These coleus plants come direct from my living room: happy, healthy, colorful, accustomed to human interaction, and mostly harmless.*

The book launch for Interference will be at 7 p.m. Thursday, October 24, at Volumes Bookcafe, 1474 N. Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago.

The novel goes on sale October 22.

On the 24th, I’ll be reading from the novel, answering questions — and giving away the plants in the photo made from cuttings from one of my own houseplants.

The idea behind the novel Semiosis and its sequel Interference started when some of my houseplants tried to kill other plants. So far, these coleus seem enthusiastic but not aggressive.

*No guarantees. As it says on the cover of Interference, “Sentience craves sovereignty.” Who knows what these plants are thinking?

Tor Publishing is giving away 20 copies of Interference at Goodreads.

If you’re a member of Goodreads, click here to enter! (Limited to Goodreads members in the US and Canada, sorry.)

The novel goes on sale in a week, and if you’re not feeling lucky, you can pre-order it now.

by Sue Burke: short fiction

This story isn’t about departing, it’s about arriving. That’s not obvious at first, though.

As the story opens, a young woman gets into a car and drives off. She leaves people standing in front of her former home: her family, a crowd of friends, and a dog. They wave, the dog barks, everyone calls goodbye and grins madly – even the ones hiding tears.

The young woman had been direly ill, bedridden and convalescent for years, her survival not guaranteed. Early on, she started to think about travel, a dream that might or might not come true, but it was the only future she wanted to imagine.

Whenever she could, she sat in bed or on a sofa and talked to anyone, sometimes just to the dog, about travel. They shared stories, fantasies, wishes, Youtube videos, travelogs, books, souvenirs, and photos. Her friends even invited their friends just back from trips to come talk to her, since she was always delighted to hear every detail, and they always left feeling happy.

This went on for years. Once she even exchanged a few emails with an astronaut orbiting the Earth.

Slowly, her health improved. She remembered everything she’d been told, waited for relapses, planned carefully, stared hard into her future, and finally the day came when she took to the road, her dreams fulfilled – and the dreams of her family and friends. She had reached the end of the journey she really wanted to take, arriving at the best possible destination, health.

That’s the story. The only one sad at the end is the dog, who had always hoped to come along on the next journey with her.

This is the towel bar in the guest bathroom of my apartment.

It looks okay, but it’s not really practical. Those curvy little points at the ends of the hooks dig into anything hung on them.

I was sitting and looking at it last week, trying to think of a way to make it useful, when suddenly I realized what was wrong — and how to solve the problem.

The towel rack was installed upside down.

To Jerry, for his love and patience.

I’ve received an early copy of Interference. The book has a surprise for my husband, Jerry. Today is his birthday, by the way.

The novel will be officially released on October 22 (you can find out how to preorder it here).