Magic Wands

Here are a few of the magic wands I've been making:

I hand-turn them from a variety of woods, and every wand is unique. My elf assistants assure me that each wand houses, in its core, some fiber or feather or filament from a magical plant or animal (but no magical creatures were harmed in the making of my wands!); I never seem to be present for installation of such components, but I trust the elves.

How can you obtain one of these one-of-a-kind necessities? Well, allow me, in one word, to tell you: Donate!

I'm giving five of these away as perks to people who donate to Clarion West's Write-a-thon fundraiser. 

My top two donors will each get one. So… that makes this kind of like an auction. If you want a wand, bid donate high… and then watch for my email updates to donors, in which I’ll announce the current top two donation levels. If you’ve been bumped out of the running, you can always come back and up your donation. When Write-a-thon ends, I’ll send photos of all wands currently available (there are many) to my top two donors and they’ll get to choose their wands (in descending order of donation amount).

BUT WAIT! That’s not the only way to win a wand.

I will also randomly award a wand apiece to THREE donors who support writers other than me.

So… if you want a magic wand, hand-turned by me, donate to Clarion West via the Write-a-thon!

2015 Review or The Books I've Consumed Over the Past Twelve Months

Okay... so... here's an incomplete list of the books, audiobooks, and comics I consumed in 2015. I only include works here that 1) I'm pretty sure I read during the 2015 calendar year and 2) I enjoyed enough to recommend them. Oh... and they are not in any particular order within category, so the best ones aren't necessarily at the top.


Audiobooks

Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke
A classic. Good science fiction book.

The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell
Pure genius, start to finish... and great narration for the audiobook. I absolutely recommend this book; Easily in my top 50 ever.

The Golem and the Jinni - Helene Wecker
So, so good. If you haven't read it, do so. The audiobook is brilliant.

Nexus - Ramez Naam
Crux - Ramez Naam
Apex - Ramez Naam
Excellent near-future science-fictional techno-thriller trilogy. Great fun—and they make you think. A lot. Full of stimulating speculations and plausible extrapolations about technology, neurobiology, politics, warfare, religion, and human relationships.

Aurora - Kim Stanley Robinson
Oh, holy hell, yes! Of course, anything from KSR is going to be amazing, but this... this... well, go read it (or listen to it).

2312 - Kim Stanley Robinson
Wait, hang on... if Aurora got a ten, 2312 gets at least an eleven? Because, yeah, this one is even better. Well... I don't know if it's actually better, but it affected me more. An absolute masterpiece.

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
A classic—and for good reason. Excellent book. If you haven't read it, do.

Bel Canto - Ann Patchett
Thoroughly enjoyable. Especially if you're into opera.

Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
I wanted this book to go on forever. So beautiful!

The Water Knife - Paolo Bacigalupi
Terrific book. More environmental thriller maybe than SF (and thrillers aren't typically my thing), but wow, did it keep me rapt! I loved The Windup Girl, Pump Six, and Shipbreaker, but I feel like the characters in The Water Knife are even more real and alive. As their paths converge, collide, and become inextricably tangled, all of their motivations, actions, and responses are entirely real... and their outcomes are earned. A gritty delight.

SevenEves - Neal Stephenson
YES! The first half destroyed me; the second half reconstituted the debris. Amazing book. I listened to it shortly after it came out (May) and hardly a day has passed since that I haven't thought about it.

The Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro
So strange. Beautiful. Ultimately, I loved this book, but it was... different. Quite possibly perfect.

We Are All Completely Fine - Daryl Gregory
Brilliant novella. Engaging, compelling, thought-provoking, emotionally moving, and funny. I feel like the characters are still living in my head—they pop up every now and again to remind me that the world is a very weird place.

Harrison Squared - Daryl Gregory
Super fun Lovecraftian YA novel featuring [spoilers] one of the characters from We Are All Completely Fine. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I hope Daryl gives us more novels from this world!

Passage - Connie Willis
Damnit, Connie! Why? WHY? WHY? I'm pretty sure I'll never completely recover from this one. Wow. SO good. Possibly my favorite Connie Willis novel (which is saying a lot, given that my older daughter's middle name came from Connie's Doomsday Book). Intense and heart-crushing exploration of death, hope, grief, love, disasters, stupidity, brilliance, and resilience (romance and comedy make their appearances too, of course—it is a Connie Willis novel, after all).

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet - David Mitchell
Mitchell at his finest. I can't recommend this book enough. So good. And the narration in the audiobook (by two different narrators) is superb.

The Peripheral - William Gibson
If it weren't for Aurora, 2312, and SevenEves, and Passage, I'd say that The Peripheral was the best science fiction audiobook on the list... but given those other four, I'll just say it's one of the five best science fiction audiobooks on the list. Really, though, this is a positively brilliant and expertly executed book. I LOVED it.

Cujo - Stephen King
Another classic. Very effective.

In progress: The Years of Rice and Salt - Kim Stanley Robinson
I'm about three-quarters of the way through this massive tome... and unless it falls apart somehow (which I can't imagine it doing), it's on track to be among my favorite books ever.



Books (print or electronic)

Alif the Unseen - G. Willow Wilson
Really wonderful YA novel. Read it!

The Child Garden - Geoff Ryman
This is a strange and wonderful book. Deeply moving and thoroughly original. Also a great one for opera lovers.

A Tale for the Time Being - Ruth Ozeki
So good. This book inhabits that marvelous realm where literary and speculative fiction intersect. If you haven't read it, you're in for a treat.

All Those Vanished Engines - Paul Park
Unlike anything else I've read. I loved it... but I don't know how/where to classify it. Scenes and images from this book play in my mind over and over again and every time I think about it, I discover new ways to see it. This is one that I definitely need to read again. And you should read it too so that we can talk about it.

The Dragons of Heaven - Alyc Helms
So, so good! SO MUCH FUN! Wow. A wild and brilliant mix of noir, adventure, fantasy, and romance. And DRAGONS! Oh, but these are not the dragons you've known before. These dragons... wow... they might just stir up feelings that... well... read the book for yourself. But don't blame me if you love it in ways you might never have expected.
Caution: If you start this book, you won't be able to put it down... and when you've finished it, you'll want more. Good news, though, the sequel, The Conclave of Shadow, is coming this April!

Seriously Wicked - Tina Connolly
What a riot! Seriously, this book rocks. Funny, smart YA fantasy. Couldn't put it down. Can hardly wait for the next in the series, Seriously Shifted, to come out next fall.

MARTians - Blythe Woolston
Blythe, Blythe, Blythe... what a book. This YA novel shows us an all too plausible dystopian future—though not your typical dystopian future. This is a future of compulsory consumerism... and it is scary. But the characters are so goddamned beautiful—and the ways that they learn to carry on and find hope and happiness... well, it's inspiring.

Solitaire - Kelley Eskridge
Such a great book! So much to think about in this one. And such wonderful characters. I love books that take me deep into the mind of another... and this one is all about living inside. I'll be reading this one again before long, and I can hardly wait for the forthcoming film adaptation, OtherLife.

Three Songs for Roxy - Caren Gussoff
Beautiful and brilliant novella. I loved every word of it! It's an aliens-among-us story... but more than that, it's story about people and commonalities despite apparent differences... and embracing love when and where it finds you.

Experimental Film - Gemma Files
So creepy and awesome! The characters feel like people you know (some like the people you wish you didn't know), their fears and motivations become your own. The gods and ghosts that affect them will haunt and harass you, and you'll never be able to unsee the images that this book projects onto your brain. But you'll be glad that you read it... and, like me, you'll be eager for more of Files' fiction.

Shelter - Susan Palwick
Lovely, amazing book about empathy and forgiveness and transformation... and artificial intelligence and high-tech houses and robot companions. Art, science, religion, philosophy, technology, medicine, psychology—these are the threads of which Shelter is woven... but the tapestry itself is a story—the story of a person and of the lives that that person touches, loves, tortures, serves, protects, and destroys... and of how that person is, over the course of her life, transformed and redeemed. Read the book and you'll be transformed too... for the better.

The Devourers - Indrapramit Das
Where do I even begin. This book dug its claws into me and tore me apart—completely shredded me... and then it ate me alive, spat out the bones, set them on fire, and then coaxed a phoenix of pure, elated joy from my ashes. This book... this fucking book... Holy hell! It is THE book.
Oh... but it's not available just yet in the USA. You can get hold of the Penguin India edition if you hunt around, or hold tight till summer of 2016, when it'll be published in the USA by Del Rey (put it on your wish lists and start asking your libraries and bookstores to order it as soon as it's available).

Look to Windward - Iain M. Banks
Good book. Not my favorite of his, perhaps, but still, amazing. Of course, to say that a book is not my favorite Iain M. Banks book is like saying that Laphroaig 10 isn't my favorite Laphroaig: no, this isn't the Iain M. Banks book that I would put at the top of my list, but it's still an Iain M. Banks Culture novel, so it's gonna be high on any list of SF books I ever assemble.

All the Birds in the Sky - Charlie Jane Anders
Easily one of my favorite books of the year—of the decade, even. A masterful marriage of science fiction and fantasy in a book that glows with fun and joy. It's exciting, romantic, smart, funny, inspiring—it's everything that a book should be... oh... everything except available. But don't worry. It'll be on shelves just 27 days from now (January 26, 2016!). So hurry up and preorder it! You will LOVE it.

In progress: Lament for the Afterlife - Lisa Hannett
I'm only a quarter of the way in, but I'm pretty sure this is going to be among the best of the best of the past several years. I won't say more yet, but wow... it's something new and amazing. Go buy it and read it so that we can talk about it.


And then there are two others that I read and loved but that aren't available yet. I did get permission from the authors to talk about them, though (hence this updated version of the post... for those of you who read the original), so here we go:

The Riverbank - Kij Johnson
The Wind In the Willows has always been one of my favorite books. I think I've read it at least five times. I can hardly wait to read it to my girls. But it has some problems. Mostly... where the hell are all the female animals?
In Kij's masterful sequel, The Riverbank, (Small Beer Press, 2017) this problem is remedied! AND the story is brilliant. SO MUCH FUN! It is a perfect, natural extension of Kenneth Graham's classic—both a worthy homage from a loving fan and an ingenious extrapolation by one of the best writers. In Riverbank, the characters with whom I grew up continue their adventures (or their attempts to avoid adventure), but they are joined by several folk, all of whom instantly feel as though they've always been part of the story, and now, in my mind, are as essential to my experience of this world as Mole, Rat, Badger, and Mr. Toad.
I am immensely excited for this book to be released to the world.

Icarus Kids - Helen Marshall
This long-awaited debut novel from World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of the collections, Gifts For the One Who Comes After and Hair Side, Flesh Side, is everything I could possibly have hoped for. And more. If you've read Helen's stories, you already know that she is one of the most talented, capable, and original writers alive today (or ever!), but getting to sink into an entire novel's worth of her writing—to inhabit the lives and minds of her characters, to learn, love, and fear their world in depth, and to experience their transformations—is a literary treat of delightful (and frightful!) immensity. Is it fantasy? Horror? Science Fiction? Magical Realism? Yes. But does its classification matter? No. Icarus Kids is. Read it (once it's available) and you'll understand that that is what matters.


Comics / Graphic Novels
I'm not going to say anything about the ongoing series, but if they're on this list, it means that I think they're great (I started a whole lot more series this year that I didn't like well enough to mention).

Saga - Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples
(ongoing)

Ms. Marvel - G. Willow Wilson & Adrian Alphona
(ongoing)

We Stand On Guard - Brian K. Vaughan & Steve Skroce
(ongoing)

Sex Criminals - Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky
(ongoing)

Daytripper - Fábio Moon & Gabriel Bá
Okay... I just read this one last week and it may just be my favorite graphic novel ever. Granted, I haven't actually read very many comics or graphic novels, but still... this would easily be among the best books of any sort that I've read. So, so good.

Unwritten - Mike Carey & Peter Gross
(ongoing)

Live at GigaNotoSaurus: MY STORY!!!

Shameless self-promotion time:

My science fiction story, Nine Instances of Rain, which I workshopped with Connie Willis during Clarion West 2012, is now published and available to read (for free!) at GigaNotoSaurus.org.

I hope you enjoy it.

Write-a-thon: Week 6 Update

Dear readers and write-a-thon sponsors,

Thank you.

Thank you for sponsoring me in the Write-a-thon, for supporting Clarion West, and for encouraging me in my writing.

Today is the last day of the Write-a-thon and as of yesterday's official report, we (you sponsoring me) have raised $560. So we're still $40 short of the $600 goal, but we've done far, far better than I'd expected when I started (makes one think of Mr. Carton... "It is a far better thing..." and all. Nevermind). 

The workshop is over and it's been the best of times (there I go again). I, like the students in this year's class, am tired. But happy. And... I've met all of my writing goals for the entire six weeks: I have written at least 250 words per day every day. Over the past week, I've written a total of 2305 words, for a daily average of 329. My slimmest day was 272. All of my writing this week was on the bead story, so now, for your reading pleasure, I present another excerpt:

When I returned with my plastic shovel and pail, he laughed and I thought he was going to make fun of me, but then he didn’t. He said, “That’s pretty smart, actually. Thanks for not bringing a metal shovel. This way I won’t lose an ear.”

I started making the hole bigger, but dirt kept falling on his face, so I put a paper towel over his face and told him to yell if it got so he couldn’t breath. He laughed and told me to just spill as little dirt as possible.

I had to stop twice while I was digging to go inside and pee. The first time, I didn’t see Mama at all and her door was closed. The second time, she was asleep in front of the TV. 

When I’d finally made the hole big enough that I could get down in it and stand on a flat place that I’d made next to Carl’s face, I moved the napkin and he winked at me.

“I’m really tired,” I said. “Can I finish later?”

“Tell you what,” he said. “I already feel a whole lot lighter and more free. How about if you just clear away the dirt around my head and neck and then we’ll see if maybe I can’t wiggle myself loose a bit.

I scraped dirt away from under his chin, so he was finally able to tilt his head forward. He had been looking straight up for a long time and when it moved, he sighed. I dug down on one side of his neck and he rolled his head into the space like his neck was stiff and he was stretching it out. I dug out even more on the other side and his head leaned over that way. He kept stretching it further and further. Then his head fell over. Fell on its side, one ear facing up, so I could see straight down into it.

Thank you for reading, and if you would like to sponsor me--to help me achieve my fund-raising goal of $600, please visit my Write-a-thon page. There are some super cool kick-starter-esque premiums!


[My Clarion West Write-a-thon Page]

Write-a-thon: Week 5 Update

Greetings, dear readers and sponsors.

First... THANK YOU to my new sponsors! I'm utterly delighted, astounded, and humbled to have so many generous donors sponsoring me in the write-a-thon. As of today, you, my sponsors, have donated $535 to Clarion West... so I'm just $65 from my fund-raising goal of $600. THANK YOU!

And now for the writing stats...

The total word count for week 5 was 2282, for a daily average of 326, and my slimmest day was 256 words, so I'm down a little from last week, but still meeting my daily minimum of 250 words.

Most of those words have been on the bead story and or the New Orleans piece. The bead story is now hovering around 16,000 words and has a ways to go, so it will be at least a novella by the time it's done. It keeps surprising me. One character that I thought had gone away for good just came back... and he's turning out to be far more interesting than I'd anticipated. Currently, he's a disembodied head, so there's that. He's also the closest thing that this story has to a villain. Not sure what's going to become of him yet. He's manipulative and resourceful, though, so I'm pretty sure he'll get out of his current jam--at least for long enough to cause more trouble for the good folk.

As for other writing projects I've been working on this week, I've continued to poke around at Elm & Fergus, and I'm contemplating some major alterations to the ending of one of my Clarion West stories from 2012. This latter is entitled, Wayward: A [Space] Opera in Three Acts. It's a retelling of Verde's La Traviata (which is a retelling of La Dame aux camélias by Alexandre Dumas, fils) that's set in a future in which humanity has largely evolved beyond biological existence and the few remaining societies of biological humans are preserved as treasured historical relics. In its original form--the version that earned me one of the most memorable critiques of my Clarion West experience... from none other than George R.R. Martin--the story closely paralleled the source material. The revised form that has gone out to (and been returned by) several magazines diverges to a greater extent, but even so, I've been trying to think of a way to let the story jump its rails entirely and become something new, something more relevant. Last week, I finally had a breakthrough. So now, two years after its inception, I'll be returning to Wayward for what I hope will be its final re-write. This is my favorite of my Clarion West stories, and quite possibly my favorite of all of my stories, so I'm very excited to dive back into its world and play some more.

Okay. Enough rambling and babbling about writing. Here's your weekly sample. This is new stuff from the bead story:

In the morning I finished the cereal and the milk. There wasn’t very much. Then I found a package of ramen noodles and opened it and sat on the floor in the living room, munching on them dry, and watched cartoons. I didn’t sit on the part of the floor with the blood stain. I tried to never touch that place. 

Mama didn’t get up until after lunch time, but she didn’t say anything about cooking. She barely even looked at me when she walked from her bedroom to the bathroom. There was a can of cream corn in the cupboard and I already knew how to use a can opener, so I opened it and poured it into a bowl and ate it cold with a spoon. I’d always wanted to eat a whole can of cream corn by myself, so that was nice.

Then there weren’t any more cartoons, so I walked around inside the house and counted the windows even though I had done that before and I already knew that there were nineteen. So I counted the doors. There were seventeen if you counted all of the cupboards in the kitchen and the bathroom. And there were thirteen drawers—not counting the two fake drawers in front of the sinks. And four faucets and eight chairs and three giant soup pots and one chain saw and two axes and four machetes and eight drinking glasses and six coils of rope and one straw cowboy hat. 

The hat wasn’t actually in the house, though. It was sitting outside, next to the driveway. It hadn’t been there when I’d gone around counting windows, because I’d looked through all of them to see if there was any blue in the sky and I would have noticed the hat sitting outside. I only saw it when I walked past the front window on my way back from counting the tools that Carl had left in the coat closet. 

It was Carl’s hat. I hadn’t ever seen him wear it, but it had always been on the shelf at the top of the closet in Mama’s room. Until he left. Because when he left, I’d looked to see if he’d taken all of his clothes and he had and he’d taken the hat too because it wasn’t on the shelf in the closet. Except now, it was sitting outside, on top of one of the raised flower beds Carl had put in a few months before and had planted with flowers, but then hadn’t watered, so all the flowers died. I went out to see if I could see Carl’s truck parked farther up the driveway, but it wasn’t there. The wind was blowing in little gusts and torn up little clouds were running across the sky, below the big flat clouds that covered up the blue. 

There was nobody outside. Just me and Mama’s car and the hat.

I walked over to the hat and stood in front of it, just looking at it for a while. I reached out to touch it, but then stopped and pulled my hand back. It didn’t feel right. I couldn’t say why. Like there was a wiggle in my chest and my arm when I reached toward it. It didn’t look right either. I leaned in closer, and I saw that it wasn’t Carl’s straw hat at all, but a hat made out of paper or clay or something and painted to look like a hat. Every detail of the woven straw and the holes and the hatband and everything were there—all painted so carefully that until you got really close, it looked completely real. 

I touched it lightly with a fingertip and it dented where I touched it and it didn’t spring back at all. I poked harder and my finger went right through and the stuff that the hat was made out of was soft and a little bit sticky and a piece of it stuck to my finger. I brushed it off, and when I did, I smelled mint. And then I knew what the hat was made out of. It was chewed up mint gum mixed with soggy tissues.

A gust of wind caught the hat and picked it up, then smashed it hard against the side of the house—flattened it. Like a green and grey and straw paint splatter. Where it had been sitting on the ground there was a hole. I looked down into the hole and down at the bottom—which close enough that I could have reached it by laying down on the ground and sticking my whole arm in, but there was no way I would have done that—was a face.

It wasn’t Dolly.

It was Carl. And he was smiling.

Thank you for reading, and if you would like to sponsor me--to help me achieve my fund-raising goal of $600, please visit my Write-a-thon page. There are some super cool kick-starter-esque premiums!


[My Clarion West Write-a-thon Page]

Write-a-thon: Week 4 Update

Greetings, dear readers and sponsors.

We've reached the two-thirds point!

The word count for week 4 was 2986, for a daily average of 427, and (coincidentally) my slimmest day was (again) 261 words.

I've continued work on the bead story, though its forward progress has slowed as I've had to spend more time thinking and outlining, rather than actually writing. I've also written a bit more on the additional scenes needed for my novel revisions, and I started another new story. This one is set in New Orleans (where I lived for a year, back in '01-'02). Actually, calling it a "story" may be a bit of a stretch. I really don't know where it's going. Mostly, I just had a very memorable scenario in mind that I wanted to get down... and then I was having so much fun writing it that I just kept going. Maybe it will develop into a story.

Oh, and I've also been reworking a story that I wrote last fall called Elm & Fergus. I sent it out to several magazines without success, and then in February, I was invited to do three micro-readings (seven minutes each) at the Winter's Hill Winery's "Wine and Words" event. I selected three excerpts from the Elm & Fergus that together comprise the important parts of the story. Afterwards, I decided that the story was stronger without the parts I'd left unread, so now I'm polishing up the trimmed-down version and I hope to get it sent out again before the end of write-a-thon.

On the fund-raising end, no forward progress yet. I'm still $227 short of my $600 goal, so maybe I need to get out there and start campaigning a bit more.

And now... here's your weekly sample of work (from the New Orleans thing):

As on most Thursday afternoons, at 3:15, Mordechai Davies took a clean t-shirt from one drawer, a pair of socks from another, and a mesh bag containing a pair of shoes from the closet. All of these items went into a light backpack. He brushed his teeth, even though he had done so three hours before, immediately after his lunch of instant ramen and carrot sticks. He checked his wallet for small bills, slid loose change from the top of the dresser into an open palm and from there, to his jeans pocket. A pen and checkbook went into the small pouch on the front of the backpack, then he lifted the apartment key from the hook beside the door and exited. 

There was a six-block walk to St. Charles, but he was not aware of it, as his mind was already fully engaged in the approaching encounter. Similarly, the streetcar ride—paying the fare and choosing a seat, even—were automatic functions that he performed without notice. His feet moved him from the Felicity Street stop to his destination, but the steps that possessed his mind, accompanied by absent melodies, took him nowhere, transported him.

Outside the red-footed tan stucco building at the corner of Sophie Wright Place and St. Mary Street, standing under the daylight-deadened neon signage of the Half Moon Bar and Grill, Mordechai checked his watch. Four minutes early. Good.

He breathed deeply. Calmed his mind. His body. And he laughed.

Because of what his classmate—no, not just classmate, but, increasingly, friend—Jonathan had said when Mordechai told him about his Thursday appointments.

“So let me get this straight. You walk up every week, ring her bell, spend sixty minutes in her arms, body-to-sweat-drenched body, and then you pass her a couple of twenties and leave?”

“I write a check,” Mordechai had said.

“You do get how this looks though, don’t you?”

The thought of someone else thinking of it in those terms when Mordechai was so careful not to, prompted a tension in his jeans that—he checked his watch—he had less than three minutes to dispel. He walked briskly to the end of the block, then back. And again. After the third trip he felt ready.

He rang the bell.

Thanks for reading, and if you would like to sponsor me, you may do so by visiting my Write-a-thon page.


[My Clarion West Write-a-thon Page]

Write-a-thon: Week 3 Update

Hi, readers and sponsors.

Halfway through the write-a-thon... and the six-week workshop.

It's been incredibly exciting to be so closely involved with the day-to-day operations of the workshop and to see the students develop, both as writers and as a group. It's also been challenging to find time to write every day, but thus far, I'm still fulfilling all of my write-a-thon goals.

I wrote 2653 words during the third week of the write-a-thon, for a daily average of 379 (down a bit from last week), and my slimmest day was 261 words. Again, I worked on both the previously-mentioned bead story and on revisions of my novel.

Also, I've gained a couple more sponsors, but I'm still $227 shy of my $600 goal... so if you know any readers who might want to chip in and support Clarion West (and encourage me in my writing), spread the word!

Finally, here's your weekly sample of my work (from the bead story):

I walked until I got to the place where only the foam edge of the bravest waves could reach, after all of their power was used up and they were tired and ready to fall back into the big water behind. I dropped to my knees, set the pail aside, and started digging. I piled the sand that I took out of the beach to one side of me. The pile grew faster than the hole, because the bottom of the hole was full of water and every time a wave came, it washed more sand into the hole.

I kept digging, though. I wanted to see if I could get to the other side of the world that Dorothea had told me about. I knew that Earth was a ball and I’d never really be able to dig all the way through it, but I was pretty sure that Dorothea knew that too, so I don’t think that when she talked about making holes through to the other side of the world, she was really talking about the Earth as a planet, but some other type of world, and I knew that it was stupid of me to even dream of digging my way there with a plastic shovel. Still, I didn’t stop digging.

The wind had been blowing in hard little gusts when we arrived at the beach, but it got stronger and more steady the longer I dug, so I started thinking about going back and getting Mama to help me launch a kite. But then my shovel hit something that wasn’t sand. I set the shovel down and reached down into the hole with my hand—down through the water in the hole—and felt for what I’d struck.

Thanks for reading, and if you would like to sponsor me, you may do so by visiting my Write-a-thon page.


[My Clarion West Write-a-thon Page]