For the next several weeks I’ve decided to call Fridays ‘Fractured Friday’ and use them to share news, contributor interviews and excerpts from B is for Broken.
B is for Broken is the second title in the Alphabet Anthologies series. It follows A is for Apocalypse and will in turn be followed by C is for Chimera. Each story in the series is associated with a letter of the alphabet and is titled in the letter is for word format. What’s more, just to keep things nice and complicated, the story’s title isn’t shared at the beginning but at the end so that you can guess at what it might be while you read.
On that note, even though the story titles could be considered spoilers because of how the book is formatted, for the sake of simplicity if the author has chosen to post their title publicly somewhere else (their blog, Facebook, wherever) I am going to include it in my posts. If they haven’t revealed that information, though, I’ll list the story titles as Letter is for…
I met Marge way back in 2007. I’m not sure exactly when but it was before September. I know that because September 2007 is then the first issue of Niteblade came out and I’d already been in contact with Marge by then because she did the cover (and every cover since). Marge has been a great friend, encouraged me in my writing, offered support as I found my way as an editor and Niteblade would not be the same without her artwork. It’s a pleasure to work with her and I’m pleased to have been able to do it for both A is for Apocalypse and B is for Broken (in addition to our other projects).
Marge and Michael Fosburg collaborated on a story for B is for Broken.
Interview With Marge Simon
What letter were you assigned? T
Please share a short excerpt from your story:
Hessura motioned Timon inside the bedroom. In her arms, a second child. “This one too, Timon.”
“A demon-son!” Timon gasped, and forked his fingers at the sleeping babe. “’The second chases after the first’ — a bad omen.”
“Aye, “ Hessura nodded. “Cursed by that yellow moon, Japeph would say. He’d have it killed.” She turned her head and spat. “A fishwife’s tale, if I ever heard one—and I’ve heard them all.”
Timon frowned, but he reached his finger to the tiny hand and grinned as the boy clasped it. “We must never let them know of this one,” he said. “Can you handle this, Hessura?”
What is the thing you’ve most regretted breaking? The heart of my first “true love” – but it wasn’t as real for my fickle young self as it was for him.
Have you ever broken something and not been saddened by it? Can you tell us about that? I tore up a photograph of a former boyfriend and me at a dance. Does that count?
If you could break one law and get away with it consequence-free, what would it be? I can’t answer this. I’m too “anal” about the idea of breaking the law. But I do lots of other wicked things.
Do you have any rules for yourself, a code of some sort, which you’d never break? Yes, writing a super trite story with lots of blood and guts and bad language–so poorly contrived that it makes me sick. But if I could write like Jeff Strand (brilliantly humorous), I might break the rule!
Did you struggle with the letter you were assigned, or did the ideas come freely? Ideas came freely!
What was your favourite idea you didn’t use? I wrote one about Lizzie Bordon, but it was pretty hokey, and Michael (Fosburg) had a better idea. I’m glad we went with his. I later rewrote the Lizzie Borden piece and sold it to Max Booth for an anthology (Perpetual Motion Publishing).
Marge Simon‘s works appear in publications such as DailySF Magazine, Pedestal, Urban Fantasist. She edits a column for the HWA Newsletter, “Blood & Spades: Poets of the Dark Side,” and serves as Chair of the Board of Trustees. She won the Strange Horizons Readers Choice Award, 2010, and the SFPA’s Dwarf Stars Award, 2012. She has won three Bram Stoker Awards ® for Superior Work in Poetry and has poetry in HWA’s Simon & Schuster collection, It’s Scary Out There, 2015. Marge also has poems in Darke Phantastique, Qualia Nous collections, and Spectral Realms, 2014. www.margesimon.com
B is for Broken is available now at:
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