Someone You Can Build A Nest In

**Nebula Award Nominee**
**Hugo Award Nominee**

*Featuring all-new exclusive material for the trade paperback: an author's note, reading group guide, and teaser for Wearing the Lion!*

“This unusual queer romance is a heartfelt fable about disability and the possibility of reconciling conflicting needs through love and understanding.” —The Guardian

"Sweetly furious, darkly funny, and gruesomely wholesome. It's a love story for the unloved, a happily-ever-after with a higher-than-average body count. I just adored it." —Alix E. Harrow, New York Times-bestselling author of Starling House

Shesheshen has made a mistake fatal to all monsters: she's fallen in love.

Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by impolite monster hunters, she constructs a body from the remains of past meals: a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, and a bear trap as an extra mouth.

Badly hurt by the hunters, Shesheshen’s nursed back to health by Homily, a warm-hearted human. Homily is kind and would make a great co-parent: an ideal place to lay Shesheshen’s eggs so their young can devour Homily from the inside out. But as they grow close, Shesheshen realizes that eating her girlfriend isn’t an option.

Just as Shesheshen’s about to confess her identity, Homily reveals something else: she’s hunting a shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Has Shesheshen seen it anywhere?

Shesheshen didn’t curse anyone, so now she has to figure out why Homily’s twisted family thinks she did. As Shesheshen’s hunt for the monster becomes increasingly deadly, the bigger challenge remains: learning how to build a life with, rather than in, the woman she loves.

John Wiswell won the Nebula Award for his short story “Open House on Haunted Hill.” He has also been a finalist for the Hugo Award, World Fantasy Award, British Fantasy Award, and Locus Award. His work has appeared in acclaimed publications like Uncanny Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Tor.com, Nightmare Magazine, and others, as well as numerous podcasts, including LeVar Burton Reads podcast, the NoSleep podcast, Podcastle, Escape Pod, and others. He was most recently a finalist of the Hugo Award a second time in 2022 for Best Novelette. He has 9,000+ followers on Twitter and is a well-known and beloved member of the online sci-fi and fantasy community. He regularly attends sff industry cons and participates in programming.