What Smack Said #1
Publications, a new podcast, and gothic vampires!
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Welcome to the first official issue of What Smack Said! If you never got your free short story, please let me know and I’ll email you the ebook.
July was a busy month this year: in addition to reading eleven books and finishing the design for this newsletter, I also started a podcast with my friend! It’s called Infinite TBR, and we’re billing it as “the podcast where we try to talk about books instead of buying them,” which honestly covers the basics. My co-host, Gabi, and I read a lot of the same genres and types of books, but we come from pretty different perspectives. While I have a writing background, she’s a scientist and can call B.S. the moment an author gets a little too hand-wavy about their imaginary world’s biology.
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We recently uploaded episode 0, where we introduce ourselves, our reading preferences, and our hopes for the podcast here. (Go ahead and click it—we’re pretty funny, and this newsletter isn’t going anywhere while you listen.)
As for other news, I’ve had work accepted for two different publications forthcoming later this year. One acceptance is for my academic essay “Wolves and Werewolves: How Our Beliefs About One Influence the Other,” to appear in a journal called the SFRA (Science Fiction Research Association) Review sometime around the end of August. The second acceptance is for a short fantasy story called “A Dragon Walks Into A Bookstore” to appear in the Sirens benefit anthology
Villains & Vengeance. That will be out sometime in the autumn of this year.
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The best book that I read this month is called
A Dowry of Blood, by S.T. Gibson. It was originally pitched to me as “Dracula’s brides fall in love and team up to kill him,” though the actual story is more nuanced than that. It’s a story about love, desire, and domestic abuse told from the point of view of a survivor. The book’s dedication reads: “To those who escaped a love like death, and to those still caught in its grasp: you are the heroes of this story.”
The dedication sets the tone for the story in a way that happens only rarely in fiction. It’s followed by a moderately graphic first paragraph in which the narrator describes blood splattered all over her nightgown and dripping down the bedroom floor. She has killed her creator, her husband, her abuser, and she’s not sorry for it. Knowing how it all ends, though, doesn’t lessen the narrative tension throughout the book or the pleasure of the story as it unfurls. We only know that the narrator survived, after all, and part of her journey is finding other people to love more than she loves her abuser.
That is really what it comes down to, in the end. Does she love herself and her fellow spouses (since they’re a mix of genders) more than she loves the man who saved her life, turned her immortal, and has kept a close and controlling guard over her for centuries? He keeps his three spouses safe from things like war, plague, or angry peasants, but he also keeps them all isolated, uninformed, and on a very short leash. They are not allowed to leave the home without him, and his moods are mercurial. The narrator and her fellow spouses spend their lives placating and trying to please him.
The manipulation is on full view throughout the book, but there are no rosy portrayals. The narrator is careful to dissect exactly how her creator managed her. It blunts the pain of the domestic violence a little, and the narrator places an equally bright light on how her love for her fellow spouses grew. By the story’s climax, we know that the love and manipulation cannot coexist any longer. That’s where the final clash stems from.
My deep enjoyment of A Dowry of Blood snuck up on me a little, to be honest. Vampires are passé, and books from such a small publishing press can be hit or miss. And I’d already finished reading The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid the week before and decided there was no way I would read anything better before July ended. But lo and behold! If you can stand to read through the domestic violence, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of A Dowry of Blood. Here are a few links to help: Barnes & Noble, Indiebound, and directly from the publisher. (Those aren't affiliate links and I don't make anything if you click on them.)
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Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses by Kristen O’Neal — utterly hilarious, can’t remember the last time a book made me laugh so much.
The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid — deeply engrossing story that balances magic and religion in a way that I’ve never come across before. The author has studied religion and ethnonationalism and it shows in her work.
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