Whimsy from William Gibson meets Exquisite Words

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I love the humor in this fragment, and the way you can see the scene so clearly.

“You’re mumbling again, big guy,” said Memory, shivering into hallucinatorily clear focus on the rumpled sheets, her thighs warm and golden against the Royal Stewart flannel. She adjusted the nosecones of her chrome bustier. “Also, you’re on the verge of a major fashion crime.”

I froze, the starched white tails of an Elmore of Shinjuku evening shirt half-tucked into the waistband of a favorite pair of lovingly-mended calfskin jodhpurs. She was right. Pearl buttons scattered like a flock of miniscule flying saucers as I tore myself out of the offending Elmore.

–William Gibson

“The Sorrow Fair,” now available on Kindle

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I’m pleased to announce that my dark fantasy novelette, “The Sorrow Fair“, is available in the Kindle Store for the princely sum of $0.99. The novelette made its original print appearance in 2008, in the now-defunct Helix Speculative Fiction, and was edited by William Sanders and Lawrence Watt-Evans. Here’s a taste:

Gabe tried to push past the child, to hop over the turnstile. She grabbed his forearm with irresistible strength, turning it palm-up and swiping her candy floss over his wrist. The fibers smoked where they touched him: there was a smell of acid and a blister rose on his forearm. Swelling to the size of his fist, the skin mottled and blackened, scorched first into indecipherable patterns and then into something recognizable: a printed rectangular ticket.

“Admit one,” it read.

Setting the candy aside, the Girl Scout pulled out a straight razor.

“Stop,” Gabe objected, but he couldn’t pull free.

My chosen Exquisite Words quote from this past Monday came from Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, a book that inspired my choice of setting for this story: reading Larson’s book and especially the history surrounding the invention of the Ferris Wheel was what drew me to Chicago, and The World’s Fair, for this.

I don’t remember that much, besides that, about the process of writing “The Sorrow Fair.” It was written right smack in the period when I was going to Alberta for a lot of family funerals, and the story certainly holds a resonance with the sadness that permeated those years.

But it has romantic love and music and all the kinds of weirdness you’ve probably come to expect from me. I was pleased with how it turned out, I still am, and I hope you will be too.

The Horrors, at Tor (rors)

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Reading Christopher Buelman’s Those Across the River got me to thinking about some of the horror novels I read during the Eighties, which in turn has led me to revisit a few of those books. The first of these time travel experiments is up at Tor.com, an essay about Peter Straub’s thoroughly wonderful novel Shadowland. Enjoy!

Exquisite Words is back from VCON

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This is my favorite paragraph from my favorite Erik Larson book, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America. I can see and hear and smell this all so clearly that it’s hard to remember I haven’t been here:

Other ballots followed. Daylight faded to thin broth. The sidewalks filled with men and women leaving work. Typewriters–the women who operated the latest business machines–streamed from the Rookery, the Montauk, and other skyscrapers wearing under their coats the customary white blouse and long black skirt that so evoked the keys of their Remingtons. A lamplighter scuttled along the edges of the crowd igniting the gas jets atop cast-iron poles. Abruptly there was color everywhere: the yellow streetcars and the sudden blues of telegraph boys jolting past with satchels full of joy and gloom; cab drivers lighting the red night-lamps at the backs of their hansoms; a large gilded lion crouching before the hat store across the street. In the high buildings above, gas and electric lights bloomed in the dusk like moonflowers.

Transitioning from news avoidance

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I used to take a daily dose of news from CBC Radio–a small, thoughtful and sanely-chosen selection of what was going on in B.C., Canada, and the big wide world, handily delivered as I was making dinner. After 9/11, I stopped listening to those broadcasts, and for the decade that followed my exposure to current events was spotty. Mostly, I’d pass headlines on the street and thus know the bare minimum about what The Vancouver Sun thought was worthy of the top fold. On the rare occasions when something was happening and I wanted to know more, I’d surf up the details on the Internet. They were always there waiting.

I stopped with even the CBC broadcasts because the world was in a terrible space, at that time, and the news kept dragging me back into the mire of distress. Regular exposure to brutality, pollution, war and especially the rage-inducing stupidity of politicians was eating at my peace of mind.

I find myself having to explain and justify this, often.

“I’m a news avoider,” I learned, isn’t a statement many people hear–and it’s one they’re fundamentally inclined to disbelieve. It’s a bit like explaining to a little kid that it’s possible to live without a car. (Or without a TV, I’m told, though I haven’t been in that position.) So for the past decade, I’ve ended up telling someone, “No, really, I don’t watch the news or read the papers,” on the order of twice a month, minimum. In most cases, I have this conversation three times with any given individual before they actually take it on.

There was always a little nagging sense, in the back of my mind, that I was skating on an obligation of citizenship by ignoring the world as much as I possibly could. But, I’d remind myself, I don’t actually believe the newspapers or the TV folks do a terrific job of keeping one up-to-date anyway. Most of what they offer on a daily basis is partial narratives about ongoing stories. The idea seems to be to offer just enough new stuff to make you want to read more tomorrow… and the lack of depth drives me crazy.

(And that doesn’t even get into the question of accuracy–I know many of you question whether mainstream media can be trusted to deliver reliable facts. Or the opinion, held by some, that the point of the news is to not make us informed so much as to make us afraid.)

Anyway. I prefer the kind of coverage that comes from feature articles and long-form documentaries. So instead of breaking news, I read things like The Best American Science and Nature Writing (this year’s guest editor is Mary Roach, folks! I know–OMG, right? Pre-order now!) Snuffy sends me copies of Texas Monthly so I can read Pam Coloff’s excellent articles about justice, and miscarriages thereof.

Social media has pulled me back into the news world, a bit. It started with Livejournal: occasionally my friends would post a link tantalizing enough to follow. And now the headlines stream by, along with the treasure and flotsam in my Twitter feed, and I cherry pick the stuff that interests me and run a minimal risk of hearing that our prime minister’s said something that makes my head explode. I follow CBC News and Peter Mansbridge and Mashable. But I’m still a feature reader at heart, and so mostly I have gotten entirely sucked into browsing–no surprise–the articles available at Longreads. That’s where the meaty stuff seems to be, and I heartily recommend it to you all.