Or, to stray from the Golden Ticket metaphor to the Real World, my first published story is on a newsstand near you (at least, it is on a newsstand near me.) Go to my totally dignified author site for all the par-ticulars!

The Grey City I
The Grey City II
The Grey City III
The Grey City IV
The Grey City V
The Grey City VI
The Grey City VII
The Grey City VIII
The Grey City IX
The Grey City X
The Grey City XI
The Grey City XII
The Grey City XIII
The Grey City XIV
The Grey City XV
The Grey City XVI

There was a curious sound that Carys could not place. It was short, percussive, and repeated at odd intervals. It sounded like something fragile breaking, far away. crack.

Then Carys heard her mother hum, and she remembered. Sunday mornings in their house, Mother would sneak out of bed and start to cook. Papa would lie in the bed, sleeping as if his body knew it was his only day of rest. Eirian, in the little cot the sisters shared, lay curled into a cozy knot like a hibernating squirrel. As the smells of cooking spread out from the cast-iron stove, the sleepers would stir and sniff, then kick off their covers and stumble towards the table.

But not Carys. It was not her nose, cold above the quilts and sheepskin, that woke her, but her ears. crack. In Mother’s hand, resting against callus and ground-in dirt, egg after egg broke against the edge of the stone mortar. crack. Carys knew that each blow split an egg perfectly into two ragged, hollow bowls, knew without opening her eyes. And she did not open them. Not until Eirian or Father had snuffled out of bed and Mama had said, “I’ve led you out of bed by your nose again!” did Carys flutter, blink and stretch. Such sweet deceit she remembered now with the absent-minded tune and the muffled, delicate crack.

Carys remembered it all, every moment her childish mind had been too busy or careless to catch. The pain and fear she had never forgotten; the body thinks it needs those things to survive. But the joys she now recalled — deep beyond memory, or rediscovered like a beloved toy at March’s first thaw — overwhelmed the sorrows.

The sweet smell of milk that had led her to Mother’s breast, the first rainbow, the spring breathing lavender onto the tall slate hills, the way a lamb butted your hand when it knew you were safe. Father teaching you to dance, the voice of the girl who lost her baby raised in song more beautiful for its knowing ache. Figgy pudding, the warmth of a blanket burrow on a stormy night, and Eirian’s breath, as familiar as your own, warming the night beside you. The voices of Mother and Father are drawing closer, more than a memory, real voices singing a song you do not know. Now you are remembering the good parts of your last months with your family, the moments you could not see through the fear and grief. Papa telling you tall tales and family history from his sickbed, and Mama — oh, how could obligation and worry chase away this glow of pride — Mama telling you she trusted you to look after your sister, knew your heart and strength.

The song was strong now, and there were words in it, indistinct as if heard through a door, felt more than understood. The dark around her was alive with warmth and music, but she could feel a thread of chill like a draft on her back. It came from the body’s world, the City she had escaped, escaped alone, and Carys turned and followed it, swimming into the cold current of time, back to the City, the night, and to Eirian.

Grey City XVIII

The creepiest thing about coming home after a few days’ absence is that the hobo spider funnel web in the bathtub is invisible until it’s fogged up from your shower. Yeeeeeech.

It is a fairly safe assumption that one purpose of giving an introduction before an invited speaker is to induce anticipation of the lecture, reading or performance in the audience. However, I think there are better ways than to tire and exasperate your auditors so thoroughly that the main speaker is anticipated as a relief from the introduction rather than as an event in his or her own right.

The Grey City I
The Grey City II
The Grey City III
The Grey City IV
The Grey City V
The Grey City VI
The Grey City VII
The Grey City VIII
The Grey City IX
The Grey City X
The Grey City XI
The Grey City XII
The Grey City XIII
The Grey City XIV
The Grey City XV

Eirian ran down Orchard Street, down indeed for the road slanted toward the river. She could hear the Runner behind her, and her breath was broken by sobs. The Runners might sneer about Country stock, but a Country girl was wise in life and death, and Eirian knew what she had seen.

Now she must run. Mother said to mind, she thought, must run. The footsteps behind were gaining on the gentle slope, so Eirian darted sideways into an alley, dodged around a broken bottle. She did not look back. The man’s shined boots fell regular as clockwork, as pistons, the only variation the sound they made on cobble, or straw, or shards.

The alley gave onto a street of shabby tenements, and the girl thought of pounding on doors, but swallowed the notion away. Who would help her against the majesty of the Law? Here the gaslights were often broken or unlit, and she ran from dark into dark, not daring to think or plan more than a step ahead, a yard.

The street loomed into existence building by building, smelly and endless. Breezeways and alleys appeared, but were closed off with planks or rusting iron gates. Dogs barked as she hurtled by their houses, recognizing criminal, or prey, or fear. Ahead, something changed; a red glow built and she could see that on both sides of the road ghost-buildings rose, black from ancient fire. At their flanks rose strange bristles of junk, of fence palings and curtain rods, old signposts and even a bit of spiked church railing. They fanned from either side in a strange display and cast flickering shadows towards her like fingers. The sound of dogs behind her had grown, more animals joining, hounds belling, and through their noise she could barely hear the Runner’s footfalls. She threw a look backward to make sure he was still there.

Jeffers, no longer white but scarlet with fury and exertion, was no more than an arm’s length behind. With a yelp Eirian tried to surge forward, but tripped on a charred brick and tumbled into the ashy street. She felt the Runner’s hand clamp around her little shoulder like a blacksmith’s tongs, and was jerked upright again.

The jumbled barricade was near now, and the wide gateway in it — strangely clear and inviting in such a stockade — seemed to Eirian to promise freedom, the bonfires a more wholesome light than the sickly gaslamps. She flailed, out of breath and half-mad with desperation, and, turning her head, bit down on Jeffers’s gripping fingers so hard she tasted soap and blood.

Free, she ran for the gap in the threatening fence, and was through, running from cobbles onto uneven earth, curving away from the threshold and staring, wild-eyed, over her shoulder. The Runner did not follow.

She ducked into a doorway, taking what time she could to breathe, and watched Jeffers turn away, wrapping a hankerchief around his bleeding right hand. He was not watching her, so she slipped into the shadows between this building and the burned-out next, nestling into the jungle of rusting poles and spikes. The Inspector ran briskly into view and joined his junior at the pale. Eirian spat convulsively. It was a vulgar gesture Carys would have despised, but she spat her hatred and the Runner’s blood onto the ground.

“Jeffers, report,” she heard, faint but clear.

“Subject Erin Owens, on point of apprehension, entered the Warrens; pursuit suspended per statute 34a sub2, pending your determination.”

The Inspector’s eyes never flicked toward the girl or the fires. “As if there could be any doubt.”

“But sir! She bit me!” Jeffers waved his bloody cloth. “That’s assault on an Officer of the Law…”

“I am not going to call in a regiment to sweep the Warrens just because your apprehension form is shoddy. Call it off.”

“And the corpse report?”

“Write it for the other, Carrie.” The Inspector waved a hand. “The Warrens keep their dead as well as their living. We won’t see Miss Erin Owens again.”

The Grey City XVII

The City Armoury/Manége Militaire in Ville de Québec has burned down. It had become a museum, and I wished when we drove past it that I had the option of visiting. Now I’ll never get to do so.

“Revision isn’t cleaning up after the party, revision is the party.” — William Matthews

The quote above is well-distributed in writing circles. When it was last passed back to me, by my current advisor, I remembered the shape of it, worn smooth and familiar by many fingers. I also suddenly recognized it as very true.

In this grad school adventure of mine, I’ve changed as a person, and gotten to know myself a lot better. I’ve also written a lot. With the exception of the microfictions with which this site is peppered, I had only written three short stories when I entered the program. Three. I’m now running about twelve, not counting microfictions and stories I’m not sure will work out. And yes, I love to write. I like messing with stories, being able to fall asleep daydreaming and call it work, stealing a moment or an image and making it into something of my own. But revision? Revision is pure play.

Creating for the first time is self-conscious work, full of doubt and soldiering on through the frustration. When you revise, you know you have something. You may not know what it is, but its promise is as physically present as a weight you roll in your hands. You feel you’ve accomplished something, even as you try to figure out what. I love revising.

And this is the season of revision. I graduate in a few months. My thesis needs to be ship-shape to embark on the library shelves, and besides those stories, I find myself itching to revisit, revamp and renovate others. In between nervous trips to big-box bookstores (my first publication will be out soon, but I don’t know the precise date) I find myself remembering this story I laid aside first semester, or even my third short story ever, which I wrote for the application process. I imagine new paths into them, look at them from far off and try to squint out their shapes. Yesterday I made a list of firm to-dos and wishful goals for April. The first word on about half of the entries? “Revise.”

Being the slothful sort of person I am, I’m still working through a copy of Poets & Writers Magazine that my fairy godsister Jeannine gave me way back in December. It’s the January/February 2008 issue, for the record. I initially began reading it front-to-back (for the thoroughness), but set it aside after finding it to read a little doomy. USPS rate hikes doom small litmags to early graves! Historical fiction loved only for being nonfiction’s stepsister! Novel crushed under the wheel of Memoirmobile! At any rate, I closed its pages and planned a less thorough perusal centered on the main article, which promised to unlock the secrets of Literary Agents.

Over the last few days, I have read all about Literary Agents, and, as is my wont, continued to turn pages. Soon I found myself reading, with great interest, an article called “Paperback Writer: Do I want to be one?” by Steve Almond. It was about the TPO trend — the Trade Paperback Original.

Those of us who read a lot of comic books tend to think of TPBs as big convenient bindings of delicious CB continuity, unburdened of ads and flimsiness. However, this is only a niche truth. In the greater publishing world, a trade paperback is a fancy paperback, printed on good paper with a larger (and these days, often more texturally intriguing) cover than its “Mass Market Paperback” brethren.

Figure 1. Faerye.net spokesmodel Qubit poses with examples. Left to right: old-school mass market paperback by Roger Zelazny; my first tradepaper novel purchase (memorable by dint of sticker shock); a comic book industry TPB by the almighty Whedon; and a hardback for comparison. Hardback selected for textural richness.

Thank you, Qubit. For some time it’s been obvious that tradepaper is getting better play in publishing than it used to. Only the most popular literary titles ever make it to mass-market editions these days, which I thought was a calculated effort to make more money: why put out a $7 edition when you can put out a $12 one? However, I may have been a bit naive.

In Almond’s article, he discusses publishers’ new habit of putting out books in tradepaper first, without recourse to hardcover. Apparently, many authors worry about this, since it does cut costs for the publisher and thus is seen as a vote of no-confidence in the title. However, advantages emerge: many more people buy copies at readings when the book is affordable (some even buy multiple copies; ) bookstores hang onto a paperback “six months, versus maybe three months for a hardback” says author Rishi Reddi.

And then we got to the line that really prompted this blog post: “The author of six novels and three story collections, [Jim] Shepard was told by Random House…his 2004 story collection Love and Hydrogen would be published by Vintage as a TPO to woo younger readers.” We then pass onto more negatives, more authors feeling slighted and a probably legendary tendency for big reviewers not to review TPOs. But to me, this line was important. I remember, though I didn’t understand the larger industry context at the time, arguing with fellow readers over whether hardbacks or TPBs were a more pleasant reading experience. I like TPBs; the increased cover size means a thinner volume, more convenient for my omnipresent messenger bag than a mass-market paperback. They are lighter than hardbacks, and less likely to have embossed letters which show wear. I even like the way they sit on my shelf, the sleek way the Harvest Book editions of Virginia Woolf cozy up to each other in matching harmony. That elegant look may even tempt me to buy a TPB of a P.K. Dick or a Woolf book when a cheaper edition is available, so that it will match my other volumes.

TPBs are cheaper than hardbacks. As a student-author-barista, I’m not a particularly hardy hybrid; I seldom plunk down hardcover price for a book I need for school, let alone one I want on a whim or at a reading. Mom says she saw a new hardcover for $36 the other day, which is a whole lot of bubble gum any way you chew. There is a possibility that the insertion of TPBs into the cycle is driving or enabling the rise in HB prices, but that doesn’t change the practicalities on the ground. Even at the more reasonable price point of $22.95 for Murakami’s After Dark in hardback, I’m waiting for the $13.95 paperback release in late April. After all, to a struggling grad student with access to the Powell’s used books inventory, $9 is another book; maybe more than one.

I don’t think I’m the only one for whom this is true, and I think that young people — more likely to be carrying books around every day, to be students with long reading lists or generally cash-strapped — deserve more than a line of consideration in this discussion. The author descends at the end of the article into depressing doomsay: “As Americans become increasingly frantic, impatient and screen-addicted, the printed word becomes that much tougher to sell.” Auditors who tell him after readings that they really want to buy a book but can’t afford hardcover “do have enough money, of course. But they simply don’t view a book — even a book by an author they happen to like — as being worth more than fifteen bucks.”

Young people, college students, artsy Portland hipsters with bad day jobs…they have many decades of book-buying ahead of them. You want them to buy books. You want them to read more. You want them to read you. TPBs tend to be beautiful; in my experience, as beautiful and sensuously pleasing as hardbacks, if not more. If you want people to keep buying the printed word, this is a good thing to do: make the physical object pleasing. Price it reasonably. We don’t just want to buy books cheap; we want cheap books so we can buy more books.

I would love to hear others’ feelings as readers (or as writers) about TPBs versus other formats of book. As I’ve indicated, I have a real fondness for them. How about you?

Now, as we all know, this web-footed fairye is currently kickin’ it down California-way. California is, as movies and Mickeys like to remind us, a magical place. As such, things are a little different down here. Things like cars.

Within a few minutes of passing into the domain of Califia, your car acquires Multipurpose Magic Spell Lights or MMSLs. Depending on the make of car, the location of the controls vary, but they usually take the form of a wand attached to the steering wheel. This wand only has a few directions of mobility, but since it is magically contextual, that doesn’t matter.

A FEW USES FOR YOUR Multipurpose Magic Spell Lights
(for Oregonians and others who may not understand)

• If you are merging (and when aren’t you?) and you see a car where you would like to be, activating the MMSL will transport this car into a parallel dimension, allowing you to safely enter the freeway or expressway precisely where that vehicle previously rolled.
• While you are bombing down the freeway, happily ensconced in a lane, activate the MMSL to daze surrounding drivers, causing them to take their feet off the gas and lose precious moments.
• At any time at all, activate both MMSLs at once with a special Ultrasecret Button Control in order to make yourself the center of attention. All the other drivers will stare at you, and you will know that you are one seriously cool dude.

In short, there are no shortage of valid uses for the MMSL. Just, whatever you do, do NOT attempt to use the MMSL to communicate your intentions to other drivers, especially in high-speed lane changes, all-way stops, or other potentially dangerous situations. The MMSL is an eldritch force beyond human reckoning, and should NOT be abused just because some other drivers want to use the roads as well. Treasure your MMSL, and recharge it once in a while by honking at people who stop at red lights before turning right. Traffic magic is a renewable resource!

Celebrating the punniest way we know how:

Maple Custard Pie, from page 368 of Ken Haedrich’s Pie: 300 Tried-And-True Recipes for Delicious Homemade Pie (book from sister sledge, choice by Ryan.)