Gretchen Tessmer lives in the deep woods of the U.S./Canadian borderlands. Her short stories and poems have been published in many places, including Nature, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Bourbon Penn, and Fantasy & Science Fiction (and Stupefying Stories, of course!).
Gretchen’s poetry has been nominated for Rhysling, Dwarf Stars, Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, and she recently edited Eye to the Telescope 53, on the theme of “Strange Mixology,” which, in her completely biased opinion, is wonderful and you should read it, too.
Gretchen is a relative newcomer to Stupefying Stories, who came in here (as so many new writers do) by way of the Pete Wood Challenge, with “Two All-Meat Zombies,” “My Fair Claritin Lady,” and the gold-medal winning story from which we lifted the above illustration, “Ivy’s Tower.”
Recently we had the chance to catch up with Gretchen, and ask her our usual batch of half-silly, half-serious questions.
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SS: What is the first SF/F book or story you remember reading?
GT: I’ll give you two, one from my sci-fi shelf and the other from fantasy. So in third grade, when they first gave us library cards, I went straight for A Wrinkle in Time. No idea why. Loved the names Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which, even if I didn’t really understand anything of what those eccentric old ladies were saying. Loved Meg and Cal and Charles Wallace. Had almost zero idea of what was going on plot-wise because I was eight years old and it was about four years beyond my reading comprehension. But I revisited it later and it was wonderful. Still one of my favorites.
First fantasy was The Magician’s Nephew, and I stand by the opinion that it’s the best (if most overlooked) of the Narnia books. The Pevensie children are great, but Polly and Digory are so much better. And there's a wood between worlds, and pond portals, and magic rings, and crazy Uncle Andrew, and crazier Jadis, and the deplorable word, and the friendly cabby and his wife, and Fledge the Pegasus formerly known as Strawberry, and…
SS: Of everything you’ve had published, which book or story of yours is the one you are most proud of? Where can readers find it?
GT: I’m very happy with “Oslo in the Summertime,” which was published in Bourbon Penn 29. I'm also proud of “See You On the Other Side,” which originally appeared at The Arcanist but was recently republished in Small Wonders, because time travel is tricky and I think I (almost) pulled it off. To be honest, my mini-zombie story (“Two All-Meat Zombies”) and my outpost story (“Ivy’s Tower”) here at Stupefying Stories are a good sampling of my work, even at under 100 words, because I think they succinctly show the two sides of my preferred storytelling.
For poems, I’ll choose “Hey Man, Nice Shot,” at Strange Horizons. Yes, both “Oslo in the Summertime” and “Hey Man, Nice Shot” are shamelessly stolen (ahem, borrowed) from song titles. But, in my defense, they are both really good songs.
SS: Is there one story you’ve published that you wish you could call back and make disappear?
GT: Haha, not really. I mean, some of my early poems are ridiculously melodramatic (but most of those are hidden away in old college magazines and I’m not telling which) and yeah, I think we all look back and cringe at old habits sometimes. But the older I get, the more I find myself cutting the younger writer-girl-me slack and just enjoying the growth and change in my style. And because I’ve been publishing poetry consistently-ish since I was 18 and I’m now approaching [redacted for extra mysteriousness], the poems act as little bread crumbs of my life events and memories through the years, some lovely, some painful, but I really don’t think I'd want to lose any of them.
SS: If you had a theme song that played every time you came into a room, what would it be?
GT: “Short Skirt/Long Jacket” by Cake. Except that I’d never change my name from Kitty to Karen and my voice isn’t as dark as tinted glass. But my fingernails definitely shine like justice.
SS: If you could have just one mutant superpower, what would it be?
GT: I’ll take whatever superpower makes having all the other superpowers superfluous. The old-time Elder magic, the Tom Bombadil and Goldberry style of living, where you’re in the story but not part of it. Where you just hang out on the porch steps in the lazy afternoon, drinking tea or smoking a pipe, and going “hmm, I wonder what’s up with those storm clouds around Isengard?” When you can flip the One Ring into the air, make it disappear, make it reappear and spin it on the kitchen table with a long-suffering sigh, you’ve won the game. So yes. Baking pies, singing songs, tending gardens, washing dishes, and scolding willow trees who wake up too early. This is the life for me.
SS: If you could snap your fingers and make one cliché, trope, or plot gimmick vanish, which one would it be?
GT: The Jon Snow of it all (I just don’t like obvious chosen ones)…unless he turns out to be an actual nobody (or alternatively, Meera Reed ends up as his secret twin and the true chosen one all along), in which case, that could work for me.
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The Pete Wood Challenge is an informal ad hoc story-writing competition. Once a month Pete Wood
spots writers the idea for a story, usually in the form of a phrase or a
few key words, along with some restrictions on what can be submitted,
usually in terms of length. Pete then collects the resulting entries,
determines who has best met the challenge, and sends the winners over to
Bruce Bethke, who arranges for them to be published on the Stupefying Stories web site.
You can find all the previous winners of the Pete Wood Challenge at this link.
Challenge #36 has been issued! The deadline to enter is December 1st! To learn what the challenge is this time and how to enter the contest, click this link.
