Short love

27 June 2008 | 6 Comments

Jeff VanderMeer is kind enough to include me on this list of his favorite underappreciated (ETA: see Jeff’s comment to learn that I misread him, so much for words being my business…) short storytellers. I am certainly always open to more appreciation (grin). Be sure to check out the other writers on the list — Jeff’s got great taste, although I would say that, wouldn’t I? (now it’s a wicked grin…)

I am always delighted to get this kind of notice, not just because it’s nice for me, but because it’s nice for short stories to get some love. They are like dragonflies, these little packets of words — such beauty, such fierceness, such swooping dizzying aerobatics, and then phht, gone down to dust often before anyone has noticed. So thanks, Jeff, for noticing. Because if a novel is a long beautiful day, a fabulous short story is the moment when the moon breaks through the clouds and lights a path to somewhere mysterious and slightly shadowed and piercingly beautiful. The short story is a cliff from which we may be persuaded to willingly leap, if the view out there is enticing enough…

I like to leap.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, writing 

Asimov’s SF reviews Dangerous Space

27 June 2008 | 4 Comments

A lovely review of Dangerous Space from Paul di Filippo at Asimov’s SF, who also had many wonderful things to say about Nicola’s memoir.

In her much-anticipated debut collection, Dangerous Space, Kelley Eskridge can sound like Samuel Delany, Theodore Sturgeon, Fritz Leiber, or Joanna Russ, while still maintaining her own unique throaty, modulated voice. A non-trivial accomplishment indeed. These seven stories cover a wide territory stylistically and venue-wise, while all adhering to the same authorial POV that regards the world as a dangerous, delightful place, where extending oneself to others and opening oneself up to experience necessarily entails the possibility of suffering. “Strings” presents a future where music has been robbed of improvisation. “And Salome Danced” gives us an actor with some uncanny supernatural abilities. A “dust-devil” bag lady holds some startling secrets in “City Life.” Postmodern sword and sorcery is the motif in “Eye of the Storm,” while a cyberpunkish vision appertains to “Somewhere Down the Diamondback Road.” Original to this collection, the long title story is a mimetic rendition of the pop musician’s life. And finally, “Alien Jane” brings us inside a cruel mental asylum where the title character undergoes a lab-animal existence narrated by a fellow patient who might be her only friend. Eskridge’s output accretes only slowly—the oldest story here dates from 1990—but like well-aged wine, these tales decant superbly.
– Asimov’s SF, July 2008

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, news, writing 

Twenty years

26 June 2008 | 11 Comments

Twenty years ago today, I met Nicola Griffith. Since then, we have drunk a hundred thousand beers, a million cups of tea, never run out of conversation, made excellent friends, had excellent adventures. Twenty years of helping each other do her best work, live her best life, be her best self. Today we celebrate.

Nicola & Kelley 2007
Nicola & Kelley 2007

Honey, this one’s for you: Crystal - Fleetwood Mac

Do you always trust your first initial feeling?
Special knowledge holds true, bears believing.
 
I turned around
And the water was closing all around like a glove.
Like the love that had finally finally found me.
Then I knew.
And the crystalline knowledge of you
Drove me through the mountain.
Through the crystal-like clear water fountain.
Drove me like a magnet
To the sea.
 
How the faces of love have changed,
Turning the pages.
And I have changed
Oh, but you, you remain ageless.
 
I turned around
And the water was closing all around like a glove.
Like the love that had finally finally found me.
Then I knew
In the crystalline knowledge of you.
Drove me through the mountain.
Through the crystal-like clear water fountain.
Drove me like a magnet
To the sea.
 
“Crystal” - written by Stevie Nicks, performed by Fleetwood Mac

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life 

What Stephen King says…

15 June 2008 | 4 Comments

…goes double for me.
 

I look for stories that care about my feelings as well as my intellect, and when I find one that is all-out emotionally assaultive… I grab that baby and hold on tight. Do I want something that appeals to my critical nose? Maybe later (and, I admit it, maybe never). What I want to start with is something that comes at me full-bore, like a big hot meteor screaming down from the Kansas sky. I want the ancient pleasure that probably goes back to the cave: to be blown clean out of myself for a while, as violently as a fighter pilot who pushes the EJECT button in his F-111. I certainly don’t want some fraidy-cat’s writing school imitation of Faulkner, or some stream-of-consciousness bullshit about what Bob Dylan once called “the true meaning of a peach.”
 
– Stephen King, from the Introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2007

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, reading, writing 

Sad week

14 June 2008 | 7 Comments

Although I have a number of cheerful little posts lined up and almost ready to go, it seems wrong not to acknowledge that there is something going on underneath it all, and that’s why I’ve been away from the blog for so long. We did a hard thing, and now we are doing the hard time afterwards. I can’t talk about it right now, but Nicola has.

I’ll talk about it later.

But if posts are a little scrambled for a while, or something feels off, well, there you go. That’s how grief works.

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, life 

Where are the plumbers in SF?

13 June 2008 | 4 Comments

Kelley,

I just wanted to say I enjoyed Solitaire. It was gripping reading. It annoyed me that I had to put it down to deal with the plumber ;-)

Astrid

 

I’m glad you enjoyed it. Heck, maybe the plumber would like it too. Except she wouldn’t find herself very well represented…

Have you ever wondered why there aren’t more skilled tradespeople in science fiction? You can find a fair number of blacksmiths, etc. in fantasy if you poke around the spaces between the royal folks and the peasants, but there just aren’t that many plumbers and electricians in science fiction.

Okay, I’m being a bit disingenuous, I know — but really, science fiction is all about the übercompetent spacefaring folk, or the übercompetent computer folk, or the übercompetent military folk…. either the on-the-outside individual or someone who is part of a large system. There’s not much middle class on any level of SF these days. I suppose the Fringe or the Sprawl or the Hegemony are much more science fiction’s natural turf, at last in novels — all that irresistible world-building. Short fiction is much more of a playground for other kinds of jobs/competencies/categories…

Solitaire isn’t much of an exception, although at the time it was published there wasn’t a lot of SF out there that posited corporate expertise as the core competency of the hero. Still, Jackal is one of the übercompetent, and she goes from high to low with nary a pause in the middle. So there I am, smack in the mainstream of SF in one way, at least (grin).

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog, talk to me, writing 

Nicola’s reading on video

2 June 2008 | 7 Comments

In May, Nicola appeared at Hugo House in Seattle, reading two excerpts from her memoir And Now We Are Going to Have a Party (which, in case I haven’t said it loud or often enough, just won the Lambda Literary Award).

Thanks to the generosity of Nicola’s publisher Payseur and Schmidt, and the excellent skills of the filmmaker David (whose last name I hope to learn someday so I can credit him properly) Wulzen, both readings are on video. Watch below, or follow this link to Payseur and Schmidt.

See for yourself why an evening with Nicola is one of the best ways on the planet to spend some time. Enjoy!

Part One: No Pants Griffith


Nicola Griffith, Hugo House Reading, First Piece
by optimusprimeminister

Part Two: Father Lucy


Nicola Griffith, Hugo House Reading, Second Piece
by optimusprimeminister

Posted by Kelley | Filed Under blog