'Marriage of True Minds' in Expanded Horizons
Expanded Horizons' new issue is out, and in it is my story Marriage of True Minds.
The story is based, of course, on the Shakespearean sonnet, and it looks at the whole idea of love and change. But it's all kind of entangled with the idea of devotion, the Hindu "bhakti" and the Sufi "fanaa" -- and the external pressures both social and familial. For a simple 2000-word story, it has a lot going on.
When my daughter was around 2 years old, she loved to paint; but it was a process, an activity not focused on the end result. We'd hang the paintings up to dry along the staircase. That particular day, she inspected one of them and said, with a sense of discovery, "I made a cat."
She had indeed made a cat, a very sophisticated one seated on a cushion.
My short story process is something like that. They tell themselves to me as I write them. That's to say, I usually start with an idea, or a phrase, and the story grows from that like a sugar crystal in syrup. I usually don't quite know what's going on until after it's written and I read it. Even then, my first read is a superficial one. It's only after it's been revised several times that other layers start to reveal themselves. So it was with this one.
I made a cat. Or at least, a different kind of love story.
The story is based, of course, on the Shakespearean sonnet, and it looks at the whole idea of love and change. But it's all kind of entangled with the idea of devotion, the Hindu "bhakti" and the Sufi "fanaa" -- and the external pressures both social and familial. For a simple 2000-word story, it has a lot going on.
When my daughter was around 2 years old, she loved to paint; but it was a process, an activity not focused on the end result. We'd hang the paintings up to dry along the staircase. That particular day, she inspected one of them and said, with a sense of discovery, "I made a cat."
She had indeed made a cat, a very sophisticated one seated on a cushion.
My short story process is something like that. They tell themselves to me as I write them. That's to say, I usually start with an idea, or a phrase, and the story grows from that like a sugar crystal in syrup. I usually don't quite know what's going on until after it's written and I read it. Even then, my first read is a superficial one. It's only after it's been revised several times that other layers start to reveal themselves. So it was with this one.
I made a cat. Or at least, a different kind of love story.