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Was fiddling this for a writing retreat I’m doing in September. This is from the beginning.
June, 1976, Indiana
On Indiana summer evenings, the fireflies begin their dance as dusk creeps over the landscape, reducing green to gray and black and brown. Their lights are yellow as sunlight or neon; they blink among the hedges and maneuver a few inches above the tall grass. There are five varieties of fireflies native to the Northern Indiana region. Each signals prospective mates with specific timing, and no four second interval firefly would approach a six second interval one.
On the same summer evenings, the mosquitoes whine, though only the female ones, hovering before landing on unsuspecting arms and ankles, draining as much as they can before either taking off, heavy and bloated with their sanguine plunder, or else are splattered and exploded by their victim when he or she notices not the sting of the needlelike proboscis being inserted, but the tickle of their feet among the fine, downy hair arms.
Other creatures come out later: soft-nosed rabbits and the tiny bats that flitter around lampposts, devouring the night insects swarming there. Possums drag their heavy bodies along, investigating garbage cans and quarreling with the raccoons come to plunder. There are even rats, in some places along the St. Joseph River, water rats that move through the green-brown water, searching among the slimy weeds that coat the bottom. But the fireflies are already there: they have marked the coming of the night, lighting as though protesting the approaching darkness.
Michigan Street crosses down from the state of Michigan, comes through Northern Indiana and splits one of its larger cities, South Bend, like a splayed bird. Corn fields and alfalfa lie further out but here the street slashes the city’s belly, unfolds layers like the dark verge of Notre Dame University, the struggling downtown, the unsavory brew further south of town as you headed down to the smaller towns: Lakeville, Lapaz, Plymouth. Far to the south it reaches Kokomo, later Indianapolis, then the nether region of the state, which hosted the revival of the Ku Klux Klan in the twenties.
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Here’s another chunk from “A New Board is Elected at Villa Encantada,” (working title) a darkly humorous story about a very odd condo complex that I’ve written several stories about already. It’s been fun filling out the complex’s roster a little in this story, and I’m going back to revise one of the unpublished ones with some of these details. Like the talking cacti.
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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.
They arrived in a variety of ways. At first in the mailboxes, in accordance with the bylaws.
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!
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(This is from the yet untitled steampunk-new weird-horror piece which I’m thinking will be the first week’s Writeathon story and which I also think may end up at novelette length.)
Doctor Larch has a pet crow named Jonah. He says he raised it from a chick, but I have trouble imagining Doctor Larch patiently nursing anything, feeding it mealworms or bits of meat or making sure it was warm or sheltered. If he has such a faculty for tenderness, he doesn’t exhibit it towards any of the patients.
Today he made an appearance to supervise Mr. Abernathy’s removal from his chair.
They should have realized Abernathy was never moving from it, but the orderlies probably welcomed not having to lift him back and forth. They left him in there till his flesh grew into the wicker, and today he screamed while they cut it away and Doctor Larch watched. He wears a pad on his shoulder for the crow to shit on, but it misses a great deal of the time, and the Doctor’s black coat is clotted with gray and white on its backside.
It’s hit or miss whether or not Abernathy will survive. I don’t know that he cares, either way. Before this, all he did was stare out his window, day and night, looking eastward, towards the mountains the white men call the Cascades.
There was thunder last night. Not natural thunder, but echoes from the battle being waged far out to sea and among the San Juan Islands. We’re close enough to those battlelines that many people have fled Seattle. Others have stuck it out, saying that the lines will shift again, in a different direction.
I have stayed. But where else would I go?
Enjoy this sample of Cat’s writing and want more of it on a weekly basis, along with insights into process, recipes, photos of Taco Cat, chances to ask Cat (or Taco) questions, discounts on and news of new classes, and more? Support her on Patreon.
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The rewrite of the first book, whose tentative working title is Beasts of Tabat, is off to Seth the fabulous agent, so I’ve started messing with the second book. It’s got the love triangle I mentioned in an earlier post, and I’m contemplating the somewhat odd strategy of having it start, chronologically, at a time point somewhere in the middle of the first book, and show some of that action from a different viewpoint. Crazy? Maybe, but I think it’ll be interesting to try.
At any rate, once I gathered up all the stuff snipped out of the first volume, I found myself with a solid 45k worth of words, and it’s encouraging to think that puts me halfway to a first draft. The second is tentatively titled Hearts of Tabat and while Bella and Teo make appearances, there’s some new voices as well. I hope you all will enjoy them as much as I have.
Other stuff includes a story rewrite that I need to finish up for Glitter & Mayhem, another story that’s due in a couple months, and the usual slew of other stories I should finish. Blah!
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Summer wound down, and we entered heat-mad August, days of sweat and sunshine, so hot you didn’t really want to move. But somehow, when evening started falling and the air cooled off a little, your energy would return.
And sometimes one of the places to burn some of that off was by driving up to the Michigan dunes, building a fire and getting drunk on the beach. I went up one evening with Anna, and a bunch of other friends from high school. I didn’t particularly like them or want to hang around with them, but Anna wanted it, and she made me promise to come.
It was what I had expected. A lot of beer and a couple of bottles of Jaeger getting passed around. We knew a spot that was technically private property, but the owners of the house far above were rarely there to disturb us. We sat on the soft sand around a fire made from the wood we’d brought and I watched the stars far out over the lake, wondering when I could gracefully excuse myself and slip away.
That was why I was the first person to see them. Somet, out in the water, coming towards our fire. At first I thought they were fish, or seals, or something, not people. But as the heads came up out of the water, I realize they were human. Women, three of them.
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Here’s Anna and I all through high school: a geeky Hispanic theater boy and a bushy-haired white girl whose geekery took the form of endless D&D games and scores of tattered lurid paperbacks.
Here’s us a few years later, both in the same community college. Still best friends, still sharing trials and tribulations, always with an unspoken question between us, all on Anna’s part, because I knew the answer.
And here’s when I finally answered it, and broke Anna’s heart.
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Still revamping this, since it insists on struggling from novelette length towards novella. Here you go.
Friendly Village loops and winds, tiny roads scattered among the trailers. Every patch of landscaping is different ““ cacti surrounded one mobile home, followed by a forest of rhododendrons, then dahlias that might have originated in my own garden.
Up along the creek ran a little road, unlined with homes. It led to a trailer of a peculiar pearly hue that might have been mistaken for grime at first. It was a Nordic style, almost, simulated white pine beams, rough wrought ironwork on the walls. Its landscaping was bare: a line of rocks, two tiny fir trees, one slightly larger than the other.
Outside, a massive rock crouched beside the mailbox.
In Greek mythology, such stones were sacred to Aphrodite. But I didn’t think a Greek God lurked within.
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I have a couple of stories that were requested, so I’m picking away at those. One’s a military fantasy piece that I’m setting at Hadrian’s Wall, right around the time it was built. Another’s for the Glitter and Madness anthology, and it’s a fun structure I’m playing with, through which a murder gets told, revolving around a lesbian were-seal. Im finishing the revision of “The Threadbare Magician,” which is a novelette I’d like to get sent off this week. I’ve also got some nonfiction stuff.
I’m also finishing up (hopefully today) the dark mermaid story. Here’s an excerpt:
When she got home, she went to the tanks, curious to see what progress had occurred. She’d put the coral seeds in them late last night. The seeds were globes now, made of a glossy gray material, almost two and a half inches in diameter. She could see something moving inside the globe. Its sides flexed and bulged as the thing inside it shifted. Even as she watched, it shuddered and wobbled. Whatever inside — presumably a mermaid — was eager to escape. Should she help it, perhaps poke a small hole in the side so it had something to work at? She consulted the pamphlet but it said nothing about the hatching process.
But by the time she came back to the tank, the question had resolved itself. A rent in the side was rapidly widening. Through it Petra glimpsed orange scales and pale flesh.
She checked the second tank. There the same thing was happening, although the scales were turquoise rather than reddish orange.
The globe convulsed and collapsed. In a flurry of scales the turquoise mermaid emerged.
Petra stared. She had expected Sea Monkeys.
This was very different.
The mermaid was tiny and perfect as one of the elaborate little fish that school in coral reefs, colored parrot bright. Her upper half was a tiny woman, complete with blue sea shell bra hiding the faint swells of her torso.
She called Leonid. “What are these? Are they intelligent?”
“Of course not!” he crowed, pleased at his creation having deceived her sharp eye.
“But it’s wearing clothing.”
“Look closer,” he said. “All natural coloration. Or engineered, to be more precise.”
Her fingers were tight on the cell phone as she leaned down to look into the tank. The mermaid coiled, long tail writhing in the water. It nosed among the plastic seaweed in the tank, perched atop an arch of rocks and groomed itself, running fingers through its long blonde hair.
“You’re sure?”
“They’re not even animals, really,” he said. “Think of them as little flesh machines.”
The flesh machines floated in their tanks. Petra pulled her eyes away from them.
“Very well,” she said.
That night she set two more seeds into their starting buds, one white, the other purple. It amused her to think that these were Suffragist colors, the same colors banner wearers of the 19th century had sported. She wondered what a suffragist mermaid would look like.
(As a side note, if you’re interested in the editing class that starts today, 4-6 PM PST and runs today and two additional Sundays, drop me an e-mail or a comment, because I’ve still got openings. It’s a class that’s useful not just to editors, but to writers wanting to enhance their own self-editing skills.)
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(Honestly, I have no idea what this thing’s title is anymore. But I’ve been working on the beginning today. Some of you will recognize the pov character as the gladiator Bella Kanto, although this is the first time I’ve tried first person with her. I like it. Anyhow, here you go.)
A blade straight through the air. Sidelong, slicing the snowy air in half.
Roll back on the heels, keeping the spine straight. Distance doesn’t matter, as long as steel isn’t colliding with eyeball, even if it’s close enough to brush an eyelash free.
Step step back, shift weight inside that left greave. Use the little shield, shaped like a snowflake, just as intricate. So easy to snag a blade with it, but I have to be careful with that, The shield’s just as prone to being broken as breaking, maybe even more if the blade were thick. I’ve done that more than once, Last year it snapped lucky, sent a blade flying up into Spring’s face, almost put her eye out, left a nasty gash the width of my little finger away from the orb.
Snow crunch underfoot from the still falling snow. My day, solid winter. The season of my power. The reason I wear Winter’s armor, crystal and steel against Spring’s gaudier garb, all spring blossoms in yellow and pink and blue. Like fighting a flowerbed.
No wonder I’d won for the last twenty-four years against that gaudy thing, no matter who inhabited it each year. Winter’s lines were clear and sharp and swift. The floral armor was heavier, with its lines of gold mesh over the pearly surface.
Click click click, blades testing each other. Meanwhile my arm comes out, rotates just a little to snare her swordpoint, swivels and snaps back in place, while my blade pushes forward at the same time. Don’t give her a moment to breathe, no time to think, press in fierce and hot and ardent as a yearling bull.
Enjoy this sample of Cat’s writing and want more of it on a weekly basis, along with insights into process, recipes, photos of Taco Cat, chances to ask Cat (or Taco) questions, discounts on and news of new classes, and more? Support her on Patreon.
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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."
(Science fiction, novelette) Silence. The darkness enfolds me. While my mind roams free I wonder if my body remains on the station, lies asleep in a redwood hammock, or nestles in an alien starship’s living breast?
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