'Cause she thinks SHE'S the passionate one...

[vschanoes]

I have a new story up at Tor.com today, "Ballroom Blitz." It's a retelling of the 12 Dancing Princesses fairy tale set in a punk dive on the old Lower East Side. It's a story with a lot of history behind it

Comments

[resonant]

thank you for writing that story

[vschanoes]

It means a lot to me. Thank you for reading it and taking the time to comment.

[anonymous]

Rose had it exactly right. The pain was about you. OK, I may have opined to Rose "My poor baby."

Its intensity speaks to the power of the written word on the reader. In "real life" however empathic a person (let's call her your mama) might be, her experience of your pain is strained through her defenses. With the written word, those defenses are at rest. Isn't that why we read? Isn't that why what we read can feel more immediate, more vital, more touchable than what we experience?

Love,
Mom

[vschanoes]

It's all OK now, Mama. I've never been so happy for so long as I am and have been now. I love you.

[anonymous]

Read your story on Tor. It rocked. Read this little write-up, realized you rock, too. 'Fuck the NYT.' That was great. And here's my two cents: It often seems that folks who've never suffered mental health issues--or loved someone who does--can't understand it, at all. I liked the ending. It felt more real to me than your bleaker version. Not every story about depression has to end with the main character's head in an oven. Having suffered depression since my late teens, and marrying a girl who was in and out of psychiatric hospitals during her late teens, I appreciate this story. I'll try to see she reads it too.

[vschanoes]

Many thanks! And I agree with you--lots of people who haven't experienced mental/emotional illness just don't understand the kind of pain it involves. I dated a guy once--briefly--who was really baffled as to why I didn't want to off my anti-depressant meds ever; even after I asked him if he wondered why I didn't want to go off my asthma meds, he just didn't get it--he kept saying it was "different" even though he couldn't say why. (The real difference is that my asthma is very mild; eventually I went off my asthma maintenance meds and was fine; that's not what happens if I try to reduce, let alone go off of my psychiatric meds.)

Anyway, what you say about the story means a lot to me--thank you for taking the time to say it.