Earlier this summer, the venerable Kaleidotrope published my very bleak secondary-world short story, “Niru Wallowed“, which is not for the faint of heart (though I like to think it’s very much full of heart, faint or otherwise). The above image (and item) is courtesy of the Met; I think it’s an appropriate reflection of the tale, though the story has nothing to do with 19th-century central Africa, per se. If you read it, you’ll know why I nevertheless chose it for this post: Niru’s journey is one filled with music, colonial oppression, and death. It’s also the first short story in a whole batch of stories that feature minor characters who crop up, at some point, in a door-stop fantasy opus whose world continues to rivet me.
This one has a content notice for scaffold violence and the aforementioned colonial oppression. (Also, dear Metropolitan Museum of Art trustees, please return this item to a steward on its rightful continent.)
There are several people on my mother’s side of the family who possess a natural aptitude for language(s) and a love of words (and crossword puzzles), but despite this ours is not a “family of letters.” There is, however, a maternal great-great-grandfather who published poems in a newspaper in the 19th century. I’ve known about this ancestor for a few years—one George Samuel Betts (1841-1888) who was born in the shadow of Westminster Abbey and established himself as a bricklayer in Ottawa, before falling from scaffolding and succumbing to his injuries in his late 40s. He was at work on a new YMCA building (
I may be biased, because it takes place in my hometown and it’s organized by friends of mine, but 
Roughen 