A story finally finds a home.
This year’s highlight for me has been the publication of a story that’s been seeking a home for a long time, in a respected journal.
“A Prophet in his own Country” began life as a response to a call for submissions for two anthologies from the same press. Unusually, they wanted writers to send in pairs of stories, the plots linking, one with the theme of corvids and the other with the theme of scarecrows. I needed, I think, about 15,000 words and the task took a long time. Enjoyable, though. I cooked up my story from a stash of ingredients: the rival siblings in the Grimms’ story “The Singing Bone”, the raven in Fairport Convention’s song “Crazy Man Michael” (not a traditional song, despite common belief) and the Twa Corbies of various ballads who ponder over the fate of the knight whose body they are pecking at. In my story the siblings became brothers, not sisters, fighting over one woman with fatal results, and the crow was the seer appointed to denounce the injustice, to deaf ears. “Listen Hard” was the scarecrow offering, and “A Prophet in his own Country” continued the story of the crow, its title being a reference to Jesus’ comment in the Bible that a prophet in his own land tended to be ignored.
I sent both stories off, and they were rejected. Now I had two tales made for a particular prompt, and no home for them. Some while later I read a call for another anthology, this time with a much looser requirement. They wanted horror or paranormal. My stories counted as paranormal, so I submitted the one that fitted their word count limit, and was very pleased to be accepted. The final version of the anthology was something of a surprise, because my story about love and ignorance in a village a hundred years ago was the only one that wasn’t horror. But it was great to get it out there.
The second story, divorced from the first, took longer to place. A first reader liked it for a professional magazine, but it didn’t make the second round. I sent it off to the journal of the British Fantasy Society and waited. Returning from a holiday, I checked my emails and spam. In the latter I found a response from the journal edtior, Pete Sutton, read that he felt the story had issues, and went to bed feeling disappointed. But something made me read it again in the morning, with a clearer head and eyes. Pete liked it enough to offer me someone to work on it with. No charge, just an option. I said yes please.
For several months I worked with Nadya Mercik, who also offers freelance, and we bashed away at the story as she guided me in the professional way to approach edits in Google Docs. There were issues Pete had highlighted, but there were also places where Nadya felt the story wasn’t clear. What we ended up with means the plot line in “Prophet” is changed from the one in “Listen Hard”, and they don’t quite segue any more. But that’s something I might address one day in the future, if I ever have the chance to republish.
Once Nadya and I were happy with the story, she told Pete. He said he would reserve it for the next issue of the journal. And once that was ready to go to press I got my e-copy, and later my author copy of the paperback. Look at that cover! It’s beautiful. What’s more, I get to be in the same collection as some authors I’ve admired and followed for a while – Lyndsey Croal, and my friend and former editor Teika Marija Smitts.
Someone was looking up at me in puzzlement. I could see he understood me and that he was surprised at this.
from “A Prophet in his own Country”
It was the curate. Since his arrival he had spent much of his time touring the village, going in and out of the cottages. The villagers greeted him with increasing respect and warmth. He was often outdoors, too, in the woods, or over the downs, ears cocked to the wind. I’d wondered if he wished he were a bird. He certainly looked a little like a crow, with his black clothes and bright eyes.
“That’s quite a story,” he said to me. “Though your language, dear bird!”
At last, someone who would listen. “A true tale, your reverence. A murder that needs avenging. I trust you will see that justice is done?”
Yes, I know. That was not what the scarecrow had asked me to do. But the man with the muddy boots was abusing the woman. And he had stolen the straw man’s child.
“Hmm, murder, eh?” murmured the curate. And to my astonishment, he smiled and shook his head.
The bird was right. Annie did walk out with William again. The next time they met was on a Sunday, for work had begun again on the land. William and Daniel were silently relieved that the hunger days were over for another few months. The winter had been got through with poaching and tightening of belts. But by the summer they were working from the first glimmer of light to the last, and William had enough money to ask Annie another question as they walked on the common.
from “Listen Hard”
“I’ll never be a rich man, Annie,” he said, stopping under an old oak tree, “but with you I’ll be a very happy man, and I’ll do all I can to make you happy too.”
“You do make me happy,” Annie said, “and I will marry you.”
He threw his arms around her and spun her, then kissed her till she couldn’t breathe.
“Ah, the oaks told me today was a good day!”
Annie laughed. “And what about that crow there on that tussock? What does he say?”
The crow flapped away with a harsh caw.
William leaned and whispered in her ear with an impish smile.
Her cheeks went pink and she pulled back, giving him a harmless slap on the arm. “He does not, you wicked man!”
Nadya Mercik, editor, writer, bookseller. Nadya offers freelance editing as well as her work at the British Fantasy Society.
Quills, Quotes, Queens and Quests 