seattle: a novella

When M. Miller, slide librarian at a large Seattle stock photo agency, falls asleep in a rep cinema one rainy autumn evening, she finds the dead invading her dreams, a mysterious stranger talking about her past, & her job taking on sudden, strange, suspicious dimensions. With the help of Kurt Cobain, François Villon, & the agency’s own Leather Boys, she slips past the Space Needle to confront love, death, resurrection, & globalization.

Praise for Seattle:

Bartleby the Scrivener is alive, unwell, and re-living the gloomy doomy in the form of McAuliffe’s brooding, misanthropic, rain-spat heroine. Impotent rage cohabitates with brilliantly arch condemnations to salt this unmoored yet claustrophobic tale. — Kassten Alonso, author, Core (a Miaden), & The Pet Thief

A marvelous stretch of work.  — Matthew Stadler, author, Deventer, The Dissolution of Nicholas Dee, Chloe Jarren’s La Cucaracha,  & Where We Live Now; Publication Studio co-founder

Back office transactions, cavernous electronic databases, suspicious dealings, duplicity, innocence, the complexities of lost love … The controlled rage throughout Seattle does the memory of Mother Jones proud. — Julie Madsen, editor, W*O*R*K** Magazine

M.F. McAuliffe’s Seattle tells the story of a bereft widow and disillusioned photographer working as a librarian at an image agency. Amid the digitally strained commerce of a photojournalism company her secretive impressions and fragmentary memories streak through the prose in poetic bursts of tension, anger and doubt. The nervous power of the writing is reminiscent of old style photography, when film would be processed in developer so that a latent image could become visible. One feels the story beneath Seattle emerging with the same chemical intensity, its meaning rising before you moment by moment.  — Mark Mordue, author, Dastgah: Diary of A Head Trip