Short Fiction

The Fox

“The Fox” is a short story set about two years after the end of Huntress. You may read “The Fox” without reading Huntress if you like, but it will make more sense if you’ve read the novel first.

• Published April 2011 at Subterranean Online

• Reprinted in the 2012 paperback edition of Huntress

• Now available to read for free here

Good Girl

About the Story: Set in a post-apocalyptic New York City, “Good Girl” is about what it means to be a good girl. Does it mean that you do everything you’re told? What rebellions are possible for a good girl in a police state? And what if you meet a criminal who challenges your identity as someone who is “good”? Read more about it here.

About the Anthology: In a world gone wrong, heroes and villains are not always easy to distinguish and every individual has the ability to contribute something powerful.

In this stunning collection of original and rediscovered stories of tragedy and hope, the stars are a diverse group of students, street kids, good girls, kidnappers, and child laborers pitted against their environments, their governments, differing cultures, and sometimes one another as they seek answers in their dystopian worlds. Take a journey through time from a nuclear nightmare of the past to society’s far future beyond Earth with these eleven stories by masters of speculative fiction. Includes stories by Paolo Bacigalupi, K. Tempest Bradford, Rahul Kanakia, Rajan Khanna, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ken Liu, Malinda Lo, Ellen Oh, Cindy Pon, Greg Van Eekhout, and Daniel H. Wilson. Edited byTobias Buckell and Joe Monti.

• Published October 2012 in Diverse Energies

• Reprinted in Futuredaze 2: Reprise (Underwords Press, 2014)

One True Love

About the Story: “One True Love” is a fairy tale-like story that begins with a prophecy and a stepmother, as many fairy tales do. It soon twists and turns into something else, and asks: What if the prophecy didn’t mean what everyone thought it meant? And what if the stepmother fell in love with her stepdaughter? Read more about it here.

About the Anthology: Have you ever been tempted to look into the future? To challenge predictions? To question fate?

It’s human nature to wonder about life’s twists and turns. But is the future already written—or do you have the power to alter it?

From fantastical prophecies to predictions of how the future will transpire, Foretold is a collection of stories about our universal fascination with life’s unknowns and of what is yet to come as interpreted by 14 of young adult fiction’s brightest stars.

• First published Aug. 28, 2012 in Foretold

• Reprinted in Heiresses of Russ 2013: The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction edited by Tenea D. Johnson and Steve Berman (Lethe Press, August 2013)

• Reprinted in Lightspeed (Feb. 2018, Issue 93)

Ghost Town

About the Story: “Ghost Town” is set in the fictional location of Pinnacle, Colorado, which is loosely based on where I grew up. And although this is only a short story and not a giant historical novel, it was inspired by The Night Watch by Sarah Waters, which takes place in reverse chronological order.

About the Anthology: The seventeen original stories in Defy the Dark, an eerie, mind-bending YA anthology, could only take place in darkness.

Open the pages and discover: A creepy guy who stares too long. The secrets of the core of the earth. Dreams of other people’s lives. A girl who goes mad in the darkness. Monsters in Bavaria. A generational spaceship where night doesn’t exist. And other mysteries and oddities.

• Published June 18, 2013 in Defy the Dark edited by Saundra Mitchell (HarperTeen)

• Reprinted in Year's Best Young Adult Speculative Fiction 2013 edited by Julia Rios & Alisa Krasnostein (Kaleidoscope, 2014)

• Reprinted in Uncanny Magazine Issue 18 (September/October 2017)

The Twelfth Girl

About the Story: “The Twelfth Girl” is my urban fantasy retelling of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” Instead of being set in a fairy tale kingdom, my story takes place at a girls’ school, where twelve girls who live together in one dorm go out every night through a secret passageway to dance at an exclusive city nightclub.

About the Anthology: Inspired by classic fairy tales, but with a dark and sinister twist, “Grim” contains short stories from some of the best voices in young adult literature today.

• Published Feb. 25, 2014 in Grim, edited by Christine Johnson (Harlequin Teen)

The Cure

"The Cure" is about one possible cure for hysteria, which was once believed to be a medical condition that afflicted women. It was inspired by the quote that opens the story — a quote from a real physician describing hysteria:

“A hysterical girl is a vampire who sucks the blood of the healthy people about her.”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes

• Published June 2015 at Interfictions

New Year

About the Story: "New Year" is set in San Francisco's Chinatown during Chinese New Year in January 1955, and is about the moment seventeen-year-old Lily Ma recognizes queerness in the world and, potentially, in herself.

About the Anthology: All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages is an anthology of historical short fiction about LGBTQ teens.

• Published Feb. 28, 2018 in All Out, edited by Saundra Mitchell (Harlequin Teen)

Meet Cute

About the Story: "Meet Cute" is a short romantic comedy about two queer girls who meet at a Comic Con-type convention while cosplaying gender-flipped Sulu and race-bent Agent Scully.

About the Anthology: "This collaboration with We Need Diverse Books features 13 standalone stories from award-winning and best-selling authors including Melissa de la Cruz, Sara Farizan, Eric Gansworth, Malinda Lo, Daniel José Older, Jason Reynolds, Aminah Mae Safi, Gene Luen Yang, and Nicola Yoon. The stories are distinct in themes, subjects, genres, and formats, creating an inclusive, authentic, and incredible collection." — School Library Journal, starred review

• Published Aug. 14, 2018 in Fresh Ink: An Anthology edited by Lamar Giles (Crown)

We Could Be Heroes

A married lesbian couple attends the inauguration of a Trump-like president on the day that aliens invade. What could possibly go wrong?

👽

Nobody expected the inauguration protests would be interrupted by an alien invasion.

Heather was standing outside the bank of port-a-potties in front of the National Museum of Natural History when the spacecraft first appeared as a shadow skimming across the ground. She looked up, clutching her wife Rebecca’s coat and regulation-sized clear plastic backpack stuffed with protein bars, identification, an emergency poncho, and 70 percent dark chocolate, and gaped at the giant black ship gliding silently overhead. It was definitely heading for the Capitol building.

• Published Oct. 1, 2018 at Autostraddle

Red

“Red” is a retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood” set during the Cultural Revolution in China.

☯︎

The east is red when Xiaohong leaves the two-room apartment that has been allocated to her and her parents—two rooms carved out of a once-grand courtyard home, now divided between five families by order of the local Party authorities. The manor has been forced into a new identity, with makeshift kitchens elbowing their way into the sky well, and the walls pasted over with red posters of Chairman Mao quotations. The speaker for the public address system, installed in one corner of the sky well, blasts announcements at all hours, but it has been mercifully quiet so far this morning.

• Published Jan. 1, 2019 at Foreshadow

Don’t Speak

“Don’t Speak” is flash fiction inspired by a photograph of Tokyo Disneyland from 1994, written for a special New York Times collection of stories by Asian American young adult authors.

🐷

Inside the pig’s head, it was starting to stink. The half-dozen mints Jenny Watanabe had eaten at the beginning of her shift to pre-emptively perfume the interior had long since worn off. She was already sweating like crazy, and the new Big Bad Wolf had just begun chasing them. She knew it was only going to get worse. Tokyo Disneyland on a hot day was a long slog through mobs of squealing children clutching melting ice cream cones while executing repetitive choreography in bulky costumes.

• Published June 30, 2019 at The New York Times