THE BEST KIND OF WEIRD

I've always been more of a novel-loving girl when it comes to literary preferences, but lately I've been reading more short stories. Maybe my attention span is beginning to slip, or maybe I'm beginning to appreciate an art form I had previously neglected. You know me. You decide. I've dipped into Michael Chabon's Werewolves in Their Youth and several volumes of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror before, but this winter I opened Pretty Monsters, a short story collection by Kelly Link, and read it cover to cover. Kelly Link is the editor of one of my favorite literary zines, the irrepressibly weird Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. It also turns out she writes exactly the kind of story I'll roll over and beg for.

Pretty Monsters is marketed as a collection for young adults, but it contains some crossover from her adult collections, Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners. Some highlights from Pretty Monsters: "The Wizards of Perfil," "The Faery Handbag" (which won a Hugo award), "The Specialist's Hat," and "The Constable of Abal." Her stories are full of death, humor, strange magic, and childhoods gone awry, as well as experiments with poems and lists sprinkled into the stories' structure. If you know me, you know I'm a sucker for this kind of thing.

The best thing about reading Kelly Link is that, for a writer reading her work, she has this strange, alchemical quality of simultaneously being fabulously talented and not making you feel like you should never open up your laptop again. Let me back up and explain. I love Michael Chabon's writing. His plots are inventive and the way he can write a sentence takes my breath away. But he's so good, I close his books and feel like there's no point in writing anything, ever, because even if I spend my whole life trying, I'll never write anything remotely near that good. But for some reason I can't entirely explain, when I close Kelly Link's books, I feel like I want to go out and try writing something. Okay, so it won't be as good as "The Specialist's Hat," but hey, at least I'm not a hopeless case. I think this aftertaste of hopefulness might have something to do with the way you can see the fingerprints of real effort on her stories. These aren't little ditties she knocked off in an afternoon because she's just that brilliant; they're clearly something she spent time perfecting.

Then, moving more into the range of pure, green, artistic envy, there's Karen Russell. My friend Nathan recommended her short story collection, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, to me earlier this year. I kept checking it out of the library, and then letting it sit on my desk until it was due, without ever reading it. That is, until about two weeks ago, when I sat down to read the first story, "Ava Wrestles the Alligator," over my lunch break.

Karen Russell writes about the natural world in a way that's half in and half out of reality. It's beautiful and disgusting, and you're never sure when a seemingly normal situation is going to take a turn for the wonderfully bizarre. I could watch her write sentences all day long. She's been in Granta and The New Yorker, and she was only 25 when Random House published her collection of short stories in 2006. I'm used to being younger than the people whose books I read, so it was a little bit of a shock to turn to her biography and find out how young she was. By all means, go out and find her book immediately, but don't read the biography. It will only make you feel woefully inadequate, unless you're Michael Chabon.

A SIMPLE EQUATION

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That is all.

AT LAST!

I came home from work last Tuesday and opened my mailbox to find a letter from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction sitting on top of a neat pile of bills and junk mail.

Le sigh, I thought. Another rejection.

I sang a little song about getting rejection letters to make myself feel better and started plotting where I would send my short story next as I unlocked the door. I plopped the bills down on the kitchen table, petted the cats, put away the groceries I bought on the way home, and only then sat down to open the mail.

The letter from F&SF felt heavier than my previous rejection letters. Maybe they liked the story enough to include an encouraging note about how the story wasn't for them, but I should try again later, I thought.

I slit open the envelope, unfolded the letter, and promptly dropped it. It was not a rejection letter. It was a contract and a check. To the dismay of both cats, I screamed like a twelve-year-old and did a dance. After I managed to calm myself down enough to regain the ability to read, I found a copy of the following previously published article by Susan Elizabeth Lyons enclosed:

Women Writing Science Fiction: Some Voices From the Trenches

The article addresses the issue of whether or not a gender bias exists in the science fiction and fantasy publishing industry, and includes interviews with well-know women writers, including one of my all-time favorite authors, Ursula LeGuin.

The gist of all this is that my short story "Bad Matter" will be appearing in F&SF sometime in the next three years, according to the contract, but more likely in nine to 12 months, according to Writer's Market's profile of F&SF.

Considering one of my friends just landed a two-book contract with a major publishing house (yay, Stephanie!), and another is an award-winning short story author, I'm very, very aware of how far I still have to go as a writer. And also, I'm feeling very, very paranoid at the moment. What if they bought my story, but never publish it? What if they only bought it out of pity? What if society collapses and there are no more science fiction magazines at all? I felt the same way last year when I had accepted my current job, which I absolutely love, but hadn't started there yet. What if the whole interview process was a dream? What if they looked back at my resume and decided they didn't want me after all? What if they decided to eliminate my position altogether before I started?

So, the long and short of it is that I'm trying not to get overly excited about this, in case Something Horrible happens between now and the publication date. At the same time, having my first short story published in a national magazine isn't small potatoes for me. I have to crow about it a little bit. But now I've done my happy dance (also frightening to the cats), and hopped up and down, and called my mother, so it's back to my laptop. Because the worst thing I can do is get complacent and stop pushing myself to write as best I can, even if it isn't up to par with Ursula LeGuin, or Kelly Link, or my incredibly talented friends.

(Thanks, by the way, to Stephanie for convincing me to do NaNoWriMo last November. I don't think I would have finished writing the story if I hadn't gone through that experience. And thanks to Jeremy, who could have killed me after I made him read my 11th draft, but didn't, and also to our mutual friend Nathan, for writerly feedback. I probably wouldn't have sent anything to F&SF if he hadn't offered some much-needed advice and feedback.)

TWO AMAZING THINGS

1. Scientists discovered an earth-like planet in the constellation Libra.

2. My sister caught a fish.


Go Molly!

A BRIEF FORAY INTO THE WORLD OF INDIE ROCK
(In which I way overanalyze our latest album purchase)

Jeremy and I had a serious debate about the new Decemberists album, The Hazards of Love, earlier this week. At its heart was this question: Will it be more dorky if we walk down to Harvest Records after work to pick it up together, or if one of us goes alone? We decided we would cut down on the frothing fanboy quotient if I went alone, but in the end, it didn't make much difference.

Harvest Records is probably the best music store in town, and Jeremy and I are incredibly lucky to live four or five blocks from it. They usually play a lot of thrash metal and experimental punk rock over the store's speakers, though, so I always feel like the guy asking for a glass of milk at the Deadwood bar when I go in there.

The shopkeeper was hanging out in front of the building, smoking a cigarette and talking to his friend when I showed up. I made a beeline for the new arrivals section just inside the door, and then made myself wander around the shop for a 60 seconds or so, so I wouldn't look like a complete obsessive weirdo. I poked through the folk section, wondering if I could afford the new Neko Case album, Middle Cyclone, and then realizing it, too, was in the new arrivals section near the door.

"Hey, are you ready?" The shopkeeper solved my dilemma by peeking through the door.

"Yeah!" I said, probably too enthusiastically.

"Are you the one who called earlier?" he asked as he came around the counter.

"Um, yeah," I said, realizing it had only been about fifteen minutes since I'd called to see if they had the album in stock and I'd told him I would head down to the store "later tonight." He nodded his head and gave me the kind of guarded smile one usually reserves for members of evangelical cults. I paid and hurried home with the CD tucked into my purse.

We've had the CD for six days now, and right now I'm listening to it for probably the fifth time. Or the seventh. I've lost count. I tend to do this with albums I like, listen to them over and over again until I understand all the lyrics and end up humming the catchier songs under my breath at work. The thing about The Hazards of Love that makes my pathological behavior worse is that it's a concept album. The Decemberists have a penchant for telling sweeping, melodramatic tales with their music. I can't just add a song from it to my playlist. Oh no, I have to listen to the whole thing to appreciate the scope of the story they're telling. (Which, by the way, involves doomed lovers, shapeshifting, Very Bad Men, the words "irrascible blackguard," and anthropomorphized landscapes.)

The dramatis personi in the album are the lovers, Margaret and William, who our villians, the Queen and the Rake, attempt to keep apart through the skillful exercise of maternal guilt and kidnapping, respectively. Colin Meloy offers most of the vocals, singing for both William and the Rake, and filling in the gaps as the narrator. But by far, the most tooth-rattling and unexpected part of the album is the appearance of Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond as the voice of the Queen. She has a walloping vibrato that made me wonder if the Decemberists had worked some dark alchemy to raise the spirit of Janis Joplin for their album. Sadly, she doesn't let loose with the full power of her voice on her own albums, seeming to prefer a breathy, ethereal style that doesn't do justice to her range. "The Rake's Song" is another highlight, delivering a terrifyingly catchy song about infanticide. (What does it say about me that the villians always fascinate me?)

Colin Meloy apparently dubbed The Hazards of Love a "folk opera" on the public radio show The World Cafe, but I've also heard it described with a certain sneer as "prog rock." If that's so, I guess I must be one of those uncouth people who likes prog rock. I've also heard comparisons between The Hazards of Love and the Decemberists' earlier album The Tain, which is their rock operatic version of the Irish epic of the same name. The Tain is truly creepy and powerful, I would say more so than The Hazards of Love, first, because it's more succinct, and second, because ancient mythology is often more bizarre and resonant than anything we can come up with today. In fact, the strongest parts of The Hazards of Love are the ones that borrow from or emulate myth: the man who turns into an animal, the antagonism of nature to man, the sentient forest and river.

But then, I think of the time we saw Colin Meloy play a small portion of The Hazards of Love at a solo show last spring. With just his voice and an electric guitar, he had the hairs on my head standing on end. Jeremy and I are going to a Decemberists show in Raleigh this June, and I can't wait to see what happens when the entire band joins in to play The Hazards of Love live. It should be mythic.

FULL DE-FUNK MODE

Between work, studying for the GRE, and finishing up a short story I'm currently shopping around, I haven't taken a day off to do nothing in a while. Well, not nothing, but fun frivolous stuff, like going to the movies or attending to my personal grooming.

I was supposed to take the GRE the Monday before last, but we had a big snowstorm that left Jeremy stranded out in Fletcher overnight (cue ominous music) and scared the local testing center into closing for the day. I drove through the icy streets of Asheville in my two-wheel-drive Toyota and boot-skated down the slippery parking lot, only to find a group of cold, slightly soggy, and obviously miffed women waiting outside the test center.

"Are you here for testing?" one of them asked.

I glanced from the darkened windows of the test center to the dry and slightly dusty decorative fountain outside. "Yeah."

"They're closed today."

I stood at the bottom of the stairs, feeling awkward and hoping it was all a mistake and someone would show up so I could get this damn test over with and get on with my life.

"How far did you drive?" asked the first woman.

"Not too far," I said. "I only came from the other side of town, but it took me 20 minutes to get here in the snow."

"We drove two and a half hours," the woman said, folding her arms and clearly feeling slightly better after trumping my harrowing 20-minute journey. She and her travelling companion exchanged glances. "Well, I guess we'd better head back."

The two intrepid travellers left, and I sat on the fountain ledge next to a fellow Ashevillian who was in as much denial about the center being closed as I was. We called the hotline number again, and then waited around talking about fish and work and snowplows until our appointment time was long past. I called Jeremy out in Fletcher and we commiserated about how much we hated the snow. By noon, pretty much all the ice and snow had melted. By Wednesday, I had a new test appointment.

All of this left me with an awful, unresolved feeling that made me cranky for the rest of the week. So when I opened my mailbox this past Monday and found a letter from Asimov's rejecting the story I submitted to them earlier this year, it didn't do wonders for my mood. I wandered around for a little bit, trying to cheer myself up by thinking things like "At least they sent the rejection back in a timely manner!" and "They're a big name. You weren't really expecting them to want your story in the first place." (Note to self: I probably shouldn't be in charge of cheering anyone up.) I didn't actually feel better until I typed up a new cover letter, printing out another copy of the story, and sped off to the post office to send it to a different magazine.

All of that is to say, that I've been in a funk lately, and I needed a couple of days off to de-funk myself. I'm incredibly lucky to have a job that allows me to take paid days off, so I found a substitute for myself and decided to take two days to clean my house, study, and finagle my brain into cheering up. Behold, my six-part plan for de-funking myself:

Phase 1. Haircut
If you've been reading this blog, you may have noticed my haircuts are so few and far between that I sometimes devote an entire blog post to informing the world when I've gotten one. Call it a public service announcement.

This morning I accomplished phase one by going down to Beauty Parade (which, by the way, has a snazzy little You Tube ad showcasing their work here), where Amanda, possibly the nicest and best hair stylist I've ever met, lopped off four or five inches of my hair and dyed part of it cherry red.
Behold her masterwork!
I had forgotten how nice it felt not to look like a shambling sagebrush.

Phase 2. Tacos!
Last week I was reading this book called Absolutely Maybe, by Lisa Yee, in which the main character takes a job on a taco truck in L.A. Naturally, Yee describes the steamy, sizzling tacos in loving detail. And even though I was fighting off a stomach virus, it left me with an insatiable lust for authentic, savory tacos. Jeremy, ever the expert in situations like this, suggested we go over to Taqueria Fast in Woodfin for a plate of delicious, authentic, corn flour tacos. I completely destroyed five tacos autenticos, including several full of really tasty carnitas (shredded pork), and probably could have put away several more if it weren't for my fear of decimating the Woodfin taco population. I declare phase two a success!

Phase 3. Movies in 3-D
After Jeremy and I had stuffed ourselves full of delicous tacos, we went to catch a matinee of Coraline at a local movie theater. The parking lot was almost empty, and after a brief moment of confusion, during which we had to clarify that we were not there to see the Jonas Brothers Concert in 3-D (don't ask!), we were issued some really fancy 3-D glasses and directed into the nearly-empty theater. I was expecting our 3-D specs to look like this:

The theater was charging an extra $2.50 for all 3-D movies, and we wondered why until they handed us our glasses. Apparently, 3-D glasses technology has come a long way since Jeremy and I lucked into seeing The Creature from the Black Lagoon at Asheville Pizza and Brewing Co. a few years ago. Here I am in my fabulous new specs:

They make me want to sing that Weezer song. You know,
Wee-ooh, I look just like Buddy Holly,
Oh, oh! And you're Mary Tyler Moore.
I don't care what they say about us anyway,
I don't care about that!

(What? Can I help that I was a teenager in the '90s?)

Which, all in all, makes me think my funk is lifting. And Coraline was pretty awesome, too. Phase 3: accomplished!

Phase 4. Reading
Jeremy is sleeping off all the taco and Coraline excitement, so I'm going to curl up with a good book and some fruit snacks, and spend the rest of the evening in our papasan chair. Phase 4: check!

Phase 5. Coffee
I think this one is self-explanatory.

Phase 6. Cleaning
At Christmas, I was talking to one of my relatives about writing, and they asked me how I found time to do it.

"Our house is an absolute wreck," I said.

Which is so, so sadly true. Everything but the absolutely necessary cleaning usually winds up last on my "To Do" list, so once or twice a year, I'll take a day or two off and actually clean my house. Tomorrow is going to be that day. I won't stop with shoving books on the shelves or washing laundry. Oh no. There will be vacuuming, mopping, and shredding of old bills. Jeremy will probably tell you that I'm cranky while I'm cleaning, but once it's done, I feel so much better about my life. Like I'm not an absolute slob, and even if Asimov's doesn't want my short story, at least my living room rug is finally free of cat hair.

THE LOVE THAT DARE NOT PURR ITS NAME

Because I have a blog, it's inevitable I'll subject you to cute pictures of my pets from time to time. Prepare yourself. Today is one of those days. But what I have to share with you tonight is not merely a cute cat photodump. Oh no. This is a story of a true and forbidden love. Shield the eyes of your small children and those with delicate constitutions, for this most salacious of tales will shake you to the very marrow of your bones. . .

They started off enemies, thrown together by cruel fate and their owner's perfidious desire to keep them both out of the cold. But by chance, they discovered a love of the same venal pleasures. Jingly mice. Windowsills. The Forbidden Closet. The Towel Trolley.

And, of course, sitting on the woman-thing's papers so she could not get anything done.

Soon, the discovered the pleasures of napping, as two felines are wont to do under such circumstances.

Over time, their affection grew.

And grew.
And grew.

Until they could no longer contain their passion.

Their love was a glorious flower, blossoming into the throes of life. No longer a bird their souls yearned for, but could not reach through the cruel, cruel windowpane.

Let them talk. Society be damned. Convention be damned.

They would no more go through life denying their most heartfelt passions. From now on, nothing would keep them apart.

They were free to live and love as they pleased, now and forevermore.

This has been a production of P&L Theatre, bringing you only the finest and most daring stories of feline love since 2008.