Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: Old Soul by Adria Laycraft

The Story Recommendation of the Week is for "Old Soul" by Adria Laycraft, from the anthology Tesseracts Sixteen.

Angelica is a young girl with an "Old Soul," despondent from the insistence of all the adults in her life that the shimmery figures she can see in the air around her are not real. The story nicely shows how a gift can be turned into a curse, by the unfair expectations of others:
"She's an old soul, Maria" a friend said as they sat in the kitchen drinking coffee. Angelica sat with a book in the very next room and wondered why adults thought children could not hear their conversations.

"She's a little girl with an active mind," her mother replied. "One day this will all be past and she probably won't even remember it."

This made Angelica close the book and lay her head back. She didn't want to forget the place of light, or Gloria. Trying to ignore these things hadn't made them go away like her mother said they would.
How Angelica learns to embrace her rare ability makes for heart-warming reading.

Tesseracts is an annual anthology series, showcasing Canadian science fiction and fantasy writers. The authors in Volume Sixteen range from established pros like Robert J. Sawyer to rising stars like Ryan Oakley to new voices such as Laycraft (as well as some of my fellow Writers of the Future alumni, including Stephen Kotowych and Melissa Yuan-Innes).

An Odyssey Workshop graduate, Adria Laycraft has sold stories to Neo-OpsisJames Gunn's Ad Astra, and other publications. She is also currently co-editing the Urban Green Man anthology.

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