In this episode of Strange Horizons at 25, we present a soundscaped reading of Jordan Kurella's poem, 'this tree is a eulogy', and afterward Kat Kourbeti chats to Jordan about his writing process, the wonders of New Weird fiction, and the magic of writer friendships.

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Episode show notes:

• For the poem reading:
  • Soundscape by Michael Ireland.
  • Music credit: 'Reawakening' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au
  • Narration by Jordan Kurella.
• Follow Jordan Kurella on Bluesky, or check out his website.
• Read Jordan's work in our archives, including his poem 'this tree is a eulogy'.
• Pre-order Jordan's upcoming novella, The Death of Mountains.
• Find more links to his work, along with everything else we talked about today, peppered throughout the transcript below.

Transcript

Kat Kourbeti: Hello, Strangers, and welcome to Strange Horizons at 25, a 25th anniversary celebration of Strange Horizons. I'm your host, Kat Kourbeti, and it is my privilege today to welcome you to another episode that looks back at the history and impact of Strange Horizons on the speculative genres. Today's guest, Jordan Kurella, was first published with us in 2019 and has since gone on to garner nominations all up and down the genre space, loads of publications, a short story collection, a forthcoming novel, question mark? All sorts of things.

We're super happy to have you here. Welcome Jordan.

Jordan Kurella: Thank you. Thank you.

Kat Kourbeti: We were just having a bit of a chat just before starting recording about shared experiences of London, and yeah, it's not changed that much since you were here, I don't think, except it got more expensive.

Jordan Kurella: I'm sure it got more expensive. It was expensive when I was there. I was living on the American dollar and everything was two to one. If you wanted anything, it was twice as many dollars as it was pounds.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, when I first moved here it was very much [the same]. I lived on the euro, and it was, I think, one pound was a euro sixty, or something like that, and it was like... a bad time. On your student budget, it's like, everything shrinks like, "ah, I see." But books were cheap, which was great for me.

Jordan Kurella: The only thing that was cheap was travel, because you could just go. I explained to people here in the States that, you go to any country in Europe and it's, you go to Paris, or you go to Vienna, or you go to this place and Paris is just as far away from where I am as Pittsburgh or Detroit or Indianapolis. They're like, wait, what? But then you explain to people in Europe that going to Cleveland is as far away as going to Germany to them. And they're like, "but I'm in the same state."

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Jordan Kurella: And they're like, wait, what?

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, truly. Us Europeans often make fun of Americans for your sense of like, "oh, it's just a four hour drive, whatever." And I'm, like, four hours?! I'm not getting in a car for four hours for anybody. And it's very much like, when the distances are that large, or in our case, when they're that small, your sense of what is a worthwhile trip gets analogous, like it will shrink and it will expand accordingly.

Jordan Kurella: The biggest thing I miss from Europe is trains.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I'm about to—I have booked my first Amtrak ticket. So I'm intending to go to Seattle Worldcon, and I'm going to go from Seattle down to Vancouver, Washington to see some family. So that's going to be my first Amtrak experience. I'm kind of excited. Is that weird?

Jordan Kurella: It's terrific. I took an Amtrak in the way before times from Chicago to Colorado. That was fun.

Kat Kourbeti: I've heard that the views on that are amazing. So yeah, I can't imagine.

So welcome to the podcast. You are a prolific short story writer and you dabble in some longer form stuff, so I wanna hear about the different kind of genres that you write in. You do a little bit of horror, a little bit of this and that, but yeah what's the general space that inspires you?

Jordan Kurella: Mostly like weirder, not... My best friend calls it "normal stuff". So it's like the new weird, dark fantasy and horror. I started off writing for publication in horror, but I'm not as efficient, I don't think, in horror, as I am at new weird and dark fantasy.

I think I like a little bit more hope in my fiction, and horror has hope in it, and I like to say that you can't write that genre without hope. I learned how to write all dark fiction by reading the RPG manual Dread, which is the RPG game that uses Jenga. And the biggest line that I took from that was that all fiction, whether dark or dark fantasy, weird, or horror, basically has to have hope, because otherwise you're just writing for the sake of freak out. Right? The idea of "the darker you go, the thinner the thread of hope is"—if you're not writing for hope, then why are you writing? So why are you playing a game? Why are you creating a game?

Every time I try to write in that darker horror vein, I always end up writing dark fantasy, or like new weird. I think Evan: A Remainder, which came out in Reactor in January 2024, I tried to write it as a horror story, but it was too funny. All my beta readers were like, this is too funny. It doesn't work as this. So I created it as a contemporary fantasy, newer weird story and it worked then. And that's what usually happens, I'm trying to write something scary and ends up being too funny or too fantastical and too hopeful.

Kat Kourbeti: I mean, is that a bad thing?

Jordan Kurella: Yes, but when you have too many jokes in your scary story it creates a dissonance, I think, for a lot of my crit partners and some editors. That's what's come back to me. But like, when I wrote All Her Rows of Teeth, which was definitely a scary story that was very unsettling, these are just my two more recent examples which are different, they both involve transgender characters, transmasc characters. That came out in Three-Lobed Burning Eye in July, it has some humor in it, but much less than the Reactor Evan: A Remainder story. So that actually worked as a horror story. The editor, Andrew, basically said this was terrifying and frightening and disturbing.

I was like, "oh, thanks. Gee, cool."

Kat Kourbeti: I find that a lot of horror writers tend to be very sweet people. Just, you know, "oh thank you so much!" But everything inside my brain is terrifying.

Jordan Kurella: Every time I show my best friend who's not in publishing, he works in factories, like I show him something and then he goes, "this is totally not normal. Congrats, you did it!" I'm like, thanks, man.

Kat Kourbeti: We aim to freak you out.

Jordan Kurella: Mm hmm.

Kat Kourbeti: So "new weird" can be quite a nebulous term, I think, but a lot of people have a sense of it. I certainly think I understand what the boundaries are, but there's also a vagueness to that. What would you say especially from your own writing constitutes new weird?

Jordan Kurella: This goes way back to 2015, the way back. When I first started getting into like, I'm going to write for publication, my friend, also not in publishing, but a big reader, said, "have you read the Area X Trilogy?" They said, "the writer is coming to town, and I think you would like to read this book and then go see his talk." And Jeff VanderMeer had not yet won the Nebula for the Area X Trilogy.

So I read Annihilation in two hours, which I do not recommend because that will really mess up your brain. And then I read Authority in two days. And then I read Acceptance in four days. So clearly, I like these books, a lot, and it totally changed—I was like, you can do this? You can write stuff like this? And Authority is one of my favorite genres of "the office as a liminal space". Because when we go to an office place for work, we are not who we are, like code switching to the extreme, especially if you're a stranger sort of person, you're not like, "I wear button up shirts all the time, and I do the normal human thing". The office is a liminal space.

Severance is also one of my favorite shows. Authority is one of my favorite books. And then Karin Tidbeck, who wrote Amatka and The Memory Theater, is also a terrific author of the new weird, right? Bogi Takács is another terrific author of the new weird. R.B. Lemberg, a terrific author of the new weird. These authors are basically like, lifting up what is the new weird for me.

I read The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed last year. I wouldn't call it new weird, but the way that it's written in its low and terrific way of telling a story, and the way that the language changes based on Alefret's state of mind, gives me that sort of unsettled feeling, and I think that's what the new weird means to do, is that it means to not scare you, it means to not comfort you, it means to not dragon you. And I hate to say that, 'cause not all fantasy has dragons, "it means to not dragon you" as in, create a sense of wonder in you, like fantasy does. It means to not transport you to another world like science fiction does, but it means to create a place where you are unsettled and uncomfortable, yet intrigued. That's what I think the new weird does. You are unsettled and uncomfortable, yet intrigued.

Kat Kourbeti: I love that. It definitely tracks for everything kind of 'new weird' that I've read. And it's kind of a fun place to be emotionally when you're reading, because it's like both liminal and otherworldly, like there's something familiar about it that you can latch on to, but then...

Jordan Kurella: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Jordan Kurella: It's not fabulism, because fabulism is one thing, but magical realism is another thing, which is not for white people to write, and I will die on that hill. It's not magical realism, but it has to be unsettling in its own way.

Kat Kourbeti: I think some of the stuff you've published with us actually has that feeling like the poem as well, I think that you published with us—

Jordan Kurella: this tree is a eulogy.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, that kind of has a sense of unsettling strange feeling, and poetry lends itself to that, I think, quite readily. But what was your inspiration around the poem?

Jordan Kurella: So that was published in the criticism issue in 2022. I was thinking about the Giving Tree and the idea of permanence, right? There's graffiti, which can be painted over and painted over. And there's the idea of sidewalk carving, which is more permanent than that. But there's the idea of the Giving Tree, which constantly gave and gave, but there's the idea of carving your initials in something living, which is then a bastardization and a painful thing. The Giving Tree was like, I'm going to give all this to you, but then you have taken so much from me. So it's also a relationship that's only one way, but also it's so painful for the person that is constantly being taken from. So that was the whole point of 'this tree is a eulogy'.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, it's beautiful, but also yeah, there's something in that pain that we can see, that feeling that's permeating. I find spec poetry very interesting because of the inherent nature of poetry to create imagery and enhanced metaphors, that just give that opportunity to make those metaphors and those images really speculative.

What has your experience been, like, dabbling in poetry and then having output in that? Tell me about it.

Jordan Kurella: I went to a undergrad university that's known for its poets. They even had a mug that basically said, "we do poetry like Ohio State does football". I have that mug, but it's so faded. It was a small liberal arts college in Ohio, and I wrote poetry because that's what you just did at this college. You sat on a bench and you wrote poems, because that's just what you did. They actually have a Poem In Your Pocket day at this college and everything. It's just bananas. You just do poetry there.

I started off writing poetry, and I actually have a whole book just full of poems I wrote at this college. I actually published a poem in another small zine that I started at that college, and then I finished in like, 2021. But speculative poetry—I was talking at Gen Con about this, what is speculative poetry? And it's basically, like, the metaphor is the same, because I talk about lit poetry too, because lit poetry is all about metaphor; it's about taking the power words and making the metaphor out of it. But with speculative poetry, the metaphor is more like, how far can the imagination get you? Because you're not just doing the metaphor within life. You're doing a metaphor within space, within dragon, within... How far can the imagination take you? And that's why speculative poetry is so hard to define.

I edited the Mercurial issue of Apparition Lit, and we actually ended up taking one more poem than Apparition Lit normally takes, because we had such terrific entries of poetry that submission period. We had one on games. We had one on resistance. We had two on spiritual animals, like basically of religion. It was incredible. It came out in May of 2024. It's so hard to define, but when you know it and you read it, you can see what's going on.

Kat Kourbeti: I think we're in fact in a golden era for speculative poetry, showcased by the fact that there's a Hugo this year that people are now reading poetry for and like, just opening up that potential of what could constitute a speculative poem? The answer is loads of things. It's very exciting.

Jordan Kurella: I was talking to Brandon [O'Brien], the poet who's being honored at the guest of honor at Worldcon, he was the one who was running this GenCon panel. "What is speculative poetry?" And he is terrific. I have his Can You Sign My Tentacle book, and it's one of the best spec books of poetry that I've read. It's just incredible.

Kat Kourbeti: He's actually the person interviewed right before you, so this episode will go out just after his.

Jordan Kurella: I just, I—he's just incredible.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, he really is, and it's wonderful to talk to this many people who were published on Strange Horizons with poems. We are one of the few markets that have always put poetry in the foreground of what we do, and there's just so much, like, golden stuff to find within our archives, including your stuff. It's great to hear like, people's different takes on what led them to writing poetry with speculative elements and all of that, and just making that part of their writing journey.

Jordan Kurella: I think starting off with poetry as early and as poorly as I did helped with writing fiction. I read a lot of poetry in high school and college, my major was in literature in my second language. I took poetry classes in high school and college in French, and then I took Russian poetry in translation. I think if you read a lot of poetry, you can understand how better to construct short fiction. Long fiction... Maybe not long fiction, because I'm too good at word economy. I don't know.

You can be better at constructing shorter sentences because you get rid of so many words. That's just a thinky thought that I have.

Also it took me longer to get a poem published in Strange Horizons than it did to get me a story. More submissions than it took me to get a story.

Kat Kourbeti: That's interesting.

Jordan Kurella: I looked through before this interview.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, so what was that like then in terms of numbers of submissions? First of all what was your relationship to Strange Horizons as a reader before you even submitted? What was your kind of impression of the magazine?

Jordan Kurella: So I always thought it was like, too cool for school, right? I was like, Oh, God, these guys are great. I loved reading it because like, you know, I was talking about how I loved Jeff Vandermeer and Karin Tidbeck and all those things. And I was like, these stories are so terrific. Early on in my writing for publication, I read a lot of stories by people who also critiqued stories, like Maria Haskins, Charles Payseur and other people like that. And I said, the reason why these people are good at writing short fiction is because they read a lot of short fiction.

So I read like a story a day, and I always loved when it was Strange Horizons Day. But then when I slushed for Apex for about a year, and this is strange, because a lot of the stories I sent up to the editors would get rejected, and then they'd get published in Strange Horizons. I was thrilled to see these stories come to life in Strange Horizons. And actually, one story that I rejected from Apex, got published in Strange Horizons, and I cried that day. I cried that day because I thought about that story every day after I rejected it, and I've thought about it since, and sometimes I go back and read it.

Kat Kourbeti: Can I ask what story that was?

Jordan Kurella: I don't remember the title, because I haven't read it in a couple of years, but I was wrong to have rejected it. Sometimes you make a wrong call. I hate to say this, but sometimes you make a wrong call. But I was so thrilled. A week after, I was like, oh, I made the wrong call... But you can't take it back.

But I was so happy that it got a great edit, or the author did some revisions. And I was like, "oh, this is even better than when I read it." And I was, oh, don't remember the author's name.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, that's so lovely to hear though. That you had that victory moment of "I recognize the quality of that story, and clearly somebody else did too."

Jordan Kurella: There's three or four stories that I remember succinctly sending up to the editors at Apex, and they got rejected and then they ended up in Strange Horizons, and I was just so thrilled. Maybe there's more of an overlap than we thought.

Kat Kourbeti: The Venn diagram.

Jordan Kurella: But also it just shows that this is my taste, right? So that was my experience with Strange Horizons as a reader also, but also as a lover of fiction.

Kat Kourbeti: So then the first thing that we have from you was a short story, in fact. Which is The Wind Whispers Secrets to the Sea. Which is a very interesting, strange little story. I don't know, would you class this as new weird? Cause I wouldn't say that it's like horror or anything, but there is something vaguely menacing about it.

Jordan Kurella: It's new weird. And it's written in first person plural.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Jordan Kurella: And the character, the narrator is All Four Winds.

Kat Kourbeti: Ooh.

Jordan Kurella: Yeah. Basically, the narrator goes through as All Four Winds and has relationships with other elements. That story came to me as a shower thought completely full, and I had to run out of the shower, towelling off, and type it completely. I showed it to some crit partners and they're like, this is done. I've had like maybe two other stories come to me that way as full shower thoughts; one was a story that got published in Apex a while ago, and another was published in Small Wonders last year. It's so weird, but so wild when a lightning strike happens and you can't get it out of your head, and you just got to write it.

Everyone said, send it to Strange Horizons. And I'm like, "no, they're too big a deal. I can't." But then I looked through my rejections from Strange Horizons, and I realized I had sent four things. And three out of four had been signed by the editors. And so I'm just like, maybe there's a chance. So I sent it off and it got accepted in 23 days. The story is less than 950 words long. It's so short. Anaea Lay did a great job podcasting it. It was the first story my family read, and it's very sexy. I threw my phone across the room, when I found out that they read it.

Kat Kourbeti: I can imagine that.

Jordan Kurella: The first person plural was something that I had wanted to explore. So the novella I have coming out in March has a perspective of a mountain, who is an ecosystem, and she talks in first person plural.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I did have questions about the first person plural. It's so rare because you do need something to anchor that to. There needs to be like a reason; in the case of the mountain, it's an ecosystem, so fair enough. But the Four Winds as a character... talk to me through that inspiration in the shower, just thinking "Hey, what about...? What if...?" Yeah, how did that happen?

Jordan Kurella: So usually I get a first line. It doesn't leave me alone for days, unless it's like a lightning story like this one was. The line will just come to me. I'll be like, washing dishes. It's like, I'm here. And so it won't leave me alone.

But this one was like, the first line is "our last husband was so hot, he burned the house down." And I was just like, okay, that's good. And I don't remember what the next one is, but the whole thing just started going, and so I was just like, I got to get out of here and I just wrote the whole thing down. Sometimes when I start writing the first line, the next six paragraphs pour out. I go to my computer and I start writing and the next like, eight pages pour out.

I'm a discovery writer, or pantser, as they say. And I'm just like, "oh, I didn't know this character was the Four Winds until I got to the end." So I revised it, and then brought out the fact that she's the Four Winds in the story. And I don't know if that's obvious, but to me it was, and the new weird is nebulous, that unsettling yet intriguing sort of thing. It doesn't need to be told .

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Oh, that's so cool. I do love lightning stories like that. Sometimes it be that way. I have a—I talk about this story often enough on this podcast. I think I've mentioned it a couple of times because I'm sitting on it, cause I think it's a Strange Horizons story. It's been rejected from all the other major ones, including Apex, but that story came to me in a dream, wholesale, including third person and then also first person because it's two different perspectives.

And for some reason, as I was writing it down, I was like, it doesn't make sense for both perspectives to be the same. I don't know why, I've never done this before, mixing up perspectives like this, but to me it just completely made sense. And before I could send it to Strange Horizons, I got the position here on the podcast, and we can't submit fiction while we're on the team. I'm like so convinced, because it's got that like, weird strangeness that Strange Horizons often is known for, especially in the fiction side. The speculative elements are, I would say, on the low side, but it came to me in a dream, and, like, when does that happen.

Jordan Kurella: My dream stuff is always, if I wake up and write something on a pad of paper, it's like "tuna socks." Yeah. Doesn't work.

Kat Kourbeti: Go figure. Totally.

Interesting that the fiction side, four rejections and then an acceptance is not a bad ratio. I think that's pretty okay. But then what happened with the poetry? Like how many rejections is a lot?

Jordan Kurella: I've gotten one poem accepted and I probably should have twenty five, but I don't metric it.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Jordan Kurella: And I need to say this: every single poem, every single story, every single essay has to find the right editor, has to find the right market, has to find the right person that loves it enough for it to sit in the right issue for the right magazine.

It's never personal. Even a personal rejection is not "I hate this. You suck. Goodbye." I don't take it personally when someone's like, "no, thank you." Because I've worked in slushing and like, they don't hate you. It's just not the right time for this.

Okay. No big deal. I'll just send it again. I'll send the same story or the same poem somewhere else, because that's what you got to do. 25 poem rejections is no big deal. It doesn't mean that you're better if you get accepted in less time, or worse if you get accepted in more time, it just means you didn't hit that right moment, right time. It's all about luck. Sometimes.

Kat Kourbeti: But the journey is interesting, though, still, that it took that long to find the right poem. Or perhaps, the poem to find the right editors.

Jordan Kurella: I'm not as good at poetry as I am at short story. I just admit that. I talk to my other poet friends and I'm like, I have no idea what I'm doing.

Kat Kourbeti: I feel like poetry is nebulous like that, though. I think for a lot of people it's just like, "oh, I don't know, I wrote this thing. Shrug."

Jordan Kurella: I can revise poetry. When I was editing poetry for Apparition Lit, I could be like, "hmm no, this is too many stanzas of the same thing, and we need a break here." And I can send it to the poet and they're like, "oh, you're absolutely right. You're so good at this!" and I'm like "yeah, but I can't write a poem."

But, yeah, I can edit it. I can help somebody with critting their poetry, but I can't—I don't know what I'm doing.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Go figure. I kind of like that though. The sense of like, "I know what's right, I can see what's right in other people's work." I think that's often the case that we're too close to our own stuff and we can't quite see past what we've put down on the page. It's why crit partners are great. It's why writers groups are great, because you get to see your work from other people's perspectives before it's even out somewhere. It's important to maintain that level of slight distance if you can.

So how was your experience working with the Strange Horizons editors, because you've worked with both the fiction and poetry teams. What was that like for you as a writer?

Jordan Kurella: It was absolutely terrific. I love it. I absolutely love the experience.

Funny story though: my email client ate my final edits of my short story. And I was like, "should I query? I feel like I should have heard something by now..." And I got a panicked email 2 days before the story was published, like, "why haven't you returned these edits?" It's like at midnight. I was like, "I never got them! I never got them." And then we were just emailing back and forth and they're like, "can you make it?" And I was like, "it's too many changes to make. I don't have time." All because the email clients ate several emails.

And so now, lesson learned, I query! Literally the email client was just like [hand gestures in the air], right? They hadn't gotten anything from me, I hadn't gotten anything from them, and they were in my contacts! But. Very understanding, terrific, wonderful. That's why I do love working with them because they're like, no, it's okay. I'm like, thank gosh. Thank gosh. Thank gosh.

But like the poetry editors were wonderful to work with, the fiction editors were wonderful to work with, the podcast team is wonderful to work with. Absolute dream. And I'm friends with some of the former editors , Vajra and Vee, and like, yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: I think it's a wonderful relationship that builds between people who work together to bring out something from one another. Whether that's an editor and a story or a poem. In my case, I've built friendships with the people whose stories I podcasted. Whether it was here or like, stuff I've narrated elsewhere. There's a genuine connection between like, I loved your work and I'm glad that it found a home.

Have you felt this as an editor as well?

Jordan Kurella: I felt this. I've only edited the one thing, but it's one of my favorite things that I did, that keep on, and I feel like I don't talk about it. Because I edited the magazine and it was such a wonderful thing to be asked, to edit this issue of Apparition Lit, and it came out and then I had to have a major surgery. I felt so bad because it keeps on getting shunted to the back of my mind, but I guest edited this thing. It was one of my favorite accomplishments that I had last year, and the stories were so great. I'm blanking on all of them right now, because of course, I'm talking about it. So I can't remember anything, but working with the team was great.

I'm so sad that the magazine shut down because it's one of those I always wanted to be published in. Then I ended up guest editing an issue. It was beautiful. Every single story that I passed up to the editors, got published. I'm curious about the writers' careers now. And with all the stories and poems that published in that material, I feel like I'm curious about their career now. I'm an expert of what is happening over there.

I was talking to my friend about this, about one of the best things about being a reader who became a writer, is that you can potentially become friends with some of the people whose books you love. And it's just so nice.

Kat Kourbeti: It is so nice.

Jordan Kurella: So nice.

Kat Kourbeti: None of my fiction's been published yet, but a lot of the friendships I've made in the space, whether it's through cons or podcasting things, it's just been really delightful how excited people get for each other's stuff. It's absolutely just the friendliest community, because we all go through the same hardship and have the same burning need to tell a story, and then we face all the same hurdles and all the same like, processes that publishing, you know, is what it is. It's just natural for people to be like excited about each other's like, "hey, you did it! You made it. Yay!"

Jordan Kurella: Yeah, like, John Wiswell—I was co-writing with him when I was writing a book that I thought I should write because it was very important. I hated every single bit of writing this book. And John, I've told this story several times, but John was also like, "why don't you write something that you want to write? Like, why are you writing this book?" I'm like, "you don't like it?" He was like, "write something that you want to write, that's fun."

So I wrote I Never Liked You Anyway, instead, and I had a great time. I was like, this is everything that I love in one book. And I'm just like, why am I not writing things that I have fun writing, because life is too short to write things that are dark and broody. And you should write it. And so like, John was one of my friends since like, the beginning of my career and it's just so cool to see, all his accomplishments.

Sitting next to Sam, she wrote The Rabbit Test, which won the Nebula, I was sitting next to her at the Nebula ceremony between her and Ai Jiang, right, who was also nominated for short story, and she was like, "I'm not going to win," and her name gets called, and Sam is livetweeting the whole ceremony and we're like, "Sam, get up." It's Samantha Mills. And she's so surprised and so gracious and it's so cool because Samantha Mills and I started publishing at the same time. One of those things when, you're at the same career trajectory and someone surpasses you, you just be like, "look at them go!"

It's so wonderful because these are your friends and they're doing so great.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I feel that way about seeing all of the other Greek SFF authors who are doing incredible stuff. Cause growing up in Greece, you can dream like, oh yeah, someday I'd like to publish books or whatever. But seeing people do it, seeing people win awards with stories set in your hometown... What? That's Natalia Theodoridou, by the way, who is also a Strange Horizons author. And it's just one of those like, just super proud moments where not only is it possible, but look at them go. And I'm so proud to know these people and to cheer them on. Cause it's like, who'd have thought we'd be here?

Jordan Kurella: Avra Margariti is one of my favorite short fiction writers.

Kat Kourbeti: Yes.

Jordan Kurella: Also of my favorite poets. They're amazing. The chapbook that they wrote about the moon, I literally sat outside, it was 3 or 7 degrees, and I read the entire thing. It's incredible. I was so cold and I had my glove off so I could like, scroll up and my hands were so cold, but I read the entire thing. 20 pages.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Jordan Kurella: And they sold it for like, how much you could pay. And I paid 7 dollars.

Kat Kourbeti: I read it on a plane.

Jordan Kurella: And I sat outside for 40 minutes and just read this entire thing, and I just, I talked about it all the time. It was so good. But Avra, their grasp of the English language, which is not their first language, is just beyond the beyond, and enviable actually, as a English as a first language speaker, and it's just phenomenal. It's one of those things where I'm watching Avra's career being like, "when are you going to be like, one of the most celebrated authors?"

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, it's going to happen. I firmly believe this. I think it's because they work in short form that they're building a body of work and that's admirable and good for itself, but I feel like eventually they'll get stuck into a novel, and then it's over for all of y'all.

Jordan Kurella: All of us. I'm excited it, right? Yeah. So incredible.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, we're fixing up an interview with everyone I've mentioned, because they've all been published on Strange Horizons, and so I'm really excited to actually pick their brains about this stuff, so it's gonna be great.

So yeah, with your short fiction, then moving on to novella length, now moving on to novels, what has been your experience trying out the different formats? Because it is a different skill set, and it is a different kind of way of thinking about each kind of story, and like, all these lengths lend themselves to different things. What has your experience been, working your way up to longer length stuff?

Jordan Kurella: I have written four novels. I haven't sold any novels. I've done a novella, which I really like. I get how the novella works. I get how a novelette works. Novelettes are my favorite thing to read because they're just like, I can read them while I'm eating dinner. I can read them while I'm waiting for a doctor's appointment. They're just the perfect length for waiting for something. You got 30 minutes before your friend is gonna arrive? Novelette, you're done. Right? So it's such a great length. Basically, it's like an episode of a TV show. I probably read 20 of them last year.

But, novelettes I can do, and novels... Last year I started 3 novels, I believe. The year was so bananas with emergencies, I would get 30 or 40K in, and then something would happen, and I'd get back and be like, "I have no memory of this place." I don't like any of this. And I'd just scrap the whole thing. Because I'd be like, "I have a whole different idea of how this has to go."

For novels, for me in particular, I need momentum, which is something I have to change, because there's no more momentum in this economy. So you just have to push through, so I think I actually have to outline, which is something I don't like to do because my brain goes, "I already wrote that. Thank you. Bye."

People have called the novella a long short story or a short book, and that's not what it is. It is its own animal. Each length is its own animal. Your flash is its own animal. It's not a short story because it has to exist as a complete entity in its own word count. So novella has different pacing rules, different structural rules, like, how many elements can go in this, within the word count requirement? And I will die on this hill. Yeah, because if you write a novella as a long short story, or a short novel, you're gonna end up getting people wanting for what they missed.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, so that's what I find fascinating, just from a writer's perspective, just the craft element of it, because of those different structures, because you're constrained by the word count. And so, it's interesting to me. I always, very naively, sit down and I'm like, "I think I have an idea for a short story", and I sit down to write it and it runs away and it becomes a book.

That's how I've ended up with multiple works in progress, just like sitting there. Cause every time that I get a new idea, I'm like, "okay, yeah, like I could whip this 5,000 word short story out". And then, like 15K in, you're like, "I haven't even introduced anybody properly... so, I don't think this is a short story anymore."

It's just fascinating to me, being aware of that on the outset, when you're sitting down to write. I don't know what your process is, and you can walk me through it—is it very much deliberately, "I'm sitting down to write a short thing now, therefore I'm thinking about this in these terms," or does that emerge as you are drafting?

Jordan Kurella: I usually get about 3K in and go "oh, this is a "this" book." Right? Cause about 3K in, I start going... like, this is gonna be a terrible analogy. So when you're putting stuff in a pot, making broth, right? You're making like a chicken noodle soup, right? That's got one thing. Then you start putting a lot of stuff in it. And then eventually you're making either a stew or a chili or whatever. And the more thick it becomes, that's a novel; the less stuff in it, you've got a novella; less stuff in it, you've got a novelette; less stuff in it, you've got a short story. But a broth is basically an idea.

So the more stuff you added to it, the more page count and more word count you have. This is a terrible analogy, but that's how I'm thinking of it. That's the analogy I'm going with to make it more relatable.

Kat Kourbeti: I don't think it's a bad analogy at all. I would say that kind of makes sense to me. If anything, there's probably a little clip in there that just speaks to me a lot about feeling your way around a thing, which, like, in cooking too, sometimes you got to feel your way around what you're making and you don't know until you're about halfway through and you're like, I think...?

And so maybe it's helpful to someone. I think it's certainly sounds like it'd be helpful to me to kind of feel my way around a thing as it's happening, and just go, yeah, I think this is a "this" length, yeah.

Jordan Kurella: Process is so individual, right? So we need to know our own processes in order to figure out how we're going to do a thing, but also process changes over time as you’re writing with your life events, and, you know, personal events, and current events, and living situation events and everything else, so you have to allow for the process to be able to change and more as you change, as the world changes, as your life situation changes, as your health situation changes, because you can't keep on hammering the same process when all the tools are different.

I have to start outlining because I can't keep on trying to do a novel in this situation. But I am always the kind of guy who writes a short story and it's a suitcase. It's a stuffed suitcase, and the thing going, "look how many thoughts I can fit in this thing!" There's a thing called the MICE Quotient, right? And I'm always like, yeah, but what about MICEs Quotient? There's so many mice in my mice quotient.

And then there's all these rules to writing; you have to write a short story linearly; you have to do this and you have to do that. Rules are guidelines. They're like guardrails for people just starting. And then you figure out, I don't need this one, I don't need this one, I don't need this one. You figure out which ones work for you. I'm going to say something I say all the time, which is "fashion is something that people tell you what to do, but style is something you have".

Rules are something that people tell you what to do, but style is your own, in writing. You take out the rules that you don't need and that's your style.

Kat Kourbeti: I really like the guardrail kind of approach, where that exists to be helpful. And a lot of the time, it's not given to you in a prescriptive way. But people certainly take it as prescriptive, even such advice as the MICE quotient, which I think is super helpful to think about.

I took a class by John Wiswell a couple of years back about 'wrangling the short story', and he talked about the MICE quotient like, yeah this is helpful, you can use it with the math and the spreadsheet if you're that kind of guy, and that's fine, but you don't have to, it's not that strict. It's just meant to be a helpful thing for you to think about while you're doing your draft in whatever way.

Personally, I am an outliner, but I've also over-outlined certain things and ended up feeling like, "oh I've written it now, so it's not fun to me to draft, because I've already put it down on the page. What else is there for me to do?" But the outline wasn't a book, it was bullet points. So it wasn't ready to be read by anybody, certainly, and it had lost its luster for me to sit down and write with it. So you gotta find that sweet in-between spot where this is helpful, this is not. Fine.

I think we're all works in progress on that one.

Jordan Kurella: We're all works in progress, basically, just in general.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Jordan Kurella: It's just one of those things of like, the guardrail approach to training wheels approach, all that kind of stuff. We have to have the grace to let people—and that's what I think about with Strange Horizons is that, when I was thinking of "it is too cool for school, too shiny, too this," I was really limiting myself. Because when you think of a zine or a magazine or a publisher as "too cool for me," you're really limiting yourself and what you submit, because everybody gets rejected. But I loved this magazine, and I still love this magazine, I still read it all the time. The criticism section like, there was a terrific, by S. Qiouyi Li—Lu‚

Kat Kourbeti: S. Qiouyi Lu. Yes. Yeah.

Jordan Kurella: About Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Kat Kourbeti: Yes.

Jordan Kurella: —which totally—

Kat Kourbeti: Fantastic review.

Jordan Kurella: —just blew my mind, and it was longer than a typical piece than I read of criticism, but it was just like, incredible.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, it was so personal and everything about like, their connection to the film. And I love the film anyway, but seeing it from the eyes of kind of the ideal target audience for this film, and seeing what they noticed about it, oh—I'm such a big S. Qiouyi Lu fan from that. I'm just like, anything they do, yes, please. They're incredible.

Jordan Kurella: There was that and the criticism that y'all do, there's fiction, the poetry, everything is such a great institution of a magazine. And the podcast and everything, just yeah, yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Aw, thank you. We do our best. What's been really interesting during these interviews is seeing how that impression that people have of us through the years, how that has changed or not changed, but also just kind of the stuff we do, the different departments, you know, we don't really have a hierarchy. Technically, we have a managing editor, but you can do whatever you want in your own department. You're left with making the choices that make the most sense to you. And it's interesting how we all kind of arrive at a similar conclusion, we all want to do similar things, without really talking about it.

Jordan Kurella: That's perfect.

Kat Kourbeti: Because I was a podcast guest recently on the Functional Nerds podcast, talking about Strange Horizons, and my managing editor, Romie Stott, posted about the episode saying, "oh yeah, I was nodding along. Like I love what they do. This is great." And it's like, Romie and I haven't talked about this very much. But it's great that what we're doing on the podcast resonates with the general vibe. So I'm super happy to hear from people who like, have been reading us for a long time and still have that good relationship with the magazine.

Thank you so much for taking the time. Is there anything that's forthcoming or recent, or both, that you might want to plug or promote?

Jordan Kurella: Yeah, The Death of Mountains comes out on March 31st from Lethe Press. The Death of Mountains is the entity that comes for a middling hill in the Appalachians who doesn't want to die. So to stave off the inevitable, she trades stories with the Death of Mountains to play the oldest game in the book with the entity of death. Publishers Weekly gave it a terrific review, and they called it "a fabulist tale with a strong world."

Kat Kourbeti: That's very exciting. Kind of A Thousand and One Nights, but with mountains.

Jordan Kurella: And it's set in the Appalachians.

Kat Kourbeti: And also has a fantastic cover. I love the cover for that already. It looks amazing.

Jordan Kurella: It was done by Inkspiral Design. The interior is also freaking terrific. I love the interior too.

Kat Kourbeti: Cool. So we'll look out for that, and where can we find you on the internet?

Jordan Kurella: So you can find me at jordankurella.com. I'm also at Blue Sky, @kurellian.bsky.social. Kurellian, like Orwellian, but Kurellian. That was a meme that somebody did. I was like, oh, that's awful, but I'm doing it.

And that's it. That's my only two places, because I have trust issues.

Kat Kourbeti: Keeping it short, and also yeah, just too many platforms, too much faff, like, we got stories to write. So that's fair enough.

So we'll look for you there, and thank you so very much for joining us, it's been a pleasure to talk to you.

Jordan Kurella: Thank you so much.