I checked out an electronic version of a novel from our local library, just to see how it’s done. The novel is What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman. Couldn’t transfer it to my Kindle–at least, I don’t think so, I didn’t try–but reading it on my computer screen is working out pretty well. I’ve never read any of her other books, but this one sounded intriguing, and it is very good. It’s about a woman who, after being involved in a traffic accident, blurts out that she is one of two sisters who went missing during a trip to the mall over thirty years ago. She refuses to provide the name she’s currently using (she doesn’t want this revelation to redefine who she is, she says, and given the way media circuses set up tent, no one really blames her) but the information about what really happened that day is being doled out slowly–but not too slowly.
I finished reading Peter Straub’s novella, A Special Place, which is an excised section from his next novel, A Dark Matter. As Gary Wolfe says in the afterword, it’s one of those “but what about that guy?” pieces that Straub has published before, focusing on the backstories of minor but important characters in his books. This is a pretty gruesome and gritty tale of a young boy whose predilection for killing neighborhood animals is cultivated by his uncle, who has some socially unacceptable habits of his own.
Raising the Bar is finding its footing as a very good show. Of course, the first date that ended with the discovery of one party’s ex-husband’s suicide is going to mess up that burgeoning relationship. And not every case is going to go the defense attorneys’ way, even when they are conviced of the rectitude of their argument. Lines get crossed, some big, some small. Moral indignation doesn’t always win out, and at the end of the day, they’re all human, as demonstrated by Judge Kessler’s lie about her date.
I turned in the last of four essays I’m contributing to Encyclopedia of the Vampire: The Living Dead In Myth, Legend and Popular Culture, edited by S.T. Joshi, which should be out sometime next year. Now it’s back to short fiction. I have a flash tale that I’m going to expand from 500 words to about 2500 words for a charity anthology. The original version isn’t really a story at all–I see that now. More of a gimmick built around a catchy title, but I’m seeing the story lurking beneath now.
I received one of those rejection letters yesterday: Your story was very well received here…however, we’ve decided not to publish it. It’s a difficult story, essentially a YA urban fantasy with mature elements, and nearly 10,000 words long, so there aren’t many possible markets for it. I did find a new place to submit it to, though, but I think the mature elements might work against it there. I’ve considered sending it to F&SF, but I haven’t summoned the gumption to do so yet.
