Of Sorrow and Such (10 page)

Of Sorrow and Such
is set in the universe I created for my collections
Sourdough and Other Stories
and
The
Bitterwood
Bible and Other
Recountings
.
It’s the story, dear reader, of Patience, whose early life was introduced in the
Sourdough
tale of “Gallowberries,” and whose later years were hinted at in “Sister, Sister.” I’d always wanted to go back and explore what happened in between.

Patience (Sykes that was, Gideon in this recounting) remains one of my favourite characters: she’s determined and cynical and clear-eyed, unafraid to do the things that must be done, unafraid to get her hands dirty, yet she has a conscience and tries to atone for her sins. Her survival instinct is strong and I think that may be what I love the most about her. In
Of Sorrow and Such
I was able to match her up with Selke, another
Sourdough
character whose life I wanted to see continue after the events of “A Porcelain Soul.” I think they work well together.

Needing a central idea to marry them to, I went to one of the stories that’s always stuck with me from childhood. Many years ago, our father gave my sister and me a copy of Mildred Kirk’s
The Everlasting Cat,
which contains the folktale of the man hired to look after an ostensibly haunted mill, which he finds is actually the lair of some very large cats who can talk, and try to poison his milk. Needless to say, after being carried around in my very messy brain for a long time, some of those images are mirrored here.

Photograph © 2015 David Pollitt

Specializing in dark fantasy and horror, Angela Slatter is the author of
The Girl with No Hands and Other Tales, Sourdough and Other Stories, The
Bitterwood
Bible and Other
Recountings
,
and
Black-Winged Angels,
as well as
Midnight and Moonshine
and
The Female Factory
(both coauthored with Lisa L. Hannett).
Vigil,
the first book of her Verity Fassbinder urban fantasy trilogy, will be published by Jo Fletcher Books in 2016. She has five Aurealis Awards, has been a World Fantasy Award finalist, and is the first Australian to win a British Fantasy Award. Angela holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in creative writing, is a graduate of Clarion South and the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop, and was an inaugural Queensland Writers Fellow. She blogs at
www.angelaslatter.com
about shiny things that catch her eye, and lurks on Twitter @AngelaSlatter.

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

of sorrow and such

Copyright © 2015 by Angela Slatter

Cover art copyright © 2015 by Anna and Elena Balbusso

Edited by Lee Harris

All rights reserved.

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Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

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ISBN
978-1-4668-9192-0
(e-book)

ISBN
978-0-7653-8526-0
(trade paperback)

First Edition: October 2015

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