Holiday 2009
Merry whatever you’re celebrating, people! Although, let’s face it, Christmas kind of owns this season, whether you want it to or not.
Personally, I’ve always made a divide between the Christian “Yay, Jesus!” Christmas and the capitalist “Buy shit now!” one. I know the latter is based on the former no matter how you slice it, but they’re not even close to being the same thing. Ideally, one day we, as a society, will make the split official—a la Futurama’s “X-mas”—allowing everyone to partake in the gift-giving and the stress and the depression and the debt, while leaving the religion to the religious.
On that note, welcome to the Jersey Devil Press Holiday Half-Issue! It’s basically entirely Christmas –themed as far as the holiday tangents go, and, despite only having four stories, about as long as a regular issue. We’re sticking with the title anyway.
We start with Audrey Forrest’s “Feliz Navidad,” a story about the holidays through a seasonal worker’s eyes, and follow it up with Lora Rivera’s beautiful “For Piano and Voice,” a story about the issues plaguing individuals on the other end of the financial spectrum. Then it’s a trip Down Under for Australian author Anne Vize’s “River Girl.” (The tale actually takes place in Vietnam, but they don’t have a clever nickname that I’m aware of.) And we wrap things up with repeat offender M. R. Lang and the indescribably awesome “September’s Christmas,” which I probably could describe if I tried, but I don’t want to ruin it. Just read it. In fact, read all of them.
So enjoy the issue, enjoy the holidays, and, if you’re a Jewish writer, you really should have sent us a story…
Individual story links are below and the .pdf is here.
– Eirik Gumeny
Audrey Forrest, Feliz Navidad
“For Joe Torres, the job at Ready Man was another temporary job that required him to take two busses and then walk half a mile every day from the middle of October until the job ended in February.”
Lora Rivera, For Piano and Voice
“She had been sitting for several hours, listening through the evening shadows to the soft tremolo of dancing voices.”
Anne Vize, River Girl
“Than Le dips her paddle idly into the murky water of the Thu Bon River and gazes across the glassy surface towards her home.”
M. R. Lang, September’s Christmas
“The knives are sharpened, the guns are loaded, bones are bleached, and Alice in Chains is playing over the bus-ship’s intercom system.”
