TABLE OF CONTENTS Issue 63, January 2021

FROM THE EDITORS Editorial, January 2021 Arley Sorg and Christie Yant

FICTION Things to Bring, Things to Burn, Things Best Left Behind C.E. McGill Incense Megan Chee 10 Steps to a Whole New You Tonya Liburd The Billionaire Shapeshifters’ Ex-Wives Club Marissa Lingen

POETRY Butterfly-Hummingbird Magaly Garcia like the gator loves the snake Maria Zoccola

NONFICTION Interview: N.K. Jemisin Arley Sorg

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS C.E. McGill Tonya Liburd

MISCELLANY Coming Attractions, February 2021 Support Us on Patreon, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard Subscriptions and Ebooks Stay Connected About the Fantasy Team

© 2020 Fantasy Magazine Cover by warmtail/Adobe Stock Image https://www.fantasy-magazine.com Published by Adamant Press.

Editorial, January 2021 Arley Sorg and Christie Yant | 600 words

Fantasy Magazine #62 has been very well-received—many thanks to all of our readers, old and new. Now we bring you issue #63 co-edited by Christie Yant & Arley Sorg. Hope you like it!

• • • •

CY: We did it! We survived 2020, and managed to get our first two issues out. We dove into this project together back in July and have been sort of feeling our way since. We’re still revising our workflow, trying new approaches to making our purchasing decisions—with such a wealth of great stories, those decisions are hard!—and of course working on getting caught up on slush reading. AS: You’ve been doing this kind of work for much longer; I’ve been . . . adjacent for a while, but this is a new role for me. With each issue we put together, I learn more, see more. I’m discovering who I am as an editor, and we are discovering who we are as an editorial team. I am loving it! As we break into 2021 I’m excited by the prospect of a new year, for what it means personally, as well as what it means for our adventure here. With the first issue (#61), we had the sheer newness, and everything was basically a wonderful experiment. The second issue (#62) we faced so many challenges behind the scenes: growing pains; but still featured absolutely lovely content. This issue, I feel like we are starting to hit our stride. I’m so proud of what we’ve done, and I am eager to see what hitting our stride means for us. CY: We’re both still learning! But I’m confident that we’re hitting our stride as we enter the new year. One of the behind-the-scenes challenges we’ve had is poetry. We were both committed to including poetry from the start. It never occurred to us that it would be so challenging to format! Of course we’re having to work with multiple platforms, including our highly customized WordPress, ebooks, and ultimately Kindle. It’s been a steep learning curve and I’m not sure we’ve landed on the ultimate solution yet. In issue #61 the problem was new and the best solution we could come up with at that moment was to post the poems as images. Since then we’ve had more back-end work done and—fingers crossed—we hope we won’t have to do that again. One thing I know we agree on: We don’t want to pass on a piece that we both love just because of tricky formatting. AS: For 2021, I am looking forward to reading more submissions from an amazing range of voices and perspectives. We’ve poured so much energy, time, and love into this magazine. Each issue is different from the last, and yet each carries our creative vision as editors. We send each issue out into the world, carried by our passion for genre and our hopes. However people transition into 2021, whether boisterous or quietly or anywhere between, my hope is that folks who read this issue find it the perfect way to start the New Year!

• • • • In this issue we have original fiction from Tonya Liburd (“10 Steps to a Whole New You”) and C.E. McGill (“Things to Bring, Things to Burn, Things Best Left Behind”), along with flash fiction from Marissa Lingen (“The Billionaire Shapeshifter Ex-Wives Club”) and Megan Chee (“Incense”). We also have poetry by Magaly Garcia (“Butterfly-Hummingbird”) and Maria Zoccola (“like the gator loves the snake”). And finally, Arley interviews author N.K. Jemisin. Thanks for reading!

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Arley Sorg is a senior editor at Locus Magazine, where he’s been on staff since 2014. He joined the Lightspeed family in 2014 to work on the Queers Destroy Science Fiction! special issue, starting as a slush reader. He eventually worked his way up to associate editor at both Lightspeed and Nightmare. He also reviews books for Locus, Lightspeed, and Cascadia Subduction Zone and is an interviewer for Clarkesworld Magazine. Arley grew up in England, Hawaii, and Colorado, and studied Asian Religions at Pitzer College. He lives in Oakland, and, in non-pandemic times, usually writes in local coffee shops. He is a 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate. Christie Yant writes and edits science fiction and fantasy on the central coast of California, where she lives with a dancer, an editor, a dog, and four cats. She worked as an assistant editor for Lightspeed Magazine from its launch in 2010 through 2015, and, in 2014 she edited the Women Destroy Science Fiction! special issue of Lightspeed, which won the British Fantasy Award for Best Anthology. In 2019 she co-edited (with Hugh Howey and Gary Whitta) Resist: Tales From a Future Worth Fighting Against, an anthology benefitting the ACLU, and co-edited The Dystopia Triptych series of anthologies (with Hugh Howey and John Joseph Adams). She is also a consulting editor for Tor.com’s line of novellas, and her own fiction has appeared in anthologies and magazines including Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011 (Horton), Armored, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, io9, and Wired.com, and has received honorable mentions in Year’s Best Science Fiction (Dozois) and Best Horror of the Year (Datlow).

Things to Bring, Things to Burn, Things Best Left Behind C.E. McGill | 3097 words

Oz is holding a knife to his wrist when they knock on the door. For a moment he hesitates, weighing his options. His eyes dart between the door and the knife—eeny, meeny, meiny, mo—and land on the door. “Might as well,” he mutters, and gets to his feet. The dull sound of the knife as he sets it aside on the kitchen table seems to fill the room. It’s a terrible thing, he muses, how loud a house is when there’s no one else in it. “I’m sorry,” the augur says the moment the door swings open. No preamble, nothing. She really does look sorry, at least. So do the three councilmen standing behind her. “But… your name came up in the hearth.” Oz wonders dimly which name it was. “That’s fine,” Oz says, and it is. It doesn’t matter, really. It might even be better this way. “Just give me a few minutes to get my things together.” Their brows furrow. Clearly, judging by the number of people they brought to drag him out of his house, they weren’t expecting him to come as easily as this. Oz knows exactly what they’re thinking—what’s wrong with him? Is he up to something? He’s become fluent in dirty glances and sidelong looks over the years. “What things?” asks one of the councilmen. “My things,” Oz says, and shuts the door again. To his surprise, they don’t force it open. Even they wouldn’t deny a dead man his last request, it seems.

• • • •

They escort him out to the edge of town, where the fields turn to marshland and scrub. One of the councilmen points out the mountain, as if it’s not at least twice as tall as any of the other peaks in the range. As if Oz hasn’t spent his whole life staring at the damn thing. As if it’s not a mountain. “Just there, halfway up the slope,” the man says. “Go all the way in.” They will not watch the mountain take him—for who likes to be watched while they eat? —but they do not need to. The string will make well enough sure he goes in. One end is tied to a post, the other is around his finger in a neat little bow. The knot will not come loose until the deed is done; it’s charmed that way, a holy relic, drawn from the same fire that spits out the names. Tomorrow morning, they will fish it from the cave and roll it back up, ready for the next unfortunate soul. After the augur and the councilmen leave, Oz looks at the string and looks at the mountain —and he laughs. He laughs. Because of course it would be him, of course it would be today, the day he’d already decided would be his last. It’s poetic, really. He starts to walk.

• • • • Not many go in for blood sacrifices nowadays. Off to the South, they’re considered old- fashioned and superstitious. Really? the young women will say as they lean over their neighbors’ market stalls, one eyebrow raised. Still? We stopped sending ours ages ago. In the North, meanwhile, they’re redundant. The people do a good enough job killing each other on their own. Their God can take His pick of bodies. But the North and the South have different mountains; and, evidently, very different gods. Once, Oz’s town refused to send a sacrifice—the girl whose name had risen from the fire that day had been four, her father’s only child—and the next day, they woke drowning. Oz still remembers the feeling of his lungs filling with water, each breath an agony as he retched onto the floor. Compassion only goes so far in the face of numbers, and the numbers said, clear as day: it’s us or the girl. So they tied her up like all the rest and sent her on her way. Most of the time, it isn’t so bad. An old man here, a widow there. About once a year, mostly, though sometimes there are as many as three in a month, and sometimes years pass without a peep. The mountain seems to prefer the lonely ones. The ones no one will miss. The ones like Oz. Of course, there are always exceptions. His mother, for one. The day she left, the whole family had come to visit, weeping and wailing and clutching at her clothes and her hands as if they could tear her to bits and each take a piece of her home with them. Oz shakes his head. Hard, like a horse shaking off a fly. He spends most days not thinking about his mother, and the rest trying not to think about her. It’s been just over three months since she left—three months and one day. She always said he’d never last a season without her. So he’d gotten through the winter, just to prove the old hag wrong. There is a girl sitting by the side of the path. Oz shakes his head again, but in a different sort of way—an “I’m seeing things” sort of way. The girl is dressed in red, too bright against the gray of the grass, the gray of the mountain, the gray of the sky. She looks, Oz realizes with a jolt, very much like someone else he once knew. “Hallo,” she says cheerfully, her legs swinging. Her boots hit the rock she is sitting on again and again, dislodging dust each time. “What are you doing here?” Oz asks. It’s a stupid sort of question, but the only one that comes to mind. “I live here.” “No one lives here.” “I do,” she says indignantly. “How would you know, anyway? No one ever comes out here to look, unless they’re going to the mountain.” Oz shrugs. Fair. “Are you?” the girl asks. “Am I what?” “Going to the mountain?” He would have thought, with the string, that would be obvious. “Yes.” She hops off her rock. “Can I come with you?” “No.” She walks alongside him anyway. Oz gets the feeling this is the type of girl who isn’t used to rules. Or at least, if she is, she’s used to breaking them. Every time he looks at her he starts, his heart skipping a beat. It feels like looking in a mirror, a sideways glance through time. “Can I carry your string?” “No.” “What’s your name?” “Oz.” “That’s a nice name.” “Thank you.” He swallows, his throat dry. “I picked it myself.” It’s not something he would usually say out loud, but he feels like she’d appreciate the joke. And she does. She laughs, loud and unselfconscious, and skips ahead to pick a dandelion. “What’s your name?” he asks. She ignores him. “What’s in your bag?” There are many things in his bag. Water, in case he gets thirsty. A little cake stuffed with raisins. Extra socks. (No point in dying uncomfortably.) His mother’s ring. (He doesn’t know why he brought this.) His journal. (He doesn’t want anyone reading it.) Matches. (For burning it.) “Things,” he says. “I’ll tell you if you tell me your name.” The girl pouts, holding the dandelion under her chin so it shines yellow against her skin. She skips ahead again. Gradually, the path grows steeper. The string itches as it slips through his fingers, the ball growing smaller and smaller. Bright yellow gorse covers most of the slope, turning the mountain gold as the sun starts to sink in the sky. It’s certainly a pretty day to die. Much prettier than the day his mother died—it was the edge of winter then, the land bare and hard with frost, the sky milky gray. He stops a moment on an outcropping of rock to sniff the air. It smells so fresh here, clean and wild. Already, the town below looks tiny, no more than a palm’s width edge to edge. He wonders how such a small thing could ever have made him so miserable. He and the girl share the raisin cake. “Look at the clouds!” she cries, crumbs flying from her mouth. “They’re on fire!” Oz looks where she’s pointing, at the horizon on the other side of the valley where the sun is setting. It’s so bright it’s almost hard to look at, a tapestry of reds and pinks shot through with ember orange. If he were sad, he thinks, this sight might cheer him up. But he’s not sad, not in the way most people know it. This feeling—no, it’s not even a feeling at all. It’s a fog, a mist, a lack thereof. A watercolor with too little color on the brush. He finishes chewing his bit of raisin cake and stands up. He shakes his head once more. The view is beautiful, that’s for certain. It’s beautiful, and he still wants to die. He turns on his heel to continue up the slope. And right there behind him, so close it’s a wonder (an impossibility) that he didn’t notice it before, is the entrance to the cave. Well, he thinks, staring into the dark. This is it. Something cold and wet drips down the back of his neck as he steps in. It smells like must and rot, like things gone to die. There’s a crunch under his boot, and he looks down to find the crumbling skeleton of a mouse. He turns back to face the girl. She’s teetering on the entrance, biting her lip—though not from fear. Oz doesn’t know what that look on her face is. “Don’t follow me,” says Oz. She gives him a look, a look like a girl who hates rules, and Oz realizes his mistake. She hops over the threshold, both feet, and grins. “I’m coming.” Oz groans and pinches the bridge of his nose. “But you can’t just—” “It’s only the people whose names come out of the fire that die in here,” she says. She skips further ahead. “I’ll be fine. Did you bring matches?” He did. They continue on, down this time, into the heart of the mountain. He has no idea how long they walk, only that it’s longer than he would have expected. In some places, the tunnel is bright and cavernous, lit by skylights above; in most it’s narrow, pitch black, half a foot deep in murky water. He feels oddly vindicated, thinking of his spare socks, though the thought of actually stopping to change them is exhausting. Farther on, it gets colder and darker and colder still, the walls and the floor and the tunnel ahead bleeding into one single, all-consuming void. The match is so small, a grain of sand against the dark. He can’t see the girl either, though he knows by her footsteps that she’s still there. He’s not actually sure at which point he’s supposed to die. For all he knows, he could be dead already. And then, all at once, the bow comes undone. The end of it slips through his fingers, falling away into nothingness. The match goes out. Ah, he thinks. So this is it, then. “Are you afraid?” says a voice in the dark, from no particular direction. He takes a breath in, out. He considers. “No,” he says. Not of this. Not of dying. In front of him, a light flares to life. Not just a light, but a fire; nothing one second, a bonfire the next. On the other side of it stands the girl. Of course it’s the girl—he knew it would be the girl. He’d known it ever since she appeared on the path. When you’re expecting death, you learn look out for it. “And therein,” she says, the word odd in her child-like voice, “lies the problem.” “You. . . .” Oz swallows. “You want me to be afraid?” “No.” Her eyes flicker in the light—he thinks of what she said back on the mountain. They’re on fire. “I want a sacrifice. Do you know what a sacrifice is?” Oz is silent. “It means something you give up. Something you want. Something you’re afraid to lose.” Deep in his chest, his heart begins to sink. Oz watches her face across the fire—sunken cheeks, eyes like coals. It feels as if he’s slipping, slipping, his feet skittering on rocks as the ground falls away. “You’re not afraid to lose your life,” says the girl. The final, inevitable blow: “And so, your death would not be a sacrifice.” Oz’s insides seize like he’s been stabbed. Maybe he has, and this is all a dream of the mountain’s making, meant to amuse him while he dies. If that’s the case, it isn’t working. Tears prick at the corner of his eyes. He’d thought that his life was worth this much, at least —enough to save the lives of a few hundred people who hate him, whom he hates back. “You don’t understand,” says the girl. “This isn’t a matter of worth. It’s a matter of want.” And then his journal is in her hands. She holds it open for him to see, flipping through the pages. At the top of each page sits a date and, below it, as much as he could bear to write. Sometimes one line, sometimes hundreds, winding up and down and across in rows as fine as weaving. Sometimes just the date. “Ninety three pages. That’s how many were left. And so, you decided, that was how long you had left. You ordered one bottle of milk this week, because you knew you wouldn’t have time to drink two. You fed the chickens double, because you knew it would be a while before someone thought to feed them again. You’ve been planning for this. Looking forward to it.” All at once, Oz realizes what she’s getting at. He reels backward. “No,” he whispers. “It’s a relief, isn’t it? A comfort, knowing you don’t have to stock wood for next winter, or face your neighbors again. Knowing there’s no one else now you’ll be disappointing if you go, knowing you don’t have to keep trying to stop yourself. This—the comfort of giving up —this is what you need to give up.” Oz falls to his knees. “I can’t. Please.” “You can.” “I can’t!” “I know you. I’ve always known you. You can.” She’s on her knees too, on the other side of the fire. A mirror image yet again. “It wouldn’t be a sacrifice if it was easy.” “I don’t—” He scrubs his eyes until black dots dance before his vision. Swipes at his nose. He’s always hated this—hated being weak. He will not cry. “Do I even get a choice?” The fire is gone now, though the light remains. The girl is where it once was, sitting with him, face-to-face, knee-to-knee. The journal lies open in her lap. “You always do,” she says, and her voice is softer this time—more girl than god. “That’s what makes it so hard.” Oz swipes at his nose again, and asks the question to which he already knows the answer. “What’s your name?” She smiles and hands Oz the book, opening it to the first page. At the top, in perfect mother’s cursive, is a scratched-out name; below, of course, is “OZ.” Despite everything, Oz chuckles. “Yeah… That’s what I thought.” When he takes his hand from the page, there are five smoldering scorch marks where his fingers had been. The scorch marks deepen and grow, eating holes in the paper like moths through silk. He gasps and drops it to the floor. “Hey,” he says weakly. The girl—the boy—the god—shrugs. “You were going to burn it anyway.” “I suppose so.” For a long moment, Oz sits and watches as the book turns to ash page by page. As months of poisonous memories turn to smoke and drift away. “So?” asks the boy. “What do you think?” Oz sighs and sighs and sighs, until he has no breath left to exhale—and then, he breathes in.

• • • •

“Is it always the same?” “Oh, no. Every sacrifice is different. Memories that hold them back, beliefs that hurt themselves or others, attachments to people who are no longer there—” The boy gives him a sidelong look. “Such as attachments to lost daughters.” Oz stops dead on the threshold of the cave, still clutching his empty journal to his chest. “She really—?” “She did.” “Then why didn’t she—come back, come and tell me?” “Take a closer look,” the boy says, nodding to the valley below. They’re outside the mountain now, on the other side—and yet, Oz realizes abruptly, it is still the same side. Mostly the same, at least. A pair of women Oz doesn’t recognize are seated by the riverside, laughing as they rinse out pots. Just past the town gate, a girl who looks very much like the four-year-old they sent to the mountain last year—only older now, and missing the bruises that always ringed her arms—plays with an orange cat. A reflection again, but unspeakably different. Cast in a warmer light. “It’s hard to go back. Impossible, nearly,” says the boy. “And besides, she was afraid that you would never forgive her.” Oz chews his lip. He thinks of his mother’s ring, stuffed in the very bottom of his bag. “Do I. . . have to? Forgive her, I mean?” “Of course not,” the boy says, like it’s the stupidest idea he’s ever heard, and that comforts Oz just a little. “Your mountain is yours. Hers is hers. You can, if you want to. If you think it would help.” That, Oz doesn’t know yet. He looks down at the valley, at the village in its center, at the sun rising on the opposite side. He has the odd feeling that this, at least, is the same—that the same sun set in one valley, and rose in the other. “I’m not through yet, am I?” he murmurs. “No.” Oz feels a hand in his, small and cold and clammy, like a wet cave wall. Like old stone. “Most choices aren’t made just once, you know. You don’t just choose to climb a mountain. Every step is a choice. But it does get easier, the more you do it.” Oz sighs once more, once more. “Alright,” he says. It’s not enthusiastic, but it will do. He blinks, and when he opens his eyes, the boy—the girl—the god—is gone. Oz changes his socks and starts home. ©2021 by C.E. McGill.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR C. E. McGill is a writer of fantasy, historical, and science fiction (sometimes all three at once) and a recent graduate of NC State University. Their work has appeared in Strange Constellations, and they are a two-time finalist for the Dell Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing. They live in Scotland with their family, two cats, and a growing number of fake succulents (the real ones keep dying). You can find more of them on Twitter @C_E_McGill or at www.cemcgill.com.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight Incense Megan Chee | 726 words

The storyteller sits on a plastic stool by the side of the street. Rickshaws trundle past; cars honk their horns. Cart vendors crying their wares (“Beef noodle soup! Dragon’s beard candy! Scallion pancakes!”) swear at him for getting underfoot on the sidewalk. Children, released from school gates in a delirious swarm, run shouting through the streets. The storyteller smiles with yellow-stained teeth as they clamor around him, coins in hand. They settle on the curb and on the road, oblivious to the warning shouts and horns from vehicles that swerve dangerously close. Coins clatter into the storyteller’s tin pail. Eager eyes watch him impatiently. He flicks his cigarette lighter and lights the first incense stick. And he begins. When he speaks, the universe shifts to listen. The city holds its breath. He tells of lady pirates and sea battles, fox spirits and unwary men, monkey kings and jade rabbits. Smoke coils up into the sky. The stick burns down steadily, powdery ash gathering at its base until ash is all that’s left. He pauses until new coins rain into the pail, and then he lights another incense stick and tells on. The children leave one by one as the sky darkens, lured away by the siren call of dinner. But not the girl in the torn shirt, with her unwashed hair and her tattered schoolbag. She has nothing and no-one to go back to. So she loiters there on the sidewalk, scuffing at the pavement with her shoe. She flicks her gaze up to meet the storyteller’s eyes, wordlessly pleading: one more story. The storyteller’s incense stick has burned down to a stub. He frowns and points to the money pail. The girl rummages hopelessly in her pockets, even though she knows there is nothing there. “You,” he says, leaning down and pinching her ear between long-nailed fingers, “have not paid.” She did not think he had noticed. She always stayed small and inconspicuous in the crowd of children, shamefacedly keeping her hands in her pockets when the others threw their coins. “Everything has a price, my little story-thief. You are here every day, but you have never thrown a coin. You are in debt, and you must pay.” She flinches away from the storyteller’s clawed hand. “I haven’t got any money,” she stammers. “There are things more valuable than money.” He places another incense stick in the burner. The smoke smells of something sharp and bittersweet. “Tell me, girl, what are stories? What are they made of?” “Words,” she guesses. “Memories. You will pay me, little thief, in memories. I will have your story.” “I don’t have a story.” He laughs. That laugh is a high, cold thing, jagged at the edges. “Of course you have a story, little one. You sit here, amazed by tales of dragons and phoenixes, even though they are common as houseflies in some parts of this universe. Never realizing that you would be wondrously strange to a creature in some distant galaxy, who has never heard of little girls or cold nights or city streets. I will tell them your story, and they will listen, and they will pay.” She gazes, hypnotized, at the burning point of the incense stick. “Your choice,” the storyteller whispers, his eyes burning red in the dying sunlight. She’s never noticed before, but he has very sharp teeth. “Will you pay? Or will you run?” “I will pay,” she says hollowly. She knows she cannot run, because the storyteller will catch her. And the storyteller has claws and teeth. The smoke swells larger and larger, until grey is all she can see. Her memories rise in flashes of vivid sensation: cold raindrops on her face, wind in her hair, the bite of hunger in her belly. . .. And then smoke, and fire, and two red eyes, and she remembers nothing. She sits on the curb, staring into midair. She does not remember her name. She does not remember that she is hungry. She does not remember that she ever wished she were a pirate, or dreamed of marrying an emperor. The storyteller, with his long claws and sharp teeth and red eyes, blows out the incense stick. The fire dies, and darkness falls. When the sun rises, the storyteller is gone, but the girl still sits, silent and staring, with no story left inside her.

©2021 by Megan Chee.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Megan Chee has lived in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the United States, and is currently based in Singapore. Her short fiction has appeared in Athena’s Daughters: Volume II. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Applied Economics & Management from Cornell University, and works as an auditor. You can find her online @meganflchee, where she admittedly lurks more than she tweets. 10 Steps to a Whole New You Tonya Liburd | 2400 words

(1) Be unaware that the wolf was presenting itself to you in sheep’s clothing.

It began, as most things do, simply enough. In a simple neighbourhood, on the edge of a town. Too urban to be rural, too rural to be urban. Women grew old. Some women aged with their children, grandchildren, family around them. Some grew old alone, isolated, bitter. Others might grow old and die sick, in pain. Then there was you. You was the woman who manage to live on she own, but who not quite there, harmless, the madwoman on the street. It was a ordinary life you live; a couple of men, you work jobs until your illness start up. You wouldn’t be able to live by yourself sometime, but right now, you tried to enjoy your life. And not embarrass the neighbours. Down at the end of the street was this new neighbour, Francine, one who keep to sheself ever since she husband gone and dead almost half a year ago. No one knew how he die; she ain’t saying. The both of you had evening get-togethers, you and your achy hips, and you cyah walk how you used to, but she walking spright spright. That’s how she start she trickery on you.

• • • •

(2) Allow yourself to be seduced.

One evening, when Francine was over, you busy trying to crochet a doily; you use to enjoy it before, but now you having trouble focusing. She start by acting as if she talking about she old folklore studies . . . She tell yuh she studied some Liberal Arts at UWI, but the folklore that interest she the most is the one about the soucouyant. She quote to you, “If the soucouyant draws out too much blood from her victim, it is believed that the victim will die and become a soucouyant herself, or else perish entirely, leaving her killer to assume her skin.” She ask you if you believe in the supernatural. You say you ain’t know; the older one get, the more one know, and questions start coming to mind . . . She say if the supernatural is real, then other things can be true, you know . . . ? You say like what, eyeing she. She say like cures for diseases and . . . You say and? She say imagine if there were ways to fix what ails you; what would you do if you were able to fix your mind? You pretending to have a thicker skin than you do right then. So you say to she, cool and calm, it would be nice. You ask she if she would have kids. If eyes were windows to the soul, you seeing she own. Pain. Longing. And something else, deeper, curious, you shoulda take it as a warning. But even in your best days, yuh mind not completely sound, and the clearest sight is hindsight. It have only so much you could get from them honey-toned eyes.

• • • •

(3) Don’t resist the carrot that’s dangled enticingly before you.

The next time she see you she say to you, Azelice, I have something to tell you. What, you say. She say she a soucouyant. What, you say. Then you laugh; no, haha. Good one Franc- She finger start to glow, and she burn a circle into the wood at the edge of the arm of she chair. All the hairs all over you stood on edge, boy. You find yourself standing up. She calm calm. All she do was tilt she head, gesture with she other hand and say to you, don’t worry. Come on. Take a seat. She say how she mean to help you. How the discussion allyuh had the other day could be as true for you as it was already for her. She say how she ain’t have no aching joints and she mind clear clear. She say how allyuh could talk more but it have to be at her place, how the old folktales have it wrong. You still in shock. You think you say okay, sure. She get up to go and say allyuh would talk tomorrow. She say see you tomorrow, Azelice, from your gate. You shoulda run then but your poor brain not only still processing what it just see, it was also buzzing with possibilities.

• • • •

(4) See the truth and wonder . . .

The power went out. Neighbours come out on their porch and start telling each other hello over their walls. If you live with a grandmother, or your parent wanted to, you could get to hear some “’Nancy stories” about Anansi, the spider-man, or ghost stories. Children trying hard hard to do homework with a kerosene lamp, although they could tell the teacher that it was too dark to do anything. But not you. You eying Francine’s house at the end of the road. You damn well know this sudden darkness, people getting catch off-guard and everything, was perfect cover for a soucouyant. And you see, inside she house, a light that was too bright, too huge to be caused by candlelight. It start soft, then it grow brighter and brighter, it move from the bedroom window to the back of the house, then out a window, past she backyard plants and fly up into the night, disappearing quick-quick. Your breath catch quick in your throat. You leave your poorch and go back into your house.

• • • •

(5) Take the challenge like a fool.

The next night you close the gate to your house behind you, and go down to Francine’s. You walk through the gate, up to the door and knock on it. You wondering if the supernatural real as you wait for Francine to open she door. She welcome you barefoot, and she ask you to remove your slippers at the door. She place was all light wood to almost match she honey complexion. It was neat, in all the nooks and crannies, where yours wasn’t. There was stew chicken, with rice and peas and coleslaw, and a glass jug of sorrel sweating and ready for drinking. It make you feel thirsty and you had to try to not smack your lips. She say to have a seat and allyuh start talking about the weather, and because it was Carnival time, your favourite calypsonians—“Singing Francine’s my favourite calypsonian,” she say to you—and who might win Road March, and who was your favourite mas band, and if you going to go to Port-Of-Spain to see the Carnival Parade or watch it on TV . . . She live better than you, but she want you for a friend. And it look like she just on the verge of making an offer. An offer you just might take.

• • • •

(6) See the truth, but go because you’re lonely and want a friend.

The next time you visit she, you tell yourself you going for the promise of companionship, for friendship bonding, for camaraderie. You were being drawn towards the promise of freedom, of renewal. You two had a nice dinner, allyuh drink some of the passion fruit that growing in she back yard. Allyuh talking nice nice. Then, at one point, Francine’s voice go deep; you getting mesmerize, and you feeling like you going to go unconscious. You fight it. The air seem to turn into some kind of tapestry of flames in the wake of her fingers. You not sure what you seeing is real. You see she tongue flick outta she mouth. It was thick and black and all of a sudden you smelling wet ashes. You feeling the heat radiating from she body through your shirt and she . . . she put she violent breath into you. Your body go limp . . . what was happening . . . You hearing, “Lay back. On the floor. That’s right . . . ” and “ . . . Oh, yes . . . ” and “yuh feel so good, Azelice . . . !” but you could do nothing. Then, you couldn’t fight unconsciousness no more. Everything just go black.

• • • •

(7) Be the living embodiment that hindsight is 20/20.

These are the things that you remembered from when you rose from the dead, having been laid to rest at home: That you had a new strength, and agile hips, and all your old creaks and pains were gone gone. That now you had clarity, because the fog lift, that gone too. None of them scatter feelings or thoughts. That you now know that the folktales were true, and that Francine knew it. Down to every last detail. That Francine’s words, when she was satisfying sheself on you, they like hungry, fat mosquitoes in your mind now, buzzing, buzzing in your ears. That you feeling unclean remembering. The rush of your new body, the mightiness of you as you going to she house. Splinters sprayed all over the floor, some jooking your hand, after you smash she door down, and she wreck of a smile when she trying to make nice-nice with you. That she try to use the bond between you, but the advantage she had at manipulating you done gone. That you could smell she fear. That you decide to call she Sucking Francine from then on, because she had like the calypsonian Singing Francine so much. Baring your fangs when she still trying; “But I make you! I give you a new life!” All your strength and power . . . That she thought she could fool you by saying, “Don’t you see, the change has been good! I knew it would be good for you!” That you damn well know she couldn’t have known because she gambled on you. That you still new to these things, and you didn’t recognize bloodlust yet, and that you were confused about how far to go. How simple it was to just break she bones, to twist she body parts in ways they shouldn’t . . . to satisfy a new hunger when you draining she blood. That, after all of that, you still didn’t feel clean even though you left she for dead. • • • •

(8) Think that vengeance is done.

You could hear the talk starting, and you know the neighbours spreading the word about what happen to your maker. Somebody come home and see the mash-up door to Sucking Francine’s house. You didn’t exactly do a quiet exit. In the depths of your own house, you chuckle. You preparing to move. You know Sucking Francine would heal supernaturally in front of all them doctors and nurses. She would become whole. And then questions would start up. She would have to move, too. Even disappear. But you, you could still blend in, melt away, get out of sight. No one would really look for you. Your maker was one of them people with “bad mind,” people who put their smarts to sinister use. Like preying on the vulnerable—people like you—for their own ends. In a way, what you did to she was better than just killing her. Sucking Francine would have to explain, to hide. You, you just packing your things quiet-quiet, and making your own plans to move on.

• • • •

(9) Realize that you can’t exactly go back to your old life.

It hit you when you home alone. You didn’t know what to expect. Your humanity had not completely sloughed off yet, like oil off water. But something . . . something had started to build, like a slow burn. You dunno know what it was, deep inside. It come to your attention when you lick your lips when you at a window. There was a late night breeze. You needed something, but the food and drink you try earlier feel almost like . . . sand on the tongue . . . You grip the windowsill tight, tight. The moon did not call to you, but the night air did. You . . . wanted to revel in it, bathe in it, view the world from above . . . You look behind you into your house. You staring at your bedroom with a some sort of new clarity. You make up your mind right then that you going to straighten the clothes hanging about, fix the bed, dust your dressing table, the entire place. Routine did not ease the slow burn that was starting to burn bright, hot, fast. You turn back to your bedroom window. You swallowing hard. You needed something, and you starting to realize what it was. You need it soon.

• • • •

(10) Embrace the new you, taking to it like a hand to a glove.

You could feel this new need pressing down on you; you were half-drowning in it. You thought back to all the old tales of what a soucouyant covets in the night. You imagined feeding on blood, on life, and your heart beat so hard that your chest thrummed. And it didn’t disturb you. Not one bit. The thirst, the pain, the desire; each moment was like undiluted pleasure. To be honest, the old you felt like your skin, which right now was a cold tightness around you. The pain of your need was . . . unbearable. You fell to the ground and hugged your knees. You tried to shut it out. But you . . . couldn’t. Resisting caused pain. The pain washed over you, drowning you. The thought of blood flowing down your throat made you moan. You were ready to bite into your own arm to get blood. You raised your head to the sky and screamed. It felt so good to let it out, as if it had been trapped in your chest for too long. With your scream, you and your skin parted in a rush of release. Your heart was a song, at one with the slow burn within you gone white-hot and bright. You don’t recall leaving your house, but you do recall being one with the sky. Beyond your skin the whole world was yours, yours for the taking. Beyond this skin you were fire, you were light. Beyond this skin you must take life, you must take blood, you held life and death. The people on this street were too close to you to take, not enough anonymity, and so you looked further. You would feed, you would take, and you would revel in it. But for right now, you would fly.

©2021 by Tonya Liburd.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Tonya Liburd shares a birthday with Simeon Daniel and Ray Bradbury, which may tell you a little something about her. She is a 2017 and 2018 Rhysling nominee, and has been longlisted in the 2015 Carter V. Cooper (Vanderbilt)/Exile Short Fiction Competition. Her fiction is used in Nisi Shawl’s workshops, and in Tananarive Due’s black horror course at UCLA (the latter of which featured Jordan Peele as a guest lecturer!) as examples of ‘code switching’. She is also the Senior Editor of Abyss & Apex magazine. You can find her blogging at https://www.spiderlilly.com or on Twitter at @somesillywowzer, or you can join her Patreon at www.Patreon.com/TonyaLiburd.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight The Billionaire Shapeshifters’ Ex-Wives Club Marissa Lingen | 765 words

“You’d have thought it’d be the musk, or the way he could rend me limb from limb at any moment,” said Carla thoughtfully, “but honestly it was the hairballs. You haven’t known gross until you step in a tiger hairball.” They all contemplated that for too long. Steph took a deep drink of her mimosa. “And I’d say, ‘my God, Trevor, that’s disgusting,’ and he’d be like, ‘it’s nature, Carla,’ and I’d be like, ‘well, clean it up after,’ and he’d just shrug. Just shrug.” They were startled by a loud honk outside but recovered quickly. “You are better off without him,” said Leslie forcefully, peeling the wrapper off her blueberry lemon muffin with quick, decisive strokes. “So, so much better. And at least they’re mostly crap at prenups.” “Such crap at prenups,” agreed Steph. “Jeff might have been an actual wolf, but he wasn’t the kind lawyers warn you about. You know what he used to do? He would sniff all my friends.” “Ugh, like their—” Carla gestured at her crotch. “Thank God, no. But still. He would smell them. And I was like, Jeff, come on, rude, and he claimed he couldn’t help it.” “If he didn’t do it while you were dating, he could help it,” said Leslie. “He did it to me once. It was creepy, I agree. For me it was—I mean, you know I love family.” They all made noises of agreement, punctuated by another loud honk outside Rachel’s apartment. “Ignore that,” said Rachel. “No one loves family more than you do, Les.” “Well, actually, Brett did. We couldn’t go anywhere without his entire family, and the minute one of them wanted to leave, we all had to leave. Like, come on, Aunt Julia, I have not even finished my appetizer yet! I know you’re starlings, but can we…maybe decide on our own when we’re done here? Just once? But no. It was all or nothing. I just…needed to be the lead bird in my own life.” “So fair,” said Rachel fervently. An entire spate of honking. Rachel passed the fruit plate around. “Where’s Sylvia?” asked Carla. “Oh, she didn’t want to come because she and Doug are still together,” said Rachel. Steph waved her mimosa dismissively. “That’s silly, she’s still our friend. Even if I don’t get it. Doesn’t it bother her that he just….” “Estivates,” said Leslie precisely. “He doesn’t actually go into hibernation, he’s just in a sort of torpor all winter.” “Yeah, but so’s the rest of her family, even though they’re not were-bears, so it sort of works out. Sylvia says she gets a lot of reading done. She promised she’d come out to the club with us, she just wanted us to have our time without feeling awkward that things are working for them.” “She’s such a sweetheart—what is that noise?” Carla went to the window and glared out it. “It’s a Canada goo—oh, God, Rachel, tell me it isn’t.” Rachel stared at the carpet. “Why did you tell him where you lived?” asked Steph. “I didn’t, but he’s got really good sense of direction, and he just followed me, and—” “Oh no,” moaned Carla. “He says they mate for life,” said Rachel miserably. “Yeah, that’s what a court decree is for, Frank, you asshole,” Carla yelled out the window. “Does he do this all the time?” asked Steph. Rachel nodded. Leslie said, “Oh hell no he doesn’t.” The others marveled to see that a manicure that elaborate could press buttons on a cell phone that fast. “Don’t bother,” said Rachel in a tiny, defeated voice. “I’ve tried getting a court order, but you can’t get a court order against a Canada goose.” “Out there all Lloyd Dobler in your business—hello, Animal Control?” said Leslie. All four women watched Rachel’s ex-husband shift back into a naked man in the Animal Control employee’s truck. He grabbed the bars, glaring, in front of the startled employee’s eyes. “Let your boss sort it out,” Leslie called down. Steph frowned thoughtfully. “He does kind of look like—” Rachel said, “Oh yeah, that entire family is were-geese. Watch his sister in the scene where she’s setting the assassin’s office on fire. Total horrible goose behavior.” They all pondered it. “You know,” said Carla, “just because we had some bad experiences….” “There’s really something to be said for having some shifters on your side,” Steph agreed. Leslie said, “And to know who else to have on speed dial. I’m going to have another mimosa.” They went back to their brunch.

©2021 by Marissa Lingen.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Marissa Lingen writes quite a lot of science fiction and fantasy. These days she writes essays and poetry too. She lives in the Minneapolis area with her family and two pets: a tiny dog and an ever-growing to-do list.

Butterfly-Hummingbird Magaly Garcia | 213 words

The clock is ticking. Go look for the black mariposa-colibrí.

Se nos va el tiempo.[1]

Do not stop searching for the butterfly-hummingbird— the true chimera, not the hawk moth. Hurry your eyes.

Do not slow down. Sharpen your ears. Losing your seeking tempo will prevent you from catching up to the mariposa-colibrí.

Se nos va el tiempo.

Do not flinch when you sight it. The earsplitting song of the butterfly-hummingbird must be caught in this glass jar.

The clock is ticking. Do not pause or listen to the mariposa-colibrí’s canto.[2] Its llanto[3] guarantees death to all who hear it.

Once jarred, toss it in fire when its wings crescendo. Its ashes will cure your children of their sickness.

Se nos va el tiempo.

[1] Time is leaving us. [2] song [3] call

©2021 by Magaly Garcia.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Magaly Garcia is a south-south Tejana born, raised, and living in a border town. She received an MFA in Writing & Publishing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has since been published in Along the River III, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley’s The Gallery (2013, 2015), VCFA’s Synezoma, Francis House (2017), The Chachalaca Review (2018), Boundless 2018: Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival, and Dreaming: A Tribute to Selena Quintanilla-Pérez. She is working at a library, writing a YA hybrid project, and practicing comics and animatics. When not working, writing, or drawing, she is summoning fantasmas to haunt her cat and cacti. like the gator loves the snake Maria Zoccola | 315 words sunlight on marshgrass, winter-brown and alive with flocks of nesting birds, flash of white feathers when the wind blows. i think of the boy and then drown the thought. the tide lifts small fishes and my own mud-drunk body, slow roll of muscle, scales touched by currents that pull north and pull south. sweet clean air when i break the surface, hair fanned out like a jelly’s hood. my teeth ache. i touch my tongue to their ripping edge, finding here and there the tissues and small fibers that walk behind my hunger. the cold wraps my mind in cordroot and rot, and still i think: the boy. clouds. no rain. at twilight the pontoon struggles upstream. he has a net, a hook, a gig, a gun. he has beautiful fingers, long and fragile, like the ribs of a heron. he has a mouth and a throat and a heart i can hear from the pluff, loud as a bullfrog, dancing in his chest, fluttering, like a little mummichog you catch in your fist. he leans his face over the side, all that fine skin stretched over the planes of his skull. i flex the muscle of my tongue against the hull of his boat, licking up salt, and when the gig strikes the water i snatch and yank and drag him into the marsh with the turtles and the cottonmouths and me. blood-hot. thrashing prey. smell like good things to eat, soft and mild, flesh for tearing from slick white bone. my belly says: consume. my thoughts say: the boy. i do not move. i hang in the murk, a dead thing, a stone, watching him haul his tender body away into the air. the motor yowls. i snap my jaws in fury, ravenous, impotent, and let the thick night swallow him alive.

©2021 by Maria Zoccola. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Maria Zoccola is a Southern writer with deep roots in the Mississippi Delta. She has writing degrees from Emory University and Falmouth University. Her speculative work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Strange Horizons, Abyss & Apex, DreamForge, Luna Station Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her literary work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in 32 Poems, The Massachusetts Review, Colorado Review, Spillway, Southern Indiana Review, and elsewhere. She is a member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association.

Interview: N.K. Jemisin Arley Sorg | 2504 words

N.K. Jemisin is a New York Times-bestselling author, and the first in the genre’s history to win three consecutive Best Novel Hugo Awards—all for her Broken Earth trilogy. She has won a Nebula Award, two Locus Awards, and a number of other honors. She lives and writes in New York City. Her recent novel, The City We Became, begins The Great Cities series.

Has the Pandemic and/or current events impacted your writing practice? And how have you adjusted?

It stopped me from writing altogether for a few weeks. I’ve worked my way back up gradually to about 1200 words/day at this point — but my norm is still 1500/day. Also, I’ve had to change the plot of my upcoming novels several times, due to my ideas being stolen by real life. That’s fun.

You write across a number of topics and genres, and people may even argue over where some of your work should land in terms of genre definitions. Do you feel like genre definitions are useful, are they important? Or are they just marketing tools?

Marketing tools. I have no interest in genre definitions beyond “fantastical” and “realist” — and frankly I’m willing to accept a lot of overlap in my own reading. With the Broken Earth series, for example, I basically had fun playing with the idea of “any sufficiently advanced science/sufficiently complex magic”, and I’m honestly a little surprised to see how many readers throw themselves into conniptions trying to classify it. A lot of the “science fiction” our culture embraces is magic, or spiritual beliefs with the serial numbers stripped off; a lot of the “fantasy” we embrace is actually alternate history, which is typically considered a science fictional subgenre, or something else skiffy. So what does it matter what it’s called?

In your LIVE from NYPL conversation you and W. Kamau Bell were talking about resistance, and different ways of resisting. In terms of fiction, is it important that fiction be part of resistance? Is making a stand of some kind inevitable; or is it perfectly fine to write a story which is “just a fun story?”

I don’t tell other artists how to do their art. For me, however, it’s important that art accurately reflect the world around me — how people really behave, how societies really work, how change really happens (or doesn’t). Even if I put it in another world, wrapped in trappings that have nothing to do with reality, certain things need to be true to life. That makes it political whether I intend for it to be or not. And right now I see (and feel) a lot of resistance, so naturally that appears in my work.

You also talked about scrapping parts of books, including taking out 90K words from a book. How many drafts did The City We Became go through? What were a few of the things that you had initially laid out but decided to change?

I’ve scrapped entire novels before. (Notably the book that became THE HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS.) TCWB just had one draft, although I think I went through six “test chapters” to decide on the right voice before proceeding. I can’t talk about some of the other things I had to change, unfortunately, since this is a series that’s still in progress, telling a whole story across three books. Spoilers.

One of the things I love about The City We Became is the individual characters, who feel so well-developed, so individualized, and yet so grounded, reading like real people. I almost expect to run into Bronca if I hit up a few Bronx art centers. Do you have specific things you do to make sure your characters are well-developed?

The standard things any writer does, if they want their character to be believable: I make sure they have an inner life as well as an outer life, I try to construct an arc for them to follow, etc. Beyond that I do tend to pick people as characters who feel “less seen” in SFF to me — women of color, disabled people, older women, mothers, etc. Where I pick characters whose background I don’t share, I try to find sensitivity readers who can help me get the large and small details of their inner lives right.

The embodiments of the various parts of the city are all very different from each other. Do you relate more to any particular character and their situations, or are they all very different from you?

Brooklyn is probably the character most like me in a superficial sense — a 40something Black woman who lives in Brooklyn. But because of that, and because Brooklyn is the borough I know and love best in NYC, I intentionally put her on a back burner for the first book of the trilogy. We’ll see a lot more of her in the subsequent books, but I made a choice to go out of my comfort zone initially. I actively dislike (the borough of) Manhattan, for example — so naturally he had to be my viewpoint character for much of the book! Love Queens, so backgrounded her; don’t visit the Bronx or Staten Island much, so brought them forward. It just seemed . . . fair? Eh, I don’t know why I do half the things I do, writing-wise. But really, all of the characters are me in some aspect. Manhattan is the half of me that isn’t a New Yorker; the Bronx is half a dozen women I know amalgamated into one badass old lady I want to grow up to be; stuff like that. I called this book “. . .a glowing but occasionally quite frank love letter to New York City. And it ain’t all pretty.” There’s this great balance between the beautiful and the problematic, as well as narrative, plot, and details. How do you strike these balances so effectively?

It’s gonna get less pretty! And I can’t explain how I do it. Like I said, it’s my duty as an artist to render the world truthfully — and the truth is that New York City is filthy and full of incompetents, assholes, and bigots, same as any other city in the world. I can love a thing and critique it. That’s how I love a thing, sometimes.

I think what a lot of people will see in this book is the discussion around gentrification as well as racism and hate. But one of my favorite things about it, and what I hope a lot of readers will also see, is discussions around love, and celebrations of people, communities, and culture. There’s a joy which comes through, for me; I spent a lot of time smiling during this read. Do you feel like positivity and joy are harder to transmit to readers; that people tend to gravitate toward anger in narratives?

I think that if you’ve done a good job of rendering the world truthfully (and that’s always going to be relative to the artist), then it will hold up a mirror to readers. They’ll see what they need or want to see in it. There are a lot of people out there who absolutely hate New York, for reasons that don’t really have anything to do with the city itself — they hate cities on principle, or they’ve fallen for the political football that loves to kick the city around as a symbol of decadence, or American exceptionalism, or whatever. Or their only experience of the city is what they’ve seen in popular media to date, like “Seinfeld” or “Girls,” which means their understanding of the city is completely inaccurate (or incomplete). What they see when they look is going to depend on how welcoming or resistant they are to a different truth, I think.

What was the hardest thing about writing this book, and what was the most fun?

The amount of research I ended up having to do was the hardest thing — much more than with any of my previous, secondary-world books! Writing the real world is harder. The most fun thing hasn’t happened yet, because the story isn’t done!

What can you tell us about where the next book in the series will take the story?

Nothing.

I remember you talking about your volcano research for the Broken Earth trilogy, and eating Spam sushi cooked over a volcanic vent. Do you have favorite researched tidbits from The City We Became which didn’t quite make it into the book?

Compared to that, my research in New York sounds pretty mundane! I think the biggest adventure I had was when I failed to get into a tour of Old City Hall Station. You have to scramble for tickets at a specific hour of a specific day from the NYC Transit Museum; it’s harder than getting into a Beyonce concert. I actually scored tickets at one point, but caught the flu and couldn’t go! Then couldn’t get tickets again. So I had to build that scene — a pretty crucial one in the book — from online photos and books about the station. But even visiting places you’ve been to before feels different when you’re looking for the ways they fit into a story—a slightly sideways look at your own hometown.

I had a lot of childhood/teens cultural touchstones in this story but for me one that immediately comes to mind, I was reminded of old Super Sentai shows like Battle Fever J, in terms of the giant city battles, all the pieces coming together. We talked about anime in our Locus interview, I know you are a huge anime fan. When you looked at the book after it was done, did you see any particular anime influences? Are there other references or inspirations that people might miss which are special to you?

I was into sentai and giant robot stuff too! As a little kid I watched old dubbed syndicated runs of Ambassador Magma, right after Zoom and The Electric Company. Robotech was my first anime; typical 80s kid. Then Voltron — the one with the cats, not the cars. I never got into the live-action stuff, like Power Rangers; by the time it hit the US, I was off to college. But I did love manga like Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, and later a parody of sentai stuff called Special Duty Combat Unit Shinesman — about a team of young corporate professionals who wear power armor in business-suit colors and throw weaponized business cards at enemies.

Since that Locus interview your DC Comics Green Lantern series started: Far Sector. You’ve described working on the project as “dipping your toe” in the medium. Did you gain anything from the experience of writing for this format which carried over into your novel or short story writing?

It’s difficult to say at this point. I certainly learned a lot about comics writing in and of itself, but it’s a very different discipline, and generally it takes a while for me to process a new medium or storytelling form, to see what I’ve learned from it.

What were your favorite things about working on that project? I’m still working on it, remember! I think the best thing is simply working with amazing artists. The original artist we’d lined up for the series was Shawn Martinborough, who does a lovely, stark noir style that I tried to adapt my writing to. Unfortunately the Young Animal line got put on hiatus for a while, and various other things happened, so Shawn left the project and we got Jamal Campbell instead. Jamal’s facility with cityscapes added something amazing to the whole thing; he really brought the City Enduring to life as another character of the story. It’s such a thrill to see stuff I’ve just described on paper made visible — or not described; in many cases I just said “draw whatever you want here” in the script, and Jamal went gonzo. He’s amazing.

It’s a safe bet that fans would love to see more comic book stuff from you. What are your thoughts or plans along those lines?

Not anything I can discuss, sorry!

You’ve dabbled in video game writing, comic books, and we talked before about the possibility of writing screenplays. Are there types of projects that you would still like to do but haven’t done yet?

Well, I haven’t actually done the screenplays, yet, so that’s coming at some point. I didn’t actually do any game writing, note; a novel tie-in is basically just professional fanfic . . . and after the experience I had, I think I’ll just stick to fannish fanfic. I’d still like to actually do game writing at some point — but that’s going to have to wait. At the moment the gaming industry is going through some stuff, and I think it’s difficult for writers to get much respect there, period, let alone a writer from another medium (and there are plenty of amazing writers already in that field). So unless it’s a game company that’s willing to prioritize story, and is prepared to defend that commitment against the kinds of harassment campaigns that have already run some of the best writers out of the field, I can’t see myself ever working in that area.

You’ve talked in several places about short stories being a difficult format. But at this point you have a large number of them out. Looking at your short fiction, are there any stories which stand out as more important to you, more personal for you, or harder to write, and why?

Not really. They’re all personal; that’s precisely what makes them so hard. Putting stories together for my collection, HOW LONG ‘TIL BLACK FUTURE MONTH, was like assembling a photo album of myself over the years—I can’t call any part of it more or less personal than any other. You get interviewed a lot (and rightfully so). Are there questions you never get asked but wish people would ask?

Nope, I get interviewed too much for that, lol.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Arley Sorg is a senior editor at Locus Magazine, where he’s been on staff since 2014. He joined the Lightspeed family in 2014 to work on the Queers Destroy Science Fiction! special issue, starting as a slush reader. He eventually worked his way up to associate editor at both Lightspeed and Nightmare. He also reviews books for Locus, Lightspeed, and Cascadia Subduction Zone and is an interviewer for Clarkesworld Magazine. Arley grew up in England, Hawaii, and Colorado, and studied Asian Religions at Pitzer College. He lives in Oakland, and, in non-pandemic times, usually writes in local coffee shops. He is a 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate.

Author Spotlight: C.E. McGill Reece Michaelson | 1443 words

Welcome to Fantasy Magazine! We’re so glad that we could bring your poignant story “Things to Bring, Things to Burn, Things Best Left Behind” to our readers in this month’s issue. This is such a powerful and authentic allegory of a reckoning; can you tell us how this story came about?

Thank you so much! This story means a lot to me, and I’m delighted to see it find a good home in Fantasy Magazine. I think the first spark of the idea that eventually became “Things to Bring” was simply the concept of sacrifice—both in general terms and specifically relating to human sacrifice. The story of the innocent young victim sent to their death to appease the anger (or hunger!) of a powerful being is a truly ancient one, of course, often overlapping with actual historical practices in many parts of the world, and plenty of people have written fascinating twists on this story already—but the question I kept coming back to was why. If the being in question is not just a dragon or a monster but a god, incorporeal and all-powerful, why would they need something so trivial as dinner? What do they really want with your blood, or your soul, or your firstborn child? Could it be, perhaps, that your firstborn child is better off without you? That this process of sacrifice could be a force for good? I think the moment it all came together, however, was when I read a post online in which an anonymous blogger discussed their past experiences with depression. At one point they confessed that they “missed the comfort of being sad”—and that sentence hit me like a freight train, because it perfectly described an aspect of my own experience that I’d been too ashamed to admit before that moment. (After all, what kind of twisted weirdo misses being depressed?) But for me, depression was all too comfortable. It was easy. It felt— frighteningly so—like a natural state, a well-earned rest after years of trying to be something I wasn’t. That ease, that parody of rest, the temptation to think of death like a fire escape, always there in case you need a way out!—those were the comforts I had to deny myself in order to get better. And just like that, I understood the kind of sacrifice I wanted to write about.

For you, is writing the result or end-product of experience, or does it help you make sense of experience while you’re going through it?

Definitely the former. I do tend to turn to writing during difficult times in my life but, oddly enough, it’s usually months or years later before I realize how closely that writing reflects the experiences I was going through at the time. (E.g., it was long after I came out as nonbinary that it finally clicked for me why I’ve always loved writing monsters and shapeshifters and aliens—it’s the gender thing again, duh!) It’s about perspective, I suppose; it’s much easier to make sense of a story, and to pick out meanings and themes, when you’re no longer living it. In the case of this story, I don’t think I would have been able to write it while I was living it—and I’m more than grateful to be able to write it now, from the other side of the mountain.

I was struck by how Oz had crossed out his name and corrected it—didn’t throw it away, didn’t start a new journal, just made the correction and carried on. It was so close to my own experience of changing my name. What does this tell us about how the person we are in the present relates to the person we were in the past?

I’m so glad it resonated with you! For me, I think it all comes back to the title—“Things to Bring, Things to Burn, Things Best Left Behind.” Oz’s diary entries, the concrete reminder of the countdown to his intended suicide, are things to be burned. They’re too painful to keep in any shape or form, even in memory; better to let them go, turn them into ash, till them back into the soil. His old name, on the other hand, is simply something to be left behind— something that was useful once, that holds memories both good and bad, but that he doesn’t need or want anymore. I realize that many trans people likely feel differently, and would absolutely burn their old name to ash if given the chance, but that’s simply my own experience. I don’t like my old name anymore, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like the person I used to be—the person I was for most of my life. Whenever I come across it, on old transcripts and documents and scribbled into the margins of my favorite childhood books, I try to react like Oz does when he comes across [the god disguised as] his old self on the mountain. He says hello, he chats and jokes, he sits and shares a moment. And then he carries on.

The writing is so poetic and authentic and perfectly elegantly spare; would you say this is your style, or did you feel the story simply called for it?

Thank you so much! I wouldn’t say it’s my usual writing style at all, no—usually I tend to be quite long-winded (I’m a book-person mostly, and my other short stories are all in the 6,000-10,000 word range), so I made a conscious effort with this one to challenge myself and make every word count. I wanted the writing to reflect Oz’s view of the world: stark, a little bleak, defined by negative space. I’d also just finished reading Carmen Maria Machado’s short story collection Her Body and Other Parties, as well as This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, and after I’d finished lying on the floor weeping about how achingly sharp and beautiful their respective styles are, I decided I wanted to try my hand at something similar.

This story puts me in mind of The Kin of Ata Are Waiting For You, a novel in which a man must face who he has been. Were there any particular authors or stories that influenced or helped you shape how you told this story?

Absolutely! In addition to the authors I already mentioned, who were huge inspirations in terms of style, one story I keep coming back to is “The Shape of My Name” by Nino Cipri. This one is about a trans man reflecting on his transition and his journey to adulthood—a journey made especially complex by the fact that his family, scattered across the decades and centuries, share collective ownership of a time machine. This story has such interesting things to say about name and identity and the various ways in which we try to write or rewrite our fates—all themes that ended up in “Things to Bring” as well. It was also, if memory serves, the first story I’d ever read with a trans protagonist(!), so it’s a really important one for me.

What are you working on now, and what can we look forward to seeing from you in the future?

I always have about half a dozen projects cooking at once, but the one closest to being a Real Published Thing at the moment is a spiritual sequel to Frankenstein called Our Hideous Progeny. This one follows Mary (née Frankenstein) Saville, a paleontologist in Victorian London, as she follows in her great-uncle Victor’s footsteps and commits cool and horrifying paleontological crimes against God—so look out for that one in the near-ish future. Less close to being Real and Published, but still dear to my heart, are a twisty alt-history fantasy novel featuring stabby lesbians, 17th century Versailles, and multi-dimensional mirror travel (think The Favourite x A Darker Shade of Magic), and a thoroughly weird ’ 20s-esque gangster novel about a shapeshifting demon who accidentally joins the mafia (and yes, of course, the demon is trans).

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER Reece Michaelson (they/them) is an editor and writer. Owing to a love of mythology and mysteries, current projects include a middle-grade series featuring the unknown sister of Icarus set in Minoan Crete, and a mystery series featuring cheesecakes and murder, set in a fictional California Danish-themed town. Author Spotlight: Tonya Liburd Veronica Henry | 672 words

Welcome to Fantasy Magazine! In your story “10 Steps to a Whole New You,” each of the ten steps and the intervening text seamlessly flow between standard Western English and Caribbean patois. Can you tell us about your decision to incorporate both in the narrative?

What I remember is that I had originally conceived of this story walking back from rescuing an injured starling and handing it in to The Humane Society, near Queen and Broadview, around the middle of December last year, and had planned to do this story as an assignment to turn in as part of Richard Thomas’s Short Story Mechanics class. Based on how the course was designed, that didn’t work out. But I still wanted to work on it, seeing as I had never done a story in this way before. Writing a story in complete Patois had been done; writing small segments of a story in Patois I’d done in “The Ace Of Knives,” my first ever published story. But actively switching between standard English and Patois? I hadn’t seen that done yet. So I’m assuming that’s how it got started, because I’m always striving to do something I hadn’t done previously in my work.

Can you describe the circumstances under which you first encountered the Soucouyant mythos?

There wasn’t any one ‘circumstance.’ I’d grown up in Trinidad, even though I’m Canadian born; my family’s of Caribbean descent, and my parents were born in other Caribbean islands. I grew up like any other kid hearing folk tales.

With each step, Azelice’s reservations soften, and when Francine reveals her true nature to Azelice, she seems poised to back away but doesn’t. What continues to draw her in?

Fascination, and the carrot that’s been dangled before her: a chance out. Azelice, at that time, was a tolerated ‘madwoman on the street.’ Mental deterioration’s my worst fear: losing control of my mind. I kind-of worked that into the story.

Aside from the Soucouyant mythos, are any other folkloric elements present in the story that you’d like Western readers to understand? Any that consistently find their way into your other works of fiction?

The first-ever novel I started writing was a vampire novel centered around a former slave who was turned. The first novel I completed was one with a Soucouyant as the main character (Azelice), and her partner-in-crime is an East Indian Trinidadian woman who was turned by a Western vampire. This story’s background info is sourced from a portion of that novel that details Azelice’s origin story, but there’s nowhere near the extensive code- switching in that novel that occurs in this piece.

At the end of the story, with Azelice engulfed in pain, we get the sense that she may have regretted her decision. Do you ultimately feel that she is happy with her new life as a soucouyant?

Azelice was ultimately misled, and it’s only going through the process of transformation does she realize the lies she was told. She’s forever altered, and she can’t go back but, based on the transformation she’s endured, it becomes clear that she doesn’t want to.

What are you working on now, and what can our readers look forward to seeing from you in the future?

I’m currently working on completing the second-ever novel I’ve started, and the novel that Azelice is in’s being shopped around to find a forever home. I was encouraged by an agent who, even though they said that novel wasn’t the right fit for them, said they loved my writing and that they thought I was a ‘brilliant writer.’ My short story “The Ace Of Knives” is being reprinted over at Apex Magazine January 2021 as well, so I’m very happy with that!

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER Veronica Henry is an author of science fiction and fantasy. Her work has appeared in Fiyah Literary Magazine and Truancy. She is a graduate of the Viable Paradise Workshop and member of SFWA. Her debut adult fantasy novel, Bacchanal, is forthcoming in May 2021 from 47North. Follow her online at Twitter: @veronicawrites and her website: veronicahenry.net.

Coming Attractions, February 2021 Fantasy Staff | 74 words

Coming up in the February issue of Fantasy Magazine… Original fiction by Innocent Chizaram Ilo (“Flight”) and David James Brock (“Kisser”); flash fiction by Sharang Biswas (“Of Course You Screamed”) and Shingai Njeri Kagunda (“Blackman’s Flight in Four Parts”); poetry by Danielle Jean Atkinson (“Like a Box of Chocolates”) and Lynette Mejía (“What My Mother Taught Me”); and a new essay, “The Validity of Escapism,” by Andrea Stewart. Thanks for reading! Support Us on Patreon, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard The Editors

We already offer ebook subscriptions as a way of supporting the magazines, but we wanted to add an additional option to allow folks to support us, thus we’ve launched a Patreon (patreon.com/JohnJosephAdams).

TL;DR Version If you enjoy Fantasy, Nightmare, and/or Lightspeed, our Patreon page is a way for you to help support those endeavors by chipping in a buck or more on a recurring basis. Your support will help us bring bigger and better (and more) projects into the world.

Why Patreon? There are no big companies supporting or funding our magazines, so they really rely on reader support. Though we offer the magazines online for free, we’re able to fund them by selling ebook subscriptions or website advertising. While we have a dedicated ebook subscriber base, the vast majority of our readers consume the magazine online for free. If just 10% of our website readers pledged just $1 a month, the magazines would be doing fantastically well. So we thought it might be useful to have an option like Patreon for readers who maybe haven’t considered supporting the magazine, or who maybe haven’t because they don’t have any desire to receive the ebook editions—or who would be glad to pay $1 a month, but not $2 (the cost of a monthly subscriber issue of Fantasy). Though Fantasy, Nightmare, and Lightspeed are separate entities, we decided to create a single “publisher” Patreon account because it seemed like it would be more efficient to manage just one account. Basically, we wanted to create a crowdfunding page where, if you enjoy the work Adamant Press puts out, and you want to contribute a little something to help make it easier for us to produce more cool projects, then our Patreon is the place to do that.

What Do I Get Out of Being a Patron? Well, you get the satisfaction of helping to usher the creation of cool new short fiction projects into the world! Plus, the more support we get, the better we can make the magazines and compensate our authors and staff. By becoming a supporter via Patreon, you help fund our growth and continued publication of two award-winning magazines. Of course, if you’re already one of our ebook subscribers (thank you!), you are already supporting us. This is for those who prefer to read the issues each month on our free websites, or wish to support our efforts more generally. By becoming a supporter, you are also bestowed a title, such as Dragonrider, or Space Wizard, or Savior of the World and/or Universe, thus making you instantly the envy of all your friends.

Thank You! If you’ve read this far, thanks so much. We hope you’ll consider becoming a backer on Patreon. That URL again is patreon.com/JohnJosephAdams. Thanks in advance for your time. We look forward to hopefully being able to make the magazines—and our other publishing endeavors—even better with the support of people like you. Subscriptions and Ebooks The Editors

If you enjoy reading Fantasy, please consider subscribing. It’s a great way to support the magazine, and you’ll get your issues in the convenient ebook format of your choice. All purchases from the Fantasy store are provided in epub, mobi, and pdf format. A 12-month subscription to Fantasy more than 45 stories a year, plus assorted nonfiction. The cost is just $23.88 ($12 off the cover price)—what a bargain! Visit fantasy-magazine.com/subscribe to learn more, including about third-party subscription options. We also have individual ebook issues available at a variety of ebook vendors, and we now have Ebook Bundles available in the Fantasy ebookstore, where you can buy in bulk and save! Buying a Bundle gets you a copy of every issue published during the named period. Buying either of the half-year Bundles saves you $3 (so you’re basically getting one issue for free), or if you spring for the Year One Bundle, you’ll save $11 off the cover price. So if you need to catch up on Fantasy, that’s a great way to do so. Visit fantasy-magazine.com/store for more information. Stay Connected The Editors

Here are a few URLs you might want to check out or keep handy if you’d like to stay apprised of everything new and notable happening with Fantasy:

Magazine Website www.fantasy-magazine.com

Destroy Projects Website www.destroysf.com

Newsletter www.fantasy-magazine.com/newsletter

RSS Feed www.fantasy-magazine.com/rss-2

Twitter www.twitter.com/fantasymagazine

Facebook www.facebook.com/FantasyMagazine

Subscribe www.fantasy-magazine.com/subscribe About the Fantasy Team The Editors

Editors-in-Chief Christie Yant Arley Sorg

Publishing Company Adamant Press

Publisher John Joseph Adams

Podcast Host Terence Taylor

Podcast Producer Stefan Rudnicki

Podcast Editor Jim Freund

Art Director Christie Yant

Editorial Assistant Alex Puncekar

Copy Editor Chloe Smith

Proofreader Anthony R. Cardno

Author Spotlight Interviewer Veronica Henry

Webmaster Jeremiah Tolbert / Clockpunk Studios