Discovered that Matthew Funk at Fiction Daily linked to my Ideomancer story “Lucky You” on January 24. It was a “Genre” entry. Very cool.
Category: stories
postbellum
“Lucky You” is up at Ideomancer. Editor Leah Bobet’s description of the story is very generous and totally apropos to what I was trying to do – regardless of whether or not I succeeded: “breaks the world and then draws us through to the other side.” Basically, this is my post-apocalyptic vision.
I want to share the music I wrote this story to, because both songs are generally excellent – both have particular “moments” where I hear them in the story, but that’s just me:
- Part 1 (Sections 1, 2, 3): “New World In My View” by King Britt & Sister Gertrude Morgan
I got the new world in my view
On my journey I pursue
I said I’m running, running for the city
I got the new world in my view
- Part 2 (Sections 4, 5): “Yawny At The Apocalypse” by Andrew Bird
photo by Roy Toft
spatial concentration
My story “Pugelbone,” which won the recent ChiZine Short Story Contest, is now live as part of the October-December issue. As I said before, this was the story based on a dream I had in China. Here’s the beginning:
I was born in the Warren, and the Warren was all I knew. Both my mother and father were Meers. We go back to the founders. My father was very proud of our ancestry, but he was also very ill. He talked about forging tunnels and building walls and digging rooms for more families, more, when of course the Warren was already finished, and there was no more concrete to dig a new space out of. The rooms had been split as small as they could go without forcing adults to stoop, without making stretching out to sleep completely impossible. Babies were being suffocated, usually under older children, sometimes under their parents. The tunnels had become so narrow that we could only pass through one by one, and even then we had to dodge laundry from the overhead apartments, and falling garbage bags, and other things that people decided they just didn’t have room for. I guess before Warrens get finished – get carved up into this Swiss cheese honeycomb as far and as dense as they can go – people have high expectations of how it will turn out. I’ve seen my father’s sketches. There is an order there that is inhuman, it is so exacting. My mother used to say that in a Warren, you eventually lose control. I don’t just mean the jealous lovers that beat each other’s heads against the floor, or the men we kids used to call trenchcoat nasties. I mean you lose control of the Warren.
What ended up tying it together was the concept of the Kowloon Walled City.
good news
I’m very happy to say that I’ve won ChiZine’s 15th Short Story Contest. Much thanks to the judges and to ChiZine for hosting the contest. I entered it thinking basically “why the hell not,” so this was a really pleasant surprise.
My story, “Pugelbone,” was based on a dream I had while I was on a train to Chengdu in China earlier this year. Not sure if any of that has come out in the story, but perhaps. Like my other ChiZine story, “Intertropical Convergence Zone,” this is kind of sociopolitico-horror. ChiZine will publish it in the October-December issue.
cosmic horror
And the aforementioned issue of Innsmouth Free Press is out! Much appreciation to the editors for putting together such a nice-looking copy (and letting my name on the cover!). A teensy excerpt from my story:
It had to be a ghost. Maybe she’d been a babysitter like Kris, some hundred years ago. Maybe she’d been Dutch. A prison nurse. Someone cruel. And maybe something horrible had happened to her, something that earned her such a nasty name. Maybe she lost her legs in an accident. Maybe they had to sew on a pair of goat legs as rudimentary prosthetics….
Just my story, “Red Goat, Black Goat,” online.
FYI: “Black Goat” translated into Indonesian is “Kambing Hitam,” which also means “scapegoat.” It’s a variation on “Black Sheep.”
his sister speaks: you must be careful
My story “Red Goat Black Goat” will be up at Innsmouth Free Press in June 2010. I believe it will be part of their multiethnic issue. Either way, it’s Lovecraft in Indonesia, so it can’t go too wrong, right? Just try not to think about the fact that it’s my first attempt at a Lovecraftian story.
Title is from the Death in June song “Red Dog Black Dog,” which obviously served as some inspiration here.
dearly departed
“Everything Dies Baby” is now live at Strange Horizons.
Besides the Bruce Springsteen song “Atlantic City,” I’d also like to point to “Behind Closed Doors,” the brilliant episode of Air Crash Investigation that spawned this story.
Put your makeup on
Fix your hair up pretty
And meet me tonight in Atlantic City
marine biology
Sze Tsung Leong: Sea of Marmara
“Lake Tahoe’s Lover” is now up at Fantasy Magazine! It’s been waiting there for a year, but I still love this story. A little more romantic/whimsical than most of what I write, but blame it on the Hudson River and my best friend’s old lake house that I used to spend summer weekends at growing up. I love the picture they chose to accompany it. Exactly how I pictured the lake (except with a few less trees).
Actually, I’ve never been to Lake Tahoe. But I think it’s a lovely name for a lake.
Little fish. Big fish. Swimming in the water.
Come back here, man. Gimme my daughter.
– PJ Harvey
game theory
Alec Soth: “West Point”
“Intertropical Convergence Zone” was nominated for a Shirley Jackson award in the short story category. Obviously it’s amazing and wonderful to get this kind of recognition. Results are in July, although I am absolutely not hoping for anything. It’s a cliche, but to be nominated is honor enough. I think that “psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic” is a pretty accurate description of my so-called genre. I’m getting more and more comfortable saying that horror’s my favorite genre to read, write, and watch (because let’s just be honest, it is).
“Everything Dies, Baby” was accepted by Strange Horizons. I am so happy because this story is so close to me. It’s named for one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs (“Atlantic City”) and is based on “Behind Closed Doors,” an episode of Air Crash Investigation. Basically, I combined the Windsor Incident (American Airlines Flight 96) with the much worse crash of Turkish Airlines Flight 981. “Atlantic City”‘s chorus is one I instinctively, immediately related to/understood as pertaining to not only grief but spirituality: “Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact/ and maybe everything that dies someday comes back.”
backdrifts
Silence of the Lambs
“And When She Was Bad” is up at Nossa Morte!
This story was inspired by my A Cultural History of Japanese Monsters class and our constant discussions about the archetype of the monster, and the cultural role it plays. As a horror movie fanatic and a feminist, the “final girl” – as I’ve written about before – is a character that’s always intrigued me. I actually wrote an essay for the class about the strange bond between the monster and the final girl. This story’s sort of the fictional culmination of that essay. It’s also personal. I’ve always felt a real sympathy, or at least empathy, for those final girls. Have I mentioned that Clarice Starling is my personal heroine? Well, now I have.
So though I hesitate to say that the final girl in “And When She Was Bad” is me… she may be an alternate universe version of me.
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen‘s “Monster Culture (Seven Theses)” was the original prompt. It comes highly recommended as not only insightful, but a good read.
Also, the fact that the nursery rhyme of the story’s title was my favorite nursery rhyme from a very early age probably says something about me:
there was a little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead
and when she was good, she was very, very good
and when she was bad, she was horrid.
Nadia Bulkin 