Under the weather, reading

I'm not feeling so great today, as the temperature climbs ( we are in sharav season - a scorchingly hot, dry desert wind which blows from the Arabian Desert - which means it's getting hot hot hot), my body is refusing to cope. Lethargy has taken hold, and a rather unpleasant dry cough. I was trying so hard to stay well and not to pick up every germ going. Two months isn't so bad, I guess. My head is too foggy to do much but play Scrabulous and surf the web.

However, the post just came, and with it some very welcome new reading material to cheer me up:

First, Mslexia (which always has the same smell, has anyone else noticed?), the magazine for women who write. While I loved this mag when it began, I have been pretty disappointed with their fiction selections and, frankly, do now wonder if "women who write" need their own magazine? Perhaps some of the WWW could comment here and let me know. I used to find their listings, calls for submissions and contests invaluable, but with the wonder of the inter-web, with their quarterly publication schedule they seem out of date, to say the least. For WHW who aren't web-connected, this is great (I know at least one WWW who still refuses to become webified, so there is a market). Anyhow, not holding out great hopes for the fiction, or the article on How to Write a Bestseller, but the nice news is that they have reviewed Vanessa's collection, Words from a Glass Bubble, and it is a lovely review, congrats V!

On to slightly more exciting and uncharted waters. Having reviewed the Logorrhea anthology for The Short Review in which most of the writers write science fiction, and now reading Kelley Eskridge's wonderful Dangerous Spaces, described to me as "feminist science fiction", for the next issue, my eyes have been opened to the genre, which is not at all what I thought (a cross between Star Trek, Star Wars and a bit of Buffy). It seems that today's science fiction is not necessarily set on alternate worlds but in our world with a twist. And it seemed to me that this is what I often do in my stories, something akin to magical realism. So, I thought I should take a look at some sci-fi/speculative lit mags and see if there is a place for me.

Two arrived this morning:

Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet (which wins the prize for Best Lit Mag Name Ever): it is not so impressive on first glance, seemingly photocopied. Yet the openings of some of the ten short stories are very intriguing:

The new sickness. I stopped being able to sleep.

The curmudgeon's face was not immediately visible as I stepped outside to embrace the still autumn air.

It is Christmas Eve. Rain rushes black down black walls.

No aliens, spaceships, wierd life forms...yet. And an article on New Wave and Speculative fiction in Japan. I will keep you posted.

Sybil's Garage is the second mag. This one is glossy, fabulous colour cover, mouth-watering. Also intriguing first lines:

The night is a blackbird and it lives on Gemma's arm.

Third grade was the winter that Nicholas' little sister died and that Audrey first decided to bring her back from the dead.

Noff sat last and alone, thinking on sidebars and footnotes as the text of her life threatened to overwhelm her.

I must say, I am excited about diving in to the unknown in these two magazines. None of the writers' names are familiar to me. A whole new world. How thrilling.