The day is here, my dearest dears! The first part (of two) of the short story set in the In Other Lands universe is with you, brought to you by the Sunday Morning Transport.
I wanted to put up this post as a celebration, but also to let you know how you can read it for free.
This is a link for a 60-day free subscription to the Sunday Morning Transport – so you can read Tears Waiting to be Diamonds and many other stories!
While you’re reading, there are many excellent stories there: one of my favourites is Katherine Addison’s Min Zemerin’s Plan.
I really hope you all enjoy the tale of Prince Mark, the misfits cabin, and the tempestuous and treasonous individual in charge of the misfits. I hope you laugh. I also hope you suffer a little. Fiction is about joy and pain. 🙂 The next part will come to you on January 28th and maybe all the suffering will be over then. Maybe. Maybe not!
It fits for me that this short story was so long it had to be split into two parts (the very first 2-parter for the SMP, thanks for having me and sorry you guys!) as In Other Lands was meant to be a short story on my blog once.
I still remember the illicit joy of writing it, knowing the story was getting too long but loving the world and the characters so much I turned a blind eye to it. I wrote it at picnic tables in beer gardens with my friends having fun beside me: I was having fun too. After finishing one part, I remember – I was living in London at the time, and I remember hurrying down a grey London street under the unfurling apple blossom with a spring in my step and with spring in my heart, just thinking about stories.
I was wearing a lemon-patterned dress, because I aspire to dress like a sangria. I was pretty pleased it fit, since I’d ordered a size down because my size wasn’t in stock. I didn’t know back then that I’d keep losing weight I didn’t intend to lose. I didn’t know I would lose my words, feel them slipping distorted out of my desperate mind like water through a clenched fist. I wouldn’t be diagnosed with cancer for two more bewildering, painful years.
When In Other Lands came out and people responded to it, drew art for it, kept buying it and lending it to their friends and family, it reminded me of the belief in myself I’d lost. It let me think about trying to write a story I could love that much again, to go searching for the joy in writing that had once been mine. You readers gave that back to me. Tears Waiting to be Diamonds works for those who haven’t read In Other Lands too, I think. Like Mark, like Elliot, like myself, there is much you have lost. And much to be gained. That’s what the story is about.
This is the start of a new year, with hopes to be fulfilled and goals to be achieved. One of mine is to catch up with that girl under the apple blossom, to know her joy again, in making and sharing stories.
Watch this space. I have stories and secrets to tell.
