handful_ofdust: (stranger)
handful_ofdust ([personal profile] handful_ofdust) wrote2011-03-23 10:49 am

Look, See, His Bones Are Gone

Horizontally-blowing snow in Toronto today, making my impossible-to-shake cough all the juicier. I also have what feels like complications from the flora-stripping and replacement two-step, extremely painful and annoying, in the usual area. Niiice!

OTOH, I did get a flood of notes yesterday on "Black Bush", a new short story starring (surprise, surprise) the redoubtable Allfair "A-Cat" Chatwin, newly-sprung holler witch gone wild. For those unfamiliar with her, I made A-Cat up for my story "Crossing the River", which was published in Dark Arts Books' Mighty Unclean anthology--the short pitch for that was "genderswapped Supernatural meets genderswapped Prison Break, plus heirarchical magic, half-demon parentage, fetches and lots of tattoo fetish material". This one, which takes place after "Crossing the River", is more like A-Cat meets Winter's Bone: She returns to her old neighbourhood, intending to dig up her Momma (literally) and quiz her re how best to summon her Daddy, but gets caught up in a teenager's quest to get her possibly-dead brother to stand up in court, by any means necessary. Other fun features include getting dive-bombed by a coven of covens lead by A-Cat's best/only childhood friend, being forced to treat with a creature known as the Rot-Pearl Queen, and (eventually) eating supper off a corpse. Fun times.;)

(There may or may not also be phantom cryptozooids involved, at one point--huge phantom rabbits, maybe, or flying cannibal heads. The sort of shit you trip over while fleeing from Baba Yaga, or such. So if anybody has some suggestions, I'd be glad to entertain them.)

One way or the other, A-Cat's voice is hilariously easy to fall back into; like her template, she's skanky and charming and scary all at once, the very model of a classic Magnificent [Bitch]. Though she'll probably emerge from this one with most of her hands intact, at least.

[identity profile] handful-ofdust.livejournal.com 2011-03-24 04:07 am (UTC)(link)
Where would I find explanations of these things? They sound fascinating.

[identity profile] moon-custafer.livejournal.com 2011-03-24 11:50 am (UTC)(link)
Well, I've really only heard of them via Manly Wade Wellman; specifically 'The Desrick on Yandro.'

[identity profile] handful-ofdust.livejournal.com 2011-03-24 02:02 pm (UTC)(link)
That one I hadn't read, but I actually just looked it up, and damn. The Bammat shaking its head at John is fairly hilarious, too.