People have told me for over ten years that I’d love ICFA in Florida, and this year I’m actually going. I’ll be reading on Thursday at 2:30 with Owl Goingback and Mari Ness in Captiva C. Fran Wilde will be hosting. Come and say hello!
“An Inhabitant of Carcosa” by Ambrose Bierce was an inspiration for Chambers’ KIY stories. I’ll be reading from “Stones, Maybe,” my story in Joe Pulver’s recently released all woman invitational KIY anthology Cassilda’s Song.
I’m the only Canadian in this book other than Helen Marshal. Joe lives in Berlin and when I was there a couple of summers ago visiting my cousins we sent each other text messages but didn’t manage to connect—but meeting between the covers of a book is almost as good as meeting in the flesh—Joe and I were in a couple of Des Lewis’s UK based Nemonymous anthologies together. Des has also written an amazing review of Cassilda’s Song on his award winning review site. You can find the link in the previous post.
I didn’t know much about Chambers’ King in Yellow mythos prior to Joe inviting me to participate but my mother used to buy me Ambrose Bierce collections when I was a pre-teen—what did she think I’d grow up to be other than a person who wrote strange stories? “An Inhabitant of Carcosa” is widely considered to be the first King in Yellow story, although there are no black stars in it, and no yellow sign, just the ruined City and a graveyard outside of time. I’ve always felt an affinity for Bierce, maybe because of the connection to my mother—and because of his mysterious disappearance in Mexico—fictionalized in Carlos Fuentes’ amazing novel The Old Gringo.
Here’s a reading of the Bierce story.