Blogetary (Weblog + Commentary = Blogetary)

Do you like fables? Fairy tales? Mythic Realism? Writers like Patricia McKillip, Charles DeLint, and Neil Gaiman at his most fantastical?  Then you’ll like Shimmer, I believe. It is a beautiful little zine, perfect bound, with eight art and nine fiction pieces (and one interview); around 80 pages of content when you subtract the front and back matter. I’m not sure about their other issues, but I was left shaking my head wondering if I would ever be able to write as beautifully as the authors included in this issue of Shimmer.  I believe the readers and editors did a fine job of choosing material.  In some cases it was like reading tapestry.

I actually finished reading it a two or three weeks ago, but I’ve been so busy I put off writing about it until I was rested enough to write about it well. And so we begin.

While the general font for reading the stories is in Times New Roman 10 (one of those fonts that’s easier on the eyes to read in print, by the way) the flourishes, side bars, and quotes are done in an elegant copperplate handwriting font, which adds to the fairy story quality of the zine. In fact, if you go to the website (and you should – here it is again), you will see where you can click on some of the stories and hear portions of them read in a fairy tale manner with some accompanying pictures and the copperplate font trailing across the screen.  It gives you a definite flavor of what you will receive once you subscribe.

The first tale is titled “Juana and the Dancing Bear” by N.A. Bourke.  Told from the bear’s point of view, this is the story of two entertainers (the bear and his jester, Just-Simon) who travel around to make a living.  In the course of their travels they come to the court of Queen Isabella, who is soon to give away her daughter in marriage.  There is, of course, a catch. Princess Juana has palsy. This is a secret that the court has kept and that the Queen hopes will remain a secret until after her daughter is safely married and taken care of.  Well – things don’t always work out the way we envision them.

In a magazine full of first class tales, this was one of the best. The editors believe so as well, as it’s the tale headlining the zine and is the subject matter for both the front cover and an illustration in the magazine (both done excellently by Sandro Castelli, who also illustrates a picture for “Catch of the Day,” as well as the Faerie picture on the back cover).  A true fable, “Juana and the Dancing Bear” is something to read by the light of the fire while the moon is high and full on a crisp, cold night.
“Duets” by Philip J. Lees is clever. It’s fun, light (not too light), sexy, and clever.  While not one of my favorites, it was a fun read.  In brief, it is the tale of a minstrel who meets his match.

“Tom Cofferwillow Comes Undone” by Stephen L. Moss tells of a man, reading a book, reaching for a smoke, when……and so the tale begins. One of the joys of this piece (though it may be frustrating for some) is the language.  I don’t know if Moss studied a dialect or made one up or did both and mushed it together, but it’s a bit like reading Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky.  You have to derive sense out of the surrounding context in order to get the meaning of the words. Even then, you might just shrug, because even if the word is still meaningless after all that, it’s fun to pronounce. I wondered, while reading, if this story grew out of a workshop exercise on making up words and language.  The strength of this story was in the language.  If it hadn’t been for that, the story would not have appeared as magical, I don’t think.

The next piece is simply a piece of artwork titled “Lucy,” by Chrissy Ellsworth, depicting a little girl with two fairies. The caption reads “Lucy suspected that the fairies were not properly chewing their food and had become too portly to carry her home” (Shimmer, Winter 2007, p. 25).  It’s the kind of thing to make you smile.

These pieces are followed by a distinctly modern day quasi-scifi tale that pays homage to the X-Files, but has a sort of a Men in Black flavor as well.  It’s not like those stories at all – it just gives them a nod, of sorts. Oh, and to top it all off, it’s a fishing story. Yes, really.  It’s the story of a man who went fishing and what happened then. Like the Lees tale, “Duets,” it is clever, and while not one of my favorites, again, was worth the read.

The Interview with Cherie Priest was good enough for me to feel both admiration and intimidation and wonder what the hell I was doing getting involved in this writing gig. On the whole, she seems like a nice girl. The kind of goth girl you could introduce to your family and have them love her by the end of the evening.

“Eagle-haunted Lake Sammamish” by Cat Rambo was one of my favorites (up there with “Juana and the Dancing Bear” and “Sparrow and Egg”).  For one, this has some of my favorite “stuff” in it. Growing up in Washington State I just assumed dryads and naiads existed for real (and they do – see the illustration by Stephen Stanley to prove it). They did for me. I went to camp with people from Lake Sammamish.  Heck, I think there was a serial killer that hung around Lake Sammamish.  So, I was reading this story carefully, but I’ve seen Cat Rambo around a bit lately (she was in the Winter 2007 issue of Fantasy Magazine and was most recently online at Clarkesworld) and she knows how to handle her fables.  This is the story of a couple who go to investigate an investment they made and come back with more than they bargained for.  It made me cry. It was a beautiful story. I wonder if she’ll ever write a continuance to it. I would like to think so.

“Night Milling” by Mike Driver was one of my least favorite, maybe because it was horror. It’s a story of revenge and death.  I’m not saying it wasn’t well done. It was for what it was.  I like horror elements and Driver did those parts well, but horror stories as a whole aren’t usually my faves.  In addition, I was a little confused at the end – I got it – but it took a reread – and it just left me with a down feeling.  Not a visceral, shivery feeling, but an “aw, that’s too bad” feeling.  But that’s like saying it was a “B” paper in a stack of “B+’s” and “A-’s” and “A’s”.

“Dwell on Her Graciousness” by Dario Ciriello was the second science fiction fable of this issue.  This was an interesting mix of space ship science fiction and religious myth.  A sister of a particular Goddess worship religious order has been sent out to the outskirts of space with a research team to help research a space anomaly.  While this was an interesting read, it was not one of my favorites (though it did have one of my favorite illustrations by Fatima Azimova). It was intriguing to see where the author was going to take this story.  It both did and didn’t go where I was expecting.
Finally, “Sparrow and Egg” by Amal El-Mohtar is one of those tales that should be put in it’s own little hardback book with illustrations, ostensibly sold for children, but really there for the grownups to read and learn from. It’s in the same caliber (IMHO) as “Velveteen Rabbit” and “Love You Forever.”  This final story was very brief, illustrated by a simple photograph of an egg shell (by Mary Robinette Kowal, Art Director at Shimmer).  It’s a nice photograph until you read the story. Then it’s a great photograph. And THAT is all I’m going to say about THAT. So there.

And now, I really must go. Pye has decided he’d rather sit on the keyboard than have me type on it. Keep writing and have a good night. Until next time.