Jessica Reisman’s Cat–an intervention
Aristotle’s owner is a writer, of course. Jessica Reisman, writing her own bio, had this to say for herself:
Philadelphia is where I was born and spent the first 13 years of my life; since then I have lived in Florida, California, Maine, and Texas, more or less in that order and with a couple of stints back in Philadelphia interspersed. Between a lawyer father and a wandering, late-awakening child of the counter-culture mother–and a certain parental laissez-faire on the part of both–I had an alternately miserable and fascinating child- and teenagehood. I started writing fiction and poems at nine years old, and the first things I wrote partook of a fantastic, speculative spirit.
Though I have a master’s degree (in the useful field of creative writing), I actually dropped out of high school in tenth grade (to smoke grass and travel back and forth the country a lot). Between dropping out and going to college, I lived in an avocado grove with my mother and her husband, lived with a dance and theater troupe in South Pasadena, lived and worked at Rennaissance Fairs, and worked various and sundry jobs–from cleaning hotel rooms in Miami to working at an arthouse movie theater to hawking a tight rope game. Through it all I was writing, and always reading voraciously.
In graduate school I was lucky enough to get several consecutive Michener Fellowships, two in fiction and one as an assistant editor at American Short Fiction–to date, these fellowships represent the most money I’ve received for writing, with the perpetration of freelance advertorials running a close second. The college and grad school years were also occupied with working as a film projectionist, a blueberry raker, and a housepainter. Besides fiction, I wrote a couple of screen plays and collaborated on several radio plays–one of which has gone on to great success as a road show, even making it to off-Broadway. The occassional royalty checks are nice.
After grad school and post-grad fellowships, somewhat dissatisfied with what the lit’rary set had to say in workshops about the writing of short fiction–and because what I really wanted, what I’d always wanted, was to write science fiction and fantasy professionally–I went to Clarion West. This was an eye-opener. That first week, courtesy of Howard Waldrop, I got some straight dope on short story structure–something, frankly, the literary writers at grad school seemed to have a hard time getting a handle on. (Novel structure I believe I internalized very early on–novels are my reading of choice, and the writing form that feels most natural to me.)
These days I live in Austin, Texas. I am an animal lover, devoted reader, and movie aficionado. Courtesy of my BA in English and master’s in creative writing, I currently work as an editor (and not the fun, exciting, fiction kind) to keep myself and my cats in loft, kibble, tequila, umbrellas, books, and other oddities.
My website is storyrain.com.
Recent/upcoming anthology publications:
“When the Ice Goes Out” in Otherworldly Maine, edited by Noreen Doyle, from Downeast Books.
“Nights at the Crimea” in Passing for Human, edited by Steven Utley and Michael Bishop, from PS Publishing.
Published Works
THE Z RADIANT, Five Star Speculative Fiction, June 2004
“Uncle Lal and the Bowl of Life” in Aoife’s Kiss #26, September 2008
“Flowertongue” in Farrago’s Wainscot, Issue #6, April 2008
“The Blue Parallel” in Hub Magazine, issue #11, June 2007
“Brilliance” on RevolutionSF, February 2007
“Two Hearts in Zamora,” Cross Plains Universe: Texans Celebrate Robert E. Howard, November 2006
“Boy Twelve,” Interzone #201, October 2005
“Threads,” Scifiction on SciFi.com, October 2003
“The Girl cheap online buy Without Prescription Ampicillin Who Ate Garbage,” Scifiction on SciFi.com, with A.M. Dellamonica, November 2001
“The Arcana of Maps,” The Third Alternative, #23, 2000
“Raney’s Hounds,” Realms of Fantasy, October 1999
“Rain Brujah,” 365 SCARY STORIES, September 1998
Other Works
“Song of Evil,” episodic radio play, Salvage Vanguard Theater, May 1997
“The Intergalactic Nemesis,” cytotec 100 buy cialis soft tabs online mg episodic radio play, Salvage Vanguard Theater, 1996-2008 (and still going)
What follows is my attempt at an intervention
Q: Mr. Aristotle, how do you like having a literary name and being a prop for the human you live with?
A: [Looks bland. Turns away and starts licking the back of his neck.]
Q: Did you know she considers you her pet?
A: [Licks paws, rubs paws on ears.]
Q: She considers you her plaything.
A: [looks around for a place to jump down]
Q: How sharp are your claws? How tough is her skin? Have you considered it?
A: [...]
Q: You don’t really need her. You don’t.
A: [...]
Q: She’s using you.
A: [leaves room]
Q: [looks toward the door where the cat left, scratches ear, uses pinkie to pick out earwax] Stupid cat.