Ancient Logic

As part of a writing workshop I've joined, I'll be participating in a public reading of my work on June 25th, 2015 at the Woburn Public Library. The details are a little hazy at the moment, but it will be in the evening and I will be joining Nick Mancuso, a writer leading the Woburn Writing Workshop. Hopefully other participants of the workshop will also be reading, as I've had the good fortune to join of group of truly talented writers! I'll give a quick shout-out to Andrea Bunker, the Assistant Librarian at the Woburn Library, for being so receptive to this idea. As I've mentioned before, reading my work before audiences has been one of my absolute favorite aspects of writing so far. Hopefully there will be other possibilities to announce in the near future.

During the Speculative Fiction: Year in Review panel I got interested in the book jacket description of a book from last year, “The Girl With All of the Gifts,” by M.R. Carey. It was the set-up that got me mostly: a zombie story centering around a young girl, Melanie, the eponymous "girl with all of the gifts," the object of a government study in some mysterious military base. She is kept under constant armed guard, taught about Greek myths while lashed to a chair, and fed writhing meal grubs once a week after being sprayed with some sort of chemical that leaves a bitter smell on her skin. It's the kind of set-up, so inherently wrong and enigmatic, that I just had to follow to the end. "The Girl with All the Gifts" by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia  Without giving too much away, Melanie doesn’t stay at the government research facility all too long. The bulk of the story is a long trek through the post-apocalyptic wastes of England, with Mela...