Chatting with Alexis Ames

Alexis Ames is a speculative fiction writer with works in publications such as Pseudopod, Luna Station Quarterly, and Tales From the Year Between. You can read more of their stories online at alexisamesbooks.com.

Alexis is the author of “Proprietary Technology” from Radon Issue 8.

Q: What inspired you to blend themes of memory and identity within a queer context in “Proprietary Technology”?

The subject of memory is something I’ve covered in my speculative stories before, because it fascinates me. I’ve written about amnesiac time travelers, musicians whose magic erases their memories, clones who don’t possess the memories of the person they’re supposed to be, and now people who have to pay a subscription fee in order to keep their memories. Memory is so tied to our identity—what happens if those memories don’t truly belong to us? If they can be taken from us? How does that affect our identities and who we are? I think there’s so much potential there for science fiction stories, and I’m sure memory will be a theme in my future stories as well.

As for putting it in a queer context, everything I write has queer characters in it; I don’t think I’ll ever write something that doesn’t center them in some way. I’m a queer writer, and I have no interest in writing about anything else.

Q: What message or commentary do you hope readers take away regarding memory and personal agency?

I don’t know if I’m supposed to admit this as a writer, but with my short stories, it’s not so much that I want people to take away a specific message. Instead, I hope that my stories make them stare at a wall for a bit and go “huh”. Whatever message readers take away from my stories is up to them. I don’t necessarily write with that in mind.

That being said, the seeds of this story came from real life, as science fiction does. So much of our lives now are governed by subscriptions. I’m a Millennial, and even in my early adulthood I could buy something and actually own it, as opposed to now where it’s sometimes very difficult to find physical copies of things I could have easily obtained in the 2000s or even 2010s. For instance, once upon a time, I could purchase Microsoft Office on a CD once and own it forever.

This story is an extension of the rise of subscriptions in our lives. The characters live in a world where even more of their lives are ruled by subscriptions—their furniture, their dishes and cutlery, prosthetic devices, and even memories.

Obviously, we all know this way of living isn’t ideal. We know it’s a problem that in this day and age, physical media is disappearing, movies can be erased as though they never existed, you can lose access to books if you stop paying a subscription fee, certain medical implants are becoming obsolete as companies go out of business, etc. These things are already a reality for many of us, and you don’t need a short story to tell you that they’re bad. Mostly, I was interested in playing this thought experiment out to the extreme, and seeing what story resulted from that.

Q: Can you elaborate on the significance of the trivia night setting you chose? Does it reflect the themes of community and escapism in your story?

To be perfectly honest, I chose that particular setting simply because it’s something I do often with friends. But yes, whatever the setting or activity had been, it needed to be something that highlighted the main character’s community—and how betrayal can come from those closest to you. How capitalism can make someone turn on friends or family, all because the job or their paycheck (or their memories) is dependent on it. It was also a way to highlight how used these characters were to this way of living, and how none of them really questioned it. Something that should have been comforting—sitting down with your community and sharing time together—became rather bleak instead.

Q: How do you approach balancing humor and gravitas in your writings?

I think a lot about the advice from Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher regarding tension in a story, and how it can’t keep building without some release. That there needs to be something that relieves the pressure before ratcheting up the tension again. That’s why I include humorous lines or moments in stories that overall are quite heavy.

Q: How are you faring with your NoNoWriMo alternatives this year?

Ha, love NoNoWriMo! I’m going to start using that.

I’ve found lots of alternatives to NaNoWriMo on various platforms—there’s #FirstDraftFall on Twitter, #Novelmber on Bluesky, #NovellaNovember on Tumblr, and I’m sure tons of others that I haven’t come across yet! But what it all boils down to is that I’ve been used to the rhythm of plotting a novel in October and writing it in November since 2007, and I’m not about to stop now. I don’t need an organization to do it. I can do it on my own, and with others who have decided to do the same.

All that to say, I’m faring pretty well! I’ve mostly outlined a novel, and I have some trusty alpha readers helping me brainstorm the parts of the plot I’m stuck on (I am a pantser and I hate outlining, but I find it necessary for writing a book in a month). I’m hoping to have the bones of something brand-new by the end of November that I can revise in 2025!

Q: Do you advocate for book chapters with unique titles or simple numbers?

I’m a fan of numbers only! I’m going to get in trouble for this opinion, but unique chapter titles feel like they belong only in children’s books. I can already hear Twitter yelling at me for this.

Q: Why do you find yourself favoring writing and reading in the third person over first person?

I’m also going to get in trouble for this opinion: first person is hard to do well, I think, because most of the time it reads like self-insert, and I’m not interested in that. This isn’t always the case, of course—for instance, one of my favorite authors is Natasha Pulley, and her book The Bedlam Stacks is written in first person. However, it’s written in a way that doesn’t feel like self-insert to me; the main character is very clearly not the author. In the interest of full disclosure, I also did once write a story in first person: “Sanctuary,” which was published through Kyanite Press but is sadly no longer available.

But aside from those few exceptions, third person is the tense for me! I’m only interested in reading (and writing) about fictional characters getting put in situations, not the author getting put in situations.

Q: As a represented author from a literary agency, do you feel that having an agent changes how you approach your creative writing or the business side of the publishing industry?

Having an agent doesn’t affect my short fiction or the way I approach it, aside from the fact that I am actively working to build a large back catalog of published stories, because I think that’s important to have. There’s at least one editor I know of who read one of my manuscripts on submission, and then went to my website and looked through my published stories. She commented that it was great to see I had so much out there already, and so many ideas.

As far as writing books goes, though, I am more strategic in what I write for traditional publishing versus what I write for short fiction or self-publishing. There’s a business side to traditional publishing that I always need to keep in mind, such as novel length and marketability and comps. So, yes, having an agent has me thinking about some of my books more strategically than I would otherwise.

Q: How has your writing changed since you began publishing in 2018?

I like to think I have a better grasp now of what makes for a good short story, and what readers and magazines are looking for. In the early years of writing short stories, I was writing a lot of slice-of-life stuff that read more like fanfiction. Now, I think I’m writing more fiction that actually has meaning to it and might contain a message that readers can take away from it.

What is next for your career?

I’m always somewhere in the process of writing, revising, and submitting short stories to various markets. I want to keep building up that back catalog, while also working on writing my books. I’ve had four short stories published so far in 2024, and I have at least another three slated to come out in the coming months.

I also plan to self-publish a book in 2025! I have a few books I’ve written with self-publishing in mind rather than traditional publishing, and I’m excited to get at least one of them out there in the world. There’s so much to learn about that process, though, as self-publishing is a whole other beast entirely. And yes, this is something I’ve discussed with my agent, and I have full permission to take this hybrid approach to my career.

If anyone is interested in following my self-publishing journey (or hearing about future short stories from me), they can sign up for my newsletter here, or follow my blog.