A Cynical Little Story

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I was working on a group of stories about the Moon the other night, and this one wrote itself onto the page. It wasn't appropriate to the project, however, so I had to cast it out.  

Rather than leave it in the Graveyard of Flash Fiction that is my hard drive, I thought I'd share this one with you.

I must caution, however that it is very sexually implicit.

Traditional Romance Moon

I shouldn't be out here with you. Not with the sky so thronged with stars and the moon so, you know, big and bright. Not with the thoughts I'm thinking. My mother would be scandalized. She'd wash out my mind with soap. I'm not sure how that would work. But I'm certain she'd try. So I really. I. Really I shouldn't.

Oh. Yes, it is. Full, I mean. The moon.

My father thinks so too. That you're bad for me, I mean. He doesn't know you the way I do. All he thinks about is money and jobs and things like that. So of course he disapproves. Of you, I mean.

I don't think I've ever seen the moon so large as it is now.

No, really I shouldn't. What if we? If we? You know. We?

Oh, yes.

Yes.

Stop that. Stop that right now. Look at the moon. Isn't it beautiful? Honestly, it is. I mean, for real.

Now, is that helping anything? You should.

Oh.

Oh.

Oh.

Oh, my goodness. Oh. Ahhh. Oh.

That was nice. Did you like too? That was nice. Of course, we'll have to get married now.

Now don't look at me like that. You knew what the consequences would be when you did it. When we did it. I tried to stop you.  And it was nice, wasn't it? You know it was. It can be nice again. After, you know, the ceremony.

Right now, look at the moon. Isn't it wonderful? Isn't it perfect? Don't you just want it to stay this way forever?

 

Above: Photo courtesy of NASA.

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One Last Farewell to Tim Sullivan

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So Tim Sullivan and I are, back in the early eighties, intensely browsing the science fiction paperback section of a bookstore when the young woman running the place comes up and brightly asks, "Are you interested in science fiction?"

Tim kind of shuffles his feet and, looking down at them, says, "Not really."

"Don't let him kid you!" I say. "This is Tim Sullivan, the famous science fiction writer. You may or may not have his books in stock, but you've definitely sold a lot of them."

"Really!" the clerk says, and addressing him directly, "How did you decide to become a science fiction writer?"

"Well," Tim replies, "I'm not any good with my hands and I don't have any talent for music or art, so..."

And now you know why you probably have never heard of this good man.

The last time I saw Timothy R. Sullivan was at Gardner Dozois's funeral. He had lost a little weight and shaved off his unfortunate mustache and, to everyone's surprise, it turned out that he was handsome. Not that that mattered to anyone when he and Gregory Frost shared rooms just off Brown Street. They two and Gardner Dozois and I were the beating heart of science fiction in Philly back then. We were, in the parlance of Saturday Night Live, "wild and crazy guys."

So the news that Tim died recently, of congestive heart failure, leaves me mourning not only him but a time in my life when we were all undiscovered geniuses only a matter of months away from the astonished recognition and accolades of a grateful world.

Old people like to say that youth is wasted on the young.  They're full of it. We all had great fun, great plans, and a heartfelt appreciation of how lucky we were to have such friends as each other. Somewhere in there, we managed to write a lot of worthwhile fiction.

Tim was a solid writer. He was a finalist for the Nebula Award. And he and I collaborated on a story, "Fantasies," which, it must be admitted, was not much of a much. He had a good start on a writing career when he veered into movies, acting in Somtow Sucharitkul's The Laughing Dead and co-writing and starring in Twilight of the Dogs, both ultra-low budget endeavors. He moved to California and then to Florida, focused on scriptwriting, and we fell out of touch. I regret that.

Rather than mope about the loss of someone who was a very good friend (we had lunch together when our friendship was new and when Tim objected to me picking up the check, I said, "Be honest. You're a writer, a creator. Don't you honestly feel that the world owes you a living?" Tim thought about it and replied, "Yes." I got out my wallet and said, "I've been authorized by the world to say: Fuck you. You're lucky to get a sandwich"), I would like to celebrate those days when we all knew we were the best thing about to happen to literature ever.

And you know what? I am authorized by the world to say we were.

Rest in peace, Tim. You never got your just deserts. But maybe nobody ever does.

Above, l-r: Gregory Frost, Gardner Dozois, Tim Sullivan, John Kessel (not a Philadelphian, but visiting), and me, mugging for the camera. Those were the days.

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One-Day E-Book Sale of Vacuum Flowers

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Once again, one of my e-books will briefly be on sale! Vacuum Flowers will be available in the US for only $1.99. Here's the news from Open Road Media:

Hello,

We are pleased to let you know that the following ebook(s) will be featured in price promotions soon.

ISBN13	Title	Author	Promo Type	Country	Start Date	End Date	Promo Price
9781504036504	Vacuum Flowers	Swanwick, Michael	ORM - Portalist NL	US	2024-11-13	2024-11-13	$1.99

Open Road will promote the feature via social media. We hope you can share the deal with your network as well. You can subscribe to the newsletters at the links below so that you will get the direct link to the deal on the day that it appears.

Newsletter	Link
Early Bird Books	Subscribe Now
The Lineup	Subscribe Now
The Portalist	Subscribe Now
Murder & Mayhem	Subscribe Now
A Love So True	Subscribe Now
The Archive	Subscribe Now
The Reader	Subscribe Now

Please let us know if you have any questions. We are thrilled to be part of this promotion; hope you are too!

Best,
The Open Road Editorial Team

And because you've probably wondered . . .

I've been asked this many times, but the answer is no: I don't have a nude drawing of Gardner Dozois hanging in my living room. It's in the upstairs hallway. Anyway, he's wearing a sheet, so much of him is covered.

Robert Walters posed Gardner as the evil genius Jonaman for one of the illos (back when SF magazines had illustrations) that went with the serialization of Vacuum Flowers in Asimov's, way back when.

It's not the sightliest picture. But it is treasured.

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The Last Leaf

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Leaf-writing season is over. By a small coincidence, a leaf has surfaced on the nightstand by my bed. I have a vague memory of writing this, but the date I'd written on it is gone, along much of my name. 

It reads:

               The leaf came in the mail with a message:

               "Preserve Me and I'll Preserve Thee."

                Some obeyed and prospered. Some

                did not and were not.

I am of two minds on this. One says it wouldn't hurt and might help to preserve it. The other says that I should never give in to a superstition I have coined myself.

 

Above: Anyone looking for the link to the complete text of All Souls Night need only to scroll back to yesterday's post.

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ALL SOULS NIGHT Complete! In One Easy-to-Read Location!

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This year's Halloween story, written on leaves and serialized daily on my blog, one sentence at a time, is done. Every day in October, I added to it, it reached its last words on Halloween.

Funny thing, though. In conversations with two different friends, I learned that neither of them had realized it was a story. They each thought I was just posting random sentences written on leaves. One of them is an artist, and thinks primarily in visual terms, so I thought at first that was a misunderstanding curious to her. The other, however, is a well-known writer and, what's more important, quite a good one. I have no idea what's going on there.

Long story short, at my behest, my son Sean, put all the photos up on Imgur, subtitled. So, if you didn't realize that they told a story... Or if, somehow, you weren't able to hold all the sentences in your head until the story was complete... Now you can find out what was going on. (The stone angels mark the ends of paragraphs.)

You can find it by clicking on the link here.

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My Halloween Season Story, "Unquiet Graves," in CLARKESWORLD

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I am always happiest when a story of mine comes into print. Today, I have the joy of introducing you to "Unquiet Graves," a seasonal tale of graveyard misbehavior and betrayal. Oh, and there's nothing supernatural about it at all.

You can read the story here. But if you're like me, you'll just go to Clarkesworld, look over the table of contents, and decide which story you want to read first. Mine by preference, but follow your whim.

 

And for those who like trivia . . .

I came up with the handheld's app many long years ago and it took forever to come up with a story for it. You'll notice that it is left unnamed in the story. That's because its secret name was "The Graveyard Reader." Which is the title of a well-known story by Theodore Sturgeon.  While I was writing the story, I thought of it as "The New Graveyard Reader." But Sturgeon's story and mine go off in totally different directions, and giving mine (or even the app) a title suggesting there was some implicit connection between the two would only cause confusion.

The title I finally came up with was derived from "The Unquiet Grave" by that most prolific of all poets, Anonymous. If you look it up, I suggest you do so after reading my story. It gives away some of the plot.

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