Unicorn Mech Suit

A Sunday afternoon in early spring. We’d spent the morning quiet, in separate rooms—me in my office, writing; Molly on the bed in the guest room, working too, so I believed. I’d pass by and see her using her laptop or reading from the books piled on the bed where she lay prone, or sometimes staring off out through the window to the yard. It was warm for March already, full of the kind of color through which you can begin to see the blooming world emerge. Molly didn’t want to talk really, clearly feeling extremely down again, and still I tried to hug her, leaning over the bed to wrap my arms around her shoulders as best I could. She brushed me off a bit, letting me hold her but not really responding. I let her be—it’d been a long winter, coming off what felt like the hardest year in both our lives, to the point we’d both begun to wonder if, not when, the struggle would ever slow. I wished there could be something I might say to lift her spirits for a minute, but I also knew how much she loathed most any stroke of optimism or blind hope, each more offensive than the woe alone. Later, though, while passing in the hallway in the dark, she slipped her arms around me at the waist and drew me close. She told me that she loved me, almost a whisper, tender, small in my arms. I told her I loved her too, and we held each other standing still, a clutch of limbs. I put my head in her hair and looked beyond on through the bathroom where half-muted light pressed at the window as through a tarp. When we let go, she slipped out neatly, no further words, and back to bed. The house was still, very little sound besides our motion. After another while spent working, I came back and asked if she’d come out with me to the yard to see the chickens, one of our favorite ways to pass the time. Outside, it was sodden, lots of rain lately, and the birds were restless, eager to rush out of their run and hunt for bugs. Molly said no, she didn’t want to go, asked if I’d bring one to the bedroom window so she could see—something I often did so many days, an easy way to make her smile. I scooped up Woosh, our Polish hen, my favorite, and brought her over to the glass where Molly sat. This time, though, when I approached the window, Molly didn’t move toward us, open the window, as she would usually. Even as I smiled and waved, holding Woosh up close against the glass, speaking for her in the hen-voice that I’d made up, Molly’s mouth held clamped, her eyes like dents obscured against the glare across the dimness of the room. Woosh began to wriggle, wanting down. The other birds were ranging freely, unattended—which always made me nervous now, as in recent months a hawk had taken favor to our area, often reappearing in lurking circles overhead, waiting for the right time to swoop down and make a meal out of our pets. So I didn’t linger for too long at the window, antsy anyway to get on and go for my daily run around the neighborhood, one of the few reasons I still had for getting out of the house. I gripped Woosh by her leg and made it wave, a little goodbye, then hurried on, leaving Molly staring blankly at the space where I’d just been: a view of a fence obscured only by the lone sapling she’d planted last spring in yearning for the day she wouldn’t have to see the neighbors. *** I corralled the chickens to their coop, came back inside. In Molly’s office, where I had a closet, I sat across from her while changing clothes in preparation for my daily run. Molly spoke calmly, said she’d just finished reading the galley of my next novel and that she liked the way it ended: with the book’s protagonist suspended in a stasis of her memories, forever stuck. I felt surprised to hear she’d finished, given her low spirit and how she’d said she found the novel difficult to read, because it hurt for her to have to see the pain behind my language, how much I’d been carrying around all this time. I told her I was grateful she’d made it through, that I wanted to hear more of what she thought after my run, already anxious to get on with it, in go-mode. My reaction seemed to vex her, causing a little back and forth where we both kept misunderstanding what the other had just said, each at different ends of a conversation. She remained flat on the bed as I kissed her forehead, squeezed her hand, then proceeded through the house, out the front door. Coming down the driveway, I took my phone out to put on music I could run to and saw I’d received an email, sent from Molly, according to the timestamp, just after I had left her in the room. (no subject), read the subject, and in the body, just: I love you, nothing else, besides a Word document she’d attached, titled Folk Physics, which I knew to be the title of the manuscript of poems she’d been working on the last few months. I stopped short in my tracks, surprised to see she’d sent it to me just like that, then and there. Something felt off, too out of nowhere—not like Molly, or perhaps too much like Molly. I turned around at once and went inside. *** During my brief absence, she’d already risen from the bed, up and about for one of only a few times that day. I found her in the kitchen with the lights off, standing as if dazed by my appearance, arms at her sides. She seemed to clench up as I came near, letting me put my arms around her but staying taut, hand on my chest. She hesitated when I asked if she’d finished her manuscript, wondering why she hadn’t mentioned it. Yes, she said quietly, she guessed it was finished, a draft at least but no big deal. I told her I was excited to get to read it either way, that I was proud of her, and squeezed her tightly one more time, then let her go. She seemed to hover there in front of me a moment, waiting mute for what I’d do next. I asked if after my run we could go to Whole Foods, pick up something to make for dinner together, and maybe watch a movie, have a nice night here at home. She said yes, that sounded good, and I said good, I’d see her soon, then one last hug before I left her standing in the kitchen in the dark. *** On my run, I followed my usual route around our neighborhood without much thought. I’d always liked the way the world went narrow in this manner during exercise, as if there could be nothing else to do but the task at hand, one foot in front of the other, counting down without a number. I don’t remember seeing any other people, then or later, though I must have; in retrospect, the smaller details would fade to gray around the corridor of time sent rushing forward in the wake of what awaited just ahead. Near the end of the run, I decided to extend my route, turning around to double back the way I’d just come, adding on an extra half-mile on a path that took me past the entrance to the gardens where Molly and I would often walk in summers. The sidewalks in this part of the neighborhood were cracked and bumpy, requiring specific care not to trip. I pulled my phone out to see how far I’d gone and saw a ping from Twitter telling me that Molly had made a post, just minutes past—a link to a YouTube video of “The Old Revolution” by Leonard Cohen, including her transcription of the song’s opening line: “I finally broke into the prison.” I liked the tweet and thumbed the link immediately, opening the song to let it play, happy to imagine her selecting the closing soundtrack for my run home, just a couple blocks away now. “Into this furnace I ask you now to venture,” Cohen sang, backed by a doomy twang. “You whom I cannot betray.” *** The song was still there with me in my head as I arrived back at our driveway, where looking up from halfway along the path toward the stairs to our front porch, I saw a shape against the door, covering the spy hole—a plain white envelope, affixed with tape. My body seized. From early on in our relationship I’d had visions of Molly picking up and leaving just like that, deciding on a whim and without warning that she preferred to be alone. Running up the steps, already flush with adrenaline, a pounding pulse, I saw my first name, Blake, handwritten in the center of the envelope’s face in Molly’s script. Immediately, I wailed, devoid of language, too much too fast, real and unreal. Inside the envelope, a two-page letter, printed out. I stopped cold on the first lines: Blake, I have decided to leave this world. Then there was nothing but those words—words to which I have no corollary, no distinct definition in that moment, as simple as they seem. Every sentence that I’ve tried to put here to frame the moment feels like a doormat laid on blood, an unstoppable force colliding with an intolerable object in slow motion, beyond the need of being named. Before and after. *** Out of something akin to instinct, I forced my sight along the rest of the letter, not really reading it so much as scanning for a more direct form of information, anything she’d written that might tell me where she was—which, near the end of the second page, I found: I left my body in the nature area where we used to go walking so I could see the sky and trees and hear the birds one last time. Then: I shot myself so it would be over instantly with certainty and no suffering whatsoever. This time when I screamed it was the only word that I could think of: No. I must have sounded like a child jabbed in his guts, squealing. I knew exactly where she meant—I’d run right by it, just minutes before, perhaps a couple hundred yards away. I might have even crossed her path while on the way there had times aligned right, had I known. A sudden frenzy of possible options of what to do next swarmed my brain, none of them quite right, devised in terror. *** At the edge of the sidewalk, I stopped and tried to think if I should go inside and get my keys and drive to where she might be, or if I should run there fast as I could, still in my running clothes, already half-exhausted and slick with sweat. Each instant that I didn’t do exactly the right thing felt like the last chance, a window closing. Finally, I took off running at full speed along the sidewalk, shouting her name loud as I could, begging her or me or God or whoever else might be able to hear me: No, please, Molly. Not like this. No matter what I said, there was no answer; no one on the street around me, zero cars. Ahead, the sidewalk seemed to stretch so far beyond me, no matter how fast or hard I ran, as if growing longer with every step; all the houses shaped the same as they were always, full of other people in the midst of their own lives. As I ran, I tried to scan her letter, held out before me with both hands, already wadded up in frantic grip, scanning through fragments of despondent logic that felt impossible to connect with any actual moment in the present as it passed. “Everyone’s life ends, and mine is over now,” she’d written in present tense about the future, which was apparently in the midst of happening right now—or had it already happened? Was there still time? I felt embarrassed, sick to my stomach, to feel my body’s power giving out no matter how hard I tried to maintain the sprint, forced instead at several points to slow down against the burning in my muscles, sucking for air with everything I thought I knew now on the line. *** I couldn’t find her in the fields. The grass was high and muddy, and my running shoes kept getting stuck, sucking half off me, as I worked my way along the path between the unkempt plots of wild grass left overgrown through the winter and the vacant patches where in the spring ahead flowers would bloom Everything felt blurred, moving much faster all around me than I could parse. I was still screaming her name, begging her to answer, to be okay, but my voice just disappeared into the strangling silence. I searched the spots where last summer we’d returned daily to watch a mother duck care for her newborn flock; the bank of reeds where hundreds of frogs would often sing till you got too near; the grown-together pair of trees Molly said she thought would resemble us in our old age someday. I kept calling her number, listening to it ring and ring until the default voicemail recording came back on, asking in an android woman’s voice for me to leave a message. Maybe in the memory on Molly’s phone now there’s a recording of me huffing and howling, just before I really understood that there was no way to go back, that nothing I could say or want or do could reverse what had taken place. *** The longer she failed to turn up, the more I felt a desperate possibility that it wasn’t already too late—that she was out here somewhere, and I could save her, and yet no matter where I turned or how I shouted, nothing changed. I realized I should call 911, holding the phone up to my face while rushing through the mud into the far end of the gardens, clogged with the trees. After what seemed endless ringing, an operator’s voice came on the line, firm and professional, and asked for my emergency. I heard the words come out of my mouth before I thought them: My wife left me a suicide note and I can’t find her. The operator asked me where I was, how they could reach me, and I kept trying to explain, uncertain how to be specific with the location of the gardens, of no immediate address. I can’t find her, I need help, I kept repeating in frustration when I couldn’t seem to get it right, please come and help me. The operator reassured me the police were already on their way, someone would be there very soon. In the meantime, she stayed with me on the line as I hurried through the trees to where the gardens reached their end amid a sort of bog, studded with thickets and obscured patches, brambles, shrubs, so many possible places to end up. Every time I called her name, it felt a little less like her; as if what those syllables had meant to me for so long no longer bore resemblance to itself, and in its place, a widening hole, larger than all else. *** Reaching the end of the bog area, I turned around and started back toward the street. Close to the entrance, along a patch of land where some local group had planted food, I saw two women coming down the slope toward me, one near my age, the other probably her mother. I could see at once they looked concerned, had come down to the area for a reason. “Did you hear a gunshot?” I begged of them in a pinched voice, desperate to hear a different answer than what I thought. Yes, they said, they had—and I felt something deep within me break—ambient anguish so overwhelming I should have fallen to my knees but could no longer remember how. Like having the skin ripped off your head and being asked to run a marathon on live TV where the finish line ends in a lake of burning bile. It’s not that time stands still in such a moment—it’s that there’s nothing you can do to make it stop, and every second lasts forever even as it’s over, as if what you’d once thought must be impossible has become the organizing principle of who you are. With someone else speaking for me now, I asked how long ago they’d heard the gunshot. They said ten minutes. I asked in which direction, and they pointed back the way I’d come. “Are you missing your dog?” the younger woman asked, as I turned to hurry where she’d pointed. “My wife,” I said, over my shoulder, and heard her groan, say, Oh my God. *** I was completely frantic now, even more incensed with the task of finding as the world surrounding bent to blur; all possible locations interlacing in my periphery like abstract glyphs, beneath one of which, somewhere, was Molly’s body. Between my clearer memories of this transition in time’s fabric, huge, wide blank patches, a jagged space in how I’d been that simply no longer exists. I remember moving away from where those women were as through a vortex, past cracks widening within my vision, the sound of my inhale like a black hole. As I hurried back along the gardens’ path again, expecting at any second to come stumbling onto blood, I noticed another form there with me parallel, a man hurrying along the massive drainage pipe that laced the property, trying to help. Back near the far end of the trees, he shouted at me for her phone number so he could call, too, as if she’d answer him instead of me. The only numbers I knew by heart were mine and my mother’s, I realized, stopping to stand there scrolling through my contacts till I found hers, then shouting it across the thickets for anyone to have. Right then, standing in the middle of a forest with my phone out, I felt as far as I have ever felt from salvation; like all the minutiae life is made of was nothing more than illness and detritus, empty gestures, worthless hope. What if I never found her, I imagined, already able to imagine countless variations of the desolation just ahead; what would life be, in this hole, where space-time seemed stretched far beyond the point of breaking, no longer even scrolling forward, but just flapping, tearing skin off, empty space? I could already imagine it just like that—the nature of reality, comprised in violence made so innate you don’t even need to find your loved one’s body to realize, with every passing moment, that you can’t go back, and that what’s ahead is little more than an endless and excruciating blur. I could barely think to lift my feet, but I was moving, through somewhere so far beyond adrenaline it felt like the world had finally actually gone flat, my blood replaced with poison, choking on it, being dragged. Somewhere above me, though, if something was watching, it would have appeared like I was strolling by now, taking care to admire the minor aspects of the terrain, laying my wide eyes on anywhere the weeds and branches might obscure the truth from being found, a secret place that so far only Molly knew the shape of. *** Then I saw. There in the wild grass, just off the path obscured by saplings. Her body on her back facing the sky. Eyes closed. Completely motionless. A handgun clenched between her hands against her chest. Hair pulled up in a bun. Her favorite green coat. Her face blank of expression, already paling. A tiny, darkened wound punched in her chin, near to her throat. A single fly already circling the hole, lurking to feed. I knew at once that she was gone. Something else about me in my brain replaced the rest then, taking me over in that instant, clobbered blank. As if the atmosphere had been ripped off and all the air sucked out around us. Like the world was just a set that’d been abandoned long ago, and I was the only one still down here wandering around. I heard me tell the operator that I’d found her, that she wasn’t breathing. My voice was steady, somehow, already cleaving onto facts. I heard me say that I was not allowed to touch her, right, because this was a crime scene. Because she was without a question dead. My wife was dead. Molly was dead. The operator told me yes. She told me they were having trouble placing my location, but someone would be there soon, so just hang on. I took a step back from Molly’s body, standing over it for just a moment before putting my hands over my face, turning away. I didn’t need to look any longer to see the way it was, now and forever—her image scraped into my brain, drained of all light. I tried to take a knee and instead fell on all fours, no longer screaming but just wailing, for her, for Mom, for God, but choking on it, out of breath, as meanwhile the white-hot silent sun above us burned, an open all-unseeing eye. *** I have no idea how long I lay alone there in the dirt—forever, it would have felt like, but also as if no time at all, as time meant nothing now that there was nothing left to fear. Nothing left, either, to hide me from the blank above, all one long clear pale blue, the surrounding land flat and sandwiched in around me, as in a hole cut through a map. This can’t be real, I kept insisting aloud to no one, simultaneously devastated and enraged, moaning for help and for erasure, anything that could intercede. I felt a sudden buzzing near my right eye, then, the hum of wings and then a landing, and a pinch. I slapped back at the place where I’d been stung, on my right eyelid, inadvertently hitting my own face in place of the bee, already moving on now, having delivered its weird joke. I’d never been stung before but as a child, too young to recall but by my mother’s story of the memory—how I’d stepped on a dead yellow jacket and lost my mind, more scared than hurt. I think I howled then, almost like laughing, pawing at the expectation of a swelling while looking back at Molly’s corpse, as if this was some strange punchline we might share—something just stung me, what the fuck—not yet having felt it sunken in yet that she could no longer respond. “A bee sticks the young king’s hand for the first time,” I’d realize later she’d once written in a poem, as if already having known. “Alone on a slope where apples are rotting / under boughs in a sweet acid smell // and he’d like insects to cover him / for the effect it had on the other children. In rain / minnows feel the pond grow.” *** When the cops arrived, they found me on my stomach, talking to myself. There were two of them, a medic and an officer, and at first they maintained a distance, testing me out, as if I were a criminal or wild animal. Without needing to be asked, I aimed my arm at where Molly’s body was and the officer went to it, the other staying with me, not kneeling down but standing over, asking questions I can’t remember to repeat. Something else was speaking for me now, a part of me that didn’t need the real me to keep going; as if I wasn’t really there, but in a maw. I heard myself call out after the officer to verify what I felt certain I had seen: That she was dead, right? Were they sure? Calmly, clearly, he said yes, simple as that, a legal fact. Was she pregnant? the medic asked, nodding just so when I said no. I could tell they could tell I wasn’t in my right mind when I asked if they could tell where she got the gun from, and if so, would they please be sure to let me know, please? As if there were anything that I could do about it now, or as if at any second someone might come up and tap me on the shoulder, apologize for the confusion, and lead me back to my real life. Instead, by now, other police had begun arriving, masses of them, so it seemed, coming as if out of nowhere to take part in the production, right on cue. Someone put up the yellow CRIME SCENE tape around her body. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to turn my head, to have to remember her there with all the cops huddled above her with their tools. Everybody else around me was all business, working around my open moaning, bawling, barking, with eyes averted, as if at once trying to give me space and do their job. I felt so helpless there in my detainment, never officially told to stay in one place but also knowing that I must, sitting on my ass in the dirt weeping through hubbub, no certain guide but by the law. These people are just at work, I remember thinking, They must feel so thankful they’re not me. What else was there to say? I knew they knew, as best they could, how no consolation could change the fact, and that therefore there was no reason to try to touch me, offer warmth. We were just here to take part today in what the day had produced all on its own—a kind of programmatic existential framework I imagined Molly finding sick satisfaction in, another brutal lesson from the void. *** I wasn’t sure who I could call—for years, my go-to would have been Molly or Mom. The absence of both options doubly underlined the absence of any place to call my own, right then and there. It felt insane, pathetic even, to call our therapist, and so that’s exactly what I did, unable to imagine any other person who’d be the one to force out of my mouth for the first time the awful truth.. Against my ear, my phone felt like a wormhole, sucking my air out as it attached me to the world beyond my reach. Maybe if nobody heard the news, it would undo itself, go back to how it’d been just hours earlier. But our therapist picked up—only my therapist now, no longer ours, I understood, trapped in the midst of the ways words sometimes alter their intentions, right in stride with all the other shifting details of your life—and I heard the words I didn’t want to have to say come flooding out: Hello, it’s me, Blake; I’m very sorry, but I didn’t know who else to call; Molly shot herself today; Molly is dead. I don’t remember what she said, quite; only the texture of the saying, the sound of the voice there on the line held far away, someone who knew us both and understood the impact of those words more than the other people all around me. I could see my body moving and hear the sounds that left my mouth, left with nothing else to do but play the role of my new self. I should call my sister, we concluded, after talking it through, like jumping forward through the hoops of future time arriving, point by point, like any day, though once I’d done that, sharing the news with someone hundreds of miles away, I feared it would become realer somehow, a final terrible seal forced popped. People would know soon, then it’d become gossip, old news, word of mouth. There’d no longer remain any way, then, that I could hold off reality from taking course, filling in around me where I was not. *** I wasn’t allowed to leave the scene. Instead, I was asked to tell and retell my story of what happened over and over, first to one detective, then another, then another, like hellish Matryoshka dolls with badges and guns. I could feel their eyes searching my eyes, reading me as I told the story as best I could. They asked if I’d had any sense that this could happen, which made me feel embarrassed to say yes, trying to explain in so many feeble words Molly’s persona, her personal history, her cryptic poetry. “I like poetry too,” one detective interrupted with a grin, somewhere between considerate and dense, like we weren’t really talking about what we were talking about. I had to hand over Molly’s letter, which I’d been clutching this whole time, messy with mud and crumpled up, now considered evidence. This letter was my last link to her mind, I felt, therefore to any frame that might be found to explicate her reasoning, and now I had to hand it over, following procedure like some suspect on TV. I begged them to be sure to return to me, to not let it end up missing, aware at the same time in my periphery of the handling of the body of my wife, the hunt for facts, none of which could ever change what had just happened, much less whatever might come next. *** I was busy reiterating my story for another detective when across the mud I noticed Matt, one of my oldest friends, running toward me. The look on his face, the sound of his voice, the way he hugged me to him: now there was no mistaking what had occurred, no way to keep it separate from the whole rest of my life. I felt my limbs go limp to be embraced, as all of what had kept me upright no longer needed to hold on. At the same time, still in shock, I felt my body holding back there on the cusp, not letting me implode yet, as somehow the world continued on. I could touch my face and feel it there, part of my body, but who was I, and why, and how? Had what just happened actually happened, or was I living in a hell world, an exact model of how it’d once been with just this one major detail brought to change? Like any second everybody would start laughing, including Molly, who’d get up and come to take me in her arms, without a need for explanation besides to say that she wasn’t really gone. Then they’d roll the sky back, too, and show me everything else I hadn’t known yet about my life, about existence. Instead, I listened in as Matt spoke up on my behalf, asserting that I should be allowed to leave as soon as possible and go home. Hearing him say home, however, reminded me that the word already clearly no longer meant the same as it last had, and in a way, that felt more frightening than standing out here in broad daylight at a crime scene, where at least there was a formal process underway. What choice did I have, though, but to keep going, unless I was ready, willing, and able to die too? Yes, that made sense. Molly was my wife, my love—shouldn’t I go with her, having failed her? Why should I be allowed to survive beyond this day? Already, in thinking back, I felt an undeniable desire that instead of doing the right thing calling the cops, I’d instead taken the gun from Molly’s hands, laid down beside her, and, as if somehow in her honor, doubled down. At my most dire, any other option outside of that, now and for some time, would bear the tint of a pitiful formality, tempered only by conditioning, as if all we really are is just the shadow of what we’re not. *** I didn’t want to get mud all over the inside of Matt’s car. I remained formal and polite even in zombie-mode, relieved at least to have something else to do. Back at our address, I trudged up the same set of concrete steps where I’d only just been standing when I discovered her suicide note taped to the door, a hanging haze there like the fumes after explosion. The front face of our house looked like a facsimile, designed to trick me into believing I existed—a secret feeling shared between me and it alone, as to most anybody else, outside my mind, it was just another piece of property. I imagine that’s how haunting works—only those who know can parse the signal linking the residue of history to how we are, what we’re becoming amid our slow transition, step by step. I sat on the stoop with my head in my hands, trying to remember how to think, or not to think. I was focused, mostly, on her letter, getting it back, so I could read it in full, over and over; as if, like Molly, only work could save me now. Matt volunteered to go back down and ask for information, if I’d be okay on my own, and I told him that was fine, that it might be good for me to have some time alone now, so I could feel the way I felt beyond the reach of other eyes. I was well-accustomed to this aloneness, this want for independence, having already accepted as natural law that no one could ever reach me but myself, the bells and whistles of attention that made most others seem to feel better were for me more a nuisance than a balm. As he drove off, I went inside and closed myself inside the bathroom, walking right past my reflection without looking, not wanting yet to have to see, and past the mostly pastel-colored painting Molly had made in college and hung here, as if for forever, having planned this ending to our story all this time. I stripped my muddy running clothes off and turned the shower on hot and lay face down on the tile beneath the spray. I can’t remember what words I made, only the texture of my voice, mumbling in monotone under my breath as if to anyone who still might hear me from Beyond, the same way that I had once, as a child, tried to comfort myself mimicking Mom’s lullabies. *** When Matt got back, he handed me a brown paper bag containing Molly’s letter and her phone, along with the business card of the investigator for the Medical Examiner’s Center and a second note by Molly found on her body, scrawled on the back side of a small envelope: VOLUNTARY EXIT. I am an organ donor. My husband Blake Butler (my phone number) I took Molly’s letter into my office, closed the glass doors. I knelt on the floor and read it from beginning to end once and then immediately again, trying to find some kernel of her voice there, something alive. These were Molly’s final words, I realized, believing in them as some form of access to her brain—despite how out-of-sync they seemed, like a lost child trying to figure out how to explain her situation to herself while standing front and center in harm’s way. Here was what she had left for me to hear. A widening terror within me renewed itself with every breathless word and hard return, underlined by an undeniable form of failure, hers and mine. If only I had one more chance to hold her, I imagined, to tell her everything she meant to me no matter what. If only I could tear this paper up, as if it alone had been the cause and not the receipt. Any chance to contradict her logic, though, to reach beyond it, had been not only lopped off at the hilt, but imminently infected by the violent silence of the world—including the matted, jagged sunlight pouring in now through the windows, getting all over everything we’d ever had, nowhere to turn but toward the absence. From Molly, to be published by Archway Editions in November 2023. Blake Butler is the author of nine book-length works, including Alice Knott, 300,000,000, Sky Saw, There is No Year, and Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia. In 2021, he was long-listed for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. He is a founding editor of HTMLGIANT. View the full article

Cardiologist Doug “D.P.” Lyle kept telling himself he would write a novel someday—someday when he finally retired. His biggest problem was he loved his career and had no plans to retire. Was this just an excuse not to write? He finally asked himself the age-old cliché: “If not now, when?” Now finally won out when he was about to turn 50 and “someday” became his second career. He wrote. And wrote. For ten years he wrote, enduring 27 drafts. Finally, he completed his novel Stress Fracture. It was his first professionally published novel, although he’d self-published an earlier one. He’d also had several non-fiction books published on forensics topics for writers—he is a doctor, after all. (Poison, anyone?) Lyle is a natural born storyteller from Huntsville, Alabama whose Scots-Irish storytelling chops seeped down through Appalachia. “Down there, if you can’t tell a story, they won’t feed you,” he says. “They just put you behind the barn.” “Swapping lies,” is how he describes it. “I had always wanted to write fiction simply because I had stories I wanted to tell but I was never sure I could.” “I took some classes at the University of California-Irvine and then joined a couple of writing groups and wrote a lot. I also read dozens of books on writing and attended many writers’ conferences where I heard others speak on how they construct stories and write dialogue and create characters, and all the other components of good writing. So, I basically learned from books and from people and from there by simply sitting down and writing. The latter is probably the best teacher.” He began writing at odd times, before going to the office or hospital, or in the evening. “I got the bug and couldn’t quit.” It took him two and a half years to complete his first novel, or so he thought. “I was learning.” A year into his work, he befriended Bay Area book agent Kimberly Cameron at a San Diego State writers conference. “We hit it off and became friends long before we worked together.” When Stress Fracture was completed 18 months later, he sent all 138,000 words to her in a big box. “I thought New York Times best seller list, here I come…She felt differently. ‘There’s a story in here somewhere,’ she said, ‘I just can’t find it.’” She said she would read it again if he would rewrite and pare down. So, he did, and she rejected his second attempt. He rewrote it again and again. “I set it aside for two or three years and kept coming back to it.” He changed the location, title, and protagonist. “The only thing that stayed the same was the bad guy and the real story plot.” The fourth version—now titled Stress Fracture—he sent to Kimberley. It was down to 85,000 words. She called a week later. “I finally produced the book that met her standards.” Even though it had morphed into a much more sophisticated version of his original attempt, “It all started with one story that I would not let go of. I think that’s a lesson.” And, he learned, “It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I just assumed, like everything else in life, if I wanted to do it, I could go do it…Some of it’s very naïve to think you can do anything you want to do…Those are lessons you learn. I assumed if you can tell a story, you can write a story. It’s a whole other kettle of fish…I don’t think it gets easier over time.” In between novels, Lyle has used his medical knowledge to write non-fiction craft books for fiction writers eager to get their murders correct. He answers all types of questions about poison, gun shots, blunt force trauma, and more. His writing brought him to the attention of Hollywood, where he has consulted on numerous crime procedural shows and movies. And yet, he always returns to his love of writing crime fiction. Writing a novel, he says, is like handling a critically ill patient in intensive care with numerous medical issues going on simultaneously. They’re referred to as “circling the drain” because the doctors could lose them at any moment, says Doug. “You have all of these things in the air and must weigh your choices because it will affect organs differently. Writing a novel is the same thing. They all mesh—all of the moving parts. “You can’t mess up one of them—no bad dialogue, bad narration, bad plot, stupid characters. You must get all of these components working together smoothly. You can kill it so easily by ignoring one component. Scribbling out a scene? Most writers can do that in their sleep. But putting it all together is extremely hard.” And just as important, Doug says, is plot sequence. Writers must understand when to release every tidbit of information at the proper time in their story. It sounds simple but realizing when the right moment is to add a certain piece of critical information to a crime novel keeps reader interested and the story moving. It’s difficult. “Novice writers,” he says, “put everything in the first chapter.” “Ain’t no crying here,” he says. “Writing is blood sport.” It’s certainly not for the faint of heart. So, if it’s so tough, why bother? “I mean, what other job could you have where you can grab a cup of coffee and sit down and kill a couple of folks without even getting dressed?” he says. “And you get to play with so many cool imaginary friends.” “I like sitting before the computer screen and making up stuff. And I think that is an important lesson for all writers—you must enjoy the process to be successful. If you don’t like sitting down and putting words on the page and constructing a story, then you should do something else because it will only be frustrating and maddening if you’re not having fun.” “A lot of it was his perseverance…he just kept trying,” says Cameron. And that is the difference between those who get published and those who don’t. ___________________________________ Stress Fracture ___________________________________ Start to Finish: 10 years, two months I wanted to be a writer: Age 40 Experience: Cardiologist Writing Time: 10 years (27 rewrites) Agents Contacted: One Agent Responses: One Agent Search: One Writer’s Conference First Submission to Publisher: 2003 Time to Sell Novel: Two Months First Novel Agent: Kimberley Cameron First Novel Editor: Christy Philliippe First Novel Publisher: Medallion Press Inspiration: James Lee Burke, Elmore Leonard Advice to Writers: Writing is an art and a craft. The first draft should be the art and the revisions the craft. Write fast. Edit slowly. Website: www.DPLyleMD.com Like this? Read the chapters on Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Tess Gerritsen, Steve Berry, David Morrell, Gayle Lynds, Scott Turow, Lawrence Block, Randy Wayne White, Walter Mosley, Tom Straw. Michael Koryta, Harlan Coben, Jenny Milchman, James Grady, David Corbett. Robert Dugoni, David Baldacci, Steven James, Laura Lippman, Karen Dionne, Jon Land, S.A. Cosby, Diana Gabaldon, and Tosca Lee. View the full article

Set largely during covid lockdown, Sing Her Down introduces Florida, recently released from prison due to issues with overcrowding, thus finding herself with a second chance at life. Pursued by a woman named Dios, also recently released from the same prison, Florida has to reckon with her own past and what the future might hold in a world that seems to be on fire, the pandemic only intensifying the sense of desperation that permeates Florida’s world. Florida skips parole and travels out of state to find her most prized possession, a car she left behind when she was locked away—only Dios, and Florida’s own true nature, can’t seem to leave Florida alone. Sing Her Down proves Pochoda can occupy any voice, any time, any place, pushing her characters to the type of reckoning that would make Flannery O’Connor proud. Ivy’s brightest gift is her ability to morph into anyone and anything, occupying a different type of person as easily as she might cover any landscape, making her home in any and every fictional universe imaginable. Sing Her Down is Ivy’s most brilliant work yet, and Ms. Pochoda shows no indication of stopping her rise any time soon. Ivy, who found a natural home in crime fiction with Visitation Street, sat down to discuss with me how she fell into crime fiction, a genre which suits her spectacularly well, especially in answering the questions which interest her most, and exploring the people she wants us all to find a part of ourselves in. Matthew Turbeville: Ivy, I’m so excited to interview you for CrimeReads. I have loved your fiction since reading Visitation Street. You have a voice that’s so distinctively yours, much like Megan Abbott, Alafair Burke, and Attica Locke. Which writers have most informed your writing and shaped you most during your formative years? Which books and authors do you continue to turn to for inspiration? Ivy Pochoda: I think the book that inspired me most now is Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem. Jonathan and I are different in age, but he grew up two blocks from where I grew up. When I was first trying to write, I thought you had to write super wild imaginative, made-up books, and I tried to write these super wild books, and then I read Fortress of Solitude. I found out you can write a book about your neighborhood, and you can make it poetic and beautiful, and take the small things that occur to you on a daily basis and turn it into art and fiction. It sort of changed my life. I went from trying to invent crazy, wild stories to writing more closely observed fiction about what was going on outside my window. For me, that was a game-changer. I reread Jesus’s Son by Denis Johnson routinely. There are small moments in that book where he has the most poetic and beautiful observations about gritty things and finds the most beauty and joy in the most desperate and down-and-out characters. I look at those two books quite a lot, and at Zadie Smith’s NW. I admire her amazing use of dialogue and language and flexibility with form. I love how she summons that neighborhood in northwest London, which is something I do and something Jonathan clearly does. Also, it’s no secret that I reread Blood Meridian a lot! There are also so many new books I’m inspired by—one example is Julia Phillips’ Disappearing Earth. I love seeing how she stacks all those stories together into a novel. MT: You write crime fiction, which is such a great match for your gritty voice and your ability to slip into worlds outside your own. Has your fiction always had such a crime fiction slant? What do you feel is so inviting and enticing about crime fiction, and how did you make the move into writing in this genre? IP: It was a complete accident. When I wrote Visitation Street, had been inspired by Fortress of Solitude and wrote about something outside of my window, and at that time I was thinking my book was a combination of this and Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. To my surprise, when it was sold to my publisher, they told me it was crime fiction. I thought I was writing straightforward literature, and my editor asked me, “Well, what did you think was happening? You wrote a book where two girls go missing on page one, and you find out what happens on the last page—that’s a mystery.” Back then, I didn’t know anything about the crime community. I thought I was going to be marginalized and no one is going to respect the writing—not the story, but the writing. I feel like it’s the luckiest thing that has ever happened to me in my writing career. Win awards, write a best-seller, who knows, but the fact that this book moved me into the crime community is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. The people! I went to the Edgar Awards recently, and the love in that room, for everything from cozies to hard crime to procedurals, it’s the most supportive community out there. Obviously, it has some problems. We need to do better with representation and embracing diversity and new voices, but it’s way ahead of where it used to be and other genres. I love crime fiction because people love to read it and it’s not a chore, and people embrace it. It gives you the flexibility to mess around with tone or structure or form, and it’s super fun. It doesn’t necessarily have to be cut and dry murder and white guy PI who solves it! Now we can write about all sorts of things, and the crime doesn’t have to be the center of the story. MT: It really feels like the crime fiction community is a family. IP: It really is. MT: I love the idea that you write fiction that allows women to be as violent as in the fiction of authors like Cormac McCarthy. It helps dispel this notion that women don’t have a certain violence to them, and it steers clear of the only violence from women appearing in movies where actresses like Charlize Theron wear make-up and fat suits in order to play a villain. But even in your novel, characters like Florida change their names to allow themselves to slip in and out of this more chaotic, sometimes sinister world. What is the importance of allowing Florida to move in and out of her own violent persona, and how do you avoid the notion that women who enact their own forms of violence must necessarily become villains? IP: I feel like one of the things that’s in this book, not in Florida but in Dios’ character, is code-switching. Dios is a Latina girl from Queens, who is given a scholarship to a really ritzy predominantly white school, and from there, she has to negate her sense of self, which is not why she’s violent, it’s just something that’s happened to her. It’s funny you bring that up about Florida, because she’s also code-switching. She feels like to be safe and survive in prison, she has to pretend she isn’t that person that she was before she committed these crimes. The secret is she is that person. To survive, she has to dissociate, and she is not able to embrace who she really is and almost allows this persona to be created for her. I’m glad you brought up Monster because we are so able to embrace violent women if they are violent because men have done something to them. We only can understand women’s violence if it’s put through a male gaze or male lens. I wrote my thesis in college on Macbeth and Oresteia, and when Clytemnestra kills Agamemnon or when Lady Macbeth commits various acts of violence, the vocabulary that the playwrights use is very anti-maternalistic—“unsex me now,” “rip this baby from my breast”—there’s no baby! When Clytemnestra is talking about her strength, she is framing it as the nurture has been ripped from her. We can only talk about this by keeping men in the picture or keeping women rebelling against their feminine nature in the picture, and we love Aileen Wuornos’ story because she is a prostitute and she has been raped and men have done this to her. We love stories where women have been attacked or their kids were taken away from them by a man. We forgive violent women if their violence is inspired by some original male violence, but we cannot deal with violent women who are violent under their own sail. It’s infuriating to me. These women exist, but we never tell their stories. MT: One of the most compelling aspects of your writing is your ability to inhabit multiple voices all at once. Reading your work is an amazing experience, where I’m looking to engage with multiple characters who are beyond me, but finding some of myself in every character. When you write, how do you go about tackling the different voices and narrative strands of each character to keep them individual and distinct? IP: Let me tackle that in two parts, because it’s really interesting what you said about identifying with yourself in every character. That’s exactly the point. I want to go back to Visitation Street. When I wrote Visitation Street, there was like all these different characters: a drunk white musician, a Black girl who’s getting in trouble at school, and others. What I thought when creating these voices is how they’re all having a problem or there’s something going on in their lives, and I had to figure out how I would react in those situations. I put a little bit of myself in all of them regardless of race, class, gender. I found something that they were reacting to, like the failed musician—I put some of my own disappointments in there—or the girl who is having issues with her best friend, which is really about me growing up. Identify with yourself in every character, that’s exactly the point. These people are not nonfiction–they are fictional people–and I do like to have a whole cast of characters people can find points of identification with. Someone like Dios, who is both from a disadvantaged background and goes to a ritzy college, is beautiful, violent, well-read and misunderstood. The reader should be able to find one thing they can relate to, whether it’s “I went to a fancy college” or “I am misunderstood” or “people deny me my strength because I’m a woman,” and there are all these things that make up a person. We should have more empathy for people in our lives, so I like to create characters who are fully rounded so we can find points of identification in them. Now, as to the voices. There comes a point in your writing career where you can say, “I can just do it,” and I can just do it. I remember Jennifer Egan talking about A Visit from the Goon Squad, and she said, “I went running and I ran, like, eight miles and I forgot to pick up my kid from school and the whole plot appeared to me,” and I thought, “bitch, you’re lying!” But the voices just come. This book is a little less voice-heavy to me than my other books and these voices change. I was really inspired by Blood Meridian and that open ending, and there’s this distance in this voice, and I sort of wanted to make it Dios’s voice, so that voice just started talking to me one night, and that sounded like an kind of overly educated person who’s a criminal, and I kept listening, thinking of what she would be saying, riffing on Blood Meridian in my head as if a woman was narrating it. When creating voices, I give every character one thing they’re obsessed with. So, Dios is obsessed with Florida and women being denied their own power, and Florida has her obsession about the car and the tree. I circle their voice around their obsession, and I can sort of find them. MT: I remember meeting Jennifer Egan at a literary festival and I remember her saying something along the lines of how she rarely wrote from a woman’s point-of-view because she didn’t want her own self to bleed into her characters—and I love that you do not seem to give a shit about that. IP: It’s funny you say that because Wonder Valley only has one woman in it, and when it came out, I got a lot of pushback on that book. I was in conversation with Megan Abbott, and she asked, “What are you doing next?” My agent was sitting in the front row, and I sort of had These Women in my head, but it wasn’t about women, it was about people surrounding this serial killer. I remember saying, “I’m going to write this book” (and my agent was so worried about the all-male thing in Wonder Valley) “and it’s going to be all these different women’s voices around a serial killer,” and I remember thinking, “Fuck, now I have to do this, and I’m not good at writing women,” and I wasn’t. The women’s voices in Visitation Street are young, they are in their teens, and that I can do that. But with These Women, I remember thinking, we need to go really deep into voice. Like with Jennifer Egan, the characters are going to be inspired by things I’m thinking but I don’t need my character in these voices. And it’s so hard! MT: I remember reading that Toni Morrison often wrestled with characters and their voices, ones who wanted to be heard much more than she wanted to permit them to be present on the page. Do you ever wrestle with characters who may want to take over the page or even over a whole novel? How do you tame the voices that are so commanding for your readers? IP: Julianna’s voice in These Women was the easiest part of that book for me, and I had no problem writing it and could have gone on forever. Dorian’s voice, which opens the book, was really hard, and I kept working on Julianna and writing more of that perspective but had to make it balanced. So, when I can hear somebody like that, I understand her outlook on the world. I knew she wanted to take pictures. I knew she didn’t understand why some art was more valued than other art because she’s wondering why her pictures would never be shown in a museum like Larry Sultan’s work—a photographer who shot behind the scenes of porn shoots. Julianna’s voice was really powerful, and Dios talked a little too much in earlier versions of Sing Her Down. I had to peel it back because the danger with Dios talking too much is that I don’t want to explain her or justify what she is doing. I just want her to do it, so I had to have her talk less so I didn’t get into any explanation or back story of why she’s doing what she’s doing. MT: Do you write all the scenes with certain voices at once, or are you able to go back and forth? IP: I can go back and forth, but I try to write them in complete blocks. Like in These Women, I wrote all those sections fully, and then I went back and edited them, just because I want them to tell their complete story. But with Visitation Street and Wonder Valley, I have alternating shorter chapters, so I can go back and forth. MT: Do you have any specific methods you use to go about writing outside of yourself? IP: I try to find something in each character that is me. When I was writing about Skid Row in Wonder Valley, that’s very much not just inspired by but about the people I worked with in Skid Row. I try to tell their story but not make it mine. I try to respect wherever the story is coming from. I don’t know if that gives me permission to do it. I try to find a story that I feel comfortable telling about my characters, what they are going through, but I’m not speaking to the whole experience of whatever race, culture, community that person comes from. MT: Moving from each of your books to the next, they’re all completely different. When you write a book, you’re truly setting out to write something unique and individual. Are there any rules you have to avoid writing something you’ve done before? Are there characters you want to revisit in future books? IP: I revisit Ren from Visitation Street. He is in Wonder Valley, has a one-second shot in These Women, and he’s the muralist, although is not named, in Sing Her Down. My characters live on. I teach my students that these people don’t end when the book ends–try to think of them existing in the world after the story you’re telling about them concludes–and I think that makes it easier to write the book and they stay alive for me. Jonathan Lethem and I had a conversation about this, and he said, “hell no, when I’m done with a book, these people cease to exist.” I can see it both ways. But my characters—and some of them are dead—live on in me. When I start thinking of a book, it often has something to do with the previous book. Recently, I started writing something that I’m not sure I’m going to use. Blake from Wonder Valley was living in Mexico by himself, and I wrote twenty pages about him. I think I’m going to use it in my new book, but maybe not. One problem I have writing a new book is I often feel like I’m writing my last book, and it takes me a while to get out of that. MT: What do you think is the most important point of writing a novel, especially a crime novel? IP: I think it’s different for different books. I often don’t know the full story of my book when I set out to write it, but I like to think of my books as a three-dimensional panorama, with all these different perspectives looking at a single event. It’s figuring out how to build that sphere, and I like to create a community of characters to see how they interact. For me, that community of characters is the most important thing. MT: When you write, do you start with the crime or the character, the setting or the story? IP: Character and setting for sure. I had no idea what the crime was in this book. Wanted to open with a super violent scene of women being violent in prison and that’s all I knew. And that’s not the crime in the book, it’s just some other act of violence. Then I figured out what it was about. MT: I remember reading that scene and thinking, “Wow, I love this, but oh my gosh.” IP: I thought long and hard about that, but said, “Let’s just go for it.” MT: What are you working on now? What’s next for the great Ivy Pochoda? IP: I’m writing a short story now, then writing a horror novella based on The Bacchae, and I also have an idea for a novel that I hope to start in the new year. I thought I was going to wrap up writing about Los Angeles with this book, but I thought one more. It’s darker, but it’s also a more about love and family and apocalyptic violence. *** View the full article

The 1920s was a decade of strict social hierarchies, with huge divides between wealthy elites and poor workers, bias against immigrants, racial segregation, and laws against homosexual activity. But the free-for-all nightlife of the Jazz Age was built around embracing everything naughty, illegal, and new. This meant that at night, many of those strict hierarchies came toppling down. Prohibition was created by the Eighteenth Amendment, and it ended the nationwide production, import, transport, and sale of alcoholic beverages… in theory. In reality, it was easier to get a drink during Prohibition than it was after. When liquor was illegal, it was unregulated, and speakeasies served their customers at all hours of the day and night. They were where young and old, rich and poor alike headed to socialize, dance, drink, and flirt. Which one you went to could depend on who you were and how much money you had. The most upscale speakeasies were restaurants and performance halls where politicians, debutants, and movie stars went to see and be seen. Photographers and journalists would attend, chronicling the parties and scandals in newspaper columns. One of the most well-known society journalists of the Jazz Age was Lois Long, who wrote for The New Yorker under the pseudonym “Lipstick.” She would drink, dance, and party at the most fashionable places in New York City, then go straight to the office the next morning to write her columns, which thousands of readers kept up with to either plan or daydream about their own exciting nights out on the town. But not every speakeasy was a glamorous destination for the elite. Many of them were more like the bars of today: places where the wealthy, middle, and working classes could all mingle over a drink. Nightlife in the Jazz Age encouraged mixing across racial lines as well, though American society was otherwise strictly segregated. In major cities like New York and Chicago, some of the most popular spots were known as “Black & Tans.” These nightclubs were usually found in cities’ bohemian and Black neighborhoods, and they as were famous for their racial integration as they were for their innovative cocktails. In the Amsterdam News, a Black newspaper in Chicago, a journalist wrote that, “the night clubs have done more to improve race relations in ten years than the churches, both black and white, have done in ten decades.” (The cocktails themselves became popular as a way to hide the taste of subquality liquor, like Chicago’s infamous “bathtub gin.”) Jazz Age nightlife also got a boost from a thriving queer subculture in America’s major cities. In New York, Greenwich Village and Harlem were known spots for queer nightlife. Some of the biggest public events in Jazz Age New York were the Masquerade and Civic Balls hosted by the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows at Hamilton Lodge in Harlem: annual public drag balls that began in the late 1800s but reached the heights of popularity in the 1920s. The LGBTQ community, some of them traveling in from other parts of the country to participate, didn’t hide themselves at these events. The New York Age often announced the masquerade winners by name and noted that, “Scores of males of pronounced effeminiate [sic] traits gracefully disported themselves in beautiful evening gowns. They might have been mistaken anywhere for fascinating shebas.” Female attendees also were likely to attend in drag, and more than one newspaper characterized masqueraders as belonging to “the third sex.” The Hamilton Lodge balls, as they were often known, weren’t just a gathering spot for the queer community. They became a major part of New York’s social calendar for all classes, orientations, and races. The Odd Fellows were a Black fraternal order, but many newspaper articles written about the Lodge Balls noted that attendees of all races and classes were there “looking for a thrill.” “Color prejudice was thrown to the winds,” noted a writer for The New York Age in 1927. Thousands of people came out for the party; in 1926, The New York Age estimated that 1,500 people attended. By 1933, that estimate had grown to 6,000, and the police and fire officials had to be present to maintain order. For those worried about ending up on the wrong side of the law, private parties were safer than public events or speakeasies. It was legal to finish alcohol that you already owned when Prohibition went into effect, so individuals could claim that they were just sharing their own “provisions” with friends (though this excuse became less believable the longer Prohibition went on). And parents in communities around the country would often host parties and dances for their young people to keep them out of trouble—though, just like today, plenty of teenagers snuck in their own booze. If you were in a major city during Prohibition, though, there was a good chance your nightlife put you on the wrong side of the Eighteenth Amendment. But that was one of the reasons that so many people who participated in that nightlife were willing to mingle across lines of class, community, race, and sexuality. No matter who they were or how much money they had, they all had a few things in common. They enjoyed a night out. They probably liked jazz music and dancing. And they were all willing to break the law to have a good time. *** View the full article

The appeal of the procedural is built upon a simple human desire: we love to solve problems, and we love to watch others solve them. Even better when solving a problem feels like revealing a hidden connection beneath the skin of the world. In a class I teach on the procedural genre, we start with Poe and Doyle and Collins and Sayers and work our way to Mosley and French. We watch the Spielberg-directed pilot episode of Columbo, which is (apologies for the fifty-year-old spoiler) about a murderous mystery novelist. We watch the crass pilot of Law & Order: SVU, studded with homophobia and transphobia, and then we read Carmen Maria Machado’s hallucinatory novella “Especially Heinous: 272 Views of Law & Order: SVU.” We talk about the girls with bells for eyes who haunt Machado’s Benson and the doppelgänger detectives Abler and Henson, whose lack of trauma renders them inhuman. We discuss the way viewers who have survived sexual violence, or those who fear it, speak of finding comfort in the show’s promise of responsive law enforcement while recognizing it as brazen copaganda. We read Auden’s “The Guilty Vicarage” and more recent criticism about crime fiction: the old theory of the genius detective as righter of wrongs and restorer of order, and newer interpretations that highlight the conservatism of the form. This is the darker side of the procedural’s temptation: how seductively it can align us as readers or viewers with the moral cleansing the detective promises. My first crime novel, Killingly (coming out in June!), is less a whodunit than a howdunit and a whydunit. It’s a historical novel, set in 1897. In writing it, I found a new way into the joy of investigation that drives the procedural: not to solve a crime, but to puzzle out real facts that bring a mystery to life and fit a story into their constraints. Historical research requires its own procedures. Following a citation to the next source, paging through paper-clip-rusted documents in manila archival folders, constructing careful search queries that drop you into online subcultures you might never have stumbled across otherwise. You bless train lovers who’ve posted old rail timetables, collectors selling period-appropriate Boston police belt buckles on eBay. First you’re the detective, sifting through evidence; then you’re the storyteller, solving the narrative problems that evidence produces. I learned about the missing girl when I was a grad student, working as a research intern at the Harry Ransom Center, a marvel-filled concrete building where UT Austin has turned oil and gas money into a world-class collection of rare books and manuscripts. (For the most delightfully nerdy procedural ever, which presents a funhouse mirror version of the drive to acquire literary treasures, see one of my favorite novels, A. S. Byatt’s Possession.) I didn’t find the girl’s story in a manuscript box; I was doing research for a patron with a genealogical query, skimming desperately through the New York Evening Journal on microfilm. LED TO DEATH BY HER CHILD OF FANCY, a headline blared, and I yanked the dial on the microfilm reader to a halt. A student named Bertha Mellish had disappeared from the campus of Mount Holyoke College in 1897, and three years later, her family’s doctor was giving long, speculative interviews about her fate to a Hearst paper. This was, frankly, too weird not to pursue. I visited Mt. Holyoke’s Special Collections, which holds a small amount of material about Bertha’s disappearance, along with her classmates’ scrapbooks and letters. I’d attended Smith, another women’s college only a few miles away, but I learned quickly how different the schools had been in their early days. Most importantly, the girls at Mt. Holyoke didn’t bring maids with them, which meant the fictional companion I’d begun to imagine for Bertha had to be a student. And she had to have a secret, something that endangered her, as well. Initially, I set myself an impossible task with this book. I created this central fictional character, and I wrote toward an ending that, if it happened, was not documented—but otherwise, I tried to stick to all the known historical facts. It was a kind of constraint. I wanted to set myself problems to solve, as if shifting between multiple perspectives with an active narrator guiding the action wasn’t complex enough. Eventually, I realized I needed to make small adjustments, to stop being so strict about the known timeline. To show how research can feel like detective work, here’s an example of one of those changes. In real life, Bertha’s sister and the family doctor were called to Florida to identify a living girl who might be Bertha. That trip offered plenty of texture and detail, but its length and placement slowed the action too much. I chose to raise the stakes and tighten the pace by having Florence and the Doctor travel a shorter distance to identify a body, instead. Like a detective, I drew a radius around Killingly, the resonantly-named town in Connecticut where Bertha grew up. I needed a train line that ran near water, between two points in New England, and a small town along that train line. Poring over those wonderful old train schedules and Google Maps, I chose Auburn, Massachusetts—perhaps partly because my mom lived in a different Auburn for a time as a kid. To figure out who might escort my characters to see a body, I needed to determine what sort of policing the town had at the time. Skimming through A Historical Sketch of Auburn, Massachusetts, from the Earliest Period to the Present Day with Brief Accounts of Early Settlers and Prominent Citizens, the name “Mellish” startled me awake. Bertha’s father John and his siblings had grown up in a nearby Massachusetts town; I’d forgotten. But I hadn’t known that George Mellish, Bertha’s wealthy uncle, lived in Auburn with his wife for years before moving to New York City. In 1897, the empty house he still owned at the center of town was serving as the town library while a new city hall was constructed. The family connection would make the local authorities solicitous; it would explain why the police of a tiny town across state lines would immediately think of Bertha Mellish when they found a girl floating in a local pond. But I still had to figure out where the good citizens of Auburn would store an unidentified body. I’d learned that the town had a constable or sheriff, likely no dedicated police building, and certainly no police morgue. Here we enter the land of disturbing search terms: things like “nineteenth century America burial practices,” “1890s morgue police,” and “storage for dead bodies 1890s.” That’s how I discovered the suitably grisly concept of the holding tomb. Auburn’s cemetery had one, as did any place, I imagine, where winter would freeze the ground too cold for digging. The dead had to rest somewhere before they could be interred. In pictures online, the holding tomb looks dignified and silent, like a little mausoleum. Heavy stone. You wouldn’t guess it was just a waystation. I think of this novel as New England Gothic, and through historical research, I found exactly the right details to flavor this scene—details I could never have imagined. I put Bertha’s sister and the doctor at its dark doors. I walk them inside to see the body. And afterward they too have to rest somewhere, before catching the train back to Killingly. So for a few hours they sit by a fire in Bertha’s uncle’s empty Auburn house, and they talk about a secret that drives the book—a conversation I’d once drafted to take place on a train back from Florida. It’s much better this way. I solved the narrative problem, and I felt the radiant satisfaction I experience as a reader of procedurals, putting the pieces together alongside the detective. I will almost certainly write a more traditional procedural in the future; I can’t help but love the form. On the classic D&D alignment chart, I’m resolutely lawful good, an orientation that rubs awkwardly against my distress at the profound injustices of our legal system. No matter how much skepticism I’ve learned about the institutions of policing and prosecution, I’m still disposed to find stories of investigation comforting. In a time when the suggestion to “do your own research” has been poisoned by bad-faith misinformation and conspiratorial violence, when any cop show can feel slick with denial about the realities of policing in the US, historical research can offer a crime writer their own experience of investigation. Historical research is freighted with its own profound ethical questions, of course; it’s the opposite of escapism to learn the depths of atrocity that have shaped our cultures, or to trace the heartbreaking surges of resistance to atrocity. But by staying grounded in the real, writers can preserve nuance and build compelling plots. We can engage the past to examine the present. *** View the full article

By Kimberly Lee You’ve seen the iconic poster—a woman in profile, her right arm raised in a fist while her left hand rolls up her sleeve. She wears a blue work shirt and a red, polka-dot scarf tied around her temples. Eyebrows immaculately sculpted, eyelashes done up, red lip-stick topping it all off. During the height of the pandemic, my cousin sent around a photo she’d unearthed, of our grandmother with a work crew, wearing that same blue shirt. When I asked my mother about it, she said my grandmother was part of a World War II “ladies’ crew,” and that her work had to do with ball bearings or something. I’d seen the poster a million times, but never knew my grandmother had been a “Rosie the Riveter.” I set out on a mission and eventually found a mug online representing her in this role. My grandparents were part of the “The Great Migration” of Black people from the Deep South to the northern and western states that took place in the early 1940s. Although their movement was within the same continent, it was epic, because their choice to undertake the journey deeply impacted my quality of life, even though I wouldn’t be born until decades later. I heard about this journey in detail from my grandfather, yet I recently wrote about it from the perspective of my grandmother, who I never knew—she passed away well before I was born. In “Departure,” I take on her voice: “The air is different here. Lighter. It could be that I’ve never been this close to an ocean, never felt the calm mist tickling my skin. Or maybe this is what it feels like to breathe easy, and free.” Those lines were my attempt to capture the emotional journey, the change that seems to be coming from outside conditions but is actually burgeoning from within. Because while my grandparents’ movement was definitely physical, through numerous states from one end of the country to the gorgeous Pacific Coast, I know that faith, perseverance, and fortitude were the true inner gifts of the journey, the qualities they silently nurtured and developed in their own hearts to have the fortitude to make the trip. Although the narrow definition of a journey is geographical, a movement from point A to B, an emotional component is always present. The richness of the inner adventure compels us to see the journey as a metaphor for countless situations, no physical change of place required. We face challenges, find allies, and overcome obstacles on the way to a final destination. We experience personal growth and development, chances to rise to the occasion, and strength arising from finding our innate gifts. We triumph, determining for ourselves what success truly means. Joseph Campbell described the well-known archetypal pattern of the hero’s journey in The Hero with a Thousand Faces. While Maria Tatar’s recent The Heroine with 1001 Faces might be seen as a response to that work, it goes beyond it by expanding our view of heroism to include qualities and narrative arcs centering the power of women to effect change. Similarly, the journey of the healer and seeker, along with the journey of integrity, offer fruitful ways to view the universal struggles and joys we face on life’s trajectory. On each of these paths, even if there is physical relocation, the deeper journey always takes place within. The process may be as silent as caterpillars transform-ing within the confines of silky, stationary cocoons. They emerge exquisite and renewed—altogether new creatures—as a result of the inner journey. Containing invisible remnants of the past yet exploding with flight into the future, they affect their own destiny and that of those to come. We are those butterflies. 6th Century Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu said, “The journey of a thousand miles be-gins with a single step.” Through the lens of the heroine’s path, the virgin’s promise, and other narratives, the thousand-mile journey becomes our lives, splayed out across the years of our existence. We look back to see where we’ve been and how far we’ve come, then venture on, knowing that just as fog clears when we move forward, our next steps will be revealed. Like my grandparents, we don’t need exact certainty to enter uncharted territory. Whether our movement is physical or centered on the journey within, we only have to believe in the possibilities and stay awake to the signs that illuminate our path, guiding us to precisely where we need to be. *** Join Kimberly this summer for a fun and interactive exploration of long-established and recently-outlined journeys. In Venturing Beyond the Hero's Journey: Exploring the Paths of Heroine, Healer, and Seeker, a five-week writing workshop starting June 12th, we’ll investigate these narratives through their appearance in literature, film, poetry, videos, podcasts, and the lives of public figures. Through creative writing prompts, and other interactive exercises and activities, we’ll discover how aspects of these paths exist within our lives and can be used to inform and enrich our own writing projects.(C) Copyright wow-womenonwriting.com Visit WOW! Women On Writing for lively interviews and how-tos. Check out WOW!'s Classroom and learn something new. Enter the Quarterly Writing Contests. Open Now![url={url}]View the full article[/url]

B The Happy Vagina by Mika Simmons August 4, 2022 · Pavilion Books Nonfiction The Happy Vagina is a fun book, primed for gift giving, punctuated with inspiring quotes and featuring bold, fun illustrations. I took one look at it and thought, “I should give this to my daughter.” My daughter took one look at it and said, “It reminds me of those very ‘You Go, Girl!’ pamphlets about periods.” This book, with its teeny tiny nibble sized portions of important health facts, is either too darn peppy, or just the right amount of hot pink feminism depending on your point of view. If the cover makes you smile, you’ll probably like it, and l learned a few things from it. The Happy Vagina is a short book that uses large type and plenty of white space, so you can read the whole thing in one or two hours. It’s full of useful facts about the female body in terms of reproductive health and fun trivia. Did you know that in addition to the G Spot there is also a A Spot, a U Spot, and a V Spot? I did not! Did you know that technically ‘menopause’ only refers to one day (“…the exact day when a woman has not had a period for twelve months”)? Or that the first movie to use the word ‘vagina’ was The Story of Menstruation, released by Disney in 1946? This is a very cis-centric book. In the introduction, the author specifies that “This book is about those who identify as women but all humans are welcome here.” It’s the only time any acknowledgement is made of transgender people. The rest of the book uses the terms “women” and “female.” I realize that saying “People with vaginas” can get cumbersome, and I don’t expect the author to use that every single time. Nor do I expect her to tackle the large range of reproductive health issues that are specific to transgender people given the small scope of this book. However, I would have liked to have seen a few more acknowledgements throughout the book of the fact that not all women have vaginas, and not every person with a vagina is a woman. The omission of transgender people is especially glaring given that the art is quite inclusive in terms of race, age, and size. This book is very pro-sex, pro-masturbation, pro-taking-charge-of -your-own-health, pro-unapologetically-choosing-the-life-that-is-right-for-you, and pro-body positivity. There’s a resource list in the back and a short guide to some socio-political issues one might take action on, including links. The issues specifically discussed are those of period poverty, female genital mutilation, ovarian cancer, and abortion rights. This is a fun starter book with a feminist outlook. It’s not detailed, but hopefully people who want to learn more will find what they need in the reading list and in links sprinkled throughout the book. I see it as more of a launching pad than a complete guide. Although the sheer positivity was a little too much for my grouchy soul, and I wanted it to be just a tiny bit more intersectional, I still think it would make a good gift for a young person who needs access to information about reproductive health and who is mature enough for specific content regarding sexual activities. In the words of Maya Angelou, who is quoted in the book, “When women take care of their health, they become their own best friend.” View the full article

OPENING SCENE - Introduces protagonist and antagonist, tone, and foreshadows the primary conflict. Evie was having nightmares. Nightmares so hellish her body sweat and toes curled. Nightmares so hellish she grew afraid of the dark. Muma took to turning off her light long after she'd fallen asleep, so Evie could slumber in ignorant bliss of the shadow standing in wait to overtake her. So why was the light on now? She was sure it was far past the hour when her grandmother usually retired for the night. And yet the shock of pearly luminescence gleamed behind her closed lids as she lay still under her blankets. Flickering. Pulsing. Damn it all to hell. The sandbox was set in an open field, and Evie knelt in it, busy building a castle with three little girls dressed far too fancily for such an endeavor. She had built sandcastles many times before, on weekend trips to the rocky shores of Cornwall. But at 16 she thought she left such juvenile activities behind her. Yet her she was, with bucket and shovel, having (she hated to admit) a fairly pleasant time. Bleeding monkeys! With a painful gasp, Evie pulled back her hand as blood pebbled the tip of her finger. She'd spoken too soon. There was something sharp beneath the surface of the sand and it had punished her for her incessant immaturity. The three young girls sitting across from Evie were cruel little things. They didn't so much as look up when she gasped; showing no concern whatsoever at the damage done to her hand. In fact, they appeared most adamant about finishing the castle, their concentration unparalleled. And yet...could this sculpture be called a sandcastle? It looked like none that Evie had ever seen, but rather resembled a towering spike. Yes, it was a spike-- massive and endless, with a peak that pierced the ethos. Curious. Carefully, Evie rummaged through the sand, one-handed, until she found the foul object that had caused her harm. It was a broken piece of glass with a crackling fissure down its middle. She had only a moment to wonder why there'd be glass in her sandbox before she caught sight of her reflection in it. The rupture split her face into two perfect pieces. Very curious. The fractured reflection did not look altogether connected. Was it just her imagination, or did her left eye blink several seconds after her right? "What are you looking at?" They'd never spoken before, but that wasn't why Evie jumped at the sound of the young girl's voices. No, what frightened her was their timbre. Their intensity. Their union. Their voice -- for she knew now that they were one -- was rough, broad, and entirely unlike those of little girls. "Oh my God!" Their faces were not that of little girls either. Now looking up at Evie, she took in their wrinkled bulbous skin, their endless eyes. They were demons. Demons sats before her. And the demons began to chant... But what they were saying she couldn't hear. Evie heard nothing over the sound of her own screams. Her legs, in their betrayal, ceased function almost instantly, and so Evie instead dragged herself from the sandbox, from the chanting demon girls, from the ever rising spike, and her inexplicable torn reflection. A piercing streak of radiance blazed through the heavens above them, blinding all in sight. It’s a dream. She woke with a start, and seconds later Evie's anxiety kicked in as it'd been wont to do for the last several weeks. With the mannerisms of a bear arising from hibernation, she stretched, recoiled, and let out a slew of groggy curses. The pile of books previously at the end of her bed were now scattered on the floor, disturbed by her movements. Naturally, Muma was already awake; undoubtedly popping garlic pills while screeching through her morning hymns. Evie paused to take it in-- the high pitched, off kilter shrill of praise and jubilee. My God. She hated early mornings more than almost anything else in the world. While Muma would insist that she was just being dramatic, Evie was fairly certain she was correct in her assessment that she suffered from hypersomnia. How else could she explain waking up dead tired after a near ten hour rest? The floor was cool to the touch as Evie wobbled unsteadily from the bedroom to the bathroom, stopping just once to wince as her grandmother (Queen of the Morning People) attempted a most ambitious key. The sun embraced every corner of the bathroom, bouncing off the old white tiles that covered the flooring and walls. Pushing aside the Swedish ivy spilling out of the basket above her cabinet, Evie (as was her custom) scrutinized her reflection in the mirror. "Bleeding monkeys." She whispered, taking in her matted mane. The bulk of kinky curls that spilled over her shoulders were in daily combat amongst themselves. Today, no one had won. And there dozens of casualties that took the form of gnarled knots. The damage was beyond salvaging through the fine art of finger combing, so Evie instead jumped into the bath for a tepid shower. Ten minutes later, naked and unencumbered, she wiped down her mirror to take in her now fully saturated curls. Then she went to work for the second time at detangling them. However, in the midst of her arduous effort, Evie's bathroom door swung open, hitting against the wall, and Muma -- squat and squinty-eyed -- stood forbiddingly at the entrance. "Dear Lord in heaven!" Evie jumped back and crouched into herself in a failed attempt at maintaining propriety. "Muma, what are you doing?! I'm naked!" She grabbed at the nightgown she'd dropped on the floor, pulling it over her head as her grandmother tutted in annoyance. "Well I certainly didn't expect that." She said unapologetically, although she took care to avert her eyes. "You didn't expect me to be naked in my bathroom?" Muma kissed her teeth. "Stop asking silly questions and put on some decent clothing. We have much to do today." Much to do-- of course. Muma always said they had much to do when what she really meant was that she'd pile Evie with busy work throughout the day to keep her occupied. And the chores, if anything, were becoming steeper which Evie was sure was punishment for being disagreeable. She and her grandmother often butted heads (they both had willful personalities) but their rows had recently heightened in their intensity. And when they'd argue over the things that they'd normally argue about -- namely Evie's lack of freedom -- Muma would plow her with chores, and in turn the girl would imagine that she was trapped in a fortress much like Rapunzel. Even more, in this fantasy her grandmother was not her grandmother but a wicked shapeshifting monster. And when they'd argue she'd take her true form of a spindly, albino, black eyed creature near 6ft long. This fantasy both frightened and amused her. Satisfied that she had adequately disrupted Evie's morning, Muma -- a short plump woman -- her black silk cap placed eschew on her head, left the bathroom as she came-- abruptly. Back in her bedroom, Evie absently rubbed her hand against her chest. She'd recently recovered from a massive case of heartburn, which, doubled with her anxiety, was a most unpleasant experience. She then paused to re-stack the books that she'd knocked over earlier that morning. Treasure Island, Frankenstein, The White Witch of Rosehall, her diary (which she never kept up with), and her all time favorite, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Finally, she plopped back down on her bed, her wet curls scattered about her. Why am I so tired all the time? She wondered. It must be the nightmares. Her eyes set on the one long crack in her ceiling. If Evie stared at it for too long it'd start to resemble a meteor, boundless and thin as it pierced through the heavens. Her mind drifted back to the demon girls in dresses. It was them that had told her that she was dreaming. Curious. Thinking back on their singular voice she found that it was indeed coarse, demonic, and endless. And yet still...most familiar.

Chapter 1: Lost in Fog The air was filled with a thick and oppressive industrial fog as Constant worked. It hung across the workcamp in a uniform haze almost suffocating in its intensity, forcing Constant to breath slowly throughout the day lest he find himself gasping helplessly for breath. Was this fog the work of the Panathema Box and its opening, or was it merely the work of mankind’s industrial greed? The answer was beyond Constant’s vision. The pun was almost funny. Constant was busy hauling. It was the job that had been given to him by the Assignment Bureau three weeks ago. He had been visited by one of their agents, in a military uniform, flanked by two soldiers, and taken to the workcamp of the assignment where he had been staying ever since, slowly making his way through his job along with the other thousand or so fog-obscured faces who had been doing the exact same thing. They were all strangers to him, and most were wearing the same Arcane Umbra military uniform as those who brought him here: that of their city state’s current military regime. Given the terrible political situation the city was in, a responsible citizen might try to do more than merely cling to their life and survive, but unfortunately surviving seemed like all that Constant could do or be good for when his horizons were just 3 feet in front of him. In that sense, he was the same type of garbage as the rotting plant matter he was so busy moving around. The fog was better now than it had been a few weeks ago, when even the ground and his footing had been obscured. At this point, he could finally see the flat stone ground that he was standing on, and finally see the situation for what it was. During his first few days at the camp, Constant had questioned why they hadn’t been given so much as a wheelbarrow to help them with their work and whether such a tool would help the company complete their assignment faster, but after three weeks he was just thankful for their lack of tools. If there were still things to be hauled around, then the government would still employ haulers, and if they still employed haulers, one of those haulers might still be him, and he’d be able to stay in this job instead of slipping into something worse. In hindsight, it was still better to be here, than in the smoke-filled cul-de-sac of his former home, where the pollution had gotten so thick that living without sickness had become impossible. This smoggy workcamp, in a ruined city district, was where the new government had put him, along with all of the other troublesome cases. At the midpoint between its valued citizens and its criminals, this was where their military government decided to send those various people who they just didn’t want to deal with, through the remains of its legal system or otherwise. Hauling was his occupation. In the truest sense of the word, he was definitely being occupied. Or at least, his body was. His mind wandered off, far afield, to sunny skies and open fields where all of the buildings were intact, such distances from his monotonous work that part of him often forgot he was even at this pointless workcamp: particularly the main part of him. There, he would forget the reality that he had to pull himself, along with the rest of this trash, this broken biomatter and rotting wood, from one end of this yard to the other end for, hopefully, the rest of his life. In his mind, he was flying through the clear and empty skies of his youth when even the urban landscape was covered with trees, flowers and fruits, rather than the rotting carcasses of green plant-life that he was now putting away. In Constant’s mind, those moments in his work where he’d be allowed to zone out and think of the past, were the only salvation he had left. Yet surprisingly, despite how often he daydreamed, it was in a moment of rare lucidity, while he was concentrating on his hauling, making sure he wasn’t stumbling over the spillage from another person’s bag, that he heard the voice of his salvation. “You ought to get out of here.” Constant had never heard any of the other workers talk in the middle of their shift before, so the voice itself was startling. Glancing around, he couldn’t see anybody. If somebody was talking to him, with a voice that unmuffled, their shadow ought to be visible at the very least. The fog which surrounded them had already demonstrated how good it was at blocking out sound. That voice… Had he just imagined it? “I mean, in a certain way you did. Telepathic sounds aren’t technically experienced, so a person’s imagination has to do at least some of the heavy-lifting on that front.” There was a voice in Constant’s head. He had reached the point where he was hearing things. “Yes, to the first one. No to the second one. I mean, as I just explained, you’re not really ‘hearing’ anything. You’re really just imagining that you’re hearing something. The meaning of my words might be coming from me, but everything else is coming right from your head right now.” That wasn’t what Constant meant. “Oh, come on… Let me throw in the occasional comedic misunderstanding to lighten the mood a little here. After all, if I have anything to say about it, we aren’t going to stick with this depressing mood for any longer than we have to.” So, Constant supposed, this being in his head must simply be the incarnation of his futile desires. How depressing it was, that they’d grown so overwhelming while he wasn’t paying attention, that they caused him to start hearing things that didn’t exist. “Claiming that I don’t even exist is pretty ridiculous…” the voice continued, responding to Constant’s inner thoughts. “Even if I was just a voice in your head, I’d still be part of existence since I’d still exist as a voice. And for the record, I’m definitely not a thought or mere figment of your imagination, and I’m definitely going to get you out of here.” Once again, Constant glanced around, but there was nobody there. Only an encroaching screen of misty white, enveloping him from all directions. Suddenly aware of the moments he had wasted, paused in the middle of the hauling route, and the sting of the warden’s punishment for when he arrived late to the drop-off point, Constant picked up the pace. He’d have to escape if he wanted to avoid punishment for his time waste. “Great! To freer pastures we go! The empty sky awaits us! First we’re going to have to sneak around the guards… Then we’re going to have to mask our presence in order to escape through their barrier…” *He’d have to escape from this fog and apologize to the warden if he wanted to avoid punishment for his time waste. “If you really want to avoid that punishment, the only surefire way is to get out of here. You want to escape with all your heart, don't you? Well, I’m saying that we should try with all of our heart to get out…” Yet it was a matter of life or death against guards who held the power to kill him on sight. He longed to escape with all his heart, but since the outcome of such an attempt was obvious, wouldn’t it just be better to live? “If it was only you, maybe the outcome would be obvious, but if it’s the both of us trying to accomplish it…” Both Constantine and his imaginary friend? Wow. What a team. “I told you! I’m not just imaginary!” Then what exactly are you going to contribute to our escape cause, my ‘not-just-imaginary friend’? “Well a plan, for one. The fog on days like this would be perfect for trying to run away.” Literally anybody could tell you that. It wouldn’t matter though. In a perimeter outside of the worksite, defogging magic was used to make the fog much thinner, and thus wouldn’t hide him from the perimeter guards. “Not if we used a little fog-magic of our own…” The fog magic that Constant didn’t have the ability to perform, and had never learned? “Just watch.” And suddenly there was a change in the air, and the fog, which had been moderately thick before, became so dense in the area immediately around Constant, that he couldn’t even see the shadow of his hand when he put it an inch in front of his face. How? Constant wondered. How had this voice managed to casually use fog magic if it was only part of his head? “Well it’s largely about spreading your mana around an area with a uniform distribution, and then masking and altering it into the shape of opaque gasses. On the other hand, it’s also largely due to my skill in obfuscation and my ability to hide the inconvenient truth, even when it’s in plain sight” the mystical voice explained, as if that was remotely close to answering Constant’s question. He continued though, only giving the minimum information necessary to avoid argumentation. “Suffice to say, this isn’t my only trick… I’m going to get you out of here safely! Trust me!” The trust that Constant felt was pretty minimal. He didn’t even know what this voice was, and couldn’t wrap his head around what its arrival ultimately meant for him. You only ever really heard one type of story about powerful voices communicating with poor disenfranchised people in this world. Given its lack of introduction, it only made sense to assume that this being was not any sort of god, but given the lack of any other feasible alternatives, maybe it was a divine being. “Sure. Whatever. For the sake of simplicity, let's say that I am.” Of course, to say the least, gods themselves often couldn’t be trusted either. Consider Kriegott, their society’s current God of War and the entity responsible for… “My god, there's no pleasing you, is there… Look: you have somewhere to be, don't you? If we don't escape soon, the warden will start to question where you are and we’ll be searched for. We can clear up this entire question about what I am and whether you want to stick with me long term later, can't we?” It was true. They’d need to hurry, but now was definitely the wrong time to escape. “What is it now? We have a solid initial plan, don't we? You trust me, right? I have answers for what to do once we get out as well. But we really need to go before people start to get suspicious.” But the problem was, if a worker like Constant made their escape before dropping their cargo off, then what exactly were they supposed to do with the huge bag full of rotting garbage they were carrying around? A giant pile of evidence to be abandoned in the middle of the path, way too large to sneak out or to hide anywhere on the flat surface that was Constant’s hauling route. A hauler could only hope to make a break after he dropped his cargo off, while his bag was empty and while it could be made to hide under his shirt or within his pocket. Anyone could tell you that. “Uh… Ok. Yeah. Yeah; fine.” the probable god said, “But right after dropping off our cargo here, we’re going right out, ok? If we delay this for any longer people might start to notice something different about you.” Constant agreed, and with a newfound sense of energy and purpose, he started to sprint forward, towards the shape of the looming free skys which marked out his best life. … Constant was in pain. “Oh; don't worry! We should be almost out…” Constant was in serious pain. “Well you can still walk, right? The punishment spell they just used on you doesn’t cause you any bodily harm, right? I was paying attention. It only creates the sensation of pain within your body, made to stimulate your pavlovian response and discourage you from defying orders. It’s not like anything could be broken or sore, just from that.” Constant didn’t know. Maybe his body wasn’t literally dying after that round of severe punishment he got for being five minutes late to the drop off point, but it certainly felt like he was, and frankly, it was taking all of his focus just to keep his feet from falling out from under him at this point. “*Sigh*. This is why I didn’t want you to go back. If I used my abilities, I’d be able to hide you pretty effectively, even from pursuers, but if you can't even walk any more without noisily wincing, there's not much I can do about it. Which was really dumb. It seemed that this voice of his was severely underestimating their city's current dictatorship and the sort of pursuers that might be called to come after them once they noticed his escape. Many had tried to escape before, but historically, merely having a god in your corner was never going to be enough to defy the might of the great city of Arcane Umbra. An article in the paper from some months ago came to mind. There had been pictures of recently caught deserters, hung up for execution, long before Constant had ever been sent to the camps. The new government had been so gleefully proud to broadcast how many people they had caught trying to run away, how powerful and capable these people had been, and the numerous methods which the Bureaus of Pursuit would use to catch them. This mysterious voice in my head hadn’t seen any of those, right? “Well, I can’t claim to know everything about that, but surely your absence at work would be way more conspicuous than a spare piece of equipment laying around…” On the contrary, he had existed as just another body within that work camp, unnamed and unimportant. If Constant didn’t show up to the drop off point in a timely manner, the wardens would assume that he was having trouble, or slacking off, or had been pulled over at the pickup point and had been harassed. Rather than searching aimlessly through the thick fog, they would’ve just waited for him to reappear again and punished him then, but abandoned equipment was much easier to track and stumble over. That was the sort of thing he’d actually seen reported. If a fully loaded abandoned bag was found without his corpse attached to it, they would be tracking his scent, his trail, and his mana within minutes. “What? So your fellow haulers would’ve ratted on you?” the voice asked, apparently not realizing that they had ratted on others and had gotten awarded for it. “Do you seriously doubt their basic sense of comradery?” the voice continued, apparently not realizing that they had never once spoken to him. “Have you seriously never felt any sort of comradery with them?” It asked, as if it felt ashamed by Constant’s justified caution for the people whom he had never properly interacted with, many of whom wore the same military suits of the new regime, and thus worshiped Kriegott, the new god of war. “I’ve got to ask, was there seriously nobody who you tried to trust?” Whatever the case, now that the incline of the ground was starting to go downhill, Constant couldn’t help but wonder if they had passed the soldier’s perimeter detection range yet, and could thus release the incredibly dense layer of fog that the voice had surrounded him with. “Not yet, and please don’t change the topic. This is incredibly important. Probably more so than escaping in the first place. Putting aside the few haulers you saw in the camp who also had military uniforms, why did you never actually try to befriend or trust anyone!?” ‘What good would it even do!’ Constant thought, red-faced and practically yelling into his mind. What did it matter that he had never relied on anyone to keep his discontent secret and his hatred disguised?! What did it matter that he had no friends to eventually betray him or acquaintances to pick on him and extort him for whatever they thought they could get away with?! To be frank, even if such a trusted soul did exist in the camp, he wouldn’t want to bother them with the burden of that knowledge anyway! “Well for one, one of those people might have been capable of helping you in the same way that I did…” The voice said, though Constant felt that was kind of ridiculous. “I’m serious: fog manipulation is not some sort of rare and exclusive ability. It comes naturally to people. Statistically speaking, several of your fellow haulers in your worksite must have once learned it.” But realistically speaking, if someone had the ability to do some magic as advanced as fog-manipulation, they wouldn’t have been sent to such a low security camp in the first place. “It’s not like it’s easy to check whether someone is capable of such a thing…” *But realistically speaking, someone with an ability like fog magic would’ve found no use in me as a companion anyway and would’ve already left. “Think about it this way. Would you have left without the push I gave you? Even if you had the innate capability?” And wasn’t that a point. Embarrassingly, Constant probably wouldn’t have. What a confusingly inept state of things for the captors who had otherwise seemed so imposing just a short while ago. In the end, if that was true, it seemed like the structure of their workcamp must’ve logically maintained itself mainly through fear and it seemed as if Constant had hardly known anything after all. And that confusion applied to all things. At this point, rather than figuring out the nature of the voice within his head, Constant wondered if he would ever even learn the voice’s name… “You wouldn’t want to know exactly what I am. You wouldn’t like the details.” the voice confessed as Constant sank deeper into the fog rolling down the hill. “But if you want a name, you can call me Prometheus, and for me it’s a matter of pride and gratitude: I'll definitely get you to where you want to go. In fact,” Prometheus intoned, dispelling the fog that covered them in a dramatic flourish, “I think we’re out.”

Story Statement: Confined to a pointless labor camp in the fascist apocalyptic city-state of Arcane Umbra, Constant desperately desires to see the sky once again, and one day, upon discovering a mysterious voice in his head, he begins to believe that it might be possible. In pursuit of his goals, it seems as if Constant might have to escape or even overcome his fascist government, but if Constant really wants to come to terms with his desires, and what exactly they mean for his place in the world, the only truly effective method is to change his perspective. Antagonist Forces: The most obvious outward antagonistic force within the novel is the city-state’s government, a power which has almost entirely been overtaken by its military. Constant thinks that it has its priorities backwards, focusing too highly on projecting the image of power, endangering its own citizens with its incompetence. In the government’s eyes, Constant’s first crime was living outside of the easily protected and monitored inner city, and his lack of patriotism towards them is his second crime, for which he’s been sent to an unpaid work camp to keep him occupied and out of trouble. Escaping being his third strike, Constant spends most of the novel fearing the government, and due to his innate misunderstanding of it and its motives, the government ends up feeling all the more terrifying as an antagonistic force to him. In contrast to the government, the results of its actions in the form of the Panathema box monsters, cut a more classically evil figure, inspired by the myth of Pandora. And yet most visible in the novel is the antagonistic force of Constant’s own defeated outlook, which would decry any attempted liberation as useless. Title Ideas: An Attempted Liberation of the Soul Constant Prometheus Falling Empyrean Fire Comparisons: In tone, I’d say that the primary source of inspiration for my novel was the world of 1984 by George Orwell. And indeed, the city of Arcane Umbra deliberately comes off as a sort of Orwellian Fantasy location, what with the authoritarian militaristic government, the destruction of nature, the degradation of infrastructure, the lack of sustainability, and the bleak sense of political hope for the future. My novel’s government may lack in comparative subtlety and all-encompassing sight, but as reality can prove, these aren’t strictly necessary for a regime. Another difference with 1984 is the addition of a tone-morphing audience representative in the form of Prometheus who would encourage the drive for self-determination and adventure from within the main character’s head. In terms of character concept, Prometheus is a bit similar to Bartimaeus from the Bartimaeus trilogy. Looking back, the origin for him probably came from a mangled idea for a similar companion, (hopefully) sharing Bartimaeus’s satirical edge despite being less physically present and more even benevolent. Conflict/Core Wound statement: After hearing a voice in his head urging him to escape, a young man must break away from his labor camp and find it within himself to hope for the future, even when he’s lost faith in the use of trying to actively improve his life. Inner/secondary Conflicts: Throughout most of the first act of the story, Constant holds inner conflict for exactly how much he should trust the voice in his head; an unknown and worryingly naive force which seems as though it’s trying to help him. His main secondary conflict is largely in argument with this voice on what exactly he should be doing in response to the various dangers they face. Constant’s stance on violence, and the power with which to use it, is also a source of inner conflict for him. His mother’s voice and her peaceful ideals often getting tested by the terrifying reality of the world he finds himself in and the goal he finds himself trying to accomplish. There is more than one secondary villain who must be overcome with conflict in a man-vs-nature sort of setting. And of course, there is Constant’s inner struggle against his core wound: the lack of trust he places in his own ability to actively improve things. Setting: Constant’s world is a world of magic and potential and has been from the very beginning right up through the ages to this pseudo-modern day. Through the power of a soul and the force of a trained personality, all types of different people can utilize magic for some form of powerful effect: from spontaneously pulling clean drinking water out of the air, to growing trees out so fast that they seem to attack you, to conjuring a barrier around a city with such thorough application that not even a soul could escape. Around the world, the development of magic is being treated just as any other sort of science, though for more ease of access, the prevalence of religion and the blessings of “Gods” who can perform such miracles for you, are even more common. Unfortunately, Constant’s immediate surrounding region, the city-state of Arcane Umbra, seems as if it’s gradually turning into a hellscape through mismanagement, bad decisions, and a pseudo fascist government hell-bent on maintaining the legitimacy of its own power. The city’s democracy has been almost completely eroded away. Freedom of religion is on the decline with the government sanctioning a new and violent god of war. The peace and high standing it used to have in the world have been brought low by the recent war and many of its suburbs have been bombed to rubble. It’s legacy of ancient evils have been pried open in a disastrous political stunt, releasing both monsters and smog. Revolutionary fervor stirs in the sewers and the enormous magical barrier that should be keeping all of their enemies out is instead keeping all of these problems in. Now, stuck in a fog of distrust and uncertainly, confined to a purposeless workcamp, and walking the ruins of his once great city, our main character Constant can only find a sense of hope and motivation through urging of a mysterious voice in his head named Prometheus, who straddles the line between a god and a monster but manages at least, to be a friend.

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It’s our first Wednesday Links of June! Happy Pride everybody! Both my partner and I are queer people, so we’re trying to nail down our Pride plans. We’re very torn between going to a Pride celebration and seeing a coworker’s queer colorguard performance in a parade or honestly, being introverts and celebrating amongst ourselves in front of our AC unit. Warm temps in New England aren’t the kindest when you live on the second and third floors and don’t have central air conditioning. Do any of you have Pride plans? … Sarina Bowen, along with a large collection of other authors, has contributed to a queer anthology for Pride month, with proceeds supporting various LGBTQIA+ causes. … Those who are entrenched in the knitting community may have already heard the news, but a knitting events organizer unexpectedly closed their business and has left many small business owner and hobbyists in a financial bind. … It’s Pride month and my heart goes out to all the queer people in places passing legislation that directly threatens their lives. I loved this essay from Florida author, Kristen Arnett, about loving a place that doesn’t seem to love you back. … 500 Queer Scientists is a great resource for finding or networking with queer people in STEM, whether you want to find a role model for yourself or a young one in your life, or if you’re trying to find a speaker for an engagement. … I shared this on the SBTB Discord (if you’re a member of the Patreon, you get access to this awesome hangout space!), but I love this parody of “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.” … Don’t forget to share what cool or interesting things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way! View the full article

Charif Shanahan and Morgan Parker. Photographs by Rachel Eliza Griffiths. I read Charif Shanahan’s Trace Evidence two ways: first as a new work by a friend, written through and about what I know to have been some of his most harrowing years, during which he recovered from a near-fatal bus accident in Morocco, and also as the second collection of a phenomenal early-career poet with a dangerously skilled command of craft. I read it as an intimate reader, and as a distant one, and both times, I experienced a sense of introduction. When we talked on Zoom, Charif told me the book “feels like a birth,” and that feeling of birth, or rebirth, permeates Trace Evidence, as a deepening and an extension of the questions in Shanahan’s first collection, and as an announcement of self and purpose that feels brand new. —Morgan Parker PARKER I love the last line of “Trace Evidence,” the book’s titular poem: “For us here now I will be the first of our line.” It’s such an exhilarating sentence. Can you tell me about that idea of deciding to be a beginning? SHANAHAN It is only we who get to tell others who we are, even when—and perhaps especially when—we are inside a system that empowers those around us to tell us who we are. Put another way, choice and agency are questions I’m thinking about in this book. I think the agency here, inside that pronouncement, is in moving deeply into what had already been waiting for me. One could call it an acceptance, but it required first a clearing of the fog such that I could see this reality and not exactly choose it, but choose to name it and step into it and inhabit it. One of the things you and I have talked about a lot is how layered my family story is as regards race. It wasn’t just white parent, Black parent; it wasn’t just light-skinned, dark-skinned; it wasn’t just American Blackness, non-American Blackness; it was all these things at once. That was part of what was so challenging while growing up. But it’s also the beauty of how my family holds race. For me to be able to say that it is beautiful is, I think, a mark of tremendous evolution and growth. PARKER There’s so much in your first book and in Trace Evidence about passing publicly—passing to white people and passing to Black people. But underlying that is the passing or not-passing that you have done in your family. Can you tell me a little more about those family dynamics? SHANAHAN Well, as you know, I was born to an Irish-American father and a Moroccan mother. In simplistic terms, we’re a mixed, Black-white family. However, for many reasons to do with the layers of empire in the North of Africa, my mother identities as an Arab, and not as African or Black, though she is perceived as both. And so my brothers and I—and I should speak for myself … I wasn’t exactly caught between “whiteness” and “Blackness,” growing up, but between whiteness and a Blackness that didn’t recognize itself as such. Many of the poems emerge from that dissonance, and I think it’s important to be vocal about that racialized experience, despite the privilege I possess. Privilege is where the narrative ends for a lot of people. People might say, “You’re light enough to pass, so what are you talking about?” But I want to put forward a narrative like that in Trace Evidence because racialized experience is so much more complicated than we seem to think. If you have a body, you are racialized. Everybody is having a racialized experience. There are trends within those experiences, of course. Primary narratives. And if Black people are being tried and killed in the street, that obviously needs our urgent examination and action. But I think we can most effectively reckon with race if as many narratives are on the table as possible. Take, for example, the racial violence I’ve experienced in my life. Folks might think, “Who’s going to profile you? What kind of violence are you experiencing?” But it’s a disservice to the complexity of the conversation to assume that violence is only, or even primarily, bodily, or that it comes only when race is optically perceived. PARKER So are we talking about racial individuality? The importance of the individual experience within what is usually regarded as collective, categorical experience? SHANAHAN Yes—and about how an individual’s pathology is shaped around race, not only in terms of implicit bias and the associations one is conditioned into believing, but also in terms of what one recognizes as belonging within a racial category in the first place. I was Zooming with a white mentor of mine whom I help with her poems—she’s a critic by training and is writing poems about her whiteness and very movingly working at decolonizing her mind, at more than seventy. It’s amazing to witness. I’m honored. It’s holy. I raised with her one day the fact that race has no basis in biological or scientific fact, even though it firstly is about the body and the way that the body presents. As I put language to this point, Morgan, I am acutely aware of you. While I think of us as two Black people, it’s also true that each of us is having very different racialized experiences, due not only to phenotype, but to other aspects of embodiment and selfhood, and I’m sensitive to the differences … But what I had wanted to explore with my mentor is the idea that we are taught to see in a way that is particular to our cultural context, such that it’s possible for somebody to look at me and say, “That is a Black man, period” and for somebody else to look at me and see something else. Of course, I am who I am, to myself, in every room I enter, so I have had to learn how to hold both mes at once—who I know myself to be and the self I become in another’s imagination. PARKER Can you tell me about how you use metaphor in this book? How do you think it connects with the content? SHANAHAN The way I think about metaphor, about figuration in general, is less about equation than about seeing how far apart the two things can be while still having a tether, still having some connective tissue. At its most compressed, narrative can function as metaphor. The opening poem, “Colonialism,” for example, comes from memory, and its narrative is unresolved. It ends with the mother’s question—“Elesh, mon fils? Why // Would you do that to me?—”—which might appear to be the exact question a mother would ask in that situation, but because the title demands that you read the scene in relationship to, or within, a colonial or a postcolonial context, the question deepens. The narrative becomes a metaphor, a conceit even. PARKER I would also point to the poem “In the Basement of Sears & Roebuck When for the First Time I Pulled My Hand from Her Hand and Fled,” where the metaphor doesn’t appear on the line level but on the poem level. It’s the narrative. The child running away from his mother and hiding, as that poem’s literal scene, is emblematic of the adult-child’s individuation around core identity questions—which I think has to do with how philosophical your poetic voice is. How does your intellectual self jut up against your experience, when you write a poem? SHANAHAN What I’m trying to do is identify, distill, and reimagine experiences that may represent a particular set of existential or social circumstances so as to foreground the speaker’s interiority in a way that is inseparable from those circumstances. And I’m writing as a way to work against our separateness, by demonstrating the effects of that separateness. I believe the lyric poem can take you to languagelessness—that, ideally, is where it would leave you—and that we can be unified in or even by that “silence.” The paradox of the lyric poem is that the medium is language or breath, but it takes you to a place that we can’t exactly language. I believe that in my bones. PARKER Is that state bodiless? SHANAHAN It’s egoless. In the encounter of the poem and the reader, who brings their own history and imagination to the text, a connection is formed. The reader plugs into an experience that is born out of a subjectivity that is not their own, which might be completely different from what they know. And yet, if the poem does its work and takes you to that place where you are without language but inside feeling, then there’s some kind of merging or bridging that’s happened. That feels important to me, both as a poet and as a reader of poetry. I look for poems that can give me, or take me to, that experience. It’s like that Anne Sexton poem that we’ve talked about … PARKER “The Truth the Dead Know”? SHANAHAN Yes! There’s a phrase— PARKER “Gone, I say!” I can’t believe I don’t have that tattooed yet. SHANAHAN That’s the next one. But there’s another line in that poem, “and when we touch …” PARKER “… we enter touch entirely.” SHANAHAN Exactly. That’s what happens, right? Or can. Entering your feeling, your experience—I am entering yours, and then we are there together as one somehow. And it’s brief, it’s fleeting. Then we walk away from the poem and return to our ego and our self and our life—to the dishes, or the emails. For me, this experience is powerful, but particularly because the subjects that I’m exploring exist to divide. The very function of race was to separate, to classify, to hierarchize in the service of capital—I don’t mean to be reductive, but it all depended on a compartmentalization of the species, right? So how can poems, especially poems that emerge from our separateness, manage to bring us back to that sense of connectivity and oneness? That they can and do seems miraculous to me. PARKER Do you see that as part of a purpose of not just your poems but your life? SHANAHAN I do believe that talking about these nuanced dimensions of race is part of my life purpose. At least that’s what I believe right now. I don’t mean to say that no one else is doing that, but it’s part of what I can do in this life, in this body. I’m working on a nonfiction book to extend the work that I’m doing in the poems, through prose, with hopes of reaching a wider audience. Thinking about purpose, there’s a poem in the book, “Thirty-Fifth Year”—the one that starts, “Dread remains. I keep looking / for a thing I can’t name, though I try / ‘purpose,’ ‘meaning,’ ‘presence.’” Purpose is the first item on that list. What else are you going to do with all this but try to make it meaningful by making it known to people outside of your particular experience? I remember at one of the Cave Canem retreats—during my first year actually, when I was writing some of my first poems about these themes, which went into my first book—I read that poem “Clean Slate.” PARKER I was there. I remember sitting on the bench and feelings were occurring! SHANAHAN Yes! And afterward Toi Derricotte came up to me by the food table. She looked at me plainly and said, “Baby, you were extraordinary.” And I was like, “Thank you, Toi. Oh my God, that means so much!” Then she gets real, Toi. She turns into the Oracle, takes my hand, leans in and says, “And what else are you going to do with all that pain, baby? What else are you going to do with all that pain?” And walked away. And I was so open and porous and unapologetic about my healing and where I was in my life that I fully received her words. Even as the work was never exclusively motivated by pain and isn’t at all anymore. PARKER Thinking about Toi and our Cave Canem brethren and sistren, a lot of what we shared was, “I already have this pain. Let me show it to you so that maybe you can see yours in a different kind of way.” And that, especially in the context of race in the U.S. and what it has done to us interpersonally, is all we can do. You know what I mean? SHANAHAN I do. I will never forget the opening circle that first time I was at the Cave Canem retreat with you. Everybody was going around, introducing themselves, and when you introduced yourself, you said, “I’m just trying to get out from under.” Twice. And that stayed with me because what you were saying—or what I heard—was, This poetry thing, this practice, is part of something larger, part of a healing that is pursued and expressed, holistically, in different avenues of my life. And this is just one piece. PARKER Generally, that is what it is—so let’s find the avenues in which to do that. No one can say more than me about how only therapy is therapy. I haven’t written a poem in a while, but I’m doubling up on the therapy. The idea of writing saving you as you’re going through something I don’t believe in at all. Even though Trace Evidence is such an accomplishment of so much physical and intellectual and spiritual struggle and pain, I don’t think that you would say that the writing of these poems was what got you through, would you? SHANAHAN No. You know what got me through? Love. And love is the thing I believe I’m trying to touch, walk us around, in my poems. Love in various expressions. Maternal love. Love of self. Love of community. Love of culture. Even country, potentially, in the case of the mother figure, who has fidelity to her country of origin. Love got me through that bus accident, the surgeries, the months of convalescence. It was astounding to see: the way that Black poets from the Cave Canem community all over the globe rallied around me; the way that my ex-partner, Nik, and his mom and friends in Zurich took turns visiting me in the hospital; the way that my buddy, Alan, flew his ass from Brooklyn to Zurich to hold my hand at the fucking hospital bed. That. It’s easy to say these are poems of identity. But for me, what’s inside that—and it’s related to the lyric poem being able to bring us to one another—is that love is the cost. The cost of our separateness is the loss of love. PARKER It’s striking that all this was born out of incredible trauma. SHANAHAN Yes, the occasion of that rallying around me in love was my nearly dying. But tomorrow’s Monday, and what’s stopping us all from doing that for one another again? What is in the way? In-it-togetherness is a core value for me. And I think it extends from the ways I experienced a kind of psychological exile in early life, as if I were nowhere and no one. There’s that short poem in the first section of the book, called “Exile,” in which I write, “You think I take from you? I do not take from you, I am you.” I couldn’t believe that more powerfully or more deeply. Let me just say one last thing about purpose as it relates to love. When I was on that bus and it lifted onto its two left wheels, and I thought I was at the end of my life … The first thought I had—and this is in the long poem “On the Overnight from Agadir”—the first thought I had was, “My work. I haven’t done my work.” PARKER No flash before your eyes? SHANAHAN None. I was like, wait, my contribution! And maybe that’s love. In the form of books, friendship, mentorship, partnership, ordinary empathy and compassion—all the forms it can take. There is something specific and particular that I have to do here and I haven’t done it yet. PARKER Maybe purpose, then, is the action of love? SHANAHAN I like that a lot. Charif Shanahan is the author of two collections of poetry, most recently Trace Evidence. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and a Fulbright Senior Scholarship to Morocco, he lives in Chicago, where he is Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Northwestern University. Morgan Parker is the author of the young adult novel Who Put This Song On? and the poetry collections Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, and Magical Negro, which won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award. Parker lives in Los Angeles with her dog, Shirley. View the full article

A Princess in Theory A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole is $1.99! This is the first book in her Reluctant Royals series and this seems to be a series that just keeps getting better with its books. Many readers loved how Alyssa writes consent, agency, and all sorts of other awesome and empowering things. However, some warn that this book takes several chapters to get into the swing of things. From acclaimed author Alyssa Cole comes the tale of a city Cinderella and her Prince Charming in disguise . . . Between grad school and multiple jobs, Naledi Smith doesn’t have time for fairy tales…or patience for the constant e-mails claiming she’s betrothed to an African prince. Sure. Right. Delete! As a former foster kid, she’s learned that the only things she can depend on are herself and the scientific method, and a silly e-mail won’t convince her otherwise. Prince Thabiso is the sole heir to the throne of Thesolo, shouldering the hopes of his parents and his people. At the top of their list? His marriage. Ever dutiful, he tracks down his missing betrothed. When Naledi mistakes the prince for a pauper, Thabiso can’t resist the chance to experience life—and love—without the burden of his crown. The chemistry between them is instant and irresistible, and flirty friendship quickly evolves into passionate nights. But when the truth is revealed, can a princess in theory become a princess ever after? Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Gouda Friends Gouda Friends by Cathy Yardley is $1.99 at Amazon! If you’ve listed to literally any podcast episode I’ve been on with Sarah, you probably know I love cheese and I’m just tickled by the heroine’s dedication to dairy. This seems like a fluffy, small town romance that’s light on angst. Two high school BFFs reunite and endeavor to fix each other’s lives in this geeky romance from the author of Love, Comment, Subscribe. Tam Doan dumped her boyfriend after he threw away her gourmet cheese. Sure, it’s a little more complicated than that, but the point is, he had it coming. Newly single and unemployed, Tam calls up her best friend from high school and utters the emergency code word—goldfish. Next thing she knows, she’s on a plane back home. Josh O’Malley was a troubled, unconfident teenager. Now he’s the successful owner of a multimillion-dollar ghost kitchen. Tam, his high school BFF and fellow member of the Nerd Herd friend group, was instrumental in building his self-esteem. When she calls him out of the blue, he jumps at the chance to return the favor. Josh and Tam immediately get to work fixing her life—but again, it’s complicated. Their close friendship was always a lifeline between them; a blooming romance might confuse things. Still, at least one thing is for certain: their chemistry is un-brie-lievable. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. The View Was Exhausting The View Was Exhausting by Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta $2.99! I mentioned this one on a previous Get Rec’d for hardcover romance readers, though I believe it’s coming out in paperback soon. Lots of tropes here – fake dating, celebrities, and friends to lovers. Daisy Jones and the Six meets Crazy Rich Asians in this escapist, swoon-worthy debut novel of a famous actress embroiled in a fake tabloid romance, confronting the challenges of being a woman of color in Hollywood and the notion that she might actually be in love. Faking a love story is a whole lot easier than being in love . . . The world can see that international A-list actress Whitman (“Win”) Tagore and jet-setting playboy Leo Milanowski are made for each other. Their kisses start Twitter trends and their fights break the internet. From red carpet appearances to Met Gala mishaps, their on-again, off-again romance has titillated the public and the press for almost a decade. But it’s all a lie. As a woman of color, Win knows the Hollywood deck is stacked against her, so she’s perfected the art of controlling her public persona. Whenever she nears scandal, she calls in Leo, with his endearingly reckless attitude, for a staged date. Each public display of affection shifts the headlines back in Win’s favor, and Leo uses the good press to draw attention away from his dysfunctional family. But pretending to be in a passionate romance can only lead to one thing . . . trouble. So instead they settle for friendship, with a side of sky-rocketing chemistry. Except this time, on the French Riviera, something is off. A shocking secret in Leo’s past sets Win’s personal and professional lives on a catastrophic collision course. Behind the scenes of their yacht-trips and PDA, the world’s favorite couple is at each other’s throats. Now they must finally confront the many truths and lies of their relationship, and Win is forced to consider what is more important: a rising career, or a risky shot at real love? THE VIEW WAS EXHAUSTING is a funny, whip-smart modern love story set against the backdrop of exotic locales and the realities of being a woman of color in a world run by men. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. Digging Up Love Digging Up Love by Chandra Blumberg is $1.99 at Amazon! This looks like a cute romance between a baker and a paleontologist. Have you read this one? It came out last year. From debut author Chandra Blumberg comes a playful, heartfelt romance about chasing your dreams and finding love in the process. Alisha Blake works her magic in the kitchen, creating delectable desserts for her grandfather’s restaurant in rural Illinois. Though Alisha relishes the close relationship she has with her family, she can’t help but dream about opening a cookie shop in Chicago. She may be a small-town baker, but Alisha has big ambitions. Then a dinosaur bone turns up in her grandparents’ backyard. When paleontologist Quentin Harris arrives to see the discovery for himself, he’s hoping that the fossil will distract him from a recent painful breakup. Instead, he finds Alisha—and sparks fly. The big-city academic and the hometown baker seem destined for a happily ever after. But Alisha is scared to fall in love. And Quentin’s trying to make a name for himself in a competitive field, which gets even more complicated when the press shows up at the dig site. For love to prevail, the two may have to put old bones aside—and focus on the future. Add to Goodreads To-Read List → You can find ordering info for this book here. View the full article

Die Hard had started with a man named Roderick going to see a movie in 1975. Novelist Roderick Thorp, a burly, bald former private investigator best known for his novel The Detective, bought a ticket for The Towering Inferno, sat through 165 minutes of Paul Newman and Steve McQueen trying to save a large ensemble cast of tanned celebrities, and then went home and had a horrific nightmare. Just as the image of a Terminator rising from flames first came to James Cameron in a bad dream, so Thorpe that night imagined a lone figure trapped in a high-rise, fleeing men with guns. He expanded the image into a 1979 sequel to The Detective, Nothing Lasts Forever, in which a retired NYPD officer named Joe Leland has a very bad Christmas Eve inside the forty-story headquarters of a company called Klaxon Oil. After battling ten invading German terrorists, he drops their leader, Anton Gruber, out of a window, though his daughter dies in the process, too. It got good reviews, with the Miami Herald even anticipating the inevitable big-screen adaptation (“Nothing Lasts Forever is truly a one-man show that would require an actor of Sinatra’s stature to do it justice”) and saluting the cleanness of its high concept (“The building is sealed off; the gang is in an impregnable position, except for Leland, the one-man army, who hides on the top floors above them”). Yet the book would bounce around Hollywood for most of a decade without drawing much interest. Finally a young executive named Lloyd Levin, who worked for Lawrence Gordon, discovered and began championing it. Gordon brought in screen-writer Jeb Stuart. And over two and a half months, Stuart turned Thorpe’s dense first-person prose, which featured its hero monologuing at length on CB radio and offering long sections of exposition about Klaxon Oil’s sideline in arms dealing, into a screenplay. “I worked with what Bruce was,” says McTiernan. “We had to work out: what are the circumstances in which you can like this man?” Much changed, starting with the title. Where Nothing Lasts Forever conjured up images of a James Bond movie or Rock Hudson melodrama, Die Hard left little doubt as to what to expect. At John McTiernan’s behest, the ten terrorists became ten thieves masquerading as terrorists; it would allow them to shake off the novel’s fug of solemnity and make it a caper instead. The earnest dialogue and flat supporting characters became similarly zesty, even more so once Steven de Souza was brought in for a pass. And then there was the hero, no longer Joe Leland but John McClane (it had been “John Ford” in early drafts, after Stuart saw a mural of the Westerns director on the Fox lot). Stuart had already made him younger than his sixty-year old literary equivalent, but originally envisioned him as suave and sophisticated, with a slick sports coat. This would have worked for Richard Gere, but once the un-suave Bruce Willis was official, McClane was retooled all over again. “I worked with what Bruce was,” says McTiernan. “We had to work out: what are the circumstances in which you can like this man?” Overhauling the script, they leaned into Willis’s working-class roots—in his pre-acting days he had been a truck driver and a security guard at a nuclear power plant—and his man-of-the-people charm, honed while working as a bartender in New York, famous for his bone-dry martinis and signature cocktail, Honey I’m Home (the ingredients for which Willis has never divulged). McClane would now begin the movie by declining an invitation to sit in the back of a limousine, getting in the front with the driver instead. He wears a white A-shirt under his flannel shirt, like a stevedore. And beneath the bravado, the grins, the “Yippee-ki-yay, mother-fucker,” is a guy who’s scared shitless. McTiernan, who saw Die Hard as akin to William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (albeit with fewer fairies and more C- 4), envisioned McClane as a wounded soul. “The secret is that he doesn’t like himself,” the director says. “He thinks he’s a loser. His wife thinks he’s a loser. And he’s just doing the best he can. He’s being a smartass to rise above the pain. And Bruce being a smartass in that circumstance becomes an act of heroism. The audience can like him for it.” Adds de Souza: “Vulnerability became a feature, not a bug.” And as the hero changed, so did the villain. A generic heavy was transformed into the polar opposite of a beat cop: designer suit, superior sneer, citations from Plutarch (“Benefits of a classical education”). Hans Gruber—Anton no more—was becoming an action-movie equivalent of the arrogant, expensively dressed bankers to whom Willis once served martinis. Albeit, thanks to the casting of Alan Rickman and the citrus-sharp dialogue, Gruber was a villain so fun that you’d actually want him to walk away with $640 million in bearer bonds, if it weren’t for the guy in the A shirt. “It’s like that cartoon about the mouse looking at the eagle and giving him the finger,” McTiernan says, summing up the two opposing forces. And on November 2, 1987, the mouse and the eagle entered Nakatomi Plaza for the first time. __________________________ Excerpted from THE LAST ACTION HEROES by Nick de Semlyen Copyright © 2023 by Nick de Semlyen. Excerpted by permission of Crown. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. View the full article

Moïra Fowley is the author of three critically acclaimed YA novels, and a part-time witch. She is half-Irish, half-French, and lives in Dublin. Moïra has a Masters in Popular Literature from Trinity College Dublin and wrote half a PhD on teenage vampires in young adult fiction before leaving academia when her first book sold and her first baby was born in the space of a few months. Since then, she has spent her time writing queer magic realism for young adults, raising two witch babies, and reading tarot. What does the end of the world look like? We all think about this – we all have our own ideas. From the great floods that echo biblical stories to atomic bombs and zombie outbreaks, we all think ‘what would I do?’ and ‘what would it look like?’ In this lingering and uncanny collection, Fowley constructs some beautifully bizarre scenarios, feeding off our darkest impulses and desires, forcing us to confront the end of the world as we know it. ‘Its not too late, Melissa answered. Women have always had children at the end of the world’ I have to say, Fowley knows her audience. Yes, the cover is pretty. Floral and feminine, the perfect piece for that ‘bookstagram’ feel – but when I walked into Waterstones in Liverpool the last thing I expected was to see a giant poster: ‘HER FACE ITCHES, DEEP FRISSON AT HER HAIR-LINE, TINGLE OF BURN ALONG HER JAW. SHE HOOKS HER NAILS RIGHT IN, DIGS UP AND UNDER, SHUDDERING LIKE SHE’S COMING, BREATHS FAST AND HARD. SHE GIVES ONE OF THOSE BELLYGROANS, FINGERS, WORKING FASTER, DEEPER IN UNDER THE SKIN. HER WHOLE FACE PEELS OFF AND IT’S LIKE A BENEDICTON.’ Suffice it to say, I immediately purchased a copy of Eyes, Guts, Throat, Bones with absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into. Fowley’s collection is difficult to define by genre, but I would categorise the stories under: Horror, Body Horror, Queer Fiction, Weird Fiction, Speculative Fiction, dystopia (and probably more). Lena Taylor (Waterstones) points out that Fowley’s collection starts with an ‘evocative banger,’ then begins introducing themes such as ‘not being listened to.’ Whilst the colloquial ‘banger’ might not seem appropriate – I insist that it is. Each story slaps, bangs, kills and fucks you in a slightly different way from a different angle. You become seduced but repulsed, amused but terrified and continuously satisfied, yet hungry for more. ‘There is always music playing and people talking, shouting, dancing, living, at all hours of the day and night. It used to be Adeline’s favourite thing about living there. The monster Doesn’t like it.’ Fowley introduces you to the monster in the mirror, the Demogorgon in your dreams and the witch that whispers in the wind. Sorry to warn you, but that the monster Fowley introduces you to, is you. Each story handles a different perspective on the end of the world, with twists and turns that you might not expect. From the face steeling activities of one drifting girl, to a ‘haunted’ mound of Earth or flowers falling from the sky when two girls fall in love, Fowley does more than ask ‘what if?’ Fowley confronts issues concerning ideological constructs surrounding Gender, love, Morality and identity. She screams ‘fuck off’ at ideological expectations and deconstructs performative heteronormativity. With her wildly delicious stories, Fowley makes you question the world, but you might not like the answers. ‘Night time was the for noises they could never dare to make in the day’ One of my favourite stories, is called ‘The Summoning,’ in which ‘Somebody. Not Katie,’ summons an interdimensional demon from a hell world. By accident. And that demon just happens to be ‘Girl Shaped.’ ‘Kind of. Hot-girl shaped.’ Not Katie (but definitely Katie) accidently summons the demon, at her college. It seems Katie is not the most popular student and has suffered some adversity from her shallow classmates. The Hot Demon offers to help Katie, and it ends in an absolute bloodbath. Whilst you might think – wow that escalated quickly – yes, it does. However, it reminded me of times when one might fantasise about seeking revenge on those who have upset you and what that revenge might look like (not that I have imagined summoning a demon, but the sentiment remains the same). ‘Only corpses stay’ Another great story is the ‘interval’ of the collection, called ‘Sad Straight Sex at the End of The World,’ Which is EXACTLY as vanilla and mundane as the title might suggest – but it is outrageously brilliant. Fowley has created a collection like nothing I have ever read. I half expected something akin to Lucie McKnight Hardy’s ‘Dead Relatives,’ and whilst if you enjoyed Hardy’s collection, I imagine you will enjoy Fowley’s, I do not feel they are cut from the same cloth. Fowley’s collection made me feel human, I haven’t decided it that is a good thing yet. I strongly recommend you read Fowley’s work, let your Eyes glide over the words, let your Guts churn with unease, leave your Throat exposed and let your Bones weaken as she walks you home, hand in hand, ready to introduce you to the monster you keep yourself hidden from. Yourself. Eyes Guts Throat Bones is available now from Orion Publishing, order your copy HERE The post EYES GUTS THROAT BONES by Moïra Fowley (BOOK REVIEW) appeared first on The Fantasy Hive. View the full article