FLUORE SENSITITIVE, a collection: a beginning and an end

Five months ago, I wrote an essay about perfectionism and my debilitating fear of not being Good Enough. I talked at length about how I tend to write and re-write my short stories over and over again out of a fear of not meeting my ever-rising expectations of myself. Looking over my old pieces I am struck with nausea, and I itch with the need to re-edit, re-explain and contextualize what I mean. Some say the mark of a good artist is the knowledge that one’s current skill set will never match what one wishes to accomplish. Call me Picasso, because nothing I do ever seems to please me. I want to raze the past versions of me, turn them to ashes and make myself anew, a reborn thing incapable of even the minutest of grammatical snafus.

In maybe the silliest, most ironic move, my way to get over this is … (Cue here the theme from Curb Your Enthusiasm) Rewriting my short stories for a final time! It does seem, at first glance, very counterproductive, but hear me out. I am stepping into a new season of my writing career and a new part of my life. I am no longer little girl Mariyah, I am no longer a child, and I am ready to put behind childish things, put behind fear and overthinking and constantly explaining myself. In words less delicate —bitch, I’m fucking grown, and I’m ready to take all these past writings, bring them up to Grown Yah Yah standards, and then move on. Once I hit publish on these short stories, they are going onto a hard drive never to be seen again until like, whenever someone desperately wants a story from the vault in ten years or so, God willing.

Long did I tarry over a title for this project. I thought about doing something like Polyphony or The Atlanta Renaissance, something grand and esoteric to match my feelings on the end of this particular era of my writing life. I wanted it to be special, to be extra, and then I realized there is nothing quite as extra as the name I’ve built for myself. Fluoresensitive, which I’ve defined as a sensitivity to light, a hyper-bright beam of fluorescence, often at odds with my very grim and dark fiction. What better title, what better word to suit a collection of stories ranging from decayed starlets stepping into their old films to gory, hyperviolent explorations of gender and Blackness? What better to encompass twisting hallways, haunted houses, space ships, time loops, dark forests and rooms with nowhere to hide?

So, in a week or two, I will begin re-editing and re-publishing my short stories. They will all be familiar to you, pieces I’ve agonized over for seven years. I’ll be selling each story on Patreon for a whopping $5 a piece, and when I’m finished with the project as a whole, I’ll sell the entire kit and caboodle for $25. Also, as a special treat, I’ll be releasing the collection with some stories read by yours truly and some read by friends of mine, with commentary and the occasional playlist + liner notes thrown in, as well as special collages for each piece published.

Thank you for enjoying what I’ve written these past seven years, and thank you for joining me going forward. I can’t wait to see what this new era brings us!

SOME STORIES TO BE FEATURED,

• JUST A LITTLE SNACK

• WHAT DINAH KNEW

• AIN’T NO GRAVE

• SUDDENLY I SEE

• WHAT WE OWE EACH OTHER

• HOW TO MAKE A VASE

• INGRID IS HUNGRY

• THE WATER WOMEN

• A GIRL WALKS ALONE