The Year's Best Science Fiction, 32nd Annual Ed.
A story I'm proud to see included
My short story "Jubilee" can be found in The Year's Best Science Fiction, 32nd Annual Edition, edited by Gardner Dozois. "Jubilee" is set in my Lockstep universe, but it explores the ideas of that book from the outside in. It's about a hereditary caste of couriers who transfer letters between two people who live in separate locksteps. The couriers live in real-time, but the Authors, as they call them, are from locksteps that only awake at 30 and 29 year intervals, respectively. Centuries pass between jubilees--those brief times when both locksteps are awake at the same time.
Here's the thing, though: the letters are just love-letters between two teenagers from different worlds. "Jubilee" is a love story, but one that's played out over hundreds of years and mediated by people who live their entire lives in between the exchange of two letters.
This story was huge fun to write, and was originally published on Tor.com. I'm delighted to see it in print form, and especially in a place like the Year's Best.