Self Wrote a Story

It’s in the latest issue of The Citron Review.

Notes from Hedwicka Cox, Fiction Editor, on the issue’s Fiction Selections:

• What is magic? Magic is dreaming. Magic is fantasy. Magic is speculative. When we think of magic, we think of the unreal, the ethereal.

So, yes, her story is about magic.

Self has another kind of tale, somewhat different in tone, which came out in Menacing Hedge earlier this year. It’s called Down.

She has another story coming out spring 2023, in J Journal. That one’s about a ship that discovers, completely by accident, a city at the bottom of the ocean.

Much love to all the editors of these hardworking little magazines, for giving her stories space to be shared. These stories are in a collection she’s been entering into contests. But they haven’t made it to the longlist, anywhere. Maybe they are just too different.

Sentence of the Day: The Mermaid and the Bear

The glow of happiness from the circle spread out like a raindrop fallen in the pool, and pleasant events kept happening for the rest of the day.

The Washerwoman of the Ballynagor Bridge

The washerwoman of the Ballynagor Bridge was a woman who had died in childbirth but who was not all-the-way dead . . . By day, the washerwoman washed clothes in the Stracam River, under the Ballynagor Bridge. By night she roamed the watery places of the countryside, looking for the child that had once grown in her belly.

Most everyone who saw the washerwoman was feary’d to their bones by the look of her. Her grey skin was all water-wrinkled, her hands were rubbed red-raw and her toes were all webbit.

— The Terrible Tale of Fillan McQuillan, in The Faerie Thorn and Other Stories

Story # 3, The Faerie Thorn and Other Stories

Self was reading Story # 3, The Merrow of Murlough Bay, when big fat tears started rolling down her cheeks!

This is crazy! She hasn’t cried about a fairy tale since The Little Mermaid!

Each of the stories in this book, at least the three she has read so far, follow the same pattern: Goodness is terrifying, therefore it is spurned. And Talbot is a genius at showing suffering. Maybe it’s the mermaid thing — self doesn’t know. All she knows is that the suffering of the merrow Bright Blue, his “all-on-my-ownness,” his fear, was so real. There was a little bit of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go in there, if you must know.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

Still The Faerie Thorn, pp. 36 – 37

If you ever find that space at the mauve time of day, stand in front of the intertwined faerie thorn and elder tree behind Donaghy’s cottage, and you will find the Faerie Thorn King and Wife Donaghy dancing.

Sentence of the Day: The Faerie Thorn

The troll was so ugly that the bottom half of Man Donaghy wanted to run away, but the top half of Man Donaghy was so desperate to get rid of New Wife Donaghy that it made the bottom half stay put.

— The Faerie Thorn and Other Stories, by Jane Talbot

By the above, you will have deduced (correctly) that self finally got to the end of The Magician King. The novel started out strong and held self’s interest until about 4/5 of the way through, when Julia’s trauma began to get tiresome. And then, without warning, her story turned nightmarish. This was not the end self had envisioned for a character who was so badass she literally could have wiped the floor with Quentin.

Stay tuned.

Sentence of the Day: “The Hump,” by Fernan Caballero

Skimming! Whoa, self is skimming!

Story #50, The Hump, is by Fernan Caballero (1796-1877), a Spanish writer who self has never heard of. Her real name was Cecilia Bohl de Faber and she wrote about Andalucia, “although she was not raised there.”

• They set the dumb serving maid to frying pancakes.

Sentence of the Day: “The Remarkable Rocket”

This is self’s favorite story so far in The Big Book of Classic Fantasy. It’s Story # 27. Kudos, Oscar Wilde!

• “Indeed, I have always been of the opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.”

LOL

“The Remarkable Rocket” by Oscar Wilde

What a relief to encounter Oscar Wilde in this monster of an anthology (The Big Book of Classic Fantasy).

His “The Remarkable Rocket” is Story # 27, and I read a Tolstoy story, “Ivan the Fool,” before getting here, and that story is nothing compared to “The Remarkable Rocket.”

An excerpt:

• The Prince and Princess were leading the dance. They danced so beautifully that the tall white lilies peeped in at the window and watched them, and the great red poppies nodded their heads and beat time.

Sentence of the Day: Story # 23, The Big Book of Classic Fantasy

The floors of the passageways were decked with poppy-petals, so that the queen’s feet would tread on purple only.

— Furnica, or the Queen of the Ants, by Carmen Sylva (1843 – 1916), translated by Gio Carval

The Jules Verne story, Master Zacharius, was extremely silly.

The next story, by Louisa May Alcott, was something cute-sy about fairies and the Frost-King.

Self flew past Stories # 16, 17, 18, and 19.

She liked the Hans Christian Andersen story, The Will-o-the-Wisps Are in Town, but it did not slay.

She didn’t read the Lewis Carroll excerpt from Through the Looking Glass because she already knows that book intimately.

She was on the point of cherry-picking (instead of reaching each story in order) until she got to Furnica, or the Queen of the Ants. She hasn’t finished reading it yet, but it is soooo charming.

Furnica got to be Queen of the Ants because: 1) She is an orphan; 2) She is virtuous; and 3) She is extremely hardworking. The ants just love her. After becoming Queen of the Ants, she takes her job so seriously that she “visited the pupae every evening, to test the softness of their cots.” She is a just Queen, banishing recalcitrant ants and even condemning a few to death, though her heart bleeds as she watches “the merciless stabbings” carried out.

Stay cool, dear blog readers. Stay cool.