John Parke Davis’s short story, Halloween Night, appears in the Autumn 2006 issue of Shimmer. Check out his web site or send him e-mail.

Questions About the Story

Where did the idea come from?
It was coming up on Halloween (obviously) and my brother and I had been writing scary stories back and forth. I wanted to do something a little different on my own, and I came up with this idea of creatures dancing and acting crazy outside, trying to tempt a child into coming out. That idea didn’t really work, but it left me with the child’s perspective.

From there, I thought about where the idea of Halloween really came from, and the idea that the dead are allowed back into the world of the living on that day only every year (all right, May Day, too, technically). So I thought to myself, what would it be like if that were actually true? Mix in the child’s perspective and some interfamilial strain themes, and you get “Halloween Night.” Hm, now it doesn’t seem so magical and impressive… um, I meant, it came to me in a dream. Yeah.

How did the story change as you developed it?
It actually didn’t change too much from the first version to the last. I think it got darker… the first version was a little more comedic than the final one. As short as Halloween Night is, most of the changes took the form of additions and sentence structure/flow alterations. The most difficult part proved to be making the intro grabbing without directly stating what was going on.

You know the advice “Sometimes you have to kill your darlings.” Was there a scene or line that it really hurt to cut, but cutting it made the story stronger?
Really good question, but in this case, no.

How is this story like your other work?
I’d say this one is a bit different—it’s just a different type of story in general. I try to experiment with many different styles in my writing; this was one of those experiments. I would say it’s like my other work in the way that the speculative element is presented; the fact that it’s a bit unexplained and/or surreal. Then again, I think that’s kind of a hallmark of true speculative fiction in general, when the term is used to denote its own genre rather than as a category head for all SF/F/H.

Questions About Writing

How did you celebrate your first sale?
This was my first sale, and I’m still celebrating!

Does your work tend to explore any particular themes?
Good question. God and religion make frequent cameos. Death seems to be a favorite, as well, and how we deal with it. Evolution, in its technical sense. My work tends to deal more with the characters and their internal states than complicated external plots.

What people have helped you the most with your writing?
My brother has probably helped me the most– he talked me into a writing game with him, where every week we throw out “pitches” and write short-short stories about them. That’s kept me writing, and really helped me develop it. He’s a very gifted writer, and his approach to things constantly amazes me. We actually decided to put the results up on the web for free on our website.

Aside from my brother, I owe a lot in my writing to my father, the first impetus to write and a constant encouragement/impromptu editor, and my girlfriend, who is a budding romance writer in her own right. Plus, she’s beautiful and awesome and a constant inspiration. Well, not for the death stuff, but you know.

Favorite book you’ve read recently?
I’ve been reading a ton of short stories recently, actually, and not a whole lot of book. House of Leaves is probably the last novel I read, and it is excellent.

Random Questions

If you have a day job, what is it? What do you like about it?
I’m a newly-minted attorney, fresh out of a judicial clerkship and into practice. I love the intellectual challenge, and the (unfortunately rare) thrill of the courtroom. I also like doing something in the real world every now and then. Not often, though.

Favourite food?
Wine.
[I’ll drink to that. -ed.]

What are some of your hobbies?
Video games (waaay too much video games), cooking, mangling the guitar, travel, scuba.

All-time favourite movie?
The Princess Bride. That may be a trite answer, but it’s an awesome movie.

What do you want to be when you grow up?
I don’t want to grow up.

Quiz: How many writers does it take to change a lightbulb? Please explain your answer:
Well, if the lightbulb really needs changing, I better change it now. I mean, technically, I need light, so that could be considered working, right? Yes, I should definitely change it now, can’t write until it’s changed. Then I’ll get writing. You know, while I’m changing lightbulbs, I might as well change all the ones in the house. And I did want to install florescent lights in the kitchen…

Angela Slatter’s short story, Bluebeard, appears in the Summer 2006 issue of Shimmer.

Questions About the Story

Where did the idea come from?
It actually started out as a story called “Champagne” for lack of anything better – mainly because of the line about the breath smelling like champagne. It just began with the idea of a small, very intelligent girl watching her mother, who’s a courtesan in Paris in the early late nineteenth century…I don’t know why! This is what I think about! It’s not my fault!

How did the story change as you developed it?
I wasn’t sure where to go after the first page and a half, really … I had to leave it alone for a couple of weeks. Then I started to think about the clients the woman would have and I got a really clear picture of Davide as bear-like. I loved Lily’s voice, how incisive and clever and cynical she is, and yet childish at the same time. Eventually I started to think “hey, what if a Bluebeard story was told by a little girl?”, and when I decided not to make Davide the villain, but his creepy mum, it all fell into place. I like the idea of Lily and her mother saving each other instead of depending on an outside (male) force to save them.

You know the advice “Sometimes you have to kill your darlings.” Was there a scene or line that it really hurt to cut, but cutting it made the story stronger?
There wasn’t too much that I lost from this story that was hard to cut. Joy and Beth at Shimmer did a great job on editing and asking all the right questions of an author (like “What does this mean?”) and making me think about what I’d written – and I’m eternally grateful to them for their help, although at the time it may not have seemed that way! It was a learning experience for me, too, as it was the first time I’d been edited by proper editors!

How is this story like your other work?
I think the voice is different because it’s a child’s voice – a very intelligent child, but a child all the same. I think it may be my creepiest story – my supervisor loves bears but she said after reading this story she had a nightmare about them…so my work is done!

Questions About Writing

How did you celebrate your first sale?
With a blueberry Danish – actually, that’s how I celebrate everything. There may well have been a drink or two in the student bar at uni…then a few more on the back deck of my home.

Does your work tend to explore any particular themes?
Errrr, the nasty creepy dark stuff? Dead children seems to be a theme…how people’s insides and outsides are very different…also the nastier elements of sex as a weapon…honestly, I’m more well-adjusted than I seem!

What people have helped you the most with your writing?
My supervisor, Dr Nike Bourke (superb writer, incisive editor), my friend Anita Bell (finance and fiction writer, who gave me my start by saying “you don’t seem too abnormal, wanna write something for me?”), my friends Azra and Jaimie and Donna who read everything and tell me what’s crap and what’s good.

Favorite book you’ve read recently?
There’s always about five on the bedside table…the standouts this month are:
”The Black Angel” by John Connolly
“The Blue Jay’s Dance” by Louise Edrich
“The Wave in the Mind” by Ursula K Le Guin

Random Questions

If you have a day job, what is it? What do you like about it?
I’m the admin-nerd at a uni in Brisbane, Australia. I push papers around a desk at the Creative Writing & Cultural Studies discipline – which is great because I’m working with writers every day. If there are no papers to push, they let me write as long as I show them what I’ve written. I like the people, all nicely quirky and quite loveable (most days).

Favorite food?
Lemon meringue pie by my Mum.

What are some of your hobbies?
Writing (d’uh), reading…nope, that’s it.

All-time favorite movie?
Awwwww, so much exclusivity! All-time favorite…I love Kevin Smith’s “Dogma”, I love “The Great Escape”, and “The Nun’s Story”…”Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story” is great…and “Life is Beautiful”…can I have highlights? They’re the highlights…

What do you want to be when you grow up?
A writer who can support herself by writing (and yes, I believe in the Easter Bunny too!)

Paul Abbamondi’s short story, Always Greener, appears in the Summer 2006 issue of Shimmer. Check out his web site or send him e-mail

Questions About the Story

Where did the idea come from?
I thought back to the street where I grew up. I used to have one neighbor that was completely obsessed with his lawn. Every day he’d be out there watering, clipping, and cutting it to perfection. I was too young to care. Actually, now that I’m older, I still don’t care. But I knew other neighbors did and thought I’d take their jealousy to the extreme.

How did the story change as you developed it?
Not one bit. I wrote it from start to end in one sitting.

How is this story like your other work? How is it different?
Well, it’s like my work in the fact that the main character ultimately meets his demise in a sickly fashion. It’s different in that I don’t write a lot of stories in present tense. [Editorial note: We actually asked Paul to recast this in present tense. Usually we’re very skeptical about present tense – but it just seemed right for this piece. ]

Questions About Writing

Who do you write for? Yourself or someone else?
I only write for myself.

What writing projects are you presently working on?
I have several short stories in progress and have been toying with a novel outline and some early chapters. The novel, so far, is of epic fantasy fare, with goblins as slaves and humans as the slave drivers. A revolt is in the process.

What time of day do you prefer to do your writing?
I do most of my writing at night, but every now and then I find that the quiet hours of morning along with a cup of tea can work wonders on my muse.

Favorite book read when you were a child?
That’d be a tie between “The Hobbit” by J.R.R. Tolkien and “The BFG” by Roald Dahl. Both really showed me how to use my imagination.

Random Questions

If you could trade places with anyone, who would it be? And why?
Are we talking physically or mentally trading places? It’s an important difference. I’d love to trade physical places with my sister in Arizona and experience life on the other side of the United States of America. Mentally, I wouldn’t mind swapping minds with China Mieville for a bit, see what makes him tick and tock.

Watch much TV? If so, what shows do you watch?
I watch very little television, but lately I’ve been obsessing over LOST, Battlestar Galactica, and Dr. Who. My guilty pleasure shows would be any reality TV cooking debacle and anything on Animal Planet.

Favorite restaurant?
I really like the Olive Garden, especially for their breadsticks.

Cat or dog person? (or something else, like birds, iguanas, or even evil robot monkeys?)
I’m a cat person. I used to have one while in college, but it turned out it was a dog inside of a cat suit (don’t ask) and I couldn’t handle him anymore. I do see several terriers in my future though.

If you had a working time machine what advice would you give a younger self?
Just because you think everything you’ve written is horrible doesn’t mean others will. You have to submit to be rejected, otherwise you’ll never get accepted.

Quiz: How many writers does it take to change a light bulb? Please explain your answer:
Two: one to write how it is done, and the other to critique his work.

Pirates! The word evokes the high seas, deep space and bootleg software. Be honest, who hasn’t wanted to be a pirate? Think of plunder, booty — Avast!

The MS Shimmer has been captured by the Dred Pirate John Joseph Adams, first-mate of the Fantasy & Science Fiction. For the Summer 2007 issue, our pages will be filled with pirate stories. What better way to celebrate National Talk Like a Pirate Day?

What kind of pirates? All kinds — fantasy, science fiction, contemporary, historical, futuristic, high seas, deep space — if it’s got pirates and it’s speculative fiction, Captain Adams wants it. The usual Shimmer guidelines apply, but with pirates.

Bring us your pirate stories for Summer 2007, the Pirate Issue.

Submission porthole: December 1, 2006-February 28, 2007.

NOTE: The end of the submission date has changed. It is now February 28th.

Send submissions to submissions@shimmerzine.com with “Pirate Submission: Title” in the subject line. Early submissions are accepted, but there’s absolutely no guarantee that they’ll be read before December. Savvy?

Links
Ye scurvy sea-dogs need some inspirin’? Here are some links to get ye started.

Watch the History Channel’s series on pirates, beginning July 9.

Can’t think of a name for your pirate vessel? Check out this pirate ship name generator.

Read some sobering information on the connection between pirates and global warming in this Open Letter to Kansas School Board.

Brush up on your pirate words and phrases.

And don’t forget Bloodthirsty Pirate Tales.

If we be missin’ some links, or if ye have more questions, fire a cannon over our fo’c’s’le at midnight, or send e-mail to info@shimmerzine.com.

Angela Slatter’s short story, The Angel Wood, appears in the Autumn 2006 issue of Shimmer.

Questions About the Story

Where did the idea come from?
Two sources – I was watching one of those British crime movies (as is my wont) and a murder was set in a place called the “Angel Wood”, and I thought “cool name”. So that was floating around in my head as a title; then a couple of nights later I couldn’t sleep, so got up for some appalling late-night TV watching. There was a program about the Black Death in London in the time of Charles II, and they’d done these excellent re-enactments of how life was then: how the sick stayed in doors during the day but came out at night for some fresh air, while the well stayed inside their locked houses. So, the two ideas came together, about a wealthy family fleeing the disease, basically going back to the mother’s old home, which she’d never spoken to her kids about. I liked the idea of it being a homecoming for the kids even though they’d never known about the place – it’s sort of a story about finding home wherever it happens to be.

How did the story change as you developed it?
I sliced off the first three hundred odd words which basically covered the escape from London – it set the atmosphere really well and I loved it, but in the end it was not really necessary to the rest of the story. I was sad to see it go, but the story stands better without it, it’s much tighter. I also had a character called Melisande, who was the great-grandmother and Sybilla was an aunt (like a bride and a handmaiden), but a friend pointed out that they were really just reflections of each other, so I cut Meilsande out (she was slightly malign anyway), and made Sybilla a more rounded character. She works much better.

You know the advice “Sometimes you have to kill your darlings.” Was there a scene or line that it really hurt to cut, but cutting it made the story stronger?
Sure, here t’is:

We escaped London almost intact. Only my father, virulent blossoms decorating his body like funeral wreaths, succumbed. He was one of the last to have a proper funeral, all the pomp and ceremony quite pointless; it was, by then, obvious that wealth and power held no sway over the disease.

Our flight was organized in a rush, with my mother paying off the remaining servants and sewing her jewellery into the hems of our cloaks. When we walked the fabric drifted heavily, like a slow snowfall. Jeremy-Charles, only three, wailed as Mother gutted his favourite bear and stuffed pearls into the cavity. When I handed it back to him he sniffed suspiciously at the new stitching before snuggling up to it and firmly lodging his thumb in his mouth. The twins, Millicent and Mathilda, sat quietly, self-contained, until asked to do something. They helped at once and, when finished, sat again and waited patiently.

Our single trunk we heaved into the carriage, too anxious to bother with tying it to the roof. Mother and I each had a set of Father’s pistols snugly sitting under our cloaks.

The carriage ride through London that evening was like traveling down a reeking tunnel. At night, the well and the as-yet-not-ill hid inside their homes so that the already ill and the soon-to-be-dead could roam the streets and take in what passed for fresh air. Mother drove, whipping the horses until we’d left the plague-infected city and its walking corpses behind.

Now, with the city just a memory, the air is so sweet it creeps up our nostrils and makes us sneeze at its strangeness.

How is this story like your other work?
It’s like the rest in that it taps into that folkloric kind of pool that I’m interested in, but it isn’t based on any particular fairytale. I guess the green man idea is an old one but I didn’t write the story for it to be a re-written fairytale. It was more about the idea of coming home, of your family always being part of your blood, even the family you don’t know.

Questions About Writing

How long had you been submitting before you made your first sale?
Um…probably only a few months. I was very lucky that my first sale was to Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and my second to Shimmer, and those were within a couple of weeks of each other. Those two sales have been so fortuitous because other magazines see Shimmer and LCRW on you writer’s bio and they go “oooh!” and are much more inclined to view your work with a tender eye, rather than a harsh one. It was weird – my first story to be sold was the one I thought no one would buy. So, what do I know??

Do you work with a critique or writers group?
My Masters supervisor is also a writing buddy, and I have about 8 readers. Four are other writers, so we work in a group; the other four are avid readers, so I get both perspectives on my work: the technical p.o.v. and the readerly p.o.v., which I find really valuable in developing my work.

What authors, if any, have had the most influence on your work?
Um. Angela Carter and Emma Donoghue are both superb fairytalers. I love John Connolly’s work, which mixes fantasy and crime and some seriously scary stuff all together – his writing has a superb voice, it’s cleverly written, great pace, and has a real depth of knowledge behind it. I really admire that. I don’t know if that makes them the ‘biggest influences’ – they are certainly writers I admire. I think your influences change over the years and it’s a hard question to answer!

Favorite short story you’ve read recently?
Two by Aimee Bender in Her “Willful Creatures” collection: “The Meeting” and “Ironhead

Random Questions

Do you believe in ghosts or the supernatural? Why?
Yep, because I have relatives who are still hanging around! Science kids itself that it has the answer to everything and that everything’s logical. It’s not, end of story, get over it! You can’t explain everything.

Fast food: Yea or Nay?
Damn it. Like everything, it’s okay in moderation. But, please, McDonalds as a health food joint?!

Name one place in your hometown that you love to go to and would recommend to others to visit.
Avid Bookstore at West End, coz it’s cool.

Is there anything that you would “sell your soul” for?
Donuts…

Do you have a secret skill that you never get to show off?
No, no skills at all. Or none I’m admitting to.

Amal El-Mohtar has appeared in Shimmer multiple times.  Her first story, The Crow’s Caw, appeared in the Summer 2006 issue.  In our Winter 2007 issue, she had Sparrow and Egg (where she was interviewed again), and most recently her tale The Fishbowl was published in our Clockwork Jungle Book (Issue #11).  Send her e-mail, or check out her poetry magazine, Goblin Fruit.

Questions About the Story

Where did the idea for “The Crow’s Caw” come from?
I used to live out in the countryside of Pontiac, Quebec, in this gorgeous place right by the Outaouais river. There was a lot of wildlife all around, especially in the spring and fall when the geese were migrating, but I’d never really paid attention to the crows – until this one morning when I woke up to the sound of them cawing. And it wasn’t that there were many, or more than usual – but it was just that, that morning, the quality of the sound shocked me. It was unlike anything I’d ever heard before, deep and raw and ragged, and so awing that I immediately wanted to write something for it. I wrote a poem, “Corbae,” which didn’t at all satisfy the urge – and then I wrote this story, which did.

How did the story change as you developed it?
I think it partly grew out of the poem, which consisted of the speaker asking the crow about its caw; I guess it went from there to being about three men who couldn’t be bothered to ask. Besides that, though, I was surprised by the way the three characters developed their own voices almost independently of me.

You know the advice “Sometimes you have to kill your darlings.” Was there a scene or line that it really hurt to cut, but cutting it made the story stronger?
With this story, nothing much changed! Once it got going, it seemed to be just what it ought to be, and the desire to tell the story right superseded any clever turn of phrase. I’m sure the crows think otherwise, but there it is.

How is this story like your other work?
I find I write a lot from a folkloric base, one that straddles many different traditions; I love myth and storytelling, and I find a lot of that gets worked into what I write. “The Crow’s Caw” is in keeping with that, I think. On the other hand, every story is its own thing, and this one has a darker edge to it than most of mine do.

Questions About Writing

How long had you been submitting before you made your first sale?
I actually dug this up… Almost two years, I think. A year and eight months, roughly, between my first submission and my first acceptance.

Do you work with a critique or writers group?
I do. Her name is Jessica Wick, and in addition to being an author in her own right and co-editor of Goblin Fruit, she’s my own personal writing valkyrie (some people have muses, but them’s the breaks). This story was actually written as part of an ongoing writing exercise we devised for each other, which consisted of writing a story for a random day of the week (determined by the cast of a 10-sided die… We made it work). We re-named each day of the week to give it a loose theme, and often wrote our stories with that theme in mind. “The Crow’s Caw” was written for Fatesday, and for her.

For this story, certainly, two standing influences are Charles de Lint and Neil Gaiman – two authors who, more than any others, made me begin to pay attention to crows and ravens, and helped me to realize that my obsession with myth and folklore didn’t have to be independent of my writing.

Favorite short story you’ve read recently?
“The Baby in the Night Deposit Box,” by Megan Whalen Turner, in the first Firebirds anthology. One of the best short stories ever, in fact!

Random Questions

Do you believe in ghosts or the supernatural? Why?
Yes – from experience. And because it’s so much more interesting this way. Also, for a good six months after I wrote this story, the crows deigned to tell me when I had received rejections. I’m not kidding.

I came across this quote, once, in one of those “Mysteries of the Unknown” books – you know the ones, big, black, find them at your local library and pretty much nowhere else – which said that what we call the supernatural is “not what is strange, only what is not yet commonplace,” or something to that effect. I think that’s true. But I would never want the strange to become wholly commonplace, of course.

Crows would give you rejections? What?
Here’s the thing. After I wrote this story, I became alot more aware of crows, in general. Now, they were all around me, understand. I lived out in the country. Not a day went by that I didn’t hear them cawing. But this one day, I was reading, oblivious to my surroundings, when I heard a caw that jolted me. I heard it again, and again — and I wondered, in fun, if it was heralding a rejection, since it had been a few weeks since I’d submitted “The Crow’s Caw” to a magazine. Still in fun, I got up to check my e-mail. Which I’d checked already earlier that morning. And there it was; a very kind and thoughtful rejection.

After that, I began to pay peculiar attention to the cawings. I wouldn’t listen for them, exactly, but whenever there was one that seemed like it was particularly addressed to me, I’d wonder, and I’d check my e-mail, and lo, there’d be a rejection. And not just for this particular story; after a while, they began heralding pretty much any rejection. I can honestly say that at least nine times out of ten, when I suspected them preparing me for rejection, I was right. This lasted for about six months or so; after that I got discouraged, and started wondering if I needed to petition some other bird to herald acceptances, and stopped submitting for a while. When I finally did get my first acceptance (a poetry sale to Star*Line), it was a complete and utter surprise, unprophesied, to the best of my knowledge, by any bird or beast.

Fast food: Yea or Nay?
NAY. Unless you’re on a road trip. Then, Yea by all means – as long as it’s anything but McDonald’s. Oh, and poutine doesn’t count as fast food, but as a cultural experience, so, always Yea to poutine.

Is there anything that you would “sell your soul” for?
Nah – I read way too much speculative fiction to be able to answer this question seriously and without fearing that the universe will somehow take me up on it.

Do you have a secret skill that you never get to show off?
I can recite “Betty Botter” at the closest human approximation to light speed – but no one ever asks me to, alas.

Quiz: How many writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
One writer and that writer’s sister — the latter being kind enough to allow her own lightbulb to be “borrowed” by the former indefinitely…

Monica M. Eiland’ss short story, Voices of the Gods, appears in the Autumn 2006 issue of Shimmer. Send her e-mail !

Questions About the Story

Where did the idea come from?
I found that just about every man I ever dated, no matter how much he might admire my talents, still wanted to clip my wings. But, then, giving up men seemed pretty harsh, too. Perhaps that’s a flip answer. Obviously, the situation is a bit more complicated, which I get at in my story.

How did the story change as you developed it?
I originally wrote the story at one sitting, in a narrative style, in which the main character was talking to her sister and asking for her help in doing the unsavory deed. Some friends loved this conceit, some hated it; some thought it had an unfinished feel. On the advice of Shimmer’s editor, Beth, I rewrote it as scenes rather than narrative, filling in the gaps with bits of Finnish culture, such as the names and some of the social customs. (My husband is a Finnish import.)

You know the advice “Sometimes you have to kill your darlings.” Was there a scene or line that it really hurt to cut, but cutting it made the story stronger?
This was an atypical story for me in that it was short and I added to it, more than doubling its size.

How is this story like your other work?
Most of my pieces are very different from each other on the surface. Nonetheless, not knowing me or my work, the editor of this magazine was able to figure out that two very different pieces were both mine. Who knows what she picked up? [Ed. Note: Maybe I should just let the world believe I am psychic – but the truth is, both stories used section headers in the same way – that’s all. They’re completely different stories! -bw]

Since I haven’t published much, this is almost a moot point, but I will say that much of my other work alternates between the present, the past, and the future. Though most of what I write is fantasy, I think of it as science fiction — technology so advanced, or biology so strange that it passes for the supernatural.

Questions About Writing

How long had you been submitting before you made your first sale?
I seriously thought I’d be able to publish my first novel by the time I was 13 — seemed like plenty of time! It’s been 20 years, and I believe this is the first piece of fiction I’ll have been paid for, although I’ve been runner-up on what seems like a lot of occasions, and I make my living as a writer, though not as a writer of fiction.

Do you work with a critique or writers group?
Not at present. The level of talent, seriousness, and dedication of the group makes a huge difference in the helpfulness of the experience.

What authors, if any, have had the most influence on your work?

Favorite short story you’ve read recently?
I used to adore Orson Scott Card — mostly due to Ender’s Game, which I read at the right age (13) — but I feel that he has lost the genuine empathy that he used to have for each and every character, even the bad ones. Considering that I do believe that evil exists in the world, I’m not sure why this bothers me so much — perhaps it’s the loss of moral ambiguity and the troubling “the hero is always right” viewpoint. Although in some of his writings, Card has a lot of valuable things to say about what makes for sympathetic characters and unabashedly entertaining fiction, I think the most useful lessons I’ve learned from him have been from characters and stories of his that I didn’t feel “worked.”

Madeline L’Engle, Ray Bradbury, Jane Yolen, Ursula Le Guin, and Octavia Butler have all stuck with me, though. I feel very sad that the world lost Butler so prematurely. These are the kind of writers I want to be. And yet… I notice that most of them are of a very different generation, and I wonder if they could have gotten their starts in the markets of today. (Maybe their successors are writing magazine ads or dry technical reports somewhere, who knows?)

Favorite short story you’ve read recently?
Truthfully, I read more novels than short fiction, though often I read children’s or young adult novels that are, effectively, the length of a short story or novellette. Lately I’ve been reading Tove Jansson, a Finnish writer of a much-loved (in the EU and Japan, anyway) set of children’s books about the Moomin family. She seems to be mostly unknown in North America but definitely worth a look. Tales from Moominvalley is a good start; Moominvalley in November is very trippy and best read later. All of her books are available online from booksellers such as Amazon (though you may have to use Amazon UK).

Random Questions

Do you believe in ghosts or the supernatural? Why?
I believe that all seemingly supernatural phenomena are real in the sense that they are manifestations of lingering psychological or physical remainders — dreams, memories, photos, recordings, and DNA are all ghosts of a sort. The human brain is designed to examine memories of the past in order to predict the future, and to study other human beings in order to read their thoughts and intentions. All are well within the limits of the natural laws we know but are no less incredible for all that.

Bryan Lindsey’s short story, Pray For Us, St. Dymphna, appears in the Autumn 2006 issue of Shimmer. Send him e-mail !

Questions About the Story

Where did the idea come from?
There were times when I got calls like the one Jacob gets in the first scene. The story started as a way to express a fantasy about dealing with that.

How did the story change as you developed it?
It started as a light-hearted comic piece called “Telephone Psychic.” As I started outlining, I realized that there could be something more subtle and meaningful there.

How did you learn about St. Dymphna?
It would be very interesting to say that I learned about St. Dymphna during my time in a monastic insane asylum, but I’m afraid the truth is far more prosaic. His Holiness, St. Google, I have to admit, introduced me to Dymphna. I was looking at images of saint’s medals, and hers struck me. It was pure serendipity that she happened to be the patron saint of the insane. Sometimes things just fall into place like that.

You know the advice “Sometimes you have to kill your darlings.” Was there a scene or line that it really hurt to cut, but cutting it made the story stronger?
My wife is a copy editor, so I’ve learned to treat my lines like lab rats – that is – never to grow too attached.

How is this story like your other work?
The primary feature of anything I write seems to be the intrusion of something completely fantastical on the real world and real characters. I think that this story does that.

Questions About Writing

How long had you been submitting before you made your first sale?
I submitted my first piece to a few magazines about two years ago and didn’t get a very good response, so I went into a long period of writer’s hermitude (assuming that’s a word) before submitting this piece – my first sale. It was a dumb thing to do. I shouldn’t have been so easily discouraged.

Do you work with a critique or writers group?
Nothing formal, just family and friends.

What authors, if any, have had the most influence on your work?
I think I learned my philosophy on storytelling from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, though I would have to say that my writing style is more influenced by cinema.

Favorite short story you’ve read recently?
October in the Chair by Neil Gaiman.

Random Questions

Do you believe in ghosts or the supernatural? Why?
If I believed in any of it, I wouldn’t write about it. I think that good storytelling should create an experience that couldn’t otherwise be had.

Fast food: Yea or Nay?
Never. I’m a Whole Foods man.

Name one place in your hometown that you love to go to and would recommend to others to visit.
The Black Forest Café inside Half-Price Books may be the most comfortable, least pretentious place on this green Earth to have a cup of coffee and read a book.

Is there anything that you would “sell your soul” for?
A newer, shinier soul. Then again, maybe not. We’re made out of our mistakes.

Do you have a secret skill that you never get to show off?
It’s a secret.

Quiz: How many writers does it take to change a lightbulb? Please explain your answer.
It only takes one, but then his editors make him redo it again and again until it burns out.