From Uptown Local and Other Interventions: "Herself"

[dianeduane]

In the heart of Dublin, something is killing the People of the Hills — and it’s going to take Ireland’s only superhero to stop it…

In honor of Saint Patrick's day... a taste of something Irish for #SampleSunday. 

The Irish Thing can hardly avoid being part of the “ground of being” of someone who’s lived in Ireland for nearly a quarter-century. That familiarity, though, with the way things really are here (insofar as anyone, “blow-in” or native, can ever tell what’s really going on in this island…) can make the inhabitant a little impatient with the perceptions of outsiders: particularly those who think Ireland is some kind of theme park that should be preserved to match its overflow into the last couple of centuries’ popular culture. I have actually stood in Dublin Airport and heard fellow Americans complaining that Ireland has broadband: as if it’s somehow polluting the cultural purity of the place. (I saw another American look around absolutely without irony or humor intended and say, disbelieving, “I thought it was supposed to be thatched.” The airport. Was supposed. To be thatched.)

…Yeah. So you will understand that when I was invited to participate in an anthology called Emerald Magic: Great Tales of Irish Fantasy, before I decided what story I wanted to write, I asked casually if I could see a list of the other contributors. When I saw the list, it was as I thought: only one of them (our former neighbor Morgan Llewellyn) had ever lived here. One of them (the excellent Tanith Lee) might have at least been here. And I knew in my bones what way everyone else would be going with their stories: the Celtic twilight, thatch everywhere, the soft green countryside, the old school Ireland and the old-school myths of a century or so back. I immediately thought, Somebody’s got to actually get into Dublin, where a third of the damn population lives! Somebody’s got to at least spend a little time in the here and now. …I’m going urban on this one.

So I wrote "Herself". The first part of the story appears here. Those eager to find out what happens can do so for US 99¢.
Those who want the whole anthology can have that too, for USD $5.99. The PayPal buttons are at the bottom of the page...

Enjoy, folks!  ...And don't dye the beer green.

Comments

[caiteydid.livejournal.com]

Our "Irish" pub here (it reminds me of the pubs I used to go to in England, but I'm not sure if it's very Irish) adamantly REFUSES to dye the beer green, or shorten St. Patrick's Day to St. Pat's. :P Reminded me of your Twitter post, I think it was?

I really regret that I didn't get to go to Ireland while I was living in England. It sounds like an altogether interesting place.

[jerel.livejournal.com]

I am disappointed in our local Irish pub. For the other 364 days it's the real deal--and having been to many pubs in Ireland, I am confident in my assertion. But their St. Patrick's Day is very commercial. Can't really blame them, because while it's got its local fans, the pub is in a rather inconvenient location, at the split of two roads and a railroad junction; seeing it from the road, you'd never figure out how to get in there, so you'd be likely to keep driving. So they probably need the business.

Although they have drawn the line at green beer. And when my former band played there on the 17th, we got free Guinness. :)

[caiteydid.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it strikes me as odd that it reminds me so much of an English pub, but maybe the two are similar? Our's is super convenient, on one of the main streets by the University (which is a dry campus), so all kinds of folks go in there. They have WONDERFUL food, both what I'd think is somewhat traditional and more traditional to New Mexico. Their Bangers and Mash is SO good, and on Sundays they do brunch- complete with beans on toast!

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Weren't traditional 15th-century Irish airports thatched? ;-)

[dduane.livejournal.com]

(grin) It's possible we've fallen behind in this regard.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Or leapt ahead of the competition, perhaps?

[tingler.livejournal.com]

I *love* Tanith Lee. Have you read any R.A. MacAvoy?

[dduane.livejournal.com]

Indeed yes.

[ailbhe]

Saint Patty's Day. Oh, yes.

summer in San Francisco

[(Anonymous)]

> Or an even better example is to watch tourists of all nationalities freeze their behinds off in San Francisco about 360 ;) days of the year because they expected it to be hot in "sunny California"

Most of the tourists go home at Labor Day, and miss the second summer, the warm one.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

"freeze their behinds off in San Francisco"

Er, how? All the information I can find gives the minimum temperature in SF as around 7C (44F) -- that's PLUS 7 degrees Celcius. You can't freeze anything[1] in that. It's the sort of temperature where I can't wear a coat if I'm doing anything active, like walking a few hundred yards, because I get too hot (OK, I'd wear one if I were standing or sitting around and there was wind).

Certainly not all nationalities would find that cold, many of us regard anything where ice is molten to be t-shirt weather.

[1] OK, any part of a human body. Several other things are frozen at that temperature -- titanium, for example.

[noirrosaleen.livejournal.com]

See: Eddie Izzard's bit about the way the fog shifts it in SF. (IT REALLY DOES.)

To Keristor - we of the SF Bay Area are unashamedly spoiled. However, for TRUE spoiling, go to Marin County (across the Golden Gate) and experience levels of snobbery unknown to most mankind about EVERYTHING, including the weather! I grew up there, and it took me ages to get used to anything <70F-80F<. I still whine about being freezing when the house is under 70F!

(Granted, that's currently because I've been going through stupid amounts of surgery and hyperbaric oxygen, and I'm guessing chemo's not going to improve the situation. >_<)

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

Tanith has definitely been to Ireland - I met her for the only time when she was GOH at Octocon. And she didn't strike me as the sort of person who goes for bullshit (I've only read her fairytale adaptations - Red as Blood.)

Morgan would be someone who would make me more nervous. She may have improved, but the works of hers I read were definitely sub-Celtic Twilight stuff that didn't appeal at all.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

I now have a clear mental image of a bunch of cast members dressed up like a certain cereal mascot, welcoming visitors to "Eireland", the Luckiest Greenest Bonniest Place On Earth.

[batyatoon]

I'm going urban on this one.

You, lady, are awesome. I just felt I should say that.

I've read the first part and I am definitely going to buy the rest.

[kayshapero]

A friend of mine, folk musician Joe Bethancourt has a really hilarious batch of parodies of things like "The Irish Rover" that he saves for when he's stuck playing in a bar on St. Patrick's Day... Almost enough to cause me to venture into one.

And then there's Three Shillings Short's rendition of Robbie O'Connell's "You're Not Irish". :)

Just bought Updown Local. Thanks muchly for the link.

[kayshapero]

I have now READ "Herself". Love it!!!!!!!! Will now go read the rest of this.

[readingredhead.livejournal.com]

Now I just need to go out and buy my iPad so I have an excuse to buy this collection and get through the rest of the story, as well as all the others!

I take some comfort in the thought that perhaps at least some tourists know how much they don't really know about Ireland, often thanks to fiction like yours...and I say this as an American whose first real image of modern Ireland came from her childhood reading of A Wizard Abroad. Being a tourist in Ireland about a decade after that first reading was quite the experience! Though the knowledge has been useful in other ways as well -- recently, the bartender at an Irish pub in San Francisco was surprised and pleased that I not only knew what "Cead mille failte" meant, but how to pronounce it. :)

[drhoz.livejournal.com]

In the Judge Dredd universe, Ireland IS a theme park. But the potatoes went extinct during the radwars, so they mould fake potatoes out of rice.

[dduane.livejournal.com]

(wraps brain around concept) ...Oooooooookay. :)

[keristor.livejournal.com]

So have you read the rest of the anthology, and is it as 'bad' as you suspected?

Is it (or will it be) available as dead tree, or only as an e-book?

[dduane.livejournal.com]

We'll be going dead-tree on this some time in the next month or so. I want to wait until we're finished doing all the Young Wizards international editions; then we'll do all the to-print conversions together.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Waiting is.

I have actually seen and been rather impressed by a Kindle (in size and shape and weight rather like a writing slate). But it does look horribly fragile compared to books, especially given the price difference (drop a $10 book on a stone floor and it will survive with possibly a few bent pages, do the same with a Kindle or other e-book reader and it will be over 10 times that amount to replace). And I really dislike their DRM and ability to delete things remotely -- I don't know that they would delete a book I had loaded privately, but I know that they could do it if they wanted.

[novak.livejournal.com]

Ah, that was great fun to read over breakfast: so much so that I forgot that I gave up fiction for Lent! I'll have to save the download to read as part of Easter's celebration, and to add (or return) to the pain of keeping the discipline for me!

[noirrosaleen.livejournal.com]

0.0 How could you do that to yourself..? You CLEARLY have far more self-control that I will ever possess.

[noirrosaleen.livejournal.com]

Unrelated: on my list of things-to-buy-when-there-is-money (aside from this anthology now!) is your cookbook. Made the Beef Pie with Guinness and boxtys (proper plural..?) today (well, yesterday now) instead of the 'Murkan corned-beef-and-cabbage, and OMG AMAZING. (Though I got TWO pies out of the recipe, one that's untouched after 6 people barely finished the first one! Huzzah, insta-dinner later...) SO glad some of the recipes are online! I fully intend to make myself large batches of boxtys during chemo as grazing-food, since they're amazingly tasty but not super-flavor. Thank you, thank you, thank you!