Two Stories Upcoming in "The Food of My People"

I am very happy to note that two of my stories, one new and the other a reprint, have been accepted for the anthology, The Food of My People, edited by Ursula Pflug and Candas Jane Dorsey.

The two are very different stories.

"The One That Gets Away", set on the west coast of Vancouver Island, tells the story of a man obsessed with fishing for dogfish from a pier.

"Eating Our Young", which was first published in the small press anthology, The Speed of Dark, looks at the plight of two young children who are regularly eaten by their family and left to recover.

I suppose they sound equally grim, in a way, but the one is an exploration, an awakening, and the other is a painful close-up of unwitting cruelty and its effects.

One of the requirements of the book is a recipe to go with each story. Both of these were a challenge for me, considering I don't actually eat sharks or children. But in the end I was able to find recipes that made sense with the stories, and now I am eagerly awaiting the publication of the book, so that I can discover all the other stories presented in the book.

Stories, Poems, Reviews!

Another of my rare postings.

Hello! Summer is crawling coolly by us. A wet one and by many accounts that is a terrible thing but I don't mind a bit. As long as there is weather at all that's good enough for me.

Energy is still not fountaining up in me but what I have I use. I'm spending many hours with my local nephews and niece (Clelie Rich and I simultaneously came up with the word "niblings" to describe such folk), doing lots of meditation and a fair bit of yoga, and...

writing!!!

In the past two and a half months I have written 60 or 70 poems* -- unheard of -- none of the speculative genre. I'm still plunking away at the 25 related reviews I opened my gob about over a year ago. And with the encouragement of a colleague I've dusted off and revised three short stories and sent them out this week. I also wrote a new one, which has a few finishing touches to be put to it before launching at some unsuspecting publisher. (The stories are: "Invicta", "Eating Our Young", "This is for Mrs. Zaberewsky", and "In Days and Nights the World is Spent".)

(*These are not Polished Poems, but earnest first drafts. When I have come to the end of this spurt I'll go back with a straight edge and candle and see what I can do to bring them to maturity.)

I am extremely grateful to this colleague, one Ursula Pflug, who reviewed Finding Creatures & Other Stories for the Internet Review of Science Fiction a while back. I hadn't realized how much it would help to have someone show an interest in the stories that are lying dusty in the drawer, and nudge me to do something with them.

Thank you, thank you, Ursula!

I fell out of action with Dad's death, and the worry about how long the reviews are taking translates in my furry mind to "shouldn't take time for my stories while the reviews are still unfinished." This new situation is helping to remind me that in fact my stories are the juice that gives me the zip to do these other things.

The reviews are interesting to do though. They are all of books about Brigit, goddess or saint, and there is a huge variety of stuff about her now, where a few decades ago there was (count them) one book available about her. The reading is prompting me to write poems related to her, as well, so really it all works like one nice composting cycle. (I am writing them, interestingly, on paper. With a pen.)

In February Eileen Kernaghan and I chose the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place stories from among the tales chosen by another judge for the Red Tuque speculative fiction anthology, Canadian Tales of the Fantastic. It was an interesting process, working with another person to weigh the pros and cons of a given story, and Eileen is always a pleasure to work with. They've come up with a wonderful cover, which I am itching to post here but as I can't find it on the RTB site, I guess I'd better hold back. Check out Red Tuque Books in September for the release.

I've pulled back a lot from the internet, as foreshadowed in earlier postings, and this is part of the reason I am finding the space of mind to write again. The router is off till I actually need it on. The computer is safe territory (safe from endless distractions, that is -- since I don't play computer games) once again.

I'm looking forward to VCon at the end of September/beginning of October. (Both. They occur on the same weekend.) Hope to get up and do more improvfoolery and have fun with the masses. Greg Benford is GoH this year so I have reserved Timescape from the library and will dutifully do some background reading. He is both a scientist and a respected author so I'm thinking this Will Be Good.

I am also going to see a favourite author at a 5 day retreat in August. This thought simply makes me smile. Thich Nhat Hanh, author of Peace is Every Step (my all-time favourite book) and wonderful teacher, is coming to Vancouver. I've been volunteering for several months and will be stepping out of my own hermitage into a sangha of many hundred people for those few days. Lovely.

Anyway, just wanted to say hello from this quiet outpost of the hinternet. Or the outernet, perhaps.

Humanizing the Impossible: Ursula Pflug Reviews Finding Creatures

Ursula Pflug, author of Green Music, reviews Finding Creatures & Other Stories for the Internet Review of Science Fiction.

Ursula's long awaited story collection After The Fires is on the Aurora Awards short list. She is also a journalist, produced playwright and creative writing instructor.

April, 2009 : Review:

Humanizing the Impossible

Finding Creatures and Other Stories, by Casey June Wolf

by Ursula Pflug

I first ran across Casey June Wolf's work in the Canadian speculative anthology Tesseracts. The ninth volume in the series, edited by luminaries Geoff Ryman and Nalo Hopkinson, included a wonderful fantasy story of Wolf's called "The Coin," about Haitian street-children. Its sense of place was almost palpable, hence I wasn't surprised to find out Wolf has worked extensively as a volunteer in Haiti. The second time I ran across her writing was when she posted a rant on the SF Canada list-server. [See Comment Secion of this post for the full rant. CJW] The subject was feminism—the many headed monster—though I can't remember whether people were for or against. Wolf's observations were ones I largely agreed with, but my point is that her rant was deeply passionate and personal and intelligent. It evidenced a life rich in experience, and a mind noble enough to examine that life, and brave enough to turn some of its gleanings into art. I must have made a mental note to pay attention, because when Wolf's debut story collection "Finding Creatures" recently launched, I immediately got myself a copy.

The same rich breadth of experience, passion, and compassion fires the nine stories herein, which includes the (previously mentioned) magical and thought provoking story, "The Coin." The titular "Finding Creatures" is about a dusty Winnipeg summer, during which eight year old Bernadette, an only child, wishes terribly for playmates, and if she can't have those, an animal will do. She has richly detailed fantasies, the kind only children and world-building fantasy and science fiction writers have. She brings home worms and leeches and dogs and things, all of which are disallowed. Then one day, seemingly in answer to her fervent prayers to baby Jesus, a horse appears in her yard. The horse is quickly named Angel, and takes the little girl for rides around the neighborhood, during which they are invisible, which is probably a good thing, as Bernadette and Angel wander farther and farther afield. One day all this changes. They visit a section of town they've never been to before, where a little boy plays alone. When he looks up he sees both the horse and the girl. Another day, the pair encounter a girl called Manjeet, who thinks Angel is her horse, and named Sita.

Over the rest of the summer, the list grew. Children who had played with Angel at lunchtime or on weekends. Lonely children seeing her for the first time. Children who'd spied her in their yards but never approached her. Children who had known her long ago, who thought they'd never see her again, and there she was, and there we were, too.

And when September comes, and Angel stops coming, those who had the luck to ride her around the dusty summer streets of Winnipeg form an ad hoc gang. There is a surprise ending to do with living breathing dinosaurs, but I won't spoil it by including it here.

In the story "Claude and the Henry Moores," a security guy (Claude) at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto (where Wolf has also worked) discovers that the Henry Moore sculptures are inhabited by beings, trapped within them in a manner somewhat reminiscent of the alien-in-the-tree in the second story, "Thunderbirds." Claude also discovers he is able to free them using a combination of empathy and what can only be called metaphysical faculties. But first he takes them (and himself) north to watch the Aurora. The deep and healing beauty of nature is wonderfully described in this passage as well as many others in the collection.

In the aforementioned "Thunderbirds," an indigenous back woods sort called Norman encounters a crashed alien ship. He buries the body, first wondering what the proper protocol for doing so is, finally deciding that all dead must be treated with respect, even if one doesn't know the customs by which they lived and died. Meanwhile the alien, who goes by the name Chitta and is capable of such things, isn't dead at all. She has however exited her body and entered the first living thing within easy reach, which happens to be a tree. Chitta spends days on end learning about her new body, and is only a little sad that she will no longer be ambulatory nor have an intellect with which to engage with others as before. Nevertheless, inhabiting a tree with one's spirit and mind intact is preferable to death. One day, Norman returns to the crash site, and something draws him to the tree. He sits there, and maybe he falls asleep for awhile, but in the end the alien in the tree and the man communicate somehow, and leave one another enriched, even though the meeting and the communication have both been so subtle as to be barely acknowledged by its participants.

What is curious about both stories is what happens to their protagonists when they encounter the alien Other, largely by the use of subtle skills which some might call psychic and others might say are the inevitable result of true compassion. Both Claude and Norman wish mainly for their strange friends to find freedom. Claude, in particular, leads an isolated life but both characters go largely unnoticed and, uncomplaining, try to find joy in their simple routines. These stories exemplify Wolf's central theme which is: what is one to do with one's loneliness? Her answer seems to be: reach out in any way you can, even if the reaching takes a form that many might tell you is simply not possible. And as such, of course, these stories about alien communication serve as metaphor for the eternal human problem of communication.

In both stories, what is at first momentous becomes small scale and human, and this, in the end, humanizes the impossible. Charles de Lint, in his lengthy introduction, makes much of Wolf's work for her combined rich imagination and rich reserves of empathy.

Wolf uses different genres, different voices, different cultures—in short whatever she needs to make the story work. What ties it all together is her sure-handed prose and a depth she brings to her writing, that indefinable element that rises up from between the lines and gives a good story its resonance.

I might add that she creates characters whose human vulnerability readers will recognize and take joy in. Not only that, but fiction writers with serious intentions must be supported, or we as readers have all fallen victim to the censorship of the marketplace.

And I've always had a soft spot for bravely ranting women.

Copyright © 2009, Ursula Pflug. All Rights Reserved.

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