It’s been eight months since I released my last story, so you could be forgiven for thinking that I’d given up on writing fiction. In fact, it’s the opposite. I’m excited to announce that I’m releasing my first fiction collection—The Gentle Romance: Stories of AI and Humanity—with Encour Press in mid-December!

(Cover design by Barış Şehri)

It contains 22 stories, most of which are revised versions of the best stories I’ve posted online. The thread that connects them is the struggle to hold onto our identities in the face of radical technological change—the same thread that winds through many of our own lives.

⁠⁠I’ve also written three new stories for the collection, which are some of my favorites:

• Lentando is set in a future inspired by Charles Stross’ masterpiece Accelerando. Through it we follow Liza, a zero-knowledge consultant whose soon-to-be-deleted copies struggle to hold the world together.
• The Biggest Short is the story of two traders who make a fortune buying and selling reputations while struggling to preserve their own.
• Kuhn’s Ladder is about a simulated utopia that starts experiencing inexplicable glitches which seem designed to remain hidden.

You can preorder the physical book here, and the ebook here.

Looking forward, it’s hard to say how much writing I’ll be doing over the next few years. I have a sense that static text will soon no longer be the best way to tell stories, so I want to try to figure out what the successor format to the short story will be. But I still have a few more stories in the pipeline, including one that’s my most ambitious effort so far—all of which I’ll post here when they’re finished.

Lastly, some thanks are in order. To Jessy Wu and Marlene Baquiran at Encour Press, whose efforts produced a much better version of this book (and made it possible at all). To Madeleine, who uplifts and inspires me. And to all of you who have read or commented on my writing over the last few years. I’m grateful for the encouragement that moved me to create The Gentle Romance, and I hope that you will enjoy it!