Welcome to another installment of If My Book, the Monkeybicyclefeature in which authors compare their recently released books to weird things. This week Dana Diehl writes about The Earth Room, her new story collection out from Black Lawrence Press.
If The Earth Room were an opening credits song from a TV show, it would be the Twin Peaks theme.
If The Earth Room were a friend, it would be a little too enigmatic. A little too absent from the group chat.
If The Earth Room were a smell, it would be petrichor.
If The Earth Room were a mineral, it would be the quartz a boy finds on a mountaintop and insists is a diamond (The boy showed the mineral to his smartest friend at recess, and the friend agreed! 3,000 karats at least!).
If The Earth Room were lost in the woods, it would know that moss grows on the north side of trees. It would know that birch bark makes the best fire starter.
If The Earth Room were an insect, it would be a jewel beetle, hungrily boring its way to the heart of the dead tree.
If The Earth Room were a witch, it’d dispense gifts and curses arbitrarily.
If The Earth Room were a cave, it’d be living. Growing stalactites one slow drop at a time. Cradling pools of blind tetras.
If The Earth Room were to make a wish for you, it’d be for the ability to walk on any surface without falling. Scale the Malaspina Glacier in only your tread-worn Vans. Balance on the mossy log. Straddle the top of the waterfall. Hop from wet stone to wet stone to cross the creek, or better yet, walk into the current. Let the rapids muscle against your shins. The water will never carry you away.
Dana Diehl is the author of Our Dreams Might Align (Splice UK, 2018) and the collaborative collection, The Classroom (Gold Wake Press, 2019). Her chapbook, TV Girls, won the 2017-2018 New Delta Review Chapbook Contest judged by Chen Chen. Diehl earned her MFA in Fiction at Arizona State University. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in North American Review, Necessary Fiction, Mid-American Review, and elsewhere. She is an educator in Tucson.
Buy The Earth Room here.