In sun and rain--

Illustration by Galen Dara

It's a melancholy day, as child no. 2 heads back to Vermont with her godparents, and the house is quiet. Outside the rain is falling, fine and gentle, sometimes in the sunshine. It all seems so appropriate to the date. As we grow older, more and more dates in our lives have a special, often secret meaning, sometimes connected with something beautiful, sometimes connected with events that wound. May 20th and June 3rd are linked in my mind, two of my dates, the latter a date from several years before my birth. Yet they have remained important all my life. The closest I've come to writing about what they mean in prose is the reprinted story here. And there's a related interview here.

"Childe Phoenix" again--

Illustration by Galen Dara

SF Signal has reviewed Lightspeed 33. Here's a consideration of my story from that issue. You may read the entire review here.

“Prolegomenon to the Adventures of Chílde Phoenix”                            by Marly Youmans 
A coming of age story, a metamorphosis, the remembrances of a young boy now deemed a man wrapped in the imagery of familiar childhood folklore and fairy tales.  Youman’s language is often lyrical in its beauty, conjuring up fantastic images.   Blaise’s sister Vesta lays in a glass coffin inset into the floor. His loving mother is either very much present with him or absent and cannot be found. His father is an alchemist who will not allow his presence to be disturbed.  His grandmother tells dark, black tales from the Old World.  Without the presence of other children in his life Blaise feels very much alone, his only playmates the books in the house’s wondrous library.  Blaise’s recollections are underpinned with melancholy and a miasma that takes the form of an abyss that is slowly tearing his home apart.  This was my first experience with the work of Marly Youmans and I look forward to tracking down more of her work.

One thing I really like about playing in the sandbox with speculative fiction writers is that a story that does not quite "fit" in categories--like an odd, surreal piece--is welcomed and is reviewed more than once. There's a huge, enthusiastic support for the form of the short story that's lacking in the "literary" world.

Northern Lights

Northern Lights x 2

Here's a new digital picture by my daughter Rebecca, who finished up a second year in filmmaking at Bard College and is soon going off to The Center for Cartoon Studies. Northern Lights. See more here. To go with it, here's a poem of mine (published last April) that has to do with the northern lights. There's a podcast of my reading of the poem as well.

He lives in a bowling alley!

Managing editor of Weird Fiction Review and copy editor of Cheeky Frawg e-books, Adam Mills reviews "Childe Phoenix" in a roundup piece (you can read the entire roundup here):

“Prolegomenon to the Adventures of Childe Phoenix” by Marly Youmans: Lightspeed Magazine recently reprinted this story, which I enjoyed immensely. It’s a coming of age story, more or less, that uses its fabulism and imagery as an extension of the protagonist’s emotional state. His father is an alchemist, his mother is a ghost, his sister lies in a glass coffin in suspended animation, and the house is falling apart around them. The sheer strangeness and poignancy of it is what keeps you reading. In a way, it reminded me of the intense emotional fantasy of some of Bruno Schulz’s stories.

The thing that I loved about this tiny review (aside from the fact that I am compared to Bruno Schulz) is that it made me see my own story in a new light; I had not thought of the mother as a ghost, not at all, but I can see that it works as a way to read the story--and certainly her nature is just as strange, appearing and disappearing without rhyme or reason, and as helpless to stop what she does not like.

Marly goes Lightspeed

The story is illustrated by Galen Dara.

Read at Lightspeed

"Prolegomenon to the Adventures of Childe Phoenix" (short story) is up at Lightspeed. Many thanks to writers and publishers Gavin Grant and Kelly Link for its original print publication in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet (2007), and to Lightspeed editor John Joseph Adams for asking to reprint the story. (John Crowley also has a reprint in this issue.) I am glad to find that even the stranger dictates of the heart may find a welcome out in the world.

Listen at Lightspeed

Paul Boehmer's reading of "Prologomenon to the Adventures of Childe Phoenix" is also available for download (time 38+ minutes.)

Read more: Author Spotlight

Christie Yant interviews me, asking questions about the story in the areas of response, family secrets, poetry vs. prose, theme, and upcoming publications.

Later: Oops. I suppose that I should have noted that a place for leaving comments is at the very foot of each Lightspeed page... Enjoy!

Childe Phoenix

This month a story originally published in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet will be reprinted in Lightspeed. "Prolegomenon to the Adventures of Childe Phoenix" is one of my stranger stories, involving a death, chasmic separation, and a young boy's departure into the great outer world. In its surreal elements I see obsessions that I have also dealt with in poetry. In addition, there is an interview with me. The full issue is available February 1st as an ebook from Lightspeed Magazine: Science Fiction and Fantasy; otherwise, I'll be up some time in February. Here's the table of contents.