Tag: strings

City Life

I’ve been dancing with your spam filter for some unknown reason…hopefully, this will go through, and hopefully you haven’t been copied this five times over. : D

Yours are among my few most beloved, formative books and stories, inspiring in my writing and my life. My experience of Solitaire‘s climaxes is imprinted thoroughly in my mind, and I am so grateful for it.

Is “The Hum of Human Cities” available outside of (the scarce, grr-expensive) Pulphouse 9 / are you planning to republish it? I thought it best to ask you, conveniently giving me an excuse to attack you with fan-mail. : )

Adrian

Hello, Adrian, and thank you for being stubborn with the form. You’re not the first person to have trouble. I have to get a different plug-in. In the meantime, if anyone wants to start a conversation here and has trouble with the form, please feel free to email me at contact at kelleyeskridge dot com (although I don’t know why I bother to stretch the address, the spammers-boils-be-upon-them found me long ago). Please say that you are submitting a “Talk To Me” post if you use email.

Thank you so much for these kind words, I’m honored. It is always my hope as a writer to touch other human beings in some way with my work, to make a connection… it means a lot to me when someone takes the time to tell me that has happened.

“The Hum of Human Cities” is indeed available in my recent collection Dangerous Space, under its original title “City Life.” It was my first sale (wow, what a feeling that was…). Kris Rusch, the editor of Pulphouse (bows in Kris’ direction in gratitude), didn’t like the title. So I found “Hum,” and like it well enough, but I’ve never stopped thinking of the story as “City Life.” I can be pretty stubborn myself sometimes (grin). So I returned to that title for the collection.

I don’t know if you’ve read all my stories: if not, there are three free here on the site: “Strings”, “And Salome Danced“, and “Dangerous Space“.

Fan mail is never an attack. Come back anytime.

For the gender curious

For those who may be visiting for the first time after hearing my interview on To The Best of Our Knowledge, welcome, and thanks for listening.

I invite you to check out some of the content here that may be of particular interest to you:

Stories
You can read two stories of Mars: “And Salome Danced” (from which I read during the segment), and “Dangerous Space”.

Interviews
Speculating Gender at Ambling Along the Aqueduct — a lengthy interview about gender in life and in fiction.
Reality Break podcast — a lengthy audio interview about the collection Dangerous Space, the character of Mars, my novel Solitaire and my recent experience with screenwriting.

Essays
“Identity and Desire” — the genesis of the Mars character.
“The Erotics of Gender Ambiguity” — an online discussion that took place about “And Salome Danced” and the gender ambiguity of Mars.

And just because I think it’s cool
This story vid created by Karina in response to the story “Strings” (which is included in my collection and which you can read here).

Thanks for stopping by.

The wordlessness

Nothing I have to say today is more important or exciting than this:

Art is the need to reach out and touch the wordlessness and then to share it. — Nicola Griffith, talking about something wonderful

An artist goes the wordlessness within her and brings back whatever she finds, in whatever form is hers. Words, music, movie, paint, sculpture, dance… We translate the wordlessness as best we can and give it away.

But what happens when someone takes that art and dives with it into their own wordless place? What happens when people respond to art by making art of their own, and then give it back?

Something wonderful. A great mad gift. Thank you, Karina.

Link change for Mad Rush vid

There is a new YouTube link for Karina’s Mad Rush vid for “Strings”. Karina has added a title at the beginning and credits at the end and re-uploaded the vid. I have fixed the link in the original post, but wanted to make sure people knew about the change.

I’m going to be spreading the word about the vid because I think it’s an absolutely awesome idea for generating online buzz for fiction, and a cool and intensely personal way for people to interact with stories they love. I’m totally jazzed about it.

Thanks again, Karina!

Mad Rush for Strings

When I first wrote about vidding, I said:

I wish there were a way to respond like this to a novel or short story. Imagine. Wow. If someone did something like this in response to my work, I would cry like a baby and count myself blessed. — from my post “Vid it“

And today comes this from Karina Melendez — her response to my story “Strings”.

The words are taken (a bit randomly) from…”€œStrings”€. The music is by Philip Glass. The beautiful footage belongs to Patricia Rozema and Aaron Platt. — Karina Melendez, describing the origins of “Mad Rush“.

And so I’m crying and I’m blessed. I’m overwhelmed by this beautiful gift. It’s just astonishing.

Because apart from the incredible personal meaning this has for me, I stand in awe of what she’s done for fiction. It would never have occurred to me to use words in this way, and I think it’s fucking brilliant. This is not a “video of the story” — it’s a response that uses the story I wrote to show the story that she feels. This is not the story of “Strings,” it’s the heart of “Strings” — what music means, how it feels, what it does. And how what we keep inside us will always find a way out.

Watch it, please, please. And please go let Karina know what you think.

Saying thank you doesn’t seem like enough, somehow. And so I thought that along with my thanks, I would offer the story itself. Here is “Strings”. It’s one of my best. I hope you enjoy it.