Somewhere Beneath Those Waves (37 page)

Mick and Jamie live in a Lovecraftian alternate universe, in Babylon, Tennessee (which seems to be more or less what would happen if you slapped Memphis down where Chattanooga is and added ghouls for good measure). They work for the BPI, the Bureau of Paranormal Investigations, and you should imagine their boss, Otho Jesperson, as being played by David McCallum circa 1985.

They’re my excuse to write little buddy-cop movies for myself.

Straw

I woke up one morning from a particularly weird and vivid dream, and by lunchtime I had turned the dream into this story. I think that’s the fastest I’ve ever written anything.

Absent From Felicity

The centerpiece of my doctoral dissertation is the chapter on
Hamlet
. And after I finished that chapter, I found that I still had something to say about
Hamlet
. And Hamlet. And poor Horatio. And about what happens after the story’s over.

The World Without Sleep

I love H.P. Lovecraft even when he drives me crazy. And of all his stories, I think my favorite may be
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
, partly because it’s so wildly inventive and partly because it takes the monsters from
another
of my favorite Lovecraft stories, “Pickman’s Model,” and looks at them from a different angle. When I was writing “The World Without Sleep,” I told everyone it was my Marxist Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath with Vampires story, and that’s still pretty much what I have to say about it.

The narrator of “The World Without Sleep,” is Kyle Murchison Booth, the narrator-protagonist of the stories in my collection,
The Bone Key.
The Bone Key
is much more traditional Lovecraft/M.R. James horror than “The World Without Sleep,” but if you like Booth, that’s where to go to spend more time with him.

After the Dragon

After the Dragon, She Learned to Love Her Body
is a sculptural necklace that Elise showed me the first time she showed me her workroom, most of ten years ago now.
Healing Is Not About Pretty
is a necklace made of deformed hearts that I bought from Elise in 2008 or 2009. The two came together to spark this story—which is also a story about what happens after you save the world. Or slay the dragon.

And with that, we’ve come full circle: from dragon to dragon. Thank you for reading.

“
Draco campestris
.”
Strange Horizons
(August 2006). Reprinted in
Best American Fantasy
, eds. Jeff and Ann VanderMeer and Matthew Cheney, Prime Books, 2007.

“Queen of Swords.”
AlienSkin Magazine
(November 2003).

“Letter from a Teddy Bear on Veterans’ Day.”
Ideomancer
5.3 (September 2006).

“Under the Beansidhe’s Pillow.”
Lone Star Stories
22 (August 2007).

“The Watcher in the Corners.” [originally published on author’s blog].

“The Half-Sister.”
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
15 (January 2005).

“Ashes, Ashes.” [first publication]

“Sidhe Tigers.”
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
13 (November 2003). Reprinted in
Glass Bead Games
, ed. Elise Matthesen. Minneapolis: Inner Magpie Press, 2008.

“A Light in Troy.”
Clarkesworld Magazine
1 (October 2006). Reprinted in
Best New Romantic Fantasy
, ed. Paula Guran. Rockville, MD: Juno Books, 2007. Reprinted in
Realms: The First Year of Clarkesworld Magazine
, ed. Nick Mamatas and Sean Wallace. Wyrm Publishing, 2007. Reprinted in
Podcastle
(March 9, 2010).

“Amante Dorée.”
Paradox
10 (Winter 2006): 4-11. Reprinted in
Trochu divné kusy 3
, ed. Martin Šust, Laser-books, 2007.

“Somewhere Beneath Those Waves Was Her Home.”
Fantasy Magazine
. Prime Books, 2007.

“Darkness, as a Bride.”
Cemetery Dance
58 (2008).

“Katabasis: Seraphic Trains.”
Tales of the Unanticipated
27 (2006).

“Fiddleback Ferns.”
Flytrap
9 (June 2008).

“Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland.”
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
11 (November 2002). Reprinted in
Trochu divné kusy 2
, ed. Martin Šust. N.p.: Laser-books, 2006. Reprinted in
So Fey: Queer Faery Fiction
, ed. Steve Birman. Binghampton, NY: Haworth Positronic Press, 2007. Reprinted in
The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
, eds. Gavin J. Grant and Kelly Link. New York: Del Rey, 2007. Reprinted in
Glass Bead Games
, ed. Elise Matthesen. Minneapolis: Inner Magpie Press, 2008. Gaylactic Spectrum Award for Best Short Fiction, 2003.

“Night Train: Heading West.”
The Magazine of Speculative Poetry
7:2 (Spring 2005). Reprinted in
The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror XIX
, eds. Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link, and Gavin J. Grant. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2006.

“The Séance at Chisholm End.”
Alchemy
3 (May 2006).

“No Man’s Land.”
Fictitious Force
5 (2008).

“National Geographic On Assignment: Mermaids of the Old West.”
Fictitious Force
2 (Spring 2006).

“A Night in Electric Squidland.”
Lone Star Stories
15 (June 2006). Reprinted in
The Lone Star Stories Reader
, ed. Eric T. Marin, LSS Press, 2008.

“Impostors.” [first publication]

“Straw.”
Strange Horizons
(June 2004).

“Absent from Felicity.” [first published on author’s blog].

“The World Without Sleep.”
Postscripts
14 (Spring 2008).

“After the Dragon.”
Fantasy Magazine
(January 2010).

Sarah Monette
grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, one of the three secret cities of the Manhattan Project, and now lives in a 105-year-old house in the Upper Midwest with a great many books, two cats, and one husband. Her Ph.D. diploma (English Literature, 2004) hangs in the kitchen. Her first four novels were published by Ace Books. Her short stories have appeared in
Strange Horizons
,
Weird Tales
, and
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
, among other venues, and have been reprinted in several Year’s Best anthologies.
The Bone Key
, a collection of interrelated short stories featuring her character Kyle Murchison Booth was published by Prime Books in 2007. A cult favorite, it was re-issued earlier this year in a new edition. Sarah has written two novels (
A Companion to Wolves
, Tor Books, 2007;
The Tempering of Men
, Tor Books, 2011) and three short stories with Elizabeth Bear, and hopes to write more. Her next novel,
The Goblin Emperor
, will come out from Tor under the name Katherine Addison. Visit her online at www.sarahmonette.com.

Other Books by Sarah Monette

Mélusine

The Virtu

The Mirador

Corambis

A Companion to Wolves
(with Elizabeth Bear)

The Tempering of Men
(with Elizabeth Bear)

The Bone Key