Shimmer #17 unites returning authors (Alex Wilson!) with authors new to our pages (Kristi DeMeester!). Both of these stories speak of the undead, of being haunted.

Alex Wilson, “Romeo and Meatbox”

It’s all story. I can spend more hours than is probably healthy locked in a dark room with just a blank piece of paper, but I also have a theatre background, so a community coming together for the purpose of sharing a common story is a great way to tempt me to unlock my door. I’ve enjoyed hanging lights and sewing costumes for shows with which I wasn’t otherwise involved, and in film I was  surprisingly satisfied when I spent a month playing an extra on projects like NBC’s Revolution and Iron Man 3, where they simply handed me a rubber gun and told me to run around in the background, while key players or stunt-people did more significant things in the foreground.

Read the rest of the interview here!

Kristi DeMeester, “Like Feather, Like Bone”

A friend of mine tweeted “This little girl was under my porch eating a bird,” only she forgot to attach the picture of the cat she found. The gears started turning, and my immediate thought was “What if it was an actual little girl?” From there the story just built itself in one of those rare dreamy moments where I looked down at the computer screen about an hour later to find the story sitting before me.
Read the rest of the interview here!

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.

Read the rest here!

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!

Read the rest here!

Shimmer #17 sees the return of Sunny Moraine and Lavie Tidhar makes his debut Shimmer appearance! Both writers give us challenging stories that may have you questioning reality. As you should!

Sunny Moraine, “Love in the Time of Vivisection”
It really started with me thinking about relationships – about mine and others’. Many of my stories deal with painful/broken relationships in some way (I swear, my own is really very happy), but what drove the imagery of this story was a meditation on honesty, about how it’s vitally important in keeping a relationship of any kind alive but can also be agonizing and even deeply destructive. Love can feel like a trap, like being forced into things you may not have otherwise done, or wanted to do. So I tried to capture some of that pain and dread with the most literal interpretation possible. I gave myself permission to go into a really dark place and see what I could bring back out.

It was also indirectly inspired by Kij Johnson’s “Mantis Wives”, which is one of my favorite short stories that I’ve read in the last few months.

Read the rest of the interview.

Lavie Tidhar, “Fishing”

It’s set in Vientiane, in Laos, where I lived for two years. That Dam (the Black Stupa) is also where Joe, the detective, has his office in my novel, Osama. It all comes from day-to-day experiences, just filtered through a slightly weird lens.

Read the rest of the interview.

Robert N. Lee and Jordan Taylor make their Shimmery debuts together in issue #17, with two completely different stories — one science fiction, and one a fairy fantasy. That’s just how Shimmer rolls, YOLO!

Robert N. Lee, “98 Ianthe”

I was doing research for Them Bones, and had to come up with a name for a  New York City analog. It figures into Them Bones and is the primary setting of a sequel, Beautiful World. It’s what New York is in movies and songs and books; the dream of New York City, I guess.

I read some of the old Bernie Krigstein 87th Precinct comic books back in the eighties, when I drew comics myself. That led me to read some of the Ed McBain books the comics were based on. Which I liked, but what lingered in my mind about them for decades after was the ersatz New York City invented for the books – to save the author fact-checking, and so they could be written in weeks.

87th Precinct’s Isola is Manhattan, except it’s not. The drive from Wall Street to the Battery doesn’t have to map to the real life version, it can go as long or short as as the author wants and the reader agrees. The bridges and boroughs all have different names and live wherever the story needs them, but they’re roughly analogous to real life. The rivers run backwards. It’s so cool…

Read the rest here!

Jordan Taylor, “The Desire of All Things”

I confess. I love fairies. I love stories about fairies, even the silly kid ones. But in my favorite fairy stories, fairies are much  more than winged sprites at the bottom of the garden – they’re ancient and strange and sometimes scary.

Read the rest here!

Each issue of Shimmer is filled with extraordinary writers. One of the best things I get to do is talk to them and see how they approach their craft. Make no mistake–we also talk a lot about cake and pie and books and if you were a cupcake, what kind of cupcake would you be? And if you were a pie? Why would you be a pie? Why wouldn’t you be a pie!

Over the next month, I’m going to introduce you to the authors of Shimmer #17. Today, A.C. Wise and our cover story author, Katherine Sparrow.

A. C. Wise, “How Bunny Came to Be”

Tell us how this story came about.

“How Bunny Came to Be” is actually a prequel to “Doctor Blood and the Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron,” which, conveniently enough, was just published in the June 2013 issue of Ideomancer. When I wrote “Doctor Blood,” I didn’t necessarily intend to write any other stories about the Glitter Squadron, even though the story plays with pulpy tropes and hints at the Squadron’s ongoing adventures. However the character of Bunny wouldn’t leave me alone. I started thinking about how someone goes about becoming a world-saving hero. I particularly wanted to explore a non-traditional notion of strength. We have several historical examples of women putting on men’s clothing and going to war (Mulan, Joan of Arc), but what about a man putting on women’s clothing? There’s still a stigma in our society surrounding “girly” things and “girly” behavior. More often than not, they are equated with weakness. But there are different ways to define strength, which Bunny proves to herself and the world over and over again.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Katherine Sparrow, “The Mostly True Adventures of Assman & Foxy”

What is it about the circus?
The circus. The circus! It’s the place where we  could go and become fantastic, in every meaning of the word. It’s where women fly, dogs dance, and clowns drive cars with strange quantum mechanics. It’s the dirty tent squatting on the edge of town filled with hustlers, bearded ladies, and con artists and maybe, just maybe, if you are lucky they will take you with them when they go.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Join us for two more authors on Thursday, won’t you? And be sure to peek at the gorgeousness that is Shimmer #17.

All month long, I’m going to be talking with Shimmer #17 authors! Today, I talk with Helena Bell and Alex Dally MacFarlane, two writers who constantly work in Shimmery veins. There’s an image for you. Read on!

Helena Bell, “Sincerely, Your Psychic”

Tell us how your came about.

A few years ago a friend of mine gifted me a session with an astrologer.  The entire experience was a bit weird in that she didn’t believe that she was a fortune teller, but she really believed in the accuracy of astrological charts.  I’ve always maintained that you can have really great, insightful experiences with Tarot readers, psychics, palm readers, etc, so long as the person doing your reading has an extraordinary level of empathy. So I went into it with an open mind,  but I still have an unhealthy level of snark in me and so a few of the things she said just rubbed me the wrong way. This story actually began as an attempt to poke a little fun at the whole practice, but it quickly veered into another direction entirely. It’s not fair to mock something that most people don’t take seriously to begin with, and so I became more interested in the idea of negative space: the decisions we didn’t make, or the decisions we regret, and the solace we take from wondering about ‘what ifs’.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Alex Dally MacFarlane, “Out They Come”

Tell us how your story came about.

It started with a Google image search for foxes in medieval illuminated manuscripts.  I found one of a woman with what looked like a fox falling out her mouth.  Either that or she was playing it like bagpipes.  I shared it on my blog, adding: “She speaks of them so often, out they fall!”  and then my friend Brooke Bolander and I got to talking about how it should become a story.  We both wound up writing one.

Mine started with the idea that an injustice had been done to a woman, Stey, and the foxes she vomited up would help her fight against it.  It took realizing that I wanted to write about sexual assault to get the story really going.  “Out They Come” is about anger, and it’s not a nice story: it’s not about things getting better, it’s about feeling that they never will.  Anger is something that some people like to suggest is a choice: “Why are you so angry?” or “You’d feel a lot better if you weren’t so angry.”  Well, I would, and I wouldn’t choose anger if it was a choice.  It’s not.  It’s overwhelming, sometimes, when some people suggest that sexual assault isn’t a big deal.

I also enjoyed writing about someone vomiting up foxes.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Next week, join us for four more authors!

Shimmer has a strange relationship with stories involving unicorns. They’re so stereotypical fantasy–but Laura Hinkle’s unicorn story “Lighting the Candles”…is not.

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Tell us how the story came to be.

I think it’s a biological fact that little girls love unicorns. I’ve always wanted to do a unicorn story, but without the traditional princess-in-the-woods approach.

What authors, if any, have influenced your own writing?

Stephen King’s On Writing has been an essential manual for me to improve my style of writing. I am also a huge fan of Caitlin R. Kiernan and Poppy Z Brite.

Are you satisfied with traditional labels for genre fiction? Do words like “speculative,” “slipstream,” and, for that matter, “genre” cover it?

I don’t pay much, if any, attention to the labels for fiction. If an author’s story is convincing and can hold my attention, regardless of the topic, I will devote my time to it.

If you could invite three authors, past or present, to dinner, who would it be, and what would you talk about?

I would absolutely love to sit down with Stephen King, John Green, and Charles Bukowski. Each of them brings something unique and starkly honest to their work. I’d like to think that we’d skip discussing business and get to laughing over drinks instead, though.

 What is your favorite Bradbury story/novel?

“There Will Come Soft Rains” is absolutely my favorite. It’s such an ominous ghost story that immerses you immediately.

What’s next for you?

I’m currently working on a story based around the condition folie a deux. So far it’s a surreal kind of horror story, the kind of monsters that you see from the corner of your eye rather than being attacked directly. I can also sometimes be found lurking around WordPress at girlcontraband.wordpress.com.

Dennis conjures a disturbing tale for Shimmer #16, “Word and Flesh,” and shares a fabulous memory of reading Bradbury.

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Tell us how “Word and Flesh” came to be.
I wrote the story during my second week at the 2011 Clarion Writers’ Workshop. I’ve always been fascinated by anthropodermic bibliopegy (binding books in human skin) and knew I wanted to write a story about it. The idea was vague, however, and I was struggling to assemble a coherent plot. As I wandered the UCSD campus mulling over the story, I came to realize how disconcerted I was by the architecture around me. The notion of a city-state dedicated to esoteric pursuits got stuck in my head, eventually becoming the Universidad portrayed in “Word and Flesh.” Once I had that physical setting, the rest of the story came more easily.

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
Since I was very young, maybe eight or nine. I’d always thought I’d be a playwright, however.

If you had a working time machine what advice would you give a younger self?
Stop waiting for inspiration and write everyday. Actually, I’d just shorten that to, Stop waiting.

Print or ebook, what is your preference for reading books these days, and why?
Definitely ebooks. My iPad and iPhone give me instant access to a ton of books, I can adjust the font size and brightness at will, and ebooks and ezines are often cheaper than their paper equivalents.

What is your favorite Bradbury story or novel?
One of my most vivid childhood memories is of sitting under a banyan tree in Kailua, Hawaii, reading The Illustrated Man. I remember that my cheek was stuffed with black licorice and I had a can of RC Cola in one hand, the paperback in the other. A light breeze made the tree’s aerial roots sway and creak, the pages were dappled in sunlight.

What’s next for you?
I’m sending out more short stories and working on a novel. Also avoiding World of Warcraft and Reddit. And reading. Lots of reading.

“Opposable Thumbs” was another story in Shimmer #16 that made the staff say “whoa!” You know that means it’s remarkable and belongs in Shimmer.

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Tell us how “Opposable Thumbs” came to be.

Well, oddly enough it actually began as a writing exercise for a class in my MFA program. We’d just read Kamby Balongo Mean River by Robert Lopez, and the idea was to write a short story making use of some element of Lopez’s novel. The whole time I was reading the book (which is fantastic and quite strange), I was becoming more and more obsessed with the idea that this particular voice would lend itself really well to a wealth of potential sci-fi ideas. So when it came time to write the story, I co-opted his voice and started there. I like to think that EV91’s voice evolved away from Lopez’s narrator, but that’s where it started, anyway.

We both enjoyed Zone One (Colson Whitehead); what other books have you read recently that you think deserve a wider audience?

David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, for one. It’s an absolutely brilliant book. And with a Tom Hanks movie coming out based on it, I’m sure it will GET that wider audience shortly. Another book that I think deserves a wider audience is Jess Walter’s The Zero. He’s an incredible writer, and it’s an amazing book that almost made me cry. Really, all of his stuff (at least that I’ve read) is fantastic.

What’s up with autocorrect, anyhow? What’s the oddest correction you’ve seen?

It’s probably just the first ripples of an eventual global takeover by Siri and friends. The weirdest I’ve had isn’t that weird, I tend to be sort of meticulous about my text messages. I did get “her” autocorrected to “errr” though. Siri must’ve been having some doubts about that girl. The weirdest one I’ve heard about is from my friend Matt, who was autocorrected from “Vidal” to “Visakhapatnam.” That one gets all kinds of points for oddness.

Do you stalk Duotrope?

I spend a goodly amount of time there. Though at this point, my list of which magazines have rejected which stories contains almost every semi-pro and pro zine on the duotrope sci fi list, so I often just use that word doc instead of duotrope. Still, it’s a great resource and I spend way too much time on it.

What is your favorite Bradbury story/novel?

I remember really enjoying Something Wicked This Way Comes, but to be honest it hasn’t stuck with me. I couldn’t tell you a thing about it. So my answer is going to be sadly typical: Fahrenheit 451. Something about it just sticks in the mind, which to me is the hallmark of a great story or novel.

What’s next for you?

Well, I’m going to be serializing a novel on a website called Jukepop Serials starting very soon. The novel’s called Multipocalypse, and I’m excited to begin that journey. There will be zombies and some other stuff, in a certain way it harks back to my childhood… but I can’t really say how without giving some important bits away. Aside from that, I’m just going to keep flooding editor’s in-boxes with short stories.

Rebecca contributes the beautiful and haunting “The Sky Whale” in Shimmer #16. Sweet Hitomi charmed us all.

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Tell us how the story came to be.

Three months after I returned home from a semester-long study abroad program in Japan, the earthquake and tsunami disaster of 2011 occurred. It took me almost a year to digest the events well enough to begin writing “The Sky Whale.” I put together the first draft of the story while enrolled in a fiction workshop – just before the one year anniversary of the tsunami. I sent an early draft to Shimmer and received a rewrite request; the next draft was written after the anniversary of the tsunami had passed, so I researched how the Japanese had mourned their loss, weaving those events into the story.

The whale itself was partially inspired by images of flying whales that I’ve seen here and there over the years. Although, of course, Hitomi’s whale has special significance.

What drew you to Japan and Asian studies?

A childhood fascination with Japanese cartoons stoked my interest in Japan early on. But as I matured, I discovered that Japan had a lot more to offer than magical moon princesses and Pokémon. My current interests in Japanese culture and history have a lot more to do with my degree than the childhood events that first sparked the flame.
Did spending a semester in Japan teach you anything when it comes to writing?

Staying in Japan taught me a lot – about myself, life, another culture. It also taught me that writing is not, for me personally, a process of simply putting pen to paper. A huge part of my process is going out and experiencing new things. To be honest, I wrote hardly a word of fiction during my entire time in Japan because I was focused on making the most of my time there and overwhelmed by all of the new concepts with which I came into contact. I needed a lot of time to sift through my own thoughts.

While I didn’t produce much in the way of fiction while abroad, I actually kept a blog during my trip. It’s a few years old and I’m not sure whether it’s of much interest, but you can find it here.
If you could invite an author, past or present, to an evening of karaoke, who would it be and what would you make them sing?

This one’s a toss-up between Diana Wynne Jones, David Sedaris, and Oscar Wilde. But I’d be much more interested in engaging them in conversation than in listening to them sing.

What is your favorite Bradbury story/novel?

I know it’s strange, but outside of a few journals and the books I read as a young adult, I don’t read very much speculative fiction. I often find myself in the middle of conversations concerning authors I am sadly clueless about. I’m sure most of my peers would shudder to know that I have never read a thing by Bradbury, although it’s something I intend to soon amend.

What’s next for you?

I’m hoping to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing in the near future. I’ve also got my eye on the Clarion West program, although I know the chances of my being accepted are outrageously slim. That’s okay though – I live in a make-believe world, so even if none of this pans out, I’ll go back to skipping through fields of singing flowers and fantastical happenstances in my daydreams.