Echoes from Amalcross: Robert Frankel on Thanksgiving; Isabelle Platt Q&A!

Happy Thanksgiving from the Distant Reaches!

Robert Frankel: Dinner is the best part of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving gets a bad rap. Between family, politics, turgid history, and recipes requiring days of your time to prepare (both mentally and physically), it’s really all just about a glorified dinner.

What’s not to love about dinner? It’s great!

Don’t miss “The Great Elk Whispers to Me,” by Nathaniel Lucas, below. It’s this week’s Secrets of Amal, about a community of people who could really use a good Thanksgiving dinner, themselves.

And creator/co-editor Benjamin Reeves has a lovely Q&A with Isabelle Platt, the writer of the fantastic “Swimming in the Swamps of Love” from Issue VIII.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Distant Reaches!
—Robert

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Recently published on DistantReaches.com:

• Issue X: “Black Powder Bind,” by Chris Diggins

• “The Bloody Bonnets,” Parts I, II, and III; by Henry Leeker

• Issue IX: “City of Glass,” by Benjamin Reeves

• “Fragments from the Diary of Anna ‘ja Nyarla,” by Robert Frankel
  

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Ask the Author: Isabelle Platt

Author and screenwriter Isabelle Platt’s piece, “Swimming in the Swamps of Love,” tells a tale of two sisters pulled apart, and together, by love and a strange moment of animal transformation. Creator/co-editor Benjamin Reeves caught up with Platt to chat a bit about the origins of this story and why she never rereads books.

Benjamin Reeves: Your story revolves around two sisters, one of whom turns the other into a dog because she can’t bear the idea of being left alone. What inspired that?

Isabelle Platt: One of the things I’m really afraid to write about is characters who I think I don’t like because they’ve done something bad. But then those are my favorite characters to watch or read about. So, I was trying to think about something someone could do that is just unforgivable. How do you forgive and do you still like that person?

The dog transformation is wonderfully weird.

I was thinking about a world of fantasy and magic and breaking it down. And my first short [film] I made was this guy pretending to act like a dog. And I just kind of was like, “I like writing about people turning into dogs.” I don’t know!

But the main thing is the sisters. I’m fascinated by my relationship with my sister because it’s not a friendship. It’s not like a romantic relationship. It’s not like a relationship I have with my brother, necessarily, because of growing up as different genders in the world. I love exploring sisterly relationships because they’re way too close. And yet, there’s something magical about them and they’re unspoken.

I’m glad you brought your sister up. If one of you were to turn the other into a dog, who would it be?

I really thought about that. I put half of me and half of her in one sister and half of me and half of her in the other sister. So I would like to think that — I think I would turn — maybe she would turn me into a dog? But I think I only think that because each sister thinks that of the other.

I love how, as the story progresses and the sisters grow more distant, the Esme gains greater autonomy, to the point of being able to do things that defy the rules of the world as we understand them. She can dive to the bottom of the ocean.

Esme’s so motivated by wanting her sister Ayse back. Esme’s told herself all the limits she has on herself, but she just sort of forgot about them. She was so focused. The other thing, too, is without Ayse around, Esme can do these things. We grow up with these narratives within our family system that are fed by our family. It’s like, “Oh, you’re the sweet one, you’re the cold one, you’re the stable one.”

My family would say I’m the cranky one.

Yeah, I’m the moody, sweet one. My sister was the cold one. But as we grew up, we were like, “Oh, that’s not really us. That’s just who we are told we are from a young age, from what our parents saw.”

I think once you’re outside of your family system — once Esme’s away from her sister and the ways Esme had perpetuated how she relates to her sister, there’s this openness. When she’s away from that system, she’s able to be all these other things.

Esme can access areas that have been closed up. They work in a bar together, which they inherited from their parents, so in a way they never left home, never stepped outside of those walls. When you were writing this, were there any books or movies that particularly influenced you?

I was thinking of Circe [by Madeline Miller]. Obviously nothing I write can compare to how amazing that stuff is. It was the most recent fantastical thing I had read. And that’s my favorite book. I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. It’s the only book I’ve ever read twice.

You’ve never reread another book?

I don’t reread books! I was just thinking about Circe because it seems so isolated on the island. Within her family, she was like this weaker person. And then when she goes off she just discovers this whole, powerful self. I was thinking about that a lot. And I don’t ever reread. I just don’t have time! I have to read these other books, and I have this insecurity that I haven’t read enough, and I can’t spend time reading a book again because I need to read something else.

You can find more from Isabelle Platt on her website and on Instagram.

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Art by Alana Fletcher.

“The Great Elk Whispers to Me”

Sermon notes from the Reverend Gaffrin Dreggalos
By Nathaniel Lucas

Good neighbors —

I heard the Great Elk whisper to me last night.

When I began to write this message, I prayed for answers to our plight. I prayed the Great Elk would take our pain away. I prayed it would bring us a bountiful harvest once more so we might fill our bellies and know peace.

The Great Elk heard me, good neighbors! The wind carried its voice to me, and it showed me the way through our hardships we face, showed me fields of abundance returning to our small village. For our hunger is its hunger. Our sorrows are its sorrows. It hears our cries and feels our pain.