Unlikely Story

Unlikely Academia Submissions Open

It’s January 1st, which means not only a new year, but that our Unlikely Academia issue is officially open for business. By which we mean submissions. In case you need a refresher, here’s what we’re looking for with this issue.

Stories about studying and the act of learning. Stories set in unusual schools like Hogwarts, Brakebills, and the Unseen University (Note: please don’t set your story in any of these specific schools unless you happen to be J.K. Rowling, Lev Grossman, or Terry Prachett). Stories focusing on the students and faculty of unorthodox majors like Decision Sciences, Theme Park Engineering, and Bowling Industry Management and Technology (these are all real majors offered by real universities). Researchers digging deep into forbidden tomes (preferably not the Necromnomicon; it’s been done.) Fictionalized scholarly articles on the Ethics of Motorcycle Taming or the Alternate History of Space Flight in the Mongol Empire (think Marie Brennan’s Lady Trent series).

As always, we want gorgeously-told tales, gripping characters, and unique worlds to explore. Genre doesn’t matter, along as your tale involves schools, studying, or academia in some integral way. Although we won’t rule them out completely, we’d prefer not to receive stories involving study related to any of our previous or recurring themes (insects, coding, maps, architecture, etc.)

We want stories with diverse viewpoints, characters, and settings. We’re particularly interested in stories by authors from traditionally under-represented groups, including, but not limited to POC, QUILTBAG, non-binary, ESL, and neuro-diverse writers. We love stories from new authors and established authors alike. We’re more than happy to receive submissions from anywhere in the world, as long as the story is in English. We’re open to translated works as well, as long as they’ve never been published in English before.

Full guidelines can be found here. Happy writing and submitting. We can’t wait to see what you send us!

An Unlikely Interview with Luna Lindsey

In Meltdown in Freezer Three, Corinne’s service animal, Macy, uses color to convey emotion. In your story Touch of Tides, which appeared in Crossed Genres Issue 8, your main character sees physical sensations as color. There are other similarities between these stories, including neuro-atypicality as feature, not a bug, making your characters uniquely qualified to deal with the situations confronting them. Could you talk a bit about your personal relationship with color, and the way you explore it and neuro-atypical characters in your fiction?

My brain is a very colorful place. I have grapheme-color synesthesia. I’m also autistic (Asperger’s), which means my relationship with language is interesting. I do think in words, but I also think in movement and shapes, emotions and flashes of images, and colors (and colors of words). Even though I’m strongly verbal, some thoughts are very difficult to translate into words. And sometimes when I’m struggling to remember something, all I get is the color of the words, not the words themselves.

I am intrigued by differences of perception and thinking styles between people. There’s an assumption that everyone is somehow the same inside, when really, we are all incredibly different. The reason we assume homogeneity is because everyone learns the same outputs (we speak the same language, for instance), but how we store knowledge varies from person to person. It’s like software that spits out the same data, but runs on very different platforms, written in different programming languages. And those differences fascinate me. Especially since underlying thinking-styles can explain conflicts, unusual behaviors, and miscommunication between people.

When I write, I often like to imagine unfamiliar internal landscapes, and write from there. Not just neurodiverse humans, but also alien minds, animals, mythical creatures. I’d like to challenge the assumption that there is a “normal” way to think, because it’s dangerous to take that for granted. Stories allow us to experience neurodiveristy in a way that no other medium can, because it allows us to be inside the head of another person and see with their eyes. (Or feel with their appendages if they have no eyes.) It can be challenging, though, because we’re still limited to words, and what do you do when your protagonist doesn’t think in words at all?

Authors frequently know more about their characters than what makes it to the page, including what happens after the story ends. If you know, and don’t mind sharing, what role might Macy have in the faelien society after she rescues them?

It’s funny, but I often don’t think about what happens after the last word in my stories. I like that feeling of mystery, the question mark without the period. But since you asked? Once the batteries die in Macy’s control circuits, she probably eats a dozen faelien children, plus three brave faelien warriors, before she is finally taken down in a hail of ice-arrows. But I’m just guessing.

Authors are notorious for working strange jobs. Stephen King was a janitor and J.D. Salinger worked as the entertainment director on a luxury cruise line. What’s the weirdest job you’ve ever had, and did it inspire any stories or teach you anything you’ve used in your writing?

I once worked a high school internship at a Cold War Era government nuclear reservation. It was the same facility (tho not the same office) where my dad worked. My job included editing electronic maps of storage tanks. Gigantic tanks full of radioactive waste. I’ve never written anything based on the experience, but the fact that this seemed like a perfectly normal job, not weird in the slightest, might have had an impact on my formative years.

One of the perennial points of contention in the world revolves around education -- who should get educated (and to what degree), what should be taught, who should be excluded. Meanwhile, children in their classrooms ask, “Why do I need to know this?” Tell us one obscure thing you learned in school that you think is important, and why.

I was actually homeschooled. And the single most important thing I learned was how to teach myself. I wish every child could learn this skill. Instead, many children are simply taught to memorize directions and obey without question. It’s a nice way to rear an army of corporate drones, but I doubt it leads to a satisfying life for most people. Life is endless learning, and without knowing how, too many people stop after they graduate.

Knowing how to learn was instrumental in my IT career before I switched to writing, since the tech field is always changing. Meanwhile, I was constantly learning about topics I felt curious about. Which has since helped my writing career. This ability makes me a better citizen and a more informed voter. I’m rarely willing to form an opinion based merely on someone else’s opinion, on conjecture or speculation. I’m always wanting to know the how and why of things. This gives me a flexible mind, willing to stretch and change and grow. I wish everyone could be given this gift.

We all have our favorite authors, some of whom everyone has heard of, and some of whom are relatively obscure. Who is one of the more obscure writers you love? What do you love about their work? Tell us which story or novel of theirs we should drop everything to read right now.

Mervyn Peake. His prose is beautiful and clever at the same time. His world building is quirky and his characters are odd. His descriptions are delightful, from a time when cinematic POV was permitted and words mattered more than stories. His plots are almost non-existent, but that hardly matters. I have underlined passages and read them aloud and quoted them on the internet. So you should drop everything and go read the Gormenghast trilogy.

Here is one of my favorite passages: “A room was filled with the late sunbeams. Steerpike stood quite still, a twinge of pleasure running through his body. He grinned. A carpet filled the floor with blue pasture. Thereon were seated in a hundred decorative attitudes, or stood immobile like carvings, or walked superbly across their sapphire setting, inter-weaving with each other like a living arabesque, a swarm of snow-white cats.”

We all start somewhere, and the learning curve from first publication is a steep one. What’s your first ever published work, and how do you feel about it now?

This is a tricky one, since I’ve been writing since before I can remember, and since I was quite young, I’ve had both fiction and nonfiction published in the kinds of small-town publications that would publish basically anything. If we’re to narrow it down to the categories of “fiction” and “published in a place where other people could actually read it,” I’d have to go with a series of shaggy-dog stories I wrote for the Benton City Bulletin in my mid-teens. These were based on jokes my dad always told, and relied heavily on puns and juvenile prose. For all that, they were probably pretty good. I’m not sure. I haven’t read them in years.

For the record, my first paid and published story, which is what some people mean when they say “published,” was right here in the Journal of Unlikely Entomology! And I still like that story. 😉

(Editors’ note: We still like it, too! The story in question is Let the Bugs Work Themselves Out from Issue 3.5. You can -- and should -- read it here.)

What else are you working on you want people to know about?

I’m just finishing promotion of my big nonfiction project that took up most of the last 18 months. (Recovering Agency: Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control.) This month, I’m switching gears back to fiction. My novel, Emerald City Iron, the long-awaited sequel to Emerald City Dreamer is all written and awaiting revisions. It’s about faerie hunters in Seattle. Sandy and her team track down a terrifying murderous sea faerie, the Nuckelavee, while Sandy herself begins her inner journey to heal from her trauma. I’d like to have it out by next spring.

Unlikely Story #10 PDF Available

The PDF version of Unlikely Story #10: The Journal of Unlikely Entomology will be skittering its way to subscribers any moment now. What’s that? You’re not a subscriber and you want to get your hands on this wondrous thing? Well you’re in luck -- subscribing to Unlikely Story is both easy and free. Just send an email to unlikelystory (at) kappamaki.com and ask to be added to our list. A post with further details can be found here.

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An Unlikely Interview with Naim Kabir

Dr. Shreeya Murrow can equally be seen as the protagonist or antagonist of Prism City Blues. Her Green Project could be an altruistic reclaiming of the planet for the greater good of humanity, or a wholly selfish act, one which doesn’t even seem to make her all that happy. How do you see her -- as a philanthropist, or a super villain?

I don’t want to interfere with whatever judgment the reader comes up with—as far as I’m concerned, if you think she’s a villain, she’s a villain. If you think she’s a hero, then she is.

What I will say is this: she’s human. A very old human. It’s a bit of a cliche to say that a person is just a product of their history and environment: but I really think that’s true here! She’s old, and in a place of high status. Somewhat detached from the younger population, and always, always missing ‘how it used to be’. Everyone’s always talking about how much hurt getting old will bring you, and—well, sometimes when you’re hurting you lash out hard and fast to get that hurt to stop.

Philadelphia seems to have attracted a natural confluence of speculative fiction authors, and you’re one of them. What are your favorite places to eat, read, and hang out in the city? What, if anything, do you find particularly speculative about Philly, or what would you say to recommend the city to someone who has never been here before?

When my wallet’s hanging heavier than usual I like to eat over at POD, which is a little like dining inside the 20th-century vision of a 23rd-century spaceship. Meal of choice? A bowl of rock shrimp glazed with something yellow and delicious with walnuts and a few slices of pineapple sprinkled all over. When I’m hurting for cash a food truck usually does the trick. Literally any truck down the line from 36th and Spruce to 38th will serve up something delicious—though I particularly enjoy New York’s Famous Gyro.

As for reading: back when I was still living around Rittenhouse, the Park was brilliant for just finding a bench and knocking back a novel. Then there are all the art shows, the performers, the extravagant set-ups during holidays. A beautiful piece of the city that lives and breathes over the year, in very familiar rhythms. Probably a bit of a common choice—but for good reason!

Last question:

Speculative elements can be found in any city. In Philadelphia I’d pin feelings of the fantastical on the purple-pink night sky that I’ve never seen anywhere else. It takes on an even stranger tinge after a snow.

But the most important thing Philly has to offer to writers, I think, is the constant reminder that people can’t be put into neat boxes. Cultures can’t, either. There’s always one fest or another that takes up an entire city block—and the characters there can be strange, and new, and wonderful. It reminds you not to feel limited when you get down to filling up a page. It makes you think, Damn, the world I live in is crazy. Damn, the world I live in has all of these unique people, and all of these unique peoples.

And if the world as you know it—constrained by what already is—if that world is this crazy, think about all the worlds that could be! All the characters that could be!

Those reminders are important.

Authors are notorious for working strange jobs. Stephen King was a janitor and J.D. Salinger worked as the entertainment director on a luxury cruise line. What’s the weirdest job you’ve ever had, and did it inspire any stories or teach you anything you’ve used in your writing?

I once was a research assistant in a sleep lab, the kind that got contracts from NASA and the Office of Naval Intelligence. It didn’t inspire any stories directly, but it definitely informed my characters and their dynamic.

The job basically had me taking care of and observing a group of four strangers thrown together as they braced themselves to bear sometimes insurmountable challenges. They dealt with the hospital food together, the lack of entertainment, the several periods of long sleep deprivation that left them incoherent—and they started as strangers.

Sometimes you’d get shear lines in the group, sometimes they’d spot weld into the strongest bunch you’d ever see. It was amazing to watch these long studies unfold, and these friendships and animosities appear.

Strangers, thrown together to trump a challenge. Now that sounds like every good epic I’ve ever enjoyed.

One of the perennial points of contention in the world revolves around education -- who should get educated (and to what degree), what should be taught, who should be excluded. Meanwhile, children in their classrooms ask, “Why do I need to know this?” Tell us one obscure thing you learned in school that you think is important, and why.

I learned that Gregor Mendel worked to give us the first—though quite simplistic—model of trait heritability.

This was important.

Though I usually prefer reading about the actual facts discovered rather than the history of the discovery, this bit of history was important because it was different. While the other scientists in my textbooks were being praised for their genius and for their ripe-for-TV eureka moments, right there on the page was this humble man whose two specialties were gardening and beekeeping.

And he was always referred to as humble. He didn’t found Mendelian Genetics through genius or in-born brilliance, but through diligence. At the time he actually embodied the apex of discipline in my mind: he was a monk. Who could work harder than a monk?

That was just a first step to learning that our culture in the States, the kind that praises innate smarts, is all wrong. I’ve always been told I’m clever, but all that did was make me smug and too reliant on cunning-over-effort.

Over 22 years of living, I’ve learned that the most brilliant head on a set of lazy shoulders is going to do precisely jack shit in the real world. Hard work is always more important, always.

And Gregor Mendel, the hardworking monk who figured out how heritable smarts might be passed down, showed me that those same smarts don’t actually matter.

Not if you don’t have discipline.

It’s a lesson I’m still trying to fully understand.

We all have our favorite authors, some of whom everyone has heard of, and some of whom are relatively obscure. Who is one of the more obscure writers you love? What do you love about their work? Tell us which story or novel of theirs we should drop everything to read right now.

Paul Neilan. I don’t know if he’s obscure, but I do know that his bibliography totals exactly 1. A hilarious, page-turning 1.

The novel is Apathy and Other Small Victories, and it will split your sides and send them into stratosphere. Or, you know, make you chuckle a little to yourself.

I’ve always thought writing comedy was the hardest talent to hone, but Neilan’s book is just effortlessly funny, while still managing to tell a well-structured story. It’s an exemplar of what good situational comedy is, and I look to it whenever I need some help. Definitely pick it up.

We all start somewhere, and the learning curve from first publication is a steep one. What’s your first ever published work, and how do you feel about it now?

Haha, I’m still actually quite the new writer. I still consider myself a novice—and so I’m still actually riding the high of my first publication! It was “On The Origin of Song”, published by Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Even now I’m incredibly grateful to Scott H. Andrews for considering me and taking me on.

Speaking of which: I’m quite grateful to you, too. Thank you so much!

What else are you working on have coming up you want people to know about?

Currently working on a science fiction story set in a near-future Japan, with a societal twist—as well as a story set in a new surgical department that I’ve taken to calling ‘Neuroplastics’. I hope the latter finds a home soon, though I’m still polishing the former.

I’m also trying to get my debut novel completed, polished, and off the ground! I’m almost afraid to even say its name, like I’m afraid I’ll break it.

But I’ll say it anyway, because I like the way it sounds:

“Starshine For Whiskey Riser.”

Which… is a tale about a bunch of strangers thrown together to trump a challenge.

An Unlikely Interview with Polenth Blake

On Shine Wings is lovely and poetic piece. For me [editor A.C. Wise] reading it was akin to viewing a series of snapshots from a dream. Could you talk a bit about where the imagery came from, or how the story originated and developed for you?

Culture plays a big part in colour language. Some colours are considered different in some languages, but the same in others. Some languages may focus more on whether a colour is light or dark, over whether it’s red or blue. It led me to think about how colour might be described for people who often see the world through the eyes of bees. For a bee, dark things are likely to be predators, such as bears stealing their honey. Bright things are flowers. That matters a whole lot more than whether those colours are shades of red.

From there, I considered if words might change depending on whether things had always been that colour. It matters if a flower is always a light colour, or if it only becomes light when it’s dying. This might matter less when describing something that can be painted, like a ship, over something alive, like a human.

So the story formed around the colours and the meaning behind them.

According to the author bio on your website, you have pet cockroaches, which makes you the first Unlikely Entomology author to openly admit to living with insects on purpose. Did the cockroaches influence the writing of On Shine Wings? Have they, or an interest in bugs in general, influenced your work in other ways, or is your professed love of invertebrates a stronger influence?

I’m afraid the cockroaches aren’t big on the idea of flying, and would likely find space rather horrible. They like warmth, apples and waking people up in the night by throwing their water bowls around.

My interest in invertebrates does find its way into a lot of stories. I’ve written about giant squid, scorpion aliens and sentient beetles. There isn’t an invertebrate I don’t like.

Authors are notorious for working strange jobs. Stephen King was a janitor and J.D. Salinger worked as the entertainment director on a luxury cruise line. What’s the weirdest job you’ve ever had, and did it inspire any stories or teach you anything you’ve used in your writing?

I worked for a while as a conservation volunteer, which included some contract work for farms. One of the team’s jobs was putting up a fence for a small organic farm. They needed a fence to divide the cow field and the wood where the free-range chickens lived, because European Union rules stated there must be a fence.

To which we replied, “You know chickens can fly, right?”

This didn’t matter. The rules only stated there must be a fence of a certain height, not that it had to actually contain the chickens. So we put up the fence, and everyone was happy. The chickens got a new perching spot. The EU got its fence. As long as the politicians never meet a chicken, all will be well.

I’ve not yet written a story about chickens or fences.

We all have our favorite authors, some of whom everyone has heard of, and some of whom are relatively obscure. Who is one of the more obscure writers you love? What do you love about their work? Tell us which story or novel of theirs we should drop everything to read right now.

I like Emily Jiang’s work, and think she’ll be one to watch. Her short story “The Binding of Ming-tian” was the first I read, about footbinding. She also has a lot of poetry out.

We all start somewhere, and the learning curve from first publication is a steep one. What’s your first ever published work, and how do you feel about it now?

The first story someone paid to publish was “Carousel Princess”. I still like the piece, though it was an early lesson in how certain works are considered not-a-story, and get a harsh reaction based on that. I tend to hedge my bets now by listing such work under flash fiction/prose poetry, and letting the reader decide what they want to call it. People tend to judge it then by whether they like it, not whether it’s correctly labelled as a story or not.

What else are you working on have coming up you want people to know about?

I’ll have a story called “After the Rain” in Lackington’s next year. I’m also working on a cozy mystery novel with a fairy godmother sleuth, which will be out some time next year.