What I published and some of what I read in 2019

So, it’s that time of year again. This year I published three short stories. In publication order:

• “Beyond the El” at Tor.com on January 16, 2019.

  Connor is a food crafter just getting back into the business after his mother’s death. To cope with his grief, Connor spends day after day recreating her potstickers, but they are never quite what he remembers. To move on with his life, he will have to confront his past.

• “Probabilitea” at Uncanny Magazine in the May/June 2019 issue.

  She’s a harried graduate student with the ability to alter chance. He’s a big, affable goof with the literal power of life and death. Together, they repair the machinery of civilization!

  Seriously, Katie has a choice ahead of her. She can follow in her father’s footsteps and do great good as a physical manifestation of Order and Chaos, but can she deal with parental expectations, not to mention stomach what she will have to do?

• “Close Enough for Jazz” in the anthology The Mythic Dream edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe, published by Saga Press on September 3, 2019.

  All the stories in the anthology are based on myths. This one is inspired by Idunn, the Norse goddess who tends the golden apples that keep them young.

  Emily is a researcher who has founded a start-up with Hock. Their company is developing these golden apples that allow people to transform their bodies. To raise funding, Hock pitches them as a way to get an action hero body. Emily finds herself trapped trying to develop whatever Hock promises rather than what she wants to use the apples for. Can she free herself to find ways to let the apples give people the bodies that truly represent who they are?

As usual, I didn’t read as much as I wanted. There are many wonderful stories that I still haven’t gotten to. I’d still like to recommend the following:

• “The Last Voyage of Skidbladnir” Karin Tidbeck Tor.com January 14th, 2019 (short story)
• “Marlowe and Harry and the Disinclined Laboratory” Carrie Vaughn Lightspeed Magazine February 2019 (short story)
• Deriving Life Elizabeth Bear Tor.com January 31th, 2019 (novelette)
• This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, published by Saga (novella)

  It’s an epistolary novella where the letter writers are time-travelers on opposite sides of a time war. It’s rich, complex, rewarding read.

• Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone, published by Tor (novel)

  This is Journey to the West in space. It’s big, bold, and thrill-a-minute. The novel is both non-stop fun and a thoughtful meditation on Buddhism. It’s worth reading just to see how he pulled that off.

• A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, published by Tor (novel)

  The novel is brilliant working out of the ramifications of language, assimilation, and empire. Plus, you get a well-written mystery to boot!

• Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, published by Tor.com (novel)

  The emperor want new lyctors. To that end, each of the nine houses has sent its heir along with their cavalier to a set of trial, wherein they may all become lyctors or they may all die.

  The novel pops and fizzes with an irrepressibly snarky voice. It is both filled with boundless invention and a touching intimate story about personal relationship and bonding.