Podcast appearances and mentions of sunny moraine

Join writer Sunny Moraine for dinner as we discuss how the short story version of Your Shadow Half Remains exploded into a novel (and whether either of them would have existed at all without COVID-19), why pantsing is good but can sometimes become a nightmare, the way stories come to them cinematically,  several questions to which I didn't want to know the answers but only whether they knew the answers, the unsettling demands of Skinamarink, why we both love ambiguity but most of the world doesn't, how to interpret and when to implement the feedback of beta readers, the writerly gifts given to us by our subconsciouses,  why their short story days seem to be behind them, the two reasons they hate the process of titling their tales, and much more.

In this episode, Trevor speaks with Sunny Moraine, the author of Your Shadow Half Remains, a novella published by Tor Nightfire on February 6, 2024. Together, they talk about how the book tackles dystopian psychological horror, reflecting on how the pandemic continues to shape generational headspaces, why dystopias seem so common with readers, the utility of addressing common generational horrors, and how the book deals with mental health and neurodivergence.You can find more about Sunny Moraine at their website, sunnymoraine.com, and you can find their book Your Shadow Half Remains from Tor Nightfire at your favorite book retailer. Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/sley-house-publishing-presents-litbits. https://plus.acast.com/s/sley-house-publishing-presents-litbits. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Relive Capclaves past and present during the lightning-round Capclave Donut Carnival, where you'll hear R. Z. Held and me bond over rejection, David Hacker explain his love of listening to writers read, Michael Dirda recall why Orson Scott Card once kneeled before him on an elevator, James Morrow share his fascination with Charles Darwin, how Katy Lewis found her husband through Dungeons and Dragons, Michael Walsh's favorite moment as a con chair (which involved Howard Waldrop, Gardner Dozois, and George R. R. Martin), Bill Lawhorn clarify the creation of the bronze dodo, Sarah Pinsker reveal how and why her first science fiction convention was Capclave, Adeena Mignogna explain why space is cool but space travel gets really hot, Mike Zipzer's memories of Terry Pratchett's surprise visit, Sarah Mitchell's arranging of a secret con wedding, Sunny Moraine opine on how the world's response to COVID-19 changes our ideas of what would happen in a real-world zombie apocalypse, John Pomeranz chat about how the infamous Disclave Great Flood transformed him into a hotel liaison — and much more!

Watching the world from outside space and time, Morgan Knox has a choice to make. The Shadow Files of Morgan Knox is a Realm production, written by K Arsenault Rivera, Brooke Bolander, Gabino Iglesias, and Sunny Moraine. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm, and sign up for our newsletter while you're there! Listen to this episode ad-free by joining Realm Unlimited or Realm+ on Apple Podcasts. Subscribers also get early access and exclusive bonus content! Visit realm.fm/unlimited Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Want to chat about your favorite Realm shows? Join our Discord. Visit our merch store: realm.fm/merch Find and support our sponsors at: www.realm.fm/w/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the burned out remains of Nocturne, Knox comes face to face with the cult and learns the truth at last. The Shadow Files of Morgan Knox is a Realm production, written by K Arsenault Rivera, Brooke Bolander, Gabino Iglesias, and Sunny Moraine. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm, and sign up for our newsletter while you're there! Listen to this episode ad-free by joining Realm Unlimited or Realm+ on Apple Podcasts. Subscribers also get early access and exclusive bonus content! Visit realm.fm/unlimited Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Want to chat about your favorite Realm shows? Join our Discord. Visit our merch store: realm.fm/merch Find and support our sponsors at: www.realm.fm/w/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With the book missing and her friends in rough shape, Knox knows what she has to do. The Shadow Files of Morgan Knox is a Realm production, written by K Arsenault Rivera, Brooke Bolander, Gabino Iglesias, and Sunny Moraine. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm, and sign up for our newsletter while you're there! Listen to this episode ad-free by joining Realm Unlimited or Realm+ on Apple Podcasts. Subscribers also get early access and exclusive bonus content! Visit realm.fm/unlimited Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Want to chat about your favorite Realm shows? Join our Discord. Visit our merch store: realm.fm/merch Find and support our sponsors at: www.realm.fm/w/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For years, he has waged war on the darkness. But he and Knox have work to do. The Shadow Files of Morgan Knox is a Realm production, written by K Arsenault Rivera, Brooke Bolander, Gabino Iglesias, and Sunny Moraine. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm, and sign up for our newsletter while you're there! Listen to this episode ad-free by joining Realm Unlimited or Realm+ on Apple Podcasts. Subscribers also get early access and exclusive bonus content! Visit realm.fm/unlimited Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Want to chat about your favorite Realm shows? Join our Discord. Visit our merch store: realm.fm/merch Find and support our sponsors at: www.realm.fm/w/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Knox learns more about Volkan Siverek, Danny makes a mistake, and sometimes people aren't so dead after all. The Shadow Files of Morgan Knox is a Realm production, written by K Arsenault Rivera, Brooke Bolander, Gabino Iglesias, and Sunny Moraine. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm, and sign up for our newsletter while you're there! Listen to this episode ad-free by joining Realm Unlimited or Realm+ on Apple Podcasts. Subscribers also get early access and exclusive bonus content! Visit realm.fm/unlimited Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Want to chat about your favorite Realm shows? Join our Discord. Visit our merch store: realm.fm/merch Find and support our sponsors at: www.realm.fm/w/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Somewhere between life and death, Knox revisits the Marne and the origins of her paranormal sight. The Shadow Files of Morgan Knox is a Realm production, written by K Arsenault Rivera, Brooke Bolander, Gabino Iglesias, and Sunny Moraine. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm, and sign up for our newsletter while you're there! Listen to this episode ad-free by joining Realm Unlimited or Realm+ on Apple Podcasts. Subscribers also get early access and exclusive bonus content! Visit realm.fm/unlimited Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Want to chat about your favorite Realm shows? Join our Discord. Visit our merch store: realm.fm/merch Find and support our sponsors at: www.realm.fm/w/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Knox and Pak attend a party at Nocturne, where the night takes a dark turn. The Shadow Files of Morgan Knox is a Realm production, written by K Arsenault Rivera, Brooke Bolander, Gabino Iglesias, and Sunny Moraine. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm, and sign up for our newsletter while you're there! Listen to this episode ad-free by joining Realm Unlimited or Realm+ on Apple Podcasts. Subscribers also get early access and exclusive bonus content! Visit realm.fm/unlimited Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Want to chat about your favorite Realm shows? Join our Discord. Visit our merch store: realm.fm/merch Find and support our sponsors at: www.realm.fm/w/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Danny drops by the station to talk to Ray. Knox checks out Craddock's apartment and hatches a plan to learn more about Siverek's associates. The Shadow Files of Morgan Knox is a Realm production, written by K Arsenault Rivera, Brooke Bolander, Gabino Iglesias, and Sunny Moraine. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm, and sign up for our newsletter while you're there! Listen to this episode ad-free by joining Realm Unlimited or Realm+ on Apple Podcasts. Subscribers also get early access and exclusive bonus content! Visit realm.fm/unlimited Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Want to chat about your favorite Realm shows? Join our Discord. Visit our merch store: realm.fm/merch Find and support our sponsors at: www.realm.fm/w/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A visit to the morgue, sinister strangers, and a deadly recording send Knox off on a new investigative path. The Shadow Files of Morgan Knox is a Realm production, written by K Arsenault Rivera, Brooke Bolander, Gabino Iglesias, and Sunny Moraine. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm, and sign up for our newsletter while you're there! Listen to this episode ad-free by joining Realm Unlimited or Realm+ on Apple Podcasts. Subscribers also get early access and exclusive bonus content! Visit realm.fm/unlimited Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Want to chat about your favorite Realm shows? Join our Discord. Visit our merch store: realm.fm/merch Find and support our sponsors at: www.realm.fm/w/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Knox's investigation takes a macabre and shocking turn. After a night in jail, a drink with a fascinating dame might help. The Shadow Files of Morgan Knox is a Realm production, written by K Arsenault Rivera, Brooke Bolander, Gabino Iglesias, and Sunny Moraine. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm, and sign up for our newsletter while you're there! Listen to this episode ad-free by joining Realm Unlimited or Realm+ on Apple Podcasts. Subscribers also get early access and exclusive bonus content! Visit realm.fm/unlimited Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Want to chat about your favorite Realm shows? Join our Discord. Visit our merch store: realm.fm/merch Find and support our sponsors at: www.realm.fm/w/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When her investigation into a series of murders comes to an abrupt end, Morgan Knox is left with more questions than answers. The Shadow Files of Morgan Knox is a Realm production, written by K Arsenault Rivera, Brooke Bolander, Gabino Iglesias, and Sunny Moraine. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm, and sign up for our newsletter while you're there! Listen to this episode ad-free by joining Realm Unlimited or Realm+ on Apple Podcasts. Subscribers also get early access and exclusive bonus content! Visit realm.fm/unlimited Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Want to chat about your favorite Realm shows? Join our Discord. Visit our merch store: realm.fm/merch Find and support our sponsors at: www.realm.fm/w/partners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In which there is an ending, of a kind. Of course, nothing ever really ends.  Writing, editing, and production by Sunny Moraine Voices by Sunny Moraine and Jessica Finn Theme is "Highway to the Stars" by Kai Engel, with remixing by Sunny Moraine. Other music is "Messier 45" by Stellardrone Read the episode transcript here Support GONE on Patreon!

In which we arrive, and see what's become of the world. Writing, editing, and production by Sunny Moraine Voices by Sunny Moraine and Gretchen Jones Theme is "Highway to the Stars" by Kai Engel, with remixing by Sunny Moraine Read the episode transcript here Support GONE on Patreon!

In which a final confrontation is had, answers are demanded, and the question of the meaning of choice is internally debated--and such debates never end satisfyingly.  Writing, editing, and production by Sunny Moraine Voices by Sunny Moraine and Jessica Finn Theme is "Highway to the Stars" by Kai Engel, with remixing by Sunny Moraine Read the episode transcript here Support GONE on Patreon!

In which reconnection is made, a new possibility is suggested, and ghosts wander the dark. Writing, editing, and production by Sunny Moraine Voices by Sunny Moraine and Gretchen Jones Theme is "Highway to the Stars" by Kai Engel, with remixing by Sunny Moraine Read the episode transcript here Support GONE on Patreon!

In which there is a reunion that no one could have wished for, which only raises more questions... and much more doubt.  (GONE will be taking a short mid-season break after this, returning on August 2nd!) Writing, editing, and production by Sunny Moraine Voices by Sunny Moraine and Gretchen Jones Theme is "Highway to the Stars" by Kai Engel, with remixing by Sunny Moraine Read the episode transcript here Support GONE on Patreon and get episodes early!

In which frustrating conversations are had and vital plans are made... and a new voice is heard.  Writing, editing, and production by Sunny Moraine Voices by Sunny Moraine, Jessica Finn, and Gretchen Jones Theme is "Highway to the Stars" by Kai Engel, with remixing by Sunny Moraine Read the episode transcript here Support GONE on Patreon and get episodes early!

In which frightening implications are reassessed and a final attempt is made -- and so is a connection. Writing, editing, and production by Sunny Moraine Voices by Sunny Moraine and Jessica Finn Theme is "Highway to the Stars" by Kai Engel, with remixing by Sunny Moraine Support GONE on Patreon and get episodes early!

In which a long silence is broken, and the rules begin to change in new and astonishing ways. Writing, editing, and production by Sunny Moraine Voices by Sunny Moraine and Jessica Finn Theme is "Highway to the Stars" by Kai Engel, with remixing by Sunny Moraine Support GONE on Patreon and get episodes early!

Somewhere between life and death, Knox revisits the Marne and the origins of her paranormal sight.  Episode written by Sunny Moraine. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm. The Shadow Files of Morgan Knox is a Realm production. Listen away.

Knox's investigation takes a macabre and shocking turn. After a night in jail, a drink with a fascinating dame might help.  Episode written by Sunny Moraine. For more shows like this, visit Realm.fm. The Shadow Files of Morgan Knox is a Realm production. Listen away.

This week, I talk to Dr. Sunny Moraine from the podcast called GONE. There's no way to plan for being alone. There's no way to plan for what comes next. GONE is a story about what happens when the world goes dark, and everyone else is gone.    Follow Dr. Sunny Moraine on Twitter at @dynamicsymmetry Find more of Dr. Moraine's work at www.sunnymoraine.com   Follow me on Twitter at @PWLTpodcast Help support the podcast at www.patreon.com/PodcastsWeListenTo Email me at PWLTpodcast@gmail.com   Join the 25K other listeners in the PWLT Facebook group at Podcasts We Listen To

In this podcast The Outer Dark presents the sixth installment of The Outer Dark Symposium on the Greater Weird 2019 featuring  readings by Gwendolyn Kiste, Marc Laidlaw, Sunny Moraine, Gregory Norman Bossert, Gabriela Damián Miravete, and Orrin Grey, and a bonus interview with Orrin Grey. The readings were recorded live on Saturday March 23, 2019 … Continue reading

In this podcast The Outer Dark presents the fourth installment of The Outer Dark Symposium on the Greater Weird 2019 including  the panel: ‘No Man's Tale: Female, Binary & Queer Bodies in a Weird Space', moderated by Larissa Glasser and featuring Laura Blackwell, Craig Laurance Gidney, Sunny Moraine, teri.zin/Zin E. Rocklyn, and Damien Angelica Walters, … Continue reading

Episode 46 is a special live recording of the “Suppressing Sex” keynote panel we hosted last April at the Theorizing the Web conference in Queens, NYC. Cameron Glover, Liara Roux, Ramona Flour, Sunny Moraine, and Samantha Cole join PJ and I to discuss the social consequences of policing sex off of social media, with a special eye to the impacts of FOSTA/SESTA on marginalized sex communities. This episode of The Peepshow Podcast is sponsored by Quick and Dirty Media. Please show us your support at Patreon.

How can you create something with only the most bare elements? There’s a lot you can do with just a story, a microphone, and a voice. Jeffrey and Joseph talk about the virtues of single-voice narrators, budgeting, and how to make a podcast or any kind of art in its most direct and affordable form. Consume: Listen to the fiction podcast “Gone,” about a person who finds themself alone in the world after everyone else has vanished. It’s entirely written, narrated, and produced by Sunny Moraine. Create: Find two items in your kitchen and figure out what noises you can make with them. Let that sound inspire you. Now write and record a 2 minute audio story (200-250 words) incorporating this sound. Or if you’re not a podcaster, use those items to inspire your written story (or visual art piece) Join the SWT Membership community to see what other listeners are making: https://www.patreon.com/startwiththis Get Rob Wilson’s excellent logo for the show on a t-shirt today: https://topatoco.com/collections/startwiththis Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Credits: Jeffrey Cranor (host) & Joseph Fink (host), Julia Melfi (producer), Grant Stewart (editor), Vincent Cacchione (mixer). Rob Wilson (logo). Produced by Night Vale Presents. http://www.startwiththispodcast.com http://www.nightvalepresents.com

In Episode 36 we explore Tumblr’s recent ban on adult content. We feature two interviews discussing the ban’s impact on marginalized communities: erotic artist Jaymie Delight and genre fiction writer Sunny Moraine. We also introduce Peepshow Podcast’s new weekly Feature Artist promotion.  

Sunny Moraine joins me to discuss their horror podcast, Gone, their stream-of-consciousness writing/performing style, their terrifying-but-fascinating doctoral dissertation, and so much more!We discuss:Sunny's origins in podcastingLARPing?The balance between mystery-box plots and Explaining EverythingFoucault's heterotopia, and spaces outside of normal rulesMental illness and apocalypse (where did they all go?!)Poetry!Sunny's other fiction, particularly eyes I dare not meet in dreams

In this podcast Scott Nicolay interviews Sunny Moraine, author of Singing with All My Skin and Bone. Also an all-new News from the Weird featuring co-host Justin Steele! Show Notes Author Sunny Moraine joins Scott to talk about their debut collection Singing with All My Skin and Bone (Undertow Publications) including their first work, “Memento Mori” with editor Michael Kelly for Shadows and … Continue reading

We interview cam model and clip producer Dahlia Dee (@xoDahliaDee) about sharing/selling sexy content on the Web, what should happen when people use the images without consent, and her experiences coming out to friends and family. We also talk to to erotica writer Sunny Moraine (@dynamicsymmetry) about writing sex from the perspective of differently bodied people, using the word “pussy,” and more. Sunny introduces us to erotic works from Circlet Press (@circletpress), who is raising funds to publish their 25th anniversary anthology: Kickstarter "Best Erotic Sci-Fi Fantasy" Anthology A special guest, sex worker and performer Maggie McMuffin (@maggiemcmuff), join us for our news segment to talk about the piece she wrote for Tits and Sass on Hugh Hefner’s death: Hugh Hefner: Rapist and Revolutionary We discuss the complicated feelings associated with Hugh Hefner the man and the legacy he left behind.  *** Hosted by Jessie Sage (@sapiotextual) & PJ Sage (@peejsage). Thanks to Joe Kennedy for our music. Produced by PJ Sage.

This episode features "In the Blind" written by Sunny Moraine. Published in the August 2017 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/moraine_08_17 Support us on Patreon at http://patreon.com/clarkesworld

This episode features "In the Blind" written by Sunny Moraine. Published in the August 2017 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/moraine_08_17 Support us on Patreon at http://patreon.com/clarkesworld

A night club, a mix of music and blood, and a monster finds something more than they were looking for. Based on the story by Sunny Moraine, from Volume 5 Issue 1 Narrator – Aria Song The Woman – Heather Brister The Man in the Trunk – Brian Lohmann Most of the music in the …

The following audio was recorded live at the KGB Bar on June 21, 2017, with guests Catherynne M. Valente and Sunny Moraine.   Catherynne M. Valente Catherynne M. Valente is the New York Times bestselling author of over 30 books of fiction and poetry, including Palimpsest, the Orphan’s Tales series, Deathless, Radiance, The Refrigerator Monologues, and the crowdfunded phenomenon The Girl […]

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

We discussed the best writing advice they've heard, how being named the most promising author of 2013 messed with their mind, their favorite Ray Bradbury story (which is one of their all-time favorite stories period), why they write Walking Dead fan fiction, the contradictions of writing a breakout book, how they decided their trilogies were meant to be trilogies,  and more. (They refused, however, to tell me for whom the bell actually tolls or why birds suddenly appear every time you’re near.) Plus—I reveal how Tim Burton prevented me from eating a perfect sticky toffee pudding!

The Subtler Art by Cat Rambo Anything can happen in Serendib, the city built of dimensions intersecting, and this is what happened there once. The noodle shop that lies on the border between the neighborhood of Yddle, which is really a forest, houses strapped to the wide trunks, and Eclect, an industrial quarter, is claimed by both, with equally little reason. The shop was its own Territory, with laws differing from either area, although the same can be said of many eating establishments in the City of a Thousand Parts. But the noodles were hand shaved, and the sauce was made of minced ginger and chopped green onions with a little soy sauce and a dash of enlightenment, and they were unequaled in Serendib.   Full transcript after the cut. ----more---- [Intro music plays] Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip, episode 32 for January 24, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. For some GlitterShip news: coming on February 1st, we will be open to poetry submissions. For more information, check the submissions guidelines page on our website, GlitterShip.com. Also, starting with our Winter 2017 issue, GlitterShip also has seasonal issues available via our Patreon (patreon.com/keffy) or at glittership.com/buy, for those of you who would like to read the stories before anyone else. Our story this week is "The Subtler Art" by Cat Rambo. Cat's fiction has appeared on GlitterShip before. Episode 13 featured her story "Sugar" , way back in September 2015. Cat lives, writes, and teaches atop a hill in the Pacific Northwest. Her 200+ fiction publications include stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld Magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. She is an Endeavour, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award nominee. 2017 sees the publication of her second novel, Hearts of Tabat.  For more about her, as well as links to her fiction and online classes, see http://www.kittywumpus.net We also have a guest reader this week! Sunny Moraine’s short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Nightmare, Lightspeed, and multiple Year’s Best anthologies, among other places. Their debut short fiction collection Singing With All My Skin and Bone is available from Undertow Publications. They unfortunately live just outside Washington, DC, in a creepy house with two cats and a very long-suffering husband.   The Subtler Art by Cat Rambo   Anything can happen in Serendib, the city built of dimensions intersecting, and this is what happened there once. The noodle shop that lies on the border between the neighborhood of Yddle, which is really a forest, houses strapped to the wide trunks, and Eclect, an industrial quarter, is claimed by both, with equally little reason. The shop was its own Territory, with laws differing from either area, although the same can be said of many eating establishments in the City of a Thousand Parts. But the noodles were hand shaved, and the sauce was made of minced ginger and chopped green onions with a little soy sauce and a dash of enlightenment, and they were unequaled in Serendib. It was the Dark’s favorite place to eat, and since she and Tericatus were haphazard cooks at best and capable of (usually accidentally) killing someone at worst, they often ate their meals out. And because the city is so full of notorious people, very few noted that the woman once known as the best assassin on five continents on a world that only held four and her lover, a wizard who’d in his time achieved wonders and miracles and once even a rebirthed God, were slurping noodles only an elbow length’s away at the same chipped beige stone counter. Though indifferent cooks, both were fond enough of food to argue its nuances in detail, and this day they were arguing over the use of white pepper or golden when eating the silvery little fish that swarm every seventh Spring in Serendib. “Yellow pepper has a flatness to it,” Dark argued. Since retirement, she had let herself accumulate a little extra fat over her wiry muscles, and a few white strands traced themselves through her midnight hair, but she remained the one of the pair who drew most eyes. Her lover was a lean man, sparse in flesh and hair, gangly, with long capable hands spotted with unnatural colors and burns from alchemical experiments. “Cooking,” said the person on the other side of her, “is an exceedingly subtle art.” “Cathay,” the Dark said, recognizing the stranger. Her tone was cool. The newcomer was both acquaintance and former lover for both of them, but more than that, Cathay was a Trickster mage, and you never knew what she might be getting into. Tericatus grunted his own acknowledgment and greeting, rolling an eye sideways at the Dark in warning. He knew she was prone to impatience and while Tricksters can play with many things, impatience is a favorite point to press on. But the conversation that the Trickster made was slight, as though Cathay’s mind were elsewhere, and by the time the other had tapped coin to counter in order to pay, most of what she’d said had vanished, except for those few words. “A subtle art,” the Dark repeated to Tericatus, letting the words linger like pepper on her tongue. “It describes what I do as well. The most subtle art of all, assassination.” Tericatus slouched back in his chair with a smile on his lips and a challenging quirk to his eyebrow. “A subtle art, but surely not the most subtle. That would be magery, which is subtlety embodied.” The Dark looked hard at her mate. While she loved him above almost all things, she had been——and remained——very proud of her skill at her profession. The argument hung in the air between them. They both considered it. So many words could go in defense of either side. But actions speak stronger than words. And so they both stood and slid a token beneath their empty bowls and nodded at each other in total agreement. “Who first?” the Dark asked. “I have one in mind already, if you don’t care,” Tericatus murmured. “Very well.”   Serendib has no center—or at least the legend goes that if anyone ever finds it, the city will fall—but surely wherever its heart is, it must lie close to the gardens of Caran Sul. Their gates are built of white moon-metal, which grows darker whenever the moon is shadowed, and their grounds are overgrown with shanks of dry green leaves and withered purple blossoms that smell sweet and salty, like the very edges of the sea. In the center, five towers start to reach to the sky, only to tangle into the form of Castle Knot, where the Angry Daughters, descended from the prophet who once lived there, swarm, and occasionally pull passersby into their skyborne nests, never to be seen again. Tericatus and the Dark paid their admittance coin to the sleepy attendant at the entrance stile outside the gate and entered through the pathway hacked into the vegetation. Tericatus paused halfway down the tunnel to lean down and pick up a caterpillar from the dusty path, transferring it to the dry leaves on the opposite side. The Dark kept a wary eye on the sky as they emerged into sunlight. While she did not fear an encounter with a few of the Daughters, a crowd of them would be an entirely different thing. But nothing stirred in the stony coils and twists so far above. “This reminds me,” she ventured, “of the time we infiltrated the demon city of S’keral pretending to be visiting scholars and wrestled that purple stone free from that idol.” “Indeed,” Tericatus said, “this is nothing like that.” “Ah. Perhaps it is more like the time we entered the village of shapeshifters and killed their leaders before anyone had time enough to react.” “It is not like that either,” Tericatus said, a little irritably. “Remind me,” she said, “exactly what we are doing here.” Tericatus stopped and crossed his arms. “I’m demonstrating the subtlety with which magic can work.” “And how exactly will it work? she inquired. He unfolded an arm and pointed upward towards the dark shapes flapping their way down from the heights, clacking the brazen, razor-sharp bills on the masks they wore. “I presume you don’t need me to do anything.” Tericatus did not deign to answer. The shapes continued to descend. The Dark could see the brass claws tipping their gloves, each stained with ominous rust. “You're quite sure you don’t need me?” A butterfly fluttered across the sky from behind them. Dodging to catch it in her talons, one Daughter collided with another, and the pair tumbled into the path of a third, then a fourth... The Dark blinked as the long grass around them filled with fallen bodies. “Very nice,” she said with genuine appreciation. “And the tipping point?” Tericatus smirked slightly. “The caterpillar. You may have noticed that I moved it from one kind of plant to another -” “Of course.” “And when it eats jilla leaves, its scent changes, attracting adults of its species to come lay more eggs there.” “Well done,” she said. “A valiant try indeed.”   The Home for Dictators is, despite its name, a retirement home, though it is true that it holds plenty of past leaders of all sorts of stripes, and many of them are not particularly benign. “Why here?” Tericatus said as they came up Fume and Spray and Rant Street, changing elevations as they went till the air grew chill and dry. “It grates on me to perform a hit without getting paid for it,” the Dark said, a little apologetically. “It feels unprofessional.” “You’re retired. Why should you worry about feeling unprofessional?” “You’re retired too. Why should you worry about who’s more subtle?” “Technically, wizards never retire.” “Assassins do,” the Dark said. “It’s just that we don’t usually get the chance.” “Get the chance or lose the itch?” She shrugged. “A little of both?” Tericatus expected the Dark to go in through the back in the way she’d been famous for: unseen, unannounced. Or failing that, to disguise herself in one of her many cunning alterations: an elderly inmate to be admitted, a child come to visit a grandparent, a dignitary there to honor some old politician. But instead she marched up the steps and signed her name in bold letters on the guestbook. “The Dark.” The receptionist/nurse, a young newtling with damp, pallid skin and limpid eyes, spun it around to read the name, which clearly meant little to him. “And you’ve come to see...” he said, letting the sentence trail upward in question as his head tilted. The Dark eyed him. It was a look Tericatus knew well, a look that started mild and reasonable but which, as time progressed, would swell into menace, darken like clouds gathering on the edge of the horizon. The newt paled, cheeks twitching convulsively as it swallowed. “Simply announce me to the populace at large,” the Dark said. Without taking his eyes from her, the newt fumbled for the intercom, a device clearly borrowed from some slightly more but not too advanced dimension, laden with black-iron cogs and the faint green glow of phlogiston. He said hesitantly into the bell-like speaking cup, “The, uh, Dark is here to see, uh, someone.” The Dark smiled faintly and turned back to the waiting room. After a few moments, Tericatus said, “Are we expecting someone?” “Not really,” the Dark replied. “Some thing?” “Closer, but not quite,” she said. They glanced around as a bustle of doctors went through a doorway. “There we go,” the Dark said. She tugged her lover in their wake. Up a set of stairs and then they saw the doctors gathered in a room at the head where an elderly woman lay motionless in her bed. “The Witch of the Southeast,” Dark murmured. “She’s always feared me, and her heart was frail as tissue paper. Come on.” They drifted further along the corridor. Dark paused in a doorway. The man in the wheelchair wore an admiral’s uniform, but his eyes were unseeing, his lips drawn up in a rictus that exposed purple gums. “Diploberry,” Dark said. “It keeps well, and just a little has the effect one wants. It is a relatively painless means of suicide.” Tericatus looked at the admiral. “Because he heard you were coming.” The Dark spread her hands in a helpless shrug, her grin fox sly. “And you’re getting paid for all of them? How long ago did you plant some of the seeds you’ve harvested here?” “The longest would be a decade and a half,” she mused. “How many others have died?” “Three. All dictators whose former victims were more than willing to see their old oppressors gone.” Tericatus protested, “You can’t predict that with such finesse.” “Can I not?” she asked, and pointed at the door where three stretchers were exiting, carried by orderlies in the costume of the place, gold braids and silver sharkskin suits. She smiled smugly. “Subtle, no?” Tericatus nodded, frowning. “Come now,” she said. “Is it that hard to admit defeat?” “Not so hard, my love,” he said. “But isn’t that Cathay?” Dark felt another touch of unease. You never know what a Trickster Mage is getting you into. And there indeed stood Cathay at the front desk, speaking sweetly to someone, a bouquet of withered purple blossom in her hand, more of it in her hair, a smell like longing and regret and the endless sea. Dark murmured, “She always loved those flowers and yet did not like contending with the Daughters.” Tericatus said, “She had lovers here, I know that. No doubt she has five inheritances coming.” Cathay turned and smiled at them. The Dark bowed slightly, and Tericatus inclined his head. # “But,” the Dark finally said into the silence as they walked away, headed by mutual accord to the bar closest to the noodle shop, “we can still argue over which of us exercises the second most subtle art.” END   "The Subtler Art" was originally published in Blackguards: tales of Assassins, Mercenaries, and Rogues edited by J.M. Martin in 2015. This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library. You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, leaving reviews on iTunes, or just telling a friend. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back on February 13th with two original stories: "Curiosity Fruit Machine" by S. Qiouyi Lu and "The Slow Ones" by JY Yang. [Music plays out]

Our seventh podcast for May is “A Heap of Broken Images” written by Sunny Moraine and read by Kate Baker.   First published in We See a Different Frontier: A Postcolonial Speculative Fiction Anthology, edited by Djibril al-Ayad and Fábio Fernandes, 2013. Subscribe to our podcast.

Our seventh podcast for May is “A Heap of Broken Images” written by Sunny Moraine and read by Kate Baker. Originally published in We See a Different Frontier: A Postcolonial Speculative Fiction Anthology, edited by Djibril al-Ayad and Fábio Fernandes, 2013.

This episode is all me talking about what it was like to create and host Cabbages & Kings in 2015. Lots of gratitude for my listeners, identifying areas for improvement, and thinking about what might happen in 2016. No discussion of books. I talked about my reading in 2015 over on The Three Hoarsemen podcast.A few links:Discussing The Fifth Season with Troy & Khaalidah (and Troy's first appearance)Discussing Ancillary Justice with Ethan (pt. 1, pt. 2)Folklore with Mike UnderwoodComics with ParrishMiddle-Aged Women Aren't Coming of Age and a much better Rocket Talk episode with a similar premiseFangirl Happy Hour podcastGalactic Suburbia PodcastOut on a Wire (radio storytelling)Pilot (podcast of possible-podcast episodes)Cooode St. PodcastMy roundup of lots of podcasts I've listened toVision StatementContact Page (be a guest!)Wisdom of the CrowdsEpisode & Guest indexHalf-Dark PromiseEyes I Dare Not Meet In Dreams (LadyBusiness Review)A not-quite-transcript is below. These are the notes I read and occasionally ad-libbed:Navel Gazing 2015Here’s a year-end wrap up podcast. This isn’t about my reading. I did an episode of the Three Hoarsemen where I talked about that. Short version - I adored Grace of Kings, Fifth Season, Black Wolves & Sorceror of the Wildeeps, while being able to see flaws in a couple of them. This is a podcast where I look back at what Cabbages & Kings is and where I’d like to go in 2016. What I’m trying to do, what I’ve done so far, what went well & poorly, and where the show might go in the future. If you don’t want that episode, bail out now, and I’ll be back in 2016 with plenty of new episodes where I talk about books and stories.OK - What am I trying to doWhat went really wellWhere is there room for improvementWhat cool stuff could I do with a podcast in the future?What am I trying to doI started Cabbages & Kings on the theory that there are a lot of science fiction & fantasy podcasts out there, but there’s a kind of disappointing sameness that I felt left a hole for (among other things) a show that focused readers talking to readers about books, with minimal chit-chat and an editor at the least cutting out fumbles and uhms. And I figured I could make that.It’s worth saying right here that this isn’t either unique or necessarily a “better” format than others. Friends hanging out talking about what they love is basically a genre in and out of science fiction and fantasy: look at For Colored Nerds, Fan Bros Show, or the Accidental Tech Podcast. In the genre space, I love inviting the ladies of Fangirl Happy Hour and Galactic Suburbia and the Gentlemen of The Three Hoarsemen into my ears every few weeks just to sit & converse for a while. Arguably Cooode St. is a similar format podcast. I think the best Writing Excuses episodes are not only tighter than Cabbages & Kings, but usually inspiring and insightful even listening as just a reader. I know that Sword and Laser has created a community around their reading experience, and I think Mahvesh Murad is a fascinating interviewer whether or not I’ve heard of the author she’s got on. I’m also periodically reminded how many podcasts there are out there that I don’t know about. So Cabbages & Kings isn’t an attempt to be the “best” science fiction and fantasy podcast out there, just fill a hole I saw.According to my slightly more aspirational vision statement: Cabbages & Kings is an attempt to create exactly the podcast that I want to listen to. I want a podcast that makes science fiction and fantasy readers smile, pump their fists in recognition, and pause to consider a new idea. I want an excuse to work out ideas that are in my head and to interview a diverse group of other thoughtful readers. Cabbages & Kings is my attempt to contribute to the speculative fiction conversation in the format that I love the most. With Cabbages & Kings I hope to focus on books and stories that I love to read, and the experiences and reactions of other readers. All of this in under 30 minutes per episode, ending with a nostalgic look back at a favorite book.So, basically - I hate blogging because I get bogged down when trying to write words. I want to put a focus on the reading experience that readers have, and I’d like to talk about books in a way that can both gush about what we love and also apply a critical eye. I’ve found that the critical reading I like the most teaches me something about how to approach any new book or media, and I hoped to create some of that.What went really well?I’m going to take a moment to cheer for a moment! I put out 22 episodes in the 34 weeks between May 13 and the end of the year, not counting this one. That’s pretty cool!I really, really enjoyed having Ethan on to talk about Ancillary Justice - I think we got at elements of the ways Artificial Intelligence and Identity are handled that I didn’t see discussed very many places, but apparently there’s a philosophy class using Ancillary Justice to talk about those very topics, so clearly we (by which I mean Ethan) saw something interesting there.Troy Wiggins has been on twice - the podcast that we did with Khaalidah on The Fifth Season was a highlight of this year, and certainly in the first few months, our discussion of his history with the genre was one of my favorite episodes.Talking Short Stories with Nick Mamatas was great, and the discussion of folklore with Mike Underwood was fun to do & seemed to touch a few people when it came out.I was expecting to enjoy having fun & interesting people come on the podcast to talk about books. I was not expecting just how enjoyable it would be. Podcast recording evenings are some of my favorites. Getting a message out of the blue from Maureen Speller (who’s writing in Strange Horizons I’d recently discovered) letting me know very politely that I’d missed the point of the Buried Giant (which I confessed to at the time) and could we talk about it led to an almost two hour conversation, two of my favorite episodes, and a deeper appreciation of the book which is really the point of so much of this! You may have mixed feelings about the endless discussions of Grace of Kings, but for me, sorting out my thoughts about the book has been delightful. Plus I got to actually talk to Kate Elliott about the book (episode to come), and will hopefully get a chance to go over some of the themes with Ken Liu once I’ve finally put out the whole series of deep dives. So anyone out there thinking of starting a podcast - you get an excuse to ask your heroes and/or the smartest people you know to talk about your favorite topics for a while. It’s pretty awesome.Where is there room for improvement?So - I’ve put out some episodes I’m really proud of. I’ve gotten to have the thrilling experience of talking about fascinating topics & books with amazing people. Have I emphasized enough just how cool that it? It’s awesome!There’s something Tobias Buckell said a while ago on Twitter that I keep going back to (and I’m quoting from memory here, so hopefully getting the spirit if not the words) - that he hopes to be able to look back at his writing from 6 months ago and see flaws in it. That’s a sign he’s improving as an author. I haven’t listened back to many early episodes, but even week to week I find that when I listen back to the episode, I can usually see room for improvement. I tend to think about four areas where the show can get better. One is guests & topics which I’ll talk about more in a minute, but three are basically production related:First, there’s the actual interview. Do I hear my guest. Am I giving them space to talk & gather their ideas when that’s what’s needed. Can I listen and follow up on an interesting track. If there’s something *I* don’t understand, can I push them to be more clear? Notably, I had my mom to talk about middle-aged women as protagonists early on and was so invested in how *I* read (looking at worldbuilding and seeing the protagonist as an opportunity to reveal that world to the reader) that I didn’t really do a great job with the interview. (I’ll note that there’s a Rocket Talk episode with Kate Elliott & Emma Newman that touches on middle-aged women in genre stories which is worth listening to and which touches on some of the same topics). Listening back to the Ancillary Justice episode, I also didn’t really follow up on the most interesting things Ethan was saying. Live & Learn. I don’t think I’ve done a really a great job on any interviews yet, but I have at least learned to pause when I’m uncomfortable or confused & pursue a better line, or keep the guest talking. Editing afterwards ... Luxury! Luxury!Quick aside - in the Three Hoarsemen episode I was on at the end of the year with Andrea Phillips, the guys and Andrea did a really good job of pulling back threads that had been mentioned earlier and either building on them or questioning the premise. They heard each other, applied those statements to their experiences, and looked for common ground or interesting differences. It’s a skill or an art or something that I’m still learning the knack of, but at least I hear it sometimes now.Fine, so I’ve got an interview. How do I present it to you listeners? I’m not good at sticking to a time limit during the interview, so I’ve often got over an hour of audio that I’d like to turn into a 30 minute episode (which is about 28 minutes of content, and usually the significant book at the end chew up 1 to 3 minutes). I’ve been working on putting together a story structure. That was there in the first of the two Buried Giant Episodes as well as the comics episode that just went up. Ideally, I’m able to set up the interview with a story of who the guest is, what we’re going to talk about, and what the story of the interview is. Something like: After mostly reading prose fiction, I tried out a comic, and the experience was Exciting! and there were some similarities in the experience but there were important differences between the two media! This, ideally, gives you a hook to tell you why you care about the episode & what you’re listening for. I’m cribbing here extensively from a pretty neat podcast that Jessica Abel is putting out to support her book Out on the Wire: Storytelling Secrets of the Modern Masters of Radio, which has been really helpful in thinking about how to put out a podcast. Brief aside - the terrifying thing about doing heavyhanded editing is that I’m taking the words of someone I was talking to and trying very hard to understand and elicit responses from, and then I’m rearranging those words. And that means there’s the possibility that I’m misrepresenting them. Or missing something they thought was really important that I thought was less important. That’s already happened once (fortunately the guest took an early listen, something I offer everyone who comes on and suggested a couple tweaks), but if the best unanticipated surprise is the sheer joy I’m getting from having an excuse to sit & talk books with amazing people, the scariest unanticipated piece of this is taking other people’s words in my hands and doing something with them.So, thing 1 that I can still improve (that sounds so much better than stuff I’m often sucking at) is getting an interesting interview with my guest. Thing 2 is shaping the audio I’ve got into a story that’ll keep you engaged and set up the key moments or insights from the story.Thing 3 is actual post production audio. Making sure that things aren’t TOO LOUD or *too soft* and that the guest and I sound similar and transitions aren’t really ragged and all of the other stuff that you can do to work with audio to make it sound good. Despite growing up on NPR, Cabbages and Kings is never going to be something like Radiolab. I know I’ve had some moments that sound pretty awful, though. The Eye of the Tiger corny audio experiment was … a corny experiment. Was it awful? I only discovered compression (which helps make soft stuff louder and loud stuff softer) recently - before that I was balancing every second or two manually and that led to some really weird volume shifts. Truncate silence has also been a good tool to learn. I’m pretty sure I’ve still got a lot to learn about audio production. Problem is my preferred podcast client (shout out to Overcast!) does some silence truncating and audio leveling, plus I listen at about 1-and-a-quarter-speed (there are way too many great podcasts out there - 59 unlistened-to-episodes at last count.So, good audio? Bad audio? I probably couldn’t tell you. I am going to order a pop filter, though. And hopefully in 2016 the basic “two or more people are talking to each other and it should sound like they are having a conversation without distracting background noise and plosives” will get better. If anyone has advice on the technical aspects of getting better audio, please, please let me know.OK, so, there are the three pieces of “interviewing people”, “making you the listener care about the interview” and “making the actual sounds good”. All of those can be improved. I’m pretty sure I have improved all of these since the early episodes, and still has a way to go.Now let’s talk a bit about who comes on the show and what we talk about. I’m a pretty firm believer that the conversation is richer and better when many people from many backgrounds are talking. Episode 16 includes a bunch of us talking about how we got into science fiction & fantasy and making fun of my notion that reading Tolkien and then a bunch of Tolkien-clones from the 80s and 90s is the cliched way to engage with the genre. (Show notes will be full of links if you want to follow any rabbit holes). “Diversity” is sometimes a buzzword that hides as much as it obscures, but looking especially over time at the race, gender, and other backgrounds of the people I have on, as well as the topics we’ve chosen can be illuminating. So lets look back at the year:In 2015, I put out 22 episodes before this one. Two solo episodes & twenty with guests. Ethan, AFishtrap, Troy, and Maureen were all on twice.So 16 guests. 8 guys, 8 women. No one who identifies as genderqueer as far as I know.4 who weren’t white, and they were all black and american3 guests not in the US - one Canadian, one British, one american living in GermanyOne thing I’m trying to do is get out of my usual Twitter book discussion bubble. 6 Guests didn’t come on because I follow & chat with them about books on Twitter, though some of them are part of many of the same conversations I am.That gender parity was actually a pleasant surprise. All of the other numbers make we want to have a show that pushes to talk to more people outside the US, outside my comfortable Twitter bubble, and more people from historically marginalized backgrounds. I’ve got a stake in the ground this year. We’ll see how things change next year.So, what’d we talk about - Broadly speaking, we had some general discussions about reading history and common interests, like worldbuilding with Anna and small presses with Shana, focused discussion on specific topics like Short Fiction with Nick and Folklore with Mike, and then deep dives on specific books - The Fifth Season, Grace of Kings (sorry, there’s going to be more of this next year), Ancillary Justice, and The Buried Giant. These deep dives took up 8 of the 20 episodes with guests. Of the four books we went deep one, 2 were by women and two by men, and Ann Leckie was the only white author. The show right now *feels* to me like it’s heavy on in-depth book discussion, mostly because I let those get out of control and have so much great stuff to run. It’s a bit light on themed discussions, though there have been more of those recently (the discussion of Saga & Comics, Folklore and short fiction). In my head, I’d like to be getting about a third of the episodes to explore a theme or subgenre while referencing a few different exemplars, about a third going deep on a book (hopefully revealing some more universally applicable critical approaches) and about a third a grab bag of other reading experiences, and I don’t think I’m there right now.I’ll note that I interviewed 4 of the 5 white guys who came on the show about an in-depth topic - Nick on Short Stories, Aidan on Cover Art, Mike on Folklore and Carl on Queer Romance in the genre. All of these were really good episodes (in fact, Mike’s folklore episode consistently comes up when I ask people about what they’ve liked), but in contrast to the “general background” discussions with Troy and Akil, or the more back-and-forth dialog on worldbuilding that Anna and I had, there’s a trend that white guys come on to be experts at a thing. That’s something interesting to notice that I’d like not to see when I’m doing next year’s roundup.OK enough navel gazing about who talked about what. What am I thinking about going forward?I have a bunch of interviews done & waiting to be edited. An avalanche-load. A heavy mountain. A wince-inducing pile. It’s a little terrifying. I’m coming close to the sense that I have a process for these interviews - I listen to them, make notes, pick out key quotes, figure out the structure, then piece them back together. This process worked well when talking Saga with Parrish, so hopefully it’ll carry me through this batch & going forward. Content isn’t a problem. Figuring out a schedule I can keep is.So is finding guests. Especially finding guests outside of Twitter, outside the US, outside the usual suspects you might hear elsewhere. Maybe even guests who don’t share my political ideology but do share my love of this genre. I’ve got a lot of room to find interesting people whose voices I’m not hearing right now. If you are one, please let me know - there’s a contact form on the website, or send an email to contact@cabbagesandkings.audio.I’d also like to try an experiment with putting together a show that doesn’t require an interview. Skipping the logistics of getting 2 or 3 people together means a back-and-forth is harder, but there’s less chance of talking over each other and no need to navigate timezones. There’s a new link on the website: cabbagesandkings.audio/wisdom-of-the-crowds with hyphens between all those words (oh just check the show notes), where right now I’ve got a bunch of questions up about Dune because 2016 will be the 51st anniversary of it’s publication so this is the perfect time to do a Dune retrospective. Pick a few questions, answer them by recording your voice in the voice recorder of your choice. Share the audio via email, dropbox link, google drive or whatever else you please, and I may include the audio in an upcoming episode.This doesn’t have to be crystal-clear NPR quality audio. I’d suggest not recording outside in the wind, but talking into a phone headset that you’re not nervously playing with and moving around as I so often do would be fine. If you want to get fancy, real professional NPR reporters cover themselves up with coats or hotel sheets to record on the road. But record the audio & send it in. I’d love to hear what you think of Dune and put together an episode with wisdom gleaned from my listeners.I’m also often without a memory of a treasured book to close an episode, so if you’ve got one of those, let me know.Other experiments that may come - there’s a new show called Pilot where Stephanie Foo of This American Life puts out a single episode of something that *could* turn into a full podcast - a bunch of starter ideas. It got me thinking about what some of the other sounds missing from the genre podcasting sphere might be, so I may be trying a few things, including possibly a week or so of running very short morning bulletins. We’ll see.I’ve toyed with the notion of running reviews on the site. A crazy idea since I mostly don’t understand the point of a review, but I try to remember that “I don’t understand” can be an opportunity to learn, so maybe if I have smart people write & read reviews of books, I’ll get the point. Maybe?I’d kind of like to edit two other people talking about something, so take me the interviewer out of the equation. If you’d be interested in that, let me know.I’d like to be reading more short fiction next year, so maybe I’ll figure out how to incorporate that into the podcast. We’ll see.I’ve been hoping that after 25 or so episodes I’ll at least see a bit of a plateau. It’s comforting to think of Tobias Buckell’s “looking back & seeing room for improvement means I’m getting better”, but right now it also means that I kind of sucked at some aspects of this podcasting gig when I started. Hopefully sometime soonish I’ll have to actually work at getting better because I’ll have swiped the low-hanging fruit of awfulness. Then again, Parrish mentioned something about finding your stride around episode 100, so maybe I have a longer slog ahead of me.Regardless, starting Cabbages and Kings this year has been an incredibly fun and rewarding experience. I’ve had people contact me out of the blue because they liked what I was making & wanted to talk about books. I’ve got an excuse to talk to readers I respect and authors whose books I admire. Apparently people in Australia, Israel, and England all listen to the show, so that’s pretty cool! I have this awesome art of a cabbage with a crown on its head that looks badass and not like a destructive meteor anymore which was draft one. I’m really enjoying this. I’m really enjoying this in large part because every once in a while someone stops by the contact form or twitter to let me know that they’re listening & enjoyed something. I think I’ve only dropped the ball on a guest once, sorry about that. I’d love to hear from you. I’d love to hear what you like about the show. I’d love to hear what I can do better. I’d love to talk to you about this genre. If you’re listening now, you’re either somewhere without access to your podcast player controls, or a pretty dedicated listener, so let me know what I can do better. Next year will hopefully have a look ahead at reading plans, a discussion of representation within the genre, an episode on Uprooted, more Grace of Kings, quite possibly an episode on The Just City if I can bring myself to finish it, and hopefully a whole lot of other things that I can’t anticipate right now. No navel-gazing until the end of next year, though.I’ll close the episode by recommending two short stories. From early this year, Malon Edwards’ Half-Dark Promise in Shimmer magazine, set in an alternate Chicago and a girl with a steam-clock heart who needs to get home through the half-dark. Beautiful voice and use of dialect, and Sunny Moraine’s “Eyes I Dare Not Meet In Dreams” about women who’ve been fridged returning just to watch us. I’m not much of a horror reader, and I don’t know that either of these are really horror stories, but they’re tense, wonderful, and well worth a read. When I dive into short fiction next year, I’m hoping to be able to discover gems like thse on my own.Thanks for listening. Tweet me, email me, rate me on iTunes? Is that something people actually do? Recommend a show that you enjoyed to a friend who reads science fiction. And if I don’t have an episode that friend would like, tell me why not, or tell them to come on the show. Happy 2015, and hoping 2016 will be even better.Thanks!

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents Sunny Moraine's "At Whatever Are Their Moons." You can read the full text of the story, and more about Sunny, here.

Come back. You hear the call as the lander breaks up around you. You're aware of the entirely arbitrary concepts of up and down before you realize what's happening, and then they're a lot less arbitrary. Down is not so much a direction as a function of possibility, of what might happen to you, of what is happening now. You finally get down as an idea. | Copyright 2014 by Sunny Moraine. Narrated by Claire Benedek.

I'm telling you this so you know: I don't remember when I started eating myself. You should remember something like that. It should be a moment, one of those that you carry around forever, a line that you cut across your life to mark before, when everything was one way, and after, when everything was different. I don't remember discovering it like a secret formula or an equation that explained the universe. | Copyright 2014 by Sunny Moraine. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents Sunny Moraine's "Cold as the Moon." You can read the full text of the story, and more about Sunny, here.

In the end, the water goes black with the witch's blood. Before this happens, the little mermaid understands that a deal is a deal, a bargain a bargain, and there can't be reneging. But this isn't reneging, she tells herself as she sinks down, down, down into water so black that in truth it would be difficult to discern witch's blood within it even had a hundred witches been slaughtered in its depths. | © 2014 by Sunny Moraine. Narrated by Susan Hanfield.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Anaea Lay presents Sunny Moraine's “Event Horizon.“ You can read the full text of the story, and more about Sunny, here.

Our second piece of audio fiction for July is "I Tell Thee All, I Can No More" written by Sunny Moraine and read by Kate Baker. Subscribe to our podcast.

Eight OA members answer the same four questions (about SF awards, what "metrosexual" means, identity politics and the term QUILTBAG, and recommended media from 2013), so we can see a bit of the wide variety of opinions on each topic. Gabriel Murray is a writer of fiction and non-fiction, and a first reader for Strange Horizons. Cheryl Morgan is a a noted reviewer, and proprietor of Wizard's Tower Books. H. B. Kurtzwilde is the Lambda nominated author of Chocolatiers of the High Winds. Sunny Moraine is the co-author of Line and Orbit. Sunny also has a story forthcoming in Apex Magazine. Dennis R. Upkins is a critic and writer. His non-fiction appears at Ars Marginal, and his first YA novel is Hollowstone, and his second novel, West of Sunset, is coming out this summer. Sarah Pinsker is a singer-songwriter and a short story writer. She did the music for the Strange Horizons Podcast, and has a story forthcoming in Strange Horizons this summer. Rahul Kanakia's short stories have appeared in all sorts of places including Clarkesworld,  Apex Magazine and Wilde Stories 2013. His novels are represented by the Greenhouse Literary Agency. Jude McLaughlin is the mastermind behind Wonder City Stories. She was our one e-mail correspondent this episode, and her answers are all together at the very end. Stuff We Mentioned Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (sad story, strong female friendship, set in WWII) The Ditmar Award Winners (congratulations, all!) Through Splintered Walls by Kaaron Warren The Drowning Girl by Caitlin R. Kiernan Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck Ancient, Ancient by Kiini Ibura Salaam "Robot" by Helena Bell "Immersion" by Aliette de Bodard "Fade to White" by Catherynne M. Valente Stoker (an interestingly disappointing movie, according to Gabe) Batgirl #19 by Gail Simone (Cheryl is excited about the trans character in this comic) Gemsigns by Stephanie Salter (currently only available in the UK) Video Game High School The Binding of Isaac (a flash game) The Starz series Spartacus (which Sunny notes is problematic, but also has some great stuff in it, including a healthy gay couple) The Evil Dead remake (again Sunny notes there are problems with this, it's not for everyone, but it does interesting things with women) Selo & Inya by Ankhesen Mie Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age II (both games have queer characters) G.I. Joe: Retaliation (Denny appreciates that this features people of color) The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord Marbles by Ellen Forney (Out-Bechdels Allison Bechdel, according to Sarah) "If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love" by Rachel Swirsky "Variations on Bluebeard and Dalton's Law Along the Event Horizon" by Helena Bell "Selkie Stories Are For Losers" by Sofia Samatar (Sarah heard this story many times while working on the very first Strange Horizons podcast episode, and she never got tired of it!) The Good Wife (TV legal drama, which Rahul enjoys for the plots and the abundance of queer characters) Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (Rahul says this one made him feel like he was living the story) Puella Magi Madoka Magica Dicebox by Jen Manley Lee Family Man by Dylan Meconis I Do Not Have an Eating Disorder Send feedback to julia@juliarios.com, and if you're coming to WisCon, say hello to me at the Queers Dig Time Lords / OA party on Friday night!

Our third piece of audio fiction for July is "Iron Ladies, Iron Tigers" written by Sunny Moraine and read by Kate Baker. Subscribe to our podcast.