A little N’Awlins in the UK

Whoa, just realized this is out — Postscripts 22/23 from PS Publishing! The Postscripts anthologies are put out twice a year, and feature big-name authors writing some really cutting-edge stuff. And now one of them features little ol’ me, and my story “Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints, in the City Beneath the Still Waters,” set in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward during and after Hurricane Katrina. Some of you heard this at the New York Review of Science Fiction reading back in June, at which I attempted to accurately recall and reproduce the deliciously chewy New Orleans accent. An excerpt for the rest of you:

Tookie sat on the porch of his shotgun house, watching the rain fall sideways. A lizard strolled by on the worn dirt-strip that passed for a sidewalk, easy as you please, as if there wasn’t an inch of water already collected around its paws. It noticed him and stopped.

“Hey,” it said, inclining its head to him in a neighborly fashion.

“‘Sup,” Tookie replied, jerking his chin up in return.

“You gon’ stay put?” it asked. “Storm comin’.”

“Yeah,” said Tookie. “I got food from the grocery.”

“Ain’ gon’ need no food if you drown, man.”

Tookie shrugged.

The lizard sat down on the sidewalk, oblivious to the driving wind, and joined Tookie in watching the rain fall. Tookie idly reflected that the lizard might be an alligator, in which case he should maybe go get his gun. He decided against it, though, because the creature had wide batlike wings and he was fairly certain gators didn’t have those. These wings were the color of rusty, jaundiced clouds, like those he’d seen approaching from the southeast just before the rain began.

“Levee gon’ break,” said the lizard after awhile. “You shoulda got out, man.”

Order the anthology to read the rest!

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