lo, the mighty pimpage!
19 Mar 2008 01:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouHereby pimping, so please to be paying attention: a good friend's newest story is now published & available, woot! It's Mallory Path's The Secret Language of Curls, with her usual mature-audience MRFA goodness and delectable language.
In sum, Nick wants both of his friends, but fear drives him to run when they both return his interest. The teaser describes Path's voice as "art-house," and while I'm not entirely certain that's the most fitting, I would say it's not a common voice in the different-gender-same-story world of MRFA, where the pronouns are often the only thing that tell you a character's gender (let alone that yes, this is a different story from the one you read last week). I've read a number of her earlier works and she's really cultivated an elliptical, poetic style that -- to riff on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
buymeaclue's recent post-contemplations -- are the kind most cherished by cadence-monkeys*.
Here's an excerpt, enough to see what I mean by Path's use of repetition, circling around and coming back again, winding in a spiral to the inevitable if sometimes ineffable center. It's an individualistic style, so if it's not your cup of tea, well, it's not. If you're the kind of person who hears the story in your head like music, then this might be something you'll enjoy.
Obligatory... uh, whatever you call it when you say what you might be getting from pimpage, uh, can you believe I use words for a living? Anyway: no, I get nothing other than the right to demand a certain starvingartist writer do jaeger shots with me in November.
*Okay, truth is that BuyMe uses 'rhythm monkey' but I can't spell that word without slowing down and pondering every single letter before retyping five times until I get it right, so I'm going with cadence-monkey.
In sum, Nick wants both of his friends, but fear drives him to run when they both return his interest. The teaser describes Path's voice as "art-house," and while I'm not entirely certain that's the most fitting, I would say it's not a common voice in the different-gender-same-story world of MRFA, where the pronouns are often the only thing that tell you a character's gender (let alone that yes, this is a different story from the one you read last week). I've read a number of her earlier works and she's really cultivated an elliptical, poetic style that -- to riff on
buymeaclue's recent post-contemplations -- are the kind most cherished by cadence-monkeys*. Here's an excerpt, enough to see what I mean by Path's use of repetition, circling around and coming back again, winding in a spiral to the inevitable if sometimes ineffable center. It's an individualistic style, so if it's not your cup of tea, well, it's not. If you're the kind of person who hears the story in your head like music, then this might be something you'll enjoy.
He pops another chocolate ball in his mouth, practically inhales it, swallows it without savoring it, washing it down with amaretto when it sticks in his throat, keeps swigging after it’s gone. Alcohol can't stop the sugar crash, but maybe it can drown it. Or maybe not, because isn't there sugar in alcohol? Or your body makes sugar from alcohol? One of those. Maybe both.Read the rest of the teaser, or jump right in and order.
Nick looks at the bottle for a clue, tries to read the label but there’s not enough light in here. He remembers that there is "good" cholesterol and "bad" cholesterol. He wonders if it's that way for sugar, too. He wonders what the good sugar might be. He's pretty sure it's not the sugar in chocolate, which is rotting a hole in his tooth. And he's pretty sure it's not the sugar in amaretto, which is rotting a hole in his liver.
He's for damn sure certain that it's not in Daniel's sweet laugh when he points sweetly at the chocolate smudge, or in Daniel's sweet fingertip trying to brush it off, smearing it sweetly instead, or in the sweet tip of Daniel's sweet tongue licking sweetly the smear from the corner of Laurent's mouth; Nick is pretty sure the good sugar is not in any of that, which is rotting a hole in his heart.
Obligatory... uh, whatever you call it when you say what you might be getting from pimpage, uh, can you believe I use words for a living? Anyway: no, I get nothing other than the right to demand a certain starving
*Okay, truth is that BuyMe uses 'rhythm monkey' but I can't spell that word without slowing down and pondering every single letter before retyping five times until I get it right, so I'm going with cadence-monkey.