astray in worlds and words.

Author: Simone

New short story: Keloid Dreams

My new story “Keloid Dreams” is out in Future SF #8, a medical-themed issue published in September 2020. Read on if you’re interested in process and trivia, but beware, here be spoilers!

If you’d like to experience Carebot’s sensor input first and see to the patient’s wellbeing, please come along. And don’t forget to take a look at the other stories in this issue – I’m totally awed by the big ideas and scientific details my TOC mates came up with!



Future SF #8 coverFirst of all, phew! All my writing attempts since 2018 got shelved during first draft, and while people kept congratulating me on my last story, I plunged into a pitch-black hole. Then along came this healthcare prompt to yank me out of my comfort zone, with a tight deadline on top. And here we are, finished story! “Keloid Dreams” originated in thoughts about healthcare getting under your skin via implanted sensors, combined with the idea of robots caring for people. How would they become accepted, what would their humanizing features have to be so that you’d trust them with your parents?

I was planning to write about dementia first, about a patient losing himself, and a robot finding a personality, but the emotion-learning robot voice didn’t work for me. The refurbished warbot idea had been lurking from the beginning, and I truly hit my stride when I imagined the two veterans on a last mission together, despite the fallout of going to war.

Then it was a question of digging deeper. I connected bits and pieces to family history: my Dad, who was excluded from taking part in my life when I was ten. My Grandfather, who turned his back to fighting, but the whole story was obscured by the way German families don’t talk about their WWII past. On a lighter note, Overwatch inspired some details of the story, and if you played the game, you may find teeny-tiny easter-eggs and guess who my favorite character is. When I considered what Callas would do as a hobby, I settled on bird-feeding, partially because bird-feeding has gotten me through the worst of this pandemic. This decision made me pull one of my favorite graphic novels from the shelf, Enemy Ace: War Idyll by George Pratt, providing further inspiration.

My thanks go out to Ella Voss and Elena Kotsiliti who were lightning quick with their insights on very short notice, and Jennifer Hudak, who helped me make the story so much sleeker and more powerful. To firefighter/paramedic Meo, who was awesome at explaining complex physiological processes and effects (any bugger-ups are on the author’s side). And to my editor, RM Ambrose, who really got to the core of the story and helped me polish it. If you like his work for Future SF and feel the need to imagine the future of healthcare differently, consider backing his anthology Vital on Kickstarter, bringing you more stories soon!

Writing this piece of post-military SF has unlocked an achievement: true short story! I almost made it down to 5,000 words – and I’m in deep awe of people who truly master this and even shorter lengths!

Achievements remaining unlocked:
– write something that’s not 1st person
– write a story without reptiles (They’re invisible this time. Improved much?)
– write a story from the POV of an actual human.

Next time, maybe. Or maybe not. I have a roster of a dozen partially told stories, some mostly dead, some quite fresh, and some same old in a shiny new skin. Onwards!

For He Can Creep (Siobhan Carroll)

Now that there is a 2020 Eugie Award winner, I absolutely have to remedy the mistake of not urging you enough to read her story: “For He Can Creep” by Siobhan Carroll is told from the point of view of a cat. And not just any cat, but distinguished, treat-loving, fierce-clawed Jeoffry, the feline visitor to a 19th century London asylum fighting the demons torturing the place.

“For He Can Creep” is a classic outsmart-the-devil story, but it is so much more: its protagonist’s cattiness is captured in every hiss and every purr, and he has to give his best performance to defend his incarcerated poet against the nastiest of foes. If you love non-human POVs, this one is for you.

And the best thing is: “For He Can Creep is”, title and all, based on a real poem! I had to look this one up, and I was delighted to find that there was a story behind the story.

For He Can Creep, free to read at Tor.com, has also been a Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award finalist, and is nominated for a World Fantasy Award.

A Handful of Sky (Elly Bangs)

I love it when stories just place me into a world and a society, leaving me to figure out the rules, and with a protagonist whose mysteries I have to unravel. A Handful of Sky by Elly Bangs delivers on that and more. Don’t miss it if you like fascinating magic concepts and high stakes!

It starts like a gritty sword and sorcery tale with a hunting party bringing in a slain dragon for its parts to be utilised. But these tropes are soon subverted, the more you find out about the hunters’ destination, a city of whispered secrets and eternal youth. The latter is not for everyone, though, and it’s always a delight to see an older female protagonist like Jorren Borriwack, a down-to-earth tailor just getting by, her talent buried and tarnished and waiting to change the world.

The story’s magic has the best handmade flavor, it’s very tangible even when it should by all means be abstract and elusive, and the ending is perfect – that’s the kind of fantasy I’d love to read more often, hopeful and addressing relevant questions.

Read it here in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #280 (June 2019).

Eugie Award

As promised, this bit of “news” gets an extra blog post, no matter how late I am: My novelette “When We Were Starless” is the winner of the 2019 Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction.

This makes me incredibly happy, not only because I’m still having trouble believing my writing was nominated for awards, let alone won one! It’s an award celebrating short fiction (yay!), and it boasts an incredibly fine selection of finalists and winners in the five years of its existence. Previous winners are Catherynne M. Valente, N.K. Jemisin, and Fran Wilde, so I’m clearly the odd one out here. And on top of that, it’s awarded in the memory of a truly brilliant short fiction writer.

I can only recommend you go and check out current and former finalists, and read Eugie’s work, too, if you don’t know it yet.

Plaque of the 2019 Eugie AwardI deeply regret I wasn’t able to be in Atlanta for the award ceremony personally – financial and health issues upset my plans to go. I celebrated two times, though – once in the middle of the night when I discovered on Twitter that my story had won, and a second time when the beautiful plaque designed by Tangled Earth Arts came in the mail.

And don’t forget to look at this year’s finalists, too. (Yes, my bad, there’s already a new round, and they’re amazing!)

Things happened …

… and things didn’t happen.
Most amazing among the things that happened was the fact that my latest story resonated with readers and was nominated for awards, to my utter astonishment. “When We Were Starless” went on to be a finalist for the Hugo and Sturgeon Awards, and it won the Eugie Foster Memorial Award (which deserves an extra blog post, even if I’m horribly late). Yay! I mean, YAAAAAYYYYY! I still can’t believe that happened!

But the fact that my latest story was, and is, still my latest story also serves as a hint to the things that didn’t happen.
I started a few new things and stopped in the middle of the process because I didn’t like where they were going. Some others simply refused to go anywhere. I dropped into that big black hole that keeps opening and swallowing me whole. I usually retreat and hunker down with (translation) work then, but last year was not great for translations, at least from my point of view. So the hole gave me some trouble this time around. Anyway, this is where I am. I haven’t given up; it’s just that my brain didn’t put out a lot of useful stuff these past months.

But things happen even when we sit in holes, and I’m lucky enough to have wonderful friends who keep nudging even if I’m at my worst holed-up self, and so the future doesn’t look all bleak: right now, a really wonderful (and challenging) translation is waiting on my desk. Friends have written amazing stories (and sometimes books) I want to talk about. And I might have been talked into doing a thing or two myself, one of them coming up right at Halloween! Which is, in the amorphous ways of 2020 time both forever in the future and sneaking up on us in a week or so.

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