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Seeking Titles
27/8/05 02:29I am seeking three titles. One is for a novel, one is for a short story which was possibly in an anthology or a chapter of a collection, and one is for a standalone short story. If you can find or remember any of these for me, I will shower you with so much praise and chocolate you won't know where to keep it all.
1.) Novel. This is a children's/YA novel, featuring a child (possibly a boy?) and his friend, a porcupine who for inexplicable and unexplained reasons wears a hat and coat, though in all other respects acts just like a porcupine. It is set (possibly) in Maine, Vermont, or New Hampshire. The plot consists of a plan to save animals from becoming road pizza.
I want to get this one partly for nostalgia, but mostly to figure out how the author constructed a novel--one I still remember fondly--around the premise of 'let's save roadkill.'
2.) This one was in an anthology, or else in a book of several related short stories, which had a green-and-brownish horned man on the cover, or possibly it was a tree. Or both. Possibly Charles DeLint, though I have gone nearly obsessively over each short-story collection the man seems to have produced and haven't found this story. It is a short story or a chapter. The overarching plot of the thing concerned an enchanted wood that drew people into it; this particular bit involved a sculptor or possibly a furniture maker who was either possessed by or had sold his soul to the devil and created terrifiying things, or possibly beautiful ones.
I had a copy of this book at one time--the only good one my mother ever picked out of the grocery-store sale bin (not mentioning the hedgehog plot devices, the covers with pink unicorns, the lisping vegan dragon)--but there was so much in it that was calling up beautiful dark things, writingly-eldritch, and a few bits I think with some sex in, that I was too scared of it and possibly too young for it, and sold it at a garage sale with some relief as I couldn't bear having it physically on the shelf. I am occasionally an idiot.
I want this one because it was a beautiful story, well-crafted and dark as all get-out--that I could recognize even then. I want to see if it will still scare me; I want to see if I can understand more of the story now and want to finish the thing after stopping paralyzed halfway through.
I also want to make sure it is real: its trope has been infecting my dreams for a year now (I no longer turn my back on glass-fronted china cabinets), and these dreams have interwoven themselves somewhat with the fey novel. I need to read it to make sure the ideas I want to use are enough mine and not some other's so that I can use them, because I'll be damned if I'm going to plagarize something even if it was filtered through a dream.
3.) Standalone short story. This possibly won a Hugo and was possibly anthologized; I read it sometime in highschool when I was reading about 6 books a week and they all bled together. It consists of the following: again, a child narrates. There is a patch of some very odd, possibly fey, possibly alien-lifeform, plant, growing in back of his (?) family's garden. The child tends this plant, believing it to be special. Meanwhile there is family turmoil. The main thing I remember about this story is that it contained the phrase "firefly tree," or possibly that was the title, though I have not successfully found anything with that title that looks familiar (it is a phrase I thought I invented at age seven, which is why it stuck in my mind). Eventually ( spoiler )
1.) Novel. This is a children's/YA novel, featuring a child (possibly a boy?) and his friend, a porcupine who for inexplicable and unexplained reasons wears a hat and coat, though in all other respects acts just like a porcupine. It is set (possibly) in Maine, Vermont, or New Hampshire. The plot consists of a plan to save animals from becoming road pizza.
I want to get this one partly for nostalgia, but mostly to figure out how the author constructed a novel--one I still remember fondly--around the premise of 'let's save roadkill.'
2.) This one was in an anthology, or else in a book of several related short stories, which had a green-and-brownish horned man on the cover, or possibly it was a tree. Or both. Possibly Charles DeLint, though I have gone nearly obsessively over each short-story collection the man seems to have produced and haven't found this story. It is a short story or a chapter. The overarching plot of the thing concerned an enchanted wood that drew people into it; this particular bit involved a sculptor or possibly a furniture maker who was either possessed by or had sold his soul to the devil and created terrifiying things, or possibly beautiful ones.
I had a copy of this book at one time--the only good one my mother ever picked out of the grocery-store sale bin (not mentioning the hedgehog plot devices, the covers with pink unicorns, the lisping vegan dragon)--but there was so much in it that was calling up beautiful dark things, writingly-eldritch, and a few bits I think with some sex in, that I was too scared of it and possibly too young for it, and sold it at a garage sale with some relief as I couldn't bear having it physically on the shelf. I am occasionally an idiot.
I want this one because it was a beautiful story, well-crafted and dark as all get-out--that I could recognize even then. I want to see if it will still scare me; I want to see if I can understand more of the story now and want to finish the thing after stopping paralyzed halfway through.
I also want to make sure it is real: its trope has been infecting my dreams for a year now (I no longer turn my back on glass-fronted china cabinets), and these dreams have interwoven themselves somewhat with the fey novel. I need to read it to make sure the ideas I want to use are enough mine and not some other's so that I can use them, because I'll be damned if I'm going to plagarize something even if it was filtered through a dream.
3.) Standalone short story. This possibly won a Hugo and was possibly anthologized; I read it sometime in highschool when I was reading about 6 books a week and they all bled together. It consists of the following: again, a child narrates. There is a patch of some very odd, possibly fey, possibly alien-lifeform, plant, growing in back of his (?) family's garden. The child tends this plant, believing it to be special. Meanwhile there is family turmoil. The main thing I remember about this story is that it contained the phrase "firefly tree," or possibly that was the title, though I have not successfully found anything with that title that looks familiar (it is a phrase I thought I invented at age seven, which is why it stuck in my mind). Eventually ( spoiler )
