My story “Littoral Drift” is out, at last, in Issue 6 of Lackington’s. I am inordinately thankful for the editor’s divine patience with what I knew would be a tricky path to publication, and for being so kind as to move it from issue to issue to accommodate it. To have such faith in one’s work is an incredible gift.
I celebrated yesterday, a celebration that was as much relief as delight at seeing it out in the world at last. It is a . . . melancholic story; there was much blue within and without when I wrote it; and I honestly wasn’t sure for a while if it would get published at all. Perhaps fitting, then, that it should emerge when I’m putting the finishing touches on a story about artistic purpose and its price (that is, the finishing touches on a full draft ready for beta reading). Which has required me listening to the first two acts of Verdi’s Macbeth over and over, and especially this aria, here sung by Callas, a tragedy singing a tragedy being written into my own little tragedy. The relevant moment for the story, should you one day read it, comes at 3:34, that long lovely Re.