Name: Amanda C. Davis
Age: Entry-level thirtysomething
Author of: “O How the Wet Folk Sing”
Current Geographic Location: Central Pennsylvania
Original Hometown, if different: Lovely, PA
Twitter: @davisac1
Website: http://www.amandacdavis.com
Recent publications: Wolves and Witches: A Fairy Tale Collection, with Megan Engelhardt, published in February 2013 by World Weaver Press; “Mr. Terwilliger Confesses“, published in December 2012 at UFOPub.com; and “Shimmer“, published in October 2012 in Daily Science Fiction.
Which zodiac sign where you born under? Scorpio. Not one of the fishier signs, unfortunately.
If a magic fish granted you one wish, what would it be? Assuming that “more wishes” is out of bounds, I’d probably ask to save it for when I really needed it, or else spend so long trying to word it JUST RIGHT that the fish would drown on the bottom of my boat before I actually got around to wishing. When it comes to magic, I’m a lawyer. I’m wary of wishes.
What inspired your story? “O How the Wet Folk Sing” was intended for a themed anthology that died before it was born. My idea was to apply the classic noir plot–”This leggy dame walks into my office and says someone is trying to kill her”–to a bizarro setting, and to push the wordplay as far as possible at the same time.
Did you listen to music while writing it? I didn’t listen to music while writing this: I drafted “O How the Wet Folk Sing” in three colors of ink on tiny pieces of stapled-together note paper in between tasks at work, because I am such a professional.
How many rewrites did you do before submitting? Scrawling it down was the first draft; typing it in at home would have been the second draft. I sent it to beta and made those changes, and since then I’ve fiddled with the beginning and ending, but it’s largely the same as it started. Between conception and its sale to the FISH anthology, this story is two years old, and I still like it.
What is your favorite bit? It’s a hard call, but this part is representative of the whole:
“The he-frog of the deepest hovel is blind and his talking belches white pus into the water. Before his legs grew long and his tail fell he sank to the chasm for seven songs. He swam up maimed and living. So the he-frog knows secrets.”
Ready for the rest of the story? Get the ePub (for nook and other readers) here and mobi (perfect for your Kindle) here. Only $4.99 each, instant downloads.
You can also get FISH as an ebook through Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or Kobo.
