Bizarre Turn of Events

MassLive.com (website of the Springfield Republican newspaper) has posted recordings from the Artifacts reading…including my own. I am somewhat wierded out by the fact that I didn’t have to do anything to cause this to occur. Then again, I can’t actually get the recording to work. Plugin missing or some such nonsense. But here’s the article if anybody wants to make the effort:

http://blog.masslive.com/soundcheck/2007/05/winterpills_small_beer_press_j.html

I particularly recommend the Paul Park thing: a whacked-out alt-historical premise with satirical wit and beautiful description.

A Reading

I realize that most likely, if you read this blog, you don’t live near me, and vice-versa. But just in case:

Tomorrow night, Thursday, May 17th at 7 PM, I will be participating in a series of fiction readings at Artifacts, a new gallery at 28 North Maple Street in Florence, MA. Other (much better) participants include Jedediah Berry, Elizabeth Hand, Paul Park and John Crowley (see Gavin Grant’s complete announcement about it from the Small Beer blog).

I’ll be reading a teaser excerpt from my Interfictions story, “The Utter Proximity of God”. Which I will spend tonight practicing profusely, so as not to screw it up.

Interfictions Reviews – Denouement

Today, April 30th, is the official release date for the Interfictions anthology. I just reviewed eighteen interstitial stories in (some close approximation of) eighteen days. Phew! I am exhausted. Can’t say I’m sad it’s over, either. Don’t get me wrong—I really enjoyed doing this, I learned a lot, and I’m still not sure what I’m going to read with breakfast now that I’m out of interstitial stories—but when I started this, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

“The Utter Proximity of God” was my first pro sale ever. I was wildly excited. I wanted people to read it! What better way to build anticipation, I thought, than to take advantage of my advance reader copy and post a whole bunch of reviews? Also bubbling up and over in the unwatched pasta-pot that is my head was the question of what it meant that this, my first pro sale, had been chosen for a place among the eerie and intriguing “interstitial”. I’ve often used my blog to puzzle out this sort of thing—once, I spent several months and several thousand words attempting to convince myself it was all right for me to try writing magic realism. I figured this interstitial mystery wouldn’t be much different.

It wasn’t until the politely-worded metaphors for severely injuring myself started rolling in from all quarters that the realization hit. With my snazzy new WordPress technology flinging links to my blog far and wide, and a brand-new, breaking-news, cutting-edge anthology to blog about, the writers I was reviewing, in every likelihood, would find their way here and read what I’d written!

“First, I’m gonna blow his toes off.
::boom::
There go his toes.” —Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels

After that it was all I could do to keep from running in unholy terror from the whole idea. I managed it somehow—told myself I would just feel like more of an idiot if I quit in the middle. And I know it’s too late to take back now, and maybe the whole notion was suicidally misguided from the outset, and maybe I’ll never sell another story as long as I live…but I think I’m still glad I went through with it.

Of the eighteen stories in the Interfictions anthology, I was genuinely impressed by fifteen, absolutely loved nine, was bowled over with jealousy and admiration of five, and found zero to be a waste of my time. That is hands-down the best record for any collection of stories by more than one author I’ve ever read—magazine, anthology or otherwise. Which is saying a lot. It means, whether or not I manage to write another interstitial story ever again, that I like reading interstitial fiction—that in fact, I prefer interstitial fiction to any of its mundane genre-adherent alternatives. I want there to be more interstitial fiction, frankly, and less of everything else. To that effect, I think I’m done trying to decide what is and what isn’t. As AsphaltEden pointed out in a discussion of the Interfictions cover art, names and definitions are traditionally assigned to a movement in art only externally, from a critical perspective, long after the movement is established. It’s almost a shame that Theodora Goss and Delia Sherman ever had to cross that boundary, to try to identify (and thus isolate) what they do in the work of others. Art doesn’t need borders—only the distribution of it does.

Another great thing I’ve learned in the course of my bumbling: interstitial writers are reasonable, thoughtful people, inward-looking, capable of recognizing their own flaws and forgiving them in others because it’s the flaws that drive them to write what they write.

Hmm. There were other things I meant to get to here…something about the function of experimentation in fiction, the balance between strangeness and familiarity? But this is getting long, so I think I’ll leave that for comments, and end with the index, for those people getting their copies and wanting to know what I’m babbling about.

My eighteen Interfictions Reviews:
“What We Know About the Lost Families of —- House” Christopher Barzak
“The Shoes in SHOES’ Window” Anna Tambour
“Post Hoc” Leslie What
“Pallas at Noon” Joy Marchand
“Willow Pattern” Jon Singer
“Black Feather” K. Tempest Bradford
“A Drop of Raspberry” Csilla Kleinheincz, translated from the Hungarian by Noémi Szelényi
“The Utter Proximity of God” Michael J. DeLuca
“Burning Beard: the Dreams and Visions of Joseph Ben Jacob, Viceroy of Egypt” Rachel Pollack
“Rats” Veronica Schanoes
“Climbing Redemption Mountain” Mikal Trimm
“Timothy” Colin Greenland
“Hunger” Vandana Singh
“A Map of the Everywhere” Matthew Cheney
“Emblemata” Léa Sihol, translated from the French by Sarah Smith
“When It Rains, You’d Better Get Out of Ulga” Adrián Ferrero, translated from the Spanish by Edo Mor
“Queen of the Butterfly Kingdom” Holly Phillips
“A Dirge for Prester John” Catherynne M. Valente