September 23, 2016 at 4:39 pm (Artists and Writers, postaday, Recommended, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: art, Bellingham Review, dystopia, exhibits, Fridays, Literary Magazines, museums, postaday, postaweek, San Francisco, short story, Wordpress, writing process
We have a new Daily Post Photo Challenge, dropped today by Cheri Lucas Rowlands, QUEST:
- What are you in search for? Capture your quest with your camera.
Here are some photos from self’s (huge) stash of photos that she thinks emblemize QUEST:
An Ed Ruscha: Currently on Exhibit at the De Young Museum
And here’s from a handmade book self saw at the Legion of Honor:
Illustrated Book at the Legion of Honor, Text is by San Francisco Poet Wallace Ting
Every new story is a quest. Here are two pages of her draft for “Ice” (forthcoming from Bellingham Review):
Two Pages of Self’s Manuscript for “Ice,” One of Her Dystopian Fantasies
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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September 8, 2016 at 4:37 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Links, Places, Recommended, Traveling, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Literary Magazines, memories, short story, The Philippines
Dumaguete is on the island of Negros, one of the central islands in the Philippines.
This is a descption of the city from a short story self wrote years ago. The story was published in White Whale Review 1.2:
The town itself was small and not at all like what he’d expected. He noticed there were no signal lights and everyone rode around on motorbikes or tricycles. These contraptions roamed all over the City and made a terrific belching noise. Smoke poured from their exhaust pipes, marring the fresh air that blew in from the ocean.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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September 4, 2016 at 10:31 pm (Artists and Writers, Conversations, Links, Lists, Recommended, Sundays, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: Just published, Literary Magazines, Potomac Review, short story
Such a beautiful cover! POTOMAC REVIEW 59
There are seven fiction writers whose work appears in Potomac Review 59:
Ron Darian * Shane Jones * Meghan Kenny * Beth Konkoski * Cassandra Powers * Yours truly * Nouri Zarrugh
Self is reading Cassandra Powers’s story, Into the Bright Sun:
I look at my husband, watch him lift his shirt over his head. A kind man, gentle-handed. Five years ago I convinced him to marry me. I still don’t know how I’m so lucky.
Self’s story is The Forest. Here’s a sliver:
“I’m relocating,” George said. “To western Washington.”
“Why?” Thumper said.
“Because the forests are being threatened by Dick Cheney,” George said.
“Who’s Dick Cheney?” Spike said.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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August 19, 2016 at 3:52 am (Artists and Writers, Links, Recommended, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: dystopia, Literary Magazines, science fiction, short story, summer
On-line now, August:
“The Future” in Monkeybicycle
“Spores” in decomP
decomP also posted a link to Morgan Cooke (Tyrone Guthrie friend!) reading “Spores.”
Stay tuned.
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August 15, 2016 at 4:38 am (Places, Sundays, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: New York, short story
New York City Brownstone, Upper East Side
It was the end of August. New York was filled with the sound of small explosions: high heels on pavement, sudden flurries of pigeon feathers, screeching tires, contentious voices.
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August 14, 2016 at 3:08 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Recommended, Sundays, Traveling, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: dystopia, Japan, Japanese writers, Literary Magazines, poetry, short story
Self is still reading Basho’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
In the poem below, Basho describes entering the province of Kaga:
I walked into the fumes
Of early-ripening rice,
On the right below me
The waters of the Angry Sea.
* * *
The poem suddenly reminds self of her dystopian short story “The Freeze,” which Bluestem Magazine published last year. Sometime while Obama is President, the Russians do something that shuts the whole world down.
Everyone starts dying. A woman decides to walk out of San Francisco and head south. To make sure she doesn’t lose her way, she decides to walk Highway 1, always making sure that the ocean is to her right. She meets a band of teen-agers.
The story begins with the woman chanting the following:
Redwood, Oak, Laurel, Manzanita, Pine.
Redwood, Oak, Laurel, Manzanita, Pine.
Redwood, Oak, Laurel, Manzanita, Pine.
And darn if self hasn’t just decided that the story ended much too soon. She has to continue, if only so she can figure out for herself what happens to the woman and her teen-age companions. She’s thinking: sequel.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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July 31, 2016 at 10:48 pm (Sundays, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: dystopia, fantasy, Literary Magazines, science fiction, short story
Self’s dystopian fantasy, SPORES, is coming out in decomP Magazine next month.
Excerpt:
When my friend Summer lay under the beechwood seems a lifetime ago, puking insides, puking until her stomach was a strange convex shape, what happened was, I heard a whooshing noise, and then from the other side of the trees came a Sand Spirit. Drum-beat Ta-ra! It came down from the sky, propellers whirring, dredging hay and thistles. Then snapped her right up.
As they used to say in Marble Arch: The Lady Exits.
For a long time after, I stayed under the beech, whispering Summer, whatya reckon to all this and watching two yella bitterns wing from branch to branch to branch.
Stay tuned, dear blog reader. Stay tuned.
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July 22, 2016 at 1:46 am (Links, Lists, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: short story, websites, writing process
Self loves Wordle.
This evening, she did a Word Cloud of a story she’s currently working on, called Gerry Dreams the Ocean.
It’s about a teen-age boy who lives in San Bruno, CA and whose mother has just passed away. His grandmother in Manila keeps trying to get the father to send the boy “home.”
The Wordle for this story was so beautiful! Don’t know if this link will still be good later, but here it is anyway (She used to be able to save her Word Clouds to a Gallery. Does this just happen automatically now?)
And, for good measure, the words that got “wordled”:
left * Gerry * girl * tumblr * find * English * dry * Stars * ocean * even * strong * sleep * shivered * on-line * sleep * Fangirl * hair * whipped * Filipinos * throat * bonfire * fathers * beer * someone’s * ago * speak * day * fun * hair * beach * comforting * discouraged * find * house * many * Tagalog
Fascinating, simply fascinating.
Stay tuned.
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July 16, 2016 at 7:10 am (Flowers, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: flash fiction, Fridays, memories, Philippines, short story, writing process
EMPTINESS OF AIR
Pericles lost his wife to a great emptiness of air, water, and sound. One moment, she was alive in the house. In the next moment, she had shifted somewhat. She still had the same form, the same face, but something had changed. He couldn’t explain it, but he knew what had happened had happened. He also knew there was no going back. She was stolen from him, as surely as if she had been abducted.
All the sampaguita blossoms had been knocked off the trees. He wandered the garden, lost. He smelled jasmine.
He picked up a white petal from the ground. The brown edges were uncommonly soft.
All the red flowers — santan, lantana, gumamela — where had they gone?
And the orchids his wife had loved: purple and white, tongued.
Small brown Maya birds used to perch on telephone wires strung up and down the street. Now, there were no poles. Wires dangled like snakes, a few sparkling like firecrackers.
- NOTE: Since self wrote this super-quick (in about 30 minutes) under Vela’s deadline, she’s now going back and editing for clarity. Stay tuned.
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July 4, 2016 at 1:17 am (anthologies, Artists and Writers, Books, Personal Bookshelf, Places, postaday, Recommended, short story collections, Sundays, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: art, dystopia, postaday, postaweek, science fiction, short story, Sundays, Wordpress
There are so many ways to infuse photos with drama, from choosing an unusual angle to focusing on a strong, vibrant palette. One idea I often explore is contrast. No, not so much in the technical sense of shadows and highlights (important as they certainly are), but more fundamentally: I love the power of a single frame to bring together conflicting elements.
— Ben Huberman, The Daily Post
**********
Self has been pondering this challenge for a few days. It turns out she likes taking high-contrast shots, mostly silhouettes, but on re-reading the prompt, she decided to try something different.
Here’s a picture from an illustrated version of Noah’s Ark. The etchings, by Arthur Geisert, are very fine. Self picked this particular drawing because of the way the straight lines of the support beams and the wooden floors are set off against the ark’s round bottom:
An Illustration by Arthur Geist for THE ARK (Houghton Mifflin, 1988)
Here’s a sign showing opposite directions:
Self-explanatory, really: near the Mendocino Headlands
Finally, two sharply contrasting book covers: Another Kind of Paradise is an anthology of short stories from the “new Asia-Pacific” edited by Trevor Carolan. After is an anthology of nineteen stories of “apocalypse and dystopia” edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Wandling. Both books are highly recommended (Self has a story in one of them).
Two Anthologies: Wildly Different
Hope you like these interpretations of the theme “Opposites”!
Stay tuned.
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