by Jared Millet
Ck’Luō blushed. Beach-Comber watched as disbelief and joy battled on the boy’s face. At last, the youth ran to his companion on exhausted legs, took her in his arms, and kissed her in the setting sunlight.
Beach-Comber managed a chuckle.
“That part comes at the end, I think.”
The two Sirenes, embarrassed now, stepped away from each other while another Roänn, the eldest of the colony, addressed them in quiet solemnity.
“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.”
It was a ceremony as old as Humanity, as old as life, as old as time. The words were fluid and had changed over the eons with the shifting of oceans and the passing of stars. The meaning was always the same: a binding of hearts and the sharing of souls.
The elder Roänn spoke of commitment and honesty, of suffering and joy, in sickness and health, until the two were parted and rejoined in eternity. At the end, he asked them a question.
They each responded in turn,
“I do.”
Story Notes
First, thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this collection, which represents my published work from the first phase of my career as a writer. These stories saw print or were performed aloud (with the exceptions of “Rougarou” and “Clair de Lune”) between 2010 – 2015, and were written while I lived in Birmingham, Alabama, working as head of the Acquisitions Department for Birmingham Public Library and moderating the Hoover Library Write Club. During this time I also got shanghaied into serving as Birmingham’s municipal liaison for National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org). Busy days, to say the least.
Though these stories have already appeared elsewhere, I couldn’t resist the urge to “George Lucas” them a little (in some cases, a lot) while editing them for this book. Han still shoots first, but I’m much better at writing a sentence than I used to be. I wanted this collection to showcase the “better versions” of these stories that only existed in my head until now.
River Ascending, the first in this anthology, was the last to see print. It appeared in Leading Edge, a long-running science fiction magazine published by students at Brigham Young University. It was also the first story of mine to be illustrated, with artwork by Jake Giddens (jakegiddens.com). That issue, Leading Edge #66, and its accompanying illustrations are still available on Amazon. It should be noted for the record that at the time I wrote the story, the closest I’d ever come to kayaking rapids was watching YouTube instructional videos and being thrown out of a canoe in Florida.
The Unwinding House began life as a grisly flash fiction story about a mad scientist stuck in a time loop. When I saw a call for “dark time travel” stories, I expanded it to its current length. The editor of that anthology gave some very useful feedback and requested a rewrite, though he ended up not publishing it. The new and improved version found a home in the Autumn 2012 issue of Kaleidotrope. (www.kaleidotrope.net)
The Orbit of Mercury was my first attempt at a short story after completing my first (unpublished) novel. While it’s obviously a work of fiction, the cat at the heart of the story was very real. The problem with “Mercury,” as with many of my stories at the time, was that it just wasn’t short enough. It’s hard to find a market for novelette-length pieces, and it’s even harder to crack that door open when you don’t have any prior credits to your name. Nevertheless, I’m very happy with it, though it’s been through more revisions than I can possibly count.
The same goes for its sequel, The Transit of Venus. While “Mercury” was inspired by my experience as a cat herder, “Venus” was brought about by my love of music – not just listening, but also performing. Once it became clear that neither of those stories were going to find a home, I used them in a demonstration at an electronic publishing workshop at the Hoover Public Library. In the class, I demonstrated how to put together an ebook using the free editing program Sigil, and then uploaded The Orbit of Mercury: Two Stories to both Amazon and Barnes & Noble, where it sold for the hefty sum of 99¢ per digital copy.
In those starry-eyed days, I’d planned to keep the series going, with ideas drawn from each of the planets and the Moon. That grand scheme never came to pass, but I did have an idea for the third in the cycle. For my own edification, I cranked out Clair de Lune during National Novel Writing Month, 2014. The climactic chicken-chase marks the highest word count I’ve ever produced in a single day of writing, and I accomplished it at my desk at work. Let’s just say that my day job didn’t always keep me busy.
Rougarou, the other previously unpublished story in this collection, was written and accepted for a mystery anthology that nevertheless died on the vine. Dubbed WTF Mysteries, the idea was that each story would contain some shocking twist that would make the reader say “What The F—.” However, no profanity was allowed. Instead, at that point in each story, one character would shout “What The” followed by the author’s most creative euphemistic word or phrase beginning with the letter F.
Given how ridiculous that concept was in hindsight, and how much I disliked my own F-word substitute, I’ve taken great pleasure in replacing it with an actual F-bomb (the only one in this collection, for those keeping score at home).
Hurricane Season was my contribution to an anthology that I edited and published on behalf of several writers’ groups in northern Alabama. It was inspired by many years of living on the Gulf Coast, especially during Hurricanes Ivan, Rita, and Katrina, as well as the idea that ghosts are as much the memories of the living as they are the spirits of the dead.
That anthology, Summer Gothic: A Collection of Southern Hauntings, featured many fine stories by authors such as Suzanne Johnson (Sentinels of New Orleans, Tor), Ingrid Seymour (Ignite the Shadows, Harper Voyager), and Teresa Howard (The Reluctant Empress, Champagne Books).
Dead Man’s Hand was my second published story and, if I had to guess, the one that’s been most widely read. It was written for the first Dreams of Steam anthology, edited by Kimberly Richardson. That collection made its rounds on the convention circuit just as the steampunk genre was hitting its stride, and “Dead Man’s Hand” was the second story in the book. As such, it was very well placed for the casual steampunk fan to discover. In writing it, I wanted to explore how nineteenth century robots might actually have worked and what their limitations would have been, instead of merely hand-waving the technological deficits of the time period away. That I took such a hard-SF tack while writing a ghost story is a symptom of my own perversity.
When the call went out for Dreams of Steam II, I chose to return to the same milieu as before. I also had to decide whether the hero of “Dead Man’s Hand” lived or died at the end. The result was Jumping the Rails and the character of Evangeline Despre, my favorite heroine to appear in this anthology. Having made an artificial intelligence the antagonist in the prior story, I wanted to explore what would happen if my clockwork computers evolved into something beyond murderbots. I also learned more about railways at the turn of the century than I’d ever thought I would.
Those anthologies were successful enough for justify a third in the series, which allowed me to bring my trilogy to its conclusion. The Peace Machine edged into what some might call “dieselpunk,” but at that point the nature of the technology mattered less than the consequences of creating artificial intelligence and turning it against itself. As before, I wanted an alternative to having the machines kill us all. Dreams of Steam III ended up being so large that the publisher split the collection in two. Thus, “The Peace Machine” appeared in Dreams of Steam IV.
Flash Fiction is a category usually defined as “complete stories consisting of no more than 1,000 words.” It’s a format I enjoy playing with because it forces an author to be brutally efficient in word choice and story structure.
Tag was my first (and silliest) experiment with this form, and was written solely to get a chuckle out of my writers’ group. I published it on my blog during National Novel Writing Month 2011, when I volunteered for leadership of the Birmin
gham region.
As moderator of the Hoover Library Write Club, I arranged for the library to host an annual Flash Fiction Night, in which club members got to read their stories to a public audience. That group, and Flash Fiction Night, continue to this day. For as long as I hosted the readings, I contributed material of my own to the program. After all, one mustn’t ask others to stick out their necks if you’re not willing to do it yourself.
Witch’s Cross started life as a scene from an epic fantasy novel I once had growing in the back of my mind. That book will remain forever unfinished, but I was happy to preserve this one vignette that encapsulated the theme of free will vs. determinism.
Fire was my take on the fall of civilization from a point of view of what would terrify other librarians. Reading it out loud in a library was unsettling, at least for me. After all, books, poetry, music, and the arts are the only afterlife that I’m sure of.
Rocket Science is my personal favorite, and the one story I’ve written with no science fiction or supernatural elements. It was inspired by my grandfather, Erlo Durbin, who (along with my parents) helped spark my love of reading.
The Dragonfly King is a fairy tale in the traditional mode, as described by J.R.R. Tolkien in his classic essay “On Fairy-Stories.” Of course – surprise, surprise – I couldn’t help but set it on the bayou. When I was growing up, dragonflies on the Amite River were the closest things to fairies that I ever saw. Astute readers will notice that this story goes over the thousand-word limit. I was never happy with it in its shorter form, and my writing friends encouraged me to let the story breathe.
Dying’s Easy, the newest story in this volume in terms of when it was written, deals with my thoughts on comedy and the meaning of existence, two topics that must be tackled together or not at all. My “imaginary audience” while writing it was my friend and fellow author Sean DeArmond, who writes fiction and pop culture reviews at zoyciteyouma.blogspot.com.
The Rendezvous was the very first of my stories to be published. I wrote it to include all of the things I enjoy most in science fiction: space exploration, the wonder of nature, alien cultures, narrow escapes, and lots of Shakespeare references. It appeared in the third issue of Shelter of Daylight (a quarterly digest that no longer exists) from Sam’s Dot Publishing (which also no longer exists). Even though Sam’s Dot wasn’t a well-known market, when I received my first acceptance letter it shot me over the moon. My wife and I immediately blew the money from its sale on cocktails. A rum and Coke has never tasted better.
About the Author
Jared Millet spent over twenty years as a public librarian before shifting gears to write full time. His work has appeared in multiple magazines and anthologies, with even more stories to come. His travel writing, including tales of ten months circumnavigating South America, can be found online at TheEscapeHatch.net. He, his wife, and their very demanding cat live in Atlanta, Georgia.
Table of Contents
River Ascending
The Dragonfly King
The Unwinding House
Fire
The Orbit of Mercury
The Transit of Venus
Clair de Lune
Tag
Rougarou
Rocket Science
Hurricane Season
Dying's Easy
Dead Man's Hand
Jumping the Rails
The Peace Machine
Witch's Cross
The Rendezvous
Story Notes
About the Author
