Introducing Eliani Torres Metropolis Bar, Brattleboro October 19, 2013   So . . . you see this woman in a bar . . . a bar pretty much like this one. Nice place. You start checking her out, and maybe you think, Oh well, she’s probably way out of my league. But then she smiles, so you screw up your courage and go to her and introduce yourself, and pretty soon you’re chatting her up — and she’s nice, a little shy at first. You ask her what she does, and she says she’s an editor — in fact, she’s edited more than 900 books, and counting. Novels, mostly. She’s got quite a way with words — you think, She must be a writer.       So you excuse yourself for a moment and head for the bathroom and lock yourself in and pull out your eyephone and you google her. Lots of hits — you start clicking around. Turns out she’s made quite a splash in the world of contemporary fiction. In 2006 she got honorable mentions in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and the Year’s Best Science Fiction, and Locus magazine, and even got a Notable Story of the Year nod in storySouth. She’s been a Nebula Award juror and a Horror Writers Association panelist. And then you starting clicking around the hipper, edgier corners of the blogosphere, and you find all these accolades for her story “Ignis Fatuus”: “a strong voice” . . . “stylish but not ostentatious” . . . “these characters are simply brilliant to behold” . . . and the one that gets you is: “a subtle dash of the tastefully erotic.” So now you’re just itching to read the story itself, with that great title, “Ignis Fatuus,” and sure enough, there it is on the Strange Horizons webzine site. You click on it, and immediately you find yourself immersed in a moody, sexy world all its own, described in absolutely mesmerizing prose: He covered her soft body like a wing case; she wore him like a hide. He breathed through Catherine’s wiry black hair, which smelled a little of flour, but mostly of herself. She moaned in his arms, dreaming still, but he would not seek her there again.       Oh, you think, she’s a writer, all right — a damn good one.       You hear somebody knocking at the door and dimly you realize that this knocking has been going on for quite some time now, so you make your way back to the bar and ask her what she’s doing in a joint like this and she says she’s here to read a story called “Salamander” that’s featured in Best Women’s Erotica 2013, and she blushes a little and says she’s nervous, she’s never done this kind of thing before, reading smut in public . . . but you can tell by the way she says that word, smut, that she doesn’t mean “dirty and filthy,” not at all. She means something a lot classier and sexier, something “risqué” (that can be our safe word) — a verbal seduction, not the kind of thing you just dive right into. So first she’ll read a poem (you’re not a bit surprised to learn she’s a poet), and then “Salamander,” and then a little more fiction to cool off, and when she’s done she’ll stick around to sign some books.       It’s her first time, so be gentle with her — ladies and gentlemen, it’s my great pleasure to introduce Eliani Torres.   © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont October 2013   top of page   other essays   e-mail to Mike   Fox Paws home page