Author Spotlight: Gio Clairval
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- September 20, 2014
Next in our author spotlight series (focusing on contributors to A Darke Phantastique) we are happy to present Gio Clairval.
Her story, “Apples and Peaches” begins:
“Officer Adohi Youngblood unsnapped his holster as he circled to the driver-side door. He knew the kind of driver he would see in the red Mustang he’d just pulled over: only a reservation drunk would barrel so fast down the winding, dusty back road. He steeled himself, prepared for anything.
Anything but the little old lady smiling up at him.
Youngblood felt the tension ease out of his neck and shoulders. He’d been dreading hauling in another intoxicated tribesman. He was fed up listening to jokes about redskins and firewater, and he’d heard enough comments on the number of reservation drunks he’d pinned. Hell, it wasn’t his fault if a guy couldn’t hold his liquor. Every man had his weakness—he’d been there himself—but drunkenness couldn’t be excused.”
She writes about the genesis of “Apples and Peaches”:
“When I was little my mother used to tell me the story of Liliom, from a 1909 play by the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar. The protagonist came back from the dead to see his daughter, but instead of telling her that he loved her—his dearest wish—he hit her because words didn’t come easily to him. ‘Apples and Peaches’ is about an abusive father who seeks forgiveness for himself, but what does his daughter need to be whole again?”
Gio Clairval is an Italian-born writer and translator who has studied and lived most of her life in Paris and now commutes between Lake Como and the United Kingdom. Since she started writing short fiction four years ago, she has sold more than twenty stories to magazines such as Weird Tales, Galaxy’s Edge, Daily Science Fiction, Postscripts, and several anthologies. You can find her at Kosmochlor (www.GioClairval.blogspot.com) and on Twitter: @gioclair.
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