searching for god on google:

1. the wikipedia article
2. www.god.com
3. God Is Imaginary 50 Simple Proofs
4. Image results
5. Catholic encyclopedia
6. View the Interview with God movie
7. Does God exist?
8. God--a Process Monitoring Framework in Ruby
9. God (god) on Twitter
10. Does God exist--six reasons to believe that God is really there
11. Site Home--God TV

Introduction

I probably shouldn’t write this at all. It isn’t ready. I’m not. It has grown out of me step by step, and now I am trying to force it into final contours. But I need to write something, and I know nothing else that fully embraces both what I love in a book and what I admire. Of course, it may--something in me says will--be a failure. But if I don’t write it, or try to write it, with its ambition intact--I will feel like the failure, whatever else I manage to write.

Yuck. Expendable, anxious posturing. I can't help but hope someone will care enough to read it anyway. Not everyone--just someone. Maybe I'll put such hard-to-read miscellanea throughout. The harder they are to read, the less I care if you do.

You know how I said it’s too early for this? It’s a terrible time. Through with college. Creative thesis didn’t happen. Only old enough to have managed to get a degree that makes me sound like a plastic, privileged, pre-packaged excuse for a human being.

I don’t even know where to start. This is fitting. Time in this book is to be something like an illusion, and the timeline Jennie’s story, I say, runs at right angles to mine, which is not a story at all. Still, it makes beginning difficult.

Damn, there I go.

Introduction

According to Wikipedia, astronomer Fred Hoyle wrote the chance that earth’s life emerged spontaneously is roughly “the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.”

Let’s say — after all, this is fiction — he was right. Say even that on all the quintillions of planets in our universe, there are only we and our animal cousins for intelligent life. Do you find this chillingly lonely and egocentric? I do. I almost believe it anyway.

But — did you catch the word most? There are an infinite number of multiples of twenty but (I can’t help but feel) a much larger infinity of real numbers. Likewise, I feel, there are an infinite number of right ways to play a musical phrase but a much larger infinity of wrong ones. And in cosmogony, say, there are an infinite number of good universes but a much larger infinity of bad ones.

Let’s think about good universes (so distant from ours with its death and entropy and empty space). Say that some of them — even many of them — are aware of one another, and of the bad universes — and, hence, of us. They look at us and see a miracle — but, because we all die, a tragedy.

Suppose those who dwell in the good universes create tributes to our universe — worldlets like ours. Let’s call one such worldlet the Kingdom.

Many live and die and bear children in the Kingdom, and their children live and die and bear children in it. The worlds outside the Kingdom — let’s call them, collectively, Evernost, because the citizens of the Kingdom do — becomes taboo. But the Kingdom mirrors our world not only in its natural laws but in its history. As we begin to break down taboos, so do they. And, when they find out what lies beyond their walls, almost every single citizen of the Kingdom deserts it.

So lives and dies the Kingdom — except that the will to begin it anew is as perennial as the desire to end it — and so! A cycle. All the while, our poor world is trapped out, forever and ever. There: let that be the theme of my little work — at the very least, if you’re literal-minded.

Random

• Inspirational writer versus not = to what extent are your talents in the part of your brain that your consciousness uses all the time? The random image generator isn't that much better than the random text generator artistically on its own.
• Cats and College (dream): I was driving or walking—going to college. I forget a lot of this part, but I found cats somehow, and each person was hand-feeding his or her own kittens (a process suspiciously like hand-feeding baby birds). I kept worrying that one had died when I got out of sight, as if I were reading a book: “that would be an evil thing to do with the plot!” The last scene was at night in our backyard with a kitten based on Diane Duane’s Ahru (black and white). The kitten ran (Mom and I worried it had gotten a bird—it may have, actually) extremely fast and jumped onto the roof. I said something like, “That’s like flying.” The cat landed on my rear in some sort of bumpy way (maybe jumping up and down).
• I'm very пошлый but I'm going to revalue your values at you. Stay away if you don't like it.
• I tend to be by turns contrarian and overly ready to believe what someone says if they say it in an engaging, charismatic way. Ideally, I will be self-aware about these things and treat them as useful cognitive tools.
• My writing will have a lot of Christianity as a mythology, because it’s pretty.
• Plane in the Backyard (dream): I was outside; I heard a rushing plane sound and saw the plane. I had been repeatedly peeking in at Mom and telling her something about the hose; she was probably getting slightly annoyed). It landed in the backyard, between the fence and the grass. “Mom, you know how when we hear a low plane, we say, ‘it sounded like it was going to land in the backyard?’ One just did. I guess it was probably a toy plane”—I was a little disappointed by my own ordinary explanation—"'cause I did see a string attached to it.” I went outside, and it did have an occupant—a human, though I get the sense he turned into a cat or something at some point.
• Making word clouds: best when you get a varied not-too-formal but sometimes serious source. As opposed to hearts and tears and time and love… My writing and now it seems someone else's breaks down into mostly functional words most common (the larger the sample the more so) with the rest, the potentially significant stuff, tiny. Is it a metaphor for our lives or our minds? But I can't blame the way we inevitably write for this--a friend's blog has fewer filler words like "really" etc that are big and important….
• I must add something to the Bronte asgdasgdsasg before I sleep. It is, at least, not four in the morning. I will wake up early tomorrow and do Russian and essay. Tomorrow will be mind-brekaingly busy as this weekend has been mind-blowingly unproductive. Let us see--panic should be thrust back and choked. I think my diction has just changed, and rather for the worse. I may well cringe when I see this next, but it may still be a worthwhile exercise. I think this whole question centers on something imaginary. Let us ask questions about Bronte: what have I not covered? What can I do to expand what I have? Can I fittingly disuss levels of reality? How? I am fascinated by this whole notion of reading on two levels, the realistic and the poetic/metaphysical? I feel, right now, that the novel is not as insane as my Scarlet Letter analysis shows it to be--there is
• I think Emily Bronte is in many ways the better writer; at least, there is more originality hough less mindbending intricacy in WH/ Not that WH does not have mindbending intricacy, but I feel like, in genre especially, by which I mean form, Scarlet letter is special that way. It truly doen't know whether it is allegory, and it sort of would like ot be. If there is allegory in WH, it is secondary and not rudely/invitingly announced to us, making it less of an allegory according to some of the definitions we are given. I am screwed. That is okay ight now, but I'm beginning to suspect that it will soon be otherwise. I need sleep, but I also need to work: what to do? Do I decide I will get little done? But I think that is patently untrue. I hope Yulia will not lose ll==though I do not care that much at this poin, foolishly. I need a nap. But only a nap. Do I nap until morning or do I nap an hour and then awaken and work more? I think the latter is wise, because there's little chance I will work well for all of tomorrow morning or get up when I am supposed to. Supposing I set the alarm for One hour, risk the raht of hallmates should I not wake up for it==setting my pohone would probablybbe better. There is now a new questionable content. Shall I check it? Yes. Teehee.
• Rafting at Peak (dream): Dad and I went to Peak with floaty raft toy things. The pool was outside, and it was twilight, so the light was very low. The first part I don’t understand at all—it had a trampoline aspect because it curled up oddly at the front. I leaped on it (with raft?) and Dad shouted “No” or something of the sort. I manipulated myself so that I fell on my back headfirst, which in the dream was actually safer than the other possible way. It was scary and very fun, but I decided not to do it again because it didn’t seem safe. Then we got in the pool. As Dad was getting ready, I found a way to zap around and bang off walls, which was great fun. I was, however, nearly running into everyone, so I tried to slow it down. After taking two such trips—jump to after swimming when Dad and I were leaving. He had two sets of braces, one of which (the new) he was wearing and the other, which he’d left somewhere. As I looked for it in the gloomy alley behind our house, I found it on the ground. I kind of thought it would glint, but I found it because it was in my nightguard case. (They transmogrified into my nightguard.)

Introduction

This is a story and the record of a story’s creation — and much else besides. The two are almost one, eventually. But right now the pieces are scattered. Nothing fits anyway, not really. It’s an illusion of art that it does. If it did in real life we’d run screaming into the grave, most of us.

Progress, real progress (I’m not going to say completion, because I doubt it will ever be complete), on Of Evernost is my New Year’s resolution.

Let’s be briefly linear here. Once upon a time, this wanted to be a novel: a nice, tangled, evocative fantasy novel, perhaps for children. Perhaps someday it will be that — too. I even have a draft.

But, the more I worked, the more I found I cared about Evernost — that inexpressibly marvelous beyond where a portion of the novel takes place — than I did about the Kingdom and about the odd and arbitrary plot I’d imagined for it. In Evernost, time is different, perhaps utterly illusory. Identity is vast and malleable. Evernost is, or almost is, another name for heaven, which is, or almost is, another name for God. As you can see, at this point things multiply and diverge; in form and content, the erstwhile novel becomes a whole lot more abstract than one convoluted story — more abstract and more personal at once. So the work you’ve begun with me, reader, is going to challenge both of us, but I hope you’ll bear with me, because I think what follows is worth your time and effort — and mine.

A game it is, a toy, a decoration, in the end — but so is all art, really, perhaps. And even if such things do not help us to live (they can, but I make no promises for this one), they are something many of us live for.

Introduction

I’m Jenny.

That’s not my real name — I have no desire to give you my real name. But that’s the name I chose because my character Jennie’s story is the closest this all has to a center, and I want to walk in her shoes for a while. My life is none of your business. Though I’ve shared parts of it, I’ve also made up a lot (a lot) of shit to confuse you, tell a better story, etc. Good luck guessing where fiction starts and the other ends.

Let’s review. Jenny, spelled with a y, is yours truly, your delightfully intrusive narrator, your dreamy author, ever inclined to wax philosophical, never inclined to shut her trap.

Jennie with an -ie is the small, boring and bored, scarcely real vessel for other beings, Emma, Karen, and the star. However (I forgot to mention this) she too follows Verna to Evernost in the spirit rather than the body.

She wanders drearily for a time and then encounters the firebird, who feeds her the fruit made of itself and the star. This grants reality of her own, and, in that, grants it to the Kingdom from which she comes, because Verna’s attempt to make Madeline’s body with the three souls in it into the spouse or embodiment of the Kingdom instead took on Jennie. Thus, Jennie is the stone that the builder rejected. Jennie is the cornerstone. I imagine Jennie’s fate too cruelly sometimes, too kindly others, but I want to be Jennie because of that fate.

If you live in the Kingdom (see above about real and unreal — the fact that I, Jenny, invented it in no way denies it independent existence), and this text reaches you in some form, realize this: as I, Jenny, invent, Jennie perceives, and she perceives everything — even me, in our dreadful island universe, composing this text. She perceives my writing and experience, and I invent hers. So this work of art must be seen as a collaboration between the two of us. Jennie, once she returns from Evernost, will tell the tale. The text I, Jenny, write, will be one thing she examines in writing her text. Mine will doubtless be the inferior, and yet perhaps she will deign to include some of it in hers, if only for the amusement.

Hallelujah by Manheim Steamroller:

Distant, quick, digital excitement. A beat. Simplicity, streamlined. How to access the pomp of Handel? It is almost meaningless from this perspective. Majesty is in impersonal speed and not in any location. All that analog gold is fussy and feels all wrong. This sublime is quick and sleek and without uncomfortable complexity. It might be satiric. I want to come back to this one and figure out what modern music I don’t hate means in my book. Translation of the old into the new. Like a train passing by, indeed. Clarity. Post-world. Everyone together looking back on uncomfortable and painful weirdness of the past. A collective consciousness of equals in status and ability. Looking forward into the new, which is a lot of "fast streamlined too-simple bullshit" — life preformatted in Bootstrap. Play. Uncomfortable resemblance to advertising. Hard to transcend it or via it. Depressing. Digital hell?

Fancy Free: IV Pas de deux Bernstein:

Untrustworthy mischievous jaunty wanderings about in the basement. Jazzy. January? Sax/muted trumpet lazing around. Nothing too serious. Tribute to Jennie's Mom. Unease. I do not understand this music at all. I can’t make a picture of it in my head. Listen again. Humor is important. More complex than Jennie’s Mom, though. Jennie’s mom translated through Jennie. The two of them together. A lot of mockery, discord, disorganization, and unrest that is not natural to Jacqueline. Parody of different things. Confusion. Unpredictable serious to funny to serious. Try to imitate this in Jennie’s writings about Jacqueline. Listen to this piece for them. Jennie hates this kind of music but is willing to love it a bit for her mother’s sake, and only sort of knows how to pastiche it... That is what a lot of this is about.

Jazz

lotioned snarl ‘n
leopard print slap
on red lipstick
steel champagne not

weirdpretty (to
intellects less
syncopated
swooping discord.)

July Sunday
flash New Year grins
panic zap! scrubs
mauve violins

showtime crash re-
boot illusion

Skeleton Key

The King is dead, long live the King. Of Evernost has caused me no end of frustration, and it is dead, thank God, and yet... — incidents remain, its characters have shadows. The Kingdom where it's set may yet have some purpose, albeit metaphorical. Perhaps it is unseemly resentment for that novel that makes me spoil it for you here, from start to finish — though I'd argue that I just want you to have some idea what I'm talking about when these people and their stories show up later on. Regardless, let's start with a dramatis personae:

The Kingdom

It's...an unholy cross between Montana, where I grew up (pine forests, mountains, no ocean), and Great Britain, where most of my favorite authors grew up (parliamentary monarchy). This is just as lazy as it sounds, except that there's (theoretically at least) a reason for it: the Kingdom was created as one of a number of tributes to our world, and because of the way it was created, its history imperfectly but persistently imitates ours. By which I mean Great Britain's (maybe Montana's) history, not the world's. And there's the fun fact that it is a pocket universe, and people who leave for the GREAT MYSTERIOUS FORBIDDEN BEYOND, a.k.a., Evernost, pretty much don't come back.

Verna

Somewhere between villain and antihero, she is easily the most interesting of this bunch. She's a spacey, witchy outcast girl with mysterious mental health issues who grows into a spacey, grandiose witch. She's convinced that everything she does, however well-intentioned, makes things worse, and this is more or less a self-fulfilling prophecy, though it helps that her idea of "well-intentioned" includes things like "killing people because heaven is a better place to be than earth." She has, in different versions, come from the Kingdom's equivalent of the Middle Ages and the Kingdom's equivalent of the 1950s. Since the plot unfolds, well, now-ish in the Kingdom, the Middle Ages version meant that she was a witch who'd made herself bitterly immortal. Possibly originally named Veronica, in which case Verna was a name chosen.

Katherine

A.k.a. Karen, but that name has baggage. From Verna's time, except Verna killed her and, uh, put her soul in stasis (long story; we'll get there). Supposed to be a warm, loving, brave, bold, rebellious protector character. Never quite came together. Probably lesbian, unbeknownst to her.

Emma

Contemporary character, though she kind of wishes she weren't. Sweet, self-absorbed, bright, princessy princess who is all about following her High and Noble Duty to be Princess, even though all that practically entails is making bland speeches and cutting ribbons at museum openings. Huge curmudgeon about contemporary culture. Political right-leaning centrist in an increasingly polarized world. Adores the once-censored literature about the GREAT MYSTERIOUS FORBIDDEN BEYOND, aka Evernost, even though she agrees with almost everyone else that Evenost is probably bad news in real. Definitely bi, to her own consternation.

Madeline

Verna's literally and metaphorically demonic daughter. Asshole bored angry murderous psychopath who grows eventually into an archetype of all evil. Criminally flat, why even bother with her? I don't know (well, actually, I have a number of theories, but...)

Celeste

Star — only in Evernost, the stars are people. Stars don't have gender particularly, or at least it's very different from ours, so we should probably call Celeste they. No particular character traits beyond: joyous in the sky, miserable on the earth, self-sacrificing, and intelligent. Long story.

Jennie

Sad little girl, by design has as few other character traits as possible. Literally created to be the soulless vessel for other souls, but, uh, surprise! She has a soul! Barely, but she does! Then BIG SPARKLY MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE happens to her, after which it's unclear what she should be like… saintly? Visionary? Broken? As ordinary as before?

Michael

Normal nerdy computer programmer would-be magician guy. Kind of a bore, but, perhaps, a relatable bore.

NOTE: The Kingdom may have a high density of slightly inferior geniuses who copy inexactly all the important intellectual developments of our world. The more complex parts of the science carry over inexactly too, because the Kingdom is really made of something much more like inhibited high-level Evernost than Earth. Experiments that are conclusive on Earth are not replicable at all in the Kingdom (not even sure that organisms are made of cells -- wait a minute, screw the souls bit? Or are they intensely streamlined as well? Are they more like humans' ideas of the flora and fauna of earth, such that they become those ideas as those ideas grow more refined? That's interesting) Communist Russia hasn't happened, but it's tried to more than once, and Michael is at present teetering on the edge between academic socialism and joining a communist underground. / The physical facts of this world mirror the physical facts of our world but they do so inexactly, and the inexactitude is where Verna does her work. Perhaps. The further science goes, the harder it is to believe in magic. But the world only gets a bit closer to ours due to belief, and the closer it gets to ours, the less belief matters. So eh. It stays a bit away from our world in all respects because of this.

Introduction

The universe is unfortunately full of shit. Most of what we know makes no sense, is irrelevant, is boring, is stupid. Our brains learn to filter out a lot of the noise and even what remains is enough to drive some sensitive people to despair. A lot of what I want to do with this book, ultimately, is to stand up against that, to suggest that there are worlds that aren’t full of garbage and are full of meaning, to suggest that even if there aren’t we’d damn well better imagine them because those imaginations themselves are better than 80% if not more of the real world.

So why do I include the shit here? Why have I included the depressing facts (or "facts," wouldn’t you like to know, neener neener) of my life, the veritable lists of weird shit that passes through our brains, the whining? Two reasons:

1. We are a hell of a lot better at depicting and understanding the real world than we are things we come up with, whether better or worse. The things we invent tend to be phantoms, beautiful or horrible, but insubstantial. Perhaps, perhaps, I can construct some substance for even my phantoms by allowing the real world in in some ways.
2. More important, though, I believe, I hope, and I want (thank heavens, in literature that last is all that’s necessary—I’m a goddess here and everything I want to be can be, and I can ask you to ignore the parts of it that make no sense) that the whole range of human experience and human capacity must be a part of Heaven. I fancy (I’m sure Christians aren’t the only ones who’d call me a heretic for it) it’s not Heaven if any little tiny thing, let alone anyone, has to be really thrown out. I think—I think, sufficiently rigorously taken—that means that all that exists is heaven. We just don’t understand how. Some of us will, someday—the elect? Maybe. I am trying, let us say, to understand in my small way how it is that the shit I’m trying to escape from is also Heaven.

An Edifying Tale?

Aka random shit I stream-of-consciousness-ed in the middle of an all-nighter.

Aka why even bother.

She smiled at the teacher with a decidedly uncertain way she had, though it wasn't really her. She hated that. He smiled back, too pityingly, and handed her a folder with the assignment for that day. She carried it to her desk and glanced through. There was nothing too unusual there. One thing she wouldn't have to worry about. She was more than worried enough already--not that she could tell anyone. Never mind. She sketched the outline of the Place on her notebook. It had seven stories. It went partly underground, partly above. She didn't know where it was. She didn't know how she knew about it. She didn't know what it was--not really. That is, she did, but she did not know how she would get to the knowledge. It was a wooden house, tall, rickety. It had been there forever. Somewhere inside it was-- She COULD NOT remember. Somewhere inside it was a friend. A brother, even. He would help her. With what? She had only found out about this a day ago. Not smashingly--just at lunch, right after she'd dropped her books and a friend picked them up. That was it--she'd suspected it was something in that gesture, something the friend had done on purpose. It made her angry that someone had that kind of power over her. But she'd realized, casually, that this guy was locked in a tower. It wasn't a big deal, or didn't feel like one. She'd thought about it in a casual, confused way all that day. Then, that night, she'd had this nightmare: It was black, black outside except for an enormous moon, and the sky swirled. That was the first part. She looked out the window and saw the swirling sky, and she couldn't bear it, she’d known she was dreaming and tried to wake up. She didn't usually dream, and when she did, her dreams were different and just frightening. This one she couldn't get out of, and the fear wanted to turn into other things. She climbed out the window, not because she wanted to but because she really couldn't help it, and grabbed onto the tree, and the tree drew her blood--more blood than she thought she had--and in all the blood the tree sprouted and grew outward and upward and inside was the place, and she'd gone from level to level. Everything was dark. Sometimes there were monsters. Great, green, toothy monsters with yellow eyes. Almost cartoon monsters. They'd grabbed her and torn at her, and it actually hurt, more than it had before, and she'd started to fight them, throwing herself at them, striking them with heavy books and sticks and everything she could find. The library--it was a library. She had to find someone. The someone did indeed seem to be her brother. She chased him all over, almost destroyed him. Sometimes he was tall and monstrous and seemed to want to hurt her, but she knew that wasn't really him. The dream had gone on for a long time after that, and she couldn't keep the rest of it straight at all, but when she’d awakened that morning, she was exhausted and sweaty and angry and went to school wary and alert. This teacher who had just handed her the paper was now smiling at her again, as he lectured, meaningly. The smile disturbed her. It was too fixed. For a moment she expected his face to peel off, revealing a skeleton or something plastic. It didn't, but the smile went on. She couldn't make herself look away, and the whole room was starting to freeze and tilt. Oh, this was a dream. "No," he said. Still smiling. Why wouldn't he stop? "You know me," he said gloatingly. She started kicking the legs of the desk and the floor. He had an apple he was eating. "I'm your brother, of course," he explained. Lies. She didn't even have a brother. She picked up her diagram and showed it to him. He nodded his approval, and his smile grew wider. He pointed his pointer at the board, where there was written a phrase she couldn’t read. "See, this is the key," he said. "You need to go through and find me." "If you say so," she said, shook her head, and was sitting in the classroom with the rest of the class, and the teacher looked fine. Nor had she made the diagram. The dream meant nothing but dream. She felt a lot better, though. She'd dozed off, because the nightmare last night had exhausted her so much--or was it just part of the dream she'd had dozing off? She shrugged mentally, and soon it was lunchtime. "Hiya," she said to her friend Jack and his girlfriend Anne. Anne had curly blonde hair. She expected this conversation to be better, but she was slipping again. Anne kept saying things to her that she didn't hear. She couldn't think. She expected to pass out, picked up an apple, and bit into it. The flavor sort of steadied her, but it only made it harder for her to think, it engrossed her completely. Where could she get a cure for this? It wasn't right. She had to get herself free. Perhaps she could get into the tower. Would it require a trapdoor, or climbing out of the lunchroom through the ceiling? Anne and Jack were talking to each other now. She went through the floor, leaving her body behind, and came out in the tower. It was still like being sick, even now. There were no monsters, though, just weathered wood that was cracking and breaking apart. It smelled musty. Light came dimly through windows. She was sick of it very quickly, and turned lots of corners as she looked for her home. Her home was somewhere in all of these corridors, and her brother was in it, her real brother, reading a book, or baking something. He was trapped there, in this home in the place, on some level, but she would never find him because she did not remember the key. Whyever would the demonic teacher version offer her the key? Was it a trick? Or did he too want freedom? What would freedom mean with him, freedom to take over minds and distort the whole world? That was unbearable. Her brother was defenseless, though. The rest would attack him? No, he must be locked in to protect him as well as to trap him. She had a very strong vision of him. She had been wandering for a long time, maybe even two or three hours, maybe longer. She was a little tired, but not that much, for some reason. She couldn't think, she couldn't want to do anything. There was, suddenly, a dog. It was curly, a terrier, and it had a red collar. She grabbed onto the collar. She didn't really know it, either, but it was trying to lead her somewhere. It wanted to take her to her brother, she was sure it was the dog of the alternate family, the one where there was a brother, the one trapped here. She might not need the key, she realized. Soon she was standing in a lit-up kitchen that smelled of soup. Everyone in it was familiar but slightly different. Mom was stirring something on the stove and her brother, who was eight or nine here, was chopping carrots and playing with dinosaurs. "Hey, you've got to come back to my reality," she said to them, desperately, and her brother turned to her and said, "MEG!! I haven't seen you for so long, you're back, Mom look, it's MEG!" "You have some soup," Mom said. "You need to come back with me," she said despairingly. "I'm going crazy back home, and it's because of all of you. This place is so much nicer than our home there. You've stolen our happiness." "I don't know what you're talking about," said her brother. "All I know is you're back. Here, we're working on a jigsaw puzzle in the living room. You go do that while we get your soup ready." "You seemed like a demon. You were a grownup, a teacher," she said. "What are you talking about?" he said. "I don't really know," she admitted. "BUT IT"S TRUE, please, it's true, I don't want to lose this, but I want things to be okay again where I come from." "Go wait for soup," Mom said. "The soup is actually a potion to make me forget about everything, isn't it?" she said. "You're onto us," said her brother, smirking, and they and the terrier all became the slimy monsters, and she had to run screaming, except she couldn't escape and they grabbed her and tore her to pieces until Anne hit her in the face with a book. "You are seriously in need of some sleep, girl," she said. "This is the third time I've tried to get you up." "I hate this. It will never stop," she said, and she knew that even though she felt fine right then it wouldn't, it was like the stomach flu, throwing up only made you feel better for like ten minutes. And there was no way out, it was a loop. She really, truly did not have a brother. But the layers were unending. She wondered if the layers would turn out to be the shape of the structure she was doodling if she could map them out somehow. But she would enjoy her momentary escape by following Anne and Jack and her other friends out into the yard, where they would talk until the bell rang.

Knot

Untie your shoelaces — or, with great struggle, the rope around your wrists. Penelope by night. Night turns to day, caught and bound again, always. Cross the strands, loop under, pull: Tie.

Free: to steal upon the sleeping enemy and loose the prisoner’s bonds. The suitors tricked, dead. The key found and the labyrinth dissolved as if it never had been: keep your hand on the left wall, it reduces to nothing. But one puzzle leads only to a harder. Old love would devour you again, and the carnivorous vines outside the enemy camp entangle.

Divide truth from seeming, dead end from clear path, and at last from those who mean you ill. With your army, or with your senses, and with true love unite.

Untie the winding way so that the path lies straight, the vows that held you to your company, no longer needed, the shoe — again — and then cross the strands, loop under, pull. Without a cause, without a maze, what now? So tie.

And — "Enough!" He hacks it apart. Rope litters the floor.

Dear critiquing professionals,

I am submitting part of an incomplete fantasy novel intended for a middle grade or young adult audience (I am interested in your opinion as to which genre is a better fit).

This novel is set primarily in a nation known simply as the Kingdom that is similar to our world while located in a much more magical realm, Evernost. The novel chronicles the failure of a mad sorceress’s attempt to seal the Kingdom off from Evernost by magically combining several people, the novel’s heroes, to create a perfect ruler.

I am a lifelong writer with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. I am as yet unpublished.

I would prefer that my writing not be included in the anthology. Thank you very much for any thoughts you have to offer.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Hagen

Synopsis