I certainly don’t post every week, but one of my stories was lucky enough to be selected for inclusion in this first Best Of. As a promotion for the launch of the book, you can win a free copy along with a free copy of another novel, just by commenting on J M’s blog. The other novel might be Strange New Feet, by Shannon Esposito, Prophecy Moon by Laura Eno or RealmShift, by little old me. Two free books, just for making a comment. You can’t say fairer than that.

Get over to J M’s site now to enter and learn more about the BOFF while you’re there.

The full Table of Contents for the collection can be found here.

If you’re outside the US, there’s a surcharge from Amazon. For example, in Australia it’s a $2 charge, so the price is down to $2.99 from $4.99. If you’re in the UK, you can now also find both RealmShift and MageSign at the UK Kindle Store. It’s Kindle-o-Rama!

If you’d be so kind as to spread the word to any of your fellow Kindle (or iPhone, iPad, etc.) owners, I’d be very grateful. And that’s enough self-pimpage for now!

.

That concept is described on the back of the book thusly:

Humankind carries the past as invisible baggage. Thirteen brilliant writers explore this, looking at Australia’s cultural baggage through new and often disturbing eyes.

Sounds pretty cool, huh? The Table of Contents is:

Vision Splendid — K.J. Bishop
Telescope — Jack Dann
Hive of Glass — Kaaron Warren
Kunmanara – Somebody Somebody — Yaritji Green
Manifest Destiny — Janeen Webb
Albert & Victoria/Slow Dreams — Lucy Sussex
Macreadie v The Love Machine — Jennifer Fallon
A Pearling Tale — Maxine McArthur
Acception — Tessa Kum
An Ear for Home — Laura E. Goodin
Home Turf — Deborah Biancotti
Archives, space, shame, love — Monica Carroll
Welcome, farewell — Simon Brown

As my part of the blog tour, I asked three questions of a cross-section of those contributing authors. The cross-section in question being Kaaron Warren, Deborah Biancotti, Laura E. Goodin and the editor herself, Gillian Polack.

The questions were:

1. The anthology is called Baggage and explores the cultural baggage carried by people, from a specifically Australian perspective. When you first saw/concocted this theme, what was your initial reaction? What do you see as Australia’s baggage?

2. Do you think baggage is essential? Would we be better off without cultural baggage?

3. What actual baggage do you always take when you travel? What’s your essential piece of physical baggage?

Their answers are below.

Kaaron Warren:

The anthology is called “Baggage” and explores the cultural baggage carried by people, from a specifically Australian perspective. When you first saw this theme, what was your initial reaction?

I thought, Rats, so I can’t pull that zombie wishing he was a werewolf married to a vampire story out of my to-be-finished pile and submit that.

I was also struck by how many layers of thought it was going to take to get to the heart of the theme. I liked that; it’s the first time I’ve been asked to write a story based on an almost abstract idea rather than something more specific.

What do you see as Australia’s baggage?

Australia’s baggage is like the really good set you get from your friends for a wedding present if a lot of them get together and are pretty generous. The history people bring with them as well as the shared history. Ditto for culture; the things people bring and the things that have been created here.

We have some shameful baggage and plenty of heart-breaking history. I think it’s the details which hurt. I recently saw the Dunera Boys exhibition at the National Library. One item was a case full of notes and stories written on toilet paper because there was no other paper available.

Do you think baggage is essential?

I think it’s inevitable. You can’t live even the quietest life without gathering some. There will have to be hurts, bad memories, loves, losses.

Would we be better off without cultural baggage?

Of course this is impossible, but I think we are better off keeping our cultural baggage. A lot of it can be negative, with slights going back hundreds of years. Memories of murder, rumours of betrayal, who scored the best position on the boat over. These things are remembered and handed on.

But these are the things which give us substance. They are the things which form our decisions and make us different from each other.

What actual baggage do you always take when you travel?

My big brown handbag. Room for a book, some lollies, travel sickness pills, the travel documents, things for the kids to do and read, phone, diary, note pad, many pens, keys…it really is very useful.

What’s your essential piece of physical baggage?

I usually travel with husband and two kids.

Deborah Biancotti:

The anthology is called “Baggage” and explores the cultural baggage carried by people, from a specifically Australian perspective. When you first saw this theme, what was your initial reaction?

I thought it was brilliant. Australia has such a tapestry of histories I couldn’t wait to see what people had come up with, what cultures we’d find in the book. I thought it was the perfect theme for our country!
For me, though, working to the theme proved to be tough. I’ve never really related to Australia. I’ve never understood ‘what it is to be Australian’. I tell people I didn’t feel at home until I *left* Australia in my twenties. (I came back, of course, but coming back was hard.) And so for me the only way to write a story of the Australian experience – my Australian experience – was to write about homelessness.

What do you see as Australia’s baggage?

Well, we don’t have a great track record on human rights. And we’re embarrassingly good at wars. All up, that seems to suck.

Do you think baggage is essential? Would we be better off without cultural baggage?

Maybe it’s a necessary evil. Baggage can make you wise, and wisdom can stop you from being overwhelmed by all your inevitable baggage.

What actual baggae do you always take when you travel? What’s your essential piece of physical baggage?

Nowdays it’s my phone. Boo-yah for inbuilt GPS and that whole data downloading thing! How else can you find the best Mexican in San Francisco while you’re on the run, eh?

Laura E. Goodin:

The anthology is called “Baggage” and explores the cultural baggage carried by people, from a specifically Australian perspective. When you first saw this theme, what was your initial reaction? What do you see as Australia’s baggage?

When I heard about this project, I thought, “Wow. An anthology for people like me!” I’ve been an expatriate for, oh, about 15 years now [Laura is American - Alan], and I’m acutely conscious of my difference, of my non-belonging to the society in which I live. I’ve been forced to confront a lot of my cultural baggage, just in the course of learning to get through the day and do some meaningful and valuable things while I’m here. I’ve been forced to shed the assumption of rightness, that my people’s way is the way that makes sense, and everyone else’s is second-best. Of course, no thinking person consciously decides that his or her culture is, by the very fact of its existence, the one that any rational person would choose if they had the chance. It’s just that until you’ve lived overseas, you’re not compelled to decide otherwise.

Obviously, it’s not just expats who carry baggage, but host-country people as well. I wouldn’t presume to stand here and wag my finger at Australians about their assumptions and cultural preferences, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have them. This obsession with bringing back Hey Hey It’s Saturday, for example – but no! No, that’s just none of my business. You people do what you think is best. No, really. *makes surreptitious “Oh my God” faces* [In our defence, I don't know ANYONE that thought it was a good idea to bring back that show - Alan]

Do you think baggage is essential? Would we be better off without cultural baggage?

I do think it’s essential, and I find the term “baggage,” with its pejorative overtones, ambiguous at best. Rather, you can consider it “context” or “cognitive framework.” Cultural baggage is how people make sense of what they’re witnessing, thinking, and feeling. Cultures evolve because they meet the needs of a group of people (or some of their needs, anyway). That’s a strength: to have a system of thought that both meets your needs and offers you a way of evaluating what you’re going through. Of course, as my karate teacher told me once, our greatest strengths are our greatest weaknesses, and the same framework that gives us strength to get through the day in a confusing world is the framework that can limit our thinking and make us bigoted, parochial, and paranoid. That’s why being a compassionate, open-hearted traveller is such a wonderful thing to strive for.

What actual baggae do you always take when you travel? What’s your essential piece of physical baggage?

Hm. I always take more warm clothes than I’ll probably need (I have a horror of being cold). I usually take my laptop. I always, always take a notebook, a pen, and a book to read. Perhaps the most unusual thing I never travel without is my radio. It’s an AM/FM/shortwave, which means I can always listen to the cricket (joke). But, in all seriousness, when I’m in another country, or even another city, the way I key into what’s happening and what things are like for the people who live there is to listen to their radio stations. Even if I can’t understand the language, I can hear their music and at least get an inkling of their news. Radios. Radios are cool, and immediate, and random in a way the Internet is not. You take what you get with radio: no picking and choosing, no clicking until you find someone who only reinforces what you thought already. Radio can surprise you. Moreover, the batteries last way longer than a laptop’s.

Gillian Polack (editor):

The anthology is called “Baggage” and explores the cultural baggage carried by people, from a specifically Australian perspective. When you first concocted this theme, what was your initial reaction? What do you see as Australia’s baggage?

I must have seen the theme for the first time, but it feels as if it’s been with me always. Finding a way of expressing it so that other people saw what I saw: that was tricky.

What is Australia’s baggage? See my answer to the next question. It’s shared stuff. Some of that shared stuff is amazing and positive. Some of it is sad. Some of it is quite nasty. We’re not aware of it all – in fact,
we carry most of it around all the time without expressing, explaining or even understanding it.

Do you think baggage is essential? Would we be better off without cultural baggage?

Without cultural baggage we don’t have any tools for communication, for living. How do we know when to wake up in the morning? How to smile at someone we love? How to cut steak? Cook steak? Eat steak? Some cultural baggage is strongly negative, but the vast bulk of it is the stuff we carry with us all the time without even knowing. The shape of your bed; how you get out of bed; what you do when you’re out of bed: cultural baggage.

We have eyes, but it’s our cultural baggage that trains us how to use them. It’s the shared aspects of that cultural baggage that enable us to look at each other and interpret what we see in a way that enables us to live in a shared world.

What actual baggage do you always take when you travel? What’s your essential piece of physical baggage?

I always try to carry a handbag big enough to fit at least one book. If the voyage is going to last more than 3 hours, then my netbook is slipped into my handbag, all powered up, with several books loaded. I also always carry paper and pen – and I always need it, too.

Thanks to everyone above that took the time to talk a bit about their perceptions of this great collection.
Get your copy of Baggage here.

(Incidentally, the awesome cover art shown above is by the very talented Andrew McKiernan.)

.

Heart of Ice
by Martin Livings

Lidja sits astride the deacon’s sodden corpse as he writhes, his erect penis cold and wet inside her. Sweat runs down the young sorceress’ chest, between her small breasts, as she rocks back and forth against the dripping body. Her hair, usually black, sweeps across her eyes in a golden blur. She tilts her head back, smiling, and looks to the corner of the guest room. There, next to the hearth, huddles the deacon’s betrothed, his beloved Gudrún. Her pale blue eyes are wide, and her perfect body is naked beneath the blankets because her nightdress is wrapped around Lidja’s slight body like a chameleon’s skin. The scent of the frightened girl still clings to it. The fire beside Gudrún seems to laugh quietly to itself in crackles and pops, amused by the girl’s terror. This in turn makes Lidja smile.

“Garún,” the corpse moans, bringing Lidja’s attention back to him. His face, though grey and bloated, is still that face she knows so well, the face she has imagined close to hers so many times before. His fetid grave-breath fills her nostrils. She breathes it in, savours it. “Garún,” he says again. He can’t pronounce the name, tongue black, swollen.

“Yes, my love,” Lidja whispers back to him. “Yes, it’s me.” The lie is the smallest of her sins.

He moans and settles back against the stone that lies in the centre of the room. It is the size and shape of a small bed, its surface flat and rough and smeared with the dirt of the field from which it came…

*

“Einn, tveir, Þrír!” the men of Myrká chanted, and in unison they strained to lift the massive rock. It came away from the muddy field with a sucking noise, and left a large, wet hole like an open wound in the earth and snow where it had lain for centuries, carried there by the passage of long-gone glaciers. It looked like the capstone of a grave, just as she’d envisioned it.

Lidja smiled, satisfied, from atop her gelding as she watched the men toil with it. She was impressed by their strength and dedication. The men, their faces red, chests bare and sweaty despite the winter chill, shuffled over to the cart, and with a single skilful motion deposited the rock over its side. The wooden wheels and axle creaked and cracked and buckled beneath the sheer weight of it, and for a long moment nobody dared speak or move or even breathe. But somehow the rickety cart didn’t collapse, though the wheels sank deep into the ground. The draft horses would make short work of that, however.

*

“How did you know it would be here?” the priest, Gunnarsson, asked. He stood by her horse, his robes tucked up into his rope belt to keep them clean. His legs looked as if they’d never seen the sun before, white as the snow that still covered most of the ground.

“It spoke to me,” Lidja answered, not looking at Gunnarsson. “Called to me. It’s waited here for me, all these years.”

The two watched in silence as the draft horses were harnessed to the cart. The animals seemed agitated, bothered by the proximity of the stone. Or perhaps it was Lidja’s presence that was upsetting them. It had taken her gelding many years of training to tolerate her, and even now she could feel it twitching between her thighs. Animals could sense her kind. They used to act the same way around…

“…your mother,” Gunnarsson said from beside Lidja, taking her by surprise. She’d been lost in thought.

She turned to the priest. “What?” she snapped.

“Your mother, Freya. I was sorry to hear about her passing.”

“Oh, such a nice way to put it,” Lidja replied bitterly. “I suppose you think she’s with your God now?”

Gunnarsson shook his head, solemn. “No, child,” he said. “Your mother burns in hell as a witch. As will you.”

Lidja laughed. “Ah, Father, at least we can agree on one thing.” She looked back to the stone, sitting there in the back of the cart. “But before I do, I can do something you cannot.”

“And what is that?”

“I can return the deacon to his grave.”

Gunnarsson didn’t respond. He just looked at the cart as well. The horses were secured to it now, and one of the men slapped them across their hindquarters with a whip. They whinnied, even more displeased than before, and dragged the cart across the field. The wheels barely turned, ploughing twin furrows into the soil and snow as it inched forward.

“It is not too late for you, Lidja,” the priest said at last, his voice soft. “God forgives all sins.”
Lidja’s eyes remained upon the stone. She shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “Not all.”

*

Lidja puts one hand flat against the rock, feels its chill, more cold even than the deacon’s wet, dead body. And getting colder.

The deacon spasms beneath her, inside her. It’s almost time.

Under her breath, she begins her incantation in a language old as the land itself. The stone beneath her hand turns colder still. The deacon seems unaware, lost in his undead ecstasy. He shudders beneath her again, grunts like an angry ape.

A freezing sensation runs through her body, starting in her loins and spreading out, filling her with ice water. She gasps as it threatens to swallow her whole; her mind flickers like a scrap of burning parchment caught in a blizzard. She struggles to remain conscious, to push the cold, empty darkness aside. She leans hard against the rock, continues the spell she memorised from the most potent grimoire that had belonged to her mother, before…

*

“Lidja!” Her mother’s voice cut through the gale outside, where Lidja was gathering firewood against the night. Something in her mother’s tone sent a twinge of fear through her stomach. She yanked her hatchet free of the lump of wood that she’d been trying to split in two and ran back towards the hut where she’d lived her whole life, just she and her mother, Freya, the most hated and feared woman for many miles. Freya the witch. Freya the demon. Freya the sorceress. And Lidja, daughter of Freya, tarred with the same brush. Her mother’s daughter.

She stepped into the hut and quickly closed the door behind her, to keep the worst of the winter wind outside. She shook herself like a wet dog, snow falling from her hair and shoulders, then looked for her mother. She wasn’t in the main room of the hut; the fireplace in the middle, its rough iron chimney going straight up through the roof, illuminated the scant furniture: a few tables, two straw beds covered in furs. Lidja was alone here.

“Mother?”

She crossed the room and pulled aside the deerskin curtain that separated the cooking area from the living space. Her mother stood in front of the rough wooden table that had always been there, her back to Lidja. A handful of small bones were scattered before her. Even from where she stood, Lidja could see the patterns they had formed, knew what it meant. Spirals of deceit, constellations of lies.

Her mother knew.

Freya turned, eyes afire with barely-controlled rage. “Lidja,” she said through clenched teeth, “what is the meaning of this?” She clutched a birch rod in her hands, one that Lidja knew all too well.

Lidja stood there in the entryway, eyes lowered.

“I see your intent, daughter,” her mother continued, anger simmering like a three day stew. “I see the past and the future. You know that.”

Lidja nodded, still silent.

Freya took a step forward. “Did you honestly believe you could hide this from me? From me?” she shrieked.
Still Lidja didn’t respond, kept her head down. She knew her mother’s temper, bore many scars from years of punishment. She knew the sorceress’ strengths. And her weaknesses.

“Hold out your arms, child,” Freya ordered her daughter. She was shaking with rage now, apoplectic. She raised the rod that she held in her hands so tightly that her knuckles were as white as bone.

“No,” Lidja murmured.

“What did you say?” her mother hissed. “What did you say?”

Lidja looked up. “I said no. I’m not a child anymore.” There was a strength in her voice that she didn’t know she possessed. She felt as if she’d left her body and was floating beside it, watching on, detached. She watched herself meet her mother’s gaze without flinching. One hand lowered to her side. “You can’t tell me what to do anymore.”

“We’ll see about that!” The beech rod whipped upwards, above Freya’s head. She bared her teeth, ready to strike.

Her mother was a fine seer, could see the future and the past with a startling clarity. But, like all seers, there was one occurrence that was hidden to her.

Her own demise.

Lidja swung her hatchet without fear or anger, just a stony resolve. Its head sank into the side of Freya’s neck. The beech rod fell to the earthen floor, and Lidja let go of the hatchet’s handle. It stayed there, sticking out at an odd angle. Freya’s lips moved, but no words emerged, just a deep, wet burble. She shuddered, and blood coloured her lips, dripped down her chin like berry juice. She fell to her knees, her confused eyes finding her daughter’s. They held a silent plea for mercy. Too late.

Lidja reached out and grasped the hatchet’s wooden handle again. Pulled it free.

Blood gushed from Freya’s neck like a burst dam, a flood released. She collapsed sideways to the earthen floor with a wet thud. She didn’t move again. Beneath the body, the dirt drank deeply of her.

Lidja stood there for a moment longer, her mother’s blood on her hands, her face, her soul. Then she put down the bloodied hatchet and opened the rear door of the hut. She grasped Freya’s ankles and dragged her body outside, into the snow. It would be her grave, at least until the spring thaw.

She returned inside and closed the door, leaving her mother and her guilt behind. Freya’s casting bones were still on the table, still in the pattern that had betrayed her. She gathered them up, focused her will on them, and tossed them across the table.

When they came to rest, they showed her the rock, so clear that she might have been standing in the field next to it.

Lidja smiled. She had much to do, and not much time. It wouldn’t be long before the people of Myrká sent for her. She had to be ready.

*

The rock cracks.

Lidja looks past the squirming corpse beneath her, and sees that the stone is no longer stone. It has turned to ice, clear and blue like the glaciers to the north. And across its smooth surface, a delicate spider web of fractures radiates out from beneath her palm, spreading wider and wider until it covers the ice entirely. She looses a triumphant cry, thrilled by the results.

The corpse’s eyes open again, milky-white cataracts clouding them. He looks at Lidja, a troubled expression on his grey, dead face.

In the corner, Gudrún sobs.

The deacon’s head turns towards the sound. “Garún?” he slurs. His eyes return to Lidja. “Garún?”

“Shhh,” Lidja hushes. She leans down and kisses the corpse lightly on the lips. Her tongue darts out, just a little, tasting his cold, dead flesh…

*

Want to read more? Get the Dark Pages anthology today!

.

Meanwhile, here’s the first excerpt. This comes from the opening story in the anthology.

The Stain of the Psychopomp King
by Lucien E. G. Spelman

I was a nervous wreck the first day I saw my father. He was at war when I was born and through most of my early years, and although he would write my mother concise letters every few months (a page or two of neat handwriting meant to reassure her that he was still alive), he never wrote to me. I never knew him. As far as I as was concerned, he was only a legend and a photograph. A stranger.

The last letter he wrote to her said he would be home before my sixth birthday.

He kept his word.

On the day of his arrival I paced around the front window, waiting and watching until I saw the old yellow taxi pull up to the curb. The back door groaned open and out came my father, followed by a large, rough-looking dog that I thought must be a gift for me. A thought which only served to increase my anxiety. My father stood staring at the house. Squaring off with it as though he might lay siege to it. As though it were an obstacle. After what seemed like forever, he ran his fingers through his thick hair, hoisted his duffel bag onto his shoulder, and started up the walkway with the dog padding alongside. The dog cast watchful glances here and there, but my father seemed so calm, so sure of himself, that I immediately wanted nothing more in the world than to be him. To be with him. At the very least, to be alongside him. Like the dog was.
He reached the top of the stairs and saw me peeking out from behind the curtains. He offered me a wink, but as soon as I knew I was spotted I panicked and snapped the curtains shut.

My mom threw open the door and wrapped her arms around him so desperately I thought for one horrible moment she was trying to strangle him. There was always a melancholy desperation in my mom. My father smiled, hugged her back, and winked at me again. But it was clear, even to an almost six-year-old, that he would never be all the way home. His eyes told a dark story. His eyes told the world that part of him would simply be somewhere else forever.

The dog walked through the door behind him, eyed me warily for a moment, and finally offered me his ear to scratch.

My father shook my hand, then kissed the top of my head clumsily.

As it turned out, the dog was not a gift for me, and my fears about him proved to be unfounded.

My father called him Hound (although he looked more like a shepherd) and he was a constant companion to our family, and a vigilant watchdog until the day he died.

Until the day they both died.

*

My father got a job as an ironworker at Yankee Steeplejacks and settled into postwar life the best he could. He went about his new life with gently imposing dignity, providing for my mom and me without complaint. He asked for nothing, rarely spoke unless spoken to, and in the evenings he played his trumpet in the basement. It was an odd choice of instrument for such a quiet man, but the type of music he played on the thing suited him well–wistful, melancholy strains and passages that would drift up through the heater vents. My mother and I would listen in the living room; she knitting; me alphabetizing my comic book collection on the floor, or petting Hound; each of us pretending to be doing something mundane, but in truth simply being carried away by the notes. Each of us trying to be near him.

*

He never mentioned the war or his experience there, but one sultry evening, there was a reminder of his time away. Suppertime; a staccato knock at the door; a man in uniform. My father spoke with him for a few moments in his own tongue. I had never heard my father’s native language before–only the residue of it when he flattened out his r’s or pronounced certain words with ”th” in them: zis and zat for this and that.

It was disconcerting. It seemed to widen the gap between us somehow.

As the man at the door spoke, my father became first crestfallen, then wistful, then determined. I watched the display with fascination. It was more emotion than I had ever before seen him show, and I could read it all without understanding a word. I suddenly hated the man at the door for his ability to move my father so deeply. Eventually, the man handed him a large map rolled into a tube, then saluted. My father returned the salute, barked out what sounded like an order, and firmly closed the door.

He excused himself from supper, and when my mother asked him what was wrong, he said a friend from the war had been killed, and then he said something strange: He said he would have to play him home.
He didn’t say anything more.

He went down to the little basement, and that evening he played all through the night and maybe even a little into the next day, because when I got up for breakfast, he was just coming up from the basement, eyes red, hair wild.

*

The first time I saw the stain, the tattoo, the whole tattoo, I was almost twelve. My father took great pains to hide it. He wore long-sleeved shirts all year long, even in the stifling New England summers, but even so, the marks and lines of it would peek out beneath his sleeves. He even hid it at home. He would dress in his room with the door closed, and he would never leave the shower wearing anything less than a long terry robe. It didn’t seem he was hiding it from my mother, though. Of course she had seen it. She could be in the room while he dressed. They even took a shower together once, on New Year’s Eve, my mom drunk and giggly from champagne. But he damn sure hid it from me. It was maddening. He was maddening.

After school one afternoon, sensing that the time was right, I rolled the dice and asked him flat out to let me see the whole thing. He glared at me at first, wounding me. Wasn’t I his son? Didn’t I deserve to understand his history? To be a part of his history? The hurt turned to anger, and I glared back. Fiercely (I thought). Piercingly (I hoped). And for some reason, that seemed to soften him. He broke from my gaze, shaking his head and muttering something to himself that I didn’t understand, and then finally let loose with a wide toothy smile. It was beautiful and terrifying. Like seeing a painting come to life. He laid the newspaper by his side and stood up. His callused hands worked the buttons of his flannel, seeming almost too big for the job. He folded the shirt neatly, laid it next to the paper, and then took off his undershirt. He stood for a moment regarding me, his undershirt balled in his fist, waiting for the inevitable reaction; his body was a mass of scars. The largest ran from his left shoulder across his chest and disappeared below the waist of his Levis. There were circular scars with pinched edges, tiny star-shaped scars in a constellation above his rib cage, a diamond-shaped scar at his throat. Each a secret history. He turned to show me the tattoo, and I was unsurprised to find more scars on his back, including one that looked like a burn running across the tattoo, warping it a bit. The tattoo was a line of music running from his left wrist to his right, across his shoulders and back. I knew the tattoo had notes of course, I had seen them on those rare occasions peeking out, but I thought there might be something more. A dragon or something. A mermaid. Felix the Cat. It was just music. He opened his arms out to straighten the staff, and let me have a good long look at the quarter notes and half notes scored in blue ink against his pale flesh.

Against the fading light from the window, he was a fleshy silhouette of a cross, scarred and irregular.

“Is it a song?” I asked.

“The bones of a song,” he said.

My eyes shifted from the music to the scars and back again. A few notes, the ones on the burned skin were difficult to read, compressed and discolored.

I soaked him in. I soaked in the notes. The lines. The bars. The fanciful “S” that I would learn later was a treble clef.

“Enough?” he said, breaking the spell.

“Enough,” I said, but frankly I could have looked at him forever. Each scar held a tale, and if he wouldn’t tell me, then I would’ve been content to stand there and make them up. Just to have the fable. Just to have the story of him.

He pulled on the t-shirt, grabbed the flannel from the couch, and patted me on the head.

“Why don’t you go play with your friends,” he said, and headed for his cave downstairs.

I pretended to leave, but when he was out of sight I went back to the couch and sat there watching the dust motes chase each other in the fading light and listened to him play.

*

My mother never helped when it came to solving the mystery of my father. She could be maddeningly obtuse when she wanted to. I would try and trick her into offering information about him, but she never took the bait. It became a kind of game between us. I once lied to her that kids at school were making fun of me because they thought my father was a German spy, and she said to tell them he spoke with a Scandinavian accent, not a German one, but if they wanted to discuss it further, she could send him down there if they liked. That put an end to that.

I was determined to solve the mystery of my father on my own, then. I would spy on him when he wasn’t looking, the scars and the notes and the war and the language framing him, gilding him sometimes: a warrior hero. Tarnishing him others: a Nazi spy. But mostly just blending together, creating a haze, making him more arcane, more impenetrable.

I did it on my own. I crept down the stairs, terrified that he would come home early and catch me. I pulled the chain on the single bulb hung from the floor joists, which seemed to cast as much shadow as it did light, and was almost disappointed with the simplicity of the room. A music stand with a tattered, leather-bound book of sheet music standing on a round Persian-style rug, threadbare where my father stood. His trumpet sat in an open, old brown and silver case next to the music stand, gleaming in the single light. As I crept forward, Hound moved from the shadows, and began to growl and whimper at me. I had no idea he was there. I had no idea even how he got there. When I last saw Hound he was in the kitchen, quietly napping by his dinner dish. I jumped, startled. Guilty. He must have snuck behind me. I spun around and caught his eyes, pleading with him silently not to make any noise. He ignored my pleas, and the growls and whimpers became barks. Loud and purposeful. I heard the kitchen door slam.

“Shit,” I muttered.

I executed a panicky about-face, and ran up the stairs, straight into my mother. For the first time in my life, I saw a flash of her anger. She grabbed me by the arm fiercely.

“Would you like it if I looked in your closet? Under your bed? Between the mattresses? In your secret places?” she said. She was shouting. She had never shouted before.

“No, Ma’am,” I said, flushing, eyes brimming with tears.

“Leave people their safety,” she growled.

I’m sorry! I thought, You never said it was a rule. Nobody ever said it was a rule that I couldn’t go down there, but I said nothing; I just looked at my shoes.

And then, all at once, the anger was gone and her face was round and soft and kind again. It was as if she were reading my mind. She brushed back my hair.

“Go and play outside,” she said, gently this time.

They always seemed to want me outside.

*

My secret, guilty pleasure was to go and watch him high in the buildings downtown, walking fearlessly across the beams. He would stop sometimes and gaze out into the distance, out to the sea, just standing there with one hand in his pocket and the other wiping the sweat from his brow. At those moments, from that distance, I felt closer to him than I ever had, my tiny little father up in the skyscrapers. He seemed vulnerable. At those moments I could almost imagine I knew his secret heart.

Once, on a particularly windy day, I played hooky and went to watch him. I was worried because another steeplejack had died the month before–buffeted by the wind until he lost his footing and slipped, prayers and admonitions splitting the air as he fell. I watched him fall, but never told my father. I wondered which was the last word to escape his lips as he landed between the tables at the outdoor café with a wet thump. God, probably.

I arrived at the worksite just as the lunch whistle blew, and my father turned and saw me. The blood drained from my face, and I ran away so fast I left my lunchbox sitting on the sidewalk. That evening when I got home from school, a note was sitting on my bed attached to the lunchbox, and next to a brand new King Silvertone trumpet. It said:

I would prefer you attend school. – Dad

I assumed he meant to give me lessons, but he never brought it up. Finally I asked him over dinner one night if he might be willing to teach me, but he said he didn’t know how to teach, and then changed the subject in his simple but firm way. My mom put her hand on mine under the table and held it like that until dessert, eating awkwardly. The next day there were three trumpet instruction books on my bed: 20 All Time Hits–b Flat Solos, Sugar Blues for Trumpet, and The EZ TRUMPET METHOD Instruction Book–Beginner to Advanced.

From that point forward, when he was playing in the basement at night, I would go practice in my room, leaving my mom alone to knit and listen to the strains of this discordant duet. Eventually I got good enough to be able to jam along with records, performing duets with Armstrong and Eldridge and James. But never my father.

*

Want to read more? Plus thirteen other equally engrossing tales of dark fiction?

Get your copy of Dark Pages now.

.

Q. How can I get Neil Gaiman to make an appearance at my school/convention/event?

A. Contact Lisa Bransdorf at the Greater Talent Network. Tell her you want Neil to appear somewhere. Have her tell you how much it costs. Have her say it again in case you misheard it the first time. Tell her you could get Bill Clinton for that money. Have her tell you that you couldn’t even get ten minutes of Bill Clinton for that money but it’s true, he’s not cheap.

On the other hand, I’m really busy, and I ought to be writing, so pricing appearances somewhere between ridiculously high and obscenely high helps to discourage most of the people who want me to come and talk to them. Which I could make a full time profession, if I didn’t say ‘no’ a lot.

I think it’s important to remember that Gaiman is an author. He writes awesome fiction that has millions of fans around the world. That’s what he’s famous for, that’s what he’s clearly very, very good at and that’s what his fans expect of him. Gaiman is also an incredibly hard working writer when it comes to tours and promotions. I don’t think there’s a harder working writer in the business and his success is at least in part due to this commitment to promote his work. And Gaiman doesn’t always charge his fee – there are things he’ll do for free as part of that commitment.

Any writer will tell you that marketing and promotion are harder work and take more time than the actual writing process. That’s as true for a relative nobody like me as it is for a giant like Gaiman. On his website, Neil has further commented on the issue. The key point of that post for me was this:

The main reason I got a speaking agency, ten years ago, was because too many requests for me to come and speak were coming in. And the speaking requests were, and are, a distraction from what I ought to be doing, which is writing. So rather than say no, we’ve always priced me high. Not Tony Blair high, or Sarah Palin high (last time I read about them, they’re about $400,000 and $150,000 respectively). But I’m at the top end of what it costs to bring an author who should be home writing and does not really want a second career as a public speaker to your event.

So if you want to pay me to come in and talk, it’s expensive.

Cory Doctorow weighed in on the Boing Boing post with an long, interesting comment that ended with this:

Anyone who asks me to leave the continent for a talk gets a friendly, hand-written, personal note explaining that I can only do this for a ridiculous amount of money; that I’ll consider lowering my fee a little if they can’t make it, and that I’ll cheerfully add their institution or group to the list of people to come speak at for free the next time paid work brings me to their neck of the world (I pay someone to keep track of this).

And then, like Neil, I do a ton of free talking: I’ll do sf conventions where I’m guest of honor for free (of course); I don’t charge any of my publishers to tour with my books (of course — but this takes me to 4 or 5 countries a year for a month or two’s worth of travel); I do EFF, ORG, and other civil liberties groups’ events for free (of course). I also attend one or two professional events at my own expense every year and speak for free (of course), such as the WorldCon.

All told, I probably spend a little more time on on the road than I would truly like to, maybe 20-30%. But most of the time I really enjoy seeing people, talking about stuff I care about, raising money for causes I support, etc. It’s a fun deal. That said, I also dearly want to spend more time at my desk and more time with my family. Like everything in life, there’s a trade-off, and I’m thankful every day that I’m lucky enough to have a trade-off between two such pleasurable alternatives.

So before people start railing at Gaiman for being a prima donna or for acting like a superstar, it’s best to get all the facts. The truth is that Gaiman is a superstar and he’s in high demand. He’s also really busy, always touring and appearing and, fundamentally, should be writing. I’d rather get more writing from Gaiman and less touring around, but I’m selfish like that.

It would certainly be amazing to be in a position to not only have Gaiman’s literary success, but also his profile which gives him such clout and allows him to earn enormous sums of money. It’s encouraging to all us starving artists out here. But let’s give Neil the last word on all this and it’ll show what a bollocks storm in a teacup it all really is:

I was asked if I’d come and talk at Stillwater, and be paid $40,000. I said, “That’s an awful lot of money for a little library.”

“It’s not from the library. It’s from the Legacy Fund, a Minnesota tax allocation that allows the library to pay market rates to bring authors to suburban libraries who otherwise wouldn’t be able to bring them in. They have to use the money now as it won’t roll over to next year and expires next month.”

“Ah.”

Well, that seemed fairly simple. They’d already booked a number of other authors. They had the money sitting there and were happy to pay me my rack rate. Either they gave the money to me or it went away – it couldn’t be used for anything else. And, most importantly, the dates worked. Another week and I would have had to say no, as I would have been away writing. But I got in from Chicago that morning. I said yes.

I figure money like that, sort of out-of-the-blue windfall money, is best used for Good Deeds, so I let a couple of small and needy charities (one doing social work, the other library/book based) know that I would be passing the money on to them, after agents had taken their commission, and did not think twice about it.

More power to your elbow, Mr Gaiman. Keep doing what you’re doing.

.

So, if you’re keen to get the ebook version, it really is 99c at Smashwords and you can get the Kindle friendly .mobi format. Or you can be a purist and buy from Amazon. Or you can buy a print edition from Amazon. Or you can just read the whole thing here at The Word for nothing.

Yep, I’m the author that offers choices.

.

I originally posted this story in weekly episodes right here on my website throughout 2008. It’s still available here for nothing on the Serial Fiction page. I then released the ebook version through Smashwords, which made the whole novella downloadable as a single volume in a variety of ebook formats (including Kindle compatible .mobi and so on.) You can still get that version from Smashwords for US$0.99c here.

However, several people have asked me if a print version was going to be made available. Well, what’s the point in running a small press if you don’t pimp your own goods? So I’ve made a hard copy of the story available. It’s a 30,000 word (roughly) sci-fi novella that follows a bounty hunter called Ghost as he tries to track down a rogue, murderous magic user. It’s got a noirish vibe and blends elements of sci-fi, fantasy and religious themes. Buy a copy now, and buy copies for your friends and family. Spread the word. It’s just US$7.99 from Amazon.com and £4.99 from Amazon.co.uk. The UK version is still waiting for the cover image to upload, but the book is available anyway.

Can you do me a huge favour if you’ve already read this story? Drop in to your local Amazon and give it a star rating and/or review? I’d be very grateful if you did.

And actually, while I’m pimping stuff, don’t forget that my dark fantasy novels RealmShift and MageSign are now available from Gryphonwood Press, also easy to get via Amazon. Click on any book covers at the top or sidebar here to get all the purchase links, previews, reviews and so on.

.

At Amazon you can find RealmShift here and MageSign here, both just $9.99 each. There are also Kindle editions of both and Smashwords editions of both for those ebook lovers among you. You can also use any of the links here as I’ve updated them all now. Click on a book cover for info.

Also (wait, there’s more!), as a Gryphonwood author, I have my very own little discussion forum on their site. You can find that here if you’re interested.

I feel like I should be giving away some steak knives or something. Please do spread the word that these books are available and you’ll not only be supporting my writing (for which I’m eternally grateful) but small press in general. If you like the books, buy them as gifts for your friends – Amazon will even gift wrap them for you – recommend them, suggest them for book clubs and so on. If it’s an online book club I’ll be happy to join in the discussions.

Thanks again for all your support so far, and on into the future. It’s the people that make the difference these days. And thanks to Gryphonwood Press for taking me on board.

.

If you’re interested in coming along you don’t have to be a society member. Non-members can attend for $20 ($10 concessions). The meeting is described thus:

Speculative fiction is one of the biggest selling genres in Australian book publishing. Two author-editor-publishers from the speculative fiction world will describe the kinds of work it encompasses. Alan Baxter works in the realms of dark fantasy, science fiction and horror. Bill Congreve’s books encompasses horror, with a specialisation in ghost and vampire stories. Between them they are familiar with all the different demands on author, editor and publisher.

(Should I be a smart arse and point out that the paragraph above could have really used an editor? Maybe not, seeing as I’m their guest).

Times and addresses and all details can be found here.

.