attack of the ten-minute story

He had that noble selflessness of a man who cares for no one but himself.

--Derek Marlowe, A Dandy in Aspic

A Dandy in Aspic began to fall apart shortly after I purchased it for $1, or 2$, (I am not entirely clear on this point) at the pleasingly cluttered used bookstore in Gibsons. I've been going there since I was a child and we were Summer People here. Now my parents are, well, what are they? Not locals. I suppose they're part of the latest wave of monstrously destructive gentrification. But, you know, nice.

This bookstore is where I first bought Dune, which I read, and Dune Messiah, which I did not finish. It is not the store where I bought my lost/loaned/stolen and much lamented copy of Tides of Lust by Samuel Delaney (I don't know him well enough to call him Chip.) This book, because some of its obscenity contravened laws created to protect you and I and our vulnerable loved ones from Fearful Notions, had to be rewritten and was re-released under a different title. I had the original. I bought it in a bookstore over a craft shop that sold local artisans' work, including tooled leather vests and, if I recall correctly, tooled leather halter tops. The bookstore has been replaced by a boutique kitchen shop, or I should say, shoppe. Damn gentrification.

Anyway, I try very hard not to be a collector-- I buy things to use and enjoy and ruin, not to put in plastic bags and pray for profit on. But the loss of Tides, and the bookshop, and innocence and obscenity, will ride with me on my Harley of Life as one of my great, or anyway favorite, regrets.

More of a Vespa of Life really.

I'm on the Sunshine Coast, for any who are confused, visiting my parents in their new house. They've just moved down, and I've come to visit and entirely failed to bring them a housewarming gift. I thought of it as I was walking past the gift shop on my way off the ferry, but I was being picked up (by a family friend, not the other kind of picked up) and I had to go, or they probably would have got a Zen Candle (TM).

Anyway, because I'm still looking for something that will let me read it all the way through, and because apparently the thing I do when moving is obsessively buy books, I got the Dandy and a fantasy novel by Diana Wynne-Jones, because Neil Gaiman speaks highly of her. Although I've noticed he speaks highly of a lot of people. Perhaps he is a Genuinely Nice Person. It's my morning routine, along with coffee and writing; read Neil, read The Good Doctor, sometimes check out Making Light or Nick Mamatas (whose book, in an act of fiscal suicide, I ordered from Munro's -- and by the way, Munro's has an awesome website. Check it.)

* * * * * *

Speaking of writing, here is a little exercise I did on the ferry. See if you can figure it out.

Wilt, Wane, Wail: A Tale

At the inn (The White Hind in Wex Lane), all in a wan daze, Delia went-- laid in ale and tended the hind. It lived in a vale at the lawn-end.

Delia had a hale, tan hand and a white, wilted hand, hexed when a jilted Neddie Wattle dealt with the vile Thane Vexhall. The deal: wealth and health for a thieved hex and a wild tale.

In the dell, Neddie and the Thane waited, while the hind ate teaweed. The hand went dead. Neddie went waxen. "The deal--"

"A hand."

"Wedded!"

"Will he whine and wail?" Vexhall lilted. "Neddie. What avail?"

Neddie waxed, vexed, at the tall thane.

"Well... wait." Thane Vexhall lit a weed-wand. "I lie. It will heal. I dealt with a thin, vain wit. He wanted wealth. And I, I welted him, head, hand, and heel."

"What healed it?"

The white hind let Vexhall halt and hold it.

"Death."

"He died?"

"He did."

"Will I?" Neddie waited. Vexhall let it lie.

"Will I?"

"All die." Then Vexhall and the hind went with the wild new wind.

The hind wended in at dawn. At the next dawn, it died. While Neddie waned, Delia tilled the teaweed and waited. He died. The hand waxed anew.

At the inn, the Hale Thane, with a tan ale in hand, Delia will tell the tale.

* * * * *

No, it's not supposed to rhyme, necessarily, although the limitations do impose an interesting assonance that becomes rhythmic, or begs rhythm.

See, I was doing this word puzzle in my Variety Puzzle Book. It was a little chart you had to fill letters into so that they spelled words no matter which way you traced through the chart. The words were WARP, WARE, WANE, WAND, WIND, WINE, WILD, and WILT. This is an evocative, shivery sort of set of words, and I thought, why not put them all in a story, as an exercise? And then I thought, or what about writing a story that only allows a certain set of letters?

I wanted to use those words (I didn't use warp or ware-- see below), so I decided I'd use the letters from the puzzle, plus, arbitrarily, enough to make up half the alphabet.

Then I realized that I was making it too easy, because the letters were the most commonly used ones in the alphabet. I still wanted to keep the word list, so I left in T, L, E, N, D, A, I, and the less common W, but I gave up P and S. I nicked H because I really wanted to know I'd be able to use 'THE' -- you can't get even vaguely naturalistic writing in English without it -- and made myself take X, Z, V and J as punishment, sort of like an extra bad Scrabble tray. With the stipulation that I actually had to use them.

It's quite possible that I slipped up --s and f, particularly, kept wanting to creep in, so if you find an error, please let me know, and I'll amend.

Anyway, this isn't the story I thought I'd get out of WARP, WARE, WANE, and the rest, if I had all my letters to work with. (I really missed s.) Maybe I'll write that one and post it next.And if you're very good children, I'll include a really, really long, explanation of how I wrote it, with elaborate theoretical ramparts and great cannons of mind-bogglingly dull structural commentary.

I was talking to grumpy_bastard about this the other day, over the most amazing coffee cake ever made (not too moist, not too dry!) and Marlboros-- how much we like puzzle-stories, stories that are not just narration but elaborate structural riddles that need to be decoded. He said he always hated story problems because the stories weren't good enough.

--rf

...Yes, I know, there's a sort of temporal flaw in the story. I'll try to work out a better sequence. With no s,q,u or c. An eene.

...Smoking is bad, and cigarettes are evil, and Phillip Morris is the devils' own backside, and Marlboros really do taste better than just about anything. And those were the super ultra pansy lights. Thanks, grumpy bastard.