Happy solstice! My novelette "The Boatman's Cure" is now online at Lightspeed Magazine. I feel this is an appropriate time of year for it.
This story began life as a dream I had in the spring of 2011:
And I dreamed urban fantasy, except that it was taking place in the salt marshes of New England: retrieving an oar from a man who lived alone in a surprisingly well-kept house with nothing but curlews and cordgrass for miles. It wasn't much to look at, short and splintery; it had power over ghosts and a probably fictitious association with Odysseus (the only man to sail to the gates of Hades and return again, his crew all lost, reclaimed by those dark shores), and his refusal to lend it to me even under orders mystified me until I realized he was a ghost himself, hiding out from whatever he should have gone on to. I am afraid I threatened him into it. By the time I got to Brig o' Dread in the "Lyke-Wake Dirge," the air was full of half-seen foxfire in the twilight and he'd have given me his fingernails if that would have sent off whatever lovers or creditors he recognized in those desolate lanterns; but then he was too frightened to let the oar out of his sight, so I had to take him with me when I left. And facing a road trip with a cranky, chattery, insecure dead man, it became evident to me that this dream was meant for either strange_selkie or teenybuffalo and I woke up.
Apparently the dream was meant for me after all, because in the summer of 2013 I finished the story it had grown into and "The Boatman's Cure" was published as the prose half of Ghost Signs at the beginning of 2015. It received some very positive reviews, but it has never appeared anywhere else until Lightspeed. It remains one of the strongest stories I think I have written and one of the most important to me. I put a lot into it: ghosts, dead languages, singing, the sea. Some of its antecedents are very old.
( And Delia she's in the graveyard, trying her best to get up. )
The sun comes back; the ghosts come up; the tide comes in; let's do the same.
This story began life as a dream I had in the spring of 2011:
And I dreamed urban fantasy, except that it was taking place in the salt marshes of New England: retrieving an oar from a man who lived alone in a surprisingly well-kept house with nothing but curlews and cordgrass for miles. It wasn't much to look at, short and splintery; it had power over ghosts and a probably fictitious association with Odysseus (the only man to sail to the gates of Hades and return again, his crew all lost, reclaimed by those dark shores), and his refusal to lend it to me even under orders mystified me until I realized he was a ghost himself, hiding out from whatever he should have gone on to. I am afraid I threatened him into it. By the time I got to Brig o' Dread in the "Lyke-Wake Dirge," the air was full of half-seen foxfire in the twilight and he'd have given me his fingernails if that would have sent off whatever lovers or creditors he recognized in those desolate lanterns; but then he was too frightened to let the oar out of his sight, so I had to take him with me when I left. And facing a road trip with a cranky, chattery, insecure dead man, it became evident to me that this dream was meant for either strange_selkie or teenybuffalo and I woke up.
Apparently the dream was meant for me after all, because in the summer of 2013 I finished the story it had grown into and "The Boatman's Cure" was published as the prose half of Ghost Signs at the beginning of 2015. It received some very positive reviews, but it has never appeared anywhere else until Lightspeed. It remains one of the strongest stories I think I have written and one of the most important to me. I put a lot into it: ghosts, dead languages, singing, the sea. Some of its antecedents are very old.
( And Delia she's in the graveyard, trying her best to get up. )
The sun comes back; the ghosts come up; the tide comes in; let's do the same.
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