Ichthyology

The online journal JMWW has just published my story “Ichthyology”. This is an odd little fairy tale, not unlike “Mermaid” or “I might not miss you”, but a little darker.

Lately I’ve been interested in the way myth and dream can be used in stories, without having the story sit squarely in the fantasy genre. I’ve been re-reading Fantasists on Fantasy, a collection of essays that was part of the course material for a class on fantasy that I took back in college with Drs. Robert Boyer and Ken Zahorski. The essays by the writers of “children’s” books–especially Lloyd Alexander, Susan Cooper, and Ursula K. LeGuin–are especially intriguing and fruitful. Returning to Kafka’s The Castle has also been intriguing. There’s something about a complex story told in simple language that I find inviting these days. “Icthyology” certainly isn’t to the caliber of Kafka or Borges, but it’s obviously colored by them.