Storyteller Times Two, Old Bones, Lonely Genes & Current Projects

Naughty, Lazy, or Thoroughly Distracted? Or perhaps all of the above...

Since typing my last post in November 2007, I have experienced six weeks of housing chaos due to a flood, two eviction attempts by a disgruntled building manager (the second involved my suing for damages due to ongoing harassment), and one major surgery which put me out of commission for longer than expected. That's the less fun news.

The more fun news is that although all of this has slowed me down considerably, it hasn't stopped me. I have had two more stories published in Storyteller Magazine, "Mr. Cowmeadow's Sky" in the Spring 2008 (Vol.14, Issue 4) and "Aggie's Game" in the previous issue (V.14,I.3).

In addition, SF Waxes Philosophical, ed. by Ahmed Khan and published by ZC Books, arrived at the post office this week. It contains stories by Michael Bishop, Matt Hughes, Steven Utley--and of course yours truly--as well as ten others.

Ahmed's anthologies have intriguing aims. Of this one he says, "SF is a literature of ideas...Philosophy is a subject of ideas. So what better theme could there be for an anthology?" (from the Introduction.) Each author provides a note to expand (or contract) upon the philosophy examined in her or his story. It's a nice little book and I look forward to reading it.

A fourth story, "Miss Lonelygenes' Secret", will be included in Ahmed's upcoming anthology (with Mohammad Aurangzeb Ahmad) A Mosque Among the Stars (ZC Books), as mentioned in an earlier post.

See below for brief snippets from each of these stories.

So what am I working on now?

Two projects mainly. I am polishing up a collection and writing a long story (what some call a "novel") set in Haiti. (Working title: Làkansyèl )

I will be going to Haiti soon to spend a month with friends there, and will use that time away from the mundane stresses of angry building managers and unfed cats to learn what is happening in that fair land, brush up on my weak and gnarly Creole, and work on Làkansyèl. I am in no hurry to finish this long story, but it does somewhat keep me away from my first love: short fiction. So I may need to quicken the pace at some point, in order to leap back into saddle number one.

In the meantime, I will see you at VCon in October (Vancouver, B.C.), perhaps at World Fantasy Con in September (Calgary), and maybe even at Potlatch in the spring (Seattle? Portland??).

Cheers to all.

Snippets:

Mr. Cowmeadow's Sky

"Mr. Cowmeadow straightened slowly with the bottle of milk in his crabbed hand and pulled the mask closer to his mouth. The air was acid in his throat.

"Day was a slow proceeding, at this stage in his life. After waking, Mr. Cowmeadow had passed a good hour or so of creeping and resting and creeping and resting before he’d come to the edge of his bed and been able to swing incrementally the nether half of himself till his feet touched the floor. All the while he’d been pressing his hands against the bed to steady himself, gathering the pillow in under his side to prop him upright while he crept. Finally, he was up, and had to sit thus for fifteen minutes till he caught his breath and his heart stopped hammering. Then the teeth, and then the specs, all installed as requisite each a.m.."

Aggie's Game

"She'd find the place where the action would begin and stand quite still. Taking a slow breath, she'd look down at the grass, letting her gaze drift elsewhere as she searched inside herself for the germ of her story. That interior, what I saw of it, was amazing to behold. In her lived passionate women and dazzling men. Storm-swept heroines and heroes flung about by the cruelties of life—staunchly fighting back, even when they had no idea how, and knew they had to lose. Endless barren hills and moors, dark woodlands, castle keeps, the rare, haunted human in a desolate land. And jealousies, furies, pain so deep I bled to witness it.

"When Aggie conjured up her worlds, the parched fringe of Winnipeg on which we lived, the not-yet-paid-for houses and hot, tarred street, the soapy water running along the gutter from cars being washed, the grasshoppers and mosquitoes and ticks and dry warm grass…all faded back, fell silent, lay forgotten in some lost realm. The far more real and poignant land of heartbreak, courage and drama filled my sight.

"That was how I met Feynit and her lover—her foster-brother, Gilbrigde."

These Old Bones

"When she tired of watching, Andrea left the museum. She drove along the empty secondary highway to her favourite walking place, parked the car and started up the long, sun-baked trail into the hills. The earth crumbled under her runners, and she worked a bit harder than she was used to, moving up the steep path. Volatile herbs and grasses gave off sweet spicy scents on the warm air as she climbed.

"She stayed as close to the trail as possible, alert for splinters of stony bone and pocked, petrified eggshell—Cretaceous litter uplifting through the weathered earth. Soft clay interspersed among the sandier soil—kaolinite, if she remembered rightly. Used in toothpaste. Glancing up at the dolmen-shaped hoodoos, she took a great soft breath. The badlands were magical. The museum, too. Thanh Sullivan might be a twit, but God, this place!

"Andrea turned at the table-flat trailhead and looked down. Below lay the shrubby desert, shaped by erosion and tinted with age. Here, all around her, spread bald prairie, an immensity of sky beyond it. Prairie and sky together were a vast tableau, and she stood solitary there, while hidden beneath her—that incomprehensible land. A place where enormous bones were every day shrugging from the soil. Where the first people might have run bison to their deaths, necks broken at the bases of these cliffs. Where time has wound so slowly that what happens there now is out of step with all the rest of the world."

Miss Lonelygenes' Secret

"Rosaleen stirred herself, as if waking. Her jaw muscles were bunched; she loosened them deliberately. Took a long draught of the amber, aromatic liquid in her glass, and gazed out the window at the jungle growing on her balcony.

"Here she was, Miss Lonelygenes, helping to build a middle class as stolid and self-referent as Her Mother The Famous Geneticist’s worst nightmare, and, for an exorbitant fee, an upper class yet more dire.

"For the rich, the pipettes were at the ready, sucking out unwanted differences in their intended’s DNA, streamlining his or her phenotype to the desired fit. That done, the less wealthy fiancé/es’ were regrown. And while their bodies were being thus perfected, they were saved in live-holo format, to be blended into their new forms when the work was done. The couples joined thereby countless other Islands of Indifference—those Mother had warned against—oases of certainty in a suspicious world of chance.

"Rosaleen hated them all. But luckily, she hated her mother, too. Thus avoiding any huge conflict of interest in betraying that woman’s ideals."

"Miss Lonelygenes" Finds a Home

Ahmed Khan is at it again! SF Waxes Philosophical will be hitting the stands this month, but he is already hard at work editing a new anthology, this one commissioned by Mohammad Aurangzeb Ahmad. In Ahmed's words:

Mohammad Aurangzeb Ahmad is a freelance writer and doctoral student in Computer Science. He created and maintains what is probably the most extensive resource on the subject of "Islam and SF" - Muslims Writing Science Fiction.

He has asked me to co-edit an anthology of SF stories that feature Islam or at least one Muslim character in a positive light. He feels that at these times when Islam and Muslims are being negatively stereotyped, an anthology of this kind would be a good idea. And I agree.

I agree, as well, and as luck would have it, had available a story which fit into the market, and which Ahmed has purchased for the collection. The story is entitled "Miss Lonelygenes' Secret". In this story you will find a scientist who matches—and sometimes improves upon—potential spouses based on their genotypes. But her own life isn't going so terribly well...

If you have something to submit, the deadline is January 31, 2008, and all the info is on Ahmed's Writer's Blog at http://ahmedakhan.journalspace.com/

Cheers!
Casey

Claude Makes the Cover!

Bit of an egoboo to have Claude the featured story in this month's issue of Storyteller magazine. The magazine is beautifully laid out and generous with well-wrought illustrations. It is cross-genre, so be ready for scary stories in addition to the high-flying Claude tale.
Unfortunately, they haven't changed their website yet, so this issue isn't shown there. A few copies are left if you want to grab one--or grab a year's subscription for about $30.
http://www.storytellermagazine.com/

Storyteller Buys "Claude and the Henry Moores"

I'm pleased to announce that "Claude and the Henry Moores" will be appearing in either the fall or winter issue of Storyteller magazine. Here is a snippet from their website:

Back in the late eighties, Terry Tyo, publisher of Storyteller, asked himself why, whenever he wanted to read short stories, he was turning to American magazines and books to find them. And what he was finding was magazines and books devoted to only one type of story. Where was the variety? Although Canada has a reputation for great writers and a wide and literate audience, he couldn't find a Canadian magazine devoted to the short story that published mystery, or adventure, or even comedy. Thus was born the concept of Storyteller.

Story: After Hours at the Black Hole

This story was published in the Summer 2006 issue of OnSpec.

The first story I posted on this site, "The Coin", is a serious fantastic story about a street kid in Haiti.

"After Hours at the Black Hole" is more sardonic. You need not worry that anything like this will ever happen. Certainly not to you.

After Hours at the Black Hole
C. June Wolf

The thing about a black hole, Jude thought, was that once you threw something in there, that was it. No more coming back on you, no more problems, no more complications. It was good and tidy that way. Of course, there was always the chance, though he'd never known it to happen—that not everything that slipped across the event horizon remained uneventful for the rest of time—or timelessness, whatever.

And that was just what he was worrying about.

Working at all this crap for so long, Jude was nearly unfazeable. He had tugged so much across this vicinity of space he couldn't count the lightness of the years anymore, and had no idea how much of what he'd volleyed in that time he might at one, more ethical period of his life, have had regrets about. Business was business, after all, and a black hole trasher had work to do like anybody else. Never mind the delicacies of ethics or right. He would have thrown away his own mother (he liked to joke) if she hadn't thrown him away first, for a price, of course, and a handsome one. He had towed space dirt of every kind, from the rubble of abandoned colonies to the floating jetsam of war—living or very, very dead—to the entrails of planets that had somehow gotten tangled up in somebody's personal space. Any old thing you'd pay him for—he didn't mind. But today's cargo was a whole nother thing, and it worried him.

So, okay. Maybe those trusty black holes had swallowed everything so far without a burp. But he thought he'd spotted some energy shimmering where it ought not to last time he was circling Old Guzzler here, not just harmless vacuum fluctuations, but something else. It was nothing he could pin down instrumentally and he let it go and puttered back for his next "desperately urgent" something that needed to be lugged away.

Now here he was, moving in slowly, a handful of lightyears from Old G, with a long trailer of ruinous lives in his wake, and he was getting nervous.

He hadn't meant to ask the fellow what it was. But the guy was all white suit and glowing smile and intruded his philosophy into everything, so it was no surprise that he took Jude's grunt to mean, "Tell me in exhaustive detail what it is I am hauling out to wing down into Old Guzzler because I am just so interested in everything you think and do." Which the guy proceeded to do, to the increasing discomfort of one long-haul space trucker with no taste for the unliving, or the unlived or badly lived or—whatever.

"It's a procedure," the guy said all Prince of Lightness-y, spinning slowly in his chair with one white-clad leg propped regally across the other, "known as Soul-Stripping. Ha, ha, ha!"—his laugh sounded rehearsed—"We don't strip out the souls, of course, but strip off all the clutter and junk that makes them, and the lives they live, so untasteful and wicked and dull." That too-bright smile again. Bring down the eye-shades.

"People's lives, you see, are made up of a series of infinitely tiny and infinitely large decisions, endlessly made and yet barely attended to in the person's mind, and each has consequences in not only the outward but the inward parts of that individual's life. Eventually, the whole is so clogged up it isn't possible to make a single clear decision—because we are so mucked up with the crud of the years that we are no longer basing anything at all on the moment at hand, but all of it on the sticky goo that is now leading, if not in any way living, our lives.

"It's really very yukky—" that laugh again, like a soft solar drill, thutting against Jude's head. "You can see what I mean." Jude tried real hard not to seem to be listening. That was enough for Glow-Boy. He lunged on. "So we strip it off. Strip off the crud accrued one gungey layer at a time and fling it—thip! Thip! Thwap! into a thing we call the Black Hole."

Now this got Jude's attention. Eh?

Glowy smiled again. "Of course it isn't really a black hole. Our clients see this iccky substance stripped off of their thoughts, their memories, their impulses, their loves, and it is an incredible liberation. They lighten immeasurably. They straighten out strangled muscles, strangled lives. It is a wonderful thing to see, every time. But the goo is still in there, in the Black Hole, and there is nothing we have found to do with it, or to it, that either turns it into something useful, or gets it utterly and permanently beyond their reach.

"You see," he uncrossed his legs and leaned forward intensely, elbows digging into smooth knees, "there is a connection, a strand of energy so infinitesimally small that no one but us has even discovered it yet, that links each person to each bit of yik that we pull out of them. As long as the scrubbings are in the Black Hole, there is no real problem. There may be barely detectable tremours along the strands sometimes but no customer has felt it yet. They are able to go on and live their lives in wondrous new ways. But we are concerned. What would happen if one day--!poof!—one of those strands got strong enough that it smuckked its attendant yik back out from the Black Hole and splatted it right up against the poor unsuspecting customer again—maybe in the middle of a critical business deal, or in the process of making love? The consequences could be disastrous. We could be sued."

He sat back, looking vaguely real for the first time. This guy was really worried. Maybe he oughtta have a soul-stripping. But, he recovered. The smile: "And that is why, my friend, we have come to you. To put a truly toxic, galaxy-grade weapon out of commission for all time—our customers' combined millenia of bad and stupid living—and keep our company safely afloat and at the top of our wondrous game."

A creep. But in this limited sphere of criminalia, an honest one. Because of course, trucking anything at all—even energy, even bad decisions—that could logically be argued to be part of a living human being, was no, no, no on the black hole blacklist, and that was simply that.

Ugh. What a freak show. And here he was hauling it right up to the gaping mouth of Old Guzzler itself. Never mind Glowy, and never mind the planetloads of customers. What would happen to him if any of that spewed back out and caught him in the backside out in space? Better hope Old Guzzler doesn't take a leak on Jude today.

Here he goes then. Jude is circling in to the vicinity of Old Guzzler, tucked deep in the island universe, el Tetratis. The wash of stars in soft bright spirals spanned out unimaginably vast as he hurtled toward them, all but motionless in sensation, yet gaining on the galaxy at stunning speed. Clusters of young blue stars, reddish gatherings of stars in the making, and a vast density of white light in the centre, Tetratis was a beauty that even Jude could still appreciate. For a moment, the apprehension about his cargo took a backseat to that familiar feeling of wow. She sure was a stunner.

Somewhere in her centre, fuelling all that wonderful star production, was a supermassive black hole. No black hole trasher with the slightest grey matter still in the hold would ever try trucking into one of those. But over there, off to one side of the densest region of stars in Tetratis, was a nice little "binary twin" black hole he had shimmied up to more than once in his lifetime. And now, his first shipment of crappy lives was about to strike Old Guzzler right in the b.h. kisser.

Once he flung a cargo close enough Old G did the rest, sucking it in with all the power of the collapsed star it was. Jude snorted to himself at the old joke. They seem all-powerful when they're dazzling their audience as stars, but watch 'em collapse on themselves and they turn all sucky and whiney till the day they die. No matter how hard they suck, ain't nobody's gonna fawn over them anymore. But don't worry. Ignore them for a few billion years and eventually they'll go away.

And there it was. Jude slowed The Tug slightly as Old Guzzler came square into view. In amongst the spilled jewels of stars, next to its buddy star (Bootleg Pete) was a modest-size shiny black orb just hovering in nothing, and he was sailing right for it. Cargo forgotten, he threw himself into the routine. Couplers were set ready for detachment, target selected, The Tug's stabilizers and cargo placement rockets simultaneously fired. Like a harpoon destined for a blubbery side, the container was set in motion, gathering more speed as rockets continued to fire, sailing toward the black hole in fluid precision. Soon, the fuel would all be gone. But it wouldn't matter anymore. Crap and container, it would coast on until Old Guzzler was licking its shiny lips and giving a nice polite smile of thanks. Not that he would actually see that. The stuff would just kind of fade away, long after he'd left for the next run. But it was fun to imagine.

Jude's shoulders perceptibly relaxed. The crap of lives trailing behind him was gone.

He got ready to buzz away. He triple-checked the shot. Trajectory and velocity were good; he'd nailed it, right on course. Still, he couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't a place he really wanted to be anymore. He turned tail and got the hell out of there.

Jude was just flickering back into regular space when he felt the tug on The Tug. Everything in him set to tingling in alarm. It was just a gentle tug but he knew without a doubt where it had come from. He looked down at his controls, and if God had been in existence just then He would have been mighty surprised to see Jude pray.

Back at el Tetratis, things were getting pretty weird. In the vicinity of Guzzler and Bootleg Pete, they were even weirder than normal around the old event horizon. A container of foolish and freaky, angry and lost, desperate and astonishing, inspired and blessed, amazed and horrified, impulsive and long over-thought decisions was being stretched and splintered and set free, yet frozen on the horizon above Old Guzzler's mighty maw, and a billion dark strands of unbreakable filaments of energy were vibrating faster and faster even as everything else held heart-stoppingly still. Unbelievably, had anyone been there to watch and believe or not, they reached far across space through nonexistent wormholes, bisected garlands of strings, pierced planets and plunged through suns of monstrous size, unharmed, unaltered, unalterable. Old Guzzler was getting a massive ache in the gut.

Jude felt The Tug slowing frighteningly, felt the thrill of a billion cold wires of questing energy find their way into him, curling tight around each peptide and grain of self, anchoring in every breath and crackling synapse. Tighter and tighter to him they wrapped themselves, hitch-hikers, hijackers, little German children left to wander and die in the wicked woods by evil parents, clutching at the only thing that connects them still to the lives they left behind, and through Jude they shot forward, strangling him from the inside out, shot through space with unheard of urgency and plunged toward the earth, the colonies, the satellites, the stars, everywhere in the hundred light year radius that was Soul Strip territory. And plunged on through to the ones who'd tried to rid themselves of them.

Old Guzzler heaved. The sucker who wouldn't exhale, the drinker who never puked, the swallower of all heaved hell-bent for mercy and out they spewed. Everything it had ever gulped came, too. Radiation, planets, ships, time. Blowing out like a firehose on speed, splattering the island universe, and through it, and beyond. With them went everything that Guzzler was, radiating off every quantum of its mass, till the one who had once dramatically collapsed now fizzled suddenly out, and Old Pete had no one left to slurp up all his booty.
But Old Pete beamed numbly on, and el Tetratis continued, unimpressed, in its making and extinguishing of stars.

Glowy Boy looked up from his desk, a strange sensation entering his consciousness. It was the pop of a billion accounts, he was sure. He frowned terribly, jerking his head around, jumping up to react but having nowhere, nowhere to go. Inside, he felt the downward slide into confusion, the bliss-less collision of a million furious thoughts, discarded on the road in a dirty little cardboard box, come back home after all this travelling, not run over, not dead, not going away, no how. And mightily pissed off.

He slumped into his chair again, and sobbed.

EL EXTREMO

copyright 2006

Self Portrait

Definitely Maybe

I just read the novel Definitely Maybe by the Soviet SF authors Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. (See also.) I will suppress my urge to gush and describe and just say, if you like thoughtful, beautifully written, seedy and itchy prose, this is a very worthwhile read.

Maybe a snippet? Taken at random, cause I gotta get to bed:

Malianov was flabberghasted. He had known Val Weingarten for twenty-five years and Weingartedn had never expressed an iota of interest in Malianov's work. Weingarten had never been interested in anything but Weingarten himself with the exception of two mysterious objects: the 1934 two-penny and the "consul's half-ruble," which was not a half-ruble at all but some special postage stamp. The bum has nothing to do, Malianov decided. Just killing time. Or maybe he needs a roof over his head, and he's just building up to the question?

"What am I working on?" he asked with gleeful malice. "I can tell you in great detail if you like. You'll be fascinated by it all, I'm sure, being a biologist and all. Yesterday morning I finally broke through. It turns out that in the most general assumptions regarding the potential function, my equations of motion have one more integral besides the integral of energy and the integrals of momenta. If the equations of motion are given in vector form and then the Hartwig transformation is applied, then the integration is performed for the entire volume, and the whole problem is reduced to integro-differential equations of the Kolmogorov-Feller type."

To his vast amazement, Weingarten was not interrupting him. For a second, Malianov thought that they had been disconnected.

"Are you listening to me?"

"Yes, very attentively."

"Perhaps you even understand what I'm saying?"

"I'm getting some of it," Weingarten said heartily. Malianov suddenly realized how strange his voice was. He was frightened by it.

"Val, is something wrong?"

"What do you mean?" Weingarten asked, stalling.

"What do I mean? With you, of course! You sound a little funny. Can't you talk right now?"

"No, no, pal. That's nonsense. I'm all right. It's just the heat. Do you know the one about the two roosters?"

Well, that gives the slightest taste of a few of the elements of this story. It's a wonderful example of writing in which essentially nothing happens but the reader is pulled marvellously along to a satisfying and unusual ending. I found myself tapping tables in anticipation of getting back to Definitely Maybe whenever life got in the way.

Definitely Maybe, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Translated from the Russian by Antonina W. Bouis, Introduction by Theodore Sturgeon. Collier Books, NY NY, 1978. Published in Russian as За миллиард лет до конца света in 1977.

Story: 'The Coin'

Well, I think I've held off long enough. Here is "The Coin", published in Tesseracts 9, New Canadian Speculative Fiction, edited by Nalo Hopkinson and Geoff Ryman. (This is a slightly revised version.)

The first short story I had written in years, "The Coin" dropped out of my pocket while I sat with Rhea Rose in the hotel lobby at VCon in 2003. It arose in homage to a little boy I had befriended in Haiti not so long before.

The Coin

Likner walked away from the girl who had brought the message from his mother. They hadn't talked long, but she had carefully taken the red cuvette of mangoes from her head and
given him two, then lifted the heavy load back onto the curl of cloth that rested on her braided hair.

The message said that his baby sister had died. He had seen her only once—she’d been so tiny. She had lived with their mother and Likner's other sisters on the steep mountainside
on the road to Vertierres. It might be a good idea, he thought, to visit his mother soon. Maybe he could find a coconut for her. But the idea made him feel leaden. He pushed it out of his mind, and headed for the boulevard, nipping the top of the first mango and peeling it with his teeth.

Likner followed the narrow street to the boulevard by the sea where the sun, hot since rising, climbed above the barely moving water of the bay. Here the sea bumped gently against a long concrete wall instead of washing over a beach, and the road that followed the wall was surprisingly smooth. The occasional rusted taxis and big 4x4s could race on it unhindered by potholes and cracks, by market stalls or crowds of people.

He started off toward downtown. His gaze shifted from the sea and low mountains to the tiny makeshift fishing boats, and back to the road he travelled. Here and there, small groups of people sat on broken benches or dangled their legs over the seawall, talking low among themselves. On the other side of the road were the houses of the people who owned the 4x4s. He scanned the tall palms in their yards for their great pale fruit.

He passed a littered beach, the empty tourist market, and then the docks. As he came abreast with a pair of rusted freighters standing in the oily water of the bay, he could see a little clutch of boys down the street by the bakery. He had expected to find them there. It was nearly Karnaval and they were dressing up as zenglendoes to “rob" the patrons at Bagay La. He watched as they huddled around the door, waiting for customers to come back out.

At seven, Likner was the youngest of these boys living on the streets of Okap, but he had been with them for more than a year and they accepted him without question. Like him, they wore shorts and dirty T-shirts that hung like dresses, and nothing on their feet. But they had also smeared their skin with motor oil, and cobbled together fake knives and guns.

In other places in the city, grown men dressed as soldiers walked with the musicians who carried the noisy homemade instruments of the rara band. They were stopping traffic at busy corners and demanding coins to let the vehicles pass. The boys knew the methods well. They crowded around a handful of blans who were coming out of the door, those wealthy foreigners come to save their souls and tell them how to live.

Likner hung back watching as the others brandished their weapons menacingly, smiling beneath the ferocity of their scowls. Two missionaries brushed past them with wry grins and flip remarks in Creole. A third, a pale white woman, followed. The boys closed ranks around her and held out oily hands. She shook her head and said something incomprehensible that wasn’t Creole, didn’t sound like French, might have been English. Bouki grinned and made as if to smear her clothes with oil if she didn’t hand something over. She winked and moved forward. They let her by.

The blan was sitting on the low wall beside the sea. The water made impatient little pushes at the concrete, urging bits of garbage back toward the shore. Down the block the beach rose up from the silky ocean waters. It was littered with plastic bags and old, rough-made chairs, well-stripped car frames and a blend of mango pits, coconut husks, and shreds of sugar cane fibre that gave off all together a thick dank smell of rot. Bouki and Benji were already with the blan, working her. Likner walked up slowly. She was shaking her head. Turning her pockets inside out. Benji snorted. Sure she had no money. His closed face locked and he turned away. Bouki shrugged and moved off, unconcerned.

He grinned at Likner and bent to scoop a little rock. Knowing Bouki’s games, Likner ducked as it sailed toward him, grabbed a bigger one and rushed forward for a revenge throw. The woman grabbed his wrist as he went hurtling by. Bouki smacked him hard and skipped away. The woman held Likner until his struggling ceased, then set him down and waited. He turned and stared.

Likner never really expected much. Half the time he didn't even ask for money. He never pushed the blans like the other boys. He didn't dream someone would take him home, to Canada or the States or France, give him money to go to school or buy a house for his mama. But even he couldn't escape a little skipping in his heart, a little difficulty with his breath when she looked at him and smiled. Because you never know, do you? You never really know.

Yesterday he'd thought that she was white-blonde, with gem-blue eyes and skin like shaved ice. Today he saw her hair was a light brown, and the blue eyes were tinged with green. She looked at him for a long time, steadily. He decided to try.

"Ba m senk goud," he told her. She cocked her head. "Give me one dolla," he said in English. She understood.

Bouki and Benji were gone. She reached into her pocket, one she had turned inside out earlier, and pulled out a large, dull coin. She put it in his hand, closed his fingers around it, looked into his eyes. She pointed to the coin, pointed to his pocket, closed her fist. "Don't lose it," she was telling him. Then she stood up, gave him a little pinch on the nose, and walked away.

He stared at the coin, empty of feeling. It wasn't Haitian. Or American. He squinted. He couldn't read, but he knew them all. It wasn't Canadian or Belgian or French. He could barely make out the shape of a woman—an American, he thought, by her face and hair—and on the other side … perhaps a fish.

He heard a shout and looked in the direction she had gone. Ezo and Bouki and Ti Patrik, sparring and yelling as they wandered up the street. The blan was nowhere to be seen.

The coin was a disappointment. He looked at it numbly. He surprised himself with what he did next, without even thinking. He tossed it over the wall and into the muttering sea. The water swallowed it and it left his thoughts. Bending, he scooped up a nicely weighted stone. Straightened and aimed at Bouki's shaved head.

Likner sat on the darkened stoop across from the Merci Jesu Bar and Grill. People stood lined up waiting for manyòk juice and white bread with spicy peanut butter. A couple of the boys stood by the doorway, available for handouts. Likner felt a presence at his elbow and turned. It was the blan. Her dark hair was pulled back from her face in a tight bun. How could he not have noticed before that she was a grimèl? Though her skin was not dark, the Haitian features were unmistakeable. She smiled at him, as if he had been very naughty. She held out the coin.

"Pa perdi li," she said in Creole. Don't lose it. She nodded sharply and he stuffed it in his pocket without a word. One of the boys noticed her there and came over to talk. She winked at Likner, smiled at him, and walked away listening to the other boy.

That night, when Likner was alone, he looked at the coin again. The woman's features were a little clearer. She had her eyes raised and her hands as well, her head twisted a little to one side, as if she was dancing. He turned it over. The fish was very long. It arced as though diving into the sea.

He walked along the boulevard, considering. What could he buy with this? Nothing. What could he trade it for? Not much. His business sense said to trade it. His gut said to hell with it. To hell with the big shot blans and their money. To hell with their promises. He took it out again, glanced up the long, dark street. Three men laughed and talked loudly a few steps away. One lone man leaned against the seawall half a block in front of him. The man filled up his lungs and sang horridly into the gentle breeze that came in off the sea. Likner thought of offering him the coin. But no. Instead, he turned to the sea again. He aimed it far out in the water, where it was deep, where the woman would not see it and fetch it back. And he threw it in.

Likner woke to the sound of gentle breathing. He lay on the sidewalk in a little cluster of boys. Jean Denis' long arm was resting on his face. The moon had left the sky. He sat up, let his legs dangle over the wall that faced the water, and stuffed his hands into his pockets. Something hard was in there. He pulled it out. The coin. Only now the woman was changed. He stiffened. She was the mambo dancing before they poisoned the owners and burned the plantations and started the revolution. He knew that it was her. He turned it over and there was La Sirene, rising in all her scaled majesty from her element, the sea.

Don't lose it, she had said. It wasn't a Visa. It wasn't a schoolbag. It wasn't even a hunk of bread. But anyone would know it was a wanga, though whose, or why he had it, or what magic it was meant to do, he didn't know. He leapt up and hurled it as far, as far as it would go and turned to race away from the sea.

He stopped. For a second he thought the moon had fallen from the sky and hovered in front of his face. He blinked. It was her, holding the coin up in her dark brown hand, a little smile playing on her face. Her black hair stood stiffly out on every side.

"It was an orphanage," she said in perfect Creole. Where was she getting these words? "With a school and uniforms and a library that actually has books." He stepped to one side, hoping to get around her. "It was a boat. Forty people and high seas and nothing to eat, nothing to drink. Do you think they'll reach America? Do you think they'll let them land? Do you think that they'll be welcome if they manage to sneak ashore?" He made a break. She nabbed him easily and held him while he wriggled.

"Good," she said. She pinned him down. Some of the other boys were starting to rouse. The ocean slapped the wall and spattered them with spray. "It was a marine. He strafed the fighters in the hills and made their families build the roads. He killed their pigs." Her teeth clicked together as she sank against the curb, her black fingers tight around him still. "It was an houngan, a strong one. What do you think an houngan can do? Draw vevers of flour on the dirt for the spirits and dance possessed all night? Anything else? Can he do anything? Is he worshipping devils like the missionaries say? Is he always drunk? "

Her legs twined around each other and fused into a long, scaled tail. She released his arm and bellied over the waking boys, paused for a second on the wall and blinked great green eyes at him. "It was a poet. He sketched his words in Creole, dipped his pen in his blood, wrote with the loops of his intestines. Did you hear him scream? Did you hear him laugh with joy?

"It was a wish, Likner. Would you like to learn to see with eyes like mine? Would you like to find your own?" She blinked her great green eyes at him. So green, they were nearly coal. "It was a dream. Do you dream, Likner? Would you like to give that up?"

She dove over the side and disappeared in the inky water with a hearty splash. “Come on," he heard in his mind. "Follow and see. See if your arm can bend this wave."

One by one, the boys sat up stiffly, looking confusedly around them. Likner watched the water shifting where she had disappeared, heard it tapping at the wall. Tentatively, he put his hand back in his pocket. Met something small, round, hard. Just for now, he decided not to look.

Pen nan boutèy, diven nan panye

Bread in the bottle, wine in the basket

copyright June 2005

"These Old Bones" Sells to SF Waxes Philosophical

well, i have indeed been absent from this blog.

not that i stopped writing--far from it. it's been a bumper year. i've written several short stories and the first draught of a novel, and am enjoying great rewards in those directions. as i wrote to Alette Willis (whose fine story "Thought and Memory" in Tesseracts 9 is what got us acquainted in the first place) this morning:

writing is going well; publishing has been going HORRIFICally.

luckily, the writing is more important to me than the publishing, but still, it's discouraging sometimes.

most of the time, i'm not thinking about that. i'm enjoying the reading and researching and writing and chewing my thumbs and wondering and stretching my brain and all of that fun stuff.

i like how many interesting things i get to ponder more deeply than when i am just reading about them, and how connected i feel to them and the world as a result. and when i write something i particularly like, i feel this pleased sense of well-being, which is very cool.

and this morning, after over a year of no thank yous, Ahmed Khan let me know he wants my story "These Old Bones" for his new anthology. i'm really happy about that, even more so because i really like what he is doing as an editor.

so there you have it. Ahmed Khan's new anthology has the working title SF Waxes Philosophical, and it is open to submissions till 15 august, so go have a look and see what this intriguing Canadian writer and editor is up to now.

click on this link and search SF Waxes Philosophical. for a look at his most unusual anthology Fall and Rise, click here, and for a list of his own works, click here.

and thanks, Ahmed. it's fun playing in the sandbox all day long. but it's a relief to have someone come by and say, "wow, i love your sandcastles!" now and then.

At Last, Something to Report!

well, i have indeed been absent from this blog.

not that i stopped writing--far from it. it's been a bumper year. i've written several short stories and the first draught of a novel, and am enjoying great rewards in those directions. as i wrote to Alette Willis (whose fine story "Thought and Memory" in Tesseracts 9 is what got us acquainted in the first place) this morning:

writing is going well; publishing has been going HORRIFICally.

luckily, the writing is more important to me than the publishing, but still, it's discouraging sometimes.

most of the time, i'm not thinking about that. i'm enjoying the reading and researching and writing and chewing my thumbs and wondering and stretching my brain and all of that fun stuff.

i like how many interesting things i get to ponder more deeply than when i am just reading about them, and how connected i feel to them and the world as a result. and when i write something i particularly like, i feel this pleased sense of well-being, which is very cool.

and this morning, after about 18 months of no thank yous, Ahmed Khan let me know he wants a story of mine for his new anthology. i'm really happy about that, even more so because i really like what he is doing as an editor.

so there you have it. Ahmed Khan's new anthology has the working title SF Waxes Philosophical, and it is open to submissions till 15 august, so go have a look and see what this intriguing Canadian writer and editor is up to now.

click on this link and search SF Waxes Philosophical. for a look at his most unusual anthology Fall and Rise, click here, and for a list of his own works, click here.

and thanks, Ahmed. it's fun playing in the sandbox all day long. but it's a relief to have someone come by and say, "wow, i love your sandcastles!" now and then.

VCon & More New Stories

Tut, tut. Been lax lately in keeping this blog. But not in writing, critiquing, reading and generally celebrating writing and writers.

VCon 31 was lovely--kudos and thanks to the organizers and volunteers for putting together an A1 convention. There was more good panelling than I could possibly attend, and I enjoyed everything I did see. For details on who was there and what they were up to, see the con website and Ahmed Khan's lovely and detailed report. (Rather alarming, though, is that when I commented on his blog I found my name called up a link to a high-priced "model" in New York. Oh, dear!)

Highlights of the con for me were:

• Hanging out with my nephews, who are all SF fans and avid readers of nonfiction, too. They are getting interested in the programming now, so we actually see each other a lot more than in earlier years. (I'm not much of a gamer, which used to be what most interested them at the con.)
• the Turkey Readings--what a hoot! We read lurid passages from old pulp novels and the audience gets to come up and act them out. An auction runs to get us to read--or stop!
• Visiting with a number of people--Brian and Anita Hades of Edge/Tesseracts Books, Bruce Taylor, Jennifer Taylor (no known relationship), Ahmed Khan, Randy Barnhart, Linda DeMeulemeester and many more.
• Readings--given and attended. Particularly liked Barbara Hambly's reading. Very personable GoH, and a wonderful writer.
• Singing with the Filkers (my convention singing debut). Sang NaCl (McGarrigle Sisters) and The Last Unicorn (Jimmy Webb).
• The video room, with it's stock of old movies and teevee, presided over by the inimitable R. Graeme Cameron.
• A gallant young man I walked down the hall with who offered me a back rub when I mentioned I was in pain. Naturally, I accepted. Thank you, kind sir!

Stories Update

I have written several stories lately, despite the long break in my routine caused by travel. I am just finishing an "idealistic youth" type story set in 1965 in Winnipeg: "The MagniCharisma Machine", and have sent off "The Ziz", a biblical, well, story, really, and "These Old Bones", set in the dinosaur bonebeads of Alberta. I have been so focussed on writing, though, that I have once again let the marketting slide. Oopsies. Honest, Ma. I'll get to it...

Here is a small taste from "These Old Bones":

Andrea walked out into the hills. The earth crumbled under her running shoes.

She stayed as close to the path as possible, alert for splinters of stony bone and petrified, pebbled eggshell, Cretaceous litter uplifting through the weathered earth. Soft clay interspersed among the sandier soil—kaolinite, if she remembered, used in toothpaste. Glancing up at the dolmen-shaped hoodoos, she took a great soft breath. The desert was magical. The museum, too. Thanh Sullivan was a twit, but God, this place!

Andrea turned at the crest of the hill and looked down. Below lay the shrubby desert, shaped by erosion and tinted with age. Above, all around her, spread bald prairie, and an immensity of sky beyond it. Prairie and sky together were a vast tableau, and she stood solitary upon it, while hidden beneath her—that incomprehensible land. A place where enormous bones were even now shrugging from the soil. Where the first people might have run bison to their deaths, necks broken at the bases of these cliffs. Where time has wound so slowly that what happens there now is out of step with all the rest of the world.

The sky contracted and folded and streaked itself with paint. Stretching out wide and flat it hungered for night. Andrea felt it, the dimming of the heat and slow resurrection of the wild. She sank down onto the ground and placed her palms against it, feeling the fine grains of clay against her skin, lifting them and rubbing them softly on her face.

Andrea stayed there a moment, smelling the earth and the grasses, feeling the cooling air as it played about her. She began her slow descent from the prairie to the badlands before the sky drew its shade to a sudden close.

What Wolf Cubs Need

I have recently re- connected with a long lost niece who is a grown woman now and the mother of an eleven year old girl. Knowing she is an artist, like her mother, I had asked her in an email if she had a site where i could look at her work. She doesn't, but she told me that she, too, is a writer, and has posted many of her poems on the internet. This is the note I wrote back to her, along with a poem I wrote in 1993--"What Wolf Cubs Need".

thanks for the note, in the midst of all your busyness.

you're lucky. one day more and i would have PHONED you! (hey, not such a bad idea, really... maybe in a couple of weeks when the Hubby-Momma has passed through town.)

i'm thrilled that you are a writer, too! i love writing much much much. if you have a science fiction bookstore anywhere around you can find a couple of my stories at the moment--one is in an anthology called Tesseracts 9, that came out last summer, and the other is in the current issue of On Spec: the Canadian Magazine of the Fantastic.

i will dig into your poems on your poetry site. very cool that you are doing that. i guess i will have to board a plane and track you down if i want to see your drawings ever. later, later...

meanwhile, i'm glad you enjoyed my haiti notes, and that your daughter did. i look forward to talking with her about her dreams someday. they sound great. have you ever heard of the american poet, langston hughes? he wrote great verses with bright nuggets of truth in them. i always remember this one:

hold fast to dreams
for if dreams die
life is a broken-winged bird
that cannot fly

hold fast to dreams
for if dreams go
life is a barren field
covered in snow

i've hung onto that even when dreaming seemed fruitless. now that i have one of my oldest dreams back--writing--life is filled with many delicious fruits, indeed!

here's another one that he wrote. it also encourages the dreamer, but not only to dream, to act!

But someday, somebody'll
stand up and talk about me
and write about me
black and beautiful
and sing about me
and put on plays about me!
I reckon it'll be
me myself!
Yes, it'll be me.

i'm thinking of going back to australia, myself. i was there in 1985--about five minutes ago, by my watch--and stayed for five months. what a beautiful place! being your mother's daughter, i suspect you have a deep love for the outdoors, and there are so many amazing places and so many amazing plants and animals there--you and your daughter would not be disappointed.

it's funny. it strikes me when i say that about you and your mom, and knowing how true it is of me and several other of my sisters...how did we get that way? so in love with beauty and wildness, so sensitive toward animals and plants and the environment.

it isn't true of everyone, or even of most people, and it isn't as though our folks made a big point of it. so how did we get so lucky? it must have been there in the home environment somehow--oh, i know what it was, partly, anyway. even though the folks weren't BIG-time into it themselves, they didn't get in the way of our loving the natural world--animals, for instance.

lots of people grow up with one or two pets over a lifetime if they're lucky, and they're kept outside or in little cages and never get to be part of the family. i think that often those people grow up without really falling in love with their animals (and it is a small jump from falling in love with animals to falling in love with their natural homes). i remember a time when we had ten people, four bedrooms, a dog, three cats, three rabbits, two guinea pigs and a budgie. in the city! (i was only supposed to get one guinea pig, but when i told them the lady said it would be lonely on its own, they grudgingly accepted it...but gave it to my younger sister.)

and of course, mom and dad were just as amused by the critters as we were, even if they didn't have quite the same feelings about them or the same approach to their care. (like, say, they actually thought we should feed them and clean their cages. weirdoes!)

in fact, in her extreme dotage, say when she was around forty, mom turned into a pretty big animal-lover herself, adopting all the stray cats and feeding squirrels and raccoons and generally making a nuisance of herself in the neighbourhood. so i guess the germ of that was always there, and we picked it up.

then there were all those nature shows on tv. nowadays there are endless superhero cartoons and so on but back then there was much less of interest to kids on tv, and the wildlife stuff was the best. the antelopes ran, and i ran with them. the wolves howled, and i cried, too. the lions tore apart their prey, and one piece of me was munching while the other piece was being torn apart. (brrrghghgh.) even the close-ups of water dripping from a leaf, or mists in the northern woods were incredibly stirring. what a blessing! even though we never camped or stayed in cabins in the woods or any of that, we were steeped in the wonder of the Great Outdoors.

anyway, my dear, i am rattling on when you should be ramming down walls, so i will let you go.

one day, i'll send you one of my old poems. (i mostly write stories now.) ah, heck, i'll give you one now.

much love,
me


what wolf cubs need

brown and curled and wet with mother's dew
each cub slides into this world
cleaned tongued nuzzled
until the mewling starts
until the new wolf waves her helpless nailed paws
into the air
against her mother's cheek
until the sealed eyes and questing mouth
find their way to her white-filled source
every cub needs her mother
her brothers and sisters, too
to lean against in slumber
tumble over
tweak in play
to run with
growling
growing smart gleeful strong
each cub needs her father
warm against the night
gambolling when mother's gone to hunt
stretched out calm and watchful
running quick and eager
barking against those who'd pull her down

those cubs who have them are the lucky ones
cubs with "aunts" and "uncles"
who wrestle long with them
who sleep with eat with
bring treats to them
you are my uncle wolf
caring when you need not care
bringing me the long red leg of a fallen deer
to chew and fight and chew
you are my brother wolf
wrestling playing
barely conscious of the cougar on the hill
you are my comrade wolf
and i walk with you contented
safe as i can be
on this long expanse
of snow

copyright C. June Wolf
3 June 1993
_________________________________

"After Hours" in On Spec

23 August Update:
The Summer 2006 issue (#65, Vol. 18, #2) has arrived in bookstores and letter boxes. So you'll want to scurry right down to your local dealer and grab one, settle down and take off for Old Guzzler, the Black Hole. (Right, Mom?)

Having great time in Haiti. back soon.

This issue of OnSpec and the story itself are reviewed on TangentOnline.

Tesseracts 9 Wins Aurora Award!

I'm pleased to learn that Tesseracts 9 has won the Aurora Award for Best Work in English (Other). My short story "The Coin" was published in this anthology. Yeehoo for us!

I look forward to checking out the other winners (and the short-list), especially Karin Lowachee's Cagebird, (Warner Aspect, Apr/2005), which won the award for Best Long-Form Work in English. For a brief chapter excerpt go to the Hachette Group's Excerpt site.

Congratulations, all!

Back to Haiti...

My first published story, "The Coin", was set in Cap Haitien, Haiti, where I lived four years ago. Another story, "Kouzen Zaka", set partly in Vancouver, Canada and partly in Haiti, is currently with a publisher. No word yet on its fate. In just over a week I will be travelling to Haiti for the fourth time, to visit friends in Cap Haitien, on the north coast, in a rural community in the mountains near Jacmel in the south, and finally in Port au Prince, the capital. While there I will be doing research for a third, as yet untitled, Haitian story.

I first went to Haiti in 2001, to visit a friend who had been living there for ten years. I have travelled only a little in my life, mostly in Canada and generally on the serious cheap--hitch-hiking away from the parental home at 13 to travel around the western half of the country as far north as the Yukon, trotting back and forth across Canada and jogging down to the States and Baja California in later years, and finally taking a six month circuit around Australia in 1985.

After leaving Australia I stopped off in New Zealand and Fiji. The entire trip was amazing, and changed my life in many ways. But Fiji was greatly set apart from the other countries in that this was the first time I was on my own in a non-European-based country and attempting to make some type of genuine contact with people of a very different culture. (Two cultures, actually--the indigenous Melanesian and the Fijian Indian.)

In the three weeks I was there I forced myself out of my normally shy and (in my estimation) unadventurous mode of living and befriended numerous people, finally taking a wild 14-hour trip in a small, wave-swept boat to a secondary island and going to meet the unsuspecting villagers, with whom I stayed for several days.

I made a lot of mistakes (some mistakes I postponed for later) and when I left the country I did so with a head full of questions and wonder. Strangely, the culture shock I had been warned about happened not when I was staying with the Fijian family I met on that smaller island, but when I returned to the culture I had been raised in, but never really felt a part of. This raised a lot more questions to mull for a decade or three.

The opportunity to go to Haiti sixteen years later was the next important step in attempting to see the world from a radically different point of view to the ones I grew up surrounded by.

I become slowly aware of the realities of life faced by people who live in ubiquitous poverty on a scale I could not grasp when simply viewing it on tv. I take in gradually the details of their complex and rich and brutal history and situation in the wider world, of nearly complete environmental devastation, of a religious mixture that affects and informs every level of life to a degree previously incomprehensible to me. I contemplate the effects of racism in me and on Haiti, the stubborn invisibility of my own cultural assumptions and prejudices, the degree of laughter and sharing and creativity and cooperation possible in me and the people around me.

I don't know how many times I will return to Haiti, how many stories I will be moved to write, how many lessons I will think I've learned that I will later overturn. But I am shaken alive in a thousand ways by my acquaintance with that land and her people, and I have a feeling I will never stop learning and deepening my love for her, and through her, for us all.

Whenever I write about Haiti, I write slowly and carefully, knowing that my ignorance far outweighs my knowledge, wanting to make of each story a gift not only to us, but to her. So I listen, I watch, I hold my tongue and I question every conclusion I want to jump to. I treasure each dull and painful and happy moment I spend in, or thinking of, Haiti. I can only hope that the following encouraging proverb is true in the case of her and me:

Si ou gen pasyans, ou ka wè trip fomí.

If you have patience,
you can see the guts of an ant.

That's pretty darn teeny. And pretty darn neat.

Be well, all. See you at VCon 31.

the photo above is of the members of DOA/BN, a Haiti-based group that teaches cultural awareness, history, and a host of other things to groups living in and travelling to Haiti.

At DOA/BN, we strive to be a bridge for those who have adventured into Haiti, experienced new sensations, and have been opened up to new realities.

Haiti's deep roots, wrenching history, and compelling truths will offer you gifts of new understandings. Our vision is to connect you with Haiti's people and history, allowing you to capture the community of their shared daily lives through intercultural experiences.

They are some cool folk. Check out their website, Haiti Travels.

PS BLogger makes me crazy. I have tried to correct the font about ten thousand times. I am now going to retire to bed with mouse-wheel tendonitis. Cheers.

The Storm Behind the Lull

It's been quite awhile since I posted to this blog. Not a lot announcement-wise. One story accepted by On Spec magazine (After Hours at the Black Hole), and that's it. Truth to tell, I have fallen behind a little on sending stories out, being much more interested in writing than in drumming up markets. But I have not been idle. I continue to attend a weekly writers' workshop, which gets my juices flowing if they weren't already, and have finished about 14 stories in the last two years.

However, I confess that at this moment there are other pursuits that are grabbing my attention more. Preparing to travel is foremost among them. So if I seem neglectful, it is benign neglect. And there is much activity behind the apparent quiet.

Cheers.

Mike Coney Interview Published

Strange Horizons has published my interview of the late SF writer Mike Coney. Check this link to read it.

Tesseracts 9 Recommended

Word from the publisher:

Hi,

Please pass the word on to anyone you know!

Tesseracts 9 makes the LOCUS Recommended reading list.

Look in the Anthologies section!

Also note also that "Mayfly", by Peter Watts & Derryl Murphy makes it on
to the Short Story list!

http://www.locusmag.com/2006/Issues/02RecommendedReading.html

Three Cheers to everyone involved!!

Brian Hades, Publisher (http://www.edgewebsite.com)
Box 1714, Calgary, AB, T2P 2L7, Canada
403-254-0160 (voice) / 403-254-0456 (fax)
EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing now includes Tesseract Books
--------------------------------------------------------
New Releases:
Eclipse by K. A. Bedford
(978-1-894063-30-2)
5.5" x 8.5" - Trade Paperback
$14.95 US - 19.95 CD - 309 Pages

A Game of Perfection by Élisabeth Vonarburg
(978-1-894063-32-6)
5.5" x 8.5" - Trade Paperback
$16.95 US - 20.95 CD - 360 Pages

Stealing Magic by Tanya Huff
(978-1-894063-34-0)
5.5" x 8.5" - Trade Paperback
$13.95 US - 16.95 CD - 256 Pages

"After Hours at the Black Hole" Accepted

i got the pleasing news today that On Spec has accepted my story "After Hours at the Black Hole". i'll pass on the issue number and so on when that is settled. the scoop so far is that it will be used within the next two years.

What's Available, What's Not...Yet

the following postings are the backbone of this blog, so you might want to check them out, besides reading the latest postings. i do add material to these as it comes up--such as when i finish a story. (see "Traversing the Wilderness.")
Currently Available Work
UpCominG PubLIcationS
Works Looking for a Home
Old Stuff I Wrote Back When
Running Mates--Others in the Pack

Potlatch 15

i'll be venturing down to seattle to Potlatch 15 the last weekend of february. i am very much looking forward to it. it is a small con that is oriented toward readers and writers, and serves as a fundraiser for the clarion west writers' workshops. this year the book under discussion is the Avram Davidson Treasury. imagine a con where everybody has read and is talking about the same book...

here is a note i sent a few moments ago, on the book selection:

hi!

when i come across something i really like i often do a brief scan of who i think might also enjoy it, and your name has just popped up.

i'm reading the book chosen for discussion at this year's Potlatch (Potlatch 15), which you may or may not know is a small readercon held in seattle in february. it's my first time there and i'm psyched to be going to a con where books are very much of interest. anyway, off track here.

the book is the Avram Davidson Treasury, and although i've read a few of his stories over time--most notable "The Golem", which i liked so much i read it to a couple of friends subsequently--i have never had a concentrated dose of this brilliant man's writing before. brilliant and zany, erudite, often hilarious. i've just finished one where a dentist is kidnapped by aliens and must be saved by colleagues in the american dental association. sounds ridiculous but reads wonderfully. ("Help! I am Dr. Morris Goldpepper")

based on what i've read of your stuff, i think you would really enjoy Avram's stories.

cheers,

casey

and i bet you would, too, dear reader.

Mike Coney Interview

happily, my interview of Mike Coney, completed shortly before his death on 4 november 2005, has been accepted for publication by Strange Horizons. i will update this notice with the publication date and url when the time comes.