Damien and Yarrow both make their Shimmer debuts in issue #17, with stories that are each chilling in their own way. If you’ve missed any of the Shimmer 17 interviews so far, click the Issue 17 category link in the header and there they shall be!
Damien Angelica Walters, “Girl With Coin”
When performing to classic Arabic music, my favorite to dance to, you have to take care to correctly portray the emotions of the song. I’ve seen a dancer unfamiliar with the lyrics dance happy-happy-joy-joy to a song of sorrow and it was off-putting, to say the least. I’ve retired from public performance but I often catch myself dancing in my office or the kitchen while mulling over sticky points in stories, so it’s connected in a disconnected sort of way. I lose myself in the dance now not to music, but to the emotions I’m trying to evoke in whatever project I’m working on.
Yarrow Paisley, “The Metaphor of the Lakes”
Perhaps I thought of the line “I don’t know whether I’m alive or dead,” and somehow that blossomed into a little girl’s diary, and the characters cascaded out of the language she employed. I enjoyed the personalities that emerged and the various discoveries I made as the narrative proceeded, and that kept me going. It was like solving a puzzle…sudoku for the soul!