Story Details
Categories Fantasy Magical Realism
Played on a triple word score in Scrabble, ZOEXLOWN (with the X on a double letter) can give you 105 points! And while there is no official recognition of this Zlovnian word meaning “beautiful flower,” nor of the Zlovnian language itself, they live in the imagination with the power to heal the greatest evils and shield an innocent generation from the horrors of the past.
Author Details
E.E. King is an award-winning painter, performer, writer, and naturalist. She’ll do anything that won’t pay the bills, especially if it involves animals. Ray Bradbury called her stories, “marvelously inventive, wildly funny, and deeply thought-provoking.” She’s been published in over 100 magazines and anthologies, including Clarkesworld, Daily Science Fiction, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Short Edition, and Flametree. Her novels include, Dirk Quigby's Guide to the Afterlife: All you need to know to choose the right heaven, The Electric Detective and several story collections. Her stories are on Tangent’s 2019 and 2020, year’s best stories. She’s been nominated for a Rhysling, and several Pushcart awards. She’s shown at paintings at LACMA, painted murals in LA and is currently painting a mural in leap lab (https://www.leaplab.org/) in San Paula, CA She also co-hosts The Long Lost Friends Show on Metastellar YouTube and spends her summers doing bird rescue and her winters planting coral in Bonaire. Check out paintings, writing, musings, and books at: www.elizabetheveking.com and amazon.com/author/eeking STORY NOTES FOR "THE LOST VILLAGE" The Lost Village is pieced together from many real stories. The story of the girl saved by caretakers, and later recognized by her locket was told to me by a friend. I first found out about the holocaust when I saw numbers on the arm of a friendly baker. She was a lovely lady who used to give me cookies. I'll never forget the disbelief I felt. ( I was about seven.) My mother used to make up scrabble words. After I had massed those ideas together, I went to look for a village destroyed, "lost," by Nazis. It was too easy to find. There are many more. Zlovnia is based on Oradour-sur-Glane, a village in Nazi-occupied France. On 10 June 1944, four days after D-Day, the village was destroyed when 643 civilians, including non-combatant women and children, were massacred by a German Waffen-SS company. A new village was built nearby after the war. President Charles de Gaulle ordered that the ruins of the old village be maintained as a permanent memorial and museum. The mayor and his tale is real. (Also real is the country that had 17 languages.) Fiction may or may not be stranger than fact, but it's almost always crueler.
The Lost Village, by E. E. King
Author Details
E.E. King is an award-winning painter, performer, writer, and naturalist. She’ll do anything that won’t pay the bills, especially if it involves animals. Ray Bradbury called her stories, “marvelously inventive, wildly funny, and deeply thought-provoking.” She’s been published in over 100 magazines and anthologies, including Clarkesworld, Daily Science Fiction, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Short Edition, and Flametree. Her novels include, Dirk Quigby's Guide to the Afterlife: All you need to know to choose the right heaven, The Electric Detective and several story collections. Her stories are on Tangent’s 2019 and 2020, year’s best stories. She’s been nominated for a Rhysling, and several Pushcart awards. She’s shown at paintings at LACMA, painted murals in LA and is currently painting a mural in leap lab (https://www.leaplab.org/) in San Paula, CA She also co-hosts The Long Lost Friends Show on Metastellar YouTube and spends her summers doing bird rescue and her winters planting coral in Bonaire. Check out paintings, writing, musings, and books at: www.elizabetheveking.com and amazon.com/author/eeking STORY NOTES FOR "THE LOST VILLAGE" The Lost Village is pieced together from many real stories. The story of the girl saved by caretakers, and later recognized by her locket was told to me by a friend. I first found out about the holocaust when I saw numbers on the arm of a friendly baker. She was a lovely lady who used to give me cookies. I'll never forget the disbelief I felt. ( I was about seven.) My mother used to make up scrabble words. After I had massed those ideas together, I went to look for a village destroyed, "lost," by Nazis. It was too easy to find. There are many more. Zlovnia is based on Oradour-sur-Glane, a village in Nazi-occupied France. On 10 June 1944, four days after D-Day, the village was destroyed when 643 civilians, including non-combatant women and children, were massacred by a German Waffen-SS company. A new village was built nearby after the war. President Charles de Gaulle ordered that the ruins of the old village be maintained as a permanent memorial and museum. The mayor and his tale is real. (Also real is the country that had 17 languages.) Fiction may or may not be stranger than fact, but it's almost always crueler.
