readings

This originally appeared in Sybil’s Garage, Issue number three, Spring 2006.
The piece of music referenced is Lucia Hwong’s “The Spell”.

This prose poem appeared last century! 1997 to be precise. It originally was printed in small press magazine Dreams & Nightmares. It features dancing mice, dreams, and of course…hands.

Because who doesn’t like a good toad story?

Amanda C. Davis recently blogged about the success of a post doing a breakdown of her stories for forensic students. It seems free forensics pieces are in demand for students looking for something to use.

In that spirit, here’s a breakdown of some of my stories that are both short enough to be read with a minimum of trimming and available online for any forensics students, speech class students, or other performers looking for something to read. Because I’ve got a lot of stories, I’m still working through the list and I’ll continue adding stuff as I go. For the complete list, see my publications page.

Prose Pieces for Forensics Students
In each category, I’ve listed the story, where it originally appeared, its length, type, and voice considerations.

Prose pieces eligible by National Forensics League Rules
Note: If you need the proof of print publication, please e-mail me at catrambo AT gmail.com, and I can send you a scan. I will be adding links to those when I get the chance, because I only recently realized they are proving an issue for performers.

• The Accordion. Originally appeared in The Walden Review in 1991, reprinted in EYES LIKE SKY AND COAL AND MOONLIGHT. 4 minutes, humorous fantasy, first person, gender unspecified.
• Bigfoot. Originally appeared in 13th Moon, 1992. 6 minutes, humorous fantasy, third person, voices include a female Bigfoot and a woman.
• The Coffee Cup Song. Originally appeared in The Cornfield Review in 1992. 12 minutes, humorous, first person, young girl.
• Falling. Originally appeared in Cream City Review in 1991. 3 minutes, dramatic, first person, gender unspecified.
• Hands. Originally appeared in Dreams and Nightmares in 1991. 1 minute, surreal fantasy, 3rd person, gender unspecified.
• Planet Crabby. Originally appeared in Asylum Magazine in 1990. 3 minutes, humorous science fiction, first person, gender unspecified.

Seven Clockwork Angels. Originally appeared in Altered America in 2016. 15 minutes, steampunk fairytale, 3rd person, voices include Sleeping Beauty, her parents, and two scientists.

Additional Prose pieces eligible by National Catholic Forensics League Rules
(Anything under NFL should also be eligible for this, if I am reading the rules correctly.)

• Aardvark Says Moo, electronically published for Patreon campaign. 3 minutes, humorous fantasy, first person, voices include adult woman, small girl, male clown, female Valkyrie.
• The Dead Girl’s Wedding March. Originally appeared in Fantasy Magazine in 2006, reprinted in EYES LIKE SKY AND COAL AND MOONLIGHT. 7 minutes, dramatic fantasy, third person, voices include a young woman, her father, a male doctor, and a male rat.
• Grandmother’s Road Trip. Originally appeared in Chiaroscuro in 2005, reprinted (electronic version only) in EYES LIKE SKY AND COAL AND MOONLIGHT. 12 minutes, dramatic horror, first person, voices are a young woman, her mother, and her grandmother.
• Magnificent Pigs. Originally appeared in Strange Horizons in 2006, reprinted in EYES LIKE SKY AND COAL AND MOONLIGHT. 15 minutes, dramatic fantasy, first person, voices are an adult male, a young girl, and an elderly Jewish woman.
• Swallowing Ghosts. Originally appeared in Daily Science Fiction. 3 minutes, dramatic fantasy, first person, voices are a young man, his grandfather, and the ghost of James Joyce.
• Wickedness. Originally appeared in Flash Fantastic. 1 minute, humorous horror, 3rd person.

Many more prose pieces available here. If you use one of my pieces in a forensics competition, please let me know and consider leaving a review on Amazon, GoodReads, or any other reading site you frequent! 😻

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On August 16, 2013, at 8 p.m., Seattle’s Wayward Coffeehouse (6417 N. Roosevelt WAY NE, #104, Seattle, WA) will host a reading of four of the area’s notable speculative fiction writers. Ted Kosmatka, J.M. Sidorova, Django Wexler, and Cat Rambo will read from new and forthcoming work.

The four readers share something beyond a love of speculative fiction — they are all represented by the same agent, Seth Fishman of the Gernert Company. After meeting during the Locus Awards recently hosted in Seattle, the four joined forces for a joint reading at the Wayward Coffeehouse. Their work ranges from epic fantasy to hard SF.

About the readers:

• Ted Kosmatka‘s work has been reprinted in nine Year’s Best anthologies, translated into a dozen languages, and performed on stage in Indiana and New Work. He’s been nominated for both the Nebula Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and is co-winner of the 2010 Asimov’s Readers’ Choice Award. His novel The Games was nominated for a Locus Award for Best First Novel. He grew up in Chesterton, Indiana and now works as a video game writer.
• Cat Rambo lives, writes, and teaches by the shores of an eagle-haunted lake in Redmond, Washington. Her 200+ fiction publications include stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld Magazine, and Tor.com. Her short story, “Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain,” from her story collection Near + Far (Hydra House Books), was a 2012 Nebula nominee. Her editorship of Fantasy Magazine earned her a World Fantasy Award nomination in 2012.
• J.M. Sidorova is a fiction writer and a biomedical scientist at the University of Washington. She is a graduate of the Clarion West workshop for writers of speculative fiction. Her science fiction and fantasy short stories appeared in Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, and other venues. Her debut novel The Age of Ice (Scribner/Simon & Schuster) has just arrived at bookstores.
• Django Wexler graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh with degrees in creative writing and computer science, and worked for the University and artificial intelligence. Eventually he migrated to Microsoft in Seattle, where he now lives with two cats and a teetering mountain of books. His latest book is the first of an epic fantasy quintet, The Thousand Names.

I had to go hunt for my proof copy of the book in order to be able to look up the art this time. Tod snagged all my extras in preparation for the reading this Friday, at the University Bookstore in Seattle, at 7 pm. I’ll be reading with three terrific writers: Alma Alexander, Corry L. Lee, and Roz Kaveny.

So! Here’s day three of the giveaway. Comment to win!

(left to right)

Image #1 goes with the story “Therapy Buddha,” which is about how much we project things onto objects and coincidences. It’s near future, another one of the eyed creatures, this one peering down, a little inquisitively, a little confusedly. It looks like part of an organic machine, like so many of Mark’s images.

Image #2 accompanies the story, “Close Your Eyes,” which originally appeared in Apex Digest. This is the one I have as a tattoo, from back before I moved to Seattle, given to me one night in a Durham tattoo parlor. I like it for its ability to be wing and eye and fish, all in one. Vicki used it with the Table of Contents as well.

Image #3 looks like a rocket ship and a Greek amphora at the same time, perhaps bubbling over with some sort of pine and summer scented wine. I selected it to go with “Peaches of Immortality” because it seemed to me it looked a little like the machine at the end of the story.

Image #4 is a detail of the larger image that goes with “The Mermaids Singing, Each to Each.” I’m glad Mark pulled it out like this for the jewelry, since it makes a lovely little piece. His work often has a tribal feel to it, and this looks like an orca to me.

Image #5 goes with “Legends of the Gone”. Sometimes Mark repeats images and this is a variant of one that I always see as a large flightless bird, standing looking at the viewer. (You may not see it. That’s okay.)