I have a new short story out! It's an audio short for the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast titled "A Farce to Suit the New Girl" (transcript available here for those who don't do audio fiction) about Yiddish theater, wlw hostility, and the assassination of Tsar Alexander II.

Technically I think this is my first published non-sff piece, although in my heart it's set in the same world as the Yudah Cohen stories -- there may be nothing supernatural going on on the page, but writing it did thoroughly curse my computer, as evidenced by this snippet of my attempt to find/replace a character's name from 'Ester' to 'Ida' while editing the second draft:

'Ida was packing up Ida Ida of Ida Ida when Ida heard footsteps behind Ida, and sprang to Ida Ida. Ida heart was hammering in Ida chest, as it had Ida, on and off, Ida since Ida brought Ida news.

Ida woman who stood behind Ida took a startled Ida back. “Ah – you’re Ida costumer? Ida said you’re to Ida my measurements.”'

I have not been able to reverse-engineer what happened and I have not been able to successfully find/replace a set of words in LibreOffice since, but nonetheless I am very happy to have this short story up on LHMP! worth the curse!

While I'm self-promoting, two more brief items:

a.) finally got a website in order to keep track of my fiction! this is entirely due to genarti doing all the hard work of initial setup last year and then mellific making some absolutely incredible art so that when I go to the site I can gaze peacefully upon it and feel joy rather than what I would otherwise be feeling, which is stress and imposter syndrome

b.) "This Is New Gehesran Calling," my short story from the Consolation Songs anthology, is going to be reprinted in The Long List Anthology, a collection of shorts from the longer Hugo Award nomination list (assuming it's funded.) I realize everyone who read and liked this story already owns it in anthology form by the very nature of its publication so this is probably not actually that exciting as news goes, but there is quite a bit of other exciting-looking stuff in the TOC if you are interested in it!

Consolation Songs, the charity anthology edited by Iona Datt Sharma I mentioned last week, is out today! One can purchase it in physical or mobi form from the Amazon or as epub from Smashwords.

Meanwhile, I personally stayed up too late last night gorging everyone else's extremely delightful stories, including:

"Storm Story," Llinos Cathryn Thomas - a magical generation ship crossing a boundless ocean, a once-in-a-lifetime storm, and a mandate to keep the lights burning; near-impossible tasks, community and hope

"Girls Who Read Austen," Tansy Rayner Roberts - Greek mythology monsters college roommate AU!

"Upside the Head," Marissa Lingen - a medical trial for a new treatment for head trauma (in mostly, specifically, hockey players); unexpected changes & unexpected growth

"Bethany, Bethany," Lizbeth Myles - a changeling story about sisters! my jam!!!

"Seaview on Mars," Katie Rathfelder - accessible elder-home hunting on a space colony that is now but was not always thriving; a really great evocation of a larger world and context from a quiet and personal moment

"A Hundred and Seventy Storms," Aliette de Bodard - a sentient spaceship and her human cousin weathering a terrible storm (as a sidenote, Aliette de Bodard's Xuya books have been on my TBR for a while but had not personally realized that the premise was quite that much "McCaffrey's Ship Who Sang books, but good!", which I am very excited about)

"Low Energy Economy," Adrian Tchaikovsky - a contract worker chugs along on a doomed mission that may not in fact be completely doomed after all

"Four," Freya Marske - a Good Omens-ish riff on apocalyptic powers, set in suburban Australia & ft. Freya's trademark incredibly gleaming prose

"St. Anselm-By-The-Riverside," Iona Datt Sharma - a middle-aged hospital worker navigates her way through a first romance in a world that is borked in ways slightly parallel to our own; rich and layered with a fascinating second thread running through it

"This Is New Gehesran Calling," Rebecca Fraimow - this one is me! pirate radio and diasporic community in space!

"Of a Female Stranger," Jeannelle M. Ferreira - turn-of-the-eighteenth-century selkies! "are they lesbians" OF COURSE they are lesbians and it's great

"Love, Your Flatmate," Stephanie Burgis - a human gets stuck with an unwanted fairy houseguest during COVID-19 lockdown ... And Indeed They Were Roommates

If any of that sounds interesting, and if you have six dollars to spare, please consider making the purchase; all proceeds go to the University College London Hospitals NHS Trust!

Hey! So you guys may remember Further Arguments In Support of Yudah Cohen's Proposal to Bluma Zilberman, a short story which I published in Diabolical Plots earlier this year.

If you liked this story, I have two pieces of good news:

a. You can now listen to it as an audio short from PodCastle

b. Also at PodCastle, you can also now read OR listen to a NEW related story, Shaina Rubin Keeps Her Head Under Circumstances Nobody Could Have Expected, in which Bluma's cousin Shaina is deeply embarrassed to discover herself in need of rescue from supernatural danger (especially if rescue comes in the form of annoying cousins)

Both of these stories should stand alone, for the record! I made very sure (thanks aberration!) to find a second reader who had not read the first one to test this.

EDIT: NOW UPDATING TO INCLUDE THE BEAUTIFUL FANART aquamirage DREW ME



This is Shaina Rubin, I think you all have a good sense of her personality now

My short story "Further Arguments In Support of Yudah Cohen's Proposal to Bluma Zilberman" is up today at Diabolical Plots!

Obviously death of the author and all that but nonetheless here are some word-of-God canonical facts:

1. Yudah's pronouns are he/him/his
2. Yudah is definitely much hotter than poor Hershel Schmulewitz (that blockhead)

So I totally forgot to note when this happened, because I'm SUPER ON TOP OF THINGS, but my short-short magical realist story "Crowned" went up last month on Daily Science Fiction. If you happened to visit me any time between 2009 and 2011, you'll recognize the mural.

(In other news, for the next week I'm in Portland! Oregon, not Maine. It is deeply surreal not to be surrounded by snow.)

I promised you guys a full post on Steam-Powered II: More Lesbian Steampunk Stories, right? I cannot and should not write my usual sort of unbiased review for this book, so instead you are going to get some information on each story and WHY IT IS AWESOME which will be extremely biased, but also very true. So, going down the table of contents!


( Cut for length and gushing )

I had been meaning to read Nisi Shawl's Filter House for ages, but did not actually get around to it until I came to the realization that it looked like I was actually going to be in an anthology with her and this was a sign that IT WAS TIME if anything was!

And man, I am now really glad for two reasons that she's appearing in Steam-Powered II, because it was an awesome kick in the pants to read these startling, gorgeous stories. I kept turning pages and thinking 'all right, this one is my favorite,' and then I'd turn a page and like the next one just as well, and then I would think 'WELL SO MUCH FOR THAT PLAN.' (But for the record, my actual favorites were "Wallamelon," "The Raineses'," "The Water Museum," and "The Beads of Ku.")

( Brief reviews by story )

In other Steam-Powered news: hey, I have an interview up at Jaymee Goh's excellent steampunk blog Silver Goggles about it! Jaymee - who also has a great story in the collection - is putting up an interview every other day, and they are ALL GREAT. Or, for the condensed version, go over to Tor.com to read the roundtable discussion.

(I think Nicole Kohrner-Stace wins the Best Summary award. MIDWIFE VS. PINKERTONS. I would read that story! - oh wait I already did and it was awesome. :D BUT SO WAS EVERYTHING ELSE.)