Angie and I drove from Philadelphia to Atlanta in one, long day. We drove up slowly, stopping along the way to visit with family members. But, we had to get back for her job, so we had to make the trip back in one. Along the way, I experienced an amazing, terrible allergy attack when we stopped for a picnic in Virginia in a freshly-mowed park. My eyes are still recovering.
I'm sore. If you're waiting to hear from me, I'll start getting through my e-mail this afternoon.
Before I left, I got some excellent news from Poland!
I have accepted an offer from Polish publishers Proszynski for NEVER KNEW ANOTHER! Polish fantasy fans, I hope, will be pleased to discover the world of Dogsland. I'm sure they'll do a great job! This is my first work to be translated into a foreign language, and I'm very excited to work with Proszynski to help the book succeed!
Yay!
Want to read it before it goes to Poland?
In other good news, Penelope wove her husband back to life in 19 years. Arachne wove greater than this.
Arachne is live at the Journal of Unlikely Entomology's Inaugural Issue, leading off the exciting new publication!
[quote]
If it bends, it can be woven. Hair braids, rivers braid, and fingers fold together in prayer. Cars crash into each other; the metals bend around the engines. With a strong enough machine, cars could be woven into each other — crumple zone to crumple zone, gas lines snaking like Hermes' staff between two twisted engine blocks. I'm too disciplined to stop what I'm doing to doodle the weaving of cars on the naked particleboard walls of this café. In a few weeks, I don't know if I will still have that discipline. I may lose my mind if I keep this up.
I sit in a corner of an abandoned café, and weave endlessly, endlessly, with all the threads and yarns and found things from the empty café. The weave of my own life bent me here. My back is hunched over. My fingers are long and nimble. I never abandon my weave.
Dr. Paris, Karen if we're being friendly, brings me food. She used to be my professor. I haven't been to class in a long time. She brings me new threads, new yarns. She lingers long enough to ask if I've heard Nicole's ghostly voice falling into my weave, yet. I don't answer her. Nicole is gone, and I'm trying to save her. I'm trying to catch her in my weave. Until I'm done, I have nothing to say.
[/quote]
Go over and read the rest?
This story is part of a whole series of stories I wrote, including Gaia in the Raleigh Review, that feature surreal re-imaginings of women and monsters and monstrous women from Greek Myths, that should start appearing here, there, and everywhere. Maybe, if we're lucky, someone will put them all together into a whole collection of stories.
Right, I'm going to go do laundry and take care of all the exciting things that need taking care of after a road trip...