[Friday Story Dissection] “Red Skein” by Angela Slatter

The Girl With No Hands Angela Slatter

Title: “The Girl with No Hands & Other Tales”
Author: Angela Slatter
Genre: Fantasy / Fairy Tale / Lore
Pages: 210
Type: Collection
Stories: 16

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What’s Friday Story Dissection?

It’s a weekly feature on the blog where I cast a more in-depth look into short stories, either in a collection or in an anthology. The idea is for these short stories to exist within the context of a loose narrative, determined by a theme, intent and story order intended by author or editor.

Anthologies have adopted detailed prompts to narrow down the wiggle space of submissions, thus creating a more focused narrative. I believe short story collections tell a larger story with individual stories feeding off and layering a top each other.

It’s my intent to break down stories to their elements – a detailed, spoiler-full review with the mandatory quotes as a base to speak about the short story collection/anthology at length. This is a practice Bulgarian literature teachers would implement, loosely translated as “analytical literary essay”, but on a much smaller scale. Plus, I intend to weave in personal digressions, so there’s that, too.
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Stories Dissected:
[1] “Bluebeard”
[2] “The Living Book”
[3] “The Jacaranda Wife”
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“Red Skein” by Angela Slatter (4/16)

“Red Skein” is the fourth tale from Angela Slatter’s breathtaking collection “The Girl with No Hands and Other Tales” and has become my favorite story as well as my favorite classic fairy tale retelling of all time. The story takes on the Little Red Riding Hood and preoccupies itself with heavy themes such as sexuality, societal acceptance and rejection, fear of change and the treatment reserved for those considered pariahs and outsiders. Continue reading »

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Jan 28

Introducing Kama Libris: Welcome to the Infinite Shelves

Kama Libris

Welcome to the Infinite Shelves!

Welcome to Kama Libris – the sensual pleasure of books!

Books have always been a special spiritual fetish since I can remember. Just the very physical presence of a book fills me with tranquility and contentment. I admit I’m terribly slow when it comes to reading, but once I have a book in my hands…

To touch, smell and run my fingers over the pages. Reading isolates me. Submerges me in pure bliss. I feel free to read as I please.

And in my freedom, I read in a lot of weird, impractical poses.

It’s exactly this special magic we’re trying to catch with the stories of a land where book shelves are infinite and reading poses mean everything.

Meet the Book Keepers!

Lyra, newcomer to the world of books, and Atticus, her unofficial mentor, scale the shelves to retrieve rare tomes and impossible volumes for anyone who seeks enlightenment… or has a coin or two to spare.

Each Wednesday, Diana Naneva, this project’s skilled artist, and I will guide you through one of the Sacred Reading Poses of the Book Keepers. Illustrated, these posts visualize and explain the pose, then discuss their point of origin and purpose.

Each post then ends with a snippet of story where the pose is seen in action.

Kama Libris has been one of those projects that lurked at the back of my mind for years and it never really seemed to be the best time to have a go at it. But once I went freelance and the concept had time to ferment, the idea was reborn and once my dear friend, Diana Naneva, agreed to do this with me, everything clicked in place. I don’t have any other ambition with Kama Libris than having fun and hopefully you’ll have fun.

The first post goes live on Wednesday, February 5th!

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Jan 23

Cartoon Network Wants You to FUCK the Power Puff Girls

IDW Power Puff Girls

That’s what I get after spending a second looking at their variant cover for PPG #6 issued by IDW’s Little line.

There is no other explanation for the cover rather than Carton Network catering to the Internet perverts to cash in on the sicker aspects of grown men idolizing characters meant for children – the way Bronies have fetishized the new incarnation My Little Pony.

Google clopping and wingboner at your own personal risk.

I still refuse to believe this cover exists as I consider Power Puff Girls to be a formative show in my childhood years. It gave me many enjoyable hours where I could finally root for female heroines who saved the girls, possessed character and was just as badass as boy heroes. That’s special and I can’t say I encounter many characters quite like the Power Puff Girls in cartoon shows today.

I got a very physical reaction when I saw this variant cover. What sort of process goes into the making of this decision.

Dirk Wood, IDW VP of Marketing, answers and it’s abysmal:

“That was actually a Cartoon Network mandated cover, by an artist of their choosing. I think they were thinking of it more along the lines of “female empowerment” than the kind of thing you guys are talking about, but certainly, we’re sensitive to the issues here.”

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Jan 20

Mushrooms in My Story: The Psilocybe Semilanceata

Psilocybe semilanceata Last week I didn’t have the chance to write about mushrooms, because DEADLINES, but the immediate danger has passed and I can return to the mushrooms.

I have already blogged about the Aseroe Rubra or as I call it – the murder mushroom monster.

Today I’m going to introduce you to a much cuter, whimsical mushroom – the Psilocybe semilanceata. Boy, what a mouthful.

But first…

Let’s see its reference in my story “The Fungi That Talk Softly” in Electric Velocipede. As this is the magazine’s last issue, I’d urge you to buy the issue as a kind thank you for the great fiction it has produced over its 27 issues.

“Upon further inspection and deduction after Rostislav’s assimilation, the Bulgarian clusters of diminutive Psilocybe semilanceata have now confirmed that this otherness manifested in the pauses between the biped’s movements.”

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Jan 19

Song for Sunday: Tiombe Lockhart “Can’t Get Enough”

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Jan 18

Saturday Inspiration: “Keep in Flames” by Alex Ferreiro

“Keep the Flames” by Alex Ferreiro

Alex Ferreiro is a Spanish illustrator with impressive skill. He has been working for quite some time and has numerous awards and exhibitions to prove it. This particular piece carries a lot of emotional impact. While it’s hard to understand what exactly is happening, there is no denying there is a lot of anguish and nervous energy, which is what makes this piece so fascinating. Obviously the painting is not meant to be understood, but rather felt and in that it achieves to keep your stare on it.

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Jan 17

[Friday Story Dissection] “The Jacaranda Wife” by Angela Slatter

The Girl With No Hands Angela Slatter

Title: “The Girl with No Hands & Other Tales”
Author: Angela Slatter
Genre: Fantasy / Fairy Tale / Lore
Pages: 210
Type: Collection
Stories: 16

—
What’s Friday Story Dissection?

“The Jacaranda Wife” by Angela Slatter (3/16)

Let’s do this. Friday has arrived and it’s time to present the third story out of Angela Slatter’s “The Girl with No Hands & Other Tales” – “The Jacaranda Wife”. Compared to the first two stories – “Bluebeard” and “The Living Book” – this story is particularly quiet and meek (or as I would explain it; there are no outright murder or torture scenes).

“The Jacaranda Wife” foregoes physical violence, an intrinsic element to fairy tale narratives before the story form suffered brutal censorship, in favour of psychological torture. The story seems to follow a predestined happy-ever-after pattern of events. James Willoughby finds one day a woman of extraordinary beauty (the story describes the woman as ‘white-skinned as the moon, violet-eyed’), who appears to be mute and without any known relations to may come to her aid. The native tribes try to explain that this woman is born out of the jacaranda tree and that they ‘bring only grief’. However, their please fall on a deaf ear. Continue reading »

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Jan 17

[Cocktail Recipe] Kelly Link’s Octopus Cuddler

Last night during my all-nighter as I was chasing down a wild deadline, I found myself tweeting in the early hours of the morning (Bulgarian time) and encountered this tweet by author Kelly Link*:

Looking up drinks you make w/ cloudberry liquor. There is a drink called Kitten Cuddler, but we do not have creme de banane. So: Golden Sip.

— kellylink (@haszombiesinit) January 17, 2014

Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, but I really started thinking about why a cocktail would be named the Kitten Cuddler (pretty random name). My brain was trying to find a correlation between kitten fur and banana crème. Anyway, somehow the conversation led to this tweet:

@HaralambiMarkov why not the Octopus Cuddler? i would try that.

— kellylink (@haszombiesinit) January 17, 2014

Which very well should be a cocktail. I strongly believed this, so I responded with this:

@haszombiesinit Give me a day and I will make you a drink recipe called just that.

— Harry Markov (@HaralambiMarkov) January 17, 2014

And this is the story of how I got around to inventing Kelly Link’s Octopus Cuddler at around 5:30 in the morning while still having a mile to go with my work and caffeine coursing through my overworked brain. I’m calling it Kelly Link’s Octopus Cuddler because she is the original inspiration behind the recipe.

I’m Not Dead (Yet)

I’m not dead. Things have gotten a bit quiet and I will return for the next review in my Story Dissection series, but until then, I have to really, really focus on some deadlines. Currently I have to look like this:

What a freelancer does.

Give me ten day and I’ll be:

Face of bliss. If only I were born with such bone structure.

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Jan 13

The Reviews, Eligibility and Milestone Post

The Big Picture

I have read many posts about reading your own reviews and many more about awards season self-promotion. I have said a lot of sage things about reading your own reviews as in “do not read reviews” and “I’m way too shy to promote my own work”, but do I do as I say?

Far from it.

Ever since “The Fungi That Talk Softly” came out I’ve been super hyped about it. It’s one of the stories I consider a milestone in my writing as it departed from how I normally approach a story. It’s certainly a publishing milestone as it made its way into one of my prized markets.

Chances are I won’t shut up about it soon and this post aims to illuminate why.*

Back to the reviews. My reaction to learning my story has been reviewed (twice) resembled a very dramatic gif.

After all, this is a short story and the format remains often overlooked. But two people have read “The Fungi That Talk Softly” and had enough of an emotional reaction to comment on it in a really classy way.

Continue reading »

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