The Reality of Beginnings

Caitlin R. Kiernan released two new Sirenia Digests a few days ago, each containing scrapped, alternate beginnings to her upcoming novel. It's interesting to look at the two and note their differences and similarities and get an impression of the entity in the middle, a hovering ghost of a story.

The two versions are very different, beginning with different characters in different situations. Even the tone is different, as one begins with a cynical gambler named Johnny Redcorn and the other begins with a first person narrative, one of two people having a discussion about an ominous book. The two versions do have one thing in common, a brief story about a boy and a talking dog. Little hints of strangeness add up to a magnificently strange conclusion, and it's not hard to see why Caitlin kept this bit in both versions.

These two Digests are certainly more than enough to whet my appetite for the novel but they're lovely curiosities in their own rights.