Mipney ma, mipney ma, yoredo haneshomo

The Dybbuk in Love has received a marvelous, deeply complimentary review by JoSelle Vanderhooft in the latest issue of Reflection's Edge. I'm floored. (In many respects, this is my first formal review.) And more than that, I am professionally pleased. Because the story worked.

Through this study of his past and his culture, Clare soon finds her thoughts and dreams centered around the love-struck dybbuk, until it becomes difficult to determine which one of them is truly trying to possess the other.

And so I know: somebody else got it. I wrote the story such that someone else was able to. It's always up for grabs; the inside of my head is my own, and the inside of another's head is all theirs. I can never make a reader see or feel or taste the exact textures that the words have when I am writing them. All I can do is try. And so it feels really, really good to know that every now and then, the trick works.

And all that aside, it's just good to know that someone else liked the story, too.

It's your skin shining softly in the moonlight

"The Fisher's Bride" arrived today in the mail. She is lovely, pellucid, as fragilely drawn and fluted as a nautilus shell; stone sea-slicked beneath her; the marks of the land still on her in shale and scour, flowers crushed around her bones that might have been scattered at her wedding. You should read the story that comes with her. erzebeta is definitely my new culture hero.