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The other side of the story–Megan’s recovery from the dragon–comes from something I’ve realized recently is a theme in my work (and dude, you have no idea how weird it is to be saying that: “one of the principal thematic elements in Monette’s work is …”), namely what happens to heroes after they save the world.
I think that all stories are part of a long dialogue and, in certain ways, are responses to other, earlier stories. Metafiction just makes this conversational aspect explicit. Also, I know that my understanding of the world, especially when I was a child, was very much shaped by the stories that I read. I’m probably drawn to exploring this in fiction.
Some of the wings are just there to demonstrate the extent of Mr. Theodus’s collection. But some of them were chosen with certain themes or meanings behind them.
This story was based on the very first such note: about twenty years ago, a friend of the family told me he’d eaten deadly nightshade, and I asked him what it was like, and wrote down the answer on a bit of envelope.
Angela Slatter is a Brisbane, Australia, writer of speculative fiction. Her short stories have appeared in anthologies such as Jack Dann’s Dreaming Again, Tartarus Press’ Strange Tales II, Twelfth Planet Press’ 2012, Dirk Flinthart’s Canterbury 2100, and in journals such as Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Shimmer, On Spec, and Doorways Magazine. Her work has had Honorable Mentions in the Datlow, Link, Grant Year’s […]
Obviously number theory and mathematics in general plays a large role in the construction of “Reading by Numbers.” What was your relationship with number theory before writing this piece? Were you familiar with the discipline or did you need to do research?
My advice to writers who want to write from a non-human point of view is to be systematic, and make sure you’re grounded in what the character knows based on his or her environment and experience, so you can use only those things to express the character’s judgment of people and events. Otherwise the human viewpoint will start to intrude.
Ham-sized is an adjective used by Robert E. Howard to describe Conan’s massive fists. I seem to remember Robert Jordan using it as well, back when he wrote Conan novels. It is, in my opinion, the perfect epithet for the genre at its best. It is big, meaty, and hits like a mattock.
Camille Alexa likes “her humor dark and her horror funny.” A short fiction writer and poet, she writes for The Green Man Review, serves as Flash Fiction Editor for Abyss & Apex, and Poetry Editor for Diet Soap. Her short story “Shades of White and Road” appears this week in Fantasy Magazine.
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