This week, Queer Wolf, Thor, Kelley Eskridge, Steve Berman, Thomas M. Disch, and Part 6 of Fat Diary.

TWO SNAPS AND A HOWL.

Queered Ficton wants gay-themed werewolf stories for its upcoming ebook Queer Wolf. A submitted story should involve a community of werewolves. See that blog for details.

THOR.

SciFi Wire reports that director and Shakespearean actor Kenneth Branagh might direct Thor. Branagh previously explored supernatural themes with Dead Again and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but this would be his first superhero movie, and the first big screen version of Thor. The mythic hero received campy treatment on the small screen, as an attempted spinoff from The Incredible Hulk.

KELLEY ESKRIDGE.

AfterEllen has posted an interview with Kelley Eskridge, in which the science fiction author discusses her use of gender, identity, and sexuality themes. She also discusses her influences and some suggested reading. KelleyEskridge.Com includes some of her writing, as well as interactive discussions of it. The New York Times Book Review called her novel Solitaire “A stylistic and psychological tour de force.”

STEVE BERMAN, THOMAS M. DISCH.

Visit LiveJournal for an interview with Steve Berman. The dark fantasy author discusses gay themes in scifi/fantasy, as well as the growing popularity of his books. Berman mentions his admiration of the late spec fiction writer Thomas M. Disch. Read a tribute to Thomas M. Disch at Critic After Dark.

FAT DIARY (FICTION/HUMOR) PART 6.

(This story uses a librarian’s diary to introduce readers to a scifi geek, a closeted mayor, and many other interesting characters, in the West Texas town of Acorn. Read Views from the Acorn Universe next week for another installment, and for sf/f news.) Read Part 1. Parts 2 and 3. Part 4. Part 5.

January 25, 2001
Dear Fat Diary:

Okay, I’ve put it off long enough. It’s time to talk about my ex-husband, how we met, and how everything went quickly downhill from there.

I was at 7-Bap one morning, several years ago, when this little beanpole of a man with frizzy, bad-part-about-West-Texas hair sat down beside me. I had seen him before, at church and around town. You really couldn’t miss him. In fact, I had recently seen him dating someone who was shaped amazingly like me, and who had frequently checked out library books before she moved off to California, but I couldn’t remember her name.

As it turns out, this young man went from lonely woman to lonely woman, letting them pay his rent and buy his supper. Well, I wasn’t falling for that. I wasn’t going to let someone like that string me along.

I just married him.

He asked me out right away, while glaring at the passing offering plate full of wadded-up cash, and he seemed really nice. Then, obviously having no life or job, he kept asking me out, and hanging around the library, looking for books on government conspiracies, the New Age movement, the end of the world, and whatnot. My dear cousin Aragon warned me that he was bad news, but I thought he was hilarious. Bear in mind that he rarely meant to be funny, but he was so inarticulate, while desperately trying to convince everyone of his profound intellect, that comedy just poured forth from his lips. He would say things like “That guy always wears that suit sometimes,” or “I’m not going to sit here and stand for this!” It was like dating Archie Bunker! (In hindsight, I wonder why anyone would want to date Archie Bunker.)

And he had an odd sort of charm to him, not to mention the fact that he could be as clever when he wasn’t trying to be clever as he was funny when he wasn’t trying to be funny. Sometimes, he would make a little remark that struck me as somewhat racist, sexist, or homophobic, but you hear stuff like that a lot in a small town, and you try to forgive people their stupidity.

I forgave too much of it.

Aragon saw where it was going. I was a lonely, desperate, twenty-something virgin. A loser magnet!

“If you get married, get a prenuptial agreement,” she insisted, as we sipped green tea together in the dining room of her first home. With the overkill of oak furniture and Southwest décor, it looked much like the dining room in the mansion where she now lives. Billy Friedman, her beautiful boyfriend (and now husband) with the perfect body (and now still-perfect body) wandered through and smiled at me. I hated her for finding someone so…so…so would not be with me. But that isn’t really true. I’ve always loved Aragon for her boldness and bluntness, and I wanted to be just like her, even if I couldn’t find a boyfriend who looked like he should rip off his shirt and start saving screaming little girls from sharks, tidal waves, and misguided crushes.

“Air, I’m not getting one of those. It’s like a promise to divorce.”

She blew on her tea, its steam curling around her pretty, lightly made-up face. “No one calls me ‘Air’ anymore. I don’t do nicknames.”

“And I don’t do prenuts! I mean, I don’t do prenups!” We both laughed at my blunder, before Aragon warned, “You’re already starting to talk like him! It’s the dumbing down of Acorn’s intellectual leader! Do we really need that? Goodbye, Ernest Hemingway, hello, tractor pulls! Goodbye, Alice Walker, hello, mud wrestling!”

“Goodbye, Aragon, hello, time to go back to work.” I walked around the table and hugged her neck, careful not to mess up the intricate workings of her latest pull-up hairstyle.

 “I love you,” she reminded me.

“Someone needs to.” I picked up an odd, misshapen piece of crystal from an antique sewing table, near the open doorway to the living room. Tiny, multi-colored buttons surrounded the object’s jagged, multi-angled surface. “What’s this doohicky?”

Aragon pushed herself around, her face vibrant with the opportunity of sarcasm, something she loved as much as I did but rarely kept to herself. “Did you just use the word ‘doohicky’? You are getting dumb, Ms. Librarian.”

“Okay!” I set the doohicky down.

“You know, if you killed someone with a doohicky, that would be doohickular homicide.”

“Let’s find out if you’re right,” I said, reaching for it again, then shaking it about in a threatening motion.

“It’s a universal remote control, for the ceiling fans, the stereo, the TV, the lights. It was designed to not stand out, not be noticed.”

“It didn’t work.”

“And it doesn’t work.” As I set it down again, Aragon grew serious. “Sweetie, Billy thinks Tyler could be abusive. Billy does a lot of research on domestic violence, you know, because of his father.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed the books he reads on the subject. Tell Billy not to be a hero. Your boyfriend worries about people too much, just like you.”

Aragon nodded in agreement, but then she said, “I’ll have my lawyer write a draft for you.”

“We have the same lawyer.”

As I started to walk through the doorway, she added, “Well, I was really going to write it myself, just to be safe.”

“I know you were. You’re my cousin, not my big sister. Love you!” I slipped on out.

Of course, she wrote it, and I told Tyler that I wouldn’t marry him unless he signed it. Not because Aragon pushed me into it, but because I knew deep down that she was right. My insistence made Tyler mad, and he shouted something about “feminaligations,” which I know isn’t a word, but that never stopped Tyler. I guess it wasn’t too much worse than “doohicky.” He relented, after reading me a passage from one of his conspiracy tracts, and telling me “You remember that!” I don’t remember a word of it, or what it was about. I just wanted him to sign the prenup.

Just five weeks after our wedding (and the New Mexico honeymoon that my parents paid for), I started insisting that he get a job and keep it. He’d been through five since we’d met, including three that I’d helped him get, and one that Billy helped him get. I told him to be more responsible, and not to drink so much, or use such spiteful language about people who were different from him. Then he up and slugged me. I don’t mean a slap; I mean hockey player style. And that bony little fist hurt a lot more than what I would have expected.

Billy happened to be the deputy back then (now the sheriff, with the still-perfect body), and he virtually assaulted Tyler when he found out what happened. I had to agree to drop any charges against Tyler to keep Tyler from filing charges against Billy. I had my prenup. I really didn’t care.

Like so many other people, Tyler soon faded out of Acorn, which makes you wonder why our population is always exactly 21,001. Maybe no one wants to repaint the city limits sign. But, then, new people fade in just as quickly. I was just glad Ian never left, and that he eventually gave up on the mayor’s wife. Unlike Tyler, Ian was intentionally and successfully witty and insightful, even if his life thus far had suggested he shared Tyler’s lack of ambition. At least he’d kept the same job for several years! That was something: a little star by his name.

And he is cute, unlike Tyler. Not the perfect body, but you can only find one of those per small town, and Aragon had already found Billy, and don’t start thinking that I’m fixated on him. He’s just nice to look at, like his Army/fireman hunk of a brother (another person who faded away from Acorn, though he visits now and then), and like my boyband posters. I’m just glad Ian never expected me to take those posters down.

(Next week, chaos at the Cow Palace.)

Duane Simolke edited The Acorn Gathering and wrote four of its stories, including “Fat Diary.”  He also wrote the award-winning novel Degranon: A Science Fiction Adventure.