The Making of a Marty

Martin Cahill is an Ignyte Award-nominated science fiction and fantasy writer living in Hell’s Kitchen, NY and works as the Marketing and Publicity Manager for Erewhon Books. He’s a graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop of 2014 and a member of the NYC-based writing group, Altered Fluid.

You can find his fiction work in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, Shimmer Magazine, Fireside Magazine, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. His short story, “Godmeat,” appeared in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 anthology. He was also one of the writers on Batman: The Blind Cut from Realm Media. Martin also writes, and has written, book reviews, articles, and essays for Tor.com, Catapult, Ghostfire Gaming, Book Riot, Strange Horizons, and the Barnes and Noble Science Fiction & Fantasy Blog. You can find him online at @mcflycahill90.

I like you like this, she said. The lack of space on the college dorm twin bed as we sat across from one another made it so our knees touched if we weren’t paying attention.

Like what, I responded. I liked this person; if there was a way she liked me, I’d like to know.

You know, she said, when you’re not trying to be funny.

#

A few weeks before school starts, I was somewhere in that strange haze of middle school, where pubescence and social hierarchy and status all implode in a Hadron Collider of unease, anxiety, and emotion. Our principal had asked a few of us local kids to come by and help with something. It would be good to see my friend, E., there. The other kids weren’t a big fan of me, but I knew E. had my back.

Sitting on the steps out in front of the school after, E. offered me a few bucks if, when school started, I tried to make it seem like we weren’t good friends. You know, because what might the other, cooler, kids think?

I went numb, but refused the money. I didn’t want to make his life harder. Don’t worry about it, I said.

And I tried to forget it had happened.

#

Making someone laugh is an intoxicating feeling.

Telling a story and seeing someone react in real time is thrilling.

Doing something goofy and having everyone look at you is... some combination of the two above.

What all three have in common?

I’m acknowledged. People know I’m there. And sure, some of them might find me annoying, or frustrating, or place me somewhere on the spectrum of yikes, this kid, am I right?

But who cares. It’s better than being ignored.

It’ll hit me later, as I meet people who love a good story and love a good laugh and don’t care about what others think. I’ll realize there are others out there like me. Who will like me for me. Who teach me to be a good friend and inspire me to grow.

I wish I could tell that young version of myself that they’re out there.

Those lonely days are just that, and there is more joy to come.

#

There are many components that go into the making of a Marty. Lots of locally sourced ingredients, lots of thoughtful pruning, approximately one and a half million words read over the course of a lifetime and counting. A Marty is made of many things, good and bad, difficult and wonderful. The stories he’s interested in telling, the people he’s interested in speaking to, in lending some light through tales told... those are borne of the tough times.

Let us not discount the good things. There are good things, many good things, and they must be counted. But those moments of loneliness and fear and being on the outside and hiding behind a wall of humortimes when I have needed to grow or learn or try my hardest, regardless of those whose judgment I fearedthat is where the heart of my stories live.

Outsiders desperate to prove themselves. Insiders wondering how they got here and what is the truth they’re not seeing. Melancholic ordeals that remind us what’s worth fighting for, moments of hard-won joy after a difficult situation. Silly and somber, bitter and sweet, wondrous and ordinary, I’ve begun to realize that my stories are written as prospective antidote in a world given to despair, isolation, and cynicism.

I’m writing for that Marty, and for anyone, who needs a reminder that it’s possible to make it through, and that better days are coming.

#

A lot of my characters and work have some part of me. How could they not? Consciously or unconsciously, we appear in our words and stories because the looking glass always catches some reflection, even when we’re not trying. It’s never a surprise to finally reread a piece and see myself staring back.

But wow, there’s a lot of me in Audition for the Fox.

Especially in my main character. I joke that a lot of this book started as an answer to the millennial job crisis, and it is, through magical, wacky shenanigans in the form of auditioning for the gods. It, of course, grew in the telling. And so did Nesi, revealing herself and her heart to me, page after page, year after year. She’s very much her own little puzzle box of a character.

But Pillars bless her, Nesi has a lot of the makings of a Marty.

She’s a young person, unsure of her place in life. Anxiety to the max, with a deep level of uncertainty in herself and what she’s supposed to be doing with her life, and for others. A fear, central to her heart, that she is destined for rejection; a true desire to make friends, to protect them against the world and its cruelties. A certain love of others.

A foundational conviction that we are in this world to help each other, and no one is ever the main character of their story, not even her. Through hardship, pain, anger, and joy, Nesi knows that at least, at the very end of the day, if she is a fuck up in every way but one, the one thing she knows she can do is be there for others.

The makings of a Marty... not all of them made Nesi, but a lot of me is there.

And I hope Nesi doesn’t mind me for it, but like others have told me: I believe in her, even if she doesn’t always believe in herself.

I think she’s going to be amazing.

#

I watch my nephew run right up to another kid, so dang excited to try and make a friend at this Mother’s Day function. It doesn’t last for long, and there is a moment where I recognize the extreme sadness of a failed connection, the unvarnished look of loss on his face. I make sure to go over, ask for his hand, smile, and say that it’s okay, we’ll keep trying to find a friend, and if we don’t today, that’s okay: We have one another. We go off.

A dear friend from high school comes over for a game day with her wife; we were inseparable when we were younger, close as can be, but things have been feeling a little more distant. Nothing majorly negative, but enough that a younger Marty would have panicked. But I’m coming to terms that even if our relationship is different, and growing up isn’t always easy on a friendship, it still exists and we still love each other, and that is beautiful.

My wife and I go out for an evening. I chat with the person host stand; I hold the door open for the couple behind me; I joke with the server; I compliment the chef, I hold my wife’s hand and we talk and laugh. I toast the person next to me; I pick up a jacket that fell, and as we leave, I thank anyone I see who I even suspect works there, and yes, I hold open the door for the people coming in.

I move through the world in a way that lets others know they’re seen; I smile at people even if they don’t smile back; I help those who need it, as best I can, when I can.

I know my value now; I know who I am and who I want to be, try to be, each day.

I meet people where they’re at.

And if they don’t see me, that’s okay, too.

Audition for the Fox by Martin Cahill

Nesi is desperate to earn the patronage of one of the Ninety-Nine Pillars of Heaven. As a child with godly blood in her, if she cannot earn a divine chaperone, she will never be allowed to leave her temple home. But with ninety-six failed auditions and few options left, Nesi makes a risky prayer to T’sidaan, the Fox of Tricks.

In folk tales, the Fox is a lovable prankster. But despite their humor and charm, T’sidaan, and their audition, is no joke. They throw Nesi back in time three hundred years, when her homeland is occupied by the brutal Wolfhounds of Zemin.

Now, Nesi must learn a trickster’s guile to snatch a fortress from the disgraced and exiled 100th Pillar: The Wolf of the Hunt.

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