Asakiyume mita

story news
I don't generally like to share news like this ahead of time because I'm afraid of jinxing it, but after a hiatus of two years I should have a longish short story coming out in a venue I won't name yet (again, the jinxing thing). I guess this time I'm risking the jinx because it's just been so long! And I'm very excited to share this story with the world.

It's called "Semper Vivens," but when I was writing it, I called it my Amazon Annihilation story. Not because it's about annihilating the Amazon but because it let me express my feelings--sort of, modified by fiction!--about the Amazon, and the result ended up kind of being my take on some of the movie Annihilation's themes. (I specify the movie because I didn't read the book.)

the babies and the 18-wheeler

Wakanomori and I were in a McDonald's last week, rather late, and there was one other patron present, a middle-aged Puerto Rican guy who was pouring powder-format electrolytes into his Sprite.** He engaged us in conversation from the other side of the establishment.

"You should get a McDonald's card. You get the discount, whatever McDonalds's you go into. On everything. It works everywhere. Here, in New York, in Puerto Rico--wherever you go."

"When we were in Puerto Rico, there was an earthquake," I said. "The McDonalds was the only place with power. Everyone was there."

"Uh-huh, that's right. The McDonald's always have power. Where were you at? Ponce? San Juan?"

"San Juan."

He nodded sagely.

"I came over here 30 years ago," he said. "Drove an 18-wheeler. Brought my babies over. We lived in the 18-wheeler."

"You lived with your babies in an 18-wheeler? You need to write your story!"

"I know," he agreed. "I gotta write my story. Hey Vanessa, you leaving?"

"Just going across the street; I'll be right back, JJ," Vanessa, a McDonald's employee, reassured him.

"Okay, that's good; see you!"

Wakanomori and I boggled all the way home.

I want to read the story about the babies and the 18-wheeler.

**I know because that was actually his opening gambit: did we know you could get electrolytes in this format? Better than buying Gatorade or Pedialyte, he assured us.

This week Mike Allen's Mythic Delirium Press published Like Smoke, Like Light, a collection of short stories by Yukimi Ogawa. Yukimi Ogawa is remarkable: she lives in Tokyo and doesn't feel hugely confident speaking English, but she writes in English, and her stories are imaginative, surprising, and memorable. She's been published in Clarkesworld, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and, back in the day, Mythic Delirium--among others.

There are more or less three types of stories. First, there are yōkai tales, that is, stories in which traditional Japanese monsters or creepy beings are main characters. Although the yōkai comes from folklore, the stories Yukimi puts them in are completely new. In talking about the yōkai tales with Mike Allen, she says, "I try to not be too inventive about yokai because they are traditional to our culture, but not be restricted by the folklore too much either. The balance is important, but difficult to keep!" (The rest of the interview is here.)

Second, there are her tales set on an unnamed island where people's skins are patterned and colored in unusual ways. Several of these stories feature Kikiro, a member of the stigmatized underclass of people born without dramatic coloring or a pattern. She's something of a detective, and her investigations reveal things about the society (but also about personal relationships). All the colorful-island stories touch on issues of status, exploitation, discrimination, dignity, trust, and loyalty.

And then there are some stories that don't fall into either of those two categories. In one, a girl's opal blood can be used as a narcotic--or to heal people. In another a woman steals beautiful parts of other people's anatomies to keep herself attractive, always making sure to leave them with something in return, and in another, a caretaking AI gets increasingly fed up with human idiosyncrasies.

Here's what I said at the end of my introduction:

Good science fiction and fantasy stories remind us that other worlds are possible—better ones … and worse ones. They give us space and time to think about how we really feel about tricky questions—like what makes a monster. Yukimi shows us over and over that true monstrosity has nothing to do with appearance and everything to do with one’s treatment of others. Her stories are full of monsters—but the monsters are not skeletons, severed heads, or creatures with eyes on their arms. Similarly, she presents us with a beautiful palette of types of love and family: we have only to accept them in the forms they choose to wear.

Needless to say, I recommend the collection! You can find ways to buy it at the bottom of the page here.

I’m delighted to share with you a second story from Fernando da Costa Pires, this one dealing with the life of Mauko, who is born with a disability. Nando’s statement about why he wrote the story is below.

Ha’u kontente loos aprezenta ba imi istória ne’e, istória daruak husi Fernando da Costa Pires. Istória ne’e ko’alia kona-ba problema saúde defisiente. Imi bele lee kona-ba Sr. Nando nia intensaun iha “author statement" okos. (Ha’u husu deskulpa ba ha’u nia liafuan la loos iha Tetun.)

The story is direct and simple in how it’s told, but I felt a strong weight of emotion behind it: the emphasis, for instance, on the fact that Mauko’s parents loved him, and the anxiety they expressed when they talked in bed together. I know these are conversations that parents all over the world have as they worry about providing for children with disabilities after they themselves are gone.

Some of the details of the storytelling may seem strange: the focus on how long it takes to get to school or how big kumbili¹ are, but I like them for what they tell me. I met kids in Ainaro who had to walk similar distances to get to school. (Why does it take less time to get home, Wakanomori asked me—not a question I put to Nando, but I would guess it’s a matter of whether you’re going mainly uphill or mainly downhill.) And I liked knowing the process of digging up kumbili, and how big they are. (Were those details written with a foreign audience in mind? Maybe. But maybe they were also written for a city-dwelling audience in Dili, Timor-Leste’s capital.)

I have some other thoughts to share as well, but I’ll save them until after you’ve had a chance to read the story.

If you would like a PDF of the story in English, Tetun, or both, leave me a message here or email me at forrestfm@gmail.com.
Se imi hakarak istória ne’e (PDF) iha inglés, Tetun, ka versaun rua ne’e, hakerek mensajen okos ka, manda email mai ha’u: forrestfm@gmail.com.

And if you have any questions for Nando, type them here and I’ll share them with him.
Se iha pergunta ba Sr. Nando, bele hakerek mensajen okos no ha’u fó-hatene ba nia.

( Author statement )

( Mauko Meet a Monkey: English Version )

( Mauko Hasoru Lekirauk: Versaun Tetun )

¹Kumbili is Dioscorea esculenta, known in English as “lesser yam.”

These questions are a mix of Tetun and English. Where they're in Tetun (probably riddled with errors), I've supplied English, but I haven't attempted to translate my English-language questions into Tetun. Similarly, where Nando answered in Tetun, I've translated the answers into English, but where he answered in English, I haven't ventured a translation. Ha'u husu deskulpa tanba la bele tradús hotu ba Tetun 😓

Nando da Costa Pires


Nando da Costa Pires is the author of "Mr. Mau Leki Meets an Eel," which you can read here.

(Nando da Costa Pires mak hakerek na'in "Sr. Mau Leki Hetán Majiku Husu Tuna," ne'ebe mak bele lee iha ne'e (okos).)

I asked him some questions ...

Can you tell us about reading when you were growing up in Ainaro?

Tuir ha’u nia hanoin kona ba reading iha Ainaro ladun le’e livru barak tanba livre ba le’e la to.

(According to my view, many in Ainaro didn’t read books because books were not available for all, but some people did find a way to read books.)

When I was a child, I didn’t read any books because I didn’t have any. Sometimes I asked other people to show me some to help me do my homework, and sometimes I borrowed my friends’ books to read.

When you were a child, what things did you do each day?

When I came back from school each day, I spent my time helping my family a lot on the farm.

Follow-up Question:
Bainhira Alin Nando sei ki’ik oinsa mak ajuda ita-nia familia iha to’os?

(When you were little, how did you help your family on the farm?)

Wainhira hau sei kiik, hau ajuda hau nia familia mak hanesan hamoos duut ou kuru bee lori ba hau nia inan aman hemu no hili ai hodi tein ba meiudia sira han.

(When I was little, I helped my family by doing things like weeding, or fetching water for my parents to drink and gathering wood to cook everyone’s midday meal.)

In school, what subjects did you like? Were there any subjects that you did not like?

In my school, I liked math and science. The subject I didn’t like was talking about politics.

You told me that your grandmother told you the story of Mr. Mau Leki and the eel. Did she tell you many other stories?

Nia konta istória só iha tempu espesiál ka beibeik ka?

(Did she tell stories only on special occasions or all the time?)

When I was a child, my grandmother told me many stories. She would tell me stories two times a month, or sometimes three times a month.

Who else in your family told stories?

My parent and my uncle (my father’s brother).

You told me “istória nee realidade akontese duni” (“this story really happened”).
Ha’u fiar ita, tanba mundu ne’e misteriozu no buat hotu (ema, animal, ai-hun, rai, lalehan, klamar) mak ligadu malu

(I believe you because this world is mysterious, and everything (people, animals, trees, earth, heaven, spirits) is connected to each other.)

So, I want to ask: What important things do stories like this one teach us?

(Istória hanesan ne’e hanorin ba ita buat importante saida?)

Istória nia importante mak hanorin mai ita atu kuidadu ita nia natureza sira, no karik ita hetan milagre husi natureza nia forsa, ita bele uza forsa ne’e bele tulun fali ita nia maluk sira ne'ebé presiza ita nia ajuda.

(This story’s importance is that it teaches us to take care of our natural world, and that if we obtain miracles from the forces of nature, we can use that power to help our families and friends when they need our help.)

Liu husi istória ne’e ema bele hadomi liu tan sira nia ambiente.

(Through this story, people can come to love their environment more.)

Hanorin ami atu oinsá atu ajuda ema seluk, karik sira presiza ita nia tulun.

(It teaches us how to help other people, if they need our help.)

Follow-up question:
Alin Nando dehan, “karik ita hetan milagre husi natureza nia forsa, ita bele uza forsa ne’e bele tulun fali ita nia maluk sira ne'ebé presiza ita nia ajuda.” Alin Nando rasik iha esperiensia ne’e?

(You said, “if we obtain miracles from nature’s power, we can use that power to help our families and friends when they need our help.” Have you yourself had that experience?)

Iha, tanba hau nia avo hetan duni milagre balun husi natureza tanba nia kura duni ema balun ne’ebé hetan moras no nia tana hodi siik ema nia moras no nia fo aimoruk tradisional ba ema moras nee.

I have, because my grandfather has indeed experienced various miracles from nature, because he has truly cured a number of people who were sick, and he performs divinations in order to understand people’s illnesses, and he gives traditional medicine to these sick people.

Is this the first time you have ever written a story?

Yes. It is the first time for me to write a story.

Do you read many stories? If yes, what types of story do you like?

Yes, I do read stories, but not many. I read some stories in Tetun from Revista Lafaek.

In your opinion, what is the difference between reading a story and listening to someone tell a story?

In my opinion, reading stories improves our comprehension about the things the story is talking about. We learn something from the story, and we come to know about interesting places. And also, we can read the story to our family.

In my opinion, when we listen to someone tell a story, we must listen carefully to the person so that we can understand the meaning of the story.


You studied math at university and now help students learn math. What methods do you use?

Yes. My experience is this: first I must prepare worksheets for the students, and then give them some examples and explain it to them. I must give exercises for student do in the class, and then I must check if they understand how to do it. And I must give them homework to reinforce what I taught, and later I must check their homework.

Follow-up question:
Kona-ba estudante ita-nian: sira-nia idade saida?

(About your students: what are their ages?)

Kona-ba estudante sira nia idade husi idade 8 to 17.

(About the students: they range in age from 8 to 17.)

Obrigada barak ba intervista ne’e no ba istória furak ne’ebe mak ita hakerek.
Ha’u hein katak ita hakerek istória barak tan!

(Thank you very much for this interview and for the wonderful story that you wrote.
I hope that you write lots more stories!)

Lagoonfire, the sequel to The Inconvenient God--or shall we say, the second in the Tales of the Polity--has a cover!



Art this time by Susan Lavoie.

And it has a back blurb for the paperback edition:

The past can be a difficult thing to escape…

Decommissioner Thirty-Seven is not the most conventional decommissioner at the Ministry of Divinities, but she takes her role of helping fading gods to retire seriously—and feels bad when things go wrong. Take the decommissioning of Laloran-morna, former god of warm ocean waves: she botched that, somehow, and now he spurts saltwater when upset. When seawater invades a development project in Laloran-morna’s old haunts, suspicion naturally falls on him. But is the retired god the source of the problem? Or is it the work of a mortal saboteur? Searching for the answer to these questions brings Thirty-Seven face-to-face with a past she’d rather forget.

Soon it'll be available for preorder! It's long enough--a novella rather than a novelette--that the publisher can send it to places like Publisher's Weekly to review... I am dying of hope and anxiety!

I was reading a review of a book about writing--according to the reviewer, the book was more a memoir of the writer's experience than a how-to book. The writer has had enough success that they're able to support themselves through writing and freelance projects--which is to say, they're pretty successful!--but they're not wildly famous.

At the end of the review, the reviewer noted that the writer offered a word of caution about Patreon. The author apparently said few of their fans "had put their money where their mouth was" in terms of support on Patreon.

Man, that attitude bothers me: the implication that you're somehow unsupportive if you won't support someone on Patreon. I mean, clearly you're less *financially* supportive than people who offer patronage, but really loving a person's work doesn't necessarily equate to having the resources to support them with a monthly donation--and shouldn't! Patronage of the arts has a big overlap with enthusiasm for those arts and artists, but it's not the same thing! Huge foundations or hyperwealthy individual donors don't expect to love every project or cause they support in a personal way. They may love some of them personally, but other projects they support for the sake of nurturing the terrain or the overall culture/society/world. And I think this is true on a micro scale, too. I love the people I support on Patreon, but I don't love them more than all the writers/artists I'm not supporting. The people I support on Patreon, I'm supporting in part because I love their work but in part because I want this type of work out there, or because I want this particular person to have financial support (or both).

Fans can't be expected to be patrons for everyone they love. Speaking as a writer, I don't want to only reach people who can "afford" me--I want to reach everyone. That's where patrons, whether institutional or individual, come in--they makes it possible for lots of different artists/writers/whatever to have support, and for people who can't afford the actual cost of the creative thing to enjoy it anyway. (We can also support these things societally, through our taxes--hello, National Endowment for the Arts, etc.)

Speaking as a reader, as a kid I grew up reading library books. I received some books as gifts, but it was nothing to the mountain of library books I read. It took me a *long* time as an adult to realize that if I loved an author's work, I should be buying their books. Now I do that, but I don't buy every single book of every single writer that I enjoy, and I certainly don't support them all with monthly subscriptions.

So that's the difference, for me, between fans and patrons. Things get even more complicated when you throw friendship into the mix: friends will support you through rough times, including rough financial times, as best they can, and friends will encourage you and cheer you on in your artistic endeavors, but if you're expecting friends to support you on Patreon--even if it's only semi-consciously, as in, you're disappointed that x or y or z person isn't doing so--then you may want to reexamine how you define "friend." (I don't know if there are any people who actually feel this way; this paragraph represents more my sense of defensiveness and oppression in the face of the number of my acquaintances who have Patreons.)

...This is probably more of a medium-length harangue than a brief one.

Those of you who enjoyed Aster Glenn Gray's Briarley but would have liked to have it in print form... now it's available! Behold its beautiful cover:



And here is a link, for purchasing ease.

And, in more news of the physical rather than the digital, the latest issue of Not One of Us is out. It's a great size for carrying with you and reading, quietly, wherever--no batteries needed. lesser_celery has relevant information here, and if you're not a subscriber and want to purchase an issue, leaving a note there would probably do the trick.

Merry December 27! Today I have an interview with Andrea Johnson, who maintains a very fun, thoughtful, wide-ranging fantasy and science fiction book blog at The Little Red Reviewer. She relates to the books she reads in a really personal way and makes interesting connections, like in her review of Martha Wells’s Artificial Condition, which weaves in her reactions to the video game Detroit: Become Human and her own experiences at the day job. (It’s a super post.) In January, after what will be almost nine years of book blogging, she’ll be launching a Kickstarter for a best-of book of her reviews, and this interview is to help spread the news about that--and also because it's fun to talk to interesting people.

Artificial Condition

Detroit: Become Human


You’ve been entertaining and informing readers with your book reviews and related posts on your blog since 2010. How has the book blogging landscape changed over the years?

One of the biggest changes I've seen is that publishers and publicists have realized that book bloggers exist and that we can actually help sell their books. Give a blogger an ARC of a book they are eagerly anticipating, that blogger will do just about anything for you. Back in the day, I don't think publicists and authors knew what to do with us. We weren't magazines, we weren't beholden to anyone, we also weren't required to read the book, give a glowing review, or publicize the review. Were we worth sending ARCs to? No one was really sure. Publicists realizing bloggers were free advertising and Netgalley changed all that. Yes, we are worth sending ARCs to! In fact, these days it's not unusual at all for bloggers to use their blog as a stepping stone to get into the publishing world.

Evolving technology has made blogging much easier. I no longer have to download the book photo from my digital camera to my hard drive and then upload to my blogging platform software. Now I can do all of that in 15 seconds from my phone. It's suddenly much easier to include more photos, short videos, or to shift your entire blog to Youtube and be a Booktuber vlogger. Instagram has a huge bookstagram area, with image-heavy posts. I am very curious to see how book blogging evolves over the next ten years. Will text-heavy sites like mine be considered “old fashioned”? Will Wordpress give me more space to store images and videos so I can imitate Booktubers and Bookstagrammers?

No matter how much the technology evolves, blogging will always involve hours and hours of reading the book, thinking about what you read, and typing up a review.


As a follow-up, I’m wondering about ways your approach to book blogging may have changed. Back in your first year, you wrote,

I review about half the books I read. Some books I pick up knowing I’m going to write a review, and other books I just pick up on a lark, and some books that I pick up on a lark I decide halfway through that I should write a review.

How have things changed for you (if at all) since you wrote that?

Only the first sentence has changed! It's still true—some books I pick up knowing that I'm going to review them, others I pick up on a lark and only later decide to review them. These days, I'm reviewing closer to 75–80% of the books I read. When I started my blog, I was working part-time, and many days my job at work was to “be available if people needed me, but other than that, stay out of trouble.” So I sat in the corner and read. What a heavenly job! I was easily reading 3–4 books a week. These days, working full-time, I'm lucky If I finish 3–4 books in a month. Less time to read means I'm more picky about what I pick up, means I'm paying much more attention to if the book is worth my time. If I get 40 pages in and the book just isn't doing it for me, I'll abandon it and pick up something else that looks more promising.

There is a stack of abandoned books next to the bed. These are books that I picked up one evening to read at bedtime, and then abandoned. Maybe I'll finish them one day, maybe not. My husband calls the stack the “book graveyard.”

If I finish the book, there is a good chance I'm going to review it.

( more interview questions--and books!--under here )

Thank you so much, Andrea, and good luck!

She’s called the little red reviewer, and she really does have gorgeous red hair

Today is two weeks since I posted my giveaway for Unlocked, so I put all interested parties' names in a hat....



... and have three winners:



That's sonia, nemophilist, and petrichor_pirate!

Please message me via DW/LJ messages with mailing addresses for the physical books and email addresses for the kindle version (mobi format). Unfortunately I don't have an epub format, but I do have a PDF if the mobi format won't work for you.
ETA: Thanks to sonia, I now have an epub version to offer, so nemophilist and petrichor_pirate, if that electronic format is better for you, let me know! (And thanks again, sonia!

Thank you, everyone, for your interest in this book! It was a lot of fun to edit, and I hope the general public enjoys it as much as I did.

Back in 2009 a story of mine, "The Gallows Maiden," about a crow girl, was in an anthology called StereoOpticon. It's been reanthologized in Fell Beasts and Fair, which is now available for preorder at Spring Song Press.

Thieves, dragons, nightmares, fairy warriors, pookas, enchanted bear-men, and other magical creatures will delight you in these unique tales of possibility, courage, and hope.

My impression, just paging through the ARC, is that "The Gallows Maiden" is an outlier in being dark, and possibly for an older audience, though I won't know for sure until I've tried reading some of the other stories. I asked the publisher about the others, and here's what they said about a few:

"A Midsummer Knight’s Bedtime Story" --charming, unexpected.
"Winter Horses" --so well-written, kind of quiet.
"The Dove of Assisi" --lovely, sweet
"The Lady and the Unicorn": --took the idea in a completely different direction