Jo Miles has a lot of fantastic credits, including stories in Uncanny, Lightspeed, and Fantasy & Science Fiction. Their books include the Gifted of Brennex space opera trilogy and the Infinite Pantry cozy fantasy series. Huge thanks to Jo for talking with me about their (fun!) new novella, The Final Chronicle of Yeneh, which came out July 7!
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Art by Kimberly Herbst
Myna: Tell us about your novella, The Final Chronicle of Yeneh! Who are your characters? What themes do you explore?
Jo: It’s a fun, genre-blending, standalone adventure with some serious topics at its heart. It’s about Lady Ada Quintrall, who’s trying to help terraform her family’s new planet and restore their fortune. She believes—wants to believe—that there’s nothing native to the planet that deserves conservation. But she meets a socialist xenobiologist who wants to study the native life… and it turns out it’s way more complicated than she wants it to be. The native life is connected to her family’s history in some deep and unexpected ways, which she’ll have to deal with.
The big themes are about colonization and the harms it causes whether we’re on an alien planet or a portal fantasy world, and it deals a lot with taking responsibility for the harms that your people have done, even if you personally didn’t start them.
But it’s also about the sense of wonder and discovery that’s so important in sci-fi and fantasy, and how our love of stories can help drive us to do the right thing.
Myna: What’s unique about this book?
Jo: It blends two genres I love: science fiction (especially planetary exploration and first contact) and portal fantasy. Not your usual combination! But they’re thematically connected, to me, both through that sense of wonder, and through the issues that come along with stepping into someone else’s world, which can be done respectfully or but more often comes with deep harm. In this book, Ada has to come to terms with her family’s wrongdoing and make things right—and her love of the Chronicles of Yeneh, the in-world portal fantasy series written by her ancestor, helps guide her in how to do that.
Myna: When a reader finishes the last word in the book, what emotion will they be feeling?
Jo: Bittersweet satisfaction and a sense of justice. Some hard decisions have to get made, but there is a great deal of optimism and determination to make things right, which I hope readers will carry back into our world (where there’s so much that needs making right).
Art by Maria Spada
Myna: You’re having a busy publishing year! I’d love to hear more about Tea & Treachery at the Infinite Pantry!
Jo: Yes! It’s been wonderful, though very busy. Tea & Treachery at the Infinite Pantry is the first book in my new cozy fantasy series, about a magical museum of food and the people who take care of it. The series is full of queer characters, found family, romance, and tasty food. It’s really fun to write!
This first book is about Glendevyn, a tea-loving middle-aged woman who’s the new curator of the Infinite Pantry and finds herself leading them through a crisis when a mysterious magic starts destroying the collection. She and Irdruan, the nonbinary elven mage who’s “just a friend,” have to figure out what’s happening and how to stop it, but also how to keep morale up. There’s a magical mystery, a little suspense, and a friends-to-lovers romance.
Myna: You also write short stories. Which of your stories are your favorites?
Jo: I started writing short stories when I’d been working for ages on my first attempted novel and, realizing that novels take forever to write, wanted a change of pace without feeling like I was abandoning it. I came to love them as a place to experiment with structure and technique, and also to tackle ideas that I wouldn’t want to write a whole book about.
A few of my favorites:
- My latest, “You Have Arrived at Your Destination” (Escape Pod), is about a self-driving car with a mind of its own, and how it and its owner help each other find joy amid the grind of daily life.
- “A Menu of First Favorite Meals” (Uncanny Magazine) is about two estranged sisters reconnecting and working through their issues over foods from different eras of their lives, after one comes back from a journey to space. It’s sweet and poignant.
- As an example of what I mean about short stories offering the freedom to experiment, “Simmered in Their Wealth Like the Richest of Sauces” (Lightspeed) plays with a very different voice than my usual; it’s a literal “eat the rich” story with dragons, and it’s a lot of fun.
Myna: How would you describe your writing style, in general? Does that hold true for this book?
Jo: My writing tends to include characters you want to root for, quirky world-building, and a sense of hope. I write lots of queer characters, and political themes including antifascism and anticapitalism. Sometimes it’s quiet and cozy, other times tense and even a little dark, but I love a happy ending, and I hope my readers leave feeling a bit better about the world.
The Final Chronicle of Yeneh embodies most of this, with both a sense of adventure and wonder, while being vehemently anticapitalism and antiauthoritarian. Tea & Treachery at the Infinite Pantry is more quietly political and more overtly queer, with themes around found family and community.
Myna: How do you stay motivated?
Jo: It’s tough when the real world is trying so hard to sap all our energy. I switch between projects depending on my mood, sometimes leaning into the anger and writing about tearing down and rebuilding systems, and other times going for escapism, writing about worlds I wish we lived in, like the world of The Infinite Pantry. My reading choices are the same.
Escapism gets badmouthed, but I think it’s so important, not just to have a place to rest and recover, but also to have visions of what a better world might look like.
The other thing that helps is hearing from readers that something I wrote spoke to them or made a difference for them. Never be afraid to tell a writer you loved their work! None of us get tired of hearing it, ever.
Myna: Which mode of transportation would you prefer: electric seahorse, cyborg dragon, raven-starship hybrid, or something else (explain!)?
Jo: Oh, wow! I want them all. I imagine a raven-starship must be very cocky and mischievous, probably prone to distraction by shiny things, and would have lots of wacky adventures. Almost like a raven-shaped TARDIS, perhaps? So I’d have to go with that.
Myna: Do you have a pet, or other non-writing hobbies/activities? Show us a picture!
Jo: My office assistants, Ada and Charlie, supervise all my writing and make sure there’s always enough fur on my keyboard. (They are quite good about not actually walking on the keyboard, fortunately!) They have their own section in my newsletter, so my subscribers get a monthly dose of cat pictures.
For hobbies, I’m a very enthusiastic, though not wildly successful, gardener. The weather this year has been rough for the garden, but I’ve got several tomato plants, a couple sweet peppers, a tomatillo, some fava beans, and until recently when the heat got them, a bunch of herbs and greens.
Myna: Here’s a question from previous interviewee, Ivy Grimes, author of The Cellar Below the Cellar: What time of day do you do your best work?
Jo: I used to think it was the evening, because when I was commuting, that’s when I had time to write. But now that I work from home, I’ve tried to take Becca Syme’s advice and write first thing, while I’m fresh and before I get sucked into worrying about everything else on my plate. I don’t always manage it, but that’s the ideal!
Myna: Do you have a question you’d like me to ask the next person I interview? What things are you curious about in other writers or editors?
Jo: What does a perfect writing day look like for you?
Myna: What’s next for you?
Jo: Apart from some short stories, I’m working on book 2 of the Infinite Pantry, which focuses on a new couple, and I’m playing with some new elements I haven’t tried before. There’s a murder! (Or… is it?) There’s a treasure hunt, complete with riddles! And of course lots more found family and delicious food. For anyone who wants updates on the series, the best place is my newsletter, where you’ll also get some fun bonus content.
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Jo Miles writes optimistic science fiction and fantasy, including the Infinite Pantry cozy fantasy series, the Gifted of Brennex space opera trilogy, and The Final Chronicle of Yeneh. Their short stories have appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lightspeed, Uncanny, and more. Jo lives in Maryland, where they help nonprofits use the internet to save the world, but mostly serve the whims of their two cats.
Check out Jo’s newsletter, and find them on Bluesky and Instagram.
Myna Chang 