Go read “Weaving Dreams” at Apex

I have a new story out in Apex called, “Weaving Dreams.”

Here’s a teaser:

Eva tossed her backpack on the picnic bench and hollered to Giancarlo. “I’m heading to the creek to cut some willow branches for the summoning spell.”

The historian strode up the hill from their car with his gear slung over one shoulder. “You could bring them with you, you know.” His English was perfect, only the rolled R and lilt betraying his origins. Well, that and the way he moved like a runway model straight from Milan.

She snapped a photo of the area with her phone and texted it to her assistant, Sandra. File under Cherokee Project. Sometimes the vegetation changed after a Fae visited, depending on the magic they used.

“The willow needs to be from here. The Fae like it better when the baskets are of their place.”

“Why?” He raised an eyebrow, curious, as always.

“The Fae are particular about the specifications for these gifts, but I’ve got no idea what they do with the baskets.”

“But…but…. Not even conjectures from seeing them in use?”

“It’s not like we can just go to a settlement to check.” To be more accurate, no one had been invited to a settlement and returned in a timely manner. Standard protocol was to decline an invitation, no matter how tempting. The story of Thomas the Rhymer was a hard-core cautionary tale, even in North America.

The story itself has a sort of interesting genesis. I was hosting a writing retreat last year at Woodthrush Woods. This is my parents’ house and is on what used to be the family farm, so it’s great for this sort of thing. In fact, I just finished hosting another and am currently sitting in the dining room. These retreats consist of a lot of writers sitting around and ignoring each other while we work.

Last year, Tempest Bradford challenged us all to a word race. I was in the middle of edits for Glamour in Glass so I didn’t have an active story to work on and was sort of needing a break from editing. It was a fifteen minute break race, so what the heck. I said I’d join in. Tempest offered the word “basketry” as a trigger for a new story.

When we’d finished the race, I had the start of a story that I was interested in, so I kept working on it. Across the room, Monte Cook was also working on a basketry story and had hit a point where he was having trouble ending it.

So we traded.

Which means that part way through “Weaving Dreams” is a section that I didn’t write. 

I will tell you that the surest way to realize that you have a “voice” that is distinctive is to trade stories with a writer of comparable skill level. Even a year later, when you read that story, the point where it changes to someone else’s voice will jump out at you.

Can you can spot it?

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