Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 178

Strange Horizons annual fund drive

Strange Horizons is having its annual fund drive. As always, there are lots of interesting prizes, and many more will become available over the course of the month. Here are some of the things on offer right now:


A signed ARC of The Summer Prince, by Alaya Dawn Johnson: "a standalone YA science fiction novel set on the coast of Brazil, 400 years in the future."


Yes, it's Cinderella Jump Rope Rhymes! Mmm, macabre goodness.


Limited edition hardback reprint of H.G. Wells' classic novel The Shape of...

Zeus, a patchwork truck, an anthem

I saw Zeus at work replacing siding on a house. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but there was no mistaking his beard:



Why was Zeus doing home improvement work?

Who are we to understand the ways of the gods?

There were three guys working on that house, possibly four--I am not sure about the divinity of the others--and three trucks out front. One truck was patchwork. A google search tells me that it was likely a 1973 or 1974 Chevy pickup. It was red, but with several very neat white patches on...

False confessions and thoughts on interrogation

NPR had a story on this morning about Richard Lapointe, a brain-damaged man who confessed to a gruesome rape and murder in 1989 ("Brain-Damaged Man Wins New Trial in Two-Decades-Old Killing").

The story cited an interesting fact that the Innocence Project turned up in analyzing the 300 cases of DNA-based exoneration** in the United States:

When the Innocence Project reviewed those cases, it found that in 1 out of 4, a defendant later proven innocent had at one point given a self-incriminating...

how it feels to be alive like this

When the sky turns to mother-of-pearl, when the sun is sinking, but not low enough yet to send the clouds into lavender or scarlet or the sky to gold--

--it's a Magritte time: the lower world darkening but the sky bright

It turned the walls of the house in the picture below into a shield of light.

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Too much beauty, sliding into the world, a shield of light, but it cuts like a blade. What protects you from the shield?

Never mind. I didn't know why I was aimlessly snapping pictures from t...

a net of grass, ghost ferns

For catching moths and mist spirits, a net of grass, with raindrop weights:



The ferns are passing into the spirit world: they are becoming ghosts. You can leave an offering beneath their pale arches. Maybe it will bring you your heart's desire, or maybe it will simply avert woe. Or maybe it will let you walk among the ghosts, yourself, and still return again.

signs and portents

My friends elsewhere took advantage of the rains to send me shaggy mane mushrooms. They send them whenever folk come calling...



(everything is sparkling quietly)



My walk this morning brought me other signs and portents:



A coin for fortune and a flashcard: seven, a lucky number, and twelve = noon or midnight, hours for visitations.



And a purple bottle cap with a white bird or butterfly on it. In the Pen Pal novel, M's younger sister Tammy collects bottle caps and finds one like this. I don't know...

Union Square West, Manhattan

A mural truck. What would you title this painting? Aztec warrior mourns his love while at a distance Our Lady of Guadalupe looks on? Except he seems to be gently smiling and she has a languorous rather than dead look to her. Perhaps he's her lover now bowing and departing?



ETA Possibly an illustration for the story Ramona. See stillnotbored 's comment.

Second ETA tekalynn offers another possibility, here

when did this happen?

Suddenly there are red trees around? Someone is turning the kaleidoscope, and now the flakes of color and light have fallen into flame colors and hints of ghost colors, still with green all around--the grass and many leaves do not yet believe in autumn. It's a rumor, they say. The evidence is, as yet, anecdotal.

Oh! And also, "The Yew's Embrace" is live at Podcastle

This is a story of mine that ran in Strange Horizons in 2011.** And now it's been given podcast treatment over at Podcastle! I am going to listen. So excited!

"The Yew's Embrace," read by Stephanie Morris"

It's a ghost war revenge sibling ... it's a story, anyway.

Recommendation: Branson-Thomas Downton Abbey fic

Honestly, this fic in which blackmail becomes the occasion for Something More just rings so true that it's become part of my head canon.

Nice job, osprey_archer !

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