Half the days are mine remembering friends from the earth

[sovay]

From the front lines of the lurgi: I woke up coughing in the middle of the night, have a spiking headache, have appointments I can't miss this afternoon [edit: THE MBTA DECREED OTHERWISE]. I had to check when I got up that there was not really a Cambridge-area writer named Sandrine Aday who had written an unfinished sequence of intense, dreamlike, anthropomorphic animal fantasies from the early '80's through the early '90's before dying under still-mysterious circumstances having to do with a holdup and her daughter being in jail. In the dream I had grown up reading her, as had several but not all of my friends; she had the kind of not quite cult fandom of Meredith Ann Pierce, pre-Baen P.C. Hodgell, pre-Firebird Clare Bell. "Like Redwall, but earlier, and only the weird bits," I remember describing her work to someone who had never heard of her. She had never been reprinted. That was changing, I really want to say because Small Beer Press had waded through the rights hell that was the remains of her estate; a previously unpublished story of hers was the centerpiece of one of their upcoming anthologies. I had work in it; so did Greer Gilman; so did Ruthanna Emyrs. The Aday story had herons and a sacrifice headland, which ties it to one of the oldest dreams I can remember. I was reading the galleys in a boathouse. I really resent this anthology not existing.

P.S. I rated an end-of-year recommendation in the same company as Sylvia Townsend Warner, Audre Lorde, and Dorothy B. Hughes. I'll take it!

P.P.S. And TCM is running Van Heflin movies for his birthday. I have already reviewed Act of Violence (1948) and The Prowler (1951); I have never seen Patterns (1956); I made it halfway through Tennessee Johnson (1942) once. I guess I have a plan? I've been so sick, I haven't even been watching movies.

Comments

[nineweaving]

The Aday story had herons and a sacrifice headland, which ties it to one of the oldest dreams I can remember. I was reading the galleys in a boathouse. I really resent this anthology not existing.

I really want to read this. We may have to write it.

Your reviewer has exquisite taste. That passage she quoted from Sylvia Townsend Warner is one of my pocket stones.

Nine

[sovay]

I really want to read this. We may have to write it.

That would be fascinating. I don't think I've written anything with animal protagonists since I was in elementary school. (I wrote cat romance. My parents still have it.)

Your reviewer has exquisite taste. That passage she quoted from Sylvia Townsend Warner is one of my pocket stones.

I'm glad to hear that; it made me think of you.

[nineweaving]

...it made me think of you.

I am deeply honoured.

Nine