Claudia O'Keefe ~ Writer & Anthologist

O’Keefe’s first fiction sale was not a short story, but the novel Black Snow Days, sold on a proposal she wrote while a student at the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop in Seattle. It was the last novel purchased by the legendary Terry Carr for the Ace Specials line of debut science fiction, which also published Ursula K. le Guin and William Gibson.

A post-apocalyptic tale...

Black Snow Days is the story of Eric Pope, a comatose man who awakens amidst the snows of nuclear winter, to find his mind rebuilt to include an added personality, that of his own female self.  It won praise from The New York Times Book Review, a coup for a first time novelist.

“My idea with this novel,” O’Keefe explains, “was to explore the ongoing psychological battle which exists within each of us between the archetypal anima and animus, the male and female halves of our gender identities. By literally bringing to life Eric Pope’s female alter ego, the character was forced to deal with issues he might otherwise repress.”

Today, O’Keefe writes contemporary fantasy. She enjoys crafting stories in which nature serves as the lens to project humanity’s darker self. As a big time fan of Jane Austen, she’s also a sucker for writing love stories that form the basis of a larger examination of social trends.

Among her novelettes and short stories dealing with these themes are: “Maze of Trees,” “On the Lake of Last Wishes,” “The Seven Flowers of Autumn,” “Heretical Visions,” and “Black Deer.” “Maze of Trees,” the story of a Hollywood screenwriter tricked and trapped into becoming the protective goddess of a lonely Appalachian forest, was turned into a Book-It style theater performance in Washington State. The novelette was also reprinted in Best New Paranormal Romance by Paula Guran.

 “The Moment of Joy Before,” a novelette which first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 2006, found the author treading familiar ground, with a story set at the end of the world.

O’Keefe asked herself a question which became the genesis for the harrowing tale of an unstoppable plague spreading across the U.S. What if Death were a woman, who wanted to know what it was like to be a mother and raise a child? In the final draft, Death appears as another major character rather than the female protagonist, yet the original question prompted the author to create an equally mysterious purpose and identity for the character of Felice.

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An Excerpt from
"The Moment of Joy Before"

Felice could never remember who the man was five minutes after he left. She could tell you neither his name nor describe his face. Was he tall or short? Fat or thin? Muscular or soft? What type of clothes did he wear? What were his politics? Or could he not care less what they did in Washington these days?  

They talked. That much she knew. Each time he visited her crappy little log cabin outside Cherry Lick, she came away with the impression that they had talked for hours. He also preferred to visit her outside. He was adamant about it, always refusing her invitation to come indoors, one of the few memories it seemed she could keep. In the late spring, they sat on limestone boulders that ruined the pasture behind the cabin as a potential gardening space, misaligned grey rocks that erupted through the March violets and wild onions like impacted wisdom teeth. When summers came, she hauled out her pair of five-dollar camp chairs and they anchored them side by side in swells of waving grass, while trying to ignore the flies and stench of cow dung that wafted over her landlord’s property. They stood sheltered under the bare, wet-black branches of her sugar maple in the fall, her boot toe trying unsuccessfully to push aside layer upon layer of sodden leaves to find bare ground where she could scratch a note to herself about him, just one word. Even in winter he made her stand out on her ice-slimed back porch while they conversed. He kept her shivering and captive for entire afternoons, so that when she found herself inside at last, with no recollection of coming in to warm her hands over her stove’s only working coil, her fingers were white and bloodless from the tips down to the palms.

Each time she witnessed his arrival on the sloping gravel drive, she told herself that this time she would remember. She would save his name somewhere in her head, some place safe he couldn’t pilfer. She’d paint the shape of his hands on the insides of her eyelids, sketch his eyes on her palm with one of her daughter’s felt markers, like a student trying to crib a test.

Twice she found her clues, within minutes of his departure, but they were useless, as if she’d scribbled them while asleep and dreaming in that language which makes no sense upon waking.  Her depiction of his eyes was equally baffling and disturbing. She’d drawn a pair of whirlpools, violent, watery tornadoes flying across her life and heart lines.

Felice had only two other vague pieces of information about the man.  One, he was kind sometimes. Two, a vein of cruelty ran through him darker and thicker than in the richest Appalachian coal mine...

Reprinted in Best New Romantic Fantasy 2, Horror: The Year’s Best 2007, and the Czech anthology Trochu Divne Kusy 3, “The Moment of Joy Before” also made Locus Magazine's Recommended Reading List for 2006.

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"The Moment of
Joy Before" 

"Whereas Stephen King's 'The Stand' and Captain Trips goes for the jugular and the scary bone, this is a Hitchcockian assault on the mind... Excellent."

–Mark Watson, Best SF

--Nick Gevers, Locus Magazine
 

"Maze of Trees" 

–Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review)

"O'Keefe tells a beautifully tragic story about wild places, the intrusion of human development, and being trapped into a metaphysical role. She shows both the glories and the isolation of being a goddess of wild places, mixing in a sweet and sad love story."