The newest Catamaran issue (Spring 2021, Vol. 9, Issue 1) has a fabulous cover—perhaps more striking than ever, and probably in honor of the interview with author Jane Smiley featured in it.
My story they've published here, "The X Vials," is a real (and unreal) departure for me—my first serious magical realism venture, written as the unreal happenings of 2020 began to change lives in ways we couldn't have conceived. This is my meditation on the situation we found ourselves in, truth much stranger than fiction, but fiction one way of coming to terms with that unpalatable truth.
The main character, Consuelo, is a shaman and the keeper of a scent library—an important resource in the days the story deals with.
"She realized just how precious they'd become—the aromas she'd carefully collected and assembled in her jam-packed library to loan out when needed (ignoring fines for overdue and missing scents when they were crucial to a borrower's well-being). Rain on a childhood driveway. A fireworks celebration. Sacks of dried pimentón in the old market district where Catalan rope makers gathered. Brazilian coffee beans in copper roasters, piñon smoke in old churches on Christmas Eve. The Shalimar worn to dances by a mother faded to a photograph. Sage smudges. Hay and saddle leather in a dusty August barn. That heady mixture of voodoo, vetiver, amber, and jazz—the sorcery of New Orleans before the hurricane and flood. Frying bacon. Baby powder. Crayons."
image: Mari Kloeppel, Catamaran
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