An Interview with Aimee Kuzenski

Posted on August 9, 2018 by scarywhitegirl

Author photo of Aimee KuzenskiHere’s an interview with Aimee Kuzenski, another of our Battling in All Her Finery authors!

DV: Tell us a bit about yourself!

Aimee Kuzenski: I have silver in my hair, a theater degree, and a hairless cat. I was once an engineer, and I spend a lot of time practicing eskrima, a Filipino martial art.

DV: What inspired you to write “Cassiopeia, Queen of Ethiopia” for Battling in All Her Finery?

AK: When I was getting my theater degree, I worked at the college radio station, hosting the folk show on Sunday mornings. One of my favorite songs (the artist has been lost to the vagaries of my memory, alas) was called “Cassiopeia.” It got lodged in my head one day, and I decided to go look up the actual myth, and I got MAD. The story is essentially my response.

DV: Your story has an amazing blend of mytho-historical events and fantasy. What interesting things did you learn about Cassiopeia and her family while writing this story?

AK: After I reread the myth a few times, a few elements struck me as ripe for subversion. Cassiopeia is described as vain, and it bothered me a lot that something so traditionally feminine apparently warranted death by sea monster. I wanted to explore a queen who was allowed to be both feminine and moral, and the consequences of that sort of ruler in a world that assumes them to be polar opposites.

DV: Without too many spoilers, your story ends on a note that there is more to come. Do you plan to return to these characters or setting in future stories?

AK: There is absolutely more to come. Cassiopeia has undertaken an enormous task, and getting what she wants won’t be easy, and might not be as satisfying as she thinks. I want to see where she goes from here.

DV: What’s on the horizon for you? 

AK: I’m shopping around a novel right now about a scientist who makes the unpleasant discovery that the undead her people use as slaves aren’t as soulless as they seem, and I’m working on the first draft of a space opera with elves and living FTL treeships.

Thanks, Aimee!

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Review of Once Upon a Fact

Posted on August 8, 2018 by scarywhitegirl

Cover art for Once Upon a FactOnce Upon a Fact (Wildside Press, LLC, 2018) is a collection of 18 retellings of fairy tales and other traditional stories with a science fiction twist, edited by Katherine Tomlinson. In stories that are both familiar and unfamiliar, these authors envision what fairy tales of the future might look like.

As is the case with many retellings of fairy tales, there are always some original stories that I’m familiar with, while others are new to me. “The Seed Stitch Solution,” by Ginn Hale, is beautifully written, but I’m not familiar with the story it’s based on (The Match-Stick Girl), so I suspect that some of the parallels are lost on me, though that didn’t stop me from enjoying the story. “The Girl with the Cybernetic Hands,” by John Donald Carlucci, is based on another fairy tale I don’t know (The Girl with the Silver Hands), but it has great worldbuilding and characterization that sucked me in.

Some of the other stories that I really loved were based on stories that I know and love. “How to Marry off Your Human,” by Shauna Roberts, is an absolutely adorable retelling of Puss in Boots, and “Alice through the Snapface Filter,” by Megan McCord, was an insightful modernization of Alice in Wonderland. I also loved the retelling of Sleeping Beauty, “The Artifact on Svijet Five,” by Kat Parrish, which has its own mythmaking, as the characters concoct a sort of fairy tale to clear up what they’ve done. And “Ella and the Ball,” by Kaye George, is the most wonderfully twisted retelling of Cinderella I’ve ever seen done!

Fairy tale and sci-fi lovers alike are likely to find something to love in Once Upon a Fact!

The publisher provided us with a free copy of this novel in exchange for review consideration.

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An Interview with Lin Darrow

Posted on August 7, 2018 by scarywhitegirl

Cover art for Pyre at the Eyreholme TrustOur interview for today is with author Lin Darrow, whose story “Caro Cho and the Empire of Light” will appear in Battling in All Her Finery!

DV: Tell us a bit about yourself!

Lin Darrow: My name is Lin Darrow! I teach 19th Century fiction by day and write queer noir by night. I also love puppets, opera, and I occasionally review theatre!

DV: What inspired you to write “Caro Cho and the Empire of Light” for Battling in All Her Finery?

LD: One of the bullet points in the call for stories mentioned a CEO, and I was really drawn in by the idea that the theme of female leaders could be expanded beyond swords and sorcery. Not that I’m knocking swords and sorcery—I love those genres, and I’m super excited to read the stories that fall under those labels in the finished book—but the positioning of CEO next to dragon-slayer as possibilities really intrigued me, and I started wondering about how to make something like a CEO “fantastic.”

The result was Caro Cho, billionaire prosthetics-tech genius and inventor of the modern hologram. She ended up being sort of like Jessica Rabbit meets Bruce Wayne in actual practice.

DV: Your story has a delightful sci-fi pulp vibe that approaches noir. Did that play into the way you named characters or set up scenes in your story?

LD: Totally! Most of what I write could be considered genre mash-ups or remixes, usually between those genres which reimagine the past and those that imagine the future. For Caro Cho, I wanted to try my hand at doing a cross between science fiction and 1950s noir.

My basic thought was, what would noir look like in the 30th century? I ended up whipping up a mystery that tried to combine elements of noir—the femme fatale, who here is also the lead detective, and urban mystery—with elements of speculative fiction—a future setting where everything from cosmetics, prosthetic limbs and advertising billboards are animated by holograms and projections. So I definitely wanted that slick, gritty vibe of classic noir, but paired with the possibilities of future technology.

Caro Cho is a name I’ve had in my back pocket for a long time, and I’m glad I finally got to use it.

DV: Do you have plans for more Caro Cho stories?

I think the title itself—”Caro Cho and the Empire of Light”—does have a sort of episodic feel to it, and it’s fun to think up other titles for other Caro Cho adventures. But I don’t have any current plans for more Caro Cho stories. If the right opportunity presented itself, I wouldn’t say no. I think it would make a fun podcast in the vein of something like the Juno Steel series if I could ever figure out the technical side of that process.

DV: What’s on the horizon for you? 

Right now I have two ongoing projects! The first is Shaderunners, a 1920s adventure comic about bootleggers in a greyscale world who steal bottled colour, which can be read at www.shaderunners.com.

The second project is a queer noir novel that was just released on July 4th! Pyre at the Eyreholme Trust is a queer fantasy noir story set in Temperance City, where magic is strictly regulated, but warring gangs with magic powers still rule the streets. The main story is both magic heist and romance, as Eli Coello—bigender jewelry salesman with unregistered ink magic—is blackmailed into helping Duke Haven—the leader of a low-level fire-magic gang—in his efforts to get out of a dirty contract with a rival gang (one that specializes in paper-magic). They fall in love over the planning of a bold “reverse-counterfeit” heist! You can buy that here: http://t.co/hbySc4lTk3.

Thanks, Lin!

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Grandma Visits

Posted on August 6, 2018 by Mad Scientist Journal

An essay by Gwendolyn Burke, as provided by Shelly Jasperson
Art by Scarlett O’Hairdye

She had promised me she’d visit. But I hadn’t seen her since she died, and that was weeks ago.

I’d expected a rattling doorknob, a creaking rocking chair. Maybe a translucent, flowing dress with a chilly whisper. But I got bupkis.

Meditation hadn’t worked, and Ouija boards were unproductive. It looked like Gran was taking the safe’s combination to the afterlife, where it would never help anyone.

In a last-ditch effort, I scheduled a séance.

The medium had asked for Grandma’s closest friends and family to attend. But I’d had trouble convincing them to come. The expansive convention center room contained only five people: Sabine, her physical therapist; Gretta, her cycling coach; Yvonne, the girl who took her order every morning at Jo’s Java; the medium; and me. It looked like a last-minute bridal shower without the gifts.

The medium, a middle-aged blonde woman whose tan highlighted her wrinkles, surveyed the room and raised a sculpted eyebrow. “Well, I’ve worked with less.”

Gran would have laughed. Age is an accomplishment! She would have said. This woman is hanging on to youth so hard her fake nails might pop off.

I stifled a giggle. Gran could be so inappropriate.

“It isn’t funny. This might not work. Spirits are fickle. Has your grandmother even been to this hotel?”

I nodded. I’d worked the front desk for the past four years, and she’d visited me every Friday with a bag of crumbly cookies and a soda. Fresh from the oven! She’d say as she plopped the bag in front of me, so I could clearly read the grocery store label.

Her house would have been ideal, with the huge picture of a cactus and southwest cowboy figurines. Her ancient corduroy recliner had smelled of dusty soap. When I closed my eyes, I could picture her there, leaning on her heirloom safe. In my mind’s eye, she tapped the top of it and raised an eyebrow.

But my father owned the house now, and he was remodeling to sell it, the jagweed. Gran would be less welcome there than behind a kissing booth.

I sighed. This would have to do.

Art for "Grandma Visits"

Gran’s face flashed in my memory. Dusty blue eyes sparkling, thin lips turned upward in a mischievous smile. I grinned. I might really get to see her face soon. And more importantly, get that combination.

To read the rest of this story, check out the Mad Scientist Journal: Summer 2018 collection.

Gwendolyn Burke lives in the outskirts of the windiest city in America: Reno, Nevada. For the past four years, she’s worked at the Reno Marriott, doling out plastic key cards and silently judging items on room receipts. In her free time, she watches old westerns and may or may not forge bank statements. You can’t prove anything.

Shelly Jasperson has an inexplicable love for dead things. This is unrelated to her being a wife, mother of three little terrors, and author. Her short stories can be seen at Timeless Tales Magazine and Bewildering Stories.

Scarlett O’Hairdye is a burlesque performer, producer and artist. To learn more, visit her site at www.scarlettohairdye.com.

“Grandma Visits” is © 2018 Shelly Jasperson
Art accompanying story is © 2018 Scarlett O’Hairdye

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Strange Science: Robots Helping Plants

Posted on August 3, 2018 by scarywhitegirl

It’s hard to count how many plants we at Mad Scientist Journal may have killed over the years. The most recent (and epic) was the air plant that died under our care. It’s an air plant. All it needed was water. And we failed it.

Fortunately for us, there’s a chance! Chinese roboticist and entrepreneur Sun Tianqi has developed a robot with a succulent on its back. The robot can take the plant into sunlight or shade, depending on the plant’s light needs, and it does a stompy dance when the plant needs water!

Granted, we think our feline interns would see this robot as a toy for them, but the robot knows how to play (in its own peculiar way) as well.

If you want to see this adorably cute and really innovative robot that helps plants, check it out!

(And, of course, we, for one, welcome our new plant-helping robot overlords.)

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That Man Behind the Curtain: June 2018

Posted on August 2, 2018 by Mad Scientist Journal
P-Cat, Biscuit, and our giant tabby kitten Foggy.

P-Cat, Biscuit, and our giant tabby kitten Foggy.

There were a lot of expenses in June, as we paid a bunch of creators for their contributions to Battling in All Her Finery and have started to do some different things with marketing. Let’s look at how we measured up.

The Money Aspect

Amounts in parentheses are losses/expenses.
Web Resources: (-$17.06)
Stories: (-$1,939.00)
Art: (-$900.00)
Advertising: (-$190.45)
Processing Fees: (-$37.96)
Printing: (-$362.82)
Donations: $90.71
Kickstarter: $34.00
Online Book Sales: $25.94

Total: (-$3,296.64)
QTD: (-$3,800.46)
YTD: (-$4,187.66)
All Time: (-$27,925.59)

As usual, I try to list costs for art and stories under the month that the stories run on the site rather than when I pay them. (This does not apply to special content for quarterlies, which does not have a specific month associated with it.) Sales are for sales when they take place, not when they’re actually paid out to me. Online book sales reflect the royalties given after the retailer takes their cut. Physical book sales represent gross income, not counting the cost of the physical book. Donations include Patreon as well as other money sent to us outside of standard sales.

Stories and art last month were payments out to most of the authors and illustrators that we have planned for Battling

Advertising is up a little because we have hired a publicist to help with social media. It will be up more in future months. We’ve decided we wanted to do more with DefCon One Publishing, the company that MSJ is published under. Normally, we’ve used it just for MSJ and books published by Dawn and I, but we’ve started publishing a small number of books by other authors. Combined with the fact that our publishing is continually losing money, we figured we needed to do something. So, enter publicist for our social media.

Since then, we’ve realized that we had other stuff that we needed to do in order to get benefit out of this increased work from a publicist. Stuff like upgrading our (normally unused) Hootsuite account and paying Facebook and Twitter to promote our freshly created created social media profiles for DefCon One Publishing. Those costs will appear on next month’s report.

I haven’t decided how I’m going to reflect these advertising costs in the future. For now I’m just going to list it for MSJ because it’s still 90% of the books that we publish.

Kickstarter income represents funds added by backers through BackerKit.

We didn’t have any conventions and sales were slow online. So not a lot of income this month.

Submissions

We received 146 submissions. This consisted of:

  • 22 classifieds, of which we accepted 17 (77%)
  • 80 regular submissions, of which we accepted 15. This was 13 as regular, 2 as quarterly exclusives. (19%)
  • 44 exclusive submissions, of which we accepted 7. 4 as exclusives, 3 were accepted as regular submissions instead. (16%)

Our all time acceptance rate is 35.7%.

Followers

Below is the social media following we had at the end of June.

Patreon: 28 (-1)

Facebook: 1,985 (+11)

Twitter: 630 (+19)

Tumblr: 309 (+3)

Mailing List: 153 (+7)

Google+: 65 (+0)

Instagram: 126 (+9)

Traffic

Last three months:

June 2018: 1,899 visits, 1,271 users, 3,125 page views, peak day 109.
May 2018: 1,713 visits, 1,353 users, 2,512 page views, peak day of 82.
April 2018: 2,256 visits, 1,500 users, 3,871 page views, peak day of 110.

Last three Junes:

June 2017: 1,423 visits, 958 users, 2,808 pages views, peak day of 103 visits.
June 2016: 1,092 visits, 703 users, 1,907 page views, peak day of 59 visits.
June 2015: 1,180 visits, 844 users, 1,861 page views, peak day of 120 visits.

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Review of Mirror Bound by Rhiannon Held

Posted on August 1, 2018 by scarywhitegirl

Cover art for Mirror BoundMirror Bound (2018) is a stand-alone urban fantasy novel by MSJ alum Rhiannon Held. Breaking from the tropes of this genre, the story follows Verity, a non-human sidekick to a team of monster-fighting mages. Bound to the leader of that team by another mage, Verity struggles between belonging and independence.

Verity comes from a mirror realm, and denizens of that realm are invading the real world, also referred to as the “grounded” realm. She is bound to Dakota, a mage who leads a small team of other mages who are working to stop the monsters that are coming through from the mirror realm. When a new pair of mages arrive to help their cause, Verity finds herself far nearer to the center of attention than she’s comfortable with.

Telling this story from the perspective of the non-human sidekick of a team of monster hunters is a fun twist on what might otherwise be just another urban fantasy novel. Verity is an amazingly deep character, filled with great quirks and flaws, and seeing this “case” from her point of view really makes this a different sort of read. And Held’s storytelling is always enjoyable.

If you’re looking for urban fantasy with a twist, I think you’ll enjoy Mirror Bound!

The author provided us with a free copy of this novel in exchange for review consideration.

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An Interview with Jennifer Lee Rossman

Posted on July 31, 2018 by scarywhitegirl

Author Jennifer Lee RossmanToday, we’re chatting with Jennifer Lee Rossman, another of our Battling in All Her Finery authors!

DV: Tell us a bit about yourself!

Jennifer Lee Rossman: I’m an autistic, wheelchair-using sci-fi geek who cross stitches. So yes, I’m a *ton* of fun at parties.

DV: What inspired you to write “The Leximancer’s Rebellion” for Battling in All Her Finery?

JR: To be completely honest, I wrote the first version of this story for a different anthology, who rejected it. But the idea of women warriors and leaders really spoke to me. We need more non-men in positions of power, in stories and in real life, so I rewrote some parts to make Hope the leader I wanted to see in the world.

DV: I’ve seen at least one other author ask you what a Leximancer is. Can you explain that for our readers?

JR: A leximancer is someone who uses word magic, conjuring images and objects by writing about them. It’s a fantastical idea, but not altogether fantasy. Words do have an amazing amount of power for such tiny, meaningless scribbles.

DV: Your story has a bit of a post-apocalyptic vibe to it, but the details of the apocalypse aren’t something your protagonist examines in great detail. Can you tell us more about it, or is that a secret?

JR: It’s not a secret so much as it’s a mystery to me, haha. Sometimes the story gives me a lot of backstory, other times it goes “nah, you’re on your own.” I know aliens came to Earth, and I know they took over. Beyond that, I have no idea. But it was probably a lot like the show Falling Skies, just with less Noah Wylie.

DV: What’s on the horizon for you?

My time travel novella Anachronism is now available from Kristell Ink, an imprint of Grimbold Books, and I’m the assistant editor of Love & Bubbles, a queer anthology of romance under the sea (or, as my mom describes it, “something about gay mermaids”). You can follow me on my blog jenniferleerossman.blogspot.com and Twitter @JenLRossman.

Thanks, Jennifer!

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A Record of Android M14DA3-Y2015’s Last Week in Headquarters

Posted on July 30, 2018 by Mad Scientist Journal

As told by Employee ID 3583002, transcribed by Teo Yi Han
Art provided by America Jones

T minus four days

All the way to work I debated with myself and changed my mind about once approximately every five minutes:

Ask her for a photo together

Don’t do something so ridiculous, please

What do you have to lose at this stage

She is going to stare at me, uncomprehendingly, and it is going to make me feel bad that I’ve done something out of convention that she has not been programmed to respond to, that my behavior is out of human average again.

I tossed the options in my mind one last time; they landed, heads up.

Don’t care, I thought, don’t care what she thinks, don’t care.

Even if she thought me weird, I would still have my photo.

She wasn’t at her usual place when I walked into our shared cubicle. I pulled out my phone and saw that the automatic message notification had been sent much earlier, in the midst of all the flip-flopping of decisions: one of her parts had malfunctioned, and she had been sent back for maintenance.

I didn’t even need to fret over it after all.

Later that morning, I was in the toilet cubicle, staring at the back of the door blankly. Someone was crying softly two cubicles down. Occasional soft sob and hiccup. Not even trying to hide. When I cry in the toilet at work, no sound is allowed to escape from my throat. I stayed still and silent so as not to disturb. I decided if I walked out and saw the person I would ask her, Are you okay? I would offer a hug.

I wondered if it was a colleague I knew.

I waited. The other person waited too. For me to leave.

So I did. I didn’t get to see who she was.

Art for "A Record of Android M14DA3-Y2015’s Last Week in Headquarters"

They said you’re not supposed to develop any feelings for androids. Androids were capable of a great deal in the workplace, far exceeding human capabilities. They were, however, incapable of returning any human feelings. This was their advantage here.

To read the rest of this story, check out the Mad Scientist Journal: Summer 2018 collection.

Employee ID 3583002 has learned not to fall in love with company made-to-order androids and will spend her spare time on dating sites looking for human males or females to date instead. She has made great strides towards reducing the incidences of alternatively crying and cursing at any complex piece of technology. Please send any potential dating partners (HUMANS ONLY!) her way.

Teo Yi Han is a Singaporean policy analyst with a degree in psychology who struggles with policy writing by day and narrative writing by night. One of her stories won 1st prize in the Singapore 2015 Golden Point Award short story category, and others have been published in Southeast Asian anthologies such as FLESH:  A Southeast Asian Urban Anthology and This Is How You Walk On The Moon: An Anthology Of Anti-Realist Fiction.

AJ is an illustrator and comic artist with a passion for neon colors and queer culture. Catch them being antisocial on social media @thehauntedboy.

“A Record of Android M14DA3-Y2015’s Last Week in Headquarters” is © 2018 Teo Yi Han.
Art accompanying story is © 2018 America Jones.

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Strange Science: Flying Spiders

Posted on July 27, 2018 by scarywhitegirl

Warning, today’s post contains spiders.

Small spider in a circular web

Stephen C. Dickson (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_classic_circular_form_spider%27s_web.jpg) CC-by-sa-4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)

Young spiders often use strands of their silk to “balloon” from place to place, but scientists have recently discovered that spiders are also able to use electrical fields to travel vast distances, sometimes hundreds of miles.

Thunderstorms cause an electrical field that spans the globe, giving the upper atmosphere a positive charge. Meanwhile, the earth has a negative charge. When an earthbound spider releases some of its silk in order to balloon, it, too, has a negative charge. The two negatives repel one another, and the spider is launched into the air.

The scientists studying spider flight used a controlled environment in which the only changeable variable was whether an electrical field was turned on or off. When it was on, the spiders seemed to sense it, as that’s when they took flight.

To learn more about these flying spiders, you can check out recent articles at Huffington Post, The Atlantic, or Current Biology. There’s also a press release from Cell Press about this experiment.

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