"The Comb" at Far Fetched Fables

Fantasy Magazine, no. 7 (2007) Editor Sean Wallace.
Reprint in Fantasy: The Best of the Year, edited by Rich Horton (Prime Books, 2008)
Podcast at Far Fetched Fables No. 20 Bill Congreve and Marly Youmans

"The Comb" is the most drastically pruned of any short story that I have written--it is a third or perhaps a fourth of what was originally written. At the time when I was revising, I remember fearing to weaken the main character by not revealing the rest of her story. While I always feel that what is cut from a story remains as a kind of shadow to the work, extending outward by little, broken tendrils of shade, that was a lot to cut and so meant a very large shadow. I've been curious about whether any of that shadow is visible to readers, though it's hard thing to know.

Eventually stories and poems are finished with the writer and her worries. They wander away to find a place in the world or else to get lost and then go unread. "The Comb" has been published, anthologized, and now is read as a podcast by actress and writer Nicola Seaton-Clark. So the story keeps moving along in the wilderness of the world, finding a home.

Thank you to Nicola Seaton-Clark for reading and liking and now recording the tale! And thanks to Gary Dowell and the rest of the Far Fetched staff.

Nicola Seaton-Clark lives in the wilds of (almost) Eastern Europe with her long-suffering husband, phenomenal children and a grumpy cat. Trained as an actress and singer, she has worked in entertainment for over 20 years and currently splits her time between writing speculative fiction, helping her husband run their voice-over company, Offstimme, and voicing everything from commercials and documentaries to public transport announcements.  She also hosts this podcast…..