Angela Slatter's Blog, page 89

The Bitterwood Posts: The Badger Bride

Kathleen’s Badgers

I love badgers – yes, I know all the arguments against them, the great list of their sins – but I love them all the same. I’ve also always loved transformation stories, but they’re generally run along the same lines: one character must be transformed from animal to human in order for there to be a happily-ever-after. That ending assumes that whatever was threatening the star-crossed lovers has been defeated; but, I wondered, what if it’s not? What if the threat remains, blundering about, looking for its dearest, darkest desire? What might our heroes do in order to escape?

I love Gytha, the feisty copyist/forger of the tale. I love that she seeks answers no matter what the cost; there’s something rather Gothic about her determination, but she’s in no way a fainting, fairly stupid Gothic heroine. I love Adelbert the ex-Abbot and Larcwide the Bibliognost, and I have always, always loved the ideas of monastic libraries and the preservation of knowledge – due in no small part to Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, and my Uncle Rod, who’s also a collector of books and no mean bibliognost himself.

And I love the idea that sometimes, just sometimes, though you don’t get what you think you want, you get what you actually want.

 

The Badger Bride

by Angela Slatter

The tip of the quill scratches its way across the parchment, a sound that sets my teeth on edge.

One might think I’d be used to it by now. The black marks it leaves in its wake make no sense to me – indeed the entire book makes no sense – then again, I am a mere copyist and mine’s not to question why. Although I do.

Frequently.

Much to my father’s despair.

When he brought me this commission, I turned the tome over and over – a difficult enough task, for the thing is heavy, aged and fragile, the ebon cover tacky to the touch, the pages brittle – and a smell rose from the skin of the thing that was quite unpleasant. The name of the author and the title of the book were utterly obscured, a thick stygian gum had been smeared across them and it was hard to perceive whether this application was intentional or the result of mere carelessness. The inner leaves confirmed intent – no extant title page waited within, merely the remnants of a folio torn from the binding, tiny sad folds of paper with ragged edges.

So, an anonymous book.

‘Who is the client?’ I asked my father, Adelbert, once Abbot of the monastery of St-Simeon-in-the-Grove, who rolled his eyes and bid me Just do the job.

‘But, Father, it is very old, very frail, and the ink is faded ? fading as I watch if my eyes don’t deceive me.’ I manoeuvred the article in question so he could better see. ‘Is it the last of its kind? Who is the owner? What does he expect?’

‘He expects, like your father, that you do not ask questions, little prying thing. That you take this volume and copy it as quickly as you might!’ He took a deep breath and roared, ‘Else I’ll put you out in the cold, Gytha!’

I harrumphed, and left his study. He will not put me out; he will do no such thing. I am the  only child in Fox Hollow House who earns her keep, after all. Aelfrith spends her days draped across the couch, sighing for a husband, and Edda devotes her time to exercising and grooming the six horses in the stables. I alone understood and adopted the scholarly arts Father had tried to teach us; and I alone adopted the trade he learned at the monastery ? and at which, he freely admits, was terrible. People come from all around, from as far away as Lodellan, to have me copy their books, their precious, unique, failing books; to have me adorn and enhance them, to add vines and flowers and strange animals in the margins; to change the existing illustrations they cannot bear (modestly clothe a naked Eve, paint out grandmother’s warts on her nose, give uncle a chin that does not slope so straight from lower lip to clavicle). Copy, edit, amend, ameliorate, augment and occasionally, if the pay is right, forge.

I will make a book what they want it to be, either more or less itself.

***

 

Today: Corpselight

Sparrowhawk – by Kathleen Jenning, just coz.

Today, I’m back on Corpselight, the second book in the Verity Fassbinder series. It’s good to be getting into this again!

Corpselight

by Angela Slatter

She took a longish time getting out of her car, smoothing the workday creases from her Donna Karan suit, collecting her handbag and the briefcase. She jingled the keys in the front door of the house, as if the noise might ward off evil spirits. As if it might let them know she was home and they should disappear. The hallway looked fine, but the smell hit her before she got even two steps inside. Steeling herself, she followed the stench.

Mud.

Again.

On the expensive silk at the base of the rocker-recliner that had replaced the last one; oblongs of insufficiently jellified gunk, almost like footprints but lacking definition. Up close, the odour got worse, and she noticed the whole chair wore a thick coat of the same crap. And it wasn’t just mud. It was filth. Ooze. Fetid, decayed, contaminated, liquefied death.

She was, perhaps, less surprised than she should have been.

It was the third such occurrence in as many months. Always on the fifth. Always when she returned from work, as if they’d waited until she was gone in the morning. Always in the same spot. None of last night’s precautions had done a damned thing; she’d be having words with the bloody hippy chick at the West End spook shop.

She couldn’t imagine the insurance company would pay out. Not again. Not even under the Unnatural Happenstance provisions.

The first time this had happened she’d been unnerved; yes, even afraid.

The second time, she’d been annoyed and thought, Tricks. Shitty little tricks. Shitty ghosty little tricks.

This time, she thought, Fuck ‘em.

‘It’ll take a damned sight more than this,’ she told the empty room. Shouted, actually, made sure her anger carried the words all through the house.

She moved on by way of the dining room to find an answer of a sort; or simply a variation on a theme.

The kitchen was awash with brown.

Slither marks patterned the linoleum as if a school of middling-sized snakes had run amok. The biggest puddle was in front of the fridge. She picked her way across, stepping on the cleanish patches, careful not to slip, careful not to get crap on her expensive new shoes.

The handle of the fridge door was pristine and she grasped the coldly sweating metal with her own heated palm. She pulled.

There was a moment, one of those frozen seconds when things stand still. In theory, in that moment, there was time to step away, to jump to safety. In reality, the chocolately rectangle filling the matt silver Fisher & Paykel quivered and slid out onto her feet with an obscene sucking sound, leaving her shin-deep in muck.

Then the doorbell rang.

 ***

 

In the Mail: Letters to Lovecraft

My shiny new contributor’s copies of Letters to Lovecraft have arrived! Thanks, Jesse Bullington and Stone Skin Press.

I get to share space with luminaries such as Gemma Files, Jeffrey Ford, Tim Lebbon, Molly Tanzer, Livia Llewellyn, Nick Mamatas, et al.

More more info, go here.

Tor.com novellas announced …

… and I’m exceedingly pleased to say that mine, Of Sorrow and Such, which returns to the world of Sourdough to check on one of my favourite characters, Patience Sykes, is one of them!

There are also works by KJ Parker, Seanan McGuire, Daniel Polansky, Emily Foster, and Mary Robinette Kowal.

The rest of the press release is here.

Further details as soon as they come to hand.

Next Project

Kathleen’s bid for a post-it note book

Kathleen Jennings is trying to convince me that our next project together should be done on post-its.

I have said ‘no’ for I am apparently a curmudgeon.

Nevertheless, we’ll be doing my story “Flight” as an illustrated book.

The Female Factory: Baggage

Baggage is the second story in The Female Factory

How to explain that a really rather nasty story sprang from watching a really adorable documentary?

Angela loves badgers. Angela thinks they’re adorable. Angela might be slightly obsessed with them – to the point where she made Lisa sit down and watch the aforementioned documentary, Badgers – Secrets of the Sett. Lisa also enjoyed the documentary (or said she did) … the important thing to remember is the idea that stuck with her: that badger females can keep fertilised eggs in stasis in the womb for months, until it is safe for them to begin gestation. As if that’s not cool enough, they can also store more than one embryo at a time, fertilised by different boars.

So, when we were looking for a first story for the collection, Lisa brought up this intriguing feature and said, ‘What if a woman could do that?’ We took it further: what if a woman could have absolute control over her reproductive system? What if she could decide how many babies to have, and when, and with whom? And what if big business, in a world where fertility rates are dropping like an out-of-control elevator, found a way to take back that control of a most intimate process?

Thus Robin was born. She was hard to write; she’s not a pleasant character, but there is something one grudgingly admires about her tenacity. The story also challenged all the pink and fluffy ideas about motherhood being a wonderful thing, and examines the harsher side for those who can, and those who cannot, have children.

The Bitterwood Posts: The Maiden in the Ice

The Maiden in the Ice

Her boots are stout, the winter ones, with tiny ridges of metal embedded in the soles to clutch at the slippery surface, and she moves quickly with the light cautious step of a fox approaching a henhouse. Her ears almost hurt from the effort of listening for the slow, dark moan that will tell her the floe is about to betray her. For a while she tries to keep her eyes firmly fixed on her destination, on the silver-ash clump of sedge not so far – yet so very far – away. But the panic she’s tamped down hard gets the better of her, and she looks to the sparkling, treacherous ground upon which she moves, seeking the cracks, the veins, the fissures that are surely forming there.

            But what she sees is something entirely different.

            An oval face; skin sallow – in the sun it will become olive; dark-flecked, large eyes; thick straight brows; an unbalanced mouth, the top lip thin, the bottom full; and hair as black as Rikke has ever seen. Black as nightmares, black as a cunning woman’s cat, black as the water she is trying to escape. Older than Rikke, caught between girl and woman, and suspended in the solid lake as if she’s a statue, standing; head titled back, one arm reaching up, the other pointing downward.

            Rikke shrieks. She forgets the singing winter grass, her mother’s tisane, her mother’s disappointment; she forgets all her fears of a permafrost death, of cold and hoar. She spins about and runs, boots throwing shredded ribbons of rime behind, body moving faster, so much faster than her little legs it is a wonder she does not fall. She clatters into the house making such a noise that Aggi drags herself from bed and Rikke’s father, Gamli, comes running in from outside where he has been seeing to the chickens and the goats. When they decipher their daughter’s shouts, Gamli leaves the little cottage, yelling at the top of his lungs.

            The cry goes up from house to house. ‘Someone’s in the lake!’

 

One of my favourite characters in the Sourdough collection was Ella, who started that  collection in “The Shadow Tree” and threaded throughout several other tales as a kind of malign presence. I’d always wanted to write a story to show where she’d come from, how she came to be exiled from her home. I had the title, “The Maiden in the Ice”, long before the rest of the tale, and the vision of the girl seemingly suspended, but still moving inexorably up towards the surface. Other stories that influenced this one were “The Pied Piper of Hamlin”, Christina Rosetti’s “The Goblin Market”, and Angela Carter’s “The Erl-King”.

As Hepsibah Ballantyne floats through Bitterwood, so does Ella, though more subtly, with scattered mentions of the Plague Maiden. I wanted the idea of kindness rewarded and bad behaviour punished to be the beginning of her journey through this world. The main character, Rikke, is an analogue of the child who wasn’t taken by the Pied Piper because he was lame and couldn’t keep up; Rikke was distracted by her books.

Ella is a character that I’m exploring a lot more in the next collection, The Tallow-Wife and Other Tales.

 

 

The Writer and the Critic: new casting of the pod

The lovely Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond have released their latest  episode of The Writer and the Critic. You can listen here.

They discuss Ali Smith’s How to Be Both and my Bitterwood Bible (so I will spend the morning listening, in fear).

And a reminder: there’s a Goodreads giveaway of both Bitterwood and Sourdough over here.

She Walks in Shadows

Amazing cover art by Sara Diesel

I’m delighted to say that my story “Lavinia’s Wood” has been accepted for She Walks in Shadows, the first all-women Lovecraft anthology (yes, women do write Lovecraftian fiction, no matter what the rumours say). Thanks to editors extraordinaire Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R Stiles!

‘You can’t read, can you?’

The undecayed Whatleys were possessed of an impressive fortune and a strict sense of philanthropy, which was how Lavinia Whatley, either afflicted or blessed – depending upon to whom one spoke – with albinism, came to be invited to the large house located on the correct fork of the junction of the Aylesbury Pike just beyond Dean’s Corners.

Despite fine intentions and enthusiastically mouthed better sentiments, all the older members of the sound branch had, at some point, used phrases such as ‘Witch Whatleys’, ‘Lesser Whatleys’, and, perhaps worst of all, ‘Queer Whatleys’. And they’d used them in their children’s hearing; children who stored spite in a more concentrated form, having not been exposed to the world and its doings, to learning things that sometimes diluted the acid of their malice.

Goodreads Giveaway: Sourdough + Bitterwood

Right! My next Goodreads giveaway is for Australia only. It consists of:

1 x hardcopy of Sourdough and Other Tales (now out of print and rather rare)

1 x hardcopy of The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings

1 x limited edition book-bag emblazoned with the art of Kathleen Jennings

Go here to enter.