Fish hair net

One thing that I continue to find interesting about playing on the irrealist side of the (tennis? fish? inter? hair?) net is that people who read speculative magazine and anthology publications often go on to chat and discuss them—I’ve published in many literary magazines and rarely had that sense of audience or received much feedback from strangers. But the first time I ever published a story in a genre/literary magazine—Argosy—I received notes from readers. From writers, even. What an idea! Later the story was reprinted in Northwest Passages. Now Tangent has reviewed the anthology, and I’m tickled to see that the reviewer found “An Incident at Agate Beach” to be her favorite of the 25 stories. That anthology may be a bit hard to find, but the story will be reprinted again in Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 19 (2006).

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B had a strange dream on the vernal equinox. He went to bed early, not long after R had begun painting a large World War II fighter as part of a class project, and the dream ended with my late father (a teenage tailgunner in the war) chasing away a band of Nazi marauders from my children and our village. But the curious thing is that on the vernal equinox B should dream an elaborate story about Herne and the forces of chaos: how odd that Herne the Hunter and his Wild Hunt should burst forth in a boy's unconscious. B had never heard of Herne or Cern or Cernunnos, but the sleeping Celt in him dreamed a Herne crowned with towering antlers all the same--in a triple manifestation, and in shape-shifting sizes varying from 8-foot to sky-high.

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Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest,
Doth all the winter-time, at still midnight,
Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns;
And there he blasts the tree, and takes the cattle,
And makes milch-kine yield blood, and shakes a chain
In a most hideous and dreadful manner.
You have heard of such a spirit, and well you know
The superstitious idle-headed eld
Receiv'd, and did deliver to our age,
This tale of Herne the Hunter for a truth.
--Shakespeare, the great dreamer, in The Merry Wives of Windsor

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Horrors! I looked at my archives and discovered that I have been keeping my blog, my glob, my bloggie thing--my semi-personal Palace of whatever it is--for one year and three days. How can that be? That takes me from the eve of the vernal equinox of 2005 to just past this year's date.

Time is a-wasting...

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Would you like to do something useful instead of wasting that time? Pester George Bush to help save the life of Abdul Rahman of Afghanistan, "guilty" of attempting religious freedom by converting from Islam to Christianity. Put your mighty voting bug in the president's ear at:

https://secure.afa.net/afa/afapetition/takeaction.asp?id=191.

People all over the world suffer and die for faith and ideals and the freedom of the soul while your average American sits on his dadgum tuffet, jaded with meaning and sucking down too much fat from the local Walmart bakery. So while you're noodling about the internet, fire off a word of flame to the White House, will you? Scorch a few hairs off the presidential ear!