New story at Daily Science Fiction!

[swan_tower]

Half an hour before the end of 2019, I got an email notifying me that the magazine Daily Science Fiction wanted to buy my flash story “Cruel Sisters” (available to read for free at that link) — a story which may be glossed as “that continuity error had bugged me for years, thanks a lot, Loreena McKennitt.” Except it’s actual thanks now rather than sarcastic, because in the end I got a story and a sale out of it.

Comments

[sovay]

“that continuity error had bugged me for years, thanks a lot, Loreena McKennitt.” Except it’s actual thanks now rather than sarcastic, because in the end I got a story and a sale out of it.

Congratulations!

That is good, and it's the second story I know to come out of McKennitt's version, so it's just as well that she sings it as it she does.

[swan_tower]

What is the first? (If it's something of yours, my apologies for forgetting.)

[sovay]

What is the first?

Patricia C. Wrede's "Cruel Sisters." I read it in her Book of Enchantments (1996); it can also be found in the tenth Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, where the introduction mentions the discrepancy of the three sisters. McKennitt's isn't the only version with three sisters, but it is the only one with the names that match Wrede's.

(If it's something of yours, my apologies for forgetting.)

No worries. I have a bone-harp-influenced piece called "The White Swan," but I wasn't thinking of it when I left the comment.

[swan_tower]

I think I may have read that, ages ago. And yes, there's also that extraneous third sister! Not to mention all the stories that set out to do something with the essential weirdness of MAKING A HARP OUT OF A DEAD WOMAN. It's no wonder people keep coming back to this song to poke at it.

[sovay]

Not to mention all the stories that set out to do something with the essential weirdness of MAKING A HARP OUT OF A DEAD WOMAN.

Who among us hasn't?!

(All of us. All of us, that's who.)

[alexseanchai]

I love it!

I had to look up the McKennitt lyrics in order to stop being confused, though; if I hadn't found the story through this post, I think I'd have had to go on being confused

[swan_tower]

It's always a risk with this kind of flash fiction -- there isn't room to lay out all the background, so it hinges on people either knowing the folksong (you don't have to know the Loreena McKennitt version specifically to recognize it here) or else being willing to fill in/skate over what's merely implied rather than shown in full. It rarely -- read "never" -- works for everybody.

[alexseanchai]

I recognized the ballad, it's just I didn't know there were versions in which the sisters aren't princesses.

[mindstalk]

Both Loreena and Steeleye Span use "The Three Sisters", with a middle sister who doesn't do anything while the sororal murder takes place in front of her. More questions!

[swan_tower]

Yup! There's a whole other story in that.