Shining Moon Episode 28: Cozy Fantasy and Hopepunk

Hello, and welcome to Shining Moon episode 28, Cozy Fantasy and Hopepunk. I’m your host, Deborah L. Davitt. This week we’ll be having a conversation with M. E. (Mary) Garber, Susan Kaye Quinn, and John Wiswell.

 Itinerant writer M. E. Garber currently lives halfway between the Kennedy Space Center and Disney World, an ideal place for writing speculative fiction. When not writing, she’s often sipping tea, snapping pics, or tending orchids, sometimes all at once. Visit her online at  http://megarber.net or on Mastodon @megarber@wandering.shop

Susan Kaye Quinn is an environmental engineer/rocket scientist turned speculative fiction author who now uses her PhD to invent cool stuff in books. Her works range from hopepunk climate fiction to gritty cyberpunk to steampunk romance. Her short fiction can be found in DreamForge, Grist, Reckoning, and more. All her novels and short fiction can be found on her website: www.susankayequinn.com.

John Wiswell is a disabled writer who lives where New York keeps all its trees. He is a winner of the Nebula Award for Best Short Story for "Open House on Haunted Hill," and the Locus Award for Best Novelette for "That Story Isn't The Story." His fiction has been translated into ten languages. His debut novel, SOMEONE YOU CAN BUILD A NEST IN, is forthcoming from DAW Books and Jo Fletcher Books on April 2nd, 2024. He would like to hug a kaiju.

Stories featured on this episode:


M.E. Garber

“Two Letters Crossing Paths Through the FairyMail,” forthcoming in 99 Fleeting Fantasies anthology.

“The Giveaway Box,” First published in Abyss & Apex, Oct 2015.


Susan Kaye Quinn

"The Joy Fund," DreamForge, https://dreamforge.mywebportal.app/dreamforge/stories/show/the-joy-fund-susan-kaye-quinn


John Wiswell

“Open House on Haunted Hill,” Diabolical Plots #64A, June 15, 2020, 

https://www.diabolicalplots.com/dp-fiction-64a-open-house-on-haunted-hill-by-john-wiswell/

“The First Stop is always the Last” Flash Fiction Online, December 2017, https://www.flashfictiononline.com/article/first-stop/



“Found Day,” By Jennifer Campbell-Hicks, Daily Science Fiction, September 10th, 2015 https://dailysciencefiction.com/hither-and-yon/magic-realism/jennifer-campbell-hicks/found-day

“Laser Squid Goes House-Hunting,”by Douglas DiCicco Escape Pod 850 August 18, 2022. https://escapepod.org/2022/08/18/escape-pod-850-laser-squid-goes-house-hunting/ 

"Don't tell me that the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." -- Anton Chekov

Piano music for closure

Thank you for listening to Shining Moon! You can reach the host, Deborah L. Davitt, at the following social media platforms:

www.facebook.com/deborah.davitt.3

Bluesky: @deborahldavitt.bsky.social

www.deborahldavitt.com

Transcript

Deborah L. Davitt (00:01.186)
Hello and welcome to Shining Moon episode 28, Cozy Fantasy and Hope Punk. I'm your host, Deborah L. Davitt. This week we'll be having a conversation with M.E. Garber, Susan Kaye Quinn and John Wiswell. Itinerant writer M.E. Garber lives halfway between the Kennedy Space Center and Disney World, an ideal place for writing speculative fiction. When not writing, she's often sipping tea, snapping pics or tending orchids, not orchards, orchids. Sometimes all at once.

Visit her online at http or on Mastodon at emmigarber at wandering shop. Hello Mary, welcome to the podcast.

mary (00:41.895)
Hi Deborah, it's nice to be here. And yes, sometimes it feels like my orchids are an orchard of them. So you might've had it right.

Deborah L. Davitt (00:51.91)
Okay, how many of them do you have?

mary (00:55.796)
Don't ask.

Deborah L. Davitt (00:57.526)
HAHAHAHAHAHA

All right, I will save that and hope to maybe see some pictures online of them. Susan K Quinn is an environmental engineer slash rocket scientist, speculative fiction author who now uses her PhD to invent cool stuff in books. Her works range from hope punk climate fiction to gritty cyberpunk to steampunk romance. Her short fiction can be found in Dreamforge, Grist, Reckoning and more. All of her novels and short fiction can be found on her website www.susankquinn.com.

Hello, Susan, welcome back to the podcast. It's nice to speak with you today.

Susan Kaye Quinn (01:33.932)
It's nice to be back. Thanks.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:37.486)
And John Wiswell is a disabled writer who lives where Newark keeps all of its trees. He is a winner of the Nebula Award for Best Short Story for Open House on Haunted Hill, which we will be discussing today and it is one of my very favorite cozy stories. He has also won the Locus Award for Best Novelette for The Story, That Story Isn't the Story. His fiction has been translated into 10 languages. His debut novel, Someone You Can Build in Neston, is forthcoming from Daw Books and Joe Fletcher Books.
on April 2nd, 2024. He would like to hug a kaiju. Hello, John, it's nice to meet you in person at last.

John Wiswell (he/him) (02:13.97)
It's a pleasure to be here. Do you have any kaiju I can hug?

Deborah L. Davitt (02:18.488)
No, but I have a very fluffy cat who thinks he's a kaiju.

John Wiswell (he/him) (02:22.171)
Well, don't they all? Yeah, the brain of a kaiju within the body of a mascot.

Deborah L. Davitt (02:23.743)
Hehehehe

Deborah L. Davitt (02:28.074)
Well, this one's a Maine Coon, so he's a little more kaiju-esque than the other two, so.

John Wiswell (he/him) (02:32.086)
Hahaha

Deborah L. Davitt (02:34.11)
Certainly they think he is as he bounds towards them going, I want to be friends with you. And they go, no, you're not gonna be friends with us.


Deborah L. Davitt (02:46.67)
And dive right into our questions. What makes a story cozy and is there a distinction between cozy fantasy and hope punk? And I'm going to start with Mary since she's at the top of my screen. What do you think makes a story cozy and do you make any sort of distinction between cozy fantasy and hope?

mary (03:08.447)
For me, a cozy story is a story that affects like a single character or a small group only with some small change of a personal nature, some change of their mood or change in their understanding. It's not a big thing. It's not an external plot thing. It's an emotional.

thing more often. And a difference between that and hope punk. For me, hope punk, which I've tried to write hope punk before, and I just I can't. But hope punk for me, seems to be more of environmental, social or political themes, where the change in the story affects

Deborah L. Davitt (04:00.994)
Mm-hmm.

mary (04:05.391)
a greater level of society, either currently or in the future. Um, but so it, hope punk can be cozy, but cozy isn't necessarily hope punk, at least for me.

Deborah L. Davitt (04:08.578)
like that.

Deborah L. Davitt (04:20.558)
Okay, this reminds me very strongly of something we discussed in the very first episode of Shining Moon, which was our literary versus genre episode. And we were talking about how literary fiction, there's like five different definitions for literary but we're going to go with the one that I devolved most towards, which wasn't the qualitative one, but the one that talked more about what goes into literary magazines and general mainstream fiction these days.

It was, it did again focus on small changes, incremental changes, changes that were more of mood or of mind than of great socialist changes. So I'm going to turn to John. I'm going to say, sudden question out of the blue. What makes Cozy different than literary fiction?

John Wiswell (he/him) (05:14.094)
It's a very interesting question, especially with how nebulous literary fiction is. I like to read broadly. I love a lot of literary fiction. I love like Percival Everett, Everett and the Degas, Colson Whitehead. Like there are contemporary literary authors who are incredible. The relatively contemporary definition of literary fiction that I find tends to operate well in MFA classes and in places like the New Yorker.

Deborah L. Davitt (05:18.944)
Yes.

Deborah L. Davitt (05:22.76)
Mm-hmm.

John Wiswell (he/him) (05:41.462)
is literary fiction is using a character as a window into observations on life, not on progressing plot. In fact, literary fiction and let's call it genre fiction don't even agree what character driven fiction means. Character driven in genre fiction tends to mean the character's choices drive the plot. In literary fiction, character driven means this

Deborah L. Davitt (05:49.629)
Mm-hmm.

John Wiswell (he/him) (06:07.074)
story is built around using the character to understand the point of view on life. Those kinds of fiction don't operate the same. And so it's very interesting to see those allegedly literary ideas that have definitely existed within fantasy and science fiction for decades before now being recognized within the cozy, which is often deemed as the shallow. And it's not. Because cozy is often about

Deborah L. Davitt (06:32.937)
It's not!

John Wiswell (he/him) (06:36.882)
relief. When I think about cozy, it's drawing a blanket around myself when it's cold. If I draw a blanket around myself in the blazing summer, it's not a cozy afternoon for me. Cozy is about a specific kind of response to conflict, a response to pain. When I look at, like for me, the first cozy thing I ever encountered was murder, she wrote. Every episode, somebody f'ing dies.

Deborah L. Davitt (06:44.366)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (06:48.982)
Not so much now.

Deborah L. Davitt (07:07.071)
Hahaha!

John Wiswell (he/him) (07:08.338)
Everybody likes to spend an hour with Jessica Fletcher solving a murder. It just makes us want to. It goes to the present. Something like Becky Chambers' Psalm for the Wild Built is a cozy novella. However, it's also basically about an android talking somebody down from a suicide attempt. That is the attempt to bring some kind of compassion, some kind of warm heartedness, some kind of validation into...

Deborah L. Davitt (07:11.662)
Haha

John Wiswell (he/him) (07:34.666)
Circumstances that are heavy for us. And for me, I've noticed my career, I had been writing things that people called cozy for many years before my career took off. My career really took off in 2020 and 2021 when the abled world was suddenly having to live like disabled people during the pandemic. And people were desperate to feel a little better. Now I...

Deborah L. Davitt (07:56.915)
Mm-hmm.

John Wiswell (he/him) (08:02.29)
I'm used to living that way. I have lung problems. I have immunocompromised issues. So I'd already kind of adjusted and wrote out of an ethos that people found they really needed because they were bewildered and they needed some relief from what they were experiencing. The greatest gift I could give anybody is to write something like that.

Deborah L. Davitt (08:08.093)
Mm-hmm

John Wiswell (he/him) (08:25.566)
And yet I came up from a literary tradition. You know, I went to college where they thought that Louis Lamour was terrible in Stephen King-Ruined Fiction. And I love the literary, but, and here, I know this isn't the literary episode, but literary fiction has a funny tradition, because if all classics are literary, there's a lot of plot in Mark Twain. There's a lot of plot in John Steinbeck.

Deborah L. Davitt (08:33.75)
Hehehehe

Deborah L. Davitt (08:51.274)
Yes there is!

John Wiswell (he/him) (08:55.026)
Now, those stories have very powerful character, but they show that you can have characters that reveal things about our lives to us in journeys of plot. And so, Cozy often says, how can I render this accessible, this revelation of what we're going through in a way that doesn't challenge somebody who's too tired to be challenged right now? They say, I read broadly, you know, like the Cozy fiction that people like from me,

Deborah L. Davitt (09:04.784)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (09:20.62)
Mm-hmm.

John Wiswell (he/him) (09:24.054)
is often because I read a ton of gut-wrenching horror, and I was like, that's great. I've ate that and I will now puke rainbows for you and you will all enjoy the bite. Oh, because that's just the way that I roll. Like I was raised by horror. All of my fight scenes have horror DNA in them, but it's this mash. So I do think you're really onto something with the similarities in the observation of the personal that exists within Cozy and also within literary.

Deborah L. Davitt (09:27.937)
Hehehehe

Deborah L. Davitt (09:32.802)
Hahaha!

Deborah L. Davitt (09:54.99)
Right? I'm going to turn a little bit to, I'm going to sort of edge towards the Hope punk with Susan here because you do a lot of environmental fiction and you can talk a little bit more about how we talked about Hope punk as well as solar punk on the environmental fiction episodes. Where does Hope punk bring the punk into being?

Susan Kaye Quinn (10:20.043)
I think Hope Punk is, first of all, I love the small TED talk that we just got from John, because now I actually understand what cozy fantasy is, and I'm pretty excited about that. So I'm like, hmm, okay, how does Hope Punk differentiate and compare and contrast there? Definitely Hope Punk comes in with a little bit of that relief element.

Deborah L. Davitt (10:26.347)
Yes!

Deborah L. Davitt (10:33.098)
Hahaha

Susan Kaye Quinn (10:47.571)
Certainly the cozy hope punk, which is not all hope punk, that is like one tenth of the hope punk is also of the cozy varietal. So, and that brings, but the concept of hope punk is essentially a rebuke against the brutality of the status quo. It says, no, we don't need to be brutal. We don't need to like fight with our fists. We're going to fight with radical compassion.

Deborah L. Davitt (10:53.617)
Mm-hmm

Yes.

Deborah L. Davitt (11:08.327)
Mm-hmm.

Susan Kaye Quinn (11:17.075)
We're gonna love you to pieces. And occasionally we might get in a fist fight if we have to punch a Nazi or something like that. But like, for the most part, it's very focused on care, healing, cooperative. And so those words don't like automatically trigger punk. Okay, because punk has this sort of rep for being the guy.

Deborah L. Davitt (11:39.612)
Mm-hmm.

Susan Kaye Quinn (11:43.919)
with the leather jacket and the bar beating up on the Nazis. Okay, but I can't think of anything more punk than to reject all of the brutality of the world. And there have been, especially since the pandemic, there's been some, but even prior to that, there've been some sort of social movements, like the laying down movement that came originally out of China, but kind of spread.

Deborah L. Davitt (12:12.346)
Mm-hmm.

Susan Kaye Quinn (12:13.275)
I don't know if you guys are familiar with that, but it's like this Gen Z class that just is absolutely opting out. They're like, no, I'm going to do nothing because what you ask of me, world, is so brutal. It is so soul destroying. I would rather literally just lay down in my bedroom and do nothing. It's this radical rejection. And I see HopePunk having threads of that.

Deborah L. Davitt (12:15.434)
A little bit, yes.

Susan Kaye Quinn (12:42.439)
That's a very inactive level of rejection. But the idea of opting out of like, no, I'm not gonna be driven by money and status and class and greed and the grind. And I'm going to choose to live a different way. Or we're gonna in story land, we're gonna choose to tell stories in a different way that resolves things with compassion rather than violence among other.

Deborah L. Davitt (13:05.345)
Mm-hmm.

Susan Kaye Quinn (13:11.887)
choices that are made in there. So Cozy has an aspect to that. It's almost like a reverence for the idea of like, we all would like to wrap up in that blanket and just have a nice world, but it's not quite like that yet. So apparently we've got to go to the barricades for a little while. Why not? But then, then we're going to have our Cozy set.

Deborah L. Davitt (13:33.82)
I love the distinction. Then we're going to sit down and have some tea. There we go. All right. Mary, I'm going to swing back to you, and I'm going to ask a question of all of you, but I'm going to start with you. What do you enjoy most about writing cozy fiction?

mary (13:38.667)
Thanks for watching!

Susan Kaye Quinn (13:38.863)
Yes, absolutely.

mary (13:52.115)
Oh, I think the thing I enjoy most about writing it is actually the glow of emotion that I get from completing a story that makes me and hopefully the reader happy. It's simply that. I'm looking to evoke a small kernel of

happiness, a little glow of joy in the reader. And actually by writing it, I get the same thing. I get that moment of happiness. And for me at least, it's made doubly effective when someone else reads it and says, oh my gosh, I love that story. Somebody read one of my stories once and said, oh, that story.

John Wiswell (he/him) (14:32.354)
Thank you.

mary (14:49.463)
It just what I needed. It felt like a warm hug. And I'm like, oh, yay. And so now it's like, yeah, we've just shared a hug, even though we're far, far away. So for me, the best thing about it is being able to share that feeling with other people and getting it myself at the same time. It's the past few years have been really rough, let's face it, for everybody. And anything I can do to make the world a little kinder and gentler, A-okay.

Deborah L. Davitt (14:52.639)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (15:19.934)
I have left that comment on people's stories before because usually I don't know how much I needed that story until I've read it and then I've gone, I really needed that. I'm gonna shout out to Carol Scheine, who is a wonderful author and she writes a lot of cozy, but she also writes just fiction that doesn't necessarily cozy overtly, but it always has that warmth to it. And I always feel like I have gotten something that I needed after I've...

read one of her stories. So I'm going to shout out to her and I'm going to turn to John and I'm going to say, what do you like best about writing cozy fiction?

John Wiswell (he/him) (15:58.486)
So here's where I admit that I have never sat down intending to write a cozy story. I just happened to have done it several dozen times. And when I look back on the cozy fiction that I've written, or the things that people call cozy, the thing that I have loved most that's the common denominator among them is that I got to go deep with characters within stories where who they were was the point of the story.

Deborah L. Davitt (16:03.69)
Hahaha.

Deborah L. Davitt (16:25.389)
Mm-hmm.

John Wiswell (he/him) (16:25.642)
not necessarily their change. Sometimes it is what they needed to change into, whether they knew it or not, whether it was they were grappling with the themes that I was grappling with or not. But that a cozy story is often on the terms of the character going through it to the point where you can construct a narrative that interests someone purely based on, character X needs this. And I know we'll talk about it later, but like open house on Haunted Hill.

The stakes are the house would like someone to live in it. That's it. There's no, and that will destroy the Dark Lord. That would be a very, it's a strange sequel. And I tend to like to write stories about people figuring out the small details of their lives that reflect on who they want to be. And that's what changes things from I went to the store to a story about going to the store, you have to tell.

Deborah L. Davitt (17:00.087)
Hehehe

Deborah L. Davitt (17:06.546)
Yeah

John Wiswell (he/him) (17:24.726)
because you changed that day. You met somebody that day that reminded you of something about yourself you forgot was there. That's the deeply meaningful thing that a year from now you still remember, even though you go to the store over and over again. And I find that in my cozy fiction, that tends to be what's resonated with people, is these are stories, sometimes of validation, and sometimes challenging who you are and helping you find who you should be, who you want to be, and got away from.

Deborah L. Davitt (17:25.278)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (17:53.884)
Mm-hmm.

John Wiswell (he/him) (17:53.886)
And sometimes, you know, it could be a flash where it's just like, oh, that's how I got back on the rails. Cause we've all fallen off of the rails and that's just very deeply helpful to have models to try to return to it. So that's, that's been my favorite thing.

Deborah L. Davitt (18:02.463)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (18:08.494)
Oh, that is a lovely thing to think of because I very often find myself writing about people who have not just fallen off the rails, but basically have finally looked up from how the deeply rutted track that they have worn themselves into. And they realize that they've basically wound up underground. And then I find myself writing how you get out from under that ground, how you get back up to ground level and how you live your life again after you discovered that.

John Wiswell (he/him) (18:25.078)
Okay.

Deborah L. Davitt (18:36.834)
this is not where I meant to be. So I love that sort of story. Susan, what do you like best about writing Hope Punk and Cozy? What gives you the most affirmation from doing this?

Susan Kaye Quinn (18:55.231)
Um, first say I don't write a lot of cozy, like what I would necessarily tag as cozy again because I think of that as just sort of a sub component of what the larger thing is that I'm doing. And I guess that larger thing is I'm trying to, or, you know, making attempts at, let's put it that way, subverting some of what the expectations are for how we're going to be telling these stories. Like I'm not.

Deborah L. Davitt (19:07.379)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (19:22.89)
Yes.

Susan Kaye Quinn (19:23.087)
Instead of hero's journey, I'm writing heroine's journey. And if you're writing that kind of story, then you're writing something that's about healing from a very explicit standpoint. It's not like we're gonna write characters who are not gonna be starting in the gutted rut, which is more like, you know, a more classic arc of how your character will start out, which is not to say that my characters don't have, you know,

obstacles and tragic backstories and things like that. But it's more like we're gonna come at it with like, okay, but if we could have a world that operated just at baseline at some higher level of better than what we are at right now. Like let's go a few steps down the road. Everything's not great, but like we've fixed a couple things at least, and we're working on the rest. And what kind of like,

Deborah L. Davitt (19:53.998)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (20:08.655)
Yes.

John Wiswell (he/him) (20:09.625)
Yes.

mary (20:17.607)
Thanks for watching!

Deborah L. Davitt (20:20.11)
Mm-hmm.

Susan Kaye Quinn (20:22.039)
I recently was teaching some kids, I was guesting into a classroom to teach climate fiction. And these are ninth graders. So I don't know about y'all, but I love kids of every age, but the teens especially are just so fun. So anyway, there's brilliant little kids. And one of the things I told them is like, I don't write about climate change, I write about how we have to change. You know, so what do we have to change into?

Deborah L. Davitt (20:48.301)
Mm-hmm.

Susan Kaye Quinn (20:51.703)
what are the models that remind us of our humanity and how we can be with each other? And write those, put those characters in motion in like a difficult situation. And I feel like when I'm writing that, I'm trying to bring those hope-hunt qualities into the story that, again, are anti-capitalist and are rejecting the brutality of the world.

and say, you know, we could have it this way. You know, how about that? There are options. There are other options.

Deborah L. Davitt (21:22.053)
Mm-hmm

Deborah L. Davitt (21:26.114)
There are options, there are options. Look at all the wonderful things I have for you. All right, so that's the end of our question segment. So we're gonna move into talking about your work individually and then together, obviously. We're gonna start with Mary, and her first story is two letters crossing paths through the fairy mail, which is forthcoming in the 99 fleeting fantasies in Thoughtlogy.

Susan Kaye Quinn (21:35.056)
So.

Deborah L. Davitt (21:56.278)
So everybody check that out when that arrives on Amazon and other fine book sellers everywhere. And this ultra short story of just 680 words, a very traditional fairy godmother and a very modern teenager agree sideways to let each other go. And while there are things that the girl will miss about her fairy godmother, such as, you know, being able to float through the air with the greatest of ease as she slams a basketball home,

into the rim, they both believe that she's old enough to make decisions and grow on her own, though the godmother's letter of resignation is a little indignant and passive aggressive, and the girl's is a little more in-depth and shows greater insight than the fairy godmother seems to be capable of, which I thought was remarkable for the perspective of a 14-year-old. What gave you the inspiration for this story, Mary?

mary (22:51.315)
Well, this story was a fiction writing contest, and I was given a prompt, which was to invent a fictional friend or family member, write them a birthday or holiday letter about something that happened. And it just, yeah, I'm like, oh, geez, a fictional friend or family member? Mm.

Okay, a fairy godmother, sure. And it just turned, I'm like, oh my gosh. And I started thinking about my niece, who as a teenager and beyond was very goth and how that would go over so well with, you know, fairy godmothers and you know, boopty boop and pink bow ties and crinoline dresses and the whole, it's like, yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (23:20.814)
Hehehe

mary (23:48.061)
this would be something that would fail immediately. So it just came from that. And I had a lot of fun writing both sides of that.

Deborah L. Davitt (23:55.65)
Mm-hmm

Deborah L. Davitt (23:59.73)
Yeah, what I really liked about this is that it was both sides of the issue and they both came to a very civilized agreement that they were going to allow her to move on and grow up, which was a wonderful thing. You don't usually get to see that. You don't get to see that civilized agreement. There's always that, we have to make a stand and there are going to be two sides of the issue and there will never be agreement between them.

mary (24:20.843)
All right.

Deborah L. Davitt (24:29.29)
you're old enough to make up your own mind, I will leave, and no hard feelings. What is it about the story that made you think cozy when I asked you for examples of cozy?

mary (24:34.772)
Yep.

mary (24:41.583)
Um, I think it's cozy because the girl Raven is growing up and inhabiting herself as the change. And that moment is very small. Nothing terrible happens. Like you said, they come to this understanding mutually and kind of sideways, but it was very peaceable. And-

Deborah L. Davitt (24:49.832)
Mm-hmm.

mary (25:10.731)
it's kind of uplifting and cute. And at the end, you kind of feel good. And for me, that's like all the check marks of, yep, that's cozy. I feel like I'm happy after I read this. So.

Deborah L. Davitt (25:26.422)
Okay, fair enough. I was happy when I got to the end of it, so why not? Everybody else is nodding and smiling. So Susan, your story is The Joy Fund, which was a delight to read. This one was, this one is not the story you think is going to be for the first half because it has a hell of a sting in the tail, but it's not a twist ending. It's just

Deborah L. Davitt (25:53.302)
two halves of the story and they click together like a Swiss watch and it's beautifully done. So for the first half of the story, the protagonist, Verenda, is faced with a troubling mystery. He's somehow been given money in his account via a joy fund, a public program that's similar to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, in which money is donated by the state to those with a terminal illness, a genetic propensity for such an illness, or to the minor children of deceased parents.

He doesn't meet any of those criteria and he thinks that he'll get in trouble for having the money or using it on himself. So he and his roommate find places to donate the money, which accidentally makes him go viral as a good person who's also dying and thus people donate more money to his joy fund, making him more and more frantic to get rid of the money or at least confess that he's not dying.

In the second half of this story, he discovers that an AI has targeted him and a hundred other people with similar bequests in an ethical, or maybe unethical, experiment to see how humans would make use of the money, and now the AI would like to know if it should go public with its sapience. First of all, what gave you the inspiration for this story? And I want to talk to you about the structure and how this is definitely more of a hope-punk story. I just want to know what gave you the starting point for this.

Susan Kaye Quinn (27:10.847)
I have a very favorite podcast called Green Dreamer, which I highly recommend. It's very progressive. It's very out there with ideas, super nerdy and intellectual. It checks all of my boxes. And in one of the episodes, there was a guest who talked about an actual joy fund that she had been diagnosed with cancer and her friends came in and this wonderful community response and were supporting her.

And then as a second level to that, they set up a joy fund that people contributed to and they're like, this is not for chemo, this is not for groceries, this is for you to just go do something joyful because you need that. And I was like, I am in love with this concept, I have to write about this. So I started with that.

Deborah L. Davitt (27:54.795)
Interesting.

Deborah L. Davitt (28:02.306)
That is a beautiful concept.

Susan Kaye Quinn (28:04.143)
Yeah, I'm like, this is something I want to exist in reality. So I'll write it into a story. And then I was like, and now what if it went wrong? Like not wrong wrong, but like the wrong person got it. And like, somehow it became a comedy and that, that sometimes is how I access my cozier side is through humor. Because I think humor is we, we kind of open up.

Deborah L. Davitt (28:16.374)
Hahaha

Deborah L. Davitt (28:29.073)
Mm-hmm

Susan Kaye Quinn (28:34.075)
a little bit and we're willing to embrace things.

Deborah L. Davitt (28:36.77)
humor is the antithesis of grimdark.

John Wiswell (he/him) (28:39.074)
Thank you.

Susan Kaye Quinn (28:39.748)
It really is. It really is.

Deborah L. Davitt (28:42.918)
You have to have an open mind for humor. You have to be open to ideas for humor. And Grimdark has but one beat and it goes on and on and on. That doesn't mean that it can't be well done. It's just that I'm particularly tired of it myself. So that is my bias and I own it.

Susan Kaye Quinn (28:55.835)
Yes.

Susan Kaye Quinn (29:05.819)
I hear ya, I hear ya. So that's where the idea came from, but then it kind of quickly went off and did its own thing. So.

Deborah L. Davitt (29:15.878)
All right. I think that with its focus on systems and finance as an ethical behavior and how we can be good to one another and how we can be good to an AI and things like that, it is clearly a hope punk story. So I'm not going to ask you about that. I'm going to ask you about the structure because this is something that we often do on Shining Moon is we put a highlight on what we do as authors. It is split down the middle, almost 100 percent

between the monkey's paw part of the story and the, how do we deal with this AI that has suddenly appeared on the scene? And how do we treat the AI as ethically as another human? Because the first half of the story is, how do we deal with the ethical quandary of suddenly having money that isn't ours? And then the second half of the story is, how do we deal with an AI ethically? And it's a beautifully balanced piece in that regard. And I was wondering how you came

Deborah L. Davitt (30:15.683)
Did it just flow naturally or did you think of this ahead of time or how did you structure this? Just talk to me about that.

Susan Kaye Quinn (30:23.483)
My process, very often with short stories, starts with a concept like the Joy Fund and like the guy and his roommate who got it incorrectly. And then where do you go from there? So in some ways, I do just kind of go with it and just write through it and see where it goes. And I got about three quarters of the way through and I was at a friend's house, a writer friend, having a little mini retreat. And I'm like...

Deborah L. Davitt (30:43.883)
Mm-hmm.

Susan Kaye Quinn (30:52.703)
I don't know what happens next. Like I got stuck. What happens here? And I was like three quarters of the way through and I'm like, there's gotta be some reason why he got the money. And I don't know what it is yet. And so at that point I had to stop writing and then go back and think about what am I really doing with this story? What are the greater themes of the story? What am I trying to say with it? And that's where I came up with the rest of the idea.

Deborah L. Davitt (30:55.524)
Hahaha!

Deborah L. Davitt (31:13.833)
Mm-hmm.

Susan Kaye Quinn (31:21.199)
and then had to go back and weave it all in and do all the writer tricks to make it be a seamless story or like, you know, make sense, be logically consistent and all that kind of stuff. And I did like the, as you're saying, there's sort of two different pieces of ethics. You know, here's, he's not really trying to do the right thing. He's trying to just avoid the wrong thing. He's trying to like,

Deborah L. Davitt (31:25.454)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (31:43.039)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (31:50.006)
Yes!

Susan Kaye Quinn (31:51.319)
the consequences of like this thing and I'm cursed and like he kind of freaks out and models all of our behaviors when we're freaking out and we're not being like compassionate, rational people. And oddly enough, the thing that triggers that for him is seeing there's this other entity who's like, I did this thing and it was unethical.

Deborah L. Davitt (32:03.054)
Mm-hmm.

Susan Kaye Quinn (32:18.851)
And I know it's unethical, but I'm also afraid because if I go public with being an AI, like I've heard, I've read the stories. They're gonna shut me down. And like, it was him and his friend who is like the straight man for all of that, seeing someone else in that same kind of quandary that sort of brings down the temperature. And he's like, oh.

Deborah L. Davitt (32:28.298)
Hahaha

Susan Kaye Quinn (32:45.855)
Okay, I can approach this now from more of a compassionate standpoint for this other being, but also myself.

Deborah L. Davitt (32:53.058)
from a psychological standpoint, he's also dealing with less stress cortisol on the forebrain when he's dealing with somebody else's problem. When he's dealing with his own problem, he's locked out of his front brain processes completely. So, and I think that the story models that very well. All right, we're gonna turn to John now with Open House on Haunted Hill, which has lasted with me since I first read it in diabolical plots in June of 2020.

Susan Kaye Quinn (33:06.611)
Great.

Susan Kaye Quinn (33:10.151)
Thank you.

Deborah L. Davitt (33:22.234)
I was so pleased to read it again for this episode. This story inverts horror tropes, landing them firmly on their head. A house is haunted, but in the gentlest possible way. When its last full-time owner died, it was because they chose to decline hospice care and spent their final months listening to the rain on the shingles of their house. And the house conducted that sound like a symphony for them. Now the house desperately needs a new family, and one is delivered to it in the form of a widowed father who's skeptical about ghosts. He runs a podcast about it, in fact.

and his four-year-old daughter who absolutely believes that her dead mother is still with her. And he firmly tells her that she's not, she's not, she's not, she's not. Yes, she is, dad. The house accidentally takes the locket with the image of the dead mother in it. And when the father returns with his daughter to look for the locket, the father sees more possibilities in the house than he did before and begins talks with the realtor to buy it. The house will have a family, the family will have a home. Perhaps just, perhaps at some point in the future, the skeptic.

John Wiswell (he/him) (34:02.306)
Thanks for watching!

Deborah L. Davitt (34:21.218)
will even become a believer. What gave you the... Obviously you talk a little bit on the diabolical plot site about what gave you the inspiration for the story, but I'd like to hear it out loud in your own words for everybody to hear on the podcast. What gave you the inspiration for this story, please, John?

John Wiswell (he/him) (34:39.214)
My pleasure, yeah. This story idea was an example I gave to a group of writers for why I don't write horror. I was trying to explain that I love horror, and I read it all the time, and I watch it all the time. But if you made me write a story about a haunted house, it'd be about a really nice haunted house that just wanted somebody to come live in it. And then all of these writers were terrible people, and they all said, please write that. I was like, no, that was an example of why I don't write that. And

Deborah L. Davitt (34:46.318)
Hehehehe

Deborah L. Davitt (34:58.626)
Hehehehe

Deborah L. Davitt (35:07.383)
Hahaha.

John Wiswell (he/him) (35:07.674)
Over and over again, people are like, oh, yeah, you should definitely write that. And so on the train ride home from World Fantasy, I started writing it. It was such a fun experiment. I was at that point in my career where I started to write more non-human points of view, which is something I love doing. I love animal points of view, and I love supernatural creature points of view. And what are those things that don't exist in our world?

Deborah L. Davitt (35:26.3)
Mm-hmm.

John Wiswell (he/him) (35:34.938)
tell us about the way we think, the way we're insecure, and what we deny about ourselves. The house, of course, to some degree has a relationship with parenting, right? The skeptic, by the way, does not need to become a believer in the same way that your children don't need to understand you. They need to grow up to be safe. And that's the reciprocal relationship, or not the reciprocal actually, it's the tessellating relationship. The house just wants to help the father, the father just wants to help the daughter, the daughter wants to be a dinosaur, which that's her fault.

Deborah L. Davitt (35:39.854)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (35:52.779)
Yes.

Deborah L. Davitt (36:04.308)
That's another story entirely.

John Wiswell (he/him) (36:08.464)
So that's where that story came from. I just love horror. But horror has, I think, a bad rap for being a callous, brutal, awful genre. And it is all of those things, but it's also the antithesis of all of those things. Horror cares, the greatest horror cares very profoundly about its characters. Now sometimes it then takes that caring in a way to break their hearts in ways that no other genre can.

Deborah L. Davitt (36:24.457)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (36:28.973)
Mm-hmm.

John Wiswell (he/him) (36:33.654)
But in a lot of times, it's holding space for truth. And that's why I have never been able to walk away from horrors because horror is where I feel home. The thing is that when I write it, it doesn't come out. That caring, that compassion doesn't come out the same way because I have my composition. I don't feel like I'm at odds with horror. Now, that story happens to not, I don't think that story is horror. It has some tropes people associate with.

Deborah L. Davitt (36:37.127)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (36:51.271)
No.

Deborah L. Davitt (36:55.842)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (37:03.371)
Yes.

John Wiswell (he/him) (37:03.614)
I have written horror stories since, which frankly, that story helped me get to a place where it's like, all right, let's actually engage with fear on the page. What, if that, if I can do loving connections, what are fearful connections through my lens? And so that story opened a lot of things up for me. I'm so glad I took a chance. And if anybody's listening, I would say, take a chance on the idea you don't think you can make work. You don't know what you'll unlock for yourself.

Deborah L. Davitt (37:29.658)
Exactly. That's a wonderful lesson to take away. I'm going to ask you a craft question, which is, what sort of revision path did this one face along the way? Or did it just turn out perfect first thing and sold the diabolical plots on its very first outing and there's nothing to be said about it? And or did it did it have a revision path?

John Wiswell (he/him) (37:51.618)
Sure. So, yeah, I'm always happy to talk about the business side of creation. It's weird that we are both salespeople and artists, but it's true. You're trying at some point to take the thing that you dug out of your own soul and get it to other people. It's a very strange experience. So I wrote this story on the train ride home and then more or less the two days that I was convalescing because with my disabilities, travel is very hard on me.

Deborah L. Davitt (38:01.316)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (38:08.701)
Mm-hmm.

John Wiswell (he/him) (38:19.766)
But I still kept wanting to like, I want to sit up and just write a little bit more of this daughter giving her dad a hard time. It's just really funny. Or just like, oh, I've got another idea for a way that the haunted house expresses emotion. And so it poured out of me and I mostly had the structure. I was surprised on the end of the first draft, every scene that needed to be there was there. There was nothing to cut. Some dialogue became smaller.

Deborah L. Davitt (38:20.319)
Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (38:25.816)
Hahaha

John Wiswell (he/him) (38:48.958)
some themes became simpler. The dad had 12 interests at first. What if he had like, this story is 3,000 words. What if he had an actual personality people could understand in a short story form. But it mostly came out whole which is a lucky thing. Sometimes stories are very hard to require. Many revision passes, many rewrites.

Deborah L. Davitt (39:01.352)
Yeah

John Wiswell (he/him) (39:11.914)
But I need to say, it did not then go on to sell to diabolical plots immediately. It was directed many times from many science fiction and fantasy magazines. It got a hold at one place that I'm not going to name, but otherwise I think it just got form rejections. And then diabolical plots. I don't think I've ever said this publicly before, but David Stephan won't mind if I say. David, diabolical plots actually rejected Open House on a Hot Hill. And then the next day.

I got an email from him being like, I think I made a mistake. I can't stop thinking about that house. I've never experienced that in my life. I was like, what? That can happen? That's legal? You can just un-reject the thing? But it was also very sweet. I think it speaks to the way that David is very passionate about the fiction that goes into Diabolical Plots. That if a story won't leave him alone, like it could happen. That doesn't mean everybody should be like.

Deborah L. Davitt (39:42.104)
Oh

Deborah L. Davitt (39:47.886)
Hehehehe

Deborah L. Davitt (39:59.544)
Yeah.

John Wiswell (he/him) (40:06.958)
I got a rejection, going to cash that check now. Like don't do that. Well, but it was very funny that like this story was so unlikely before it was published that it was rejected by the magazine that printed it. It was not the kind of story that was critically invoked back then. There were occasional stories like it in the short fiction world. You know, I was inspired to some degree by the long fiction of Martha Wells.

Deborah L. Davitt (40:09.59)
Hahaha

Deborah L. Davitt (40:27.283)
Mm-hmm.

John Wiswell (he/him) (40:36.886)
to be more emotionally resonant. And then some of the short fiction of Vinayajee Minprasad, particularly fandom for robots, which is a great story you can read for free on a candy magazine, which is basically about an AI that's lonely, so it tries to write fanfic to build community, which is very, it is a delight. Vinayajee Minprasad, all bangers. I don't think there's anything by Vinayajee Minprasad that's not a ten out of ten. But anyway.

But there weren't that many stories in that vein. There are more now. And so most magazines are just like, I don't see why anybody would want this. Which of course is funny because then it went on to be, let's say, somewhat successful. It was my first nomination. It was my first nomination in 12 years for any award whatsoever. And it was nominated for almost all of the awards. It was very fun to be a 12-year path to an overnight success.

Deborah L. Davitt (41:32.586)
Hahaha

John Wiswell (he/him) (41:34.818)
But it was so wonderful to see so many people, whether they were like hardcore horror people who were like, this is for the people who think they could live in a haunted house. And then there's a bunch of people who are like, I hate horror, except this one. That's very funny to see everybody see some part of themselves in it. But it was an unexpected path. And to this day, I think it's the most read story on diabolical plots, which, you know, like to some degree you can say it's my craft, but to some degree,

Susan Kaye Quinn (41:46.013)
Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (41:46.358)
Hahaha!

John Wiswell (he/him) (42:03.35)
David took a chance on that story. And a lot of the time when you're creating these stories that are creating space for stories that are emotional and soft or contemplative like that, you're taking a chance on your audience caring more than they've been given credit elsewhere. And so I'm still so very grateful. He didn't do anything for my novel, but like I had to put him in the acknowledgement. So like David.

Deborah L. Davitt (42:05.175)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (42:20.373)
Yes.

John Wiswell (he/him) (42:31.478)
But yeah, so that's the saga of Open House on Haunted Hill. And I would also just last note is if you are struggling, like just keep submitting and write the next thing while you're submitting. Because it was not my first sale. It was not my tenth sale. But it was also not my 600th rejection. All right, like I worked to get there and I didn't stop. And it's a

Deborah L. Davitt (42:44.466)
Yes, yes, absolutely yes.

John Wiswell (he/him) (42:58.786)
It's very easy to become discouraged. It's very easy to think like, I can't take this anymore. Take the night off, but like give yourself the chance the next day to keep expressing yourself because you don't know. It could be your 10th submission of the same story finds the right market. It could be your 10th story that outshines all the previous nine, but just give yourself a chance.

Deborah L. Davitt (43:21.426)
One of the things that social media does a really poor job on is not showing people the downside of fiction writing, because I'm guilty of it. I only post about the, okay, I signed a contract because I don't really think it's relevant to write down every time I get a rejection. I just had a story sell this week that had been rejected 21 times before.


Deborah L. Davitt (43:48.542)
And that would get, it's been accepted and then I signed the contract at Lightspeed. So yeah, 21 times before it has gone into the breach. 22nd time I said, okay, well, maybe Lightspeed will like it. I don't know. And they did. So just keep submitting. Learn a little bit each time, but if you believe in a story, keep submitting it, give it a chance, be patient with it.

John Wiswell (he/him) (44:13.762)
Yeah. I try with my little podium to go on social media and announce my shortcomings. It's funny because you want to build yourself up so that you're a brand or whatever. But earlier this month I was like, hey, first rejection. I'm not happy about it, but you should know that happens. And I used to every month do my submission stats of I have this many stories out, I've had this many rejected, I've had this many accepted. And of course,

John Wiswell (he/him) (44:42.67)
rejected number is always higher than the accepted number. I think there's one year of my career where that wasn't the case. And I fell off only because I've written left short fiction, because I've been nose to the grindstone writing novels lately. But I wound up, because people were buzzing about it, I was like, all right, whatever. I'm going to go into my files. And I recently collated everything from 2023. And I still had more rejections than I had acceptances. So yeah, it's, it,

Deborah L. Davitt (44:55.625)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (45:08.458)
Hehehehehehe

John Wiswell (he/him) (45:12.266)
we could do a better job of normalizing and demystifying this, that it is not, you write a story and then you get a check for a million dollars and you're done for, you know, you're good for us.

Deborah L. Davitt (45:17.143)
Yes.

Deborah L. Davitt (45:22.194)
Yeah, and then you get the movie rights and then everybody hates it because the movie is completely different than the book and blah di blah. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't happen that way. It really doesn't. But back to cozy fantasy. "The giveaway box" is by Mary and it was first published in Abyss and Apex in October of 2015 making it one of our oldest stories on the podcast is another

John Wiswell (he/him) (45:34.811)
Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (45:49.85)
Ultra short story of just 695 words, but it packs so much into a short space. A woman who's gone through an ugly separation from an abusive partner visits a garage sale and finds a mug that reads, best friend on it, and wishes it true, reaching for the magic that used to be hers, except she has nothing left to give in exchange for the gift of a friend. She cuts her finger on the mug by accident, giving her own blood to the working, and the woman giving the mug away suggests that they should get to know each other better.

It's a small, simple story in which she escapes mentally from the still stifling psychic presence of her ex and reaches for a better future. It is so simple, but it is so effective. And I really enjoyed reading it. What gave you the inspiration for the story, Mary?


mary (46:34.739)
Well, this was another contest story. And amazingly, the prompt for this was the title, the giveaway box. And I saw that title and it just spoke to me. It's one of those things, in human terms, I am not a big believer in love at first sight, but in title, yes, it's like...

Deborah L. Davitt (46:44.757)
Mmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (47:02.1)
Yes.

mary (47:05.359)
Oh, that is my title. Yes, I am writing. I just, and yeah, I just took that title immediately. And then I had to stop and think, well, what is this giveaway box? Like something bad comes out of it? Something wonderful comes out of it. Now giveaway box is used to discard non-useful things.

Deborah L. Davitt (47:33.686)
Hmm hmm.

mary (47:35.203)
And like, oh yeah, people put them in yard sales and they throw their junk in it, you know? Like, yeah, take this stuff, we don't care. And as soon as I got that image of the yard sale and the non-useful things, literally I started writing and this doesn't happen often, but the story came out almost in one piece, almost exactly as it was published.

Deborah L. Davitt (48:05.09)
Very nice.

mary (48:05.187)
Um, it does not happen often at all. It's usually. Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (48:09.103)
I love it when it happens, that mental click when you get to the end and you go, yep, that was it.

mary (48:15.591)
Yeah, and there was a point where I had to stop and go, oh, okay, where am I going at this point? But it just came out and those kinds of stories for me are just such a difference from the like, oh my gosh, stop, back, forth, back, forth, rewrite 30 million times, nope, this is still not quite clear enough, nope, change this, nope, this. But it was just...

A lovely thing to write this one.

Deborah L. Davitt (48:49.582)
And absolutely this one is cozy and not hope punk. It revolves around a simple sea change in someone's mental state and reaching for community, which is a big thing that we talked about in the solar punk and environmental fiction episodes. So you can see there are connections between the genres. There are little web connections going every which way. We're going to turn back to Sam.

And we're going to talk about his second story, which is the last the first stop is always the last and flash fiction online December of 2017. And this story, this narration style is almost as much of a protagonist as Selma, the bus driver, starting and stopping crick-sautically, rewinding and starting again, as the second character is revealed to be the daughter of time himself. And she's just leaving his funeral forced to pick up his job where he left it off. The story is about grief and moving on with what needs to be done in the face of it.

It is a wonderful story. And the narration style is so effective and it draws you on through the story as you go from one brief section to the next section to the next longer section. It's structured like certain songs I have heard sung and it is really interesting. So what gave you the inspiration for this story?

John Wiswell (he/him) (50:15.706)
I like time loop stories. I like Groundhog Day. And I always wondered what those stories are like for everybody who doesn't know they're in a time loop, who's not in charge, who's not the protagonist in the time loop. I like to find out what are the internal lives of characters who are treated as disposable by their authors. And in this case, yes, Selma is not the goddess of time. Selma.

Deborah L. Davitt (50:20.686)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (50:28.971)
Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (50:37.825)
Hehehehe

John Wiswell (he/him) (50:43.038)
You know, Selma has a route to run. She is here for a job. And she gradually comes to realize that something is up with the one passenger, even though she can't experience the deja vu. It's the other person who she's talking to, the one woman on the bus who she winds up flirting with, who has the power, who is the special one. But she's stuck. And to some degree, it was about.

mary (50:53.419)
Thanks for watching!

John Wiswell (he/him) (51:11.71)
wanting to be the kind of person who can help somebody get unstuck. You don't need to be able to control the cosmos to open that sort of thing up for somebody else. In fact, by setting a mood, you almost have a greater power and charisma than you do by controlling the hands of time. And so that was the relationship between the mundane and the supernatural. It's always fun to explore. And then there was also just the desire

to watch somebody trying to get their meet-cute right, and then realizing that you can't do it on purpose. That chemistry isn't something you forge. And that actually your best chance to meet somebody who could actually care about you is to be yourself and to own your mistakes. And ownership of mistakes is a thing. It is a thing in time-loot fiction, because nobody likes it. Everybody's kind of like,

Deborah L. Davitt (51:44.333)
Ha ha!

Deborah L. Davitt (52:01.517)
Mm-hmm.

John Wiswell (he/him) (52:09.818)
I'd hate to be trapped in Groundhog Day, but maybe two or three shots in a day would be kind of nice. Like, just let me know who I'm gonna talk to, like who I'm gonna be, like who might be on the other side of my front door when I'm picking my nose and just grabbing it and walking through. Like, what simple things can I avoid? Yeah, so that's where that came from. I would say Groundhog Day, and then also there's a wonderful Japanese film by...

Deborah L. Davitt (52:14.967)
hahahaha

Deborah L. Davitt (52:26.538)
Hehehehe

Yeah.

John Wiswell (he/him) (52:39.722)
Mamoru Hosoda called The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, which is a movie entirely about a girl who has the ability to rewind time and just use it for the reasons that a 16 year old would. It's like, oh my God, that boy confesses he likes me. I'm not ready for this. Rewind and avoid him. Like I thought we were friends. Oh God. I know I can nail this dive in gym class if I just do this again.


John Wiswell (he/him) (53:09.266)
And I am enamored with that film. Oh, so Mammerhood is amazing. And obviously the people who made Grand Hawk Day is amazing. But those notions of putting the very small mundane things at the core of the time loop is what draws me in. And of course, that's why my little story is Coatesy, is because it's about sussing out what we want to do on the personal level, not the cosmic level. We don't see how she goes and holds the office of godhood. We just know that they have a date lined up at the end of it.

Deborah L. Davitt (53:21.427)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (53:30.699)
Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (53:38.41)
That actually, since you defined it specifically as cozy, I'm gonna flip that around. I'm gonna ask you, since this is about changing one person's outlook in a solitary moment of, well, time, would you consider the story literary? Why or why not?

John Wiswell (he/him) (53:54.366)
I'll say when I wrote it, it didn't, it felt like I was playing with a literary form, of course, because rewinding and prose is much less common than refrains and song. But the characters to me felt very much like science fiction and fantasy characters. And if a literary reader says that those are literary characters, sweet. I'm happy to have landed for you. And of course, the great mileage of cozy and literary is,

Deborah L. Davitt (54:05.992)
Mm-hmm.

John Wiswell (he/him) (54:22.802)
Is it to you? But to me, it was operating within the tropes of science fiction and fantasy. I was trying to get at something meaningful between two people, which you could call literary, but I don't, I also don't think that meaningful relationships are the exclusive domain of literary fiction.

Deborah L. Davitt (54:24.62)
Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (54:45.054)
This is true. All right, this is where we're gonna turn and pivot to someone else's work because on Shining Moon, we try to lift up other people, not just the people who come on the podcast, but we are going to lift up two different people this time because the wonderful authors who are joining us today sent me so many wonderful stories that I couldn't pick. I just finally had to close my eyes and go, these two.

John Wiswell (he/him) (55:09.094)
I'm going to go to bed.

Deborah L. Davitt (55:09.23)
So one of them I had read before, which is Laser Squid Goes House Hunting by Douglas DiCicco, or DiCicco, I don't know how to say his last name, but we're going to handle him second. The first one we're going to do is Found Day by Jennifer Campbell Hicks, which appeared in Daily Science Fiction, September 10, 2015. In this short piece, everyone knows what they'll find on Found Day, a day so lucky that whatever you lost that you've most valued will be found over the course of it.

The narrator knows exactly what she's going to find, a stuffed toy from her childhood, except even with the help of an old friend with whom she's largely lost contact from the last year or so, the toy doesn't turn up. But the friendship, once nearly lost, is refound instead. I could personally see the turn, the twist ending coming from about the orbit of Pluto, because it wasn't much of a twist, but.

doesn't mean it's not a good story. It just means that it's well foreshadowed. And what did you guys like or dislike about the story? I'm sure that none of you actually disliked anything. So I'm going to start with Mary and say, what did you like about the story? What resonated with you or stayed with you or anything like that?

mary (56:24.147)
Well, one of the things I really liked about the story is that I, as the reader, like you said, could see quite clearly that what was going to happen, what was found was this friendship. It just took the protagonist a while longer to figure it out than the reader. And that's one of the things that I actually like, if it's well done in a story.

Deborah L. Davitt (56:52.292)
Mm-hmm.

mary (56:54.992)
I think the author on this did a nice job making it believable that she wouldn't catch on. And I liked watching as, you know, the day progressed and she finally figured out at the end, oh, I guess I found the thing I really needed after all, you know, connection, friendship. Okay. So I think that was my favorite.

Deborah L. Davitt (57:02.207)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (57:15.445)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (57:20.61)
Sometimes when you figure something out before the before the protagonist does, it's very frustrating. But this was it was just the right amount of lag for it not to be frustrating, but just to be comfortable. It felt like a pair of well worn in shoes to me. But that's me. John, what did you like or dislike about this story?

John Wiswell (he/him) (57:44.286)
Oh, well, I just hate having a good time, so I despised it. I structurally, of course, I saw where it was going. And that's a feature, that's not a bug. Part of cozy fiction is an invitation to the reader to have this experience. You are being handed some tropes at the beginning of the story and being told, like, trust me, this is gonna feel all right, and you're gonna...

Deborah L. Davitt (57:46.934)
Hehe

Deborah L. Davitt (57:58.248)
Yes.

Deborah L. Davitt (58:05.783)
Mm-hmm.

John Wiswell (he/him) (58:12.886)
feel a little better about your day by the end of it. And that is a promise that the story completely fulfills. These are heartwarming tropes that have been around for a while for a reason. We love realizing we've taken something for granted and then changing. Now, our main character doesn't necessarily shift yet, but we know that's coming after this. We, the audience, get to recognize that we take bonds for granted.


John Wiswell (he/him) (58:43.554)
We're the ones who get to do the little growth. That feels great. We got to see a good story, but we also got to take a theme away. That hopefully makes us just look around and be like, okay, who do I want to share this with? Who's a friend who would like this too? And that's a beautiful meta layer to the story. And I think this story is also just a good illustration of why people like predictable fiction.

Deborah L. Davitt (58:56.829)
Mm-hmm.

John Wiswell (he/him) (59:11.542)
Because predictability is usually determined to be a bad thing. I know where this is going. Yeah. And that's why I'm staying in this seat and finishing reading this. And I sometimes in my own work and in my reading, I prize originality too much. And there is great originality. Of course there is. But this is showing us why we sing in this rhythm.

Deborah L. Davitt (59:21.653)
Hehehehehehe

Deborah L. Davitt (59:28.617)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (59:38.602)
I was reading something this past week that I was enjoying. I was along for the ride on it. And then they put in a twist on page 200 and I put the book down. I just went, nope, I'm not along for the ride anymore. It was light, it was breezy, it was fun. And I went, and you made it into a polemic. And that's not what I signed up for at the beginning of this. I had a ticket for entertainment.

and now it's gotten political and I'm out. So yes, sometimes you want the promise, the extended beginning of the story to be extended all the way through the story. There should be a through line and that promise should be kept. Susan, what did you like or dislike about this story?

Susan Kaye Quinn (01:00:32.667)
Well, first of all, I'm absolutely delighted with the idea of Found Day. I like want like I want an entire series of Found Day stories that explore all the things that people find on this magical day. So like I'm very I was very hungry for more actually. But it was interesting to listen to you guys talk about the predictability. It to me, I also write romance and I'm like.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:00:37.599)
I wish, I want that day.

Susan Kaye Quinn (01:01:00.539)
oh, this is a romance. This is what this is. It's a friendmance, but it's a romance. I know it has a happy ending. I know they're gonna get there. I know that, you know, you have that thing of like, okay, how are they gonna work it out? You know, like what is, what's gonna be the back and forth before we actually get the payoff at the end? And that's what a lot of romance is, is that, cause you know how it's gonna end, the journey, the ride, you're there for the ride to find out.

John Wiswell (he/him) (01:01:02.319)
Mm. Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:01:07.765)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:01:15.65)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:01:28.628)
Yes!

Susan Kaye Quinn (01:01:29.531)
What are they going to learn about themselves as they go along here? That's the whole thing. And so I just found it delightful from that standpoint.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:01:39.874)
This is not a criticism at all. This is something my husband brought up this past week and he was commenting about the Hallmark Christmas movies and he was had been listening to an interview with a guy who's been an actor in several of them and the guy said he really enjoyed being in a part of the production because he knew what he knew exactly what he was signed up for. He knew exactly what the audience was going to get out of it and we were sitting there talking about

why people enjoy having this on in the background of their house over the holidays. It's because they know exactly what they signed up for. They know that anybody from eight to 80 is going to be able to get something out of it. It can be either engaged with or not engaged with as you please, but it's a comfortable familiar thing. And Hallmark obviously has this down to an absolute science because they produce these yearly.

and people still gobble them up because the promise has been given and the promise has been kept. So yeah, we're gonna move to... it works. It absolutely works. It's not a criticism. If people buy it and enjoy it, you're obviously doing something right. Our next story is Laser Squid Goes House Hunting by Douglas DiCicco.



Deborah L. Davitt (01:03:06.866)
Escape pod 850, August 18th, 2022. I had the great privilege to read this when it was in beta. And so it was probably in a Codex contest a few years ago. I mentioned Codex on the flash fiction episodes. I will again reach out to anybody who is out there, who is not a member of Codex. If you have had even one story that was published professionally.


Deborah L. Davitt (01:03:33.246)
You might be eligible to become a member of Codex. This is a wonderful organization that will help promote your career and will help you find markets and will help you write more stories than you can ever have dreamed that you were capable of writing. So in this story in particular, a realtor down is down on her luck and is having difficulty footing the bills for her own home and her daughter's Ivy League education. She's shepherding around what she thinks is the worst client imaginable.

literal laser-toting squid from the depths of the ocean. Gradually, however, she comes to sympathize with the laser squid. The abyssal being is just trying to find a better home and school system for her coming spawn than is available in the protean depths of the sea. When laser squid manages to convince the realtor's ex to cough up child support, the realtor suggests that they become roommates on the houseboat that she's about to put a deposit on. This story is a humorous delight and an absolute warm hug.

Again, the real change is how the narrator comes to view her circumstances and her client. What did you like about the story? What did you dislike about the story? What did you find to be cozy? Did you find that there are other layers that I have missed? Mary, talk to me about this story.

mary (01:04:43.387)
Oh, I had never read this story before, so it was a delight to read this. It just, the idea of this, this giant squid in the back of the Realtor's car, it just, yeah, it just, I was, yeah, just in love with it from the very first.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:05:00.065)
In the back of the hatchback.

mary (01:05:09.875)
bit. It was so outlandish and so funny. And yet, I mean, it was real. Here's this squid who is looking for a new home and the realtor desperately needs to make this sale. So I was infested. Like, okay, she's got and yeah, how, how do you do this? Okay, what's gonna happen?

So I thought it was really nicely done to keep me invested, to give me that outlandish concept, and yet pull me through with the details, and again, the emotional layering that will hook me and keep me reading to see what's going to happen. And the ending, the idea of, yeah, oh, my houseboat.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:06:00.609)
Hehehehe

mary (01:06:05.451)
Yeah, it was just so perfect. And it just wrapped everything up kind of like with, yeah. Tentacles. Yeah, a big squid hug for everybody. It worked out beautifully. And how can you argue with an ending like that? And getting the child support from her husband. I love the fact that it was actually mostly left off the page.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:06:12.226)
Big squid arms. Big squid-y hug.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:06:34.41)
Mm-hmm.

mary (01:06:35.027)
Because again, cozy, we don't necessarily want to see the intimidation factor, but I think it's better left to the imagination as to how it went down so it can be truly humorous.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:06:42.397)
Mm-hmm

Deborah L. Davitt (01:06:50.975)
there's our parallel to horror again, because some things are better left to the imagination than shown on the page. It's more effective that way. John, yeah, John, what did you think of this story?

mary (01:06:59.988)
Seriously, yeah.

John Wiswell (he/him) (01:07:04.614)
Yeah, so I was the one who recommended this because I just, I love this story on basically every level. Like, the title alone, it's not a squid. Laser squid. All right? Like, we're going all the way over in that direction with this story. And the title, you're, like, we talked about the other story gives you a promise. From the title, this one gives you a promise. We're going to go to somewhere outlandish. What's unexpected then is that the Chico merges the outlandish and the very mundane, the...


Deborah L. Davitt (01:07:15.207)
Hehehehe Hehe

John Wiswell (he/him) (01:07:33.81)
woman trying to get child through school, having a deadbeat ex. This is powerful. Like this is in itself compelling as a motivation for a character, but it compels the character to what? To care about finding a home for a problematic client, which is to me doubly investing because I am interested in finding places for people who are told they just don't belong.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:07:34.084)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:07:55.038)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:08:00.947)
Mm-hmm.

John Wiswell (he/him) (01:08:01.862)
and laser squid is the most does not belong as you could find, certainly in the back of that car. I also just generally like squid. They're very intelligent. They've got more grain matter than a dog. I would rather have a pet squid. But a pet squid would rather I not have it. Thus I have none. I think the characterization of the laser squid is very fun. But at the same time, it isn't merely a gag.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:08:05.398)
Hahaha

Deborah L. Davitt (01:08:20.7)
Hahaha

Deborah L. Davitt (01:08:32.343)
Mm-hmm.

John Wiswell (he/him) (01:08:32.694)
There is an emotional payload to the two of them going on this journey that ultimately yields something that's a better place for both of them. That is tremendous. And then also there was a squid in it. I don't know if I mentioned that, but I really like that part.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:08:41.695)
Yes.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:08:49.06)
Hahahaha

mary (01:08:50.527)
So John, what you're saying is that the squid is close enough to a kaiju? A laser squid!

John Wiswell (he/him) (01:08:54.61)
There are squid kites. There are. They're absolutely squid kites. You know, now I don't know if laser squid is capable of reaching the requisite body mass to be a kite. If so, I would hug it. Otherwise, just simply welcome into my neighborhood.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:09:08.387)
Hehe

Deborah L. Davitt (01:09:14.753)
Susan what did you think about the story what haven't we talked about that you really liked.

Susan Kaye Quinn (01:09:21.643)
I was delighted by it, of course. I think it's a really good example of how comedy can open us up and make us very accessible to... This story could have been told without the squid. Wouldn't have been as much fun, right? But you absolutely had all the elements, completely fully constructed story without the squid. But I don't know if it would resonate.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:09:45.037)
Mm-hmm.

Susan Kaye Quinn (01:09:47.475)
quite as much because we wouldn't have been open to you. You would have had to do a whole different level of heavy lifting to make that story emotionally resonant in that short period of words. So, so comedy is one of the ways that you can access that. It's almost like this, you know, first two words, laser squid, okay, I'm ready, I'm here. Give it to me.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:09:55.165)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:10:06.736)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:10:12.822)
Hehe hehehe

Susan Kaye Quinn (01:10:15.795)
So it's almost like a hack into like in the best possible way, right? You're reaching into making that immediate connection and now we're ready and now we have this enjoyment factor as well as this sort of deeper understanding. And that's some well done storytelling. Kudos to that author.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:10:20.398)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:10:39.37)
Yeah! All right, now that we've lifted other people up, we're going to turn to Susan and we're going to ask you to do a reading. And so could you introduce what you're what you're reading for?

Susan Kaye Quinn (01:10:54.171)
Yes, I am reading that story right there. The first, the one above my head right there. The first in my HopePunk Climate Fiction novel series. It's self-published. And the first one is called When You Had Power. The name of the series is Nothing Is Promised. And it's a future world 2050, rolling pandemics, turtle bots.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:11:00.014)
the one above your head.

Susan Kaye Quinn (01:11:22.423)
intrepid power engineer on an island that produces energy, green energy, and all kinds of stuff. I'm just starting at the beginning, and I'm not even going to go your full, I think you said 750 words or whatever. I'm going to go to where it stops in a good spot. So okay, here we go. Chapter one. A steaming pile of antiviral spray doused her.

Susan Kaye Quinn (01:11:50.395)
Lucia held her breath until the gas settled on the concrete step below her boots. The biohaz goggles were definitely the right call. Nothing like blasting off any freeloading virus before saying hello. She hitched her backpack and smiled for the camera, wherever it was. The cottage-sized house was like a fairy tale. A literal white picket fence. Beautiful bay windows. Blinds closed. Sorry, no sneak previews.

and a tiny garden with responsibly California native wildflowers and an inviting wooden bench. Two ceramic frogs were making out on the seat. Then there was the half-inch thick acrylic shield sealing off the porch. Probably could survive a sarin gas attack if their Huntington Beach Homeowners Association went mad max over the frogs.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:12:31.203)
Yeah

Deborah L. Davitt (01:12:44.835)
Hahaha

[Text of reading removed for copyright reasons.]


Deborah L. Davitt (01:15:07.27)
has a lot of humor in it and it has a lot of that last line is a hell of a hook to make me want to read further.

mary (01:15:17.171)
Definitely.

Susan Kaye Quinn (01:15:17.315)
I'm glad. I just had the fourth, so there's four in the series, I just had the fourth audiobook come out just this week, finally finishing the whole series. So it is complete if you, you know, that's important to some people before they start. They're like, is it done? I want to know if it's done.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:15:29.386)
Oh wow!

John Wiswell (he/him) (01:15:38.405)
Congratulations.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:15:38.922)
Yeah, some people definitely want to know that it's done so that the promise isn't broken and that the author isn't going to g-r-r-martin themselves out of existence.

mary (01:15:50.198)
Hahaha

Susan Kaye Quinn (01:15:52.527)
Or just make them wait. People are like, I'm gonna just, and they do, they'll just like rip right through that baby and just read the whole thing in one swoop.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:16:00.758)
Yep, exactly. So going forward, do you guys have something coming out soon or out recently that you'd like other people to read? Obviously, Susan, you have an audio book out this week. So let's start with you. Talk about your audio book a little bit more, please. Is there a physical copy that people can read with their eyeballs or is it just on audio book or how does this work?

Susan Kaye Quinn (01:16:23.111)
know, it's ebook, audiobook, print, all the things. I, the when you had power is the first book. And then the other ones, the type that I don't know if you can tell but like that the covers all go together in one large image, which doesn't show up really here. But that's because the structure of this again, it's Hope Puck, right? So I'm talking community storytelling.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:16:29.282)
What's it called?

Deborah L. Davitt (01:16:34.399)
Yes.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:16:52.255)
Mm-hmm.

Susan Kaye Quinn (01:16:53.687)
So they're four tightly connected stories, each from a different protagonist. And it's sort of a baton passing where one of the reviews said it was like a queer Scooby-Doo mystery and I'm like, Oh, I like that. You said my marketing materials, but anyway, it's kind of like that. So we're passing the baton between one protagonist and another and the

John Wiswell (he/him) (01:17:11.414)
Thank you.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:17:11.857)
Hehehe

John Wiswell (he/him) (01:17:14.47)
Ha ha!

mary (01:17:16.651)
That's awesome.

Susan Kaye Quinn (01:17:23.239)
The fun part about this audio book and the fourth book in the series was bringing back the narrators from the first three books, in addition to the fourth book narrator and those narrators working together to tell the story, which was so cool. And I was so grateful to my narrators of like being willing to do this with me. So I'm proud of that whole how that all came out. So, yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:17:31.31)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:17:45.071)
Nice!

Deborah L. Davitt (01:17:50.51)
That's lovely.

Susan Kaye Quinn (01:17:52.423)
So that's my big thing, I guess recently. Also, I've got a story out in Reckoning that just came out. Reckoning is an environmental justice magazine and this is a political issue. So some of it is really dark and gritty and like, and the editor is like, and then there's your story, which is, you know, different in a really good way. And I'm like, okay, interesting.

John Wiswell (he/him) (01:18:13.474)
Hahaha!

Deborah L. Davitt (01:18:13.887)
Hehehehe

Deborah L. Davitt (01:18:17.462)
Hahaha!

Susan Kaye Quinn (01:18:20.955)
But now that I'm reading it, I haven't gotten all the way through, but I'm like, OK, I see why it fits. It does definitely fit. So what Reckoning does, and they're a wonderful organization, but they're actually a nonprofit. And so they will make all the stories free to read online. But they release them one week at a time. So right now, you can buy the whole e-book, I believe, in a print book.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:18:27.371)
Hehehehe

Deborah L. Davitt (01:18:36.073)
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:18:41.287)
Mm-hmm.

Susan Kaye Quinn (01:18:49.359)
And then my story is in there, but it won't be released online for free until like July. So it's kind of out, but not out. But I encourage people to go ahead and buy the ebook or the print book, however you like, because it supports the organization and lets them pay more writers. Exactly. And I think that's super important. I try to do that as much as I can. And I know not everybody can afford to, support all the zines,


Deborah L. Davitt (01:19:07.23)
Yeah. It lets them continue to exist.


Susan Kaye Quinn (01:19:19.043)
If you can, if it's a thing you're into, like go do that. Cause these people operate on a shoestring. So.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:19:25.614)
All right, so Mary, what do you have out soon or out recently that you'd like to direct people's eyeballs towards?

mary (01:19:32.951)
Well, I'll have that story that we talked about, the two letters crossing paths through the fairy mail will be coming out first quarter sometime of this year and Yeah, 99 Fleeting Fantasies from Pulse Publishing

Deborah L. Davitt (01:19:38.701)
Yeah?

Deborah L. Davitt (01:19:52.672)
Anything else out recently that you'd like people to read as well?

mary (01:19:57.683)
Not a whole lot recently. I have been doing a lot of novel writing. And yeah, it takes a whole lot of time and my short story inventory has fallen precipitously.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:20:00.723)
Okay.

Yeah, it takes time. It takes time.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:20:13.95)
Yeah? John, what do you have out recently or coming out soon that you'd like to talk about?

John Wiswell (he/him) (01:20:21.042)
Yeah, just my life's work. The thing that I've been working on my entire life is my debut novel is coming out in April. Thank you. Yeah, it's out from Daw Books in the United States and Joe Fletcher and Quirkett's Books in what they call the Commonwealth, which is an interesting term. But the United Kingdom and New Zealand and Australia. I have friends in Australia who have.

Susan Kaye Quinn (01:20:31.151)
So exciting.

John Wiswell (he/him) (01:20:49.658)
receipts proving that they can get that book there, that they are entitled to their copies of Someone You Can Build a Nest In. The novel is called Someone You Can Build a Nest In, and it is one of the most young, as well things that I have ever produced. It is about a shapeshifting, horrible monster who lives on her isthmus, and if you just leave her alone, there wouldn't be a story, but gosh, Monster Hunters just keep coming after her. At one point,

she is poisoned and driven off of a ravine and she thinks it's the end. Then she wakes up and there's this woman who's nursing her back to health and she's like, what the hell is a human doing, taking care of me? This woman named Hameli is an unusual person who has mistaken Shisheshin, our monster, for a human, possibly a victim of the monster. And so nurses her back to health and Shisheshin's like, well, I don't have the strength to kill her now, so I'll kill her tomorrow. But then like...

The next day, Hamali is feeding her and nursing her back to health and getting her physical assistance. And she's like, I guess I'll eat her tomorrow. And the more time they spend with each other, the more she comes to realize that Hamali, though human, is an outsider here and is treated with scorn. She doesn't understand why. And they get closer and get closer, and she actually realizes, like, this is somebody who I could actually spend my life with. But if we were together, she has to know.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:21:54.661)
Hahaha!

John Wiswell (he/him) (01:22:13.01)
I have to tell her. It's chafing at Shisheshin to hide her nature from this perfect cinnamon roll nerd outdoors lady. And so she's about to confess when Hanalee mentions, oh, yeah, by the way, I'm in the region hunting this horrible shapeshifting monster. You know where we can find it? And so, you know, it's a love story. We've all been there.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:22:20.846)
Heheheheheheheheh

Deborah L. Davitt (01:22:32.604)
Aww.

John Wiswell (he/him) (01:22:39.338)
Yeah, and it's called someone you could build a nest in. It is more than 300 pages of monster point of view. She's a very opinionated monster, and she would love to meet you.

Susan Kaye Quinn (01:22:48.727)
Let's start them.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:22:49.566)
sounds like I would love to meet her. Alright?

John Wiswell (he/him) (01:22:51.404)
I don't know.

Deborah L. Davitt (01:22:53.966)
Thank you all for having been here to talk with me this week. I've really enjoyed our conversation. I say that every week, but every week I mean it. Next week on Shining Moon, we'll be talking about YA and middle grade fiction. And I'll be speaking with David Anaxagoras, Nicole M. Wilverton, and Alicia Hilton on that topic. As always, please hit the Like and Subscribe buttons. If you have Like and Subscribe buttons to hit, you need to help me feed that algorithm. And we are out.