And the wind chime strikes and your dead stare strikes

I wasn't surprised about The Seventh Seal (1957), but I had no idea my brain considered Bergman generally comfort viewing. I just rewatched The Devil's Eye (Djävulens öga, 1960) and The Magician (Ansiktet, 1958)—in the case of the former, for the first time since the winter of 1999; I had liked it then and it was better than I remembered—and if I didn't need to make myself try to fall asleep I would probably have cued up Hour of the Wolf (Vargtimmen, 1968), it being the right time of night and all. I bounced hard off Persona (1966), but everything else I can recall has been a hit. Do I just find existentialism basically reassuring? I don't want to read Camus, even if all the cool kids are doing it.

A ship of paper on a sea of fire

My short story "As the Tide Came Flowing In" has been accepted by Weird Whispers. This is the maritime ghost story with late nineteenth-century whaling and pregnancy. I am so pleased it will have this home.

None of my stories mean little to me, but this one means more than some. It is my longest piece of historical fiction to date. It is the first time I have revisited the continuity of one of my own stories—it's a prequel to my novelette "The Salt House." Fragments of it go back to 2014, and in all honesty the core of it is an elementary school nightmare, but the story itself was written last summer during a heat wave to a soundtrack almost exclusively composed of chanteys and black metal. It incorporates Elise Matthesen's "Was Ice, Am Ocean," the pendant of silver wire and labradorite with a shipwreck in it. The title comes from the folk song "Jenny Storm."

The market is a new one for me. The news made my night. Everything feels so fragile right now, it matters even more that we still tell stories.