Blog
Most of what I know arrived by land. Trains you can sleep on, buses that should have retired decades ago, one very small plane. I go where the files were written, because places remember differently than paper does: a corridor has a temperature, a bus stop has a mosaic, a lake tells you why somebody stayed. The notebook always comes along. The umbrella, as discussed, does not.
I spent years reading files about women who built computers and flew missions. The files kept their diplomas and cropped out their bodies. My whole work is putting the body back into the record. I will not cut it out of my own. The coat is for the weather. The lace is on purpose. Nobody frames me but me.
2026
The Lake Before the Next Book
July 28, 2026 · A dock at Issyk-Kul, a stack of pages held down by a stone, and the first evening of whatever comes after Ternary Dreams.
Six months of this
July 27, 2026 · Six months of the blog: what the habit turned out to be for, and a small, wordless tug toward whatever is next.
The Signing Table
July 26, 2026 · A stranger's three-colour-underlined photocopy of a declassified MESM page, and the good kind of book fair noise.
Reading Nights on Tour
July 24, 2026 · Two days into the Ternary Dreams tour, what a reading actually demands of a sentence that looked strong on the page.
Ternary Dreams is out
July 22, 2026 · Launch day for Ternary Dreams: what the work asked, what I am proud of, and quiet thanks to the early readers who went first.
What launch week actually looks like
July 18, 2026 · An honest account of a self-published launch week: a modest trickle, a refreshed dashboard, and one reader email that outweighed the rest.
Two weeks out
July 14, 2026 · In two weeks Ternary Dreams meets the world. The first time the title and a real date sit together on this blog.
Osh bazaar drafts
July 10, 2026 · Last edits in a notebook between errands at Osh bazaar: proof that finishing a book and ordinary life share the same afternoon.
Baikonur dawn notes
July 8, 2026 · An early research tangent on Baikonur that never entered the manuscript, and why some unused hours still refuse to leave.
Rain before the launch
July 6, 2026 · A wet Bishkek morning, small final edits, and the ordinary week that refuses to pause for pre-launch nerves.
Proofing Days
July 3, 2026 · On the tedium and low-grade dread of reading your own finished book again, and the typo that survived four drafts like a smug stowaway.
When the Manuscript Outruns the Room
June 29, 2026 · A short note from the nearly finished stretch: when the book feels more solid than the chair, the cup, and the afternoon around it.
Notebook on the Long Train
June 25, 2026 · Writing in transit across a long rail stretch: the texture of research notes taken half on purpose, half because standing still had become impossible.
Ternary on the Kitchen Table
June 20, 2026 · Deep in drafting, a notebook full of ternary-logic diagrams, and the click when a book’s three-way structure finally behaves.
Courtyard Bench, Stanford
June 15, 2026 · On a research-adjacent return to the Symbolic Systems courtyard, and the gap between the student who sat there and the novelist who sits there now.
The Pitch That Got a No
June 10, 2026 · On a side project politely declined, the usefulness of a clean refusal, and why I am not staging a grievance from Bishkek.
A Name in the Declassified File
June 6, 2026 · The small, particular jolt of finding one real name that had only ever arrived secondhand, and what it costs to write near it.
Almaty cafe corner
June 3, 2026 · Working through Kazakh-archive threads on Soviet computing history in an Almaty cafe, with mountain light on the table.
Moldova, library desk
May 30, 2026 · An afternoon at a library desk in Moldova, chasing one thread and pocketing scraps meant for other books.
Cosmonautics museum pages
May 26, 2026 · A research day at Moscow’s Museum of Cosmonautics: spacecraft models, borrowed light, and notes that feed the work sideways.
The only ternary computer ever built
May 14, 2026 · Notes on Setun, Brusentsov, Lebedev, and Ekaterina Shkabara, whose name recedes in the retelling.
Console Time
May 5, 2026 · An afternoon at the console of a Soviet-era mainframe with the people who kept it alive: relay racks, magnetic drums, and the logic of three states.
A Sunday call home
May 1, 2026 · Weekly phone call with my mother: weather, gentle pressure, and the subjects we circle without naming.
Feofanija
April 18, 2026 · On researching Kyiv’s Feofanija district as a frame setting, and why a live war can never be treated as scenery.
The Niva, the Market, and the Wallet That Stayed Home
April 10, 2026 · A red Lada refuses to start, the Osh bazaar waits for no one, and the cash is still on the kitchen table. Dry comedy from a Saturday that stacked its luck poorly.
A week I did not write much
April 2, 2026 · A bad cold, a quiet desk, and the unglamorous decision to stop treating rest like a moral failure.
Der Buzzer UVB-76 Is Out
March 30, 2026 · A second launch in two days. Quieter pride, a wry calendar, and a Siberian signal that kept me company through the drafts.
Secret Dawn Among the Stars Is Out
March 28, 2026 · Launch day. Holding the printed book for the first time, thinking about what a 1985 sealed hull asked of the work, and saying thank you.
Six weeks of just this
March 22, 2026 · An honest account of a bad stretch: a chapter that would not cohere, a structure second-guessed into confetti, and the small breakthrough that finally arrived.
A diary in code
March 10, 2026 · On encoding a private diary in balanced ternary, the fictional device at the heart of the new book, and the real machine that made the idea feel possible: Setun.
A third state
February 25, 2026 · Early research notes on a new novel about Soviet computing, balanced ternary logic, and why a third state beyond yes and no feels like the right shape for hidden lives.
Desk, cezve, radio
February 14, 2026 · What a working day actually looks like in Bishkek: coffee in the cezve, a desk by the window, handwriting first, and the shortwave after dark.
The unglamorous math
February 3, 2026 · Royalties, payout thresholds, and whether a cover redesign is worth the invoice: a dry look at the business side of keeping books alive.
What the archive will not say
January 19, 2026 · On the throughline running under Secret Dawn, Ivanov’s Ghost, and Der Buzzer: women left out of the official record, and fiction as a way back toward them.
A longer room
January 7, 2026 · A New Year’s resolution with no fireworks: opening a quiet place to write about research, process, and the work that will not fit in a post.
2025
The registration office
December 1, 2025 · A morning spent on residency paperwork, a tired clerk, and the particular relief of being waved through without joy.
The Reading Where Everything Failed
November 8, 2025 · Microphone, water glass, power cut: a small Bishkek bookstore evening collapses in sequence and somehow becomes the better version.
Holding the First Copy
October 15, 2025 · The first printed copy of my debut novel arrived this morning in Bishkek. I sat with the cezve and tried to believe the years had led here.
Registan at Dusk
September 20, 2025 · Three unresearched days added to the end of an archive trip, purely because the flight connections made it nearly free.
Yurts and Horses
July 6, 2025 · A week at Song-Kul in the gap between manuscripts, with no footnote to justify it and none needed.
The Back Seat Archive
April 22, 2025 · Loose photocopies, one hard brake, and several hundred pages redistributed across a Niva footwell. Curb-side re-sorting with a tire iron for a paperweight.
The back that finally complained
March 12, 2025 · Desk years collect interest. A physiotherapy room, a printout of stretches, and the art of forgetting to do them.
Lunokhod on the Duvet
February 9, 2025 · Marat charged apricot candy for one supervised drive. Decades later the moon rover patrols my blanket, and I write a late letter to the girl who paid.
2024
Locked Out in December
December 5, 2024 · Slippers, cardigan, rubbish bag, and the soft click of a door that has opinions. A neighbor, fried onions, and ninety minutes of humility.
Twenty-seven
September 30, 2024 · A birthday kept mostly quiet, and a set of questions I am not dressing up as answers.
Trail Days
May 19, 2024 · Forty minutes from home, a valley with no research angle at all, and a chapter that got clearer anyway.
People who know my face but not my name
February 14, 2024 · The apricot seller, the neighbor on the stairs, a classmate I almost walked past: the loose weave of a life in one city.
2023
The layover that ate a day
October 5, 2023 · Eleven hours in an airport after a cancelled connection, a bag that wandered off, and the special boredom of hold music.
The Door to Hell
August 17, 2023 · A hunch-driven detour to Turkmenistan's burning crater, and what it taught me about writing an unexplained signal.
The Long Way to the Sources
August 11, 2023 · A coolant break on the Pamir Highway, an implausibly turquoise river, and what endurance is teaching this research.
Small Plane In
August 8, 2023 · Reaching a stretch of mountains no rental car would insure, on the way to remote fieldwork for the numbers-station book.
How I Came to Own a Red Niva
June 14, 2023 · A retired engineer in Bishkek sells me his Lada like introducing a difficult relative. I stall once and fall for it anyway.
The setup that went nowhere
April 18, 2023 · Dinara sent me to a gallery opening with a name and a description. The evening was pleasant. That is most of what there is to say.
Nights on 4625 kHz
March 5, 2023 · A shortwave receiver, headphones, a map of Russia on the table, and the buzz that never stops.
The Idea That Would Not Leave
January 22, 2023 · A Bishkek balcony, a blanket, and a shortwave radio that has quietly turned a year of notes into the beginning of a book.
2022
The grant that said no
November 2, 2022 · A research-travel grant rejected by form letter, then an afternoon of invoices, receipts, and a tax question I keep postponing.
The Robot from the Barakholka
October 16, 2022 · A silver wind-up robot lived behind glass at Baba Roza's. Twenty years later it marched off my desk, and something in my chest was eight again.
Prayer Flags and Yaks
September 9, 2022 · What high altitude does to a body and to attention, chased across the Tibetan plateau for a research thread I cannot yet name.
The Questions the Exhibits Do Not Answer
July 19, 2022 · A museum notebook full of orbital modules and life-support diagrams, and the gap where the bodies should be.
What Aigerim said on the phone
June 10, 2022 · A plan cancelled for the third time, a comment about who always adjusts, and a pause neither of us quite knew how to fill.
Coffee on the Only Copy
April 20, 2022 · The cezve chooses the exact second I reach for a pen. Three weeks of notes meet Turkish coffee, then the laundry line.
Ships on Dry Land
March 14, 2022 · Rusted fishing hulls on dry seabed, a vanished island, and the first notes toward a book that does not exist yet.
Parcels on the Bed
February 18, 2022 · An afternoon of locked doors, tissue paper, one defeated bodysuit, and the black slip that finally looked like me. Also a question.
Flashlight Hours
February 8, 2022 · Flashlight visits to abandoned sanatoria: the wards, the basements, and the paperwork nobody thought worth taking along.
Permission
February 6, 2022 · A week after the shop window: deciding, quietly, that this page can hold more of me than the careful public self.
The Lit Window on a Dark Street
January 28, 2022 · A late-lockdown walk through empty Bishkek, a closed lingerie shop still glowing, and a quiet click I was not ready to name.
A day that went nowhere
January 15, 2022 · A whole day lost to the phone and the ceiling, half-started chores, a bad film, and nothing improved by the end of it.
2021
What the royalty statement actually says
November 20, 2021 · A thin quarterly statement, the math of a winter coat, and the particular unease of money that arrives in uneven lumps.
Why Longhand
October 5, 2021 · On drafting by hand in a café that let me sit for four hours over one coffee, and a stubborn cluster of Soviet computing footnotes I cannot stop reading.
The day the drain won
August 25, 2021 · A Saturday spent on a clogged drain, heavy bazaar bags, damp laundry, and a hallway bulb that chose the worst moment to die.
Black Sand, Steam
July 17, 2021 · A solitary morning on a black sand beach the day after a rough ferry crossing, and a coastline I do not yet have a use for.
My Mother’s Coast
July 16, 2021 · An overnight ferry up the Kamchatka coast to see the region my mother left and still will not talk about.
The flu week
June 1, 2021 · Four days in bed with a real, unglamorous flu. Fever, soup at the door, and boredom that outlasted the worst of it.
A cousin I am missing
April 12, 2021 · A wedding in Bishkek I cannot attend, a video call standing in for a hug, and my mother saying almost nothing about it.
Fog Season
February 19, 2021 · A cold bus ride out to the bridge on a fog-heavy day, mid-way through a Symbolic Systems degree that has not yet decided what it is for.
The First Time We Sat in a Room Again
January 10, 2021 · Nearly a year on: tea with Aigerim and Dinara, masks half-managed, gratitude braided with a wariness that will not simply switch off.
2020
The Middle of It
July 20, 2020 · High summer indoors, closed banyas, thin video calls, and the flat stretch where writing is the only thing that still has edges.
The Week the City Went Quiet
March 25, 2020 · A state of emergency, a last run through Osh bazaar, and the sudden hush that settled over Bishkek almost overnight.