Dear friends,

I've been thinking a lot about the shape of stories we get used to, this month in Minnesota. I watched the Seven Dials miniseries adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel of approximately the same name, and there was a tiny moment--I'm just going to describe it generally, in a way that won't give you any real spoilers for plot events. The protagonist urges another character to compel people to help them by telling them he's from the Foreign Office, and he objects that they're in Home Office territory. This is framed by the narrative as him being frankly a bit useless, a stuffy bureaucrat, leaning on technical details while she bravely gets the job done.

I did not have the reaction the filmmakers clearly set me up to have: I loved him in that moment.

I loved him because I live in Minnesota in the winter of 2025-2026, and I have seen firsthand what happens when people say to themselves, "I can use my power as an employee of the larger governmental authority to suit my own ends--I don't have to check whether it's an appropriate use of power." All of us here in Minnesota this year have been living in a place and time where a thousand, a million harms to our neighbors--small scale and large--could have been prevented by someone saying, "Actually I'm not going to do that, that's not power I legally have under the Constitution, and relatedly, it's morally wrong." And we have all--right, left, and center, old and young--grown up on narratives that tell us that even asking yourself, "Is that power I'm supposed to be using over other people? Is that my job, really?" is weak quibbling at best and obstruction of real justice at worst. That real heroes don't wait for due process, they go in with guns blazing. We've grown up on narratives that tell us the worst thing you can be is mired in bureaucracy. The internet is full of excuses for and crushes on the glamorous sexy villain. But the person who says, "hey, some of the rules are there for a good reason"…is a buzzkill, a square. Definitely nobody's favorite.

And it's even harder to find ways to tell stories that effectively counter this, because we all know--at this point I really do think we all know--that only some of the rules are there for a good reason, and some of them are there for a very bad reason indeed. It is much, much easier to come up with an exciting and interesting reason why the heroes of your story should be breaking bad rules than why they should be not only obeying but insisting on the good ones as a basis for shared community.

Ope, I said the c-word. But I've been thinking a lot about exciting science fiction where community is not a forbidden word. Where building shared community is an active thing that we are choosing on purpose and with features specific to the people, place, and time we're in, not a passive and featureless huddle. You're seeing Minnesotans be more Minnesotan in this crisis, you're seeing people in Portland leaning into Portland, Chicago has been so Chicago…strong communities share commonalities but also have very individual features. And if we know that the best love stories are about individual people building relationships that work for them as individuals with all the quirks and weirdness individuals have, I would really like to see us understanding that community love is like that too. I would really like to see a bunch more stories out there like my friend Premee Mohamed's The Annual Migration of Clouds and its sequels, where community is bumpy and sometimes painful and active and specific and needed.

There are a million other things I can do sooner than finishing entire novels to hope to shift people's mindsets, and thank goodness for that. You can do some of them too! My friend Naomi has put together pages of links for things you can do if you are here in Minnesota or farther away. It means a lot to know that we're not facing this alone.

Not a whole lot for writing news that I can share this month, but one of my stories, On the Water Its Crystal Teeth, is on the BSFA (British Science Fiction Association) long list for its short story award, so that's pretty nifty. See the whole list here--lots of great stuff on it. (Although frankly if you find the page formatting a bit difficult, I don't blame you.) I keep waiting on when I'm allowed to share more news about a different project, but the answer is not today, so…stay tuned.

I was earnestly informing a group chat that you can sing "vegan paella" to the tune of "Viva Las Vegas" (AND I DO, my poor family), and she asked if I had my recipe for vegan paella available anywhere. Up until this moment I did not! So here we are, vegan paella. If you're not a vegan you can make it with chicken broth, sausage, shellfish, whatever you like, although you'll have to do some parts of the cooking differently. I'm telling you what veggies I put in, but you could easily do it with other veg, or with just some of these veg. If you're cooking for someone whose sobriety needs don't allow for even thoroughly cooked wine, NA wine is fine as long as it's a reasonable tasting NA wine (trust me, there is some!...and also trust me, there is some that's NOT, and you don't want sour abused grapes in your paella) or with just more broth in that step I think, won't have quite the same flavor but still should work fine.

Hang in there. Look after each other. Stay strong.

Excelsior,

Marissa

Vegan Paella

Heat 2 T olive oil in a large flat pan with a lid. Add:

6-10 cloves minced garlic

2 t paprika (smoked if available)

2 c rice

And cook for one minute-ish. 

Next add 1 1/4 c. white wine and boil uncovered for 2 minutes.

Next add: 1 can (15.5 oz) diced tomatoes
1 3/4 c. vegetable broth

1 bay leaf (yes I can smell and taste the bay leaf; if you can’t, don’t bother, I guess, but I totally can)

3/4 t. ground saffron (this is not a precise measure, just get some saffron threads and grind them on your mortar and pestle, or throw them in if you don't have one)

1/2 can (same size as above) chickpeas, drained--or equivalent amount of chickpeas cooked from dry, or the whole can if you want

1/2 can (same) artichoke hearts, chopped if they're large, or the whole can if you want

1/2 chopped bell pepper, or, you guessed it, the whole pepper if you want

A few stalks of asparagus, cut into bite-sized chunks (or if you have leftover roasted asparagus in the fridge, throw that in at the end with the peas)

Reduce heat and cook, covered, for 15 minutes.

Check it at this point. The broth should mostly be absorbed and the rice cooked--if you're still seeing liquid, cover it back up and cook it a few minutes longer. Throw in 1 c. peas (frozen is fine and no need to thaw them, but if your frozen peas have gotten icy in the freezer, probably best to knock the worst of the ice chunks off them). These will cook super-fast, so basically by the time you've stirred them in, turned off the heat, and called everybody to the table, they'll be done.

This reheats well as leftovers. And as I said above, any of the veg that you don't have or don't like is optional--except the tomatoes. The tomatoes are crucial to the thing coming together as itself. You can use fresh tomatoes in fall if you're drowning in tomatoes but it won't be worth it any other time, just throw the canned ones in and feel good about it.