[Want to buy a signed copy? Click here.]
“Maiden, mother, crone—the women in these stories are
filled with magic and wonder, vengeance and tenacity.
Keep an eye on Tamara Sellman—she knows how to cast a spell,
weaving a grand tapestry filled with mystery, love, horror, and hope.”
—Author an editor Richard Thomas (Incarnate, 2024),
Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson and Thriller Award finalist
“Tamara Kaye Sellman is a short-story lover; you can see it in what she writes—
stories where the marvelous stands elbow to elbow with the commonplace,
where the voice at your elbow may be a witch’s mumbling or an oracle’s hint.”
—Cat Rambo, author and award-winning World Fantasy editor
“Do you like the grit of soil under your nails? Do you speculate
about what is to become of us all? Would you like to meet a very
active imagination that explores the world with vigor and bristles
with ideas? You can have it all in Tamara Sellman’s sparkling
new collection, Cul De Sac Stories, from Aqueduct Press.”
—Glenda Bailey-Mershon, author and founder of Jane’s Stories
Press Foundation/Clara Johnson Award for Women’s Literature
CUL DE SAC STORIES
Tamara Kaye Sellman
The neighborhoods of Cul de Sac Stories are not precisely the safe spaces you might expect. Instead, look for dark and quirky exurban tales that lean into postmodern experiences where fears are whispered between mothers and daughters, crones and maidens, neighbors both familiar and aloof.* [Check out the Cul de Sac Stories book trailer here!]
[Want to buy a copy? Click here.]
Publisher: Aqueduct Press [ info@aqueductpress.com] || ISBN: 978-1-61976-262-6 || Perfect bound, 138 pages, release date July 15, 2024 || This book joins 91 others in the Conversation Pieces small paperback series, which celebrates the speculations and visions of the grand conversation of feminist sf. Aqueduct Press, PO Box 95787, Seattle, WA 98145-2787.
Why this title?
The purpose of designing neighborhoods based on cul de sacs (literally, a term that means “dead end” or “no exit”) was chiefly to slow down or deter traffic so that only people who live in or visit these addresses will generally enter these streets. From the traffic safety perspective of the time, it made sense.
However, a lot of commentary in the last two decades has risen to question whether these urban, suburban, and exurban strategies were actually creating safer living spaces. It got me to thinking about the cul de sacs I grew up in during the 1970s.
- The kids literally played (baseball, hockey, basketball, skateboarding, bicycling) in the street! If there were sidewalks, that helped, but without sidewalks, one could expect children to appear right in the middle of traffic at any given time without warning.
- I’m GenX. I remember encountering creepy neighbors while out and about selling candy bars solo, door to door, for the boosters club. I also remember really aggressive dogs, the sounds of domestic violence, home theft through the ease of unlocked doors, neighbors unwittingly feeding rats, and a rooster waking everyone up at 4 am.
- Parking is dismal and, in an emergency, a firetruck, aid car, utility service vehicle, or snow plow may not be able to even enter a cul de sac. Sure, this goes back to traffic issues, but I wonder about all the urban trails and bike paths that commonly link these neighborhoods today. These create exit strategies for burglars and drug dealers.
From Tomorrow’s Cities, Tomorrow’s Suburbs cited in an NPR Morning Edition feature:
“The effect of cul-de-sacs has been like a corset.
It changes appearance. The… resident feels better
superficially, but the underlying condition and danger
remains. Perhaps the danger… is worse
because of a false feeling of being in control.”
So many of the images, situations, and motifs of Cul de Sac Stories circle around the idea of hidden danger… a gas station that isn’t the oasis it promises to be, for instance, or nightlights that don’t inhibit waking nightmares.
There are suburban back-door break-ins, unsolved mysteries in coastal towns, neighbors who are deputized by the military, women forced into traditional roles in order to move freely in the world.
Danger, it seems, doesn’t lurk only in the city’s mean streets, but may be found in your burn barrel, storm shelter, or blackberry bushes. Control is, indeed, a mirage in the oases of exurbia, especially for the marginalized.
*Please note: These stories explore fearful situations that may be triggering for the more delicate among us.
an excerpt from “Blood Tunnel”—
The ground suddenly buckled. Gianna braked abruptly, fifty yards from the station. The town had seemed abandoned until she realized it was actually under attack.
“What is it, Mommy?”
“They must be weeding again.”
“What about those booms?”
Gianna still couldn’t bring herself to tell her pre-school-aged daughter that the big booms came from nearby mortar blasts. Mothers everywhere, since the dawn of time, have struggled to keep the realities of war from the innocent psyches of their children. “Remember? We talked about this… They’re using dynamite to remove the thistles.”
Gianna surveyed the building as a potential shelter, noticing the familiar banner right away.
I survived the 2020s, but all I got was this lousy civil war.
Gianna and Maria had been traveling west from Boise in their neighbor’s SUV. Every shop they entered had displayed the banner across its storefront. Tourist trinkets marked with the slogan were sold as well: bumper stickers, tee shirts, key chains, baseball caps, water bottles. The design was handsome: a checkered border surrounding black-and-white graphics that represented thistles, mountains, and water in silhouette.
She could only guess at the campaign’s propagandistic aim; whatever meaning had been attached to its design was entirely lost on her. But she also thought such a campaign, to commercialize the morality war, was a remarkably organized—if pointless—effort, a quintessentially American scheme at a time and place that grew less American with each skirmish, abduction, and military barricade she and Maria encountered on the road.
“Look, Peanut,” she said, pulling the SUV to a quick stop. “It’s that funny sign again.” She turned to smile and
placate her daughter. Maria, instead, shoved open the SUV door and dashed toward the building, her fingers clutching the long skirt she’d been forced to wear to conceal her identity as a Pacifican.
“Maria!”
Another crashing sound. The earth shook. Charcoal smudged the air above the weedy jungle towering beyond the Conoco. More bombs.
More than usual.
Gianna jumped out of the SUV and chased Maria across the lot, dodging broken glass and several cannibalized vehicles before pushing through the glass door of the Conoco’s main building.
[What happens next? Buy a copy here and read to find out!]
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