: an anthology of superhero poetry--all the panelists have poems in this, and it is free.*Malnda Lo's books (Lesbian characters without being problem novels)*Beauty Queens by Libba Bray (good trans character, bi character who is also disabled, complex relationships, very good audiobook version)*If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan (two girls in love in Iran)*The Weetzie Bat series by Francesca Lia Block*Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein (as an example of a classic YA book where diversity--in this case race--is played down, so the character reads as white to a lot of people)*The Shattering by Karen Healey (and a blanket recommendation for Karen Healey in general, and Guardian of the Dead has a good asexual character)*The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black (trans character)*AO3 (Archive Of Our Own--a fanfiction website where Emily sees teens going to write their own fix it fics. If they like a story and are disappointed about the representation, they will transform it themselves.)*Cassandra Clare, Sara Rees Brennan, Naomi Novik, Lois McMaster Bujold (authors who got their start in fanfic and/or still write fanfic after being professionally published)*Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (as an example of something where the issue of othernerss--in this case race--is so highlighted that the person portrayed as other must be presented as perfect)*The Nightrunner Series by Lynn Flewelling *The Hobbit by J. R. R.  Tolkien (Teen #1 in audience read and liked it for the adventure)*The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Teen #2 read and loved this because it didn't try to romanticize death, but was blunt and direct)*Fanfiction! (Teen #3 is following over 150 fanfics right now and loves Once Upon a Time fanfic because, "The show is so terrible, but the fanfic is so good!")*The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson (SF in future Brazil with a polyamorous relationship with QUILTBAG characters and characters of color)*Marco Impossible by Hannah Moscowitz (mainstream gay book for middle school age readers)*My Most Excellent Year A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, and Fenway Park by Steve Kluger (another mainstream book with 9th grade protagonists, one of whom is gay)*The Circle of Magic series by Tamora Pierce (to start with one character has two moms, and later one of the main characters is bi. These are good because they start young and get older, so goo books to grow with)*Ultraviolet by R. J. Anderson (Audience recommended, but then did not want to spoil it, so I'm unsure why exactly it was recommended)

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the December issues. “Artifacts in the Lens" by Selkie D'Isa, read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Selkie here. “Manteia, Katabasis" by Liz Bourke, read by Liz Bourke. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Liz here. “Power Men" by Jenny Blackford, read by Ciro Faienza. You can read the full text of the poem and more about Jenny here.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the November issues of Strange Horizons. “Counterpart“ by Stefanie Maclin read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Stefanie here. “What the Higgs Boson Means to Me“ by C. W. Johnson read by Anaea Lay. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about C. W. here. “Sand Bags“ by Dominik Parisien read by Anaea Lay. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Dominik here. “Datafall“ by Richard Larson read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Richard here.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the October issues of Strange Horizons. “Tatakai“ by Shweta Narayan read by Shweta Narayan. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Shweta here. “How a Mermaid spends her winters“ by Marchell Dyon read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Marchell here. “Slouching Towards the Garden“ by Margarita Tenser read by Ciro Faienza. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Margarita here. “Ivy“ by April Grant read by April Grant. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about April here. “Memento Mori“ by Richard Prins read by Richard Prins. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Richard here.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the 2013 Fund Drive and hosts a round table discussion with fellow podcast readers Julia Rios and Ciro Faienza. I Am Learning to Forget by Dominik Parisien, read by Ciro Faienza. You can read the text of the poem, and more about Dominik, here. Full Metal Hanuman, by Bryan Thao Worra, read by Julia Rios. You can read the text of the poem, and more about Bryan, here. This podcast has been published as part of our 2013 fund drive bonus issue! Read more about Strange Horizons' funding model, or donate, here.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the September issues of Strange Horizons. "And Deeper Than Did Ever Plummet Sound" by Mat Joiner, read by Mat Joiner. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Mat, here. "Tryptych" by Jane Crowley, read by Ciro Faienza. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Jane, here. "When Ever Young" by Mukete Samuel Oreh, read by Tony Sebastian Ukpo. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Mukete, here. "The Loss" by Mari Ness, read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Mari, here.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the August issues of Strange Horizons. "A Modern Prometheus" by Lynette Mejía, read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Lynette, here. "my father as a sonnet on the human meaning of inhuman stars" by Andrew Brenza, read by Anaea Lay. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Andrew, here. "All That Her Mother Left Her" by John W. Sexton read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about John, here. "Abduction" by Laura Madeline Wiseman, read by Laura Madeline Wiseman. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Laura, here. "St. Patrick and the Snakes" by Jane Yolen, read by Ciro Faienza. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Jane, here.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the July issues of Strange Horizons."Wolf Daughter" by Sara Norja, read by Sara Norja. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Stella, here. "Castle Csejthe (Bathory)" by Jennifer Ruth Jackson, read by Anaea Lay. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Adriana, here. "Marceline (Adventure Time)" by Theodore Kanbe read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Alicia, here. "Reflections En Route to Orion Nebula" by Erik Goranson, read by Ciro Faienza. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Jude, here.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the June issues of Strange Horizons. "Again, Pygmalion" By Stella Nickerson, read by Stella Nickerson. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Stella, here. "Maidenhead" By Adriana Tosun, read by Ciro Faienza. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Adriana, here. "Once, I Was a Mermaid" By Alicia Cole read by Julia Rios. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Alicia, here. "Air on a G String" By Jude Cowan Montague, read by Ciro Faienza. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Jude, here.

The Queers Dig Time Lords panel from WisCon! This panel was moderated by Sigrid Ellis, and the other panelists were Michael Damian Thomas, Amal El-Mohtar, Na'amen Tilahun, Brit Mandelo, Mary Anne Mohanraj, and me, Julia Rios. Even though this panel happened at 10am, it still gets the explicit tag (and how!), so consider yourself forewarned! Congratulations to award winners! The last month saw both the Bisexual Book Awards and the Lambda Literary Awards announced, as well as the Chronos Awards in Australia, and Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint won best Audio Drama at the Audies! Congratulations, all! If you want to see pictures from WisCon 37, you can check out my photo set on Flickr. Finally, if you were not able to attend WisCon, and would like to with the OA WisCon Prize Package (signed copies of Queers Dig Time Lords and Amal El-Mohtar's The Honey Month, plus a souvenir Queers Dig Time Lords test tube), e-mail me at julia@juliarios.com any time during the month of June. I'll draw a winner in early July.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the May issues of Strange Horizons. "Book of Vole (Excerpts)" by Jane Tolmie with artwork by Perry Rath, read by Julia Rios and Perry Rath. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Jane and Perry, here. "the houses of girl-ghosts" by Cassandra de Alba read by Cassandra de Alba. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Cassandra, here. "Ophelia", by Qyn read by Ciro Faienza. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Qyn, here. "And the War is Never Over" by Shira Lipkin read by Shira Lipkin. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Shira, here.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Julia Rios presents part two of Anaea Lay's "Hiding on the Red Sands of Mars." You can read the full text of the story, and more about Anaea, here.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Julia Rios presents Anaea Lay's "Hiding on the Red Sands of Mars." You can read the full text of the story, and more about Anaea, here.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents poetry from the April issues of Strange Horizons. "Tattertongue" by Jenn Grunigen. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Jenn, here. "The Monster Learns how to Read" by Bryan D. Dietrich. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Bryan, here. "The Mutant Forests of Mars", by Robert Frazier. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Robert, here. "Three Visions Seen from Upside Down" by Alexandra Seidel. You can read the full text of the poem, and more about Alexandra, here.

This week's podcast features the poetry from the February issues of Strange Horizons. The first poem is "Tadi," by Alex Dally MacFarlane. Second, "Lost", by Amal El-Mohtar. Third, "Jael", by Nancy Hightower. Finally, "The Haunting of Delphi," by Darja Malcolm-Clarke.

This week's podcast features the poetry for the January issues of Strange Horizons.  The first poem is "In the Courts of the Khan," by Lisa Bao, read by Julia Rios.  Second, "Watching for Aliens over the Allegheny," by Karen Weyant, read by Anaea Lay.  Third, "Heat and Sainthood," by Crystal Hoffman, read by Anaea Lay.  Finally, "Straw Man," by Sandi Leibowitz, read by Ciro Faienza.

This month on The Writer and the Critic your hosts, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond, briefly discuss the results of the 2011 Hugo Awards -- Ian was right! -- as well as the heartening increase in diversity of the nominated works in response to some listener feedback. Buoyed by his success in predicting that Connie Willis would take home the Hugo for best novel, Ian makes another silly startling prediction about the future of books and awards. Mention is also made of Jo Walton's excellent retrospective series in which she revisits the results of past Hugo Awards over at Tor.com. They then turn their attention to this episode's featured books, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson and Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor. Kirstyn mentions this thoughtful essay about Jackson and her work by Joyce Carol Oates. This lengthy review of the Okorafor novel by Paul Di Filippo is taken to task for being just a little bit patronising and somewhat missing of the point. The rather harrowing Washington Post article that inspired Okorafor can be found here. For those wishing to avoid spoilers and skip ahead, discussion of We Have Always Lived in the Castle begins at 14:30, while Who Fears Death starts around 52:50. Ian and Kirstyn would like to warn listeners that Who Fears Death deals explicitly with rape, female genital mutilation and sexual violence. Their review of the novel in this episode naturally involves frank discussion of those same subjects. Some very brief final remarks can be found at 01:29:30. Oh, and look, the episode of the Outer Alliance podcast is now live! OA host Julia Rios invited Ian and Kirstyn along to have a Writer and the Critic style discussion, with the recommended texts being Horn and Bleed by Peter M. Ball (chosen by Ian), "Nightship" by Kim Westwood (chosen by Kirstyn) and "The Behold of the Eye" by Hal Duncan (chosen by Julia). They talked for over three billion hours. Thankfully, Julia managed to edit the conversation down into a very succinct podcast of around two hours. She is a genius! Next episode will focus on two short story collections: Bluegrass Symphony by Lisa L. Hannett (chosen by Kirstyn) and Everyone's Just So So Special by Robert Shearman (Ian's recommendation). As both of these collections are fairly new releases, Ian and Kirstyn intend to go light on the spoilerage, but still encourage you to grab yourself copies of these fine volumes and read ahead.

The winners of the 2011 Hugo Awards will be announced on 20 August, so this month on The Writer and the Critic your hosts, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond, are looking at the books which have been nominated for Best Novel. Two of the nominees have already been featured books on this podcast: Feed by Mira Grant was discussed in Episode 2 and Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis in Episode 7. While you will need to go back and listen to those episodes for detailed reviews, Kirstyn and Ian do take the opportunity to finally read and respond to listener feedback from Cat Sparks in regards to Blackout/All Clear. The difference between a primary and a retrospective reading experience is examined and the duo muse on why Connie Willis is too often the subject of unfair personal attacks. The name of the beautifully horrific Willis short story that Kirstyn couldn't remember is "All My Darling Daughters". Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold is also a Hugo nominee, but Ian and Kirstyn have decided not to read this book themselves, as it's part of the Vorkosigan saga with which they have not been keeping up. Tut. Tut. Tut. However,  Tehani Wessely of Fablecroft Publishing, one of their wonderful listeners, has provided a passionate and spoiler-free summary of why she believes Cryoburn should take home the gong. Thanks, Tehani! Ian and Kirstyn then move onto an in depth discussion of the remaining two nominated titles: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin and The Dervish House by Ian McDonald. Further information about the fascinating legend of Mellified Men, as featured in McDonald's novel, can be found here. If you wish to skip ahead avoid the many, many spoilers -- including the endings of both books! -- discussion of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms begins at 26:30 while The Dervish House starts around 53:30. But listen in again at the 1:21:10 mark for some final remarks about the Hugo Awards and which book(s) should win -- and also for a shock! horror! confession from Ian! Seriously, you will be aghast. Finally, the Department of Cross-Podcastination is pleased to announce that Kirstyn and Ian were recently interviewed at length by Julia Rios from the Outer Alliance podcast. Julia adopted the format of The Writer and the Critic, with the recommended texts being Horn and Bleed by Peter M. Ball (chosen by Ian), "Nightship" by Kim Westwood (chosen by Kirstyn) and "The Behold of the Eye" by Hal Duncan (chosen by Julia). The Outer Alliance episode should be up on the site by the end of August, so catch up on your reading and add the podcast to your feed. Next episode, The Writer and the Critic returns to its roots, with a discussion of just two recommended books. Ian has picked the recently published Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor while Kirstyn has chosen a beloved classic, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. Read ahead and join in the spoilerific fun!