Tracy Roberts does it again!



The illustration is Papa Gatto, "program spokescat,"
from Ruth Sanderson's book, Papa Gatto.


If you have a better memory than I do, you might remember that about a year ago I talked about one of the MFA students I worked with at Hollins while a writer-in-residence there. She won The Shirley Henn Award at The Francelia Butler conference at Hollins for a story, “Head-on,” that we had gone over together, although it was a very good story before I put in an appearance.

She has done it again with the other story we worked on, “Slew-foot.” Once more, I can say it was already a fine (and highly amusing) story before I got to read it. And now they are going to have to graduate her to keep her from doing it again, tic tac toe…

Tracy is interesting and loveable and has goats that stand on jeeps and generally make a goat-fuss.  She shows and raises cutting horses and is all-around a strong and lovely mountain woman. She is also generous. All year I have enjoyed a big sack of her home-grown and home-ground Bloody Butcher meal, made from a type of corn that has been raised for meal and seed in her region of Virginia for three hundred years. And she even sent Lucius Shepard a sack of Bloody Butcher (yes, it’s a ruby red) because he is the coveting type when it comes to heirloom-seed Virginia corn meal, and he coveted mine. She probably prevented some ninja-esque robbery in the stealthy part of the night.

Confetti, Tracy! You are on the upward trail, which is the right one for a mountain child to follow...

* * *

And speaking of Lucius, Jack Dann and Nick Gevers write that the Ghosts by Gaslight anthology from Harper has won a starred review in Publishers Weekly. And that the powers there pronounced all the stories to be good—rather unusual and what Lucius (who has already read it in manuscript) said as well. It will materialize via print and e-ectoplasm and manifest itself everywhere at the start of September.