Endicott Redux

On Celtic New Year, and transitions...

It's a time of transitions here at the Endicott Studio, and what better time for it than Hallowe'en -- an outgrowth of the ancient pagan Festival of Samhain, which is New Year in the Celtic calendar.

First, there have been personal transitions. Midori and her husband have moved from Milwaukee, where they lived for many years and raised two extraordinary kids into adulthood. They're now in Tucson, Arizona, just down the road from my winter retreat in the Rincon Mountain foothills. And I'm in the middle of moving too, leaving the 16th century English cottage where I've lived for 15 years. I'll be moving to another place in the same village, so unlike Midori I'm not going far...but it feels like a big change for me nonetheless. One rich phase of my life is ending, and another is about to begin.

Second, the Journal of Mythic Arts is also in transition. As Web technology changes and evolves, we're changing too to keep up with the times. We're switching JoMA from its old hand-coded format, which -- due to being labor-intensive to produce -- limited us to four issues per year. Tomorrow we'll debut the new version of JoMA, re-designed with the aid of blogging technology -- allowing us to post new material much more easily. So instead of quarterly issues, we'll now be presenting new articles, poems, stories and art on a regular basis, all year long. Each new piece will be announced on this blog, which (as of tomorrow) will include links to all of JoMA's new pages. And it will now be possible for readers to leave comments about the pieces. There will also be links to JoMA's archives, where past material will still be easily accessible.

We're thrilled about this re-design for three reasons: 1.) It gives us the opportunity to publish works in JoMA year 'round. 2.) We think the new design looks rather handsome. 3.) It's so much less work to produce (particularly for our web designer, Midori, a.k.a. the hard-working "Code Girl") that we'll have more time for other kinds of work...most notably, our own writing and art. (Midori's working on a sequel to The Innamorati now, and I, for one, can't wait to read it.)

So for Endicott, too, one phase of life is ending, and another one is about to begin. Happy Celtic New Year, everyone. And tune in tomorrow!

The "book elf" picture in this post is by Edmund Dulac. The running fairy woman is by Alan Lee. The painting at the top is "Twilight" by Brian Froud -- a perfect piece for Hallowe'en, for twilight, too, is one of those in-between times when the gates between the worlds open, allowing passage between the mortal and faery worlds, and the worlds of the living and the dead. As another Hallowe'en treat, here's a magical video created by Brian and his son Toby for the German band Qntal:

Qntal - Von den Elben (2006)

How to Bring Someone Back From the Dead

It seems right on Halloween that we should read Veronica Schanoes' How to Bring Someone Back From the Dead, an Orphic guide to the underworld. This instructional tale is terse, driven, and deeply mythic.

"There is always a journey and it is often long. You will have to take the path of pins and the path of needles. You will walk on the pins and your feet will bleed. You will walk on the needles and your feet will bleed, red like your jacket (You must always wear bright colors when you go to the underworld). This is your body mourning. It hurts to bring someone back from the dead."

The Parade of You: 1 day to Halloween

Barth Anderson's terrific story, The Parade of You, has everything a good autumnal story should have: rituals, feasting, masks, zombies, and transcendence.

"Take a cold, translucent candle from the child in the bulb-eyed fish mask, and pray for your beloved to die. Light the candle from a torch at the woodland path's gate. Say, 'Burn.'

"Behind you, your city shines, but the forest is dark, and the night is damp as the freeze of winter encroaches. Your candle drips as you walk past musicians in the rainy forest. Gauze winding sheets shroud musicians playing violins and quiet drums, lit by the stream of your many candles. All of you leave a trail of wax drippings on the forest floor.

"Please. Sit. Once you have spread your blanket on the dead grass and drunk a draft of sweet beer, your ritual will begin..."

The art above is "Twisted Devotion," used with permission from  Vince Marcone of the fabulous "My Pet Skeleton" website.

My Shadow: 2 Days to Halloween

My Shadow by Kate Bernheimer is a dark and troubling tale of a young girl cursed by her shadow. The horror here is in life's sharp edges and repressed fears, simmering just beneath the surface of ordinary events.

"And the more I grew up the harsher she got — I don't think she liked the way my growing stretched her so thin. When I became a woman, as my mother puts it, I grew leagues not only in height but in feelings. Soon after that the shadow girl began to trouble me badly. She became very strange: her face held a constant and hideous smile, in the past, she had hardly broken even a tentative grin — just like me, whom my mother has always accused of having a grim demeanor..."

The art above is by Connie Toebe.

Sunday Poem

Did you put on a mask and party this weekend? If so, the Sunday poem, All Souls by Michael Collier, is for you. This poem is so full of humor and energy: masked revelers, raccoons feasting on party snacks, and dance music turned up loud enough so that "the house becomes a drum."

The image above is from a wonderful show, "Halloween in Harlem," by photographer Amy Stein. Stop in to her website and view the whole exhibition. While you're there, I recommend also having a look at Domesticated -- another fabulous collection of photographs, exploring the mythic relationship between humans and animals.

The Princess and the Ghost: 3 Days to Halloween

Today's tale, The Princess and the Ghost, was written by Jessie Roy, one of the Journal of Mythic Arts' youngest authors. It appeared in the Summer, 2007 Young Adult Fiction issue. Roy's story is a haunted version of the familiar Sleeping Beauty tale, but with a poignant twist.

"And there was supposed to be a happy ending. Rose knows this, as surely as she knows the lore of the flower for which she is named. She knows her own story from start to finish, and knows exactly what happened to make it all go wrong."

How Master Madman Came to Ch'ing Feng Temple: 4 Days to Halloween

Heinz Insu Fenkl gives readers a Chinese tale of cannibal demons and the search for authenticity in How Master Madman Came to Ch'ing Feng Temple. The hero is arrogant and in need of a re-education; the demons are sufficiently scary and monstrous-- and there is a whole lot of crunching and munching of body parts -- so put down that mini-snickers when you read this.

"...And in this dream the enemy was not human — they were a horde of cannibal demons wearing the armor of dead soldiers from the time of the First Emperor, carrying antiquated weapons, shouting war cries in their guttural tongues. They swarmed towards him like the foaming waves of the sea, and then, as he noched an arrow and drew back his magic bow, an odd thing happened. The dream split in two, each half playing over the other half, as if the two were superimposed one on top of the other. In one dream his magic arrows caused great confusion and panic, and then he drew his great sword and drove through the demons, mowing them down like a field of ripe wheat. But in the other dream the chariot suddenly stopped and would not move. The single wheel was stuck. There was something wrong with the eight spokes, something having to do with how they converged on a point of nothingness. The demons were upon him like a ravenous swarm of locusts. He was overwhelmed by their stench of spoilt milk and rotting meat, the sight of their goggling round eyes, their red and yellow fur, their sickly white flesh like the bellies of dead fish. They tore him to pieces."

Jubilee: 5 days to Halloween

Today's offering, Jubilee, is an eerie, haunting tale from Tim Pratt. A man, grieving the murder of his girlfriend, returns home looking for solace in his hometown and its quaint traditions. But something has changed in our protagonist, and everything he views is strangely altered by a recent tragic experience:

"I knelt, and there was a creature partially covered by sand, unlike anything I'd ever seen. It was as big as a two–year–old kid, smooth–skinned, with long froglike legs, a lumpily oblong body, and big black eyes. Lacy fins hung limp from its legs and sides, and glowing green algae covered its body in spiraling, swooping patterns that seemed almost artistic. I was astonished. 'Bill, have you ever seen anything like this?' "

The painting above is "The Ghost in the Hills" by John Jude Palencar. The image is copyrighted by the artist, and used with permission.

Godmother Death: 6 days to Halloween

I thought as we all set about buying those bags of miniature candy bars (which we know we will eat more of than we should between doorbell chimes), or as we work on the last bits of that killer costume for this weekend's party, or as we squiggle around in the guts of a pumpkin, that maybe a little fiction countdown was in order to sweeten the mood. So today's offering is Godmother Death, from the incomparable Jane Yolen.

"You think you know this story...." the narrator begins ...."You do not...It happened this way, only imagine it in Death's own soft breeze of a voice. Imagine she is standing over your right shoulder speaking this true story in your ear. You do not turn to look at her. I would not advise it."

(*image by William Hunt Morris)

The Letters of Ted Hughes

Here's a new title due out soon that has made my "must have" list: the Letters of Ted Hughes, edited by Christopher Reid. You can read a fabulous review by John Carey in the Sunday Times online here. The letters reveal much about Hughes' personal, almost religious relationship to poetry -- believing, as he did, in an active link between poetry and the body. Poetry, Hughes felt, had the capacity to heal the body, while prose destroyed it.

Carey has this to say about the shamanic fashion with which Hughes approached his poetry: "But critical or analytical prose of the kind he had to write at Cambridge was, he saw, a danger. He had a dream, now part of literary legend, in which a fox, singed and smelling of burnt hair, came into his room, put its paw on an essay he had been writing, leaving a bloody mark, and said 'You are destroying us.' So he changed from English to anthropology. This trust in dreams and in his animal, instinctive, pre-verbal self brought with it a gamut of other beliefs, disturbing to people who like poets to be rational. His ouija board and tarot pack were of real importance to him. He spent 'thousands of hours' studying astrology and requested Faber to publish his books only on days when 'the special conditions of the earth’s electrical field' were propitious."

This is also a good place to mention a wonderful article by Anne Skea, "Ted Hughes and Crow,"  from the Winter 2007 issue of the Journal of Mythic Arts. Skea offers a fascinating analysis of the Crow poems, which she describes as  "the first sequence of poems in which Hughes began to create an extensive folk–mythology of his own, complete with a fallible God (reminiscent of Blake's Nobodaddy) and with a questing hero who, in the end, turns out to be inadequate for the task which he, and Hughes, have set themselves."

Reid's book is due out in early November. Amazon doesn't have it yet -- but one can sign up to be notified of its arrival.

The Sunday Poem

Following on from Midori's posts on Le Danse Macabre (as we draw closer to Hallowe'en, Samhain, and the Days of the Dead), our Sunday Poem today is "Gacela of the Dark Death," a gorgeously evocative piece by the great Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, translated by Robert Bly. "I want to sleep the sleep of the apples," the poem begins, and the painting above, appropriately enough, is "A Dream of Apples" by Charles Vess.

Danse Macabre Encore

Here's one of those cool moments of synchronicity: P.K of BibliOdyssey (where I first read about the Totentanz, a 15th century book of woodcuts depicting Death doing his job in a variety of settings) has published a new set of illustrations that are from an earlier edition than the ones I wrote about here last week. And wow, are they beautiful in a creepy sort of way. Death just looks so darn cheerful.

Also, wonderfully, BibliOdyssey has published a collection of the blog's many gorgeous archival images. I have happily put in my order as I spend waaay too much time on the blog enjoying the wealth of visual material.

Yes, Mother: Elizabeth Genco on The Chemistry Set

Elizabeth Genco has a wonderfully gothic little comic -- part Cinderella, part really creepy step-mother tale -- which you can view in its entirety on The Chemistry Set website. The art is by Sami Makkonen and the layout assist by Rami Efal.

If you've never visited The Chemistry Set before, consider staying a while and browsing through some of the great black and white comics there. The group describes itself as "a collective of comic creators, exploring what happens when they throw their talents together in the cause of fresh, new, unexpected work. Sometimes we get beautiful synthesis. Sometimes we get explosions. But in every case, we get new comics, delivered every day by talented up-and-coming creators, including three Xeric Award winners."

And it's free.

"Instructions" and more...

Midori has been valiantly covering this blog solo while I've been down with a truly nasty flu -- and as I'm still shaking the last of a rattling cough out of my lungs, my posting may be a bit sporadic over the next week or so.

This post is to let y'all know that there is now an "Endicott Studio Channel" on YouTube, where we'll be putting videos that we think will be of interest to fans of mythic arts -- such as the Mythic Journeys documentary from the good folks at the Mythic Imaginations Institute, Ben Okri discussing his approach to writing, an A&E biography of J.K. Rowling, a little film on artist Paula Rego, the great June Tabor singing Child Ballad #191: "Hughie Graeme,"  and more. (f you come across other good videos on YouTube, send us a note and let us know.)

The video above is of Neil Gaiman reading his fairy tale poem "Instructions" at Cody's Books in Berkeley, California. Considering his voluminous output of work over the last several years, Ellen Datlow and I will forgive him for forgetting that he actually wrote the poem at our request for our children's fairy tale anthology A Wolf at the Door, where it was first published in 2000. It's my favorite of all his poems, and a real treat to hear him read it.

(While you're on YouTube, if you're a martial arts fan, check out this little video that Howard Gayton made of a tournament/demonstration of our Kung Fu teacher's school, The Dragon Temple, in our village hall in rural Devon.)

Serendipity's Halloween Specials

Ok, I promised not to double-post on this and my own new blog...but I simply must do it today as I am really enjoying Serendipity's new issue. So here's today's post from the Labyrinth:

Just wanted to make sure folks stopped by the second issue of Serendipity, a new online journal featuring works of magical realism. The short fiction selections are great (ranging from dark to outrageous, and one classic from the Grimms), and there is a kicking interview with Joanne Harris (author of Chocolat) discussing her work (with some very interesting insights into food and magic realism -- totally the sort of thing I think about). And to get you in the mood, there is an annotated Halloween reading list with some excellent titles. Don't like reading online? The good folks at Serendipity have also provided a print function so you can read it in hard copy.

The Sunday Poem

Our Sunday poem today,  "Atlas," comes from Shapeshift, a recent collection by Diné (Navajo) poet Sherwin Bitsui. Bitsui's work is powerful and deeply mythic, seeking to articulate the challenges of maintaining a Diné perspective and identity in a world that all too often marginalizes traditional cultures. Spiritual and cultural identity collide in the poems as mythic images are combined with those of modern technology -- creating a tense, interstitial space where they briefly coexist. In "Atlas," a man struggles to hold together two halves of a contradictory universe:

"Tonight, I draw a raven's wing inside a circle
        measured a half second
               before it expands into a hand.
       I wrap its worn grip over our feet
        As we thrash against pine needles inside the earthen pot.

He sings an elegy for handcuffs
      whispers its moment of silence
at the crunch of rush hour traffic
and speaks the dialect of a fork lift,
       lifting like cedar smoke over the mesas
            sacred to the furthest block. "

Sherwin Bitsui, a member of the Todich'ii'nii (Bitter Water Clan), is originally from White Cone, Arizona, where he was born on the Navajo Reservation. Fluent in Diné, he has remained committed toan active participation in the ceremonial life of his tribe. He graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts Creative Writing Program in 1999, and is currently living in Tucson, completing his studies at the University of Arizona. Bitsui is the recipient of numerous grants and scholarships, Bitsui including the 2006 Whiting Writers Award. He has published poems in  American Poet, The Iowa Review, Red Ink, and elsewhere. His poems have also been anthologized in Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century. Shapeshift , published in 2003, is his first collection.

Poet Arthur Sze says of Bistui's poetry that the "images oftentimes depict a world-out-of-balance. Indeed, his work struggles with the tension between Diné and English, between the desire to restore a balance with the natural world and the recognition of how ineluctable the forces of twentieth century technology are. In struggling to reconcile these opposing forces, his poems and prose poems enact a personal ceremony."

A final note: "Atlas" is available online at From the Fishouse, a site for emerging poets. This is a terrific site, by the way, for in addition to the texts there are audio recordings of poets reading and discussing their work. Stop by and listen to Bistui read "Atlas" -- and if that whets your appetite, more of his work is available online here.

The art above is "The Lens of Perception" by Mark Wagner, a long-time friend of Endicott. Visit the Hearts and Bones Studio to see more of his work.

Secret Histories: Ekaterina Sedia

Lately I have been charmed by the discovery of Ekaterina Sedia's short fiction, which has appeared in a variety of online journals. (You can find a list of them here.) So I was delighted when a review copy of her forthcoming novel, The Secret History of Moscow, showed up in the mail. And what a treat it is -- combining a wry political satire of Moscow in the 1990s with a richly imagined underworld, populated by Russia's iconic fairy tale figures -- from the smallest of the domovoi (house spirits) to the powerful Koschey the Deathless.

The novel focuses on Galina, a young woman troubled by strange visions, who is convinced that her sister Masha has been transformed into a jackdaw moments after giving birth to her son. On the other side of town, Yakov, a police detective, also witnesses a man abruptly transform into a jackdaw and fly away. All over Moscow, trees are lined with jackdaws and owls, even as the number of missing persons reports continues to grow. Galina and Yakov encounter a street painter named Fyodor, who seems to know something about it. He shows them how to look in the reflection of a door in a puddle: "Don't look at the real thing. Watch the reflection -- this is what's important." And from the dark, reflected opening, flocks of dark birds emerge from a hidden world below.

With little more than faith in the fantastic and the desire to rescue her sister from enchantment, Galina falls, like a modern day Alice, along with Yakov and Fyodor, into the dark reflections and discovers a secret world beneath Moscow. From here the story gathers steam, as well as a wonderful cast of characters: many of the familiar names of Russian folk tales, along with other human beings who throughout history have inadvertently found their way down into Moscow's eternal underworld. Interestingly, each one of these human characters was someone who once refused to capitulate in a moment of historical crisis -- as each tells their story, there is a layering effect -- suggesting the sediment beneath Moscow is made up of failed revolutions and the lost survivors of reactionary regimes.

Until now, the underworld with its fantastic denizens have worked silently to protect Russia from the worst of its historical tragedies. But someone has learned how to open the doorway between the worlds -- and suddenly the modern world of Russian gangsters and thugs has begun to corrupt the underworld, endangering the world above with newfound power stolen from the fantastic.

The secret histories of Moscow are not just those of the city and the underworld. Galina, Yakov, and Fyodor will each find something essential about their past and their families, and discover a truth about themselves, as they journey through the underworld with its deep historical and cultural roots. Sedia writes about the underworld in a magical, lyrical voice (the rusalka -- water spirits of drowned girls -- are superb), but she also writes with dry, deadpan humor about the modern Moscow above. For example, she notes that the Zaporozhet, a little car that a thug drives to avoid being noticed, is "the make that in the city folklore was often compared to a pregnant ninth-grader, since both equaled the family disgrace."

I think readers will find this novel thoroughly engaging -- whether one is new to Russian history and folklore or already well versed in both. Treat yourself -- the novel is due out in early November, but can be pre-ordered here .

Green Evolution

Suzanne Stryk is an artist whose work is currently on display at the U.S. Botanic Garden. The exhibit, Green Evolution, features her sketchbooks of studies of the natural world along with her paintings, where "original observation merges with imagination in a dreamlike blend of precise knowledge and myth." The work for this exhibition came out of a walk in a field, where a sunlit leaf caught her eye. "On its green surface meandered white lines which were the handiwork of a tiny leaf miner, an insect larva that tunnels through the inner cell layers of leaf matter. Those hieroglyphics embedded in green were like a secret message saying: 'all life -- yours, mine -- comes down to this: sunlight and a green leaf.' "

Suzanne Stryk has held solo exhibitions at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, the Fernbank Museum in Atlanta, and Duke University in Durham, NC. Green Evolution is on display through November 11. Check out her website to see more of her beautiful paintings.

In the Labyrinth

Ok...a moment of shameless self promotion, for which I apologize in advance! I have finally built a blogsite for myself. I hope you will stop by occasionally to visit (and leave comments too if you like) and I promise not to double blog between Endicott Redux and Into the Labyrinth. I am still building the pages and putting in material (I don't have all my books and articles up yet), so it should get fatter over the next month as I move in. Thanks everyone for this small indulgence.

La Danse Macabre

Oh rational creature,
who desires eternal life.
Here you have wisdom, worth noting:
to properly end your mortal life.
It's called the dance of death,
which everyone will learn to dance. (1485)

As it is October and the world seems to be sliding into Halloween and Day of the Dead, it seemed appropriate to begin the month with a glance at the robust (said with heavy irony) artistic depictions of the "Dance of Death" (La Danse Macabre or Totentanz) which flourished after the all too intimate relationship with pandemic death during the plagues. Death was seen as capricious, arbitrary, and above all an equal opportunity guest -- visiting households without regard for social or economic status. The sudden onset of plagues that ravaged the milkmaid as well the wealthy burgher, the common thief as well as the emperor, inspired a form of art -- a "memento mori" (remember death) as a reminder of inevitability of death, as well as an encouragement to pious living.

Church walls were painted with frescoes (like the one above at La-Ferté-Loupière) of ordinary folk, from all walks of life encountering the skeletal figure of death -- dancing, eating, playing dice, working. To the right is one of the killer woodcuts from The Heidleberger Totentanz (which can be seen in its entirety here.) According to the BibliOdyssey (which introduced me to this work) the book was printed by Heinrich Knoblochtzer in 1488 and contains "a core series of 38 woodcuts in which the satirical emblem of death visits upon all manner of citizens. In most, the skeleton carries a musical instrument as a type of Pied Piper motif. The text, in a high German dialect, is addressed by death to its target."

For more images, have a look at Cornell University which has a terrific collection of historical images and detailed notes. (The image below is from their collection -- an 18-century engraving by Thomas Rowlandson from the book The English Dance of Death.) Tapholov website (in French and English) has a lot more information about the Danse Macabre, including history on the folk traditions and art.

Sunday Poem...on Wednesday

Due to being out of the office, Terri and I missed posting a Sunday poem, and that's been bothering me for the last couple of days. So I wanted to make up for it by recommending Windigo, a splendid poem from Louise Erdrich. The Windigo is a frightening creature from Chippewa myths -- a flesh-eating demon lost in the northern woods who stalks his prey on burning feet. Yet, buried deep within the monster is a man trapped by his fate. In some Chippewa stories a young woman tricks the Windigo into consuming hot lard which melts his cold exterior and frees the man inside. Erdrich's poem focuses not on the terror of the Windigo as a monster, but the beauty of his transformation.

The art is "Indian People" (from Leech Lake Indian Reservation by Cameron Booth, 1923) and is currently housed in the Minnesota Historical Society collection.

Wilfredo Lam: Cuban Surrealist

In accordance with National Hispanic Month, the Haggerty Museum in Milwaukee is hosting a rare retrospective exhibition of sixty paintings by Cuban Surrealist Wilfredo Lam. The art has been collected from galleries around the world to create this single, stunning presentation of his seminal work. The show runs from October 11, 2007 to January 21, 2008. Check here for additional scheduled events planned for the exhibition.

Born in 1902 in Sagua la Grande, Cuba, Lam's family moved to Havana where he attended the Escuela de Bellas Artes. In 1923, Lam moved to Madrid where he continued his studies at the studio of Fernando Alvarez de Sotomayor, the director of the Museo del Prado. Lam's early work was inspired by the Surrealist movement and by artists such as Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, who encouraged Lam's interest in traditional African and Afro-Cuban art. He also traveled to Mexico and stayed with Frida Khalo and Diego Rivera.

Lam's work reflects his own multicultural heritage (the son of a Chinese father and a mother of mixed African, Indian, and European descent) and his growing interest in Santeria, a religion rooted in African traditions. During WWII, Lam returned to the Caribbean, along with anthropologist Claude Levis Strauss and author Andre Breton, whose prose poem, "Fata Morgana," Lam illustrated in 1940. Returning to Havana in 1941, Lam was introduced to Carl Jung's theories and began to produce some of his most powerful paintings, exploring the mythic themes and images of the Caribbean. "Jungle" (above), for example, considered to be Lam's masterpiece, intertwines figures and nature in a dense and vibrant landscape to create a visual experience of a spiritual state.

Lam's work offered a unique fusion of Afro-Caribbean spirit, Surrealism, and contemporary art. Throughout the 1950s and '60s Lam lived in Europe, settling for a time in Paris and later establishing a studio in Albisola Mare, on the Italian coast. In 1964 he received the Guggenheim International Award, and between 1966-67 there were multiple retrospectives of his work in several European cities. Lam died in 1982 in Paris.

Happily, this extraordinary show will be touring the United States after its opening at the Haggerty Museum of Art. The exhibition will travel to the Miami Art Museum, The Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, California, and the Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida.

Autumn fruits...

     The veil between the worlds is thin, they say, tonight.
     And if we walk now to the marketplace
     (we fancy it built of fog and fireflies)
     the goblins will smile, cry hail and welcome!
     They nod their heads, stroke our hair, grasp our fingers,
      whisper, yes, the veil grows thin, grows thin...

         - from "Transplendent We" by Peg Aloi

The Autumn 2007 Issue of Goblin Fruit is now online, featuring "poems about ghosts and memory, poems about animate place and music. We have poems that are bare-tree spare and poems that are harvest-lush. This season’s issue is our fattest yet, so swallow a spoonful of honey or olive oil and prepare to read aloud for a while."

In addition to the Peg Aloi poem quoted above, there are many other magical offerings (my personal favorites are Jennifer Crow's "Bear Clad" and Corey Mesler's wry fairy tale poem, "The Wolf Hungry for Connection"), and a discussion of dark fantasy in poetry of the Romantic period. The webzine is edited and designed by Amal Ah-motar, Jessica P. Wick, and Oliver Hunter (a talented young trio that I was fortunate enough to spend a little time with this summer), with illustrations by the latter.

    

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

I must confess, I'm simply loving the urban fantasy trend running through young adult literature right now.  One of my recent favorites is Wicked Lovely, the debut novel from Melissa Marr.

Like her mother and grandmother before her, Aislinn has always seen fairies.  And, like them, she must follow a long and elaborate list of rules to guard her from attracting their cruel and mischievous interest.  To keep her protective grandmother's threat of house arrest at bay, Aislinn begrudgingly follows the rules and takes to the city where the iron and steel of girders and bridges provide some shelter from unwanted attention.

But the rules haven't been working so well lately for Aislinn.  Keenan, King of the Summer Court, must find and wed his mortal queen or his entire kingdom will forever fall to the power of his sadistic mother, the Winter Queen.  He's convinced that Aislinn is the one and will do whatever it takes to make her his bride, whether she embraces her destiny or not.

Wicked Lovely is an imaginative, compelling story, deftly crafted and rife with delicious romantic conflict. That Aislinn and Keenan both have others who call to them - Aislinn's longtime best-friend-turned-secret-crush Seth and Donia, a former mortal in love with Keenan who failed his test long ago - sets in motion not one but two love triangles that will keep readers flipping pages to see how it all turns out.

Melissa Marr has created a rich and realized setting in Huntsdale, the small fictional city outside of Pittsburgh where Wicked Lovely takes place. Folklore fans and scholars will get a kick out of the references to classic 19th century fairy texts that precede each chapter.

I can't wait to see what Melissa does next.  According to her Livejournal profile, she has a number of projects in the works, including a 3-book manga series from Tokyopop and Ink Exchange, the next book in her urban faerie series (I hear tell it's about tattoos, which just makes me smile).  Also be sure to check out her website for more information about Melissa and to read an excerpt of Wicked Lovely.

Melissa is the founder and co-moderator of Fangs, Fur & Fey, a Livejournal community of urban fantasy authors.  While you must be a published (or under contract) author to become a member and post topics, any Livejournal member can read and reply to posts.  With a membership of over 60 authors, the community is very active with new posts almost every day on the writing life and everything in between.  To join the conversation, simply add the community to your friends list.

Mythic Passages: October

The new issue of Mythic Passages, the webzine of the Mythic Imaginations Institute, is now online. Focusing on "Educating the Imagination," the 'zine includes articles on the art of teaching by David L. Miller and Jay D'Ambrosio, on Haphaestus the blacksmith by Wilhelm Oosthuizen, and on the mythic imagination by William F. Doty, plus a look at Derek Beres' Burning Man film and an interview with playwright Sidney Perkowitz. There's also mythic fiction, poetry, and more -- such as a fine sequence of poems by Ari Berk, and reviews of Stardust and Brian Froud's World of Faerie by Brenda Sutton. The cover art this month is "The Magic of Books" by Martin Springett.

Shadows of the past....

Douglas Gresham has published a moving tribute to his stepfather, C.S. Lewis, in a recent edition of The Guardian -- timed to co-incide with a new London staging of William Nicholson's Shadowlands, the moving play about C.S. Lewis (known to his stepson as "Jack") and Gresham's mother, Joy Davidman.

"I think that in today's sad and dark world many people will have difficulty in believing in the real Jack," writes Gresham. "He was a man who had grown up with the thinking of the 19th century. He believed in honesty, personal responsibility, commitment, duty, courtesy, courage, chivalry and all those great qualities that society in its wisdom dispensed with in the 20th century on the grounds that they were somehow outdated, and now needs so desperately to recall and recover." (Read the full article here.)

For more information on Shadowlands, visit the Wyndhams Theatre website. 

A night of stars....

I'm back home again after a journey up to London to attend the UK premier of Stardust, the film based on the book by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess. Howard Gayton and I were there by the kind invitation of Charles and his wife Karen, who I don't see nearly often enough now that I live in the UK. Neil and his extended family were there too, though Neil was much in demand over the evening and we saw him for about a nano-second.

It was truly a star-studded event (forgive the pun), and a surreal experience to walk down the famous red carpet (which in this case was actually green) while paparazzi snapped photographs and wondered who the heck we were. But what a wonderful way to see the film for the first time, sipping champagne, cheering, and celebrating our friends' big night.

The video above is the UK trailer for Stardust. You can watch a video interview with Neil about the creation of Stardust here. (I hadn't known, before this, that the story was inspired by a falling star above my winter house in the Arizona desert...how nice!) More informaton can be found on the Stardust movie site. Photos: (above) Howard, Karen, Charles and me at the premier (photographed by our companions in the Young family); (left) Neil at the premier; (below) pages from The Stardust Visual Companion, a new book that mixes film imagery with wonderful art by Charles, along with text by Neil and others.

Many thanks to C & K for a truly memorable night.

Out of the Offices

Terri Windling and I are both away from our offices this week. We will be back again on Monday, October 8th. Thanks everyone, and may your week be as productive as I hope ours is!

Fortune Teller

Click here for a bit of magical musical silliness to kick-start your week....courtesy of The Iguanas. I love these guys. I love to crank them up loud in my pick-up truck on hot desert nights during the months of the year that I spend in Tucson. Listening to their music on a Monday morning back here in the rain-drenched hills of Devon, I can almost feel that desert heat....

Enjoy!