UnCommonwealth

VFD Adventures

About ten years ago, the Heaven Hill Distillery fire was really big news in Kentucky. It entered the cultural conscious to such an extent that the Galoots, a local little-bit-a-funk/whole-lotta-bluegrass combo, had a pretty killer song about it. (The Galoots were headed up by a guy I knew a little named Shannon Lawson, who I see here has gone on to bigger things. And look, he’s got a version of the song, “Heaven Hill,” that you can hear via flash player if you click the next button a couple of times. I remember the Galoots version as being a little more high energy, but those guys played some very high energy shows).

All that's background, the "inspired by a true story" bit.

Several years later, when I was living in Lansing, a Clarion West classmate of mine got a gig editing Quantum Speculative Fiction for Obscura Press, which I gather was an imprint or arm of Wunzenzierohs Publishing. Quantum Speculative Fiction was kind of an odd experiment in terms of format—it had a real “my brother-in-law can get us a killer deal on the equipment” vibe. When you subscribed, you got a little 2/3 scale three ring binder (stamped with an ISBN). When the individual issues shipped, they came as envelopes packed with sheaves of pre-punched pages, which you put in the binder. Here’s a picture.

I’m not bad-mouthing Quantum at all, by the way. It paid better than almost anybody else at the time, and in the year they were in business they published stories by Justina Robson, Rachel Pollack, Ray Vukcevich, Pat York, Michael Bishop and Kage Baker, among others. If it was a failed experiment in business terms I'd certainly count it a success in editorial terms.

So, like I said, my buddy Kurt Roth is editing. He asked me for something light and I sent him an early version of what would eventually be published as "Men of Renown” several years later. That story didn’t do it for Kurt and he gave me a call and chatted about what he was looking for and while, no, he did not come right and say “Make it goofy, make it Southern,” the subtext was there, I thought.

At the time, I was temping for a company that specializes in hoovering up state government service contracts, so I wrote “VFD Adventures” while cubicle-bound. The people in the cubicles around me checked on my progress every hour or so, and let me tell you, bored Michigan temps want their pages fast, they want a lot of gags, and they don’t have time for any of this “theme” business.

Like pretty much all of the stories I published in the nineties, the accent is thick, but hopefully navigable. Also like most of those nineties stories, several characters and situations (and one whole scene) were lifted from my first piece of fiction, the never-to-be-published “When We Killed the Dogs.” And as you’ll see if you click through, it’s yet another piece set in the fictional Cane County.

The burning man image up there is the illustration that accompanied the reprint of the story at Ideomancer in September, 2002, and that’s the version of “VFD Adventures,” my fifth-published story, that I’ll use for this entry in my Virtual Collection.

PS My brother gave a copy of this story to some buddies of his who are volunteer firefighters back in Adair County. They said they wished they’d had a chance to give me some notes before it was published, but I think they liked everything but the firefighting bits.

Sally Harpe

The short version is that Sally Harpe is Giselle on Kentucky's Green River.

Here’s the long version. Sometime in 1997, Ellen Datlow invited me to submit a story for one of the anthologies of revisioned fairy tales that she was editing with Terri Windling. Setting a pattern that continues to this day, I said yes and then finished the story roughly a year after the book was actually published. First, of course, I asked for a special favor--instead of a fairy tale I wanted to base my story on a ballet, specifically on Giselle, which I’d recently seen performed by the excellent Louisville Ballet.

Like many of the classic ballets, the story line of Giselle is creepy as all hell. It seemed ripe for a little of the Southern gothification I was trying to work out of my system. It’s also got some very significant artists behind it: the ballet was first choreographed by Jean Coralli from a libretto by Théophile Gautier and a score by Adolphe Charles Adam. When it debuted, at the Paris Opera (then housed at the Salle Le Peletier--that site's well worth a look for the pictures at the bottom, even if you don't read French) in June of 1841, the role of Giselle was originated by Carlotta Grisi (that’s her in the painting to the right). Some of the best of music, writing, and dance in all of Europe came together that night. Can you imagine being there?

I wrote the story long hand, in a blue clothbound notebook that I still have. Since I missed the deadline, I sent it to Shawna McCarthy at Realms of Fantasy, who regular readers will remember had purchased two of my earlier Cane County stories as well. I was living in Michigan by the time I heard back from her. The letter was waiting for me when I flew back from the World Fantasy Convention in Monterey  in 1998 (that turned out to be one of the most important trips I ever took in terms of beginning new friendships, by the way).

When the story eventually appeared, in the October 1999 issue of the magazine, it was accompanied by a very creepy and appropriate illustration by the famous horror artist JK Potter. It’s an extensively reworked photo montage of ghostly girls and ghostly deer and well, you should try to track down a copy of that magazine just to have a look at it.

Sally Harpe is my personal favorite of that first triptych of Cane County stories. It has its excesses, but overall I think it’s a pretty good story, and one I’d be proud to publish even today. It was listed as an Honorable Mention in the thirteenth Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and was reprinted in my chapbook, Bittersweet Creek. In December of 2003, Small Beer Press also reprinted the story at their website, and it’s that reprint I’ll point you to for this entry in the Virtual Collection.

Baptism on Bittersweet Creek

By order of composition, as opposed to order of publication, Baptism on Bittersweet Creek is my second story (it was my third published, and neither was the first the first, nor the second the second either, you follow?). In 1996, when I decided to apply to the Clarion workshops, I discovered that the page count of my sole previous piece of fiction--the never to be seen in public When We Killed the Dogs--was insufficient for the applications. So I wrote the first draft of this piece, which was at the time titled I'll Fly Away.

I was accepted into the workshops and chose to attend Clarion West because the lineup of instructors that year was pretty much tailor made for me: Terry Bisson, Pat Cadigan, Jack Womack, Geoff Ryman, Ellen Datlow and Rachel Pollack were the instructors. Since I didn't have any other fiction, I ran my submission piece through the workshop that first week. This is the story Terry said has "thick but accurate" accents. My fellow classmates helped me a lot with the piece. They didn't like the title (and Ellen Datlow later pointed out that I couldn't use a lot of the song lyrics that originally appeared in the story because they were still under copyright; I was very new at this stuff).

I found other appropriate songs and gave the story its present title. Those keeping score will note that this marks the first appearance of Japheth Sapp in my fiction, though I'd developed the Cane County setting for the dogs story mentioned above.

The acceptance letter for this story showed up in the mail on the same day as the check for my second sold story. That's probably still one of my top "mail days" from a writing perspective. The story was published in the April 1999 issue of Realms of Fantasy (who seem to be giving away free magazines right now, by the way). The cover of that particular issue was used in their advertising materials for years, particularly on the blown-in subscription cards. You may have seen it: in an autumn forest, a barely dressed and definitely mammalian young woman stands before a menhir carved with ancient and inscrutable ruins. Also, she's got a dragon. The best part of the cover, though, is the tiny graphic  advertising the film column about witch movies. It's a head shot, lifted as a detail from this publicity image of Veronica Lake in Rene Clair's I Married a Witch. Veronica Lake trumps barbarian princesses every time.

The very striking illustration for my story is by a Web Bryant, an artist who has trod lightly across the internet indeed. It's full of green and yellow light and shows a painfully thin young man standing in a creek before a waterfall, between giant trees. I like it a lot.

The story was eventually reprinted as the sort of title story for my chapbook from Small Beer Press. Details about that book are here.

The way that gospel music is used by the people in this story was inspired by the way that gospel music is used--not just sung or performed, but also as conversation--by my mother's family, the Singing Riches. The ridges sheltering Barnett's Creek United Methodist Church, and of course the creek itself, inspired the setting. All of this led to one of the best experiences I've had as a writer.

In 1998, I was invited by Lindsey Wilson College (in my home county) to give a public reading as part of a series they have there. I worked with my brother, Fred, my uncle Brian, my aunt Patricia, my grandfather, Stanley, and my mother, Rita, to integrate a gospel music performance with the reading of this story. Fred and Stanley played mandolin and guitar respectively (and sang bass, baritone or whatever else was needed at any given moment), Brian sang lead and/or tenor, Patrica sang alto and Mama sang soprano. Freed of copyright worries, we used the songs I'd originally intended for the piece. There were a hundred people there, many of whom we weren't related to. 

I've got a lot of affection for this story, flawed as it might be. Baptism on Bittersweet Creek has never appeared in electronic form, so I'm doing the same thing I did with the previous entry in this series. If you click on the "continue reading" link below, you'll find a PDF of the story. It will be available for a week or so, until I put up an entry about a story called Sally Harpe. Thanks for reading.

UPDATE: The PDF mentioned above has been removed.

Long Live the King

A few weeks after I got word that I'd sold my first story, I attended the 1998 Chattacon in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Another first; I didn't have to pay to get in! And they put me on panels so I could sit next to Andy Duncan and laugh at all the clever stuff he was saying! (This is actually pretty much what I do to this day when I attend Chattacon, which we'll be traveling to again in a few months. It's always a great trip, if for nothing else than the awesome aquarium.)

After one such panel, an Atlanta based small press and webzine editor came up to me and solicited a contribution to a new magazine he was launching called Pulp Eternity. He had very specific needs--he wanted a time travel story about either Elvis or Tesla, he wanted it to be 2,500 words long, and he wanted it in two weeks. First sale, first convention as a "pro," and now this! A commission!

And so I went home to Louisville and wrote what I later called my minimum wage story. My methodology when I was first starting out was to do a lot of research and a lot of notebook work before actually doing any, y'know, writing. I would write interviews with characters, collect photographs and maps to paste into my notebook (every story must have its own notebook! and its own folder for attendant paperwork!), use multiple outlining "strategies" for the same piece and so on. As you might guess, this is not a highly profitable use of time in terms of how much money the writing of any given genre short story is likely to yield. (It's also not highly profitable in terms of producing even a small number or stories, or of artistic success for that matter, but these things lie without the purview, y'dig?)

In this case, however, since I was now a professional, I decided to keep track of exactly how much time I spent on the story, whether it was reading or writing or even just thinking about it. And I decided that I wanted to make better than the prevailing federal minimum wage, which at that time was a paltry $5.15 per hour. "At that time," he says. So, zero prep work.

I was working an odd tech bubble job in those days, wholesaling computer equipment via telephone and the web. High stress cubicle farm stuff that took up a lot of time and energy. What with one thing and another, I found myself up against the deadline without having even started, and so on a Saturday in February of 1998 (I could look up the exact date, probably, because I still have the folder. Every story must have its own folder!), I walked down Lower Brownsborough Road to the video store where the World's Biggest Chow Yun-Fat fan* worked and, because they didn't have anything about Tesla in stock, rented a couple of Elvis movies. I went home and watched 'em. Then I drafted this story, sent it to a buddy who read it and suggested some changes, incorporated all but one of his notes, then sent it to the editor via the electrical mail. He sent back an acceptance about ten minutes later. So I totally busted minimum wage.

The story, well, it is what it is. The editor wound up making a couple of changes: he was even more dash happy than I am, and he didn't like my title or ending line. I think my original title was Even the King and it tied into a now forgotten original last line that was anything but "Long live the King." One of my, um, artistic goals for the piece was to not use that phrase. My buddy had correctly predicted that the editor would want exactly that phrase as the ending line and the title. Being a high powered professional writer now, I dug in my heels a little on the line (though I did rewrite it, just not to what I saw as the editor's lame specifications) but he pretty much told me that he would title it whatever he wanted and that was that.

The magazine, when it eventually came out, was a full sized newsprint publication. Even the cover is newsprint. It was billed as a "collectible" and the copy I have, signed and numbered by the editor, is #294 of 2,100. The editor (he was also the publisher, but you've probably figured that out) kind of disappeared from the field shortly thereafter and I don't know if he ever produced a second issue (which he also solicited a story from me for--"Dragons! Less than a thousand words! I need it by Thursday!"--though he didn't buy what I sent him). The check for Long Live the King did clear, however, and I got another fun illustration.

The apartment in the story is pretty much exactly my first apartment, a truly crappy little place I lived at on Kentucky Street in Bowling Green when I was nineteen. Artist Brett Tadlock, to the best of my knowledge, never visited that place (I don't think I've ever met him, actually) but he got the kitchen pretty much exactly right. Even better, when Elvis shows up (oops, should have said SPOILERS), he's described like this: "He was young, maybe from around the time he filmed King Creole. But he was wearing the black leathers from the '68 comeback special." I thought it was hilarious when I realized that the illustrator took that literally--Elvis is clearly the young, slim dandy of the early films, but his leather outfit is way too big for him, because I guess, it was tailored for the Elvis of ten years later.

If you click on the "continue reading Long Live the King" link below you should see another link, which will get you a PDF of the story. I imagine it'll either download or open in a browser window, depending on your setup. I'm only going to leave the file up until the next Virtual Collection entry, because, well, to be frank, this is not exactly a piece I want out there representing, y'know? If I have my druthers, this'll be the last time it's ever available. That said, I do think there are some moderately fun aspects to the story and if you read it, I hope you'll do so with a light heart.

UPDATE: The file has been removed, as scheduled.

*Why yes, I do mean that in more than one way.

Kin to Crows

Like a lot of writers, my favorite parts of short story collections often aren't the stories at all, but the "story notes" provided by the authors. These can range from short squibs that don't really provide much more information than what's found on the copyright page to lengthy accounts of the events surrounding the writing of the story, its influences and antecedents. The best ones are like little ethnographies with stories as their subjects of study.

A few of my stories are collected in the chapbook Bittersweet Creek, available from Small Beer Press, and a couple of others have been printed or reprinted in various anthologies. But I've never had the opportunity to write up story notes, so I thought I'd take advantage of this journal to indulge in a little hubris. I know, I know, indulging in hubris is something heretofore unknown among writers on the internet. I may do more of these if people like the idea, and won't if they don't. I'll point out where the stories appear online in those cases where they do, and provide downloadable PDFs of those that haven't been electronically reprinted.

First up, Kin to Crows.

This was the first story I sold, and my memory of finding the letter of acceptance in the mailbox is crystal clear almost eight years later. It was in December of 1997, at the rental house on Ewing Avenue with the intertwined red and white dogwoods in the front yard. I had to leave for a company Christmas party just a few minutes after I opened the envelope and saw the contract, and the party turned out to be a "professional" version of one of those How-to-Host-a-Murder games. (The bartender did it.)

Kin to Crows was the first story I sold, but the fourth I'd completed as an adult. I wrote it in 1996, in the fourth week of that year's Clarion West Writers Workshop. Geoff Ryman was the instructor that week, and after he'd read both the story and a couple of issues of the Adair Progress I had lying around, he said "Adair is your secret weapon."

Like a lot of my early stories, it's set in the imaginary Cane County, which is an amalgam of the place I grew up and a romanticized version of the place I grew up, liberally salted with some second-hand Appalachian folkways. I remember spending an afternoon in the map room of the Louisville library working with the quad maps of south-central Kentucky, mentally adding ridge lines and moving lakes so I could nestle Cane County in among the real world Adair, Casey and Taylor Counties.

It's also the, or at least an, "origin story" of a character named Japheth Sapp, who continues to appear in various contradictory forms in my fiction. One of my goals for my novel-in-progress, The Border State, is to exorcise old Japheth.

Kin to Crows first appeared in the June 1998 issue of Realms of Fantasy. The full page, full color illustration was by a David Martin. There seem to be at least three David Martins working in the field of fantasy illustration, but on the evidence of the line work of this piece, I'm pretty sure "mine" is the one who later won a Chesley Award in the gaming-related illustration category. I was very pleased with the layout of the story in the magazine, which featured a ghostly, silhouetted crow behind the text.

They used a photograph of me on the contributors page in which I was wearing round rimmed glasses, a wool fisherman's sweater and a full beard, so I'm not coming to this hubris thing late. The teaser the magazine used for the story, well, it was what it was: "Vengeance is a dish best served cold—much the way carrion birds prefer their meals." I'll leave it to you to determine how applicable that is.

The story garnered an honorable mention in the Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, Twelfth Annual Collection, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. It was later reprinted online by Ideomancer when I was their featured author in the summer of 2002, and then in my chapbook (linked above) Bittersweet Creek, in 2003.

The Ideomancer version is still online, so I'll let that page act as the official text, at least so far as this virtual collection is concerned. It's strange, now, to read something I wrote when I was almost a decade younger, but I'm still proud of it—even if it reminds me, in more than one way, of something Terry Bisson said about the dialect in an early draft of another of my stories: "It's thick, but it's accurate."