in a revisionist state

It’s been a long time, but I’m finally nearly done with my M.A. program and I’m hoping against hope that I’ll be able to devote more time to fiction.  I have a few updates to report:

• My story “The Tiger The Dove” is in the Stone Skin Press anthology The Lion and the Aardvark.  It’s an extremely handsome book with some excellent writers included, and I was delighted to see that my story got an illustration by Rachel Kahn.  ”The Tiger The Dove” is based on the pacifist political parties that emerged in Japan after World War II, primarily the DPJ – having grown up in two prideful countries that would never have surrendered their arms, I’ve always been intrigued by Japan’s support for Article 9.  For an academic take on this, check out “Japan: The Power That Dares Not Speak Its Name?” in The New Global Politics of the Asia Pacific, ed. Connors, Remy, and Dosch.
• My story “Every Heart is Cold Dark Matter,” will appear in the Belladonna anthology Black Apples, which will feature a line-up of gothic/dark princesses.  ”Every Heart is Cold Dark Matter” was inspired by my winter break at home, during which I watched a lot – a lot - of the Showtime soap opera The Tudors as well as astronomy shows on science channels.  I tried very hard to understand Hermeticism for the purpose of this story.
• My story “Red Goat Black Goat” will be reprinted in Ellen Datlow’s anthology Lovecraft’s Monsters.  “Red Goat Black Goat” was initially published in Innsmouth Free Press for their multi-ethnic issue.  I have realized recently that Lovecraft goes together perfectly with my thesis subject, nationalism – the nation as a god, a sleeping god that needs to be awakened, and all that – but this is not that story.  ”Red Goat Black Goat” comes from a scary story I was told as a child and couldn’t wrap my head around.  It’s also semi-inspired by the Death in June song, “Red Dog Black Dog.”

I haven’t been doing a lot of writing in the past couple years, but I’ve been taking notes on story ideas and checking them twice.  I’ve also been plotting a rewrite of a series of political novels that I originally wrote when I was in junior high, and finally put down the first chapter and a half in the last couple weeks.  I owe a lot of my sanity to writing – it’s the one thing I can do, especially in this city, that is just for me, that has nothing to do with my business card or my LinkedIn profile.  It’s a relief.  After college I was very worried that I not use writing to shut out the world, and I don’t think that’ll be a problem now, but just having a little refuge where I feel like I can to mine own self be true is a privilege.

digging

Discovered that Matthew Funk at Fiction Daily linked to my Ideomancer story “Lucky You” on January 24.  It was a “Genre” entry.  Very cool.

Paleontologist Anthony Martin

postbellum

“Lucky You” is up at Ideomancer.  Editor Leah Bobet’s description of the story is very generous and totally apropos to what I was trying to do – regardless of whether or not I succeeded: “breaks the world and then draws us through to the other side.”  Basically, this is my post-apocalyptic vision.

I want to share the music I wrote this story to, because both songs are generally excellent – both have particular “moments” where I hear them in the story, but that’s just me:

• Part 1 (Sections 1, 2, 3): “New World In My View” by King Britt & Sister Gertrude Morgan

I got the new world in my view
On my journey I pursue
I said I’m running, running for the city
I got the new world in my view

• Part 2 (Sections 4, 5): “Yawny At The Apocalypse” by Andrew Bird

photo by Roy Toft

spatial concentration

My story “Pugelbone,” which won the recent ChiZine Short Story Contest, is now live as part of the October-December issue.  As I said before, this was the story based on a dream I had in China.  Here’s the beginning:

I was born in the Warren, and the Warren was all I knew. Both my mother and father were Meers. We go back to the founders. My father was very proud of our ancestry, but he was also very ill. He talked about forging tunnels and building walls and digging rooms for more families, more, when of course the Warren was already finished, and there was no more concrete to dig a new space out of. The rooms had been split as small as they could go without forcing adults to stoop, without making stretching out to sleep completely impossible. Babies were being suffocated, usually under older children, sometimes under their parents. The tunnels had become so narrow that we could only pass through one by one, and even then we had to dodge laundry from the overhead apartments, and falling garbage bags, and other things that people decided they just didn’t have room for. I guess before Warrens get finished – get carved up into this Swiss cheese honeycomb as far and as dense as they can go – people have high expectations of how it will turn out. I’ve seen my father’s sketches. There is an order there that is inhuman, it is so exacting. My mother used to say that in a Warren, you eventually lose control. I don’t just mean the jealous lovers that beat each other’s heads against the floor, or the men we kids used to call trenchcoat nasties. I mean you lose control of the Warren.

What ended up tying it together was the concept of the Kowloon Walled City.

good news

I’m very happy to say that I’ve won ChiZine’s 15th Short Story Contest.  Much thanks to the judges and to ChiZine for hosting the contest.  I entered it thinking basically “why the hell not,” so this was a really pleasant surprise.

My story, “Pugelbone,” was based on a dream I had while I was on a train to Chengdu in China earlier this year.  Not sure if any of that has come out in the story, but perhaps.  Like my other ChiZine story, “Intertropical Convergence Zone,” this is kind of sociopolitico-horror.  ChiZine will publish it in the October-December issue.

cosmic horror

And the aforementioned issue of Innsmouth Free Press is out!  Much appreciation to the editors for putting together such a nice-looking copy (and letting my name on the cover!).  A teensy excerpt from my story:

It had to be a ghost. Maybe she’d been a babysitter like Kris, some hundred years ago. Maybe she’d been Dutch. A prison nurse. Someone cruel. And maybe something horrible had happened to her, something that earned her such a nasty name. Maybe she lost her legs in an accident. Maybe they had to sew on a pair of goat legs as rudimentary prosthetics….

Entire issue here (PDF).

Just my story, “Red Goat, Black Goat,” online.

FYI: “Black Goat” translated into Indonesian is “Kambing Hitam,” which also means “scapegoat.”  It’s a variation on “Black Sheep.”

his sister speaks: you must be careful

My story “Red Goat Black Goat” will be up at Innsmouth Free Press in June 2010.  I believe it will be part of their multiethnic issue.  Either way, it’s Lovecraft in Indonesia, so it can’t go too wrong, right?  Just try not to think about the fact that it’s my first attempt at a Lovecraftian story.

Title is from the Death in June song “Red Dog Black Dog,” which obviously served as some inspiration here.