Monday, October 31, 2005

Margo Lanagan/10th Time Around

If you haven't heard of her yet, you will soon. Her name is Margo Lanagan and she writes stories so good I'm in awe. She's published several books in her native Australia, but so far, the only book available in America is her collection Black Juice. Good luck finding it, though: it's being marketed as YA, and while the protagonists are young adults, these are definitely not stories only for YA. (I've yet to find it at the usual bookstores, although it is available on Amazon. I hope to pick it up this week at WFC.)

I've only read the two stories she has in the eighteenth edition of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, "Rite of Spring" and "Singing My Sister Down." Both stories involve rites of passage, in a manner of speaking. The characters are at the same time ordinary and extraordinary, familiar and completely foreign. While reading them, you have the sense that you're in another world, yet right in your own backyard. And the writing is absolutely spellbinding. Seek Lanagan out.


How many roads must a story walk down before you call it a loser? (Sorry, Bob.) I just sent out a Clarion story (revised, of course) called "Where the Vultures Feed." It's been rejected nine times previously. That's right, nine.

Why do I keep sending it out? I don't know, maybe because it's a story that's very personal (Aren't they all?), one that I believe in very strongly. It generally got good comments at Clarion and I believe the revisions have strengthened it. Maybe I'm too close to it, but I still think it's a good story. But if it gets rejected again, it's time to retire it. I've got too many other stories to write.

Happy Halloween...is there any candy corn left?

Now Playing = Bitches Brew – Miles Davis
Now Reading = Why Should I Cut Your Throat? – Jeff VanderMeer

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