4th publication of "An Incident at Agate Beach"

"Ocean Sky" by Nathan Allworth.
On the Oregon coast. Courtesy
of the photographer and www.sxc.hu.

“An Incident at Agate Beach” is online! The story originally appeared in James Artimus Owen's handsome Argosy Quarterly 3 (2005) and has proved popular. It was reprinted in the anthology Northwest Passage: A Cascadian Odyssey (Windstorm, 2005) and in The Year’s Best in Fantasy and Horror, edited by Ellen Datlow, Gavin Grant, and Kelly Link (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2006.)

Today the tale is published for the fourth time at weirdfictionreview.com, a site (what an attractive home page!) dreamed up by the well-known-for-weird team of Jeff and Ann Vandermeer and managed by also weirdoholic Adam Mills. It is, indeed, a strange, fantastic thing, and I hope will find many new readers.

The day I visited Agate Beach in Oregon, I knew that I would write a story about the place. But this is not the one I expected. If you have comments, there's a spot to leave them at the close of the story. Enjoy!

Oh, and thanks to Rebecca Beatrice Miller for that leading-with-the-chin, uncanny eyebrow portrait...

Rabbit with a pocket watch--

Tenniel's White Rabbit

It's barely Maundy Thursday, the taxes are not complete, sleep is needed, and there's a heck of a lot of choral singing lined up for the next four days. I feel like a panicky soprano White Rabbit headed for an appointment with the Duchess. I must say that though I resisted being part of a choir at first, I have learned a great deal about music and added a new gallery to the chambers inside my head.

Despite the fact that the snow is still deep around town, the afternoon sun burning on the front of the house has warmed the beds and revealed snowdrops and aconites. Little shivering souls, my heart goes out to you. You are so desperately sweet and brave. I hope it is your time to drink in the sunshine, although it may be time to be covered in another white blanket.

In important No'then news, I saw two titmice perched in the broken lilac, looking adorably as though it might be time for spring.  Juncos and cardinals and mourning doves and the ever-enduring sparrows pecked at the snow for dropped seed. Lovely.

Illo from Clive Hicks-Jenkins
for THALIAD

In personal news, I heard six bubbly-sounding words from my husband and two from my youngest, coming from deep inside that giant rabbit hole of the Grand Canyon. So that's good. Bit small, but good. I am guessing that they'll finish the rim-to-rim climb late tomorrow and be back on top of the world after four days in the canyon.

Also, "An Incident at Agate Beach" appeared on one of the 10 Awesome lists yesterday. (Timely, as it will be online soon, in its fourth anthology publication, first online publication.) Thanks for fb-tagging, Jeff Ford!

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Meeting me elsewhere: excerpts from 2012 books (A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, Thaliad, The Foliate Head) at Scribd. Thaliad at Phoenicia Publishing. See page tabs above for review clips and information on those brand new books plus The Throne of Psyche from 2011, and more.

The sundry news--

Reprints are cheerful! 

Thanks to Adam Mills, managing editor of Weird Fiction Review (brain child of that energetic duo, the Vandermeers), for asking for a reprint of "An Incident at Agate Beach." The story first appeared in James A. Owen's gorgeous, short-lived Argosy Quarterly, and went on to a second life in the Northwest Passages anthology and a third in Year's Best in Fantasy and Horror, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. An appearance in the online Weird Fiction will mark its fourth publication and be its home on the web.

I've also been asked for another reprint story for an anthology, tba.... I'm pleased about that one as well.

Thaliad

I'm still working out how to describe the new book.

My latest suggestion from Gary Dietz is that a summation of the book mention "dystopian," "story,""teens," and "in the future." Any thoughts? I find that Thaliad tends to exceed any description of it, and so any any attempt to describe it in a few words is insufficient. It's easier to depict in 500 words than in 20. So far. Also, everybody suggests not using possible "turn off" words like "apocalypse" or "epic."

My feeling is that after a while, the whole attempt feels de-natured. I never have liked summaries. If I wanted to write a book in 20 words, I would do so and be done. I tend to like other people's descriptions better than my own for that reason.

In THALIAD, Marly Youmans has written a powerful and beautiful saga of seven children who escape a fiery apocalypse----though "written" is hardly the word to use, as this extraordinary account seems rather "channeled" or dreamed or imparted in a vision, told in heroic poetry of the highest calibre. Amazing, mesmerizing, filled with pithy wisdom, THALIAD is a work of genius which also seems particularly relevant to our own time.
          --novelist Lee Smith

New page, also thanks to Gary Dietz--

Gary is a former student of mine (from another life, almost!) who gives me advice about the internet and other things. He's a creative sort and a good writer. Here he is: http://about.me/gdietz. Here I am: http://about.me/marly_youmans. Most compact. So now I have a kind of complicated signpost...

1 + 1 + 1

If you're interested in my poetry and fiction, please take a look at the pages (see tabs above) for my three 2012 books--the new Thaliad, the almost-new The Foliate Head, and the slightly less new novel A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage. Every now and then publication dates collide, and those books are a challenge.