Raspberries and robots
A tree is known by its fruits, a writer by her published works.
Last summer, I had to leave behind my raspberry jungle.
If you follow me on the social media site formerly known as Twitter, you might know that my family moved to a new country last year. It was a big change, and one we're still excited about. But it meant moving away from the twenty years of life we'd built in Wisconsin, the house where our kids were babies, and the yard where I'd coaxed a nice patch of raspberry canes into a full-blown sovereign raspberry nation. I loved those raspberries—picking them and eating them fresh off the vine, making jars of jam to give to friends and family, inviting the neighbor kids to come eat their fill. Sometimes, a couple we were close friends with would come over and help us pick, and their little dogs would run under the bushes and gobble up the lowest-hanging fruits that we had trouble reaching. Food is my way of connecting with people, and raspberries were a bountiful source of that connection.
My first book arrived during a pandemic. A real-life physical book from a real-life physical publisher! Like a lot of writers, I'd long had daydreams about what kind of party I might have to launch a first book: the local bookstore where I might be able to do a reading, the bakery where I would order a cake, the friendly faces I'd ask to be there. There wasn't … any of that. When my second book came out, I read to a computer screen. There were a few friendly faces there, in pixel form, and I made a cake that I ate a piece of by myself after the reading was done. It was lemon with raspberry filling.
I don't make friends easily. I assume people will find me annoying, or difficult, or strange. (Sometimes I am annoying and difficult and strange.) I let myself drift away and I believe that the people left behind are better for it. I don't think I drifted, when I moved across an ocean—I think I stretched. But moving to a new country with a different language is an experience and a half for a person who is, at least occasionally, annoying, difficult, and/or strange.
The raspberry jungle was precious, but it was also a lot of work. By the time we moved away, I could easily spend an hour a day, four or five times a week, just picking berries. More time, too, in a hot kitchen stirring boiling berry pulp. Even when the kids helped, my back started to hurt from all the berry-picking, and my headaches got worse with high heat. The process had become a burden, but I loved the end result enough to push through.
Today, my third book arrives officially in the world. If you like feisty general artificial intelligences on a mission to prove zemself to zir mothers/inventors, you should check it out. The publication date from this one really snuck up on me, in fact (which is why I'm finishing writing this newsletter the day it comes out)! The local bookstore here doesn't stock much in the way of English-language speculative fiction, and I don't know enough people here to host a party. So I guess this is my party: welcome! I would offer you a piece of cake, but my arms aren't quite long enough. I'm really, really glad you're here.
We moved houses again a week or so ago, to a place with a little more space—in place of the one-bedroom apartment that was the only option we could find from overseas that would rent to a family with two kids and a dog. It's been nice to have more room in the kitchen (although the dog does somehow still always find a way to be directly underfoot), and there's also a nice little garden space in back. We'd seen it in pictures on the listing online, and then come to gawk at it ourself in person: marveling over the wisteria and the other pretty, nicely-kept flowers that I don't know the names of. But it was only after we'd moved in that one of my kids shouted to bring me running out to the garden. There, behind the other plants, she'd spotted something we'd never noticed before: two raspberry canes, with exactly four ripe, sun-warmed berries—one for each of us—ready to pick and eat and love.
Books: betcha can't read just one
Enough about my novella and also about my garden. If a short-form long-form read is what you're looking for, let me throw a recommendation in here for Eliane Booey's Other Minds, which debuts in just over a month. It includes her novella "Carrier", which played a symphony on every string in my motherly heart. You probably also don't need me to tell you to read T. Kingfishser, but I adored What Moves the Dead, and I hope we get to see more of Alex Easton soon.
In terms of short fiction, Eugenia Triantafyllou gives us all the flavors of sweet and spooky in "Undog", at Strange Horizons—but perhaps I'm just biased because I adore both Eugenia and dogs (or things that are not quite dogs).
Somewhere in the middle between short fiction and novella, there's a lovely novelette in Strange Horizons this month, too: "The Ones Who Come Back to Heal", by Cynthia Gómez, a response to Omelas that is satisfying in its bittersweetness.
Did someone say dog pictures?
We all know why you're really here.
Commander Riker's two favorite hobbies are 1. sleeping and 2. destroying board games in progress. Here, he multitasks.