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Snippet from the Current WIP

(From the beginning of the novel I’m currently about halfway through)

It was Fish Day at Archie McPhee’s.

In another kind of store, Fish Day might have signaled a sale on salmon or fresh herring.
Here in the novelty store, against a backdrop of bins filled with rubber eyeballs and plastic beetles, it meant the appearance of the enormous Wheel of Fish.

The vast, obviously-handmade cardboard construction took up three square yards of space. The clerk kept knocking things off shelves as she maneuvered it among the aisles in order to let customers spin, leaving a trail of hula-shirted dashdboard dolls and a flock of pink plastic flamingoes scattered in her wake.

Each customer she managed to present it to spun, winning, in rapid succession, a rubber shark, a glow in the dark squid, and goldfish earrings.

Casey grinned, watching a teenager don the last item. This was what she loved about Archie McPhee. So wonderfully random.

Picking up a basket, she wandered the aisles, fingering band-aids printed with bacon, an action figure of ancient Greek philosopher Socrates, a golden mustache, an enormous plastic raven that squawked “Nevermore, Lenore” when you pressed a button. While she touched things, she sent her luck sense whispering out, tasting each object’s subtle flavor.

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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."

~K. Richardson

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Clarion West Write-a-thon Progress: How Deep Is Red

Kittywampus
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As many know, I’m participating in this year’s Clarion West Write-a-thon. Last week I let people choose the title of the story I’d write for the write-a-thon’s first week, and the people’s choice was “How Deep Is Red”.

So here’s a chunk from this morning’s writing so far. The story will be the sequel to “Sugar”, which is available in Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight. If you’re interested in getting to see the whole story, then I invite you to support me in the Write-a-thon! I’ll be sending a weekly e-mail that will include the stories that I write for the Write-a-thon over its six-week course, so for a small donation, you’ll be getting what I’d like to think of as high quality fiction. 🙂

Laurana used a bowl of mercury to watch her lover’s battle. The thick, silvery liquid showed the ships from above, a fat-bellied Tabatian merchant, and the two pirate ships, lean-lined and fanged with cannon, converging on it from either side, the wind behind them making them race forward.

Tiny toy ships. The name of the merchant was Saffron Butterfly The pirate ships bore no names, only figureheads of women, one with a flaming skull for a head, the other with bracelets and necklaces of snakes. Flame’s Kiss and The Serpent.

The liquid didn’t transmit sound. For that Laurana relied on imagination: the deep-throated boom of the guns, the crash of cannon balls, the shouts of despair and defiance.

The Kiss neared the merchant. Laurana leaned forward, trying to find Cristina among the mass of pirates: some readying spidery hooks and ropes, others with hackbuts raised and aimed, all braced for collison, another sound dependent on Laurana, whose mind rendered it down to the taste of salt on one’s lips from the relentless wind, the crash louder than anything one had ever heard. There. A purple bandana tied across orange curls. Cristina, swinging herself aboard the pirates’ prey.

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