This is weird and wonderful:

The very first short story I sold, back in 1995, “Poet for Hire,” involved a young woman with curly brown hair who starts a freelance poetry business in Milwaukee. She works out of a storefront in the 2200 block of Kinnickinnic Avenue, down the street from where I used to live, and she gets vital inspiration from the plants in the Arid Dome of Milwaukee’s Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory.

Last month I was contacted by Anja Notanja Sieger. Someone found the story and sent it to her — because she’s Milwaukee’s first poet for hire, she has written poems in the Arid Dome, her husband owns a used bookstore in the exact same storefront in the story, and she has curly brown hair.

Anja invited me to her podcast, The Subtle Forces. I read the story out loud, and we chatted about its coincidences. “Perhaps you wrote this story,” she said, “and then I happened.”

You can listen to the podcast here:

https://subtleforces.podbean.com/e/episode-37-poet-for-hire/

I’ve turned in the manuscript for Usurpation, the third book in the Semiosis trilogy. At the end of the second book, Interference, rainbow bamboo has been taken to Earth and is flourishing, and Stevland tells them to protect and dominate the humans. But how? The third book tells that story.

Usurpation should appear in bookstores in October 2024.

A whole year from now! Yes, it seems like a long time, but a lot still needs to be done. My editor at Tor might suggest a few more changes, such as adding a scene that could strengthen the story. Then the manuscript will be sent to a copyeditor.

Good copyeditors are far, far more than proofreaders. As they go over the manuscript, they will make a glossary or stylesheet of names of characters, places and other terms, and they’ll check to see that they are used consistently. They’ll note distinctive formatting or punctuation, and make sure the text conforms overall to the Chicago Manual of Style and a standard reference dictionary. They might need to check facts, such as dates of actual historic events. They also look for inconsistencies in the story: Becky might have blue eyes in Chapter 2 but brown eyes in Chapter 3. They’ll go line by line and make sure every sentence makes sense. Copyeditors have saved me from many howling mistakes, and they have my affection and respect. I don’t want them to rush.

After I review and approve the copyeditor’s changes and suggestions, the manuscript will be typeset, which is an art in itself. Then it will be proofread — twice. The proofreaders might have additional questions for me.

Meanwhile, an artist will design the cover. Finally, the package will be sent to a printer, and the printed books will be sent to a distributor.

If there’s an audiobook, and I’m sure there will be, the audiobook publisher will select the narrator, who will begin the work of reading the novel aloud creatively.

The final steps are marketing, sales, and publicity, and I may have a lot to do to promote Usurpation before and after the publication date.

Still, for me, the hard part is done, and right now, I’m thinking about my next novel. It won’t be about talking trees … but what? It’s a nice problem to have to solve. Any suggestions?

This year the Worldcon will be held in Chengdu, China, and the 2023 Hugo Awards, the Lodestar Award, and the Astounding Award will be presented on Saturday evening, October 21, at a formal ceremony at the Chengdu Worldcon.

Although I won’t be attending in person, I’m a Worldcon member and get to vote for the awards. Members also make the nominations, and the works or individuals with the most nominations become the finalists.

While all these works are solid and any one of them deserves to win, I was disappointed that no Chinese novellas were finalists.

The voting is by ranked choice, and here’s my ranking:

6. Where the Drowned Girls Go, by Seanan McGuire (Tordotcom) – Cora, a girl who has gone through a portal, faces bullying and institutional abuse as she tries to adjust to our world. This is part of the Wayward Children series. It’s a heart-wrenching story, but not quite a stand-alone.

5. Into the Riverlands by Nghi Vo (Tordotcom) – This story is part of the Singing Hills Cycle. A wandering cleric joins a group of travelers, and they share stories between episodes of epic martial arts in which they battle notorious bandits. Clever and consistently interesting.

4. A Mirror Mended by Alix E. Harrow (Tordotcom) – Fairy tales are filled with problematical characters and situations, and they get their comeuppance. The various versions of Snow White all lead to trouble, told by a witty but anguished would-be rescuer. A fun examination of metastory.

3. What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher (Tor Nightfire) – A very creepy retelling of “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe, with an engaging voice and outstanding characters. Simply well done.

2. Ogres by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Solaris) – What seems like a fantasy story at first turns into a dystopia. Nothing more can be said without spoilers. The choice of second-person narration turns out to be important.

1. Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk (Tordotcom) – In Chicago in the 1930s, the “White City Vampire” seems to be an ordinary serial killer, but a private detective knows that a lot more is at stake — more than she thinks, in fact. Can she protect her beloved? Demons, warlocks, and angels keep the plot twisting and turning. This novella won the Nebula Award.

I’ll be giving a Zoom talk on Thursday, November 9, from 6 to 7 p.m. CST for the Audubon Society of Northern Virginia about plant blindness, the inability to see or notice plants in everyday life. It also refers to failing to recognize the role of plants on Earth and believing that plants are somehow inferior to animals.

When I wrote Semiosis, one of my secret goals was to make my readers afraid of their gardens and afraid for plants in general. I’ll speak on how plant blindness affects our environment and what can be done to be more aware of the foundation of our ecosystems. Plants, like birds, connect us to the Earth.

You can join us. Sign up here.

This year the Worldcon will be held in Chengdu, China, and the 2023 Hugo Awards, the Lodestar Award, and the Astounding Award will be presented on Saturday evening, October 21, at a formal ceremony at the Chengdu Worldcon.

Although I won’t be attending in person, I’m a Worldcon member and get to vote for the awards. Members also make the nominations, and the works or individuals with the most nominations become the finalists.

The voting is by ranked choice, and here’s my ranking — of course, your opinion may differ:

6. “The Space-Time Painter” by Hai Ya (Galaxy’s Edge, April 2022) – Alas, no translation from Chinese is available. Given the quality of the Chinese works in the short story category, I was looking forward to reading this.

5. “We Built This City” by Marie Vibbert (Clarkesworld, June 2022) – Workers maintaining the dome over a city on Venus fight for their right to do their job in reasonable working conditions. Science fiction is always about the present.

4. “The Difference Between Love and Time” by Catherynne M. Valente (Someone in Time: Tales of Time-Crossed Romance, Solaris) – An extended metaphor eventually leads to an understanding of the difference between love and time, stylishly told with an uplifting ending.

3. “A Dream of Electric Mothers”, by Wole Talabi (Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, Tordotcom) – Technology manages to make tradition come true: ancestors can be consulted. But should their messages be trusted? Time and place, character and theme mesh to bring the answer.

2. “If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You” by John Chu (Uncanny Magazine, July-August 2022) – Can you be friends with a superhero? Can a superhero solve one of today’s ugliest problems? John Chu explores these questions with a tender, breakable heart, and emotional honesty suffuses every sentence.

1. “Murder By Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness” by S.L. Huang (Clarkesworld, December 2022) – Can an AI unintentionally become a killer? Using the format of a magazine article, this story has the creepy feel of our present-day reality rather than science fiction. It even has footnotes.