Afterword
The Writer and the Tale, or How and When Inspiration Hits or Not
I have been known to reply to the question “Where do you get your ideas?” by saying “I don’t know. The stories simply leak out of my fingertips.” Where stories actually come from, though, is one of the great mysteries of the literary world.
How easy it would be if there were some central warehouse where ideas were stored, waiting to be claimed. A lost-and-found of usable motifs. A clearinghouse for plot ideas. A place where writers could send away for story starters.
But the truth is that even if such storage areas existed, what the ordinary visitor would find there would be only bits of rags and bone shanks and hanks of hair.
Writers are peculiar archeologists. We gather the backward and forward remnants of our own and others’ histories, mining the final part of that word: histories.
What we find there is always a surprise.
But there is a secret, a magical spell, that successful writers know—and I shall impart that to you now.
Ready?
The magic word is: BIC.
That’s right.
BIC.
Butt In Chair.
There is no other single thing that is as helpful to a writer. William Faulkner understood this well when he said, “I write only when I’m inspired. Fortunately I’m inspired at nine o’clock every morning.”
BIC.
However, for those who would like more precise answers as to where individual stories come from, here is what I remember—or think I remember—about how the stories in this book began.
A warning, though. I have a notorious bad memory. And I am, after all, a storyteller.
The Traveler and the Tale
There was an article in the New York Times Book Review section about Henri Pourrat, the great collector of French fairy tales.
That article started me thinking about how certain stories have, indeed, changed cultures. Or charged them. Or infused them. Folklorists would say that stories follow the culture, not precede it. But I am convinced that sometimes—as I say in this tale—“Only through stories can we really influence the history that is to come.”
I sent the piece to Greg Bear for his influential anthology New Legends. He wanted it rewritten in a “straightforward space setting.” I thought that he was wrong and sent it on to Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow for their Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears anthology. They thought I was right.
Obviously I did, too.
Snow in Summer
In a book about fairy tales that I have written with my daughter (Mirror, Mirror, Viking) I wrote: “The first time I remember reading the Grimms’ ‘Snow White’ I was six years old…living in Manhattan. My mother had warned…both my brother and me not to open the door to strangers. In fact, she spelled out in some detail why not.
“So when Snow White—despite a similar warning from the dwarves—let the old witch woman in, I knew that she deserved what she got. With that peculiar moral certainty that six-year-olds (and some Republican congressmen and religious groups such as the Taliban) have, I was not at all surprised or horrified at what happened to Snow White. In fact, I believe I was somewhat miffed that she was rescued in the end.”
That’s why I began this story, an Appalachian version of the Snow White tale. Aided and abetted, I must add, by my husband and his relatives, all West Virginians. And by a book called Salvation on Sand Mountain, by Dennis Covington, which is all about snake-handling sects.
The story was first published in a Windling/Datlow anthology.
Speaking to the Wind
One of the three brand-new stories written for this anthology, this story includes an enormous amount of autobiography. Everything but the actual wind ride is true.
The Thirteenth Fey
Terry Windling was putting together an anthology about fairies. That was the outside impetus. The inside was my interest in redactions, or old (fairy/folk) stories told from a different point of view. Once you start a story in an outsider’s voice, all sorts of strange and wonderful things can happen.
Granny Rumple
Another redaction, this story began with a discovery. I was working on a variety of fairy tales for a children’s literature course I taught at Smith, and one of them was “Rumplestiltskin.”
I was considering the moral center of the story. Something was horribly wrong. Here was a miller who lies, his daughter who is complicitous in the lie, a king only interested in the girl if she can produce gold. And the only upright character in the tale is sacrificed in the end.
So I looked more carefully at the little man, Rumplestiltskin, himself. He has an unpronounceable name, lives apart from the kingdom, changes money, and is thought to want the child for some unspeakable blood rites. Thwack! The holy salmon of inspiration hit me in the face. Of course. Rumplestiltskin is a medieval German story. This is an anti-Semitic tale. Little man, odd name, lives far away from the halls of power, is a moneychanger, and the old blood-rites canard.
I wrote an article about this idea and it was published in an academic book on Holocaust themes, edited by Dede Weil and Gary K. Wolfe. But the idea would not leave me and so, after a bit, I wrote this story. Windling and Datlow (again) to the rescue. It was published in one of their anthologies.
Blood Sister
This is actually a prequel to the novels Sister Light, Sister Dark, White Jenna, and The One-Armed Queen. (The first two were nominated for the Nebula.) Those novels and this story take place in a mythical kingdom called The Dales, which is—and is not—Great Britain. In The Dales, women have been brutalized, marginalized, and left out on hillsides as babies to die. Now they live together in communities known as Hames. In those books—as well as this story—I am looking at ways we tell history: through narrative, parable, balladry, folktale, and academic explanations. Like the old man and the elephant, we cobble together history and call it truth when it is actually just story. This was first published in an anthology called Am I Blue: Coming Out from the Silence, a book of stories that explored gay and lesbian adolescence.
Journey into the Dark
I woke up one morning with the four presents given to the young prince in my head. How could I refuse to go on? Later I found it was the perfect piece to submit to an anthology by Marty Greenberg and Richard Gilliam, called The Book of Kings.
The Sleep of Trees
I’m not sure when this one started, but it certainly received its impetus from my conviction that the Greek gods and a lot of artists have something in common: vanity, ego, a belief that what they do is more important than what anyone else does. I hope that’s not the kind of artist I am. But for that, you’d have to ask my husband, children, grandchildren, and friends. This story was first published in 1980 in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and has had many reprints since.
The Uncorking of Uncle Finn
A part of a series of stories I’d planned around the family of fey in “The Thirteenth Fey,” only this and “Dusty Loves” have been written so far. It was first published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Dusty Loves
A part of a series of stories I’d planned around the family of fey in “The Thirteenth Fey,” only this and “The Uncorking of Uncle Finn” have been written so far. It was first published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
The Gift of the Magicians, with Apologies to You Know Who
You Know Who is, of course, O. Henry, and the story is a Beauty and the Beast version of “The Gift of the Magi,” where a poor husband and wife sacrifice for each other, and find they have given gifts that are, in some ways, no longer useful. She sells her hair for a watchfob; he sells his watch for special combs for her lovely long hair.
I couldn’t resist the ending of this story. I couldn’t.
My story was a long time coming, as I had gotten a Complete O. Henry for my thirteenth birthday and didn’t write this until I was in my fifties.
T
he story was simultaneously published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Marty Greenberg’s Christmas Bestiary.
Sister Death
I was asked for a story by Barbara Hambley for an anthology she was planning on female vampires, called Sisters of the Night. I was still in Holocaust mode when she wrote to me. My Holocaust novel, Briar Rose, had come out three years earlier, and my short stories, “Granny Rumple” in ’94 and “The Snatchers” in ’93, were both stories on the Jewish/pogrom theme. So it was only natural that I thought about the great female demon—possibly a vampire—Lilith. I like the line “What are Jews that nations swat them like flies?”
Barbara placed the story last in the book, one of the two places of honor (the other, of course, being the first story).
The Singer and the Song
What can one do with a short-short story? Well, use it for fillers at a reading, of course.
I’d written this little piece and had been using it as filler for some time, and could think of nowhere to send it.
Then Robin Adnan Anders, the great drummer of the rock-and-reel band, Boiled in Lead, asked me to write a story for the liner notes of his latest solo CD, Omaiyo. (I’d written the song, “Robin’s Complaint,” with Robin for Lead’s Antler Dance album. And—oh yes—lead singer and guitarist, Adam Stemple, is my son. It’s good to know people in high places. Even better to be related to them!) I was not to be the only author on the CD. Robin had asked other friends, too, among them authors Steve Brust, Emma Bull, and Adam’s wife, Betsy. I sent Robin this story, which he duly printed.
Salvage
Occasionally I write real science fiction stories. Though in the end they always seem to be about poets or singers or dragons or some other fantasy-oriented critter. This one was published in Asimov’s.
Lost Girls
Winner of the 1999 Nebula for best novelette, this story may possibly be the first children’s story to win that honor. It came from my children’s constant complaint, “It’s not fair.” (To be honest, they were all grown up and long past that whine when I wrote the story.) It also came from my conviction that Peter Pan and his boys might have been having a lot of fun, but not Wendy.
This story was first published in my own collection, Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast, and then in Realms of Fantasy.
I was at a children’s literature conference in San Diego when the awards were announced. Calling home, I picked up messages from my machine, and discovered word of the Nebula. I couldn’t find anyone to burble at for hours, so I finally told two relative strangers in a mall.
Interestingly enough, Pat Cadigan wrote a story on the same theme in the same year. The two stories were published months apart. Neither of us knew the other was working on such a piece. And they are absolutely and totally distinct and different from each other.
I do want to note that the book’s editor, Michael Stearns, adores this story. So does my husband. But Bruce Coville, my best friend, finds it appalling. “Don’t f**k with my childhood icons” is the gist of what he said to me. Or maybe something stronger.
Belle Bloody Merciless Dame
We have a house in St. Andrews, Scotland, where we spend long summers. Or as long as we can manage. I wrote this story there, overwhelmed by Celtic mists.
Words of Power
Don Gallo is an academic who has done a number of YA anthologies and he asked me for something for one of them, called Visions. I struggled for months and no story came. That summer I was teaching at the Centrum writer’s conference in Port Townsend, Washington. (We were housed at Fort Worden State Park, which was used as the setting for Richard Gere’s An Officer and a Gentleman.) Suddenly the story came pouring out. I had to put it aside to give lectures and to critique student work, of course, but otherwise I ate and slept and dreamt this story till it was done.
The story was reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.
Great Gray
The town in this story is my town, Hatfield, Massachusetts. And while I don’t know anyone like the killer in this story, there is the Stillpoint Massage Center, as well as the barn-turned-into-a-house. Also, I actually witnessed the genuflecting scene at the end, where the birders “worship” the Great Gray owl with my son, Jason Stemple. (Sorry, Jason, for killing you off in this tale.) However, what really started the story was a request from Ann Devereaux Jordan, who was at work on an anthology, Fires of the Past, stories about hometowns.
Under the Hill
One of the three new stories for this collection, “Under the Hill” began as an idea for a Marty Greenberg book, Mob Magic, which I never managed to finish in time. (Though my daughter, Heidi E. Y. Stemple, has a story in the anthology.) It took two years for me to figure out where this story was going. I call it Damon Runyon meets the elves.
Godmother Death
So Neil Gaiman asked me to contribute to a Sandman anthology and I wrote this story, which is based on a powerful folk tale that can be found in variants from Scandinavia to the Middle East. He accepted the story and sent the contract, which said that all rights to the story would belong to Marvel Comics till the heat death of the universe, as they held the copyright on the Sandman characters in their iron fists.
I pointed out to Neil that Death as a lady was not an idea original to the Sandman mythos, citing numerous folk stories: a Peter Beagle story, “Come, Lady Death,” and my own story, “The Boy Who Sang for Death,” all of which vastly predated the Marvel comic. Poor Neil, he agreed with me, but could not fight that particular fight. So I told Neil to tell Marvel where to put their contract.
Of course, I was much more polite than that. I am always polite. Then I yanked the story, which gave me the perfect thing to submit to another anthology, Black Swan, White Raven, when the opportunity presented itself.
Creationism: An Illustrated Lecture in Two Parts
There were two wars raging in the book world when I wrote this particular piece. One was the Salman Rushdie battle in which an Iranian mullah put a fatwah (a sentence of death) on author Rushdie because he had published a novel thought to be blasphemous. The other were the ongoing Creationist stories, where the No-Nothings—who believe God created Heaven and Earth in exactly seven days exactly so many years ago—were trying (and in some cases succeeding) to remove science books about the Big Bang Theory and dinosaurs, etc., from school libraries. This was my only Pulphouse story. They folded soon after.
Allerleirauh
Editor Terri Windling was working on a dynamite anthology, The Armless Maiden, a book yoking child abuse and fairy tales. She was already going to reprint a story of mine and a new poem (“The Face in the Cloth” and “The Mirror Speaks”) when this story came tumbling out of me. It’s based on a Brothers Grimm Cinderella variant, one in the incest strand, and while I wanted this to have a happy ending, the story insisted otherwise. When I read it before publication at the Centrum writer’s conference, a woman came up to me and begged for a copy of the story to give to her daughter, a survivor of childhood incest. Of course I immediately Xeroxed it for her. I only hope that in some small way it gave her daughter a voice.
Sun/Flight
This is one of three pieces I’ve done on the Daedalus/Icarus myth. The other two are Wings, a picture book with illustrations by Dennis Nolan, and a short poem published in Parabola Magazine:
Icarus
Death did not come black and cringing.
Wingless
In the dawn,
But banking upward toward the sun,
He burst full nova
And was gone.
I also won something called the “Daedalus Award” in 1986, for a body of fantasy short fiction. I have never heard again from the group that issued the award.
Dick W. and His Pussy; or, Tess and Her Adequate Dick
Surprising? Not really, if you know me. I have a somewhat raucous sense of humor, though I rarely write that stuff down. Still, when a friend told me about an anthology called Dick for a
Day, a feminist volume, I decided to chance this fairy tale redaction of “Dick Whittington and His Cat.” The one time I read it out loud was at a party in Chicago thrown by my dear friends, professors Dede Weil and Gary Wolfe. Author Joe Haldeman laughed so hard, he fell off the piano bench. I got a standing O (sorry about that) from novelist Philip José Farmer.
Become a Warrior
Marty Greenberg asked me to submit something to a volume of warrior stories, which was lucky since I’d already started this one. It took a couple of twists I wasn’t ready for and which I am quite fond of. Especially that last line.
The story was reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.
Memoirs of a Bottled Djinn
Author Susan Shwartz and I were at some convention or other discussing short fiction, and I came up with the idea of modern stories from the Arabian Nights tradition. But I was so mired in other projects, I told her, “You do it!” She did, sold it to Avon as Arabesques (great title!), and bought this story from me. I call it my homage to my husband because it’s about a sexy middle-aged man.
A Ghost of an Affair
This is the third new story for this book, all three of which were written in Scotland. But this is the only one with any Scottish flavor. Our Scottish house is only a few miles from Crail, where half the story is set, and a few more miles from Edinburgh, where the story ends. Our best friends in St. Andrews are the Morrisons, so I borrowed their name.