Sidhe Tigers
This is another story that is very close to being a poem. It comes from a necklace of the same name, of very pale green beads.
A Light in Troy
I was thinking about the fall of Troy (you know, like you do). More specifically, I was thinking about Euripides’ The Trojan Women, which is about what it’s like to be a woman on the losing side of a war. And I was thinking about Andromache and the various stories told about what happened to her after the fall of Troy.
And then I was thinking about feral children.
Why these two trains of thought should have collided to produce this story, I don’t know. But, as best I can reconstruct it, that’s what happened.
Amante Dorée
A little alternate history here . . . a little genderfuck there . . . And somehow it came out a spy story.
Somewhere Beneath Those Waves Was Her Home
The Field Museum in Chicago has a collection of figureheads which are beautiful and slightly sad. Elise made a necklace called Somewhere Beneath Those Waves Was Her Home. The selkie was originally in a different story, but it turned out she needed to be in this one. If you’re getting the idea that short stories generally happen by virtue of two or three random things colliding in my head, you’re not wrong.
Darkness, as a Bride
There was a challenge involved in the genesis of this story. I know it had something to do with rocks, because the challenge also produced Elizabeth Bear’s excellent “Love Among the Talus”
. I was obviously thinking about the rock that Andromeda was chained to and about what happens if Perseus never shows up. I was also obviously thinking about the ballet Coppélia—and about the Hoffmann stories it’s based on—and what that story looks like from the doll’s point of view.
Also, I love the sea monster in this story with all my heart.
Katabasis: Seraphic Trains
Every writer gets one Orpheus story. This is mine.
It’s also a Tam Lin story, and an urban fantasy—in the literal sense that it is a fantasy about a city. The moment that sparked the story was riding the El from the outskirts of Chicago into the city itself, and seeing how close it comes to the houses along its path. It was also a chance to nest several tiny stories inside the larger one.
The section headers are lines from the song “Why Do You Linger?” Like the sections themselves, they are not in linear order, but you can put them together to find the outline of the song, which is itself one of those tiny nested stories.
Fiddleback Ferns
I don’t write much science fiction, and I don’t write satire at all, but this story turned out to be both. I love some of the turns of phrase in it, and I like the fact that it gets in, gets the job done, and gets the hell out of Dodge.
Three Letters From the Queen of Elfland
Another Elise necklace: this one turned into my first published and most successful story. It is my most reprinted story, and it won the Gaylactic Spectrum Award for Short Fiction in 2003.
Night Train: Heading West
Believe me, no one is more surprised than I am that I wrote this poem. But the twined images—reincarnation and Solitaire—didn’t have a story around them, which pretty much means you’re stuck with a poem, and I did the best I could.
The conversation on the train really happened, but it was about UFOs, not past lives.
The Séance at Chisholm End
I write a lot of old-fashioned horror, because I love it. This story is old-fashioned horror, with the séance and its off-stage aftermath; it’s also, very quietly, alternate history.
And from a different angle, it’s as close as I’m ever likely to get to writing like Georgette Heyer. Which is to say, not very close at all.
No Man’s Land
I get many of my stories from my dreams, which tend to be very vivid and also very narrative. This is one of those stories, although it took a lot of reworking and polishing to get it into the shape of a story. It originally started out in a sort of stock fantasy setting, with swords and kings and suchlike, and had to be rewritten from the ground up because all the fantasy trappings kept getting in the way of what the story was about. So it ended up as one of my very rare science fiction stories. Really, I’d call it science fiction magical realism, which surely puts it in a subgenre of its own.
National Geographic on Assignment:
Mermaids of the Old West
Mermaids of the Old West is one of Elise’s necklaces. I’d been reading a lot of National Geographic magazines (where by “reading,” I mostly mean “looking at the pictures”). You wouldn’t think the two would go together, and yet, they do.
A Night in Electric Squidland
&
Impostors
. . . I don’t even know how to begin to explain Mick and Jamie.
There are three stories about them: these two, and a third, “Blue Lace Agate,” which is, as of this writing, in press with Fantasy Magazine. I also have a bunch of other ideas about Mick and Jamie that are just waiting for me to get around to them.
Mick and Jamie live in a Lovecraftian alternate universe, in Babylon, Tennessee (which seems to be more or less what would happen if you slapped Memphis down where Chattanooga is and added ghouls for good measure). They work for the BPI, the Bureau of Paranormal Investigations, and you should imagine their boss, Otho Jesperson, as being played by David McCallum circa 1985.
They’re my excuse to write little buddy-cop movies for myself.
Straw
I woke up one morning from a particularly weird and vivid dream, and by lunchtime I had turned the dream into this story. I think that’s the fastest I’ve ever written anything.
Absent From Felicity
The centerpiece of my doctoral dissertation is the chapter on Hamlet. And after I finished that chapter, I found that I still had something to say about Hamlet. And Hamlet. And poor Horatio. And about what happens after the story’s over.
The World Without Sleep
I love H.P. Lovecraft even when he drives me crazy. And of all his stories, I think my favorite may be The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, partly because it’s so wildly inventive and partly because it takes the monsters from another of my favorite Lovecraft stories, “Pickman’s Model,” and looks at them from a different angle. When I was writing “The World Without Sleep,” I told everyone it was my Marxist Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath with Vampires story, and that’s still pretty much what I have to say about it.
The narrator of “The World Without Sleep,” is Kyle Murchison Booth, the narrator-protagonist of the stories in my collection, The Bone Key. The Bone Key is much more traditional Lovecraft/M.R. James horror than “The World Without Sleep,” but if you like Booth, that’s where to go to spend more time with him.
After the Dragon
After the Dragon, She Learned to Love Her Body is a sculptural necklace that Elise showed me the first time she showed me her workroom, most of ten years ago now. Healing Is Not About Pretty is a necklace made of deformed hearts that I bought from Elise in 2008 or 2009. The two came together to spark this story—which is also a story about what happens after you save the world. Or slay the dragon.
And with that, we’ve come full circle: from dragon to dragon. Thank you for reading.
Acknowledgements
“Draco campestris.” Strange Horizons (August 2006). Reprinted in Best American Fantasy, eds. Jeff and Ann VanderMeer and Matthew Cheney, Prime Books, 2007.
“Queen of Swords.” AlienSkin Magazine (November 2003).
“Letter from a Teddy Bear on Veterans’ Day.” Ideomancer 5.3 (September 2006).
“Under the Beansidhe’s Pillow.” Lone Star Stories 22 (August 2007).
“The Watcher in the Corners.” [originally published on author’s blog].
“The Half-Sister.” Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 15 (January 2005).
“Ashes, Ashes.” [first publication]
/> “Sidhe Tigers.” Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 13 (November 2003). Reprinted in Glass Bead Games, ed. Elise Matthesen. Minneapolis: Inner Magpie Press, 2008.
“A Light in Troy.” Clarkesworld Magazine 1 (October 2006). Reprinted in Best New Romantic Fantasy, ed. Paula Guran. Rockville, MD: Juno Books, 2007. Reprinted in Realms: The First Year of Clarkesworld Magazine, ed. Nick Mamatas and Sean Wallace. Wyrm Publishing, 2007. Reprinted in Podcastle (March 9, 2010).
“Amante Dorée.” Paradox 10 (Winter 2006): 4-11. Reprinted in Trochu divné kusy 3, ed. Martin Šust, Laser-books, 2007.
“Somewhere Beneath Those Waves Was Her Home.” Fantasy Magazine. Prime Books, 2007.
“Darkness, as a Bride.” Cemetery Dance 58 (2008).
“Katabasis: Seraphic Trains.” Tales of the Unanticipated 27 (2006).
“Fiddleback Ferns.” Flytrap 9 (June 2008).
“Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland.” Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 11 (November 2002). Reprinted in Trochu divné kusy 2, ed. Martin Šust. N.p.: Laser-books, 2006. Reprinted in So Fey: Queer Faery Fiction, ed. Steve Birman. Binghampton, NY: Haworth Positronic Press, 2007. Reprinted in The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, eds. Gavin J. Grant and Kelly Link. New York: Del Rey, 2007. Reprinted in Glass Bead Games, ed. Elise Matthesen. Minneapolis: Inner Magpie Press, 2008. Gaylactic Spectrum Award for Best Short Fiction, 2003.
“Night Train: Heading West.” The Magazine of Speculative Poetry 7:2 (Spring 2005). Reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror XIX, eds. Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link, and Gavin J. Grant. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2006.
“The Séance at Chisholm End.” Alchemy 3 (May 2006).
“No Man’s Land.” Fictitious Force 5 (2008).
“National Geographic On Assignment: Mermaids of the Old West.” Fictitious Force 2 (Spring 2006).
“A Night in Electric Squidland.” Lone Star Stories 15 (June 2006). Reprinted in The Lone Star Stories Reader, ed. Eric T. Marin, LSS Press, 2008.
“Impostors.” [first publication]
“Straw.” Strange Horizons (June 2004).
“Absent from Felicity.” [first published on author’s blog].
“The World Without Sleep.” Postscripts 14 (Spring 2008).
“After the Dragon.” Fantasy Magazine (January 2010).
About the Author
Sarah Monette grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, one of the three secret cities of the Manhattan Project, and now lives in a 105-year-old house in the Upper Midwest with a great many books, two cats, and one husband. Her Ph.D. diploma (English Literature, 2004) hangs in the kitchen. Her first four novels were published by Ace Books. Her short stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, among other venues, and have been reprinted in several Year’s Best anthologies. The Bone Key, a collection of interrelated short stories featuring her character Kyle Murchison Booth was published by Prime Books in 2007. A cult favorite, it was re-issued earlier this year in a new edition. Sarah has written two novels (A Companion to Wolves, Tor Books, 2007; The Tempering of Men, Tor Books, 2011) and three short stories with Elizabeth Bear, and hopes to write more. Her next novel, The Goblin Emperor, will come out from Tor under the name Katherine Addison. Visit her online at www.sarahmonette.com.
Other Books by Sarah Monette
Mélusine
The Virtu
The Mirador
Corambis
A Companion to Wolves (with Elizabeth Bear)
The Tempering of Men (with Elizabeth Bear)
The Bone Key
Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction Elizabeth Bear
Draco Campestris
Queen of Swords
Letter from a Teddy Bear on Veterans’ Day
Under the Beansidhe’s Pillow
The Watcher in the Corners
The Half-Sister
Ashes, Ashes
Sidhe Tigers
A Light In Troy
Amante Dorée
Somewhere Beneath Those Waves Was Her Home
Darkness, as a Bride
Katabasis: Seraphic Trains
Fiddleback Ferns
Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland
Night Train: Heading West
The Séance at Chisholm End
No Man’s Land
National Geographic on Assignment: Mermaids of the Old West
A Night in Electric Squidland
Imposters
Straw
Absent from Felicity
The World Without Sleep
After the Dragon
Story Notes
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Sarah Monette, Somewhere Beneath Those Waves
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