Uncanny Magazine - JanFeb2017 Read online

  I love adding the WTF strand as much as anything else. Even more I love that often the strands are equally believable to people. Sometimes people think the real details are things I made up, and vice versa. That’s the best.

  Uncanny Magazine : You seem to be constantly writing new work. You whisk yourself away to volcano lairs for a few weeks and come back with finished novels. It’s amazing and wonderful to watch as an outsider. Does this feel as magical to you as it does to me?

  Maria Dahvana Headley: It feels generally wonderful to write the way I do when I go on a writing roam, and to have gotten to a place in my career where I sometimes can do that. I’m a frugal traveler with fancy taste, so I rent glorious places to write, often at major discount. It’s possible to do it if you don’t mind being the only person on the top of a remote volcano, eating only fish bought from fishermen at the bottom of the hillside, and lemons from the tree. Which, um, obviously, I do not mind. The whole thing, though, is based on trusting that I’m good enough to finish things, and that the story is already in my brain, that I’ve already filled my head with the materials I need to do my work. I don’t always know what the story will be, but I’ve gotten to a point of trusting that if I engineer my time and conditions to write, the words will come. That’s what I get from 20 years of publishing all kinds of weird things. It’s a pretty nice thing to have written this much because at least, at this point in my career, I know that I have a history of knowing how to write. Just having that knowledge helps me make new work, quickly, and usually joyfully. I also give myself the great treat of only writing things I am in love with. That means I have fun. Having fun as a writer is pretty damn important, if you want to keep doing this all day and night.

  Uncanny Magazine : Finally, what can we look forward to next?

  Maria Dahvana Headley: Lots of things in the next year or so, stories, and books too, hopefully. The Mere Wife should be coming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux sometime next year. The Combustible , which is a queer YA superhero novel, will come out from HarperCollins in 2018. Also, I accidentally wrote a miniature detective novel in a sort of Sherlock Holmes/Agatha Christie vein last month, so at some point I’ll stretch that out and make it a full length novel. I was trying to write a commissioned short story, and a thousand words into what was supposed to be 7,500 words, the manuscript yelled “ You Don’t Own Me!” I should know that if one of my own stories says that, I have to listen. Instead I tried to squash the story. It refused my squashing, and ended up at 11k, obviously an oppressed novel. Now it’s sitting on my desk, cackling, because it forced me to hold it back and write an entirely new story for the commission.

  Uncanny Magazine : Maria, thank you for being so generous with your thoughts and stories!

  © 2017 by Uncanny Magazine

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  Julia Rios is the reprint fiction/poetry editor and an interviewer for Uncanny Magazine . She is a writer, editor, podcaster, and narrator. Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in several places, including Daily Science Fiction , Apex Magazine , and Goblin Fruit . She was a fiction editor for Strange Horizons from 2012 to 2015, and is co–editor with Alisa Krasnostein of Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories , and the Y ear’s Best YA Speculative Fiction series. She is also a co–host of the Hugo–nominated podcast, The Skiffy and Fanty Show , and has narrated stories for Podcastle , Pseudopod , and Cast of Wonders , and poems for the Strange Horizons podcast. To find out more, visit www.juliarios.com .

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  Thank You, Patreon Supporters!

  Uncanny Magazine Editorial Staff | 251 words

  Uncanny Magazine would like to thank the following people for supporting us on Patreon . This magazine would not be possible without their support.

  Space Unicorn Ranger Corps COMMANDERS

  Adam Leff, Bliss Ehrlich, Christian Valencia–Neihart, Dain Unicorn, Daniel Sales, David Mackie, Didi Chanoch, Edmund Schweppe, Hisham El–Far, Jayme Lundeen, Mark Alexander, Avery Flinders

  Space Unicorn Ranger Corps LIEUTENANTS

  Ai Lake, Besha Grey, Caitlin Rosberg, Carl, Daniel Ryan, David Fiander, Deborah Levinson, Felice Piserchia, Jaime, Wurth, Jessica Gravitt, Kristopher Jones, Lauren Vega, Lisa McCurrach, Michael Lee, Paul Weimer, Rebecca, Xander Grzywinski, Emilly Vonapplesauce, David Demers, Aaron Roberts

  Space Unicorn Ranger Corps ENSIGNS

  Anne Petersen, Arinn Dembo, Carlos Hernandez, Danica Schloss, Emily Hogan, Jen Melchert, John M Gamble, John Klima, Kate Lechler, Kevin Korpi, Laura Watkins, M Michelle Moore, Ondrej Urban, Renae Ensign, Sarah L., Steven Hoefer, Kate Baker, Nicole Grotepas, Kevin Lovecraft, Jeffrey

  Space Unicorn Ranger Corps RECRUITS

  Andrew and Kate Barton, Annaliese Lemmon, Brooks Moses, Cathy Hindersinn, Clarissa R., David Mullin, David Versace, fadeaccompli, Margaret Wack, Miranda Rydell, Shana DuBois, Sidsel Pedersen, Tasha Turner Lennhoff, Heather Berberet, Josh Smift, Jay Lofstead, Philip Woodley

  © 2017 by Uncanny Magazine

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  Lynne and Michael are the Publishers/Editors–in–Chief for the Hugo and Parsec Award–winning Uncanny Magazine .

  Four–time Hugo Award winner Lynne M. Thomas was the Editor–in–Chief of Apex Magazine (2011–2013). She co–edited the Hugo Award–winning Chicks Dig Time Lords , as well as Whedonistas and Chicks Dig Comics .

  Along with being a two–time Hugo Award nominee as the former Managing Editor of Apex Magazine (2012–2013) Michael Damian Thomas co–edited the Hugo–nominated Queers Dig Time Lords ( Mad Norwegian Press , 2013) with Sigrid Ellis and Glitter & Mayhem (Apex Publications, 2013), with John Klima and Lynne M. Thomas.

  Together, they solve mysteries.

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  Table of Contents

  Uncanny Magazine Issue Fourteen

  Uncanny Magazine Editorial Staff

  About Our Cover Artist: John Picacio

  The Uncanny Valley

  The Uncanny Valley

  Bodies Stacked Like Firewood

  Monster Girls Don’t Cry

  Goddess, Worm

  The Thule Stowaway

  To Budapest, with Love

  Some Cupids Kill With Arrows

  The Unknown God

  Inferior Beasts

  Why You Should Read Romance

  I Have Never Not Been an Object

  Blood of the Revolution: On Filipina Writers and Aswang

  In Lieu of the Stories My Santera Abuela Should Have Told Me Herself, This Poem

  Jean–Luc, Future Ghost

  Except Thou Bless Me

  Interview: A. Merc Rustad

  Interview: Maria Dahvana Headley

  Thank You, Patreon Supporters!