Last Week, This Week, All Around the Town

I’ve just started roughing out a new story, “A New Board is Elected at Villa Encantada”. I’ve written several Villa Encantada stories now, including “Eagle-Haunted Lake Sammammish,” “Events at Villa Encantada,” and “The Threadbare Magician.” In this one I’m trying for dark and funny, and thinking it will end at 4-6k words.

A few weeks beforehand, the notices would begin to appear, first as shy and scarce as first daffodils, then later in desperate profusion, splashed among all the other flyers proclaiming one candidate or another. Then the secondary wave, responses to the veiled accusations or outright confrontations from those first campaign flyers.

Later more unorthodox means intended to grab attention for their words. Printed on invisible or octarine paper, scented with sulfur or jasmine, woven through with enchantments that produced moving, illustrative images of tiny workmen laboring on the parking lot or engaged in wrenching the building skirting awry with pirate-like gestures and red drunkard’s noses. A few unscrupulous tried bullying cantrips or mental snares, but those were quickly discovered and invoked a fresh crop of warnings, legal threats, and expansions of points previously made.

If you want to read the rest of the story, you can get it, along with at least six other stories, at the end of July by signing up to sponsor me in the Clarion West Write-a-thon. Even a small donation entitles you to the stories, so please do sign up!

Here’s the afternote for the story:

This story was written for Clarion West, during the week that L. Timmel DuChamp was our instructor, and is my attempt at a screwball comedy, combined with the idea of the Bodys, which was inspired by a long walk in which my foot began to hurt, making me think about what it would be like to be able to switch body parts easily.

The story appeared in the final issue of Crossed Genres, a magazine which I was pleased to support during its existence and which went away far too quickly (although at the time I’m writing this, a Kickstarter projector looks as though it may succeed in reviving the magazine.) “Long Enough and Just So Long,” which appears in the Near volume of this collection, was originally written for a contest of theirs, but got purchased before I could send it to them.

“Zeppelin Follies” remains a story I’m fond of, particularly since I can remember the three am, story-due-tomorrow moment that led to the line, “Look, is that a zeppelin?”