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sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2005-10-30 01:50 pm

And the rain sounds like a round of applause

Over at Jeff VanderMeer's blog, I have walked the plank. Go forth and read the rant, the review, and my five silly answers. It's all valid criticism, and I am very pleased.

. . . still better than ninety percent of the short story collections being published in genre this year.

Last night, I attended a terrific Halloween party. We started out at GPSCY, the grad student club, where I rarely go because it's killingly loud and frankly I don't like the place much; but I put in earplugs, stayed for an hour and a half (an hour and twenty minutes longer than my previous record), and observed the fascinating effects of black light on different costumes. It's embarrassing to realize that the lint on your top is glowing. But far more impressively, who knew that white garters fluoresce visibly underneath a black slip?* (Nothing, however, beats the gin and tonic that turned a luminous, poisonous green, like an irradiated luna moth. I always say, if you can read by the light of your drink, maybe you shouldn't drink it . . .) We were a 1930's starlet, Major "King" Kong, Humphrey Bogart, a Viking princess, a Chicago ganster circa 1920, a goddess in the dark, Munkustrap, a Ghostbuster, and a nonexistent sister: and it was good. We watched Rocky Horror in the rec room, to which no one else fortunately laid claim—I suppose they were all still at GPSCY—and although I was the only person in the room who knew even half of the callbacks, I don't think anyone minded. Tim Curry in a corset. Susan Sarandon in very little. Elbow sex! What's the problem here?

Someone dear to me gave me the naming of a star for my birthday. It's in Orion, which has always been my favorite of the constellations: sky-striding, autumnal and wintry. Last night was so brilliantly clear that I could see the colors in the stars as I walked back to my apartment. The stars don't know or care whose names we fix on them. But here on the ground, it's nice to look up and know.

I have to write the midterm that I will give my Latin students tomorrow. The first of my exams is this Friday. Watch me disappear.

*Because we were watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show later in the night, I attended in my usual dress: black half-slip, black camisole, fishnets, black jazz boots; and pomegranate in hand, because although no one ever asks (until this year, actually), I technically attend every showing as winter Persephone. There will, I hope, be photographs.

[identity profile] coalescent.livejournal.com 2005-11-01 11:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Another review, this time by Rich Horton, from the latest Locus (pp58-9). I'm not going to type up the whole thing, but:
Sonya Taafe is a writer of some of the most intense and image-drenched prose around. Line by long, exquisite line her writing is desperate and involving. She made her first major impression on me as a poet--and she may be the best poet working in the sf genre right now. But she has also been publishing short stories all over the place, often on mythical or traditioanl fantastical themes but always individual and always centred on a central character's obsession. [...] Singing Innocence and Experience is an excellent introduction to Taffe's work. [...] I don't have the space to describe each story, but each is a heady brew. The poems as similarly striking. As I said, perhaps the stories cluster around too similar emotional poles, and perhaps at times they go on a bit too long, but they remain fascinating, and the collection is at once fine work and a promise of even better to come.
Sounds pretty good to me. :) His favourite stories were: 'Constellations, Conjunctions'; 'Featherweight'; 'Till Human Voices Wake Us'; and 'A Ceiling of Amber, a Pavement of Pearl'.

[identity profile] coalescent.livejournal.com 2005-11-02 07:55 pm (UTC)(link)
You're welcome. :)