How people change—but you were never like the others

[sovay]

At the end of a long, exhausting, and frankly demoralizing day, the mail brought me my contributor's copy of Wilde Stories 2015: The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction, edited by Steve Berman. It is a very elegant hardcover and I am honored to have "The True Alchemist" reprinted alongside stories by Chaz Brenchley, Craig Laurence Gidney, Alex Jeffers, Sunny Moraine, and other people I should read more of. I dreamed one night in December 2013 that I was writing a story for ashlyme, so like a reasonable person I stayed up the next night and wrote it. The title comes from a line in Mattie's "A Portrait in Rust," one of the best autumnal stories I have read in recent years—appropriately, both stories were eventually published in Not One of Us #51. This is the second time "The True Alchemist" has been reprinted this year and I am delighted. Seriously, check this collection out. There is a lot of lovely weirdness in it. Tom Cardamome's "The Love of the Emperor Is Divine" is another one for the classics list.

I am in the middle of reading George Gissing's Born in Exile (1892), Sylvia Townsend Warner's Mr Fortune's Maggot (1927), and Ray Monk's Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (1990), so that's how I'm doing.

[edit] Speaking of emperors: the director of I, Claudius (1976) has died. Herbert Wise. I hope someone deifies him.

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I hope someone deifies him.

Seconded. He should have a small temple in the precincts of Broadcasting House.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on your story's rebirth amid lovely weirdness.

I am in the middle of reading George Gissing's Born in Exile (1892), Sylvia Townsend Warner's Mr Fortune's Maggot (1927), and Ray Monk's Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (1990)...

Good heavens! Cold pork pie, passion fruit, and Swiss cheese and rye bread. Hot Ziggety!

I hope someone deifies him.

His memory for a stele.

Nine

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

Hooray for publication. Boo for the demoralizing day. I hope things get much, much better.

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

I'm happy for you - I love that story dearly, for many reasons. It's a little gem of weirdness. Thanks for your kind words, too. *hugs*

I don't know much about Gissing beyond "New Grub Street". I'll check some more out. And raise a glass to Wise tonight.

[gwynnega]

Congratulations on the reprint! The book sounds wonderful.

Herbert Wise definitely deserves deification! Your mention of I, Claudius reminds me of another book that could fit in the classics list: Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

How is Gissing? I only know Gissing from Le Guin's essay on the first time she read The Lord of the Rings, in which she describes being ambushed by it in the library at at time when, she says, "I was, for reasons now obscure to me, reading all of Gissing". This has never exactly filled me with enthusiasm, so I am curious.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Late congrats on the rewrite. I am still wrestling with stories and also got the line-edit proof of Experimental Film. Luckily, I'll be up at somebody's cottage all weekend, away from the Internet, so I hope to catch up on all my back work. (Then again, I also made the mistake of watching Lars von Trier's Antichrist, though I doubt I'll see many self-disembowelling foxes or deer with dead fauns hanging out their vaginas while I'm up there.)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

That's excellent, reprinted twice in one year!