I am the lucky recipient of the first volume of a new literary magazine, Electric Literature. Usually I turn these kinds of things down but I was sucked in on the basis of a really good animated trailer of one of the short stories in the magazine. “Your Fate Hurtles Down at You” by Jim Shepard happens to also be the first story in the magazine which consists only of five short stories.

“Your Fate Hurtles Down at You” is about a small group of men who are living in an unheated cabin in the Swiss Alps on the slopes of the Weissfluhjoch, 9,000 feet above Davos. They are engaged in studying avalanches, what causes them and the conditions that make them possible. It’s 1939 and it seems like other than the cold, things at the cabin are fine. But then we start learning about the narrator’s past and what has brought him to be on the team. We find out in bits and pieces as the current time moves forward shedding new light on the narrator’s past. The story builds like an avalanche might until it stops just before the inevitable conclusion at the height of tension.

It’s an excellent story and if the other four are as good as this one is, I will have spent a couple pleasant hours. I’ll be sure and let you know.

On a side note, posting will likely be sporadic for the next two weeks as I work on my term paper and make a final push to finish the summer quarter. I will then get a well-earned break for what I think will be three weeks. Woo!

And an update on my bus injury. Parts of the bruise are already starting to turn that sickly yellow color. Other parts have turned darker purple. I still have a big bump on my shin, though not goose-egg size, and my ankle is swollen but there is absolutely no pain or tenderness at my ankle so it is just banged up. Oh and the little scrape on my shin has begun itching just enough to make me a little crazy.