WIP: Teaser from Poppy and Letitia

Excerpt from Villa Encantada (working title), an urban fantasy short story set in Villa Encantada, a condo complex on Lake Sammamish. For those familiar with “Eagle-haunted Lake Sammamish” or “Legends of the Gone,” it’s the same complex.

The doorbell rang as soon as Simone’s hands were covered with dirt from repotting primroses. That was how it always was lately. She wiped her hands on a dish towel, regretting the dark smears as soon as she saw them. The dish towel landed in the sink; she hurried to the door.

As abrupt and perfumed as a magazine advertisement thrust in her face, a broad-toothed woman in red polka-dots that shouldn’t be chic, but were, atop a teeter of matching red heels.

Presenting her hand in a direct overhand shake, “I’m Cherry Abramson, Unit #8.”

Simone wished she’d washed her hand instead of just wiping it, but she shook anyhow. Cherry’s face remained set in the same smile, but somehow Simone was sure the other woman had noted the half-moons of dirt underneath her fingernails, the scatter of dirty dishes visible in the sink, the cloth across them like a soggy wick.

She squared herself in the doorway. No way was she asking this woman in for coffee. She didn’t want that appraising blue eye noting the stack of boxes, the unfolded laundry heaped on the sofa, already marked with a cat-shaped divot.

“I’m still in the middle of unpacking,” she said.

“I saw you out on the balcony on my way over,” Cherry said. “Of course, you want to make sure they all have saucers or some other water catching dish underneath them,” she said. “Otherwise you’ll get marks and the Board will fine you.”

Her tone was edged with unfriendliness. It surprised Simone and she hovered in the doorway at a loss for words. Then Cherry’s smile re-shuttered her face. “I’m sure you will, but I’m on the Board and need to mention things like that.”

“Sure,” Simone said.

“I wanted to invite you to our next board meeting. We always need new voices in the community. You’re an owner, right? Not a renter?”

“That’s right,” Simone said. “Got a good price and it seemed like time to settle down.”

Cherry nodded in tight satisfaction. “That’s what I thought.” She looked at the hallway mirror past Simone’s shoulder. “Well, I see you’ve got plenty of work to do.” She turned and trotted down the stairs.

Simone felt the bounce of her steps. The two-story building was several decades old; you could always tell when someone was coming or going via the cement planks leading down to the courtyard between buildings.

“Bitch,” she said, half to herself as she closed the door. Turning, she stooped to pet the cat winding itself around her knees pretending not to be investigating the door’s opening.

I had a wonderful time talking to Shaun Duke and Jen Zink of the Skiffy and Fanty Show last week. The podcast is up here. If you enjoy it and use iTunes, show them a little love with a rating on there.

A reason the interview wa so enjoyable was that they asked really interesting, incisive questions about the stories in Near + Far, in that way a writer desires and dreads at the same time, where they’re seeing some of your psyche’s underpinnings shaping the stories that you create. I’ve been mulling over some of those questions since then, and was thinking about one on the bus home the other day.

They pointed to many of the stories being about the need for connection, with characters like the protagonist of “Angry Rose’s Lament” being addicted to a drug that makes him feel connected, the hero of “Therapy Buddha” projecting all his needs onto a toy, or Sean Marksman’s ultimate fate in “Seeking Nothing.” Going through other stories in my head, I see the theme of connection coming up in various forms throughout. I think that’s a basic human need, one born of monkey roots, an instinct to be with the other monkeys.

Connection’s been something I’ve sought throughout my life. I was a brainy and isolated child, and still am to some extent. NowadaysI work in a profession that requires stretches of isolation in order to produce. So I value my time spent with other people, and particularly writers and likeminded people. I know that I’m happiest when I’ve got a group of interesting and lovely friends doing wonderful things and setting the world afire, just as I know that without some of them I would be a much different person.

Still, it’s not something I’m alone in exploring, as a writer. Human connections — gone awry, gone swimmingly, mistaken or acute, agape or philia or eros — are what fiction is made of.

At a panel at this year’s Worldcon, a fellow panelist got quite huffy when I mentioned the idea that fiction teaches us about being human. He found the idea outmoded and far too 19th century. Perhaps the divergence lay in our conceptions of what the word “teach” means — and perhaps “demonstrates” or “discusses” would be a better verb there, but I don’t know. We’re all just flailing about trying to fit into our own particular monkey packs and we’re watching the other monkeys to see what they’re doing and what we’re supposed to be doing. Don’t we read fiction to find some of that information? Perhaps we don’t say to ourselves, “I will be like character X in Book Y,” but we do think about heroes. We try to be better human beings sometimes because we have their examples. Or perhaps to avoid whatever fictional fate they fell prey to.

So, yeah. Connections. In fiction, the connections between characters, the way they choose to interpret word or gesture or telepathic scream. In the absence of human (or perhaps, intelligent, rather than human) connection, they make imaginary ones, creating fiction within fiction. That’s one of the things I’m looking at in the book I’m currently working on, focusing on the connections between the main character and the beings around her. It’s let me plunge into her head in a way I haven’t before, and I’m enjoying the heck out of it, connecting with her.