The Seldom, №11
Using the false to get at the idea of the true
Suppose a politician has given an order leading to many deaths. Somebody refers to that politician as a “butcher”. The politician does not actually sell cuts of meat for a living; it is not accurate to call them a “butcher”. But to call them a “politician who has ordered many deaths”, while certainly true, somehow doesn’t feel true enough. This is one reason we use metaphor. To say something literally untrue—“Butcher!”—feels more true than to speak plain facts. At times, we can only express an entire emotional truth by pushing words beyond their proper meanings. But this power of metaphor can also be perilous. The most dangerous metaphor is one which we have forgotten is a metaphor.
I fling this random observation at you because, at the end of this email, I discuss an old short story of mine which prompted a chain of thought, and here’s where I ended up. Anyway…
In the tradition of periodicals whose names indicate their frequency of publication (Publishers Weekly, The Atlantic Monthly, Lapham’s Quarterly…), I bring you The Seldom. My name is Dale Stromberg, and you’re receiving this newsletter because you signed up for it, or else because an anonymous benefactor decided to give you, in lieu of a hefty cash gift, a Seldom subscription.
Is the Price Half-Empty or Half-Full?
Three of my ebooks are now half off during the Smashwords 2025 Read an Ebook Week, which runs from 2–8 March. Head over now to get an even cheaper copy of Melancholic Parables, Gyre, or Váried Parályses. Or, if you’re feeling flush, all three. They make great stocking stuffers! (Not true. They are intangible electronic books. Maybe that was a metaphor.) Links to the discounted books:
My literary high fantasy novel Maej is not part of this promotion, but tRaum Books is still offering free review copies to anybody who pinkie-promises to post a review to any of the onlines (Goodreads, &c) in exchange. That review copy link is here, and feel free to share it around. But please note that pinkie-promise breakers are traditionally made to swallow a balloonfish:
Other News
Here’s a bit of what’s going on with my writer friends and with me:
Friends
Rohan O’Duill is now a BookTuber twice over. First, he’s launched a new podcast-slash-video channel called Don’t Mention the Book, where he forbids his author-guests from (wait for it) mentioning their books, instead delving into their pasts and influences. His podcast First Chapter Reads is now also on YouTube as well as your favourite podcast app; watch and listen along as he reads the first chapter of an indie book.
Rachel A. Rosen, who designed the covers for Maej, Gyre, and Melancholic Parables, has a new speculative novel coming out that you can pre-order right now: Blight is the second Sleep of Reason book, and it is just as awesome as Cascade, the first novel in the series. Free advance review copies are also available at BookSirens or NetGalley. And on a recent episode of Wizards & Spaceships, which she co-hosts, Rachel talked with Shawn Whitney about pulp fiction. Check out the “Toxic Schlock Syndrome” episode here or wherever you get your podcasts.
Rachel and Zilla Novikov, co-authors of The Sad Bastard Cookbook: Food You Can Make So You Don't Die, have announced plans to release not one but two sequels: first, a follow-up cookbook with more “judgement-free recipes you can make when you're suffering”; second, the same thing but with the focus on helping burnt-out parents of young children. And they are crowd-sourcing recipes, so if you have a go-to recipe for when you’re barely hanging on, they want it. Rachel is also giving a talk about The Sad Bastard Cookbook at the Welland Public Library on 22 March. If you’re in the area, drop by. Details here.
You can now pre-order Shauna Lawless’s historical fiction novella Dreams of Chaos, which will have an e-book release in July 2025. It is a prequel to the Gael Song series but can be read as a standalone (all events happen before those of The Children of Gods and Fighting Men), making it a good introduction to the series.
Me
Last time, I announced the release of my little novel Gyre. Since then, the Night Beats collective interviewed me about it, Tucker Lieberman posted a deeply interesting essay on Medium which ruminates on it, and Frank at Rosie Amber’s Book Blog wrote a glowing review of it (calling it “a magisterial achievement”).
Speaking of reviews, I continue to bate my breath in the hope of seeing more folks rating and reviewing Maej. If you’ve already done so, a thousand thanks. If you’ve been meaning to, here are some helpful links (nudge-nudge-nudge): Goodreads | Storygraph | LibraryThing | Indie Story Geek.
If you really want to set an indie author’s heart aflutter, asking your local public library to stock the book is monumentally helpful. I am shoehorning this baldfaced appeal into my “News” sections on the off chance that this fact is “news to you”.
I’ve reached the halfway point in drafting my next project, a sci-fi novel featuring sea monsters and mind control. My working title is Abysm, which begs for “abysmal” puns but don’t you dare bruise my ego like that. Progress on this first draft has been slow but steady, with the accent on “slow”. It seems you can either write a novel or live in the world but not both.
Recent reads
Allow me to share some excellent books I’ve read since the last Seldom:
We Who Will Not Die by Shingai Njeri Kagunda, a speculative novelette published by Psychopomp. If the people on a resource-rich planet do not truly die, but transition instead from life to life, does that extenuate the act of exterminating them? Just how far can forgiveness and understanding extend? What happens when forgiveness runs out?
North Continent Ribbon by Ursula Whitcher, a sci-fi short story collection from Neon Hemlock Press. Every part of these six linked stories is excellently done: the fineness of the language, the subtleties of character development, the thorough solidity of the worldbuilding—everything. In its finespun complexities, North Continent Ribbon is beautiful; in its depiction of power, hierarchy, and expropriation, it is dark; in its final allegiance to its characters’ agency, it is hopeful.
The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar, a fantasy novel from Small Beer Press. This companion piece to A Stranger in Olondria is a novel to read for the sheer delight of reading. Imbued in the atmosphere that suffuses the lines of both of the exquisite Olondria novels I find a kindly moral exhortation: we must love the word, and we must love the world. Not one or the other, but both.
When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo. In old times Ho Thi Thao was a majestic tiger who was also a human woman, and both humans and tigers, when they tell her tale, shape it as they’d like it to be. This delightful novella strikes an exquisite tone.
The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera. A work of arresting, vibrant originality with a strong ethical core and an impassioned set of convictions, which nonetheless inherits a bit of postmodern playfulness. Indescribable but very good.
I’d also like to share some fine short fiction I’ve encountered online:
“Hóngmén Banquet” by Alice Evelyn Yang (in The Rumpus): a hungry ghost and Japanese war atrocities converge in this dark and creepy myth.
“We Think of Our Mothers like Trees” by alex terrell (in The Kenyon Review): in which mothers who fade into the forest may or may not ever come back.
“Housemom” by Hannah Gregory (in Electric Literature): dry humour and keen emotion when both Mom and the house are falling apart.
“The Pick” by Emma Pacchiana (in The Masters Review): an immersive portrayal of inside-basketball politics and understated but turbid emotion.
“Procession” by Kathy Fish (in Swamp Pink): a lyrical vignette on a teacher’s funeral.
“The Family Gathers at a Meal” by Andrea Cavedo (in CRAFT): what we give to our families, why we do it, what it costs us
“The Water Garden” by Louise Jarvis Flynn (in AGNI): motherhood, widowhood, the secret interior life.
“The Baker’s Wife” by Devon Halliday (in The Adroit Journal): a complex and finely written glimpse into a life of perpetual overload.
Finally, a twofer from Split Lip Magazine: Selen Ozturk’s “Cancer” takes a resonating turn I did not see coming; and A.A. Tojino’s “Ymelda's Infinite Eels” is weird and emotionally ruthless.
Something old
In case you’re interested, back in April 2021 the online literary magazine Menacing Hedge published my short story “On donne l’idée du vrai avec du faux”. In it, a statue to Bellatrix Sakakino gets raised and then torn down. Read the story here. (It is also included in my collection Melancholic Parables.)
You may recall a period a few years back when there was much tearing down of statues. I began to think the answer to “Why topple a statue?” depended on the answer to “Why raise statues in the first place?”
Statues aren’t really raised for people, but for heroes. A person is a person; a hero is a character. When we gussy up messy people as unmessy heroes, they become instruments for telling stories—presumably noble ones. Yes, a hero is a construct, a falsehood, but we believe we are employing the false to create the true (on donne l’idée du vrai avec du faux, as it were). To see our heroes discredited seems to discredit the stories in which we’ve employed them, so we seek to defend them. As a means of hero-defence, a statue is a handy tool: It says, “This person couldn’t possibly be anything but a hero. Why else would they have gotten a statue?”
But sometimes discrediting a story is precisely what’s needful. People take aim at the hero; they remind everyone that the hero was actually, not an impressive hunk of bronze, but a human—and humans, beautiful and noble, are also downright scandalous. (Being human is the last thing I want to be caught on camera doing.) So activists will say to us, “Come, take a good look. Don’t glance away. Meet your hero.”
Common sense says you should Never Meet Your Heroes. Admire from a distance; don’t buddy up. If you do meet someone to whom you’ve raised a statue, getting to know them as a touselled, rumpled, grouchy, blockheaded, sinful, all-too-human person will mean that the statue needs to come down again. A statue to a hero is inspiring; a statue to an ordinary skunk is embarrassing.
Never Meet Your Heroes wouldn’t be a necessary caution if Never Raise a Statue were the rule in the first place. Then again, Never Raise a Statue might seem too bleak and joyless a rule. We knock down the ones we don’t like, but we raise new ones instead.
So, in the midst of such rumination, a story idea cropped up, and I ran with it. Maybe you’ll like it. Here’s that link again.
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