FISH by Dagan Books, an anthology of speculative fish stories, is out in the world. I wrote a little before about my story, as it was one I had trouble placing. There’s also a page on Dagan Book’s site all about fish, with a full table of contents and information about purchasing.
Thwarting the Fiends is about a boy called Broccoli, and his slightly surreal adventures in his back garden. The world he travels through is based on his make-believe play.
The inspiration was my own experiences of ancestry issues. I don’t look Northern European, and that raises questions, but I can’t answer them. I don’t know my ancestry. Nor is there any culture remaining from whatever cultures were involved. There’s a generally feeling that something was lost, though I don’t know what, and that I’ll never quite fit. There are always more questions saying I don’t belong where I am.
In Broccoli’s case, he has more awareness. Not in the direct sense, but he knows enough about his family’s cultures to imagine a world where they interact. Not in a tidy and obvious way, because fragments don’t go together neatly, but it’s there.
I wasn’t sure if anyone would see any of that, or if they’d see it an disapprove of how I’d tackled it, but either way, that’s how the story came about. And it has goldfish. Lots and lots of goldfish. So if nothing else, read it for the fish.
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# Art by Galen Dara.
Some time ago, I wrote a piece of whimsical absurdism. I was soon to discover it’s hard to sell absurdism. And by hard, I mean some of the rejections I got implied the slush reader wanted to take my keyboard, burn it, stomp on the pieces, then burn it again, so I wouldn’t write another just like it.