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Sarah Brand is another author in Athena's Daughters 2, and in her story, Perchance to Dream, Maya has the gruesome task of disposing of the bodies in a terrible plague, but begins to suspect that for some of the victims--including her childhood friend Elise--death may not have been the end. You can see the awesome art for the picture below. I asked Sarah to tell me a little more about Maya and how the story came to be.
The End Is the Beginning
I imagine the future a lot. Not just things like wondering which aspects of 21st century culture will be hideously embarrassing to our descendants, although that's always entertaining, but also my own future. I build narratives: fun ones where I find love and win at karaoke and write beautiful novels that sell a zillion copies, and scary ones where I fail at everything forever. But every time I think I know how some part of my story is going to end, reality surprises me.
For instance, I didn't think I was going to sell "Perchance to Dream," my story that appears in Athena's Daughters 2. In fact, this odd little apocalyptic story accumulated quite a few rejections. It did receive an honorable mention in the Dell Magazines Award in 2011. One of the judges, Sheila Williams (the editor of Asimov's), offered to show all the finalists where she would have stopped reading if we had submitted our stories to Asimov's for publication. I handed her the manuscript and she pointed to a spot halfway down the first page.
I edited that spot before sending the story anywhere else, for the record.
Like me, Maya—the main character in "Perchance to Dream"—thinks she knows how her story is going to turn out. She's lost her best friend Elise not once, but twice: first thanks to a high school crush that Elise didn't return, and then again, finally, to the plague that's devastating the human race. Maya herself is immune to the plague, but to her, that just means that she has to burn the bodies as everyone around her dies.
Without giving too much away, Maya is wrong. The end of everything she knows is still a beginning, and while this new beginning doesn't diminish her losses, it does give her hope, and the courage to keep going.
No matter how dire the present may seem, or how flimsy our hopes for the future may feel, every day, we are creating our futures—building the next world. I'm so happy that this small slice of my future-imagining will appear in Athena's Daughters 2, and for those of you who back the project, I hope you enjoy the story.
Sarah Brand writes young adult science fiction and fantasy. When she's not writing or working at her day job, she enjoys karaoke, ice cream, Tumblr, and organizing things. She is a graduate of the Alpha SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers. Her website is sarahbrand.com.
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The kickstarter is going so well and we've had lots of authors added on. There are many options for contributing and thank you so much if you decide to help by pledging to the publication or spreading the word.
The End Is the Beginning
I imagine the future a lot. Not just things like wondering which aspects of 21st century culture will be hideously embarrassing to our descendants, although that's always entertaining, but also my own future. I build narratives: fun ones where I find love and win at karaoke and write beautiful novels that sell a zillion copies, and scary ones where I fail at everything forever. But every time I think I know how some part of my story is going to end, reality surprises me.
For instance, I didn't think I was going to sell "Perchance to Dream," my story that appears in Athena's Daughters 2. In fact, this odd little apocalyptic story accumulated quite a few rejections. It did receive an honorable mention in the Dell Magazines Award in 2011. One of the judges, Sheila Williams (the editor of Asimov's), offered to show all the finalists where she would have stopped reading if we had submitted our stories to Asimov's for publication. I handed her the manuscript and she pointed to a spot halfway down the first page.
I edited that spot before sending the story anywhere else, for the record.
Like me, Maya—the main character in "Perchance to Dream"—thinks she knows how her story is going to turn out. She's lost her best friend Elise not once, but twice: first thanks to a high school crush that Elise didn't return, and then again, finally, to the plague that's devastating the human race. Maya herself is immune to the plague, but to her, that just means that she has to burn the bodies as everyone around her dies.
Without giving too much away, Maya is wrong. The end of everything she knows is still a beginning, and while this new beginning doesn't diminish her losses, it does give her hope, and the courage to keep going.
No matter how dire the present may seem, or how flimsy our hopes for the future may feel, every day, we are creating our futures—building the next world. I'm so happy that this small slice of my future-imagining will appear in Athena's Daughters 2, and for those of you who back the project, I hope you enjoy the story.
Sarah Brand writes young adult science fiction and fantasy. When she's not writing or working at her day job, she enjoys karaoke, ice cream, Tumblr, and organizing things. She is a graduate of the Alpha SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers. Her website is sarahbrand.com.
* * *
The kickstarter is going so well and we've had lots of authors added on. There are many options for contributing and thank you so much if you decide to help by pledging to the publication or spreading the word.
