Want more Silvia? Check out her blog, and her new venture, the Innsmouth Free Press, a fictional newspaper publishing faux news pieces in a Lovecraftian/Cthulhu Mythos universe, as well as original short fiction stories.
Next in our Author Spotlight series: Claude Lalumière. Claude’s story, “What to Do with the Dead,” is part of the Lost Myths project, a collaborative effort with artist Rupert Bottenberg, an “eclectic offering of mythological webcomics, fiction, art, & more,” coming in 2010.
“What to Do with the Dead” is the most charming story about corpses I’ve ever read; it was irresistible.
As a special treat, Claude reads one section of “What to Do with the Dead” below, accompanied by Rupert’s illustration.
Click on the illustration to listen. Thanks, Claude and Rupert.
It’s a terrific issue, with a dozen new stories and an exclusive interview from Cory Doctorow. It’s my favorite issue yet, and a pretty great way to celebrate reaching ten issues.
But it’s not really a celebration unless everyone can join in — so we decided to make the electronic edition of this issue FREE. Download a copy here. Let your friends and family know. We want everyone to read and enjoy this issue.
IF you prefer, you can buy the lovely print edition:
To celebrate our tenth issue, we put the whole thing up online: download it for free! We still have a few copies of the lovely print editions, too!
This issue features Nir Yaniv’s “A Painter, a Sheep, and a Boa Constrictor,” which was reprinted in Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2010.
Five stories were selected for Ellen Datlow’s Honorable Mention list in the Year’s Best Horror, including our cover story, Caitlin Paxson’s “The Carnivale of Abandoned Tales.” The others: “Counting Down to the End of the Universe,” by Sara Genge; “The Spoils of Springfield” by Alex Wilson; “What to Do with the Dead,” by Claude Lalumière; and “A Painter, a Sheep, and a Boa Constrictor.”
You also don’t want to miss Shweta Narayan’s “One for Sorrow,” and the cover art by the brilliant Carrie Ann Baade.
They are unfailingly well written, which gives hope for the future of the genre. — Tangent Online
Download your free copy today, or buy the lovely print edition below, and celebrate with us!
Josef Anton Miklovic, Blue Joe, was twenty-one years old and playing the sax in a nightclub in Youngstown, Ohio, when he met his father for the first time.
Joe was on stage with his family band: Karl on keyboard, hunched and intense; Niko on drums, grinning his lopsided, dreamer’s grin; and Ivan, as smooth and polished as a Croatian Clark Gable, playing his shining trumpet like a peal up to heaven.
“Step right up, step right up!” cries the Big Barker. He lifts up his top hat, and what big and hairy ears he has. “Ladies and gentlemen! See the wonders of the Black Forest! See the Tattooed Woman with her skin as white as snow and red as blood and black as night! See the horse head that speaks from beyond the grave! Be the first to witness as a little girl—no taller than your waist, sir—dances with three ferocious bears! Step right up!”
A look at the transformative nature of fairy tales and the twisted ways of wishes coming true. Neat fantasy idea. —Lois Tilton, IROSF.
A Painter, A Sheep, and a Boa Constrictor, by Nir Yaniv (Translated from the Hebrew by Lavie Tidhar)
“Please, draw me a sheep,” he said—he looked just like you—and I thought, oh my, the kid makes demands. I would have liked to be in the desert, beside the broken remains of my airplane, or anywhere else for that matter. But no—we were both in the space port, I who was thrown like a discarded tool from the bowels of a trading ship, and he, who had seemed to arrive from nowhere.
He was out of Lainie’s sight for ten seconds while she did her little ritual of freedom, stopping on Skene Street just out of sight of the school to pull the daft, throttlesome tie off and stuff it in her bag. When she looked back up he had a glossy black feather as long as his arm. It was green and violet where it caught the light, shiny like an oil slick.
We all thought Signe was never going to come back to school because she’s, like, all dead and stuff, you know, but when junior year starts, she’s right there with us in home room. But she’s all pale and gross looking and no one wants to sit next to her because her skin is like all slimy and blue and she has all these gashes all over her. There’s this one on her neck that like goes all the way around, and the stitches are really big. Plus she has this lame haircut that’s like a barrel on top of her head with these two white stripes that go from her face all the way to the top.
So no one wants to talk to her, right, so I go up to her and I’m all, “Like, what happened to you? Didn’t you like die or something?”
She forgot how to be a jaguar but the knowledge sometimes returns in her dreams and she wakes to the dark room and the shape of the man next to her and the distant smell of jungle and night.
Bound inside the stiff dresses, under layers of velvet, ruffs, embroidered roses, it is easy to forget how to shift her shape, how to move sleek and elegant on four legs.
They speak new words to her and the words drive away the words she used to know. They even give her a new name and she watches as her old name is trampled under the hoofs of their horses. The magic is lost.
The house next door to Marta’s had an octopus living in the hanging basket over the front porch, right where a plant should have been. The backyard had a fence made of pine trees and every night a green glow came through the cracks between the trees. Grownups said that Marta’s neighbor was a witch and that she hated children, but Marta knew better than to always believe what grownups said.
A long time ago, before there were paved roads, lived a human king who was very proud of his beard. He went so far as to call it one of the glories of his kingdom. It was thick and it never tangled; also, it was a beautiful red. His pride was all the stronger because nobody could really argue against it. His beard was just as fabulously red as he said it was.
One day the king made a mistake. He bragged that his beard was of such a glorious red that, beside it, even the fox king’s brush was dull and shabby.
Interview with Cory Doctorow, by Jen West River Water, by Becca De La Rosa
In Allison’s garden there grew a tree of little oranges, delicious in summertime, veined with white, like palm-sized marbles. Allison’s garden was a treasure trove before the ferry ride. The long grasses, windswept, kept their secrets.
Allison sat under the orange tree where rind littered her lawn. It was already autumn. The orange tree reached down into the earth, questing for water and sweet minerals. Allison thought of the underground cradling its roots like thin fingers, a handshake or a hug. She began to cry.
At first, people had no idea what to do with their dead. If you just left them lying around, they started to stink, not to mention all the vermin they tended attract. So that option was ruled out pretty quickly.
Not everyone came up with the same solution to the problem.
They call us uncivilized. Decayed. Prone to violent outbursts, because apparently hunger is just another base, primal need which the Unspoiled have transcended in the uncounted hours since my own expiration. Apparently an entire industry of eating—from the farm, to the butcher, to the flash-freezing factory, to the market, to the oven, to the fork for every purpose (and for every purpose a fork) to chewing before swallowing—has replaced the somehow less practical sinking of one’s incisor into a neighbor’s unsuspecting cranium. Or perhaps the portion of my brain whose purpose is to remember such things was the first to rot.
Counting Down to the End of the Universe,by Sara Genge
Tren is glad his hands are still good enough to build a clockwork bird. He looks at the table; he has everything he needs. The feathers are sharp, golden and perfect. The beak is finished and shines on the cloth.
A head blocks the light from the mouth of the cave and casts a shadow on the delicate springs he’s working on. He looks up, knowing even before he shifts his gaze that it’s his daughter. At two hundred, Lia is relatively young as immortals go, and the only one of them who has remained mobile.
If you had to liken writing to anything, what would it be?
People have asked me about my writing process, and the best description I can give is that it’s a bit like doing a jigsaw puzzle. I start by looking for pieces. This is basically anything shiny and interesting that happens to catch my attention — it could be a phrase or a photograph or a character — most anything, really. I collect several pieces, and then I mash them together. Some of the pieces fit, others don’t (so I save them for other stories). Once the entire story-puzzle is assembled, I repaint all the pieces so they match.
Do you ever get to a certain point, reading a story, and feel the click! as you have got to the point of no return/can’t stop now? Does writing ever feel that way?
Yes! I definitely get that. I think of it as being the opposite of the ‘red line of death’ that some editors use — a sort of ‘green light of life.’ It’s that moment where the story pulls you in and you are immersed in the world. I love that moment, both in reading and in writing. I don’t get the click with every story, but it’s so much easier to write the stories that click early on than the ones that don’t.
What’s the best piece of writerly advice someone has given you?
When I was just getting started, a friend of mine told me that what new writers need most is encouragement. There’s this notion that if someone is meant to be a writer no amount of disparaging remarks or discouragement will turn them away from that goal. But I think having a good support system early on is what allows writers develop a thick skin. I’m so grateful for all the encouragement I’ve gotten from my family and friends.
Do you see stories as images?
I’m a very non-visual writer (and reader). Even when I’m completely immersed in a story, I don’t see images in my head. It seems strange to me that I’m not more visual — I do a lot of photography, and I often find story inspiration in photographs.
Where did you get the idea for Firefly Igloo?
This story was one of several I wrote as part of a flash-writing challenge on Codex (an online writers’ group), and the story came from a prompt: “Write about a house or other dwelling with an unusual property.” With a prompt like that, a firefly igloo was pretty much inevitable.
If you could talk to any author from the past, who would it be? Would you use a character to speak to that author, or yourself?
How far past? It’d be fascinating to talk to Socrates, or Aesop (or anyone who had a hand in the writing of what are now called Aesop’s fables). In the less distant past, I might pick Emerson or Louisa May Alcott. Someone from the immediate past who I never got to meet but always wanted to is Octavia Butler.
My mind has a tendency to go completely blank when meeting someone for the first time, so maybe sending one of my characters would be a good idea! Honestly, I wish I could have my characters answer interview questions — I’m pretty introverted by nature, so it’s tough to spend so much time talking about myself.
Through the magic of interview wish-fulfillment, Marta is conjured from the pages of Firefly Igloo. She enters, carrying a hanging basket with an octopus inside.
Marta: I can answer questions. What do you want to know?
What writing projects are you presently working on?
Marta: She’s writing a sequel to Firefly Igloo! One where I get to ride on a unicorn and rescue dragons and eat chocolate ice cream. Or if she isn’t working on it now, I’m sure she’ll start soon. It’s a good story.
Um, we’ll see. My current projects include a fantasy story about semi-autonomous puppets trying to break free from the boundaries of their world, and a pair of science fiction stories that I’m doing in collaboration with a colleague of mine.
Particular favorites for movies, series, comics, blogs, etc.?
Marta: TV is boring. Caroline never watches TV.
Well, I wouldn’t say that I never watch TV. But I did somehow manage to make it all the way to 2008 without having seen a single episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and when my friends found out, they remedied the situation by holding a series of Buffy nights where we watched the entire series. And I loved it! I’m now a huge Joss Whedon fan, although I have to admit that Dollhouse hasn’t grabbed me yet.
What kind of advice do you wish characters listened to? Or offered?
I’m driven more by ideas and plot. If I’m not careful, I end up with characters acting . . . well, out of character. So I wish my characters would protest when I make them do things they don’t want to do.
Marta: I don’t want to do that.
Oh, but it would be so much better for everyone if you did! It’s very important that you stay in character.
Marta: Yes, but that’s your job. You’re supposed to think up what happens, and I get to have adventures.
Marta, I notice you are carrying an octopus in a basket. It seems to be waving its tentacles a lot.
Octopus: *squirms* Marta: The octopus wants to go home now. I think we should end the interview. End with something about food. People like food.
Milk chocolate or dark chocolate?
Dark chocolate, definitely. But not too dark. I like chocolate to be bittersweet.
