Theodora Goss's Blog, page 42

Writing a Romance

Yesterday, Damien Walter had a wonderful column on romance and fantasy in The Guardian, and he mentioned The Thorn and the Blossom. The column is titled "Romantic Fantasy, Fiction and Reality," and it has an intriguing subtitle: "The elusive nature of 'real' love is a perennial question for writers, and fantasy authors provide some refreshing ways to pose it."

Here's what he says about the book:

"But what if true love is rare – so rare that we might only find it once every ten lifetimes? Would you suffer loneliness for eternity waiting for love, or would you settle for something less? Such is the theme of The Thorn and the Blossom by Theodora Goss, a novel almost as remarkable for its format as its writing (but only almost). Packaged as a slipcased, accordion fold book, read in one direction it tells the story of Evelyn, and in the other of Brendan, two star-crossed lovers whose lives intersect again and again, but never quite find romance.

"Goss has written some of the most remarkable short fantasy fiction of recent years, shortlisted for the World Fantasy award for short fiction in 2005 for "The Wings of Master Wilhelm," republished in her sole collection to date, 2006′s In the Forest of Forgetting. The Thorn and the Blossom is Goss's longest work to date but even with its dual stories combined it numbers less than 100 pages. Nevertheless, it extends her fascination with postmodern revisions of myth and folktale, which has led to her being labelled among the emerging "mythpunk" movement in contemporary fantasy. The Thorn and the Blossom introduces the courtly Arthurian myth of Gawain and Elowen, and recasts it in modern garb, asking the reader to wonder if the values of courtly love could survive in the modern world."

The reason I mention this is that honestly, I never thought of myself as writing a romance when I wrote the story. I knew that I was writing a love story, but I'd been so used to thinking of romance as "category romance" – you know, the stuff in the romance section of the bookstore. And The Thorn and the Blossom is most certainly not that. But romance doesn't have to be defined so narrowly, does it? The word used to have a much broader meaning, of course: any tale told in a Romance language, one of the languages derived from Latin, rather than in Latin itself. Latin was for serious writing. French and Spanish and Italian were for fanciful tales about knights and ladies and giants. (Which, of course, The Thorn and the Blossom is about, technically. It's about what happens when Romance, in that broader sense, survives into the modern world.)

But I think what I wrote is in fact a romance, in the lower-case-r sense, so the question is, what can fantasy add to romance? And I don't mean vampires. I don't mean, what can fantasy tropes add to category romance, without actually changing its fundamental nature? Because the love interests in category romance are already fantasy figures, so there's not all that much difference between having a romance in which our heroine falls for a dashing, dastardly pirate and a romance in which our heroine falls for a dashing, dastardly vampire/werewolf/mummy. (All right, I don't think there are many supernatural romances, as these books are often called, with mummies in them.) I write this as someone who spent her teenage years reading category romances, from Barbara Cartland on, as well as mass market fantasy. And I do not write it as a criticism, simply as an observation that supernatural romance is a logical extension of, not a fundamental change to, category romance.

But what can fantasy add to the love story? Because I think Walter is asking an important question. What is real love, and what can fantasy tell us about it? One thing it can do is express the mythic dimension of love. The realist novel goes perhaps a little too far in showing us the ways in which love is socially constructed. Yes, Elizabeth Bennett does realize that she loves Mr. Darcy after she sees Pemberley. She sees herself as the mistress of Pemberley as well as his wife. In Jane Austen, love is always shot through with economic considerations. And that is a genuinely important insight into how we love, although she has been criticized for looking at love, and human motivations, so coldly. But love is also foolish, dangerous, magical. Emily Brontë shows us that in Wuthering Heights. And of course she has been criticized for giving us protagonists who essentially torture each other. In our rational era, Heathcliff is seen as abusive, his love for Catherine Earnshaw as unhealthy. But that sort of obsession, that complete desire for the beloved – that's part of love too. Pride and Prejudice is a novel; Wuthering Heights is the story of two people who belong in a Romance but ended up in a novel.

When we are in love, it feels mythic. The world feels fantastical. We feel as though we are "soul mates," meant to be together since before birth, after death. And perhaps we are. Perhaps the novel is not, in fact, the ultimate word on love. So at a minimum, fantasy shows us what love feels like – as though we are suddenly, actually, living in a Romance that has come true. And perhaps (at a maximum?) what fantasy does is show us the fundamental truth of love. That love is exactly that: the coming of magic into the world.

Reminder: Book Giveaway #1 is still going on, so if you'd like to enter, look at the rules below! Remember that it will end on Sunday night, at midnight my time (Eastern Standard Time).

Imaginary Shopping Again

I'm so tired!

I'm not sure why, except that I went to sleep late last night, and then woke up early this morning so I could go to a ballet class. (Which was a little more difficult than I'm used to, and therefore wonderful. You should always do things that are a little too difficult for you. That's how you get better.)

Tonight, I can't think of anything to write about. So we're going to do one of my favorite things, which is imaginary shopping. That means we go to my favorite store, which is Etsy, and pick out what we would buy if we could buy anything we wanted.

Here are the items I've selected for today.

The first is a print called Sea Sisters from The Art of Emily Balivet. I don't know who Emily Balivet is, but her art reminds me of the pre-Raphaelites, and I particularly like this print. So thank you, Emily!

I think we need some fairy houses, don't you? You can never have too many fairy houses. These are from Suzanne's Pottery Farm.

Of course, we need something to adorn ourselves with as well, so I'm going to choose this Opium Poppy necklace. It's from Stella Nova Jewelry and Fine Art.

To go with that, let's choose a red Icelandic Poppy hair clip from The Faerie Market, which is one of my favorite Etsy shops.

I love this linen sundress! It's from The Simpson.

And I want to add another print, The Liberation of Lady Sprout, by one of my favorite artists, Virginia Lee. I love everything Lee does, and I think this print is charming.

So there you go, that's our shopping for today. And to be honest, I'm so tempted by these items that I might try to find a way to get some of them myself, even though at the moment I'm saving my money to go to London next summer.

Reminder: Book Giveaway #1 is still going on, so if you'd like to enter, look at the rules below! Can you tell how much I like gardens? I mean, look at the items I picked out, above!

In My Mind

I heard this song by Amanda Palmer a few days ago, and it really stuck with me. I've listened to it over and over since then, which is what I do with all the songs I love. It's called "In My Mind." Here is the video:

I think the reason it struck me so much is that the person Palmer describes wanting to be in five years is pretty much the person I am.

In my mind

In a future five years from now

I'm a hundred and twenty pounds

And I never get hung over

Because I

Will be the picture of discipline

Never minding what state I'm in

And I will be someone I admire

I'm about five years older than Palmer, and I'm a hundred and twenty pounds, and I never do get hung over because you know, I'm a college professor and a glass of wine is pretty much my limit. And there are ways in which I am the picture of discipline, although that's mostly from the outside, because it doesn't necessarily feel like that from the inside.



And it's funny how I imagined

That I would be that person now

But it does not seem to have happened

Maybe I've just forgotten how

To see

That I'm not exactly the person that I thought I'd be.

I don't think I was this person five years ago. I think I was a lot more confused, a lot more afraid, not at all sure I could do what I wanted in the world.

And in my mind

In the far-away here-and-now

I've become in-control somehow

And I never lose my wallet

Because I

Will be the picture of discipline

Never fucking-up anything

And I'll be a good defensive driver

I never do lose my wallet, and I am a good defensive driver. I think my last speeding ticket was twenty years ago. I've been pulled over three times since then, once for running a red light, once for not yielding, once for turning into a one-way street the wrong way – all accidentally, and each time I apologized profusely, and each time the policeman warned me sternly and then let me go.

And it's funny how I imagined

That I would be that person now

But it does not seem to have happened

Maybe I've just forgotten how

To see

That I'll never be the person that I thought I'd be.

So I guess the question is, did I become the person that I wanted to be? And I suppose the answer is, partly. I'm less confused, less afraid. But my life still looks a lot neater from the outside then it does from the inside. Being the picture of discipline doesn't necessarily mean you are actually always disciplined. There are parts of my life that are still very much a mess.

And in my mind

When I'm old I am beautiful,

Planting tulips and vegetables

Which I will mindfully watch over

Not like me now

I'm so busy with everything

That I don't look at anything

But I'm sure I'll look when I am older

I've planted tulips and vegetables in the past. And sometimes I want to be the person who plants tulips and vegetables, who lives a sort of calm and gracious life. But I'm so busy with everything that there's no time, not even to look around me some days. So actually I'm in the same place Palmer is, in the song. Despite never getting hung over or losing my wallet, despite being a good defensive driver.

And it's funny how I imagined

That I could be that person now

That that's not what I want

But that's what I wanted

That I'd be giving up somehow

How strange to see

That I don't want to be the person that I want to be.

So I guess the question is, what do I really want? Because there have been times in my life when I thought I wanted to be the woman who planted tulips and vegetables. And I still dream of that sometimes. But my life is so full, even though sometimes it feels like a merry-go-round that is moving too fast. I don't think I could give up the messiness of it.

Sometimes we think we want to be one person, and we end up becoming another person, and it's because that's the person we always wanted to be anyway.

And in my mind

I imagine so many things

Things that aren't really happening

And when they put me in the ground

I'll start pounding the lid,

Saying, "I haven't finished yet,

I still have a tattoo to get,

It says, 'I'm living in the moment.'"

I'll never get a tattoo. I used to say it was because I don't like pain, but that's not the issue. If I could pass the New York and Massachusetts Bar exams, I can take a tattoo. It's because I don't like permanence, and as soon as I got one, I would change my mind and want something else. I don't want to make a decision about who I am, what represents me, that is supposed to last the rest of my life.

And it's funny how I imagined

That I could win this win-less fight

Maybe it isn't all that funny

That I've been fighting all my life

But maybe I have to think it's funny

If I want to live before I die

And maybe it's funniest of all

To think I'll die before I actually

See

That I am exactly the person that I want to be.

I think we become the people we actually want to be, for good or ill. So we have to stop and think about who we are, why we want to be that way, at least at a particular point in our lives. When I look back, I realize that I've made choices, all the way, that made me into a different person than the person I thought I wanted to be. Instead of tulips and vegetables, I have a PhD and a writing career.

(It is funny, isn't it?  Everything we go through.  I do feel as though I've been fighting all my life, partly with myself.)

I chose the mess and pain of getting here. I chose the life I have now, and the person I am.

When I think about where I want to be five years from now, that's where I have to start.

Remember, if you want to enter Book Giveaway #1, look for the rules below.  And I didn't make this clear, but yes, you can enter from any country.  If you win, I'll find a way to get you the books!

Book Giveaway #1

I've never done a book giveaway before.

But I've gotten permission from my wonderful publisher, Quirk Books, to give away some of my author copies of The Thorn and the Blossom, and that's exactly what I'm going to do over the next three weeks.

Here's how it's going to work:

Each giveaway is going to last about a week. In each giveaway, I'm going to choose two winners, who will get copies of The Thorn and the Blossom and In the Forest of Forgetting. (So each winner will get both books, as well as some cool bookmarks! Also, I will sign both books unless you tell me that you don't want them signed.)

(In real life, The Thorn and the Blossom is actually smaller than In the Forest of Forgetting, but anyway.)

I'm going to choose the winners by asking a question. The two people who give what I think are the most interesting answers to that question in the comments section below will get the two sets of books for each week. You can only enter once per week, but you can enter all three weeks if you would like. I'm afraid that my choices are going to be highly subjective, but we can't avoid that, can we? My apologies in advance to anyone who doesn't get a copy of the books this way, but hey, it's always worth trying, right?

So here's the book giveaway for this week.

If you would like to enter, post an answer to the following question by Sunday, January 8th, at midnight (my time, which is Eastern Standard Time). I'll announce the winners on Monday. You can enter all week long! Here's the question:

As you know, I love gardens. I describe gardens in both books. If you could create an imaginary garden, what would it be like? Feel free to describe it, and be creative!

(No more than a paragraph, please! If it's too long, chances are I won't be able to read the whole description, and that may hurt your chances.)

Post your answer in the comments section, and at the end of the week I'll choose two winners!  I'll contact the winners by email, and you'll need to email me an address so I can send you the books.  If for some reason I can't contact you by email or you don't send me your address, I'll choose an alternate winner.

This is the first time I've done something like this, so let's see how it works. I'll do my best!

Oh, and by the way, just in case you're interested, here is a description of a garden from the story I'm currently working on, called "Blanchefleur":

Just as he was wondering if he would indeed find the castle that day, for the sun was beginning to set, he saw it: in a clearing by a stream, its turrets rising above a high stone wall.

He knocked at the wooden door that was the only way in. It opened, seemingly by itself. In the doorway stood a white cat.

"Are you the Idiot?" she asked.

"I suppose," he said, speaking for the first time that day.

"I thought so," she said. "You certainly look the part. Well, come in then, and follow me."

He followed her through the doorway and down a stone path that led through the castle gardens. He had never seen such gardens, although in school his teacher had once described the gardens that surrounded the King's castle, which she had visited on a holiday. There were green lawns surrounding fountains, with stone statues of fish spouting water. There were box hedges, and topiaries carved into the shapes of birds, squirrels, mice. There were pools filled with waterlilies, in which black and orange carp were swimming. There were trellises from which roses hung down in profusion, and an orchard with pleached fruit trees. He could even see a kitchen garden, with vegetables in neat rows. And all through the garden, he could see cats, pruning the hedges, tying back the roses, raking the earth in the flower beds with their claws.

It was the strangest sight he had ever seen, and for the first time it occurred to him that being the Lady's apprentice would be an adventure – the first of his life.

The path took them to the door of the castle, which swung open as they approached. An orange tabby walked out and stood waiting at the top of the steps.

"Hello, Marmalade," said the white cat.

"Good evening, Miss Blanchefleur," he replied. "Is this the boy her Ladyship is expecting?"

"As far as I can tell," she said. "Although what my mother would want with such an unprepossessing specimen, I don't know."

This is still very much a work in progress, and it will change in the rewrite. But I thought you might like to see a glimpse of stories to come . . .

Being Human

I am a human being, and I am woman. But there have been times in my life when I've been treated like the latter instead of, rather than in addition to, the former.

Why was I thinking about this today? Probably because I read a blog post by Amanda Palmer on her wedding to Neil Gaiman, which was in the house of the writer Ayelet Waldman. So I started thinking about strong, creative women like Palmer and Waldman who do their own work, go their own way. And I wondered why it's been difficult for me to do that at certain points in my life. I think it's partly a result of growing up in the South, where there were certain things women weren't expected to do. Create their own companies, for instance. Write best-selling novels. They were expected to support their families. To be nice, to avoid controversy.

It was a surprise, coming North for law school, to find that I was being treated differently – that I was expected to be as competitive as my male classmates. That no one cared whether I was nice or not. And you know what? It was liberating.

I'll tell you two stories to illustrate what I mean. While I was in law school, I spent the summers working at law firms in Richmond, Virginia. In the South again. In those law firms, when we went to lunch, the men always let the women get into the elevator first. So, of course, all the women were at the back of the elevator. And then, when any women needed to get out, all the men would get out first, stand in the hallway until they got out, and then get back into the elevator. It was an elaborate and inconvenient ritual. And while it was meant to be courteous, it was also insulting, because it was a daily marker of difference: you might be an associate at a law firm, but you were still a woman. You were never just another human being.

The second is more personal. After I ended a relationship, the man I'd been in a relationship with decided that he could no longer speak with me, that it was too painful. And then he asked his best friend, who was also a friend of mine, not to speak with me either. And because of their relationship, his friend agreed. I thought for a long time about why that incident was so painful, and finally decided that it was because I had been treated, not as a human being, but as a woman. (Of course what I thought at the time was, are we in fifth grade? I was incredulous.) As a human being, I had a right to form friendships of my own. But as a woman, I was the one he had been in a relationship with, and that meant he had the right to ask male friends to end their own friendships with me. Yes, this too happened in the South.

It took me a long time to get past the lessons I learned, growing up in the South. To realize that I could be ambitious, could create the life I wanted for myself without asking anyone's permission. That I could speak my mind, generate controversy. That, as the historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote, "well-behaved women seldom make history." And that I had a right to want to make history, do something important. Change the world.

That, in fact, the world needed changing, and it was much more important for me to try to change it than be nice.

No wonder being treated as a human being, rather than a woman, felt liberating. (Although it was also, initially, disconcerting. I was not used to competing, to being in an environment where niceness got you exactly nowhere. Believe me, it counts for nothing at Harvard Law.) But I am inescapably both.

Women like Palmer and Waldman generate controversy. They make us talk about what it means to be a woman, and what it means to be a human being, and how to negotiate those two identities. And that is in part what I value about them and their work. I hope my own work participates, in some way, in that discussion.

I'm starting the year more tired than I would like to be. Here she is, tired Dora (if you look closely, you can see the lines under my eyes):

So I have a lot of work to do, simply on myself. Rest, become healthier. But I also want to work on all the projects I have planned. I'll tell you about them as the year progresses. I think it's going to be a particularly interesting one.

Two Resolutions

There were two things written on the last day of 2011 that particularly spoke to me. The first was a blog post by Neil Gaiman, who wrote,

"I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

"Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.

"So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

"Whatever it is you're scared of doing, do it.

"Make your mistakes, next year and forever."

I think I can promise to make plenty of mistakes in 2012. I certainly made plenty of them in 2011. And yet I learned from them – I'm a different person now than I was at the beginning of the year. In 2011, I earned a PhD and wrote a book. I edited a regular column. I published two stories and several poems. All while working as a university professor and raising a daughter. At the beginning of 2011, I was scared of life. At the end of it, I'm waiting for the next adventure. (Of course, there are things that still scare me. Most of all, right now, I'm scared that the next adventure won't come soon enough, that life will stand still. But when has it ever? I predict an adventure of some sort in the next few months.)

What do the next few months hold? A lot of work, but also the book coming out, and the effort of promoting it, and a lot of travel. And I've set myself some writing deadlines. (At the moment I'm putting together the poetry collection, and I'm about a quarter of the way through the first draft of "Blanchefleur," which is probably going to be a novella.) The next few months should be exciting, and of course I'll tell you what happens.

I almost forgot, I also have a couple of stories already scheduled to come out. The first will be "Woola's Song" in Under the Moons of Mars: The New Adventures of John Carter.

The second hasn't been announced yet, but I'll tell you about it as soon as I can. And at least three of my published stories will be reprinted this year.

The second thing that particularly spoke to me was a blog post by Rose Fox, in which she said,

"I could fill up screens and screens with doubts and fears and worries and plans and hopes but really it comes down to this: change is scary and hard. [ . . . ] When in doubt, create order and beauty."

If you do what you're scared of doing, your life will inevitably change, and yes, it will be scary because you will risk making mistakes, and you will almost certainly make some. So when in doubt, create order and beauty. I tried to do that today, at least a bit. Cleaning up, putting things in their proper places so I could work. So I could write my stories. I think my resolutions for this year are the following:

1. Do what scares you, and be willing to make mistakes.

2. Create order and beauty.

In a way, the second of those resolutions counterbalances the first. But I think I will need that counterbalance. Because when the world gets too scary, you need order and beauty around you. It makes you braver for the next effort, the next possible mistake.

Doing Publicity

Yesterday, I made a mistake: I drank coffee. But it was so delicious, a Starbucks skinny peppermint mocha, that I couldn't help it. All right, I could have helped it. Either way, I could not get to sleep until 4:00 a.m., which gave me plenty of time to work on "Blanchefleur" (the story I'm writing right now). But this afternoon I was so tired that I fell into a deep sleep, and when I woke up I was so dazed that I drank water the wrong way. The way where you get it all over your chin. Trust me, I've tried it and it doesn't work. (You can still try it yourself, of course. I'm just saying.)

So anyway, this post is about doing publicity.

I'm not very good at doing publicity. As I've mentioned before, I'm introverted and hypersensitive, which basically means that I tend to be overwhelmed by both physical and mental stimuli before people who aren't those things (physical stimuli = anything sensory, such as noise or smells; mental stimuli = stress). I'm in a profession with high levels of both those things. So into my daily routine, I incorporate moments of rest, moments of silence. Reading is highly restful for me, as is writing: I can escape into writing, as though into my own country.

Although writing is restful, publicizing your writing is stressful, whether it's online or in person. (I love conventions, but especially at conventions I need to find quiet spaces. I love the noise and the bustle, and even the stress of it for a while – but after that while I need to lie down in a dark room.) But you have to do publicity. If you want a writing career nowadays – and I don't mean if you want to write, because all that takes is writing, but if you want a writing career – you do need to be willing to publicize your work. So what do you do?

Well, I have a book coming out in January. (Have you heard? As though I haven't mentioned it enough!) It looks like this:

And it works like this:

So I'm trying to make sure that people hear about it. Of course, in the grand scheme of things there's not a lot I can do: the publisher has a publicity department, and the people there know so much more about this than I do, and are so much better than I am. But I want to do what I can, in part because I care about this book, as I care about all my stories and poems – I feel almost as though they were my children (the children of my mind and heart), and I don't want to simply sent them into the world without support.

So what to do? Well, first, you'll see a new page on this website, listed in the menu above: Novels. I'm considering The Thorn and the Blossom my first novel, and on that page I'll have information about the book. I'll also be writing about the book on this blog – about how I wrote it, what I was thinking at the time.

Second, I've already posted this on Facebook and tweeted about it on Twitter, but I'll mention it here as well: if you're a blogger and you'd like a review copy, send me your address and URL, and I'll try to get you one. (You can contact me on Facebook or Twitter, or simply by email: tgoss@bu.edu.) And I'll probably link to and quote from reviews here.

Third, once the book is out, I'll remind people that if they do decide to read it, they can review it on the book's Amazon or Goodreads pages. Even if you don't have a platform like a blog, you can offer your opinion. Or, you know, you can just rate it. Or even just press "like." (Well, assuming you like it, of course!) Those are all ways of getting the word out.

Oh, and by the way, I've been updating my Amazon Author Page. Feel free to "like" that too (but only, you know, if you actually do!).

(This is for writers, but did you know that if you have a story in an anthology and you're listed in the table of contents, you need to tell Amazon so you're listed as an author? It's not done automatically. This is the sort of thing writers need to know when they're starting out, because they often start with short stories, and it can look as though they haven't written anything when in fact they've been published and reprinted in a number of places.)

And then there will be the more personal things, like readings. Soon, I'll be posting where you can see me in 2012, but it will certainly include Boskone, the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Readercon, and the World Fantasy Convention. And at least some readings around Boston . . . I'll post a more complete schedule.

It sounds kind of exhausting, doesn't it? There are things I love about it, because I do genuinely love talking to people. (I don't blog, or use Facebook or Twitter, because I want to publicize myself or my work. I do it because I want and need to maintain a connection with people, including friends of mine who are so far away, and people I barely know who are nevertheless fascinating and brave and kind.) But honestly, I don't love it as much as I loved being awake last night at 3 a.m., with Ivan (called the Idiot) in the castle of the Lady of Cats.

The Holographic Universe

I've always had a weird relationship with reality. Part of it comes, I suppose, from having an especially vivid imagination. When I wake up in the morning, if I've had especially vivid dreams, it often takes me a moment to reestablish that the real world, or what we call the real world, actually exists. (It's often a relief, actually.)

When I read about scientific theories, I have a tendency to ask myself, not whether they are true, but whether they are interesting and useful. So, for example, I find Sigmund Freud's theories of the human mind incredibly useful for analyzing literature, but reading the case history he recorded in Dora: Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria destroyed any belief I might have had in his ability to understand an actual human mind. It was so obvious to me that, in Dora's case, he was simply making stuff up (and ignoring evidence of actual underlying abuse).

I've been very interested recently by the strange experiments being done in physics. I love the idea of quantum entanglement, which seems to confirm in some way my fundamental instinct that the universe is much stranger than we think. And recently I came across the theory of the holographic universe. (I think I followed a facebook link to an article that led me to a book by Michael Talbot called The Holographic Universe: The Revolutionary Theory of Reality.)

So you know what I'm talking about, I'll quote from an article of his I found online called "The Universe as a Hologram:"

"Does Objective Reality Exist, or is the Universe a Phantasm?

"In 1982 a remarkable event took place. At the University of Paris a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect performed what may turn out to be one of the most important experiments of the 20th century. You did not hear about it on the evening news. In fact, unless you are in the habit of reading scientific journals you probably have never even heard Aspect's name, though there are some who believe his discovery may change the face of science.

"Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart. Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain away Aspect's findings. But it has inspired others to offer even more radical explanations.

"University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes Aspect's findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram. "

That's actually inaccurate. If you read Talbot's article carefully, what you find is that a hologram is a useful metaphor for how the universe works. That's what the science actually implies. But I'm going to quote a little more:

"This insight suggested to Bohm another way of understanding Aspect's discovery. Bohm believes the reason subatomic particles are able to remain in contact with one another regardless of the distance separating them is not because they are sending some sort of mysterious signal back and forth, but because their separateness is an illusion. He argues that at some deeper level of reality such particles are not individual entities, but are actually extensions of the same fundamental something.

"To enable people to better visualize what he means, Bohm offers the following illustration. Imagine an aquarium containing a fish. Imagine also that you are unable to see the aquarium directly and your knowledge about it and what it contains comes from two television cameras, one directed at the aquarium's front and the other directed at its side. As you stare at the two television monitors, you might assume that the fish on each of the screens are separate entities. After all, because the cameras are set at different angles, each of the images will be slightly different. But as you continue to watch the two fish, you will eventually become aware that there is a certain relationship between them. When one turns, the other also makes a slightly different but corresponding turn; when one faces the front, the other always faces toward the side. If you remain unaware of the full scope of the situation, you might even conclude that the fish must be instantaneously communicating with one another, but this is clearly not the case.

"This, says Bohm, is precisely what is going on between the subatomic particles in Aspect's experiment. According to Bohm, the apparent faster-than-light connection between subatomic particles is really telling us that there is a deeper level of reality we are not privy to, a more complex dimension beyond our own that is analogous to the aquarium. And, he adds, we view objects such as subatomic particles as separate from one another because we are seeing only a portion of their reality. Such particles are not separate 'parts,' but facets of a deeper and more underlying unity that is ultimately as holographic and indivisible as the previously mentioned rose. And since everything in physical reality is comprised of these 'eidolons,' the universe is itself a projection, a hologram.

"In addition to its phantomlike nature, such a universe would possess other rather startling features. If the apparent separateness of subatomic particles is illusory, it means that at a deeper level of reality all things in the universe are infinitely interconnected.The electrons in a carbon atom in the human brain are connected to the subatomic particles that comprise every salmon that swims, every heart that beats, and every star that shimmers in the sky. Everything interpenetrates everything, and although human nature may seek to categorize and pigeonhole and subdivide, the various phenomena of the universe, all apportionments are of necessity artificial and all of nature is ultimately a seamless web."

This makes perfect sense to me, and it fits with the way I write about the world we live in. The underlying assumptions on which my writing is based are that the world is stranger than we can understand, but that it does have an underlying pattern, and that we see only part of that pattern. I think that's why Miss Emily Gray weaves in and out of my stories.

Later in the article, Talbot proposes some things that you might think go too far: for him, the theory explains things like coincidences, premonitions, etc. All the small indications we have that the universe is following laws different than the ones we learned about in school, which we tend to ignore because they make us uncomfortable. I tend to ignore them too, despite the fact that they happen to me with some frequency: dreaming about the future, for example. In a sense, what he's proposing is a sort of magical universe, or a universe in which magic can happen because the reality we think we live in is not actually the reality that exists – that underlying reality is far stranger than we can guess.

And true or not, that theory is interesting and useful. It certainly describes the universe I write about.

Unfinished Stories

Today, I was going through my files, trying to figure out what I have in them. In general, my writing files are very organized. But in both my story and poetry files, I have a folder called something like "current" or "working." And I had completely forgotten what I had in those folders. Well, as it turns out, in my story file, in that folder, I have stories that I started but never finished. A long, long time ago, because nowadays I never start a story that I don't finish. (Seriously. By the time I start a story, I have the entire trajectory in my head. So the story is always finished, always eventually published.)

I thought I would post a little bit of what I have in that folder, just the first few paragraphs of a couple of unfinished stories I have in there. What do you think, should I finish them? At this point, I would rewrite them, probably from the beginning. I'm a better writer than I used to be (at least, I hope I am). But I still remember what these stories are about, who the characters are and how the plots go.

Here they are:

Red as Blood and White as Bone

There is always a kitchen maid. Who do you think sweeps the ballroom, the morning after a ball? In poorer kingdoms, she dusts the Wicked Queen's mirror, washes the Prince's underwear. When the Princess begs to be let in, she says "We don't need your kind here" and shuts the kitchen door. But she is never, ever important.

This is not that fairy tale.

I. Black as Night

It had been raining all day, and I had been crying for at least an hour in a corner of the kitchen. Every once in a while, I would wipe my eyes and look at the cabinet where Frau Greta kept tea, sugar, anything else she thought might be stolen or eaten by mice. On its highest shelf, behind a locked door, lay the only book I had every owned, other than a Bible the Mother Superior had given me on the day I left the convent.

"Fairy tales!" Frau Greta had said, snatching it out of my hand. "So this is what you've been doing, while I've been ironing Miss Teresa's sheets! What do you think the Mother Superior would say, if I told her you were reading this trash? If she hadn't asked me herself, I would never have taken in such a careless girl. Can't you see that the meat is almost burned underneath?"

She was right, the venison roasting on a spit in the kitchen fireplace had an undercoat of black char. I had been told to turn it slowly and steadily, but watching the spit turn around and round had made me so sleepy that I had gotten the book from under my mattress, where I kept it hidden. It would do no harm to read as I turned, and anyway reading would keep me awake. I had been in the middle of "The Old Woman of the Forest." I had not heard Frau Greta coming up behind me.

"Clearly the time I've taken to teach you has been wasted. I'm going to do my duty and throw this trash into the fire, where it belongs."

"No!" I cried. "Oh, you can't! My mother gave it to me." I clutched at Frau Greta's apron and pulled, which made her tilt forward and almost fall on top of me.

"Stop that at once! Where are your manners? You're behaving like a monkey." She pulled her apron from my hands and placed the book on the top shelf of the cabinet. Then she locked the door and slipped the key into her pocket. "I'll decide what to do with your book later. You make certain that meat doesn't burn. I'm going to finish the potatoes. And I warn you, miss. I'll have my eye on you."

To Merlin, With Love

My friend,

Will you read this letter? I know so many things: that the Black Death is caused, not by exhalations from the northern marshes, as our physicians have supposed, but by the bacterium Yersina pestis. That the two-headed Worm Grimante, whose bones were discovered by Sir Bedivere, is a Tyranosaurus rex curiously entangled with a common cow. But the sun will burn itself out from its own brilliance, and this great clock, the earth, will wind down toward its final stillness, without my knowing if you have read this letter.

(Who would have thought the girl had so much poetry in her? It is the influence of our English poets. I have, over the years, spent considerable time with poets. Shakespeare, for instance. A short man, balding, fond of cats.)

But I am wandering. Toward the end, I am inclined to wander. Perhaps whatever separates the worlds begins to slip, as my mind ages. Or perhaps the old are always closer to madness.

(You will think I am mad, certainly, if you read this letter.)

One of the novices brings me breakfast. I am the only one at the convent for whom they knock, the final courtesy due a discarded queen. In the garden below my window, doves are walking along the paths, between knots of chamomile. One roosts in the apricot tree that has never yet bloomed. I could tell the sisters that it will never bloom in this English climate. But it was sent at great expense from a convent in Boulogne, and the sisters wait for it to bloom with patient pride. They would say to me, with faith in the Lord, everything is possible.

You and I place our faith in the laws of the universe. How well I remember the scientific instruments of which you were so proud! Your astrolabe, your crucibles created by the glassmakers of Venice, your dragon's egg. (If I had the time, I would describe an emu. Although it occurs to me, what do I have but time?) Perhaps that is why we understood each other, you and I. Neither of us believed in a benevolent power guiding the universe. But you never trusted me. You could never bring yourself to trust beautiful women.

A Thief in the Night

"The Latin mus, meaning mouse, comes to us from a Sanskrit word meaning to steal. The Book of Leviticus calls the mouse unclean, which we might be tempted to connect to its activity in the granaries of the Israelites. Even soldier of the Great War, who found the insulation on the wiring of their vehicles chewed by small teeth, identified the mouse as a thief."

Letitia Easton shuts the book, using her pencil as a bookmark. The eraser and the end of the yellow shaft have been chewed. Sometimes she wonders if she has begun to catch their habits, if when she does not notice her nose twitches.

It is time to feed the mice.

She puts the book beside her on the bed, which is already covered with books: The History of the Mouse in twelve volumes, Our Mutual Friend, the most recent issues of Mouse Fancy. The floor around the bed is covered with books, in piles. She should put them back on the shelves, in the paneled room her father called the library. But those shelves are occupied, and anyway she is small. She has no problem sleeping on one side of the bed.

She stands, a process that takes longer than it used to. When did her back begin to ache? Perhaps it comes of sleeping with twelve volumes beside her on the bed. Not that she sleeps much, nowadays. She lies awake in the darkness, listening to their sounds: scamper across the floors of cages, shuffle of paper, rattle of exercise wheels. She finds it soothing, like listening to the sea in a shell. Sometimes, after midnight, she wanders around the house. She does not need a flashlight, has known it since childhood. In the darkness, the silver satins shimmer like ghosts.

But now it is time to feed the mice.

Living in My Head

Sometimes it's difficult, living in my head.

Today I got an idea for a story (yes, another idea – I get story ideas all the time). It comes from two true stories, both of which affected me significantly when I first heard them.

The first story is about the man who was turning into a tree. (Do you remember? Everyone was talking about it, several years ago.) Of course he wasn't really turning into a tree. He was a fisherman from Indonesia who had a rare immune disorder. Whenever he was cut or scraped, warts would grow in that place, and they would not stop growing. His immune system could not stop them. Eventually the growths were enormous, grotesque. (I won't link to stories because the pictures are disturbing, but if you want to see for yourself, just google "man turning into tree.") He joined a freak show – it was the only sort of work he could get. When pictures began circulating, doctors became involved and he was finally treated. I don't know how he's doing now, but I hope he's doing well. There are plenty of news stories about his condition online, but there seems to be nothing about what happened to him after doctors began treating him. I suppose that wasn't as exciting. (I, for one, would like to know if he's OK.)

The second story is one I researched for my dissertation. It's the story of Krao, a girl from what was then known as Indochina who was brought to England and displayed as a freak. Based on pictures of her, it's obvious that she's a fairly standard "bearded lady," meaning that she has the sort of facial hair one would expect on a man. But at the time she was advertised as a Darwinian "missing link," an atavistic throwback who demonstrated the validity of evolutionary theory. She was first displayed as a child. Eventually, she grew up and married the showman who had first discovered her. She continued to perform in freak shows for the rest of her life. (I'm using the scholarly terminology here – this is how scholars who study the history of freak shows speak about the participants, as performers. Their relationships with the people who displayed them could certainly be exploitative. But some of them also exercised agency and created lives for themselves.) I can't find a photograph of Krao that isn't exploitative, but you can see from this advertisement how she was presented to the public:

Of course the advertisement is exploitative as well. The story fascinates me because of all the ways Krao was understood and presented – when of course what she was, really and truly, was a little girl, and eventually a woman. I wonder how she perceived her life, how she would tell her own story.

So what was the story idea? It was an idea about a child who has an immune disorder like the Indonesian fisherman's, in the 1860s. Like Krao, she is put in a freak show, and the man who displays her deliberately cuts and scratches her to create the effect of a tree. She is advertised as a Living Dryad. The story would be from her point of view. You see how fascinating and horrible the idea is? That's why it's worth writing about.  Because the story would be about exploitation and love, about what it means to be human and perceived as monstrous.

(Why am I describing this idea rather than keeping it all to myself until I can write about it? Writers who are just starting out often worry that their ideas are going to be stolen. Well, you're welcome to steal this idea, because no matter how hard you tried, you couldn't write the story that I would write about it, any more than Earnest Hemingway could write Mrs. Dalloway. Can you imagine his version of Virginia Woolf's novel? I would of course make it as beautiful, as romantic, as possible. That's what I always do with the horrible. Because it heightens the horror.)

But can you see what an uncomfortable place it is, my head? It comes up with ideas like this one. Sometimes even I want to leave it. Tell it, come up with ideas on your own. I'm out of here. Because the ideas never stop . . .