The first Linnaea/Dunn collab is available … and reviewed!

Sarah and i collaborated on the short story, “Messages from Valerie Polichar” (my first collaboration, ever.) It just came out in Shock Totem Magazine. (This is also the first time my name’s been put on the cover!)

There’s some great stories in the issue. You can pick one up on Amazon.

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It’s already been reviewed on a blog. Robert J. Duperre had this to say about our story:

Messages from Valerie Polichar by Grá Linnaea and Sarah Dunn – This, for a while, was my least favorite story. The inclusion of technology and technological terms in a work of fiction has a tendency to turn me off because it can date the tale horribly. However, this one, by the end, I grew to appreciate, and it became my second-favorite. It’s the story of a woman who obsesses with the dead and Facebook. Sound like an odd plot? It is. And it works.

Heh. I’m starting to get used to that. Reviewers seem to hate my stuff at first and then … i dunno, it infects their brain or something.

Thanks for the review, Robert!

Tags: Chunks Of Story, collaboration, horror, published

My first (unofficial) review.

John E. Rogers, Jr. writes on the Asimov’s Forum:

“LIFE IN STEAM by Gra Linnaea
(Illustrated by Ryan Behrens)

The first truly superb story in the anthology. Answers the age-old question of what would have happened if James Blish had tried his hand at Steam Punk. This would. I hereby dub this sub-sub genre Steam Monk. Religious intolerance, agents of the Inquisition, artificial “Babbage” brains made of wood and brass, chasms full of clanking and hissing machinery, an impossibly alternate world where travel upward into the “heavens” involves spider ships that crawl along the fixed, solid firmament of the sky, crises of intellectual and spiritual “conscience,” and some good, old fashioned action. What’s not to love?”

I feel a little squee.

UPDATE

John goes on to say later:

“Linnaea’s bizarre, rule-breaking steam monk story “Life in Steam” exhibits a form of literary bravado (and bravura) we need to see more of.”

More squee!

Tags: Chunks Of Story, omg!, review

art day 50 – [story fragment] Red Hot Rush

Whoa, i’ve been doing this for 50 days? Sheesh!

I didn’t have anything immediately ready this morning, so i did some five-minute writing exercises and this little chunk annoyed me the least.

I haven’t figured out why its working title is, “Red Hot Rush” yet. Maybe it has something to do with pizza. (As always, the views of my annoying cynical characters do not necessarily reflect the views of the author. K? K!)

I think this was about to get seriously surreal when the timer went off.

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Increasing night-blindness was starting to put a real crimp in Hal’s driving. Doing pizza delivery at fifty-five was humiliating, but so would being a bum. No driving, no job. No job, no crappy apartment with cockroaches. No apartment, bum.

He already felt like a bum. He dressed like one. If he wasn’t driving a car, he might be indistinguishable from a bum. Some bums had car’s, they lived in them. That was probably a lot cheaper.
And yeah, it wasn’t PC to call them bums. Bums and bag lady’s?

Was there a male counterpart to a bag lady? Were all bums male? He’d have to investigate. He got off the pizza job at two AM and could probably sneak into the library to check Wikipedia.

He had a volunteer pass at the library, and with it he could sneak in at night. There was the constant fear of being caught, but he couldn’t let the damn pass go to waste, could he? Not when the vast Internet lay waiting for him out there.

He was lost. Or rather, he thought he was lost. It was hard to tell when he couldn’t read any of the signs.

In a minute, he’d need to pull over and examine a street sign up close.

Through the fogged window, street signs looked like dessicated trees, buildings looked like the looming walls of a sea canal.

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Tags: Chunks Of Story, fast writing, pizza

art day 25 – [story fragment] Rubber Duckies

This little chunk of cynical just sorta popped out. Hmmm… i haven’t figured out if there’s anybody to like in this, or … um, what anybody’s doing. Ah well, into the “Story Starts” folder with you.

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I got the nickname Nix when I was fourteen. I thought it was cool, like the guys had stopped thinking of me as the token girl, like I had finally bought some status in the gang. It was three, maybe three and a half months later when I learned what it meant. Nada. Zilch. Nothing.
After that, I think I kept the name because I wanted everyone to think it rolled off of me. Like my nerve endings had gone numb.
Not that I had much choice anyway. Once you were branded in the gang, that was it for life. The same time I figured out what Nix meant was when I started to feel more confused about what friends meant.
Don’t get the wrong idea from the word “gang.” I’m talking about a bunch of nerdy suburban white kids. Ducky, Erik and Eric. Rick, Pat and me. I found out later Ducky spread rumors they were all screwing me. Buying status with kids cooler than us.
The gang weren’t very kind to each other either. Ducky made names for everyone. Eric was Virgin. Pat was Stick. They called Rick Spoon Boy, from some drunken story Ducky made up about a boy who lives on a toilet, eating shit.
Ducky named us all. We each had a superhero name. We each had a Godzilla Monster name, and a wrestling name.
I was Nix, Capt. Pox, Rodan, and The Masked Vagina.
I never figured why we looked up to Ducky. He was our fashion. He made our fads and broke them.
And he always got his way, could lay any chick he wanted. Except for me. And to be honest, sometimes I thought about it.

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Tags: Chunks Of Story, cynical, rubber duckies, teenager

art day 17 – [story fragment] Dervish

This might be the start of something if i can get some real characters into it … and a plot … maybe some character desires.

———————–

Trevor ran his articulated plastic fingers through the thick grey wires that were supposed to look like his hair. He kept the wires pulled back in a stiff ponytail that hung against his undyed cotton jacket. His face was a solid piece of plastic resin, so he couldn’t visually express emotion.
He enunciated every word carefully. “I am tired of staying inside.”
For all Dr. Mortison’s expression, she may as well have had a plastic face herself. If she had a first name, she had never said it. “Trevor, we still don’t know the effects the outside will have on you.”

He tapped his fingers against his hard cheeks. She would press the point for at least another few minutes. He slowed his outside perceptions until Dr. Mortison raced, making her words an incomprehensible stream. When she seemed to be winding down, Trevor sped his perceptions back to one-one time. His heat fins were pressing against his shirt and he shrugged to dissipate it before he started smoking. Besides, he liked this coat.
“…Not to worry Trevor, people will be excited to meet you. You’ll be exploring the world in no time.” Dr. Mortison smiled.

Dragging his feet down the hall to his room, he mentally spun the VR randomizer. In his mind, he hung from the very tips of his fingers. There was something about the situation that made things all right, if only for a bit. His internal tension drained until calm hung abnormally from his bones like he was resting in the park.
In VR, he looked down, past his dangling legs, to the abyss far far beneath his black boots.
The strength in his fingers gave, in a way they never would in real life, and his body quickly reached terminal velocity.
He savored his body dashing on the marble floor below and pulled his mind from virtual.

———————–

Tags: Chunks Of Story, perception, robot, time

art day 13 – [story fragment] Joist

I don’t know what i was thinking.

Ray mentioned his riff on James Joyce, “Rejoice” and i thought, “i’ll do that too!”

The only problem was i’ve never read Joyce. So, with five minutes research on wikipedia and a vague idea that Joyce didn’t like punctuation, i present “Joist” (Get it? Get it?!)

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The nail chipped through my skull I thought ridiculous you always loved my hair but your mother you were never to marry a construction man the skull cracked in fractures that crystaled out like supersaturated salt splintered bone finding pores in the stainless steel the flash of light like God or alien beams of solid information head wounds bleed most hair hennaed like a long haired punk with slicked dreads Bob and Joe watching clenching their work gloves Bob crying not five minutes after calling Joe fag both look at me at each other clenching hands tapping denim pockets scream the cell phone the cell phone you sit with your mother in bored conversation a restaurant we can’t afford wondering if we’ll ever talk about you and Joe we both know but never speak Joe wondering if it was an accident the nail gun slipped Bob is crying your mother is wishing you had picked a lawyer or a doctor or some other cliché wishing you spoke of Joe even if I knew already our dinners would have been easier with Joe on the table and the air cleared the light so bright everything in shadow naked building bones in black contrast as the sun gets brighter and brighter and brighter.

———————–

Experiment done. Let us never speak of this again.

Tags: Chunks Of Story, construction, James Joyce

art day 9 – [story fragment] Shaman Of The Cardboard Hills

I should do something with this some day.

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Pero worked his paws over the carbon tip of the matchstick, licking and smoothing, licking and smoothing. He paused to rub at his black eyes and push back his whiskers. When the stick was sharp, its tip damp, he lifted it to resume his drawing on the box in front of him.
General Cow looked iconic and angular, blocked out in light carbon strokes, hooves crushing squirming masses of cats and snakes and hawks. Her head was lifted with purpose toward the black clouds, as if in rapture. In the background Crusader Raven bowed his head approvingly.

Tags: cardboard, Chunks Of Story, fragment, mouse

art day 6 – [story fragment] dizzy pig

For my 5 min exercises, i usually pick a verb or an adjective, and a noun.  It’s probably pretty obvious what the pair were for this 5 min prompt.

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Uncle Buddy was the kind of man who would attend functions in his best overalls and walk on the street side of a woman. He was the kind who would hold open doors for older men.

He wrote letters to my sister and I with tiny stubs of pencil delicately clutched in his enormous hands. He told us fanciful tales of farm life, each wrapped like a gift in a translucent shawl of gentle lies.
The hero of his tales was always the Dizzy Pig. The Dizzy Pig was a coward of epic proportions, a sneak, a scoundrel. The Dizzy Pig often meant well for his brethren at the barnyard, but something in his nature kept him from living a life of Christian honesty.
The Dizzy Pig was lonely sometimes. Sometimes he was jovial and mischievous. Often the Dizzy Pig missed my sister and me, for we didn’t visit nearly often enough and then eventually not at all. Long after our parents stopped visiting Uncle Buddy, he wrote us still.
Uncle Buddy was sometimes impatient with the Dizzy Pig, other times he envied him.

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Hmmm… a little more Americana than what i usually do. Dunno if i’ll do anything with this one.

Tags: Chunks Of Story, excerpt, fragment

art day 2 – [story fragment] life’s a joke

I try every day to do a couple of five minute writing exercises, just to keep my brain working.

Here’s one:

———————–

Underneath a steamer-trunk in an attic in a house on a street in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan is a leather-bound book with your name in it. Next to your name is the day you will die, the exact time, and a sentence that describes perfectly your favorite thing.

The trunk belonged to someone’s aunt who had survived some war long ago. It is covered with stickers of the places she’s been, and quite a few she never visited. The book, of coarse, belongs to God.

God lives as a Filipino-Irish youth in a working class neighborhood. He laughs at younger children, sneers at teenagers, and ignores adults.

The worst thing God can imagine is passing a Halloween without getting in the paper.

He finds dog poop in a flaming bag trite. Phone calls from dead relatives became boring years ago.

Last year he had turned the Detroit river to blood. Just before city officials tested it, he transmogrified it to red food coloring. That was the funny part.

But you, you are His favorite. God thinks about you every day. Sometimes he pushes the trunk aside and flips the book to your page. He gets out his eraser, changes a number here, adds a word. Then he chuckles to himself.

Life’s a joke.

Get it?

Tags: 5 min, Chunks Of Story, exercise