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Excerpt
Johan skips among the tombstones, but Gertrude is too tired to chase in her starched black dress. She watches instead: the loose crowd of mourners flocking each side of the country road, the priest's thurible swooping on a clanking iron chain, the ash and smoke spewing from its perfect half-circle. Father, blank-eyed and stiffly smiling, is watching as well. The small litter of branches, his gamboling son, his black-dressed daughter, his second wife's burial. Harp and reeds. Evening crickets in harmony.
"Come along," Gertrude snaps at her younger brother. She worries about meals and markets and washing to finish. Their stepmother is gone now; Gertrude must attend to the household.
from "A Moth's Desire"
Bio
Adrian Khactu is a doctoral student in literature at the University of Pennsylvania, and he holds shiny, though not entirely profitable, creative writing degrees from Stanford and Temple Universities. For one brief, shining summer in 2002, Adrian also wrote with some great friends at Clarion West. He would like to accomplish great things this year during the Clarion West Write-a-thon!
Writing Description
I write what the kids today call Slipstream. Or is it still Magic Realism? Interstitial? Mundane SF? New Wave Fabulist? New Weird? I adore the work of J.G. Ballard, Octavia E. Butler, Angela Carter, Ted Chiang, Robert Coover, John Crowley, Samuel R. Delany, Karen Joy Fowler, Ursula K. Le Guin, Jonathan Lethem, Kelly Link, Ian R. MacLeod, China Miéville, and George Saunders (to name just a few), and those are the literary gods I aim at when I write.
Goals
This is my second attempt at the Write-a-thon, and I aim to deliver! I’m going to complete the first draft of my novel by writing one new chapter a week.
About five years ago, when I was living and working in Viet Nam, I applied to Clarion West knowing that I probably wouldn't be able to afford to attend. Then, through the serendipitous grace of the Susan C. Petrey Fund and an unknown donor, I was able to live and thrive and be considered as a writer for the first time in my life. While still a grad student, I can't exactly contribute as much financially as I would hope, but I'd like to do anything I can to pay it forward.
Therefore, I'm asking everyone to contribute whatever-you'd-like per chapter. I’m aiming for 6 new chapters (making my new novel healthy and complete). I’ll post snippets of my work through Facebook, but sponsors will, of course, be able to read them in their entirety.
