Val/Orson, coming in early May

"The spirit of the forest is alive in the beautiful writing of Marly Youmans' Val/Orson; a compelling legend of romance and mystery both ancient and modern at once." --Jeffrey Ford

"Incendiary, passionate writing propels Val/Orson, an utterly fearless story that takes chances and passes that test brilliantly. Brave, beautiful, and fey." --Jeff Vandermeer

"What a gorgeous tale! I'm always delighted to read a new work by Marly Youmans, and Val/Orson both enchants and satisfies: it is a combination of myth, Shakespeare, and modern environmentalism, with not a little magic thrown into the mixture, written in prose as lush as it is precise. A treat for anyone who loves fantasy or just a tale well told." --Theodora Goss

Editions & how to order...

Jacketed hardcover limited edition (200) A handsome cloth edition signed by Marly Youmans and the writer of the introduction, Catherynne M. Valente, with jacket image by Clive Hicks-Jenkins and interior by novelist-designer Robert Wexler. Click on the image above to see the jacket in full. A larger run is the unjacketed limited edition (500) signed by Marly.


P. S. Publishing
"flap copy,"
with special thanks
to Philip Lee Williams
and Robbie Mayes:

Inspired by the French medieval tale Valentine and Orson, this moving, insightful novella from award-winning author Marly Youmans reclaims a 500-year-old epic for contemporary readers.

Through the dazzling double-story of a stolen twin and the secrets of an ancient forest, Youmans roams also among the sweet spirits of Shakespeare’s romance plays.

Val/Orson opens with Val long saddened at the loss of his stolen twin brother. He has grown up in the California forest, climbing mysterious redwoods and finding his greatest pleasure in a landscape that seems alive. And sorrow for his lost sibling—his double—haunts his walks.

From boyhood, he has worked with all his intelligence and strength to save the ancient trees. Now Val's world is increasingly populated by environmentalists, sometimes dangerously radical, sometimes merely idealistic, and further shaded in connection with the disappearance of a particularly bewitching tree-sitter--a woman who has both captivated and confused him.

“I fear seeing a luminous being crouched by the hearth, ready to swing its intense light-drenched gaze toward me. I fear that I’ll never grasp the terms of my own damnation or what happened to the woman I knew only by the name of Diamond . . .”

Did she die in her wanderings? Is she still in the deep forest with her lover, mocking Val? As he searches for his lost twin, he must find out.

The sequoia groves are the stage where a company of figures worthy of a Renaissance “winter’s tale” (Fergus, the Sherwood band of tree-sitters, grief-shaded Bella with her wild inheritance, Clere, and mysterious others who seem close by, half-hidden in trees) engage, entertain, and challenge Val. As their stories mesh and unwind, they lure Val deeper into the rich complexity of their narratives and toward revelation. And as the mystery in Marly Youmans’ magical world intensifies, Val moves from revelation to a stunning transformation as son, brother, lover, and steward of the wildwood.

P. S.

I've enjoyed working with publisher Pete Crowther and editor Nick Gevers. I find that it's sweet to be asked for a manuscript and a pleasure to work with a smaller house. I recommend it!

New anthology, soon-to-be-new book

WE THINK, THEREFORE WE ARE

Somehow I neglected to mention that Pete Crowther's anthology of stories centered around artificial intelligence(Penguin/DAW) is out, including--oddly enough--a story by me. Note the interesting male-to-female numbers here.

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Contents:

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“Tempest 43″ by Stephen Baxter
“The Highway Code” by Brian Stableford
“Savlage Rights” by Eric Brown
“The Kamikaze Code” by James Lovegove
“Adam Robots” by Adam Roberts
“Seeds” by Tony Ballantyne
“Lost Places of the Earth” by Steven Utley
“The Chinese Room” by Marly Youmans
“Three Princesses” by Robert Reed
“The New Cyberiad” by Paul Di Filippo
“That Laugh” by Patrick O’Leary
“Alles in Ordnung” by Garry Kilworth
“Sweats” by Keith Brooke
“Some Fast Thinking Needed” by Ian Watson
“Dragon King of the Eastern Sea” by Chris Roberson

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Harriet Klausner, who is surely the quickest and most prolific reviewer on the face of the planet, already has a review and notes, "the compilation is superb as the authors contribute diverse tales with some seemingly weird like Marly Youmans' 'The Chinese Room' adding depth and variety." "Weird," eh? This was the last thing I wrote during my Yaddo stay, and when I fired it off to Pete, he did mention something about it being just a bit different.

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For those of you who are allergic to artificial intelligence, it may comfort you to know that there are no robots whatsoever in "The Chinese Room," though there is a computer. There are midgets and ex-jockeys and general commotion. There are sausages in bed. There is childbirth. There is pent-up love from here to China.

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The story is based on the "Chinese Room" thought experiment of John Searle. As our friend Wiki says, "The Chinese Room argument comprises a thought experiment and associated arguments by John Searle (Searle 1980), which attempts to show that a symbol-processing machine like a computer can never be properly described as having a "mind" or "understanding", regardless of how intelligently it may behave." For more about the original Chinese room, go visit Wiki, right here.

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VAL/ORSON

“Flap copy” for spring’s book, Val/Orson, is up at last. As I am feeble and Milquetoastish when it comes to proper boasting, I enlisted help. And now the thing seems properly flappy and boastful. See here!

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The two limited editions (plain or signed and fancy, take your pick!) are available through the online catalogue at http://store.pspublishing.co.uk/. Thanks to bloggers and reviewers who have let me know they would like a pre-publication e-copy of the book to review or feature; if anyone else would like to sign on, write me or leave me a note here.

Catherynne Valente has written a lovely introduction as well, so that will go up some time closer to the spring pub date, along with a jacket image and other news.

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This book is also associated with publisher Pete Crowther because he and Nick Gevers were kind enough to ask for a short novel for their novella series (U.K.: P. S. Publishing). I love to be asked, as does every writer I know, and I love it when people read and like my work and want to see more. Thanks to both of them.

e

CHILDHOOD & WRITING

E

I was talking to my mother yesterday, and she mentioned that I knew in third grade that I was going to be a writer, and that it was perfectly clear to her what I would be. Interesting. I find that I have a rather soupish memory which renders much down to alphabet when I would like to have clear text.

e

She was standing under the pear tree in our family home in Collins, Georgia. The blossoms were not quite open... This summer I canned pears off that tree. One of my childhood memories is of my Aunt Sara fishing a snake out of that tree with a hoe and killing it, chopchopchop.

Christmas-to-Epiphany

2009 WRITING RESOLUTIONS

Finally, finally, finally come up with a topic for the nonfiction book request because in the current Titanic-going-down publishing climate, one should be grateful for requests from a high-class house. Then work on it!

Don't be lazy. Send out those dratted little white envelopes now and then. I still hate submitting poetry and am glad some magazines have online submissions.

Work on collecting a book of stories.

Don't be lazy, no. 2; do something about What Sits on the Shelf.

Don't be lazy no. 3; do more readings.

Another long narrative poem? More poems, definitely and already.

Write a ghost tale worthy of M. R. James and Henry James. Perhaps a few other stories.

Commit surprise.


NEW YEAR'S EVE

I usually post our dinner menu (8:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. this year), but I don't seem to have kept track of wines and champagne and drinks. Unless I extract them from my husband later, you'll just have to keep imagining the stars in the glass...

It was a bit like Epiphany, as we had three Kings from afar for dinner--one from Australia, one originally from Canada, and one who was born on runway nine at Heathrow, back when it was a village and not an airport. Peter King, the runway child of 86, is one of the funniest men of my acquaintance and gives me hope that elder ages can be joyful.

Appetizers

Tapanade

Seared ahi tuna kabobs marinated in soy sauce and sesame seed
with wasabi mayonaise dipping sauce

Soup

Eggplant and roast red pepper pother

Fish

Backfin Crab cakes

with Rutabaga Scratchbacks and mongolian fire oil

Salad

Candied Walnuts, Blackberries and smoked gouda
on greens with olive oil and vinegar

Main

Braised short ribs and rosemary-cabernet sauce
Gorgonzola, wild mushroom and shallot polenta

Dessert

Old-fashioned gingerbread cake with mango ice cream

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WHAT I'M READING IN THE NEW YEAR

I'm reading the Potter books to N at bedtime and finding that I've changed my mind about Rowling, so that's interesting. I'm reading an old Godine book that collects essays of William Plomer--right now I'm reading some about English and Welsh poets and wondering if I am related to all these Welsh poetry-committing Thomases, as I have a fiery Welsh Thomas in the bole of my tree. I just picked up a copy of Eudora Welty's "The Robber Bridegroom" illustrated by Barry Moser and thought I might reread it and see if it's still on my love-list. Lots of poetry. Some William Logan essays. An anthology of ghost stories edit by Brad Leithauser.

SOME QUOTES FROM ELECTRIC DELIGHTS BY WILLIAM PLOMER
The electric delight of admiring what is admirable. --Charlotte Bronte, Shirley

Plomer puts me to shame, genre-wise. In these days of uniform packaged goods, I am inconvenient because I don't stick to one thing but write lyric poetry, long narrative poetry, novellas, stories, and novels. But Plomer! Poetry, novels, stories, biographies, autobiographies, children's book, libretti (with the great Benjamin Britten), and diaries (as editor). What a time that was, when one could be anything!

Although he declares that "poetry is simply an art to which the special gifts of women, who excel in so many things, are not as rule adapted," he is clearly in love with Christina Rossetti's poems and biography: "We have seen what that experience was: it was the experience of a woman of deep feeling who was frustrated in love and continally oppressed by illness, and whose heart and mind were subjected to a religious discipline, but who could not help singing; her sensuousness, her playfulness, her longings and regrets, her dreams and fears and fantasies, all found expression in her poetry. She has been called morbid, and if it is morbid not to take an easy way out of one's difficulties, not to except life on the cheap and easy terms that are good enough for most people, not to compromise, not to be ashamed to be sad and admit it; if it is morbid to be oppressed by the vanity of human wishes and worldly shows, well, then, she was morbid, and morbid in good company. But in reading her, we do well never to lose sight of the religious discipline, which causes her to strike often a strong and stoic note."

"A poet is liable to be a kind of exile in his own country or time: the consciousness of difference, and the effort to communicate it, may provide his motive power as a poet."

"It is needful for a serious writer to try and measure his own limitations; it must be his hope and it may be his luck to transcend them. Much of the verse offered to editors and publishers, and some of the verse they cause to be printed, is deformed by the inability of its authors to harmonize what they intend to say with their way of saying it, or to convince even the well-disposed reader that it is worth saying. Looking for poetry, that reader is often confronted with feeble or facile or bardic posturings, empty rhetoric, strainings after effect, reach-me-down diction, turgidity, false simplicity or false complexity." That was a passage from a positive review of R. S. Thomas in 1956. I wonder how he would sum up poetry's weaknesses in our time. It seems to me that ours are far greater than these.

ILLUSTRATION
That's a quick doodle by R, a few years back. She must have been around 15. I'm on my husband's computer and found it in his collection of pictures... And today is a Snow Day, free of school.

Val / Orson

"Alice was now tall enough to reach the top of the little glass table, and so at last she picked up the book. The neatly printed label attached by grocer's string read, 'Buy Me.'" --from Alice's Secret Adventures in Wonderland

My limited edition novella, Val / Orson, is forthcoming from Peter Crowther and Nick Gevers' P. S. Publishing in the U. K. (Thanks to publisher and editor for requesting a manuscript!) Although the book won't be out until the end of 2008, now would be a splendid time to order, because the first class or international shipping costs will be free until the end of this month:

Val / Orson page: http://www.pspublishing.co.uk/cat/vo.asp

Special Offer: Free Postage on all pre-orders until September 31st
To mark our major schedule update announcement we're making this special offer until the end of September 2007: Free Postage on all pre-publication orders placed before October 1st 2007! That's right, if you pre-order any items from our list of forthcoming titles and complete your order by September 31st (full payment has to reach us by that date to qualify) then we won't charge you our usual postal rates for those books. The book(s) will be sent out as soon as they're published by our usual first class / international airmail carriers.

I'm thinking about changing the title back to Valorson.... That combines the names of the twins into one and also makes a pun.

This novella or short novel (whichever you please) is planted on the boundary line between what's commonly called realism and the realm of irrealism. That is, though the setting is contemporary--the story takes place among (and on, very much on!) California redwoods--and events take place in the realm of possibility, the tale has an aura of the marvelous because it makes use of legendary materials by borrowing threads from the story of a pair of famous twins, Valentine and Orson.

Of course, I don't believe in realism; there's nothing about a book that's not the sheerest fabulation, because the fabric of words is such very different stuff from a yard of muslim or velvet. It may feed me, but it will never be an egg.

Want to know more about the legendary source? Here's a brief introduction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine_and_Orson that mentions source and uses by other writers. I snagged the Nancy Ekholm Burkert poem-and-picture book when it came out from FSG, and it's quite lovely. (One of my former editors there, Robbie Mayes, told me that the model for the handsome twin boys was her son.)

Two of my long stories are also forthcoming from P. S. Publishing's magazine, Postscripts. Drunk Bay will be out by Christmas; Rain Flower Pebbles will appear in 2008.

Photo credits are due www.sxc.hu/ and the following: for the sequoias in snow, Vlad Romascanu of Montreal, Quebec, Canada; for sequoias in mist, Marcin Jochimczyk of Sosnowiec, Slaskie, Poland. Many thanks!