The Seldom, №9
Estranging Visions, Brioches, and Ill-Considered Acts
I suspect that at least some of you are patient and well-adjusted persons. I envy you. I instead am a “bottle up and explode” specimen. To the likes of me, the occasional ill-considered act can count as self-care. As frustrations mount and rankle, a rash decision may serve as a release valve. (Perhaps that sounds melodramatic? So be it!) Midway down this newsletter, I’ve got a little announcement of one such ill-considered act.
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, like the cat who came back, it keeps resubscribing you no matter how many times you try to escape.
Given the timing of this newsletter, I offer both season’s greetings and season’s commiseration. If you are experiencing the holiday blues, I hope you will realise that few indeed of us are not.
Mæj
As readers of the prior Seldom know, my latest inkstained paperbrick entered the world in October. Maej has sold a modest number of copies and garnered a handful of reviews. A thousand thanks to all of you who have already read it, reviewed it, shared it with friends.
Let me Do Capitalism for a couple of paragraphs:
If you’re thinking of buying a copy, links to shopping websites are on the publisher’s Maej page. If you’d rather grab a free review copy in exchange for an honest review, those are available too. If you’d like to leave a review, you can share takes on Goodreads or elsewhere. Once you’ve read it, I’ve even got ideas for how else to put the paperback to use.
My publisher, the incomparable tRaum Books, still offers a Maej book bundle: an ebook of Maej, a physical novella of your choice, and press swag that includes a cute Maej sticker.
Okay. That’s capitalism out of the way.
In related news, tRaum Books has been singled out for nomination for Indie Press of the Year in The Transfeminine Review’s 2024 Reader’s Choice Awards. Voting is open until 11:59 p.m. on 27 December 2024, so please consider clicking that link and showing Maej’s publisher some love.
Other News
Here’s a bit of what’s going on with my writer friends and with me:
Friends
Rohan O’Duill’s science fiction novella Cold Blooded (book 2 in the Cold Rush series) is due out in early January. Sci-fi author Nick Snape calls it “a superb take on corporation greed and madness in the uncaring vacuum of cold space.” The book features illustrations by Maej mapmaker Marten Norr. Preorders are live.
The next tRaum Books release is on the way in January. C.L. Methvin’s queer horror collection Eusect is full of “stories of terror, gore, and dissociation” which portray “people facing themselves and the infinite―often both at their worst.” Preorder the special edition right here.
Briar Ripley Page is also dropping a much-anticipated collection in January through Cursed Morsels Press. Lupus in Fabula offers “thirteen stories about the interplay of lust, violence, yearning, and grief; about becoming a monster and loving monsters.” I’m eager to read it. Preorders are live.
Author and artist extraordinaire Rachel A. Rosen discussed cover design in an episode of the Writing & Editing podcast. Her own podcast, Wizards & Spaceships, hosted WorldCon whistleblower Diane Lacey and spilled some tea on a certain debacle at the Hugo awards.
Shauna Lawless’s recently released The Land of the Living and the Dead (book 3 in the Gael Song series) is hitting some “Best of 2024” lists, including the LoveReading UK roundup and Before We Go Blog’s Top Five Fantasy Novels of 2024. Congratulations to Shauna!
Me
From me, a little announcement. Not a big one? Little-big? Big-little?
Any of you who took one look at Maej’s formidable page count and instantly noped out may like to know that I’ve got another, much slimmer book coming. It’s a literary novel of around 200 pages called Gyre, and you, my newsletter subscribers, are getting an exclusive first look at the cover:
Lovely, right? Cover designer Rachel A. Rosen has outdone herself again.
Perhaps it is ill-considered to rush out a second novel on the heels of the first. And for any of you who enjoyed Maej and would like something similar, Gyre is… utterly different. No gryphons, no floating parliaments, no poetry battles, no algorithmic magic spells. Merely a little story about a woman who is born a second time with knowledge carried over from her previous life. But I just want to bring the book out, is all. Bottle up, explode.
If you’d like to snag a free advance review copy (ARC), use this signup form; it’s the usual deal: I offer a free ebook, you promise an honest review. (As always, honest can mean critical or ambivalent too.) Otherwise, the paperback drops in early January, the ebook a couple of weeks after. I plan to send another quick announcement around then.
In other news, I have finished recording readings of all ninety-one stories in my 2022 collection Melancholic Parables. Search for “Melancholic Parables” on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, set the series to play Oldest First, and let it rip—it’ll be like having a lo-fi audiobook, free of charge but featuring the sadly unmellifluous voice of the author himself.
Also, the ebook editions of my collections Melancholic Parables and Váried Parályses are going to be 50% off from 12 December to 1 January as part of the Smashwords 2024 End of Year Sale. The links above will take you to the Smashwords pages.
Recent reads
Four good books I’ve read since I last Seldomed at you:
She Weeps Each Time You're Born by Quan Barry – Out of the four books I’m sharing this time, I liked this one best of all. In a country racked by war upon war, the voices of unquiet souls desperate to be heard come to number millions. This tale of Vietnam through the eyes of struggling peasants creates, in its numinous imagery and the cruel events of its plot, a poetry bodying forth surreal emotional truths.
Traveler’s Tales by Briar Ripley Page – Of the four short stories in this, my two favourites were “Ménage à Trois” and “Recovery”; in each, a being or consciousness comes to inhabit a body not original its own; while the former story is a disturbing vignette of violation and bodily colonisation, the latter dwells longer and more poignantly on alienation and the irrecoverable.
Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right by Jordan S. Carroll – This slim volume packs in a great deal of insight about how science fiction has long been ridden with a strain of white supremacist thought. Carroll traces out the illogic and the paradoxes of such thought, as well as offering examples of how progressive movements within the genre have resisted fascist infestation.
The Church of Wrestling by Emily Thomas Mani – This gently elegiac novella disarmingly paints the distress of a child confronting “the way moments ended and then were gone”, the ways we are perpetually losing one another as time and life and the warmth of love slip past us. Also, it has wrestling. A whole church of wrestling.
I’d also like to share good short fiction I’ve encountered online:
“The V*mpire” by P H Lee is a chilling portrait of internet cruelty, with vampires.
“The Dollmaker” by Apoorva Bradshaw-Mittal has a weird and menacing power it resists explaining to the reader.
“After We Die” by Andrew Kozma is a surreal piece on how we miss the dead.
“Mister Nowakowski” by Max Kruger-Dull is a touching story about a teacher troubled by the allure of nostalgia and escapism.
“Describe Your Most Recent Episode, Ctd.” by Carly Alaimo has an inventive, disjointed form which mirrors the story it tells.
“No Machine” by Dan Musgrave is an excellent, emotionally resonant piece from a nonhuman perspective.
“Five Views of the Planet Tartarus” by Rachael K. Jones is ruthless sci-fi flash fiction.
In the pensive “Of Birds Alit in Trees” by Hala Alyan, a housekeeper in Dubai learns to mother a daughter.
Something old
In case you’re interested, Twin Pies Literary published a short story of mine back in 2021 called “Burning of Judas”. In it, Bellatrix is at the bakery, demanding her due as a customer. You can find it here.
Perhaps one thing that making, telling, reading, and hearing stories does for us is this: to storify life is to make certain anxieties more bearable. What can this imply about absurd stories? By what anxieties might an absurd story-idea be triggered?
If you are observant of the world, and inclined to view it with critical irony, many things—most things?—can start to look patently ridiculous. The more ironic or alienated you find yourself, the more ludicrous our entire shortsighted, lunkheaded, cocksure, horny, vain, clingy, covetous, showboating, antsy-in-the-pantsy species can appear.
You might find yourself out in public, doing some mundane thing (buying a brioche?), only for a sudden access of estranging vision to overcome you. The Normal Serious World suddenly appears to be a daft farce. It is like seeing a strong gust of wind blow off society’s hairpiece.
From time to time, I glimpse such estranging visions of the human world. It can prompt a bit of angst, knowing what an iron grip foolery has on us all—for foolery too often spurs the infliction of misery. But because these visions reveal absurdity, one is also tempted to smile, or to smirk—to jive away the bleakness, as it were. One feels the urge to poke fun. One writes, perhaps, a story like “Burning of Judas”.
This story is also included in my collection Melancholic Parables. Maybe you’ll like it. Here’s that link again.
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