My guest today is the great Marissa Lingen. When I started writing, now and then I’d bump into one of Marissa’s short stories and they always made my day! In 2024, Marissa also blurbed my collection. So, I have many reasons to be happy to have her here in the Hyperspace! She’s also at Bluesky.

In personal news, I had two stories out this week, two flashes! My story A Poem of Anas is in issue #15 of Translunar Travelers Lounge! It’s a tale about a connected multiverse and support networks. And my story Pandora’s Unboxing is now out in Gavagai! What happens when Pandora opens the jar that contains some versions of her past for her Youtube channel? (Content warning for misogyny, domestic violence, and religious intolerance.) Coincidentally, both were published in Portuguese before. Pandora’s Unboxing is particurlaly powerful and personal to me, as someone who has witnessed violence at home during my childhood.

Tell me more about A Dubious Clamor and what made you write it.

A Dubious Clamor is the story of an ex-harpy and her harpy ex-girlfriend who have to team up with an assortment of allies including a very opinionated ancient sword, to defeat an authoritarian threat. I put all sorts of things I like in it—cake! operetta! complex friendships!—and had a great deal of fun. I'd like to say it arrived fully formed, but I didn't give myself enough room to stretch at first. I tried to write it as a short story. Thankfully, one of my favorite editors made it clear in his kind rejection that it needed to be more than that.

From the synopsis, Jules seems like a complex and lovable character! Tell me more about her and what is compelling about her.

I think one of my favorite things about Jules is that she's fiercely loyal through complicated circumstances. A few years before this novella, she was cursed to become a harpy, and she managed to keep a lot of friendships through that and also build new ones. She is definitely not living the life she expected as a little kid, but I think that's pretty relatable too.

What is a piece of fiction that you think didn’t get enough attention?

I just finished reading M.E. O’Brien and Eman Ahdelhadi's Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072. It's a very non-standard shape of science fiction, and I kind of love it for that. I didn't hear about it until very recently, and now I'm telling everyone.

Show me an illustration that you love and tell me why!

Oh, oh, what a great question! Here's what Julie Dillon did to illustrate my story Uncle Flower's Homecoming Waltz.

I love that this is not a literal illustration of the story but conceptually absolutely nails both the hope of the young protagonist and the sorrow of her uncle as they navigate their war-torn and complicated world and family. I find Julie's human faces so expressive and her speculative details absolutely thematically on point.

Let us show the newer writers that they are not alone! Tell me something that made you feel bad (a rejection, an empty signing session, a very harsh critique) and how you got over it (or not).

I've gotten very inured to rejection, and I'm pretty good at processing critique (I even published an article about it! ) Probably the hardest thing that's happened to me in publishing was in my early twenties when a big editor said they were going to buy my book, definitely going to publish it, and other things of that sort, and then completely ghosted me, only to tell a friend years later that they'd rejected my book years ago. At that point I had moved very far on, but at the time it was devastating. I was prepared for a lot of hard work, rejection, harsh critique, and even just...lack of attention. But the emotional roller coaster there was awful. Now I have a great agent and a lot more awareness of when exactly contracts should show up and what I should or should not expect without them—and I hope no one is treating new authors that way now. If they are, though, I want to say: that is unprofessional and you do not deserve it. I've gotten to work with a lot of wonderful editors in short stories, poems, and essays, and now my novella experience is starting out beautifully on the editorial front. Happy ending? No, happy middle, I hope!