Glen Hirshberg's Blog - Posts Tagged "ellen-datlow"
Gemma Files and Marjorie Bowen
Tuesday Round-up of Everything, Week of 6/17, Post 5:
Had heard terrific things about Gemma Files, and she'll be joining me to talk the teaching of writing ghost stories at Readercon, which seemed a perfect excuse to check out her work. Her story, "Nanny Grey," which I found in Ellen Datlow's BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR VOLUME 5, maybe holds the last emotional chord a bit too long for me, spends too much time explaining more than it needs to. But the build-up is a flat-out blast, a gritty, too-real riff on the picking-up-the-wrong-girl, heading-home-to-meet-the-(in this case, extended)-family trope. Seedy, unnerving, playful, wicked.
At the more classical end, I also caught up with Marjorie Bowen's "Dark Ann," and as I usually do when I read Marjorie Bowen, wound up feeling she's an under-acknowledged titan. At an academic conference, a writer of ghostly tales attends a lecture by a brilliant, stiff, arrogant scientist. To the writer's surprise, the scientist then seeks her out at the after-party, expressly to tell her a tale about a ghost he met (but won't describe as a ghost), which triggered longings in him he can't accept as love. And vanished. That's it. Just established, credible reality, the wispy touch of wonder, the intoxicating mixture of emotional states, one of which is dread. If I didn't already have one (or ten) already prepared, the story would be a template for the way I teach the kinds of stories I write.
Had heard terrific things about Gemma Files, and she'll be joining me to talk the teaching of writing ghost stories at Readercon, which seemed a perfect excuse to check out her work. Her story, "Nanny Grey," which I found in Ellen Datlow's BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR VOLUME 5, maybe holds the last emotional chord a bit too long for me, spends too much time explaining more than it needs to. But the build-up is a flat-out blast, a gritty, too-real riff on the picking-up-the-wrong-girl, heading-home-to-meet-the-(in this case, extended)-family trope. Seedy, unnerving, playful, wicked.
At the more classical end, I also caught up with Marjorie Bowen's "Dark Ann," and as I usually do when I read Marjorie Bowen, wound up feeling she's an under-acknowledged titan. At an academic conference, a writer of ghostly tales attends a lecture by a brilliant, stiff, arrogant scientist. To the writer's surprise, the scientist then seeks her out at the after-party, expressly to tell her a tale about a ghost he met (but won't describe as a ghost), which triggered longings in him he can't accept as love. And vanished. That's it. Just established, credible reality, the wispy touch of wonder, the intoxicating mixture of emotional states, one of which is dread. If I didn't already have one (or ten) already prepared, the story would be a template for the way I teach the kinds of stories I write.
World Fantasy Nominations
Delighted to see that Nathan Ballingrud's North American Lake Monsters: Stories and Richard Bowes' Dust Devil on a Quiet Street, easily two of the best books I read last year, have been both rewarded with World Fantasy Award nominations. Congratulations to them, to Ellen Datlow for the Lifetime Achievement Award she obviously deserves, and to all the other nominees.
Epistles from Readercon 2014: Heading Out
Having escaped Paul Tremblay's trunk when he was busy snapping illicit photos of the writers in the car that had pulled up alongside us,
I crept back to my room, scraped the bits of...no, I don't even want to know who else Paul Tremblay keeps in his trunk, or what happened to them...anyway, I changed, steeled myself, and reemerged for one last glorious day at Readercon: Peter Straub
waxing eloquent and magnanimous over a long, quiet breakfast conversation,
Mary Rickert delivering a deceptively gentle excerpt from The Memory Garden (and then passing out Forget-Me-Not seeds), John Langan surprising us all with a deft and disturbing action sequence from a new story. Then standing up, as the night's last reader, and letting Good Girls rip for the first time.
Getting a response from a readinged-out crowd that felt absurdly generous and tremendously reassuring. Then bad mousse
and great conversation with Langan, a light-hearted and laughing Ellen Datlow (full of good projects, as ever), Daryl Gregory (whose work I have recently discovered, and think is most decidedly worth YOUR discovering), and the charming Liza Trombi of Locus, before stumbling upstairs into the sauna--wait, that was someone's ROOM??--where maybe 80 writers, editors, conversationalists, friends, saw the CON out the way it came in: with clever chatter, whiskey way too strong for little hobbit Hirshbergs to touch, book recs, movie recs, genuine mutual admiration, and friendship. Sean Moreland, great last chat, looking forward to more next week. So good seeing everyone. More, please...
I crept back to my room, scraped the bits of...no, I don't even want to know who else Paul Tremblay keeps in his trunk, or what happened to them...anyway, I changed, steeled myself, and reemerged for one last glorious day at Readercon: Peter Straub
waxing eloquent and magnanimous over a long, quiet breakfast conversation,
Mary Rickert delivering a deceptively gentle excerpt from The Memory Garden (and then passing out Forget-Me-Not seeds), John Langan surprising us all with a deft and disturbing action sequence from a new story. Then standing up, as the night's last reader, and letting Good Girls rip for the first time.
Getting a response from a readinged-out crowd that felt absurdly generous and tremendously reassuring. Then bad mousse
and great conversation with Langan, a light-hearted and laughing Ellen Datlow (full of good projects, as ever), Daryl Gregory (whose work I have recently discovered, and think is most decidedly worth YOUR discovering), and the charming Liza Trombi of Locus, before stumbling upstairs into the sauna--wait, that was someone's ROOM??--where maybe 80 writers, editors, conversationalists, friends, saw the CON out the way it came in: with clever chatter, whiskey way too strong for little hobbit Hirshbergs to touch, book recs, movie recs, genuine mutual admiration, and friendship. Sean Moreland, great last chat, looking forward to more next week. So good seeing everyone. More, please...
