I'm weirder now

It has been a brutal week so far, and it's only Tuesday. But I met my students today, and they seem quite keen. I also heard from Behind The Wainscot ("weird fiction, weirder writiers"). They have accepted a story of mine for the next issue. Super news, especially since it looks like they are closing down open subs for a while. I'm excited, as this piece will be my first SF publication. Or wait, maybe it's horror? I'm not really sure. All I know is that the stories about which I am most insecure seem to be the ones people like best. My "straight" stories are getting rejected left and right.

Sort by . . . or the Anxiety of Anthology

The myth of theme as anything other than an open container for intelligence has always interested me. I love arbitrary organization as long as it remains permeable and aware, and the best literary collections tend to be the ones that play with their own assumptions of content or push the extremity of formal restriction. The theme is interrogated from page 1.

At the same time, I’m deeply attracted to narrower venues that promise certain emotional outcomes, as in permanently dedicated horror or crime collections. I wish I could claim to be a reliably “Noir Writer,” but my dark fiction is more opportunistic than it is seriously crafted for excitement.

I have earned other labels though, as I’ll have a story in an anthology for Washington Area+Women Writers. Delightful, but these are two identities I don’t really inhabit or understand from an aesthetic point of view. I know what DC means in terms of food and interior decorating, but beyond that I’m clueless/curious.

I am reminded of my colleague's experience with a library assistant who refused to copy several essays and place them on reserve for students to check out. The librarian wrote that he could not execute the request as the collection "would make an anthropology."