Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire

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Good girls go to heaven...

Ever wondered what really happened to Rose Marshall, the pretty little dead girl who started it all? Well, you can finally find out...starting today.

Issue 49 of The Edge of Propinquity is live, and with it, the first of the Sparrow Hill Road stories is available. "Good Girls Go to Heaven" introduces you to Rose Marshall and the ecology of the ghostroads, where death is not forever; it's not even for tonight.

There are a lot of stories trapped and tangled in the twilight. This is only one of them. But it's the one I have to tell.

Give a girl a ride?

Tags: short fiction, sparrow hill road
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  • 40 comments
Very enjoyable, and different from what I was expecting from having heard so many variations on the ghost girl!
Yay!
Um, you, um, I have no words. You used them all. Wow. Very powerful.
Thank you.
Thank you for answering a question I hadn't asked.

(I wondered if Rose could have met James Dean. It doesn't look like it, but it certainly would have been her sort of work.)
You're welcome, for all that I don't know which one it was.
Very nice indeed! And closer to true(*) than the songs? (You just can't trust those songwriters :) )

(*) For certain values of true.
For values of true, yes. This is Rose's side of the story, and as far as she's concerned, it's the real one.
Thank you. This is wonderful, I'm really looking forward to seeing more of Rose's world!
Yay!
oh. my.....
Tears are dropping into my keyboard.

Damn you're good
Thank you!
I've only just begun to read it, but I had to gush a tad, because Meatloaf--that specific album--was one of the first I ever owned. (I have a lot of love for the 80s and early 90s, but that's a lot of going back after the fact. The first music video I really remember being aware of, if any of that makes sense, is "I would do anything for love.")

Okay, I'ma go finish the story now.
Now, I'm done. And I really enjoyed it. A lot of great lines. It makes me want to read more. I'm floating in that headspace where I'm still wrapped up in the characters and story and mood, and it doesn't quite feel like all I'm doing is sitting on my bed with a sunny day visible through the large window a few feet away.

seanan_mcguire

7 years ago

seanan_mcguire

7 years ago

ravens_shadow

7 years ago

Beautiful.

I've driven a lot of roads, stopped at a lot of truckstops. Thank you.
Thank you, and you're welcome.
Enjoyable. I had been expecting a less friendly take on Rose Marshal.
Like I've said before, the Rosettes lie. :)

maverick_weirdo

7 years ago

seanan_mcguire

7 years ago

Wow. I'm still there. You do have all the words.
Thank you!
Very cool
Awesome.
Good lord. Now I HAVE to get your other stuff. *wonders how early the local bookstore opens tomorrow*
Yay!

Also, AWESOME evil cat icon.
Yup. This is what I have been waiting 3 years to read. Thank You.

One question

"My story started at a desert crossroads, and at a hairpin curve at the top of Sparrow Hill Road in Buckley Township, Michigan. "

Did you mean desert, or deserted?

I mean desert. Rose is from Michigan, and died on the top of Sparrow Hill Road; the crossroads comes into things a little later, and is located in the middle of Death Valley.

bercilakslady

7 years ago

Diners and long roads have always had a special place in my heart. I have no words on how much this touches me.

AngelVixen :-)
Awesome!
Read it, loved it and loved everything about it.

:)
Ah, yay. :)
...ever since you said "Sparrow Hill" this has been in my mind, and I finally got outside with the camera:

OMG you have an actual Sparrow Hill!

WIN!
I was just re-reading Bill Wittle's essay about Columbia's last flight, and this bit reminded me of your story.
We don't call industrial-sized air conditioning units 'she.' Well, most of us don't anyway. We don't refer to buildings this way very often, or to generators or dumpsters.

But vehicles, they are different somehow. If you do not believe it is possible to love an inanimate object, then you do not know too many teenage boys and their first cars. Ships have always been she. Airplanes, too. And I don't think this is so hard to figure out, because there is something about a machine that takes us places, something alive and magical. Many foreign observers of America simply cannot comprehend our love of automobiles, but that is because they have never had to face crossing Texas. There is a rite of passage for everyone in the US, and that is your first teenage road trip. And no matter what kind of piece of crap you may be driving when you take that trip, that machine is serving you up pure, unrefined freedom and it's so delirious and liberating that it makes your head spin, and carves the songs you heard during those glorious hours into that part of your brain that makes you cry when you hear them again twenty and forty and sixty years later.


So yeah. Rose knows. Maybe she got to Florida a time or two, and helped someone find their way home on a cold morning.
I could see Rose helping astronauts home.

It's an interesting image, that's for sure.