For this year’s Giftmas blog tour has an advent theme each participant has donated a story — one each day between now and Christmas Eve, with a special surprise on Christmas Day. Not every participant has an active blog, however, and so for those couple who do not it is my pleasure to host them here. Julie E. Czerneda is one of those people, and so it is my honour to share her story here on my blog.

Before we get to the story, however, a quick word about the tour, if I may. The purpose of the blog tour is to fundraise for the Edmonton Food Bank. We do that by collecting donations through our Canada Helps page which you can find right here. We use Canada Helps because it’s easy, and also because then you can give with confidence knowing that the money is going exactly where it’s intended — to help struggling people. Also, by using Canada Helps it means Canadian contributors will be able to get a tax receipt. Oh, and American donors? You get some awesome value for your money because donations are all in Canadian dollars so the exchange rate will definitely work in our favour here 😉

Finally, in addition to offering a story a day to everyone who’d like to read them, we like to reward those people who do what they can to help out. However they help out. Whether that be by making an actual donation, helping to boost our signal or just leaving encouraging comments on the stories themselves. They all help. So we’ve got a rafflecopter with tonnes and tonnes of prizes. You can read the full list here but they include loads of books, critiques, a magazine subscription, dice and more.

Enter to win here:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

(If the widget doesn’t load for you click here, it will take you to the page so you can enter directly)

And now, without further adieu…

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Dear John

Julie E. Czerneda

Dear John:

<as the opening line to a letter destined for a being of indeterminate sex and nomenclature, it would likely tickle his sense of the ridiculous. Still one should follow customary form in these matters>

Dear John:

<definitely should scratch that, however traditional. Haven’t covered formal or informal modes of address – stylized or otherwise. And what kind of name is “John” to identify a 3 metre animated piece of chitinous tupperware>

I am writing this to say…

<nix that line too. Who writes these days? By the time this vocalization makes it through the translator, it will consist of quantified photons and resonances with an occasional catchy rhythm>

I’ve met someone else…

<technically? Well, now’s not the time for details>

This someone can satisfy me in ways, frankly, you can’t…

<not being equipped by nature or imagination, dear>

It’s best that I leave…

<we’ll ignore the fact that you’ve already flown the coop. The saucer-like, quaint, crater your ship left in my yard will generate enough tourist dollars for my retirement, thank you very much>

It’s been fun…

<except for the incident with my mother. You really never grasped our prohibition against consuming ancestors, did you?>

And while I wish we could have been together always…

<actually, while I can imagine a dimension in which you – or I – were less relatively ugly, in truth, we both know that’s unlikely>

We both realize forever can never be…

<though I do have concerns about those glowing pods in my cellar. They seem new, John. Have you left something behind?>

I will carry your memory in my heart always…

<right above the 16 stitches you gave me before we both realized that taking our relationship to the, ahem, next level, could be a fatal mistake at this – or any – time>

So, I wish you the best in your future, John…

<a feeling not shared by the rest of the inhabitants of my planet, unfortunately, given the regrettable results following your experiments with those harmless-looking gnats>

And hope you can find it in your heart to understand and forgive me…

<and if you ever show up here again, buster, have I got a bug-spray for you!>

Love,

Barbara

P.S. Just kidding about the pods. I can assure you they aren’t yours…

<strike that. Not a nice thing to bring up – which could be truer than I’d like to think.>

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An original SF story by Julie E. Czerneda first published in Odyssey Magazine Volume 6, 1998, London.

 

For over twenty years, Canadian author/ former biologist Julie E. Czerneda has shared her curiosity about living things through her science fiction, published by DAW Books. Julie writes fantasy too, her Night’s Edge novels (DAW) A Turn of Light and A Play of Shadow, winning consecutive Aurora Awards (Canada’s Hugo). Her Clan Chronicles series concluded in To Guard Against the Dark, Julie’s latest SF is Search Image, #1 of The Web Shifter’s Library. Next out is Clan Chronicles: Tales from Plexis. This winter she’ll be busy with her new fantasy standalone, The Gossamer Mage, out August 2019. www.czerneda.com.

 

 

The blog tour continues tomorrow at Steve Toase’s website with his story, “Seeing with Pollen”, and in case you missed it, yesterday’s story was “The Fool and the Wise Men” by JB Riley.