I’m thrilled to announce that my short story “Curb Day” was accepted for Shadows and Tall Trees 7, forthcoming from Undertow Publications. It’s particularly exciting to me because, as I blogged here, in writing this piece, I adapted a process from Lynda Barry‘s process…and it was such fun to dig through compost from last spring’s embryonic essay about junk week and turn it into a story. I’m grateful to Michael Kelly at Undertow for accepting the results. Shadows and Tall Trees 7 will be available in March 2017.
When the actual world isn’t weird enough…this anthology might be. Year’s Best Weird Fiction volume 3 is now available (and it’s lovely)! Still, again, eternally grateful that my story (“Rabbit, Cat, Girl”) was chosen for this anthology. For more information, go to Undertow Publications.
Flea market lamp; thrift store wine glass bought for our wedding; College Cars Only sign stolen from Earlham College in the mid-1980s; tablecloth brought from Africa via college friend; ship painting by folk artist Mary Paulsen acquired in 2012 in North Carolina; glass flowerpot candleholder from Mendelson’s Liquidators and used for wedding centerpiece, still useful; Writer in the midst of detritus of the Weird.
I’m grateful to editor Mark Teppo of Resurrection House for first publishing the story, and to Year’s Best Weird Fiction 3 guest editor Simon Strantzas and Michael Kelly at Undertow.
It’s a big deal (to me) that 1) Anyone is reading anything these days, that 2) Mark Teppo liked my story enough to publish it, and that 3) Simon and Michael also liked it enough to honor it in this way.
I don’t often write short stories. This story came from months and strata of excavation, which I wrote about here and elsewhere on the blog: layers of messy personal essay drafting, onion-peeling story attempts…all trying to find where the innards of that slice of my humanity would fit into Story.
Grateful that it fit somewhere, and that people in the world outside my head appreciate it. I always felt, and still feel, weird. Nice to have an upper case confirmation.
Rebecca Kuder 