afbeelding van elidecaf

About the author
elidecaf
Novel: Paper Lily
Genre: Science Fiction
55,555 words so far   Winner!

About elidecaf

Location: Minneapolis, MN, USA

Home Region:
United States :: Minnesota :: Twin Cities

Age:30

Website: http://backbooth.thesane.net

Favorite novels: Giovanni's Room, Set This House in Order, Middlemarch, The Time of Our Singing, Ruby in the Smoke, A Hat Full of Sky

Favorite writers: George Eliot, Michael Frayn, James Baldwin, Carl Sagan, Richard Powers, Chaim Potok, Michael Chabon, Robin Hobb, Matt Ruff, Terry Pratchett

Favorite music: Soul Coughing, Morphine, Tom Waits, Neko Case, Carl Hancock Rux, pandora.com, The Current

Non-noveling interests: spoken word, wind energy, labyrinths, kites, Reclaiming, Pantheism, hockey, green tea

Joined: Oktober 28, 2002

This Year: Official Participant

NaNoWriMo History:
'02 '03 '04 '05 '07

NaNoWriMo posts: 82

NaNoWriMo buddies: 8

 

Brief Author Bio:

I'm a playwright, essayist, and novelist enjoying life here in Minneapolis. My essays appear in We Don't Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminism (Seal Press) and Best Date Ever: True Stories that Celebrate Lesbian Relationships (Alyson Books). I'm a five-time writer-participant in Theatre Unbound's 24-Hour Play Project, and I've performed my original work at Balls, Patrick's Cabaret, Stonehenge Gallery, and the Minnesota Fringe Festival. I live with my wife, visual artist Leora Effinger-Weintraub, and our cat, Mister Brown. Check out my website, Back Booth.

Synopsis: Paper Lily

"In hindsight, we should've expected that Diamond Griggs would steal a lifeballoon and escape the Muir. It's just the sort of thing he would do. Fortunately for us, he was stupid enough to leave his notebook behind, and, well, he is not the brighest light on this green Earth; I deciphered his code quite easily.

"So now off we set, Mr. Murphy and I, following Diamond Griggs's trail, attempting to determine what his gridsaps are up to. Since Mr. Murphy has graciously offered to pose as Diamond Griggs--"

I did no such thing! Miss Worrow strong-armed me into this ridiculous position!

"--for the duration of the investigation, finding the gripsaps has been child's play. But what are they playing at? Their schemes are as inscrutible as their motivations."

And at every gridsap community we find, someone presses something into my hand - a coil of wire, a gear, a vial of unactivated biolight or a strip of photovoltaic cells - and says, "This is our contribution for The Savior," or, "Tell The Savior we wish we could be there in person to see it." Who is this "Savior"? And what is this "it" they wish to see? What are we making ourselves a party to? What are we walking ourselves into?

Excerpt: Paper Lily

Ofeibea tugged on the black silk ribbon that marked her progress, and the book popped open. She pulled the graphite stub from the hollow of the binding and prepared herself for a long, boring session of reading and deciphering. As she worked, the tip of her tongue often peeped out from between her thin lips, and occasionally she talked - to herself, to the notebook, to the erstwhile Diamond Griggs - just to break the interminable silence that filled the room after the medical personnel abandoned her to her own devices.

"All right," she murmured, beginning to scribble translations of Diamond Griggs's painfully obvious code in the spaces around and beneath his own impossibly precise handwriting. He was nearly as fastidious in regards to his handwriting as he had been to his grooming. "What do you have to tell me today, William? 'Rec'ved t-gram fr RS Subterfuje.'" She assumed he referred to the Reliance settlement known as "Subterfuge;" he never had been good at spelling. "'Request cap ass't for expanshin of soler convershin exps.'"

Ofeibea tapped the graphite against her lips and considered what this meant. While she had cracked Diamond Griggs's code easily enough, his often dizzying array of abbreviations, combined with his abysmal spelling, was much more difficult to work through. In the blank space he'd left beneath this note, she wrote, "Received telegram from Reliance Settlement Subterfuge. Request capital assistance for expansion of solar conversion experiments."

Ofeibea frowned and shook her head. Diamond Griggs erroneously fancied himself an entrepreneur, a pioneer, even, in his most self-aggrandizing moments, an artiste. One of the things he thought all of that meant was combining his various roles - bribesman, con artist, and gambler, in various ways to meet his needs. It appeared that he had combined his gambler and bribesman role several times in the service of Reliance. The settlers would front him a sum of money; he would take that sum to the casino and, theoretically, increase it on their behalf.

She could not begin to imagine how more than one community had taken advantage of this "service": for all his bragging and bravado, he was one of the worst gamblers she had ever had the misfortune to know. And, unsurprisingly, Diamond Griggs's next two notes confirmed her experience in this: 'Rec'ved $500 wire fr A. Owens, Subterfuje. Will take to Fronteir Gateway Wed.' Frontier Springs she guessed to be a gambling saloon in the vicinity of Subterfuge. And three days later: 'Ret'ned $432 to Subterfuje.' That wasn't all losings; Ofeibea assumed he collected a twenty-five dollar commission on every transaction, the same way he did with bribes. Still, a negative forty-three dollar return on investment could hardly have been what the settlers at Subterfuge were hoping for when they entrusted their savings with renowned gambler Diamond Griggs (she remembered that this is how he liked to refer to himself. He always conveniently omitted the part about being renowned for his arrogant lack of skill and rotten bad luck).

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