June 5, 2017 at 10:30 am (Conversations, destinations, Explorers, Filipino Writers, Places, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: dystopia, fantasy, flash fiction, humor, Mondays, Paris, short story, writing process
Self worked on this story in Paris. It’s about the end of the world, naturalement.
A pink bathosphere named Pinkie Pi (Joke, joke, joke!), navigated by a pair of squabbling men, is the last to leave the surface of the planet (A new city awaits on the Ocean Floor):
We’re going under.
When?
Today.
Just like that.
Oui. N’est-ce pas. What do you think?
You’re talking about under.
That’s what I’m saying, oui.
That down there, on the ocean floor, we can — je ne sais quoi.
Yes.
In the shift and roll of waves . . .
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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June 4, 2017 at 7:04 pm (Artists and Writers, Filipino Writers, Links, Publishers, Sundays, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: dystopia, Events, fantasy, Literary Magazines, memories, Readings, restaurants, short story, Washington DC
Read it at Sixth Engine in Washington DC, at a group reading organized by Quarterly West in conjunction with AWP February 2017. The editors took a chance with this one, it’s all fractured syntax and stars a professor named Fire Lizard. Self is writing a sequel right now.
What a blast:
Quarterly West reading at Sixth Engine, Washington DC, February 2017
Discussion of the First Corollary: What is average is perfect. Thoughts dark as dark. Big arguing with her. But but but. Her winking at me behind his back. Me thinking: sunlight and glass.
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April 12, 2017 at 10:04 am (Filipino Writers, Links, Places, postaday, Traveling, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, happiness, inspiration, Ireland, postaday, postaweek, short story, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Wordpress, writing process
- Share a photo that depicts your interpretation of security . . . It could be a worry stone you keep in your pocket or that favorite tee shirt that makes you feel awesome every time you put it on.
— Krista, The Daily Post
I can never be creative unless I have an absolute feeling of security. I always have that in Annaghmakerrig.
In the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, I sleep next to my writing desk. Because life is too short.
Main House, the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig
The Main House, Under a Crescent Moon
Finished a story yesterday! A continuation to Magellan’s Mirror. Also, ordering more copies of self’s Mayor of the Roses.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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April 6, 2017 at 11:26 am (Artists and Writers, Explorers, Filipino Writers, Places, Recommended, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: dystopia, fantasy, flash fiction, Juked.com, Literary Magazines, Philippines, short story
“First Life” first line:
- Ever since they moved our colony from Tonle Sap to the Philippines, my mind hasn’t been the same.
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April 5, 2017 at 6:18 pm (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Calls, Conversations, Dearest Mum, Family, Filipino Writers, Lists, Memoirs, Places, Publishers, short story collections, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Asian American Writers, book lists, California, Mayor of the Roses, memories, Miami University Press, short story
There were fourteen years before self’s first and second book.
The first was published by Calyx Press in Corvallis, OR.
The second was published by Miami University Press.
The third, The Lost Language, is only available in the Philippines.
The fourth is an e-book published by Vagabondage in Florida.
There’s also an anthology she co-edited for Calyx Press: Going Home to a Landscape.
Recently, she got an email from writer and teacher Susie Hara, who said she had liked the story “Rufino” in Mayor of the Roses.
It was the last story to be included in the collection. She threw it in at the last minute.
Rufino was a real person.
Here’s an excerpt from the story:
Towards the end, he couldn’t wear any clothes. They had to cover him in banana leaves.
It was in July he died — I couldn’t believe it. A voice on the phone told me.
“Rufino died na.” It was my mother speaking. Naturally, she had to be the one to break the news.
I was staying in a friend’s house in the Santa Cruz Mountains. In the mornings, fog blanketed the hills. We heard the mournful mooing of invisible cows. One or another of us would look east, toward where we heard Neil Young had his ranch, wondering whether we’d catch a glimpse of his pink cadillac that day.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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March 30, 2017 at 4:18 pm (Artists and Writers, Food and Drink, Links, Places, postaday, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, artists residency, fantasy, Ireland, photography, short story, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, writing process
Texture. Texture. Texture.
That’s what she thinks about, when she thinks of this week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge: DENSE.
Self loves stone, and exposed brick, and rough surface, like the inner walls of her cottage:
Interior Wall of Self’s Unit at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig
In attempting a picture of a painting, she ended up “layering” the image with the reflection of the room behind her: her writing studio.
Self does all her writing in this room on the 2nd floor. She was trying to take a picture of a painting in her room and ended up experimenting with the reflections on the glass.
#amwritingfantasy
Excerpt of the story she’s been writing (TRIGGER WARNING: Language):
Drinker says, low: “Big passed.”
I answer: “Fucker. Big’s not big. He’s Big XXX. Mark it. I slash three quick XXXs across my screen.”
Finally, what real bread looks like: a loaf from Cootehill SuperValu (studded with cranberries) Self has been slicing off thick chunks, toasting, and then slathering with rich Irish butter)
Handmade, Cranberry Loaf
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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March 27, 2017 at 8:54 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Explorers, Filipino Writers, Memoirs, Philippine History, Places, short story collections, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Literary Magazines, memories, Mondays, short story, The Lost Language, The Philippines, TransGenre
This was published many years ago, in a magazine called Isotope.
Published in Utah and edited by a poet, Chris Cokinos.
It joined together two things: science writing and creative writing.
You would find, in the same issue, a play by a physicist, a nature essay, a poem by a mathematician. That sort of thing.
Self loved it.
Chris Cokinos, what are you doing now? Know that self considered Isotope a very noble experiment.
Here’s an excerpt from the story they published, which became the title of her third collection. It’s one of those hybrid things: part essay, part memoir, part myth, part short story.
The Lost Language
Filipinos once had an ancient written language. If I were to show you what the marks look like on a piece of paper, they would look like a series of waves. Or like Egyptian hieroglyphics. Like the eye of the Pharaoh I saw in my old high school history books.
The language was written on tree bark. Epics were probably written in this language, but I don’t know what they are. My ancestors are shadowy people. Shadows.
When I was a little girl, perhaps eight years old or so, my mother gave me a book of Philippine legends. The legends were mostly about beautiful maidens and enchanted animals. But the story I liked best was about Hari sa Bukid, which means King of the Mountain.
Read the rest of this entry »
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March 24, 2017 at 7:10 pm (Books, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, short story collections)
Tags: Fridays, Iraq, reading lists, short story, war literature
- We took different routes all the time. Don’t be predictable. It’s up to the convoy commander, and they’re all lieutenants, but most of them are pretty good. There’s one who can’t give an Op Order for shit but tends not to fuck up too bad on the road. And there’s one female lieutenant who’s tiny and real cute but tough as balls and knows her shit cold, so it evens out. Still, there’s only so many routes, and you got to use one.
That’s as true of RL as it is true of a convoy in Fallujah. Thank you, Phil Klay!
Very flat, affect-less voice does not fool us: there’s dread here.
Stay tuned.
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March 12, 2017 at 10:54 am (Artists and Writers, Sundays, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, fantasy, happiness, horror, Ireland, Literary Magazines, short story, Sundays, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, writing process
Self’s horror story, The Rorqual, now up to 15 pp. YAY!
Stay tuned.
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March 9, 2017 at 4:03 pm (Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Annaghmakerrig, artists residency, fantasy, horror, short story, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, writing process
A story is fashioned from:
- scotchtape
- stapler
- a book on Story Structure
- newspapers
- post-it notes
The Writing Desk Today, Thursday, 9 March 2017
Since this is a story about shape-shifting invaders, it can be classified #horror or #fantasy:
- The settlements that raised the white flag vanished, and its people with them.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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