Alas, a Blog

January Fifteenth debuts tomorrow! This is my last post before it heads out into the world.

(ICYMI, check out some of my earlier posts about January Fifteenth, including my official announcement, the Debut Sampler, and meeting the characters. Preorders are available through several different online platforms, including Powell’s, Amazon, Indiebound, and Barnes and Noble.)

Here’s the author’s note I wrote for the beginning of the book:

Dear Reader, 

January Fifteenth takes place in a near-future America with a Universal Basic Income (UBI) program. If you’re not  familiar with the term, Universal Basic Income is a policy proposal for the government to provide an annual income to  its citizens. Details vary—like how much that income should be—but every citizen would get it, without condition. 

For me at least, any argument about UBI begins with one question: will it help people? 

Practical assessment follows, of course, but that’s the first thing we have to know. In its ideal form, if everything went  perfectly, would UBI improve people’s lives? I don’t have a definitive answer, although I pose a series of possible  questions and answers in this novella. 

During my research on American UBI proposals, most of the hypotheticals I saw concentrated on the traditional  concerns of the right versus left political axis. Would UBI open new possibilities for society, or encourage a culture of  laziness and dependency? 

I became more curious about other questions. For instance, some people dislike that UBI goes to people of any social  class—so whatever might (some) rich kids do with it? Some people are wary about the ways cults exploit contemporary  welfare programs—what might they do with UBI, and how might others try to stop them? Pervasive, systemic racism  has created an enormous disparity between the assets of Black and white American households—can and should we  brush over that history as if White and Black communities have an equal starting point? Money can help someone  escape an abusive relationship, but would Universal Basic Income change what happens afterward? 

The characters in this book have gone through hard things, from being orphaned to domestic violence to forced  marriage. Many of the scenarios in this book reflect situations that I or people close to me have gone through. Others  evolved through research and talking to people. So many of us have gone through similar tribulations, whether the more  common horrors like casual racism and sexual assault, or the more rarefi ed ones like cult exploitation. These things  impact our lives. They affect our happiness. They certainly affect how and why Universal Basic Income could change our  circumstances. 

Although I hope January Fifteenth is true to the characters and emotions, I can’t claim it’s an accurate prediction. UBI  could play out in lots of ways that are equally, if not more, plausible. For example, in January Fifteenth, the practical side  of running UBI is relatively smooth and easy. As a world-building choice, that allows me to let fiddly details fade into the  background while I focus on the characters. But is it the most likely scenario? Probably not—very few things seem to be  easy. 

Even within the world I set up, there are a ton of possible alternative and conflicting scenarios. I could have happily kept  adding more. In fact, a fifth thread ended up on the cutting room floor during an early draft, when the word count kept  relentlessly increasing.

If I can make any “true” predictions, I suppose they are these: 

1. Money can make life easier, but it can’t solve everything. 
2. Adding money to a system with underlying problems won’t fi x those problems on its own. 
3. After any massive change, some people will be better off, some people will be worse off, and many people will be both better and worse off. 
4. However the future unfolds, it won’t go according to my values. There will always be outcomes I don’t expect. Some of them will contradict my beliefs about the world. 
5. I’m definitely wrong about something. 

Rachel Swirsky

January Fifteenth comes out next week! I can hardly believe it. Last week, I posted a short excerpt of Janelle’s story and linked to the Debut Sampler, which includes a longer one.

Today, meet all the characters!

(I’ve put some graphics in here, but all the information on the graphics is also in the text.) 

January Fifteenth takes place in a future USA with Universal Basic Income. The novella follows four women on January 15th, the day they get their UBI payments.

• HANNAH, an abused mother on the run in upstate New York
• JANELLE, a broke reporter raising her orphaned sister in Chicago
• OLIVIA, a wealthy student celebrating Winter break at a Colorado ski resort
• SAARH, a pregnant teen trapped in a fundamentalist cult in Utah

While I was reading all the various arguments about UBI, I noticed that most commentary centers on the traditional right/left political axis. That’s a great place for discussion, but I wanted to talk about the smaller scale, human effects. 

The story evolved to center around these four women from different places who have very different experiences with UBI. The money enables some of them to change their lives, but it can’t get rid of all their problems. Or, to put it like the tag line does: Money changes everything– except people.

UBI has the potential to ameliorate–or not–some of the most serious problems people have in life. This novella engages with a number of those, from the more casual horrors that many readers will have experienced personally like racism, domestic abuse, sexual assault and suicide, to more unusual situations like cult exploitation. I’ve experienced some of these things myself. To write about others, I read a lot and talked to people. (Thank you so much to anyone who shares their stories in whatever way they choose.)

I spent a lot of time with these characters (40,000 words is more than twice the length of the longest thing I’ve published before!) so I feel very close to them. I hope you find them compelling, too.

Meet Hannah, an abused mother on the run

January 15th is the anniversary of the day Hannah looked at her universal basic income payment and realized she had the resources to take her two children and flee her abusive ex-wife. Since then, Hannah and her children have been on the run, fleeing from Abigail as she stalks them from rental home to rental home. So far, Abigail hasn’t discovered their new place in Canasota, New York, but it’s just a matter of time. 

​​As the twanging faded, Hannah heard a distant, quiet shuffle from the back of the house. Something wooden groaned. Hannah’s mouth went dry. The ends of her scarf dropped from her hands, unwound, and fell loosely across her chest.

Her heart pounded. She hadn’t expected Abigail to find them so fast. She took a deep breath to shout upstairs for Jake and Isaiah to start piling furniture against their bedroom door.

A high-pitched giggle broke the quiet, followed by another. Hannah exhaled in relief. Thank God. It was just the boys playing.

Her heart hadn’t stopped pounding, though. Damn it. Damn it! What was she supposed to do when the boys wouldn’t listen? This wasn’t about sticking their fingers in their cereal or getting crayon on the walls. Did it really matter that it was developmentally normal for a seven-year-old to test authority if it ended up giving Abigail a way back into their lives?

Meet Janelle, a broke reporter raising her sister

Since their parents were killed in a plane crash, reporter-turned-activist Janelle has been raising her little sister, Nevaeh, in their home city of Chicago.Their inheritance isn’t enough to cover all their expenses so Janelle spends her time scrambling to get as many gigs as possible. Unfortunately, legitimate news jobs are scarce, and a lot of aggregators won’t work with Janelle because of her former activism. Every January 15th, Janelle gets stuck doing the same boring interviews so she can keep their bank balance positive.

She felt like a bee doing the same mindless task year after year, just like all the other bees. Get the honey. Do a dance. Interview someone who thinks her cats should get UBI.

Interview a violinist who uses their money to fund lessons for disadvantaged kids. Interview a new mom about the savings fund she set aside for her baby. Interview a lawyer representing a class action lawsuit against a landlord for extorting his tenant’s disbursements. Interview a senior citizen who lost his home because of problems with the transition from social security. Interview the protestors wherever they are this year. Interview the protestors protesting the other protestors wherever they are this year…

The aggregators would probably love to run her story, too, if she wedged it into the right box. Sentimental: Chicago-based 28-year-old raises 14-year-old sister after parents die in plane crash. Political: Former activist relies on legislation she championed to care for orphaned sibling. Socially Responsible: UBI Keeps Black Families Together. 

Anyway. The upshot was that there was always work for two weeks in January even if you didn’t have a great relationship with the major aggregators…

So of course one of her buzzcams was broken.

Meet Olivia, a wealthy student on winter break

Olivia, a freshman at Brown University, has always been the scapegoat of her dysfunctional, grandiosely wealthy high school “friends” group. Things aren’t going any better for her at college where she’s isolated and failing out. So maybe it’s not too shocking that she’s doing badly at her friends’ reunion at an expensive Colorado ski resort. Drunk and preoccupied with her own worries, Olivia barely notices her “friend” William’s bizarre “Waste Day” celebration: a contest to see who can waste their UBI payments most extravagantly.

“How’s life at Brown?” Elsa pressed sweetly. “Does Brown have remedial classes?”

“I’m not in remedial classes,” said Olivia.

“So you’re failing out,” Elsa said.

The accusation caught Olivia like a blow to the stomach.

Don’t think about Brown, Olivia told herself. Don’t think about Spring semester starting in ten days. Don’t think about telling your parents. 

“Whoa,” said Leroy.

“Low blow,” said Freddie.

Disapprovingly, Pauline said, “Not nice, Elsa. We don’t hunt foals.”

Meet Sarah, a pregnant child bride trapped in a cult

Fifteen-year-old Sarah is trapped in a cult, a fundamentalist offshoot of the Church of Latter Day Saints. Having been married off last year, she’s only a few months away from giving birth to her first child. Everyone knows that the heretical mainstream Mormons only force the prophet’s women to pick up their checks in person to harass them. But as she makes the annual pilgrimage on foot, pestered by her needy cousin Agnes and haunted by memories of her recently exiled brother Toby, Sarah’s starting to doubt what everyone knows.

Sarah didn’t keep sweet. That was her problem. She’d always been too angry. She said no. She didn’t smile. 

Her brother, Toby, was gentle, but the wrong way for a boy. He always let everyone else choose first. He was weak and he cried too easily. 

Her cousin, Agnes, was too smart, too needy, too scared.

They were all bent nails trying to keep tacked together. No wonder everything kept coming apart.

January Fifteenth is available for pre-order through several different online platforms, including Powell’s, Amazon, Indiebound, and Barnes and Noble.

I am delighted to have January Fifteenth reviewed in Locus Magazine Issue 737 not once but twice! 

Here’s snippets of both:

Locus Looks at Books: Caren Gusoff Sumption

“If you’ve ever read any of Rachel Swirsky’s short fiction, then you’re familiar with her signature elegant prose and her very literary deconstruction of traditional plot. Swirsky’s style is instantly recognizable and widely appreciated, earning her multiple Nebulas, and, at the very least, enthusiastic nods from nearly all the award committees in genre.”

“January Fifteenth is a fascinating thought experiment. For two of the characters, the guaranteed income provides them the opportunity to escape conditions in which they are vulnerable. The other two characters, though they come from wildly different backgrounds, contend with how one lives a meaningful life when your basic needs are covered. Swirsky chooses not to show all the possibilities that UBI may have, but instead to linger within these two emotionally-resonant themes.”

Locus Looks at Books: Gary K. Wolfe

“Swirsky, who has long been a profoundly character-driven author, spends little time depicting the political debates around such a policy or explaining the legislation behind it, but rather focuses on its impact on four diverse characters during a single blizzardy January 15.”

“Accurate predictions, as we all know, are actually pretty rare in SF, so that’s hardly the point, either. What is more to the point isthat characters as memorable, engaging, and sympathetic as Swirsky’s four women, each seeking ways to survive in systems that don’t really seem to like them much, are almost equally rare. By the time we’re halfway through their tales, we’re engaged enough to want to follow their fates, UBI or no UBI.”

As always, you can pre-order January Fifteenth from several different locations, including Powell’s, Amazon, Macmillan, and Barnes and Noble.

It had been interesting to report on UBI when the program started. Since then, she’d felt like a bee doing the same mindless task year after year, just like all the other bees. Get the honey. Do a dance. Interview someone who thinks her cats should get UBI.

She felt like a bee doing the same mindless task year after year, just like all the other bees. Get the honey. Do a dance. Interview someone who thinks her cats should get UBI.

Interview a violinist who uses their money to fund lessons for disadvantaged kids. Interview a new mom about the savings fund she set aside for her baby. Interview a lawyer representing a class action lawsuit against a landlord for extorting his tenant’s disbursements. Interview a senior citizen who lost his home because of problems with the transition from social security. Interview the protestors wherever they are this year. Interview the protestors protesting the other protestors wherever they are this year.

It occurred to Janelle, not for the first time, that the aggregators would probably love to run her story, too, if she wedged it into the right box. Sentimental: Chicago-based 28-year-old raises 14-year-old sister after parents die in plane crash. Political: Former activist relies on legislation she championed to care for orphaned sibling. Socially Responsible: UBI Keeps Black Families Together.