Review: You Know When The Men Are Gone

Writer Frank O'Conner emphasized that loneliness and isolation were the most compatible themes with the short story's formal qualities. In that spirit, "You Know When The Men Are Gone" by Siobhan Fallon is the quintessential short story collection, and Siobhan Fallon one of the best new writers to arrive in many years.

These series of stories are at heart about isolation even in the midst of a community that makes great efforts to reach out to those affected by deployment over seas. You never know the private battles your neighbor is going through, and they come in many shapes and sizes: PTSD, physical trauma, lost limbs, infidelity, graft...as if life isn't hard enough, being married and in the military dials up the pitfalls and trials to eleven. Fallon's voice rings true in these tales, and why shouldn't they? She was a military spouse stationed in Fort Hood while her husband completed two deployments in Iraq. A marriage that survives base housing and deployments has the legs to hold together a hundred years.

The Date

Playboy College Fiction Contest Winner 1999

The Date

Edward Lazellari

In 1999, I was a senior majoring in English literature at Rutgers University, with a concentration in creative writing. The Date was my second submission to Playboy; I had tried the previous year with a story about a NASA shuttle mission and astronauts getting it on in zero gravity. (It was not as good.) Somehow, under the onslaught of plodding through melancholy emo stories of student life generated by my classmates, I managed to find my way to this dark comedy. The inspiration was a Dateline NBC story about conjoined 10-year-old twins living in the Midwest, and thriving despite their condition. I was a big fan of the girls, cheering them on for making lemonade out of life's lemons. I remember being grateful that my problems did not come that big and that I should be more of a doer and less of a complainer.  I also remember thinking, "things would get a lot harder once those girls hit puberty, though." Duh! And of course, it clicked. I hit the computer like a force of nature for the next three days--and here we are.

(For a Pdf version of this story available for download, click here.)

The Ogre Hunt (A Tale of Aandor)

I wrote The Ogre Hunt between Awakenings and The Lost Prince. Although it features a character from my novels, which are adult urban fantasy, this one beckoned to be a young adult (YA) story. The illustration is an oldie from 1995, when I still made a living as an artist for Marvel. I only had an inkling of my fantasy series at the time and was still fleshing out the back story.  (Lelani in The Ogre Hunt is much younger than she appears in this illustration and has a full head of hair instead of a Mohawk.) I had fun writing this short and present it here for old fans and new. A PDF version is also available by clicking on this Link.

~*~

Everything was black.

The ogre had taken them all in seconds. It was implausibly swift for such a large, brutish creature—twenty-five feet tall, with the rancid odor of a garbage pit. So this is death, thought Lelani. Her cheek stung fiercely but she couldn't move, as though she were made of lead. She had always imagined death to be more comfortable then this. A tiny hand slapped her face—again.

"Wake up!" came a tense whisper.

That high, squeaky voice did not belong to any centaur. Lelani opened her eyes just as her diminutive friend Mytah was about to administer another smack of impromptu medicine. For an unabashed pacifist, Mytah packed a good wallop. She wore her hair in a pixie cut with matching big brown eyes. Her short-sleeved forest-green smock denoted the Fhlee preference for forest colors and materials, as did her hemp-rope belt and sandals woven from leaves of the water lotus. Her eyes were red and puffy, the tracks of her tears clearly marked upon her cheek.

"Thank the gods...I thought you..."

"What happened?" asked Lelani.

"It carried them off!" Mytah whispered.

"But not me?" Lelani asked.

"Don't you remember?"

Lelani could not remember—recent events were hazy. She recalled the previous two days quite clearly, however—the moment everything started to go wrong—the moment Kreeg ruined her first hunt.

No Good Deed…

(This short story was originally published in August 2011 for the Fantastic Fables book giveaway contest at DarkFaerieTales.com.)  
©2011 Edward Lazellari

Lelani did not think the street looked right. The houses were too small and the blue sky looked like a matt painting used in stage plays; everything felt claustrophobic. She consulted her teacher’s notes and things were just off -- really off. There was no mention of any yellow brick road in his texts.

“Lost?” asked a woman’s voice behind her.

Lelani spun around and laid eyes on the strangest women she’d ever seen. She looked as though she stepped out of a children's storybook, plump with a greenish hue -- too tall for any of the houses in this town -- in a black and blue robe. She wore white socks with black circular stripes and ruby-colored shoes, a red cone-shaped hat with a large brim, and held a long gnarled walking stick. Her eyes were a deep black. Lelani sensed great power in this woman.

“Actually, yes,” said Lelani, cautiously. "How can you tell?"

“You are too tall and swarthy to be from this village,” said the woman. “And far too beautiful. Nineteen?” the woman guessed.