Let me tell you about Rose Marshall...
Let me tell you about Rose Marshall-
Might be the last thing you’ll ever see.
They say some stories will never die,
Well, she died back in fifty-three,
Kept her prom night date with the cemetery.
-"Pretty Little Dead Girl."
"Have you ever heard the story of the woman at the diner?"
-Rose Marshall, "Good Girls Go to Heaven."
Sparrow Hill Road is finished now. Twelve stories, twelve stops along a single stretch of highway. We didn't blow a tire or take any unexpected detours along the way, and that's good. And now here we are, and it's time to get out and stretch our legs, at least for a little while. The first part of the story's done.
I knew when I agreed to do Sparrow Hill that it was going to be a one-year commitment. Not only was I not sure how much of the story I'd be able to get through in a year-there was a very real chance that I'd finish the setting completely, leaving nothing untold-but I knew that 2011 would be extremely busy, which would make agreeing to a two-year tenure suicidal for me, and dangerous for Jennifer. A year looked just about perfect. That didn't stop it from being nerve-wracking at times. A few of the stories were turned in just as the ragged edge of my deadline was approaching, and the schedule I was on didn't really give me time to say "you know what? This story needs to be benched, let's do something else." But I never missed a deadline, and I never turned in a story I thought was bad. I can look back on the year with a sort of smug pride. I did that. I turned in one complete narrative a month, every month, for a year. And now I'm finished.
If you know me through filk, you may have met Rose as far back as 2004, when I wrote the song "Pretty Little Dead Girl," although most people didn't "meet" her until I was the OVFF Toastmistress in 2005, and did the song, along with my Rosettes, in a bright pink prom dress on the convention's main stage. I went on to write a bunch of songs about Rose, showing different sides of her story. I always knew I wanted to write the "what really happened" version, eventually, but it seemed too complex for lyrics.
Then Jennifer asked if I wanted to be one of the 2010 Universe Authors, and everything started falling together.
Sparrow Hill Road was challenging, exciting, and complicated in a way that neither novels nor short stories tend to be complicated. It was, essentially, my Green Mile: a serial novel told in strange installments. And like The Green Mile, I'm planning to revise it, turn it into a coherent whole, and see about finding a publisher. But that's going to need to wait a little while.
My big, big thanks go to Jennifer, for being the best editor I could have had on this crazy project; Amber, for taking amazing pictures; Torrey, for being Rose Marshall (and doing a bang-up job of it); Vixy, Amy, Brooke, Kate, Rebecca, and others, for editorial, copy-edits, and letting me talk things through with them; and Phil, always Phil, without whom none of this would have happened.
It was a good ride. It's over now, and there were ghosts in the eyes of all the boys I sent away, but it was a good ride.
Thank you for taking it with me.
Might be the last thing you’ll ever see.
They say some stories will never die,
Well, she died back in fifty-three,
Kept her prom night date with the cemetery.
-"Pretty Little Dead Girl."
"Have you ever heard the story of the woman at the diner?"
-Rose Marshall, "Good Girls Go to Heaven."
Sparrow Hill Road is finished now. Twelve stories, twelve stops along a single stretch of highway. We didn't blow a tire or take any unexpected detours along the way, and that's good. And now here we are, and it's time to get out and stretch our legs, at least for a little while. The first part of the story's done.
I knew when I agreed to do Sparrow Hill that it was going to be a one-year commitment. Not only was I not sure how much of the story I'd be able to get through in a year-there was a very real chance that I'd finish the setting completely, leaving nothing untold-but I knew that 2011 would be extremely busy, which would make agreeing to a two-year tenure suicidal for me, and dangerous for Jennifer. A year looked just about perfect. That didn't stop it from being nerve-wracking at times. A few of the stories were turned in just as the ragged edge of my deadline was approaching, and the schedule I was on didn't really give me time to say "you know what? This story needs to be benched, let's do something else." But I never missed a deadline, and I never turned in a story I thought was bad. I can look back on the year with a sort of smug pride. I did that. I turned in one complete narrative a month, every month, for a year. And now I'm finished.
If you know me through filk, you may have met Rose as far back as 2004, when I wrote the song "Pretty Little Dead Girl," although most people didn't "meet" her until I was the OVFF Toastmistress in 2005, and did the song, along with my Rosettes, in a bright pink prom dress on the convention's main stage. I went on to write a bunch of songs about Rose, showing different sides of her story. I always knew I wanted to write the "what really happened" version, eventually, but it seemed too complex for lyrics.
Then Jennifer asked if I wanted to be one of the 2010 Universe Authors, and everything started falling together.
Sparrow Hill Road was challenging, exciting, and complicated in a way that neither novels nor short stories tend to be complicated. It was, essentially, my Green Mile: a serial novel told in strange installments. And like The Green Mile, I'm planning to revise it, turn it into a coherent whole, and see about finding a publisher. But that's going to need to wait a little while.
My big, big thanks go to Jennifer, for being the best editor I could have had on this crazy project; Amber, for taking amazing pictures; Torrey, for being Rose Marshall (and doing a bang-up job of it); Vixy, Amy, Brooke, Kate, Rebecca, and others, for editorial, copy-edits, and letting me talk things through with them; and Phil, always Phil, without whom none of this would have happened.
It was a good ride. It's over now, and there were ghosts in the eyes of all the boys I sent away, but it was a good ride.
Thank you for taking it with me.