Jack o’ the Hills

“Stone Shoes” first appeared in Subterranean Press Magazine, but is more than worth revisiting here. It is a delectably odious tale of unchecked impulses as it follows the abused and debased lives of Jack Yap and his seemingly simple brother Pudding. Their mother is a terror, having once sewn Jack’s mouth shut for three days (and oh, he has the scars to show) and insisting her towering simpleton of a son Pudding always wear painful granite shoes so he can’t wander too far. Their good old Marm’s too busy satisfying her own impulses to watch over her boys every second of every day, and so they terrorize the local countryside and come to find a skinchanger’s egg to further horrifying results.

“Oubliette’s Egg” is original to this publication and is more than worth the cost of admission if you’re hung up on the fact that you can read “Stone Shoes” for free. This second story picks up three years after “Stone Shoes” left off, introducing us to Princess Oubliette and Prince Garotte, twins and two of the most wicked and disturbing monarchs-in-waiting you’ve likely met recently. We also reunite with Jack Yap, Pudding, and Jack Yap’s own Tam, his bright and vicious skinchanger beloved. There are literal hanging gardens here, and murders most fell, nettle shirts and perverted swan-maidens, and more besides.

These are stories that made me shudder with horror and revulsion, but also had me clinging to the pages with delighted wonder and avid hunger. Cooney is a master with the cadence and rhythm of prose, weaving sentences and paragraphs that bespell and entrap. Her characters, while homicidal maniacs and terrifying sociopaths, are captured with breathtaking precision and captivating monstrousness shot through with just the right hints of humanity. They’re people you love to hate, but also find yourself hating to love– and doing it anyway. These stories are dancing with the best kinds of monsters.

Cooney also proves herself a deft hand at retelling fairy tales, or rather understanding their essence and tapping it to suit her purposes. Her stories are infused with the stark terror of maiming and mayhem implicit in so many fairy tales, right alongside the narrative nudges toward insight and maturation. “Oubliette’s Egg,” particularly, offers illumination with its subtextual commentary on skins: skins that bind, skins that change, skins that sicken us, skins that free us. There are only two overt skinchangers in the story, but the reader can’t shake the feeling that we are all of us skinchangers in our lives. Or that we want to be, and, oh, how we tangle and tame those around us by the metaphorical skins we choose.

After finishing Jack o’ the Hills, I found myself quite unable to put Jack Yap and Pudding and Tam and Princess Oubliette out of my mind. My dreams last night were actually Tam-colored, and that’s a captivating goldblack thing; today, I find myself impatiently wondering when we can expect the Empire of Leech to fall. These are tales written by a magnificent madwoman, full of rhyme and mischief, and all I want to do is ask her how much more blood she needs for her inkwell. Read Jack o’ the Hills, and you might just find yourself right alongside me.

If you’d like to find out more about Jack o’ the Hills by C.S.E. Cooney, check out “You don’t know Jack!” on the Papaveria Press blog. The post includes links to purchase information, news about the audiobook, and insight from the author on the origins of Jack Yap.

You’ll also find my blog, which you can read just below, and pages to explore containing interstitial projects, articles and reviews on the SFF genre, amateur photography, and more!

If you have any comments, please feel free to send an email.

Here are some things you likely already know about Terri Windling: she’s a fantastic artist, creating captivating sketches, paintings, and collages of tree-people and rabbit-people and fairy tales and faerie creatures and more. She’s a distinguished editor, responsible for co-creating Bordertown, co-editing The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (with Ellen Datlow), and a great other fairy tale anthologies and novels besides. She’s the author of The Wood Wife and more, the mother of Endicott Studio, and a gracious, generous woman.

Here is something you don’t know: Terri Windling’s work helped save my life.

Terri Windling has been through some shit in her time, and she’s turned those experiences around into both overt and embedded outreach in her work. An especially potent example is an anthology entitled The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood’s Survivors. Reading that collection gave me the wherewithal to break down some walls, battle the monsters that plagued me beyond them, and emerge from my inner-labyrinth a stronger, more capable person. Terri Windling is one of those amazing creators, women and men I have never met, who have built this sword in my hands through stories of strength, grace, and survival.

I’m not the only one. She’s helped people professionally, of course, but I’ve also heard from no few others about how she’s helped them personally through her creative works and endeavors.

Now it’s our turn. To quote The Color of Angels, a fundraiser to benefit Terri Windling:

Terri Windling and her family have been coping with health and legal issues that have drained her financial resources at a critical time. Due to the serious nature of these issues, and privacy concerns for individual family members, we can’t be more specific than that, but Terri is in need of our support. As a friend, a colleague and an inspiration, Terri has touched many, many lives over the years. She has been supremely generous in donating her own work and art to support friends and colleagues in crisis. Now, Terri is in need of some serious help from her community. Who better than her colleagues and fans to rise up to make some magick for her?

A truly staggering number of Terri’s friends, colleagues, and fans have gotten together and put together a fundraiser of equally amazing proportions. This fundraiser already offers a custom poem by Jane Yolen, character-naming rights in Catherynne M. Valente‘s next Fairyland novel, a personalized story of how you survived the faerie apocalypse by Janni Lee Simner, an original painting by Brian Froud, an original handmade doll by Wendy Froud — I would go on, but the sheer wonderment of it all has made me quite dizzy.

The fundraiser is growing with every passing moment as more people flood in with offers of baked goods, signed books, fandom portraits, and more. In the days to come, auctions will go up from Neil Gaiman, George R. R. Martin, Amanda Palmer, Emma Bull, Alan Lee… Honestly, there’s just more awesome here than you can shake a stick at. Two sticks, even.

So, please, come down to the Goblin Market – come buy, come buy! Help Terri Windling, get yourself something beautiful or unique or delicious. If you can’t buy, offer something of your own.

Terri Windling is definitely a woman who deserves it.

We close now with a word from the auction’s mascot, namely Tilly (Terri’s beloved black labrador):

Note: The quote in the subject line reads, in full: “Fairy tales were not my escape from reality as a child; rather, they were my reality — for mine was a world in which good and evil were not abstract concepts, and like fairy-tale heroines, no magic would save me unless I had the wit and heart and courage to use it widely.” From Terri Windling’s essay, “Surviving Childhood” in The Armless Maiden: And Other Tales for Childhood’s Survivors.

Human Tales

Human Tales are, to quote the back jacket of the anthology, “[t]ales of warning and terror… of those who break their vows and kill for no reason other than malice. Tales of saving the lovely princess from a prince that is much less than charming… and what it takes to bring her home, of rescuing babes from parents not fit to raise them, and the reason no supernatural can truly win a bargain with such vile creatures.”

I have a story in this anthology – “A Tithe for Homecoming,” being the life and times of a woman named Laura Jane and a grove of elm dryads. It’s set in 1950′s rural Alabama, with all the kudzu-choked highways, ingrained spirituality, and folk songs that suggests. It’s about changelings and paying for things taken and finding comfort where we may.

I hope you’ll give the anthology and my story a try – there are many excellent pieces in the collection, including a desert-bright story about sphinxes by Seanan McGuire, a disturbingly beautiful revision of Rumpelstiltskin by Ivan Ewert, the horrifying betrayal of an aquatic savior in “The Human and the Sea Sprite” by Dylan Birtolo, and others.

There have also been a couple of reviews of Human Tales within the last two weeks, with Steven Saus over at ideatrash having the following to say about “A Tithe for Homecoming”:

Dark, mysterious, and twists a few concepts together into a nice interaction of the modern world and the ancient tales.  Tree spirits, changlings [sic], and revenge all fall naturally together like leaves on the forest floor.  Potential trigger warnings for child abuse.

About Human Tales in general, he says:

Graded as a solid B.  Some really good stories, and a lot of pretty good ones.  It’s a bit uneven at times, and probably should not be read straight through.  Several stories have small missteps, either because of the method of telling the story or because they don’t have enough of a punch at the end.  Despite these small flaws, it’s a good anthology and worth the price of admission.  A few potential triggers exist for child abuse and those who have dealt with attachment disorders.

You can read the entirety of his review here at ideatrash.

A. Rose also reviewed Human Tales earlier in the month, commenting “… the caliber of writing on the whole is above par and the concept irresistible to those of us who enjoy peeking behind the curtain of a story to see what it looks like from behind.” Find her full thoughts here at her Livejournal.

Human Tales is published by Dark Quest Books, and is available via Amazon – both in traditional print form, and as a much-discounted Kindle book. (The collection is also available via Barnes and Noble, and likely anywhere else you can order books. Pick your purveyor!)

I recall it clearly — I was standing in the musty confines of the SFF section in Zelda Books in Montgomery, Alabama. Many important moments began this way for me, as many a well-travelled book fell into my hands and helped build me into the woman I am today. I would spend every minute my mother let me, running my fingers along the spines of so very many inviting books, pulling those out that caught my fancy.Wolfwalker by Tara K. Harper. The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge. Beldan’s Fire by Midori Snyder.¹

Life on the Border, edited by Terri Windling.

Honestly, it was the allusion to borders that caught my eye, along with the mind-expanding moment of being confronted with a collection of stories described right on the cover as “where Elfland meets rock and roll.” I needed borders at that time in my life: borders to cross, borders to run to. A way to escape into a place filled with magic, no matter the cost. I lingered over it, but my mother was calling from the register and I’d already met my quota of allowed books for the day with other choices. I reluctantly left Life on the Border on the shelf, determined to come back for it the next week.

I never found it again, as a kid. Tickets to Bordertown aren’t easy to come by, nor do they hang around if you make the mistake of not running off with them immediately. The collection was gone when I went looking the next week, and I let it fade from memory. I found my way to similar places — Newford under the wing of Charles de Lint, particularly. I found my way to the nexus of Bordertown authors and their kin by discovering The Endicott Studio almost as soon as I first logged onto the Internet, becoming an ardent fan of the site.

Yet it wasn’t until very recently that I found my missing ticket to Bordertown, and claimed the collections I didn’t quite manage to find when I was a perfect candidate for emigration. Funnily enough, my mother was the one who found them for me and sent them to my doorstep: a calling card from years gone by. (Thanks, mom!)

Here’s what you need to know about Bordertown: [keep reading this review on Cabinet des Fées].

I always meant to read more of her novels, and had not yet gotten around to it for all that The Dark Lord of Derkholm and The Tough Guide to Fantasyland and the Chrestonmanci books sounded extremely up my alley. I would have liked to have been more familiar with Diana Wynne Jones before she left us; it saddens me to know that we now have all the books by her that we’re going to get.

Gorgeous, touching or just heartfelt things have already been said by a number of people:

Neil Gaiman – “Being alive. Mostly about Diana.”
Pamela Dean – “I want to tell of our journey down the river.”
Delia Sherman – “More Precious was the light in your eyes that all the roses in the world.”
Marie Brennan – “A Seed of Hemlock.”
Robin McKinley – “Diana Wynne Jones.“

In memoriam here, I now give you the story of the first and only Diana Wynne Jones book I’ve read, a theatre-outing to see Haoru no Ugoku Shiro, and two silly gaijin.

I am an ardent admirer of the Studio Ghibli films directed by Hayao Miyazaki, most prominently of Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke) and Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away) at the time this story takes place in late Fall 2004.

At the time I moved to Tokyo, I actually had no idea that Miyazaki would soon be releasing his newest offering: Haoru no Ugoku Shiro, or Howl’s Moving Castle, inspired by a British author’s book of the same title. A fantastic girl I worked with – Becky, who would soon resolve as one of my fastest and best friends in Tokyo – clued me in to the forthcoming Studio Ghibli feature, and soon we were both intrigued by the film’s premise and eagerly awaiting its release.

One problem: neither of us spoke more than a few phrases of Japanese.

To counteract our ignorance, I hied myself to the nearest bookstore after work one day and purchased a copy of Diana Wynne Jones’ novel. I figured we could both read it, and then follow the basic story as it unfolded in Miyazaki’s film.

I didn’t expect to fall head over heels into such a marvelous narrative. I didn’t expect the sly humor, the meta-inclusion of fairy tale tropes, the urban fantasy mixed in with secondary world fantasy and a dash of portal fantasy. I didn’t expect this novel to push so many of my buttons, indulging my fascination with the heart and witches and fairy tales. And strong women: in a time when I was often feeling vulnerable and lost, Sophie’s irascible strength filled me with a sympathetic conviction.

We saw the film in the theatre at Roppongi Hills a couple of weeks later, reveling in super-plush seats and the fact we didn’t have to wait ages to see it in an indie theatre back in the States.

For the first five minutes, the fact that we understood none of the film’s dialogue wasn’t a problem. (Especially considering there isn’t any dialogue for the first several minutes of the film.) We were armed with our knowledge of Diana Wynne Jones’ fantastic book. We were prepared!

Of course, then Miyazaki took us for an utterly fantastic ride away from the source material and into his own, equally genius vision. We were soon utterly lost, but it didn’t matter. The intoxicating imagery moved us, the music enthralled us, and I sat transfixed as even more of my thematic fascinations played out on screen: fallen stars, the lure of power, the glory of flight.

I may have missed all the nuance of Miyazaki’s concept in that first viewing, but I had a wholly complex two hours there in the dark: Diana Wynne Jones’ narrative and Miyazaki’s vision collided in my heart, leaving me immersed in an artistic experience beyond language that enthralled much deeper than either the novel or the film could have on their own.

It’s an experience that has stuck by me, and it need not have happened at all. The theatre we visited apparently also does a small number of showings of Japanese films each day with English subtitles. We had just missed that detail, and didn’t realize what the beleaguered ticket lady was trying to communicate to us before she just gave up and sold us tickets to the Japanese-only showing.

Still, I’m glad Becky and I were such silly gaijin. Otherwise, I would have missed out on a potent experience.

If you’re not familiar with Diana Wynne Jones’ work, do yourself a favor – find her books and read them.

That’s one of the best memorials such a fine writer could have.

When I heard about the devastating earthquake and resulting tsunami, my heart literally hurt. So much destruction. So many lives lost. I remember how bemused I would be when there was an earthquake while I lived there – any earthquake at a good distance from Tokyo, mind – and my family and friends reached out to me with great concern because they were unsure of the geography. I know the geography. I know how far the people I know stood from the epicenter of this terrible event, but it didn’t matter. Especially since distance wasn’t as helpful in the face of an earthquake that measured 9.0 on the MMS. Part of Honshu (the main island of Japan) was moved almost eight feet. The tsunami destroyed entire cities. Collateral damage certainly reached as far as Tokyo, as in the oil refinery fire in Chiba. There is an ongoing concern with Japan’s nuclear reactors.

My friends are all safe, for which I am exceedingly grateful. However, it is a bittersweet thing – for all that I rejoice in my loved ones’ safety, I can’t help but think of all those lost, and homeless, and devastated.

I am moved by the charitable response that has swept the world, and especially by the harnessing of the Internet to generate donations for the aid of Japan and other areas affected by this catastrophe. I can’t turn around without finding a new way to give to Japan, and I thank the world for that.

If you haven’t helped already, and if you have the means and desire to contribute, I hope you’ll consider a few of the ways below:

Papaveria Press, purveyor of brilliant books, is donating all proceeds in the near future to Doctors Without Borders.

Genre for Japan will be auctioning prizes (related to the SFF and horror genres) for donations.

Writers for the Red Cross, while not specifically geared for Japan, is raising money for the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund, which will be assisting recovery efforts in Japan.

If you participate in any fandoms, you may like giving through one of the following – get something cool, and help Japan at the same time!

help_japan: A series of fandom auctions, from fanfic to artwork to care packages.
japan_calls: Auctioning celebrity voices to raise funds.
fandomaid: Another series of fandom auctions.
helpjapan: Deviant Art’s auction group, mostly of arts and crafts.

These are just a few ways you can help; like I said, you almost can’t turn around without falling over a new way to donate. This is an amazing thing, and I hope you’ll search your pockets or the couch cushions for even some small bit to chip in to one of those charities.

Now, let’s close close this post with another amazing event that has arisen in the wake of this tragedy: Hideaki Akaiwa named Badass of the Week. The silly honor is not the amazing bit – just read the story and see! (Warning, though: contains language.)

I haven’t yet had a chance to read the full issue, but have instead sampled here and there as fancy took me. There’s a new poem by Catherynne M. Valente – the first in nearly two years! – that makes me want to amble on the range and shed fierce tears and laugh in the seized grasp of truth. “The Secret of Being a Cowboy” is powerful, and the accompanying audio recording by SJ Tucker in an Arkansas accent brings that point well home.

Sonya Taaffe’s “Persephone in Hel” is a paragon of macabre beauty and leaves me both delighted and creeped out. A startling juxtaposition to be achieved by one poem, but it’s true! Jo Walton’s “The Weatherkeeper’s Diary” is a slow little bit of cloud-gathering, equal parts pragmatism and whimsy. The timbre of Walton’s poem suits this issue of Stone Telling entirely, and adeptly strokes the reader’s imagination.

Beyond these, there’s a pantoum inspired by mathematics, a haunting prose poem concerning Lot’s wife (who deserves a name), kaleidoscopic poetry invoking the chaos of cities, and several other pieces as unlikely and surprising. The accompanying images are deftly chosen by Rose Lemberg, and there are audio recordings of the poetry where available.

Stone Telling is also unique among poetry zines in its inclusion of nonfiction columns. In this issue, you can find an article by Nin Harris on Muhammad Haji Salleh’s Sajak-Sajak Sejarah Melayu, as well as one exploring the pantoum that I am honored to have contributed.

In “There is That Line Again: Revealing the Pantoum in Context,” I explore how the pantoum emerged into the Western poetry scene from the Malay pantun. I included quite a few examples of Malay poetry, French poetry, and poetry in English, along with the historical context and an expanded definition of the pantoum form. If you have any interest in poetry, I hope you’ll read it – if you do, tell me what you think!

After you’ve read this fantastic issue of Stone Telling, be sure to continue on to the roundtable led by Julia Rios – this is another unique aspect of Stone Telling, and one that never fails to foster important conversations.

This issue of Stone Telling can be discussed at stonetellingmag, the zine’s Livejournal community. Also, if you’ve enjoyed the publication and are interested in supporting the arts, please consider leaving something in the tip jar at the bottom of this page.

Maybe this is what thirty feels like, this mixture of responsibility, self-respect, creativity, and silly fun. That’s not bad at all.

Happy birthday also to Mary Robinette Kowal¹, Jules Verne², John Ruskin³, Seth Green⁴, and Kate Chopin⁵!

Each and every one of you should do something awesome today, and be excellent to each other. Get excited and make things. Maybe even say it was done in the name of me. I would be amenable to that!

Here’s something both enjoyable and generous you could do:

Erin M. Underwood is raising money to donate to the Great Lakes Bengal Rescue, an organization dedicated to helping Bengal cats in need. As part of this effort, she solicited cat poems from the online community and has posted them along with images of some absolutely gorgeous Bengal cats and a donation link.

Go. Enjoy free cat poetry, and give a little if you can.

You will find a poem of mine entitled “Fae Cat Fib” in there. It was originally inspired by the Cait Sidhe in Seanan McGuire‘s October Daye series, although the final piece also drew upon the Scottish legends of the Cait Sith. The poem is also informed by the Fibonacci sequence: I set out to write a fib, but decided I wanted to mirror the structure in the end.

Brittany Warman’s “My Cat is a Collector of Stories” is one poem particularly deserving of your attention in the collection: it’s infused with an elegant fairy tale sensibility, and phrases both fully apt and startlingly resonant. Jess Mersky’s “Alice is Missing” evokes shivers of dark delight, summoning to mind the black and white kittens from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. “Reveille” by Martha Wallen makes me laugh because it’s so true, and Amanda Gannon’s turns of phrase in “Cat in the Doorway” are gorgeously constructed and perfectly evocative.

Read poetry. Help bengal cats in need, if you’re moved to do so: make a donation, or spread the word of Poetry for Cats.

And have an awesome day.

Notes:

1. Who wrote the delicately enthralling Shades of Milk and Honey, one of my favorite books of 2010.

2. Who is being honored with a great interactive Google doodle!

3. Who may have inspired his friend George MacDonald, who wrote Phantastes, The Princess and the Goblin, and many other fantastic works.

4. Who made me love him as Oz in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and is stunningly well-connected in Hollywood.

5. Who wrote The Awakening, one of the more engaging books I was tasked to read in a rather intellectually painful high school English class.

These characters are already rolling on into new stories, even as I’ve worked at finishing this one for submission to 100 Stories for Queensland. I’ve got mischievous plans for that carnival’s denizens and an independent theatre in Montgomery, Alabama.

…this is what happens when I listen to Seanan McGuire‘s Wicked Girls on loop for a while, with a mad dash of Lady Gaga and a judicious sampling of Seanan’s earlier album, Stars Fall Home. They compose the perfect creative soup for mythic madcap merriment.

But, yes, wordcount! The original draft of “Binding Tides” was in the neighborhood of 1200 words, which was really a bit shorter than it needed to be. However, the maximum wordcount permissible for the 100 Stories for Queensland benefit anthology was 1000 words. That’s it.

Cue bringing out the scalpels, along with the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.

The worth of a word is so precious when you’re dealing with so few. Implications, nuances, whole delicate architectures of suggested backstory can fall away with just one excision.

I’m not sure I’ve ever appreciated disused quite so much.

Thanks to copious teeth-gritting and fine paring work – but more to the tireless efforts of my crack coterie of friendly beta readers – I made “Binding Tides” come in at the maximum wordcount and sent it off to the editors last night.

Regardless of whether it’s accepted, I’m pleased that I wrote so quickly and to spec, for the first time in a very long time. It’s refreshing.

100% of the money made from 100 Stories for Queensland goes to supporting those impacted by the flooding in Australia. The anthology is due out in late February or early March, in both print and ebook formats. Y’all should absolutely purchase it, for it promises to be full of good fiction for a really good cause.

And maybe even my selkies.