Podcastle, Episode 917 for Tuesday the 11th of November 2025.

A tale from the vaults.

To follow the waves by Amal El Motar, read by Marguerite

Croft and produced by Eric Valdez and Priya Wood, rated R for putting the steamy into steampunk.

Good morning. Good morning, good day, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to Podcastle, the flying castle of fantasy fiction. I'm your host, Matt Dovey, and it is my pleasure to present, once again, to follow the waves by Amal El Motar, narrated by Marguerite Croft.

This tale from the vault's first run here is episode 139 in 2011, and was originally published

in the anthology, Steampowered, Lesbian Steampunk Stories. Amal El Mota writes fiction, poetry and

criticism.

She won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards for her short story, Seasons of Glass and Iron.

And again for her novella, this is How You Lose the Time War, written with Max Gladstone, which also won the BSFA and Aurora Awards, became a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into over 10 languages.

Her reviews and articles have appeared in the NYT and on NPR books. The River Has Roots, her solo debut,

is out now from Tor.com Publishing. She lives in Ottawa, Canada. Find her online at Amalelelmotar.com

Marguerite Croft lives by the ocean just south of San Francisco.

She has read stories for Podcastle and Escape Pod

and provided the audio narration for Tim Pratt's The Strange Adventures of Ranger Girl.

She makes regular appearances on the Point Mystic podcast,

where she is also a story developer and script editor.

And now pay attention, for our tale is about to begin,

and the details must be exact.

To follow the waves, by Amal El Mottar.

Huss's legs ached.

She knew she ought to stand, stretch them,

...