Author: Cheryl

Glasgow Fantasy Centre Does D&D

~ Cheryl

The lovely people at the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic at the University of Glasgow are doing another online event. This one is titled, “D&D and Fantasy Fiction: Giants in the Oerth”. I am definitely looking forward to this. As someone who bought one of the first (white box) sets of D&D in the UK, I can definitely say “I was there!”. And of course my fellow players were all avid fantasy readers. I’ll be fascinated to see what history says about us.

The event will be at 6:00pm GMT on January 28th. Registration is required but free (and they will probably live stream on YouTube if they exceed their Zoom capacity). More details here.

New Salon Futura

~ Cheryl

The December issue of Salon Futura went live last week. Here’s a list of the things reviewed:

  • Blackthorn Winter by Liz Williams
  • The Once and Future Witches by Alix E Harrow
  • When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo
  • The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix
  • The Doors of Sleep by Tim Pratt
  • Last Stand in Lychford by Paul Cornell
  • Miracles of Our Own Making by Liz Williams
  • Merry Happy Valkyrie by Tansy Rayner Roberts
  • The Mandalorian – Season #2
  • SMOFcon 37¼

If you are in the UK and like the sound of any of those books, you can buy them through Bookshop.org and help support Wizard’s Tower Press in the process.

Coronavirus – Day #281

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Hello, and greetings from Plague Island. 2021, eh? Meet the new year, same as the old year.

Things here have been moving with some rapidity, mostly the number of new COVID-19 cases where the chart is looking steadfastly vertical. But politics, too…

On Sunday morning Bozo went on national television to reassure that nation that he had no doubt that it was safe for our children to go back to school for the new term starting Monday.

Later that day, Nicola Sturgeon announced that she was recalling the Scottish Parliament and having an emergency cabinet meeting about the ongoing pandemic crisis.

By Sunday evening Bozo had achieved the unprecedented result of uniting all of the UK teaching unions against him. Many schools were saying that they were refusing the re-open.

The Scots spent Monday deliberating and planning. In the afternoon Nicola Sturgeon announced new lockdown provisions.

On Monday evening, Bozo went on national television to explain that it was far too dangerous to send children to school and that a new national lockdown was being put in place for at least 6 weeks (i.e. until mid-February).

This morning Wormtongue Gove went on the radio to say that the new lockdown would last at least into March.

Today my Twitter feed has been full of people in England trying to find out what the new lockdown regulations are, who they affect, what government support there will be for affected businesses and so on.

Meanwhile it was leaked that Fake President Loser was planning to flee the US on the 19th and would be hiding out on his golf course in Scotland. Today Nicola Sturgeon announced that he would not be allowed into the country. Perhaps he will go and stay with his friend Bozo instead.

Politics, eh? The only thing anyone is certain of is that we have no idea what Bozo will do next, but whatever he does it is certain to be too late and the implementation will be bungled.

Yesterday I had planned to do a big shop before the virus situation got any worse. But my car wouldn’t start and the jump starter was out of juice so I figured I would go today instead. Then Bozo made his announcement. Tesco is likely to be mad right now, and definitely out of toilet roll. I have enough food to last at least another week, possibly two. So I’m going to hunker down and hope that a bit of sanity returns after a while.

Coronavirus – Day #275

~ Cheryl

It is a week since Christmas eve, and the effects of the holiday are starting to be felt. For the past two days we have had over 50,000 new cases of COVID-19 per day. Deaths yesterday were just short of 1000. I suspect it will get worse over the next week. Posts from NHS staff in my twitter feed are starting to sound desperate.

So what is the government doing? It is ramming through a bill to approve Bozo’s Bexit deal, which also happens to be stuffed full of various provisions allowing the government to create new laws without reference to Parliament.

Well someome appears to have taken back control, but it is certainly not us. And what they have taken control of is certainly not the response to the pandemic.

Croatian Earthquake Appeal

~ Cheryl

There was another earthquake in Croatia today. Thankfully this one had an epicentre some 50 km from Zagreb, so most of my friends just got a book shook up. However, the earthquake was a 6.3 and for the small towns close to the epicentre that was very serious.

My friend Mihaela Perkovic put out an appeal for donations for the relief fund. (It’s her birthday today, so it makes a nice present for her.) The campaign webpage is here (scroll down for English). However, the actual donations page is only in Croatian, so the easy way to give them money is via PayPal. The account is info@solidarna.hr.

New Translation Awards

~ Cheryl

Earlier this year I was approached by the lovely people at the Future Affairs Administration in China. They were interested in starting up a new set of SF&F translation awards and they wanted me to be part of the jury. Gary Wolfe was also involved, and I still very much believe in having such awards, so I said yes.

I was not expecting to be asked to chair the long-form jury, but once they accepted my suggestion that no one should hold the post for more than two years I said yes to that as well. Basically Gary and I are providing continuity from the previous set of awards. After a couple of years the new awards should be able to fly free.

There’s still a but of talking to do internally about how things will work, but there will be awards, and there is now a website.

Rachel Cordasco does a superb job of keeping track of what gets published in the field, so hopefully we won’t miss anything, but we are very much interested in what other people think of published works, so do let us know.

Brexit and the Bookstore

~ Cheryl

Now that a Brexit agreement has been provisionally agreed (pending a possible massive rebellion by Tory backbenchers) it seems likely that new trading rules will apply to sales from the UK into Europe from January. Bascially we are back where we were before Juliet & friends did such wonderful work negotiating a Europe-wide VAT registration limit. As I do hope to continue to visit Europe in future years, I need to avoid intentionally breaking EU law and will therefore have to close to international sales as of January. I have been looking at doing UK sales of print books, so there might be a role for the store in future, but as far as ebooks are concerned I’m afraid it is back to Amazon, Kobo and B&N.

For the last fews days, I thought we might as well have a sale. This is mainly for Aleksandar who has been ill (not COVID). Last I heard he was in hospital, and he may have spent Christmas there, so it would be nice for him to get a bit of a present. For the next few days you can pick up As the Distant Bells Toll at a bargain price.

Also, of course, The Green Man’s Heir and The Green Man’s Silence are on sale at Amazon UK until the end of the month. I figured I should match that, and in our case the offer is good anywhere in the world.

And finally I thought I should extend the sale to those books that came out recently and whose sales have been impacted by my being unable to get to conventions. So you can get Unjust Cause and Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion II cheaply too.

For convenience, here’s a link to the entire sale.

In the Dark Midwinter

~ Cheryl

Yesterday morning I did a quick check of my podcast feeds in case there was anything worth listening to while I had breakfast. I was delighted to see that the Backlisted crew had a new episode up focused on Susan Cooper’s fantasy series, The Dark is Rising. The guests on the show were Robert Macfarlane, who writes about landscape in a way that fantasy writers love; and Jackie Morris, who in addition to being a writer and illustrator of books for children of all ages, turns out to have a voice that is always winter and never Christmas.

The discussion was excellent, as I had expected. I was partcularly pleased that it included extracts from Cooper’s Tolkien Lecture. But what got me sat up and taking notice was the music, which was taken from a concept album inspired by the books. The music was created by a chap who calls himself Handspan. He’s originally from the north-east of England, but now lives in Joensuu, a town in the mid-latitudes of Finland but far east towards the Russian border. The extracts I heard from the album were good enough for me to hop onto Bandcamp and by a copy, which I spent much of yesterday playing.

Handspan’s work is electronica, so of course it won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I enjoyed it. There are other instruments on it besides synths. Apparently Handspan has taught himself to play the kantele, a traditional Finnish stringed instrument.

Of course I then had to compare Handspan’s work to Bo Hansson’s album based on The Lord of the Rings. Hansson was a synth pioneer, and managed to catch the wave of Tolkien-mania that happened in the 1970s so the album did very well at the time. As far as I’m concerned, Handspan wins easily. Hansson’s work is not bad music, but I can’t see the connection to Tolkien. Handspan, on the other hand, totally gets British fantasy. A review of his album in Fortean Times says, “the album is as crisply keen as the sweeping snowdrifts and slate-grey sky that lend the book such an air of forbidding, suffocating stillness.” I’m guessing that he sees a lot of that sort of weather in Joensuu.

So that was my Christmas Day. Many thanks to the Backlisted crew and to Handspan for giving me a suitably wintry experience. Now I’m wondering if we can get Handspan to come to Finncon to talk about his work. I’m sure we can find a Cooper expert or two to be on a panel with him. And maybe we could have a concert.

All I Want for Solstice…

~ Cheryl

Yes folks, it is that time of year again. I shall soon be settling in with a glass of wine and a mince pie or two, and watching Santa cruise ever closer. As is traditional, I shall be relaxing to the gentle Innsmouth sounds of Mr Ogham Whaite and his Amphibian Jazz Band. In the meantime, we can all enjoy a few more tunes from the HP Lovecraft Historical Society.

This year has undoubtedly been crazier than most, so what better tune to offer you than that modern classic, “All I Want for Solstice is my Sanity.”

Coronavirus – Day #268

~ Cheryl

Right on cue, Bozo has announced that after decades of failed negotiations, he personally has wrested the Best Deal Ever from the evil foreigners of the EU. Analysis of the deal suggests that it will leave the UK far worse off than we were as members of the EU, but we will have blue passports and we can stop a whole lot of foreigners from coming to these sceptred isles, so it is apparently all worth it.

There are two main reasons why the deal has been announced now. Firstly it is good for Bozo’s ego to be able to do so. It makes it seem like he was working hard right up until the last minute, whereas in fact all he had to do was decide which concessions to make. Of course he knows that his rabidly xenophobic right wingers will be furious at what he has done, but by announcing the deal so late, and over a holiday, he gives them no time to stir up a fuss. This is far more important to him than giving British businesses time to plan for operating under the new regime. As always, Brexit is far more about internal Tory Party feuds than about the good of the country.

The Labour Party has enthusiastically embraced Bozo’s deal. Brexit appears to be one thing on which both their centrists and far left agree on.

Meanwhile, for the last two days, we have had new infection rates in excess of 39,000. We are supposed to not notice that.

Green Man Sale Reminder

~ Cheryl


It seems kind of foolish to remind you to buy a book that you almost certainly own, but you might know someone who is looking for a good read over the holidays. It therefore behooves me to mention once more that The Green Man’s Heir and The Green Man’s Silence are both on sale from that great river in the aether to UK customers for a mere 99p each. The Green Man’s Foe is not on sale, but you can get all three books for under £7 which is a ridiculous bargain. ‘Tis the season, so go ye forth and encourage people to buy. The sale ends on Dec. 31st. Linkage here.

Cooking Gadgetry Success

~ Cheryl

Because I am not completely boring, I do normally buy myself a present at Solstice, just to keep in with the spirit of the season. There isn’t much that I need, of course, but something I can treat myself with is a kitchen gadget. I’m a sucker for those, after all.

So this year I decided to buy myself an air fryer. I’d resisted buying one for a long time, because I didn’t believe the marketing promises. But I do miss proper chips (that’s fries for North American friends). The various frozen or re-heatable options that they have in Tesco just aren’t the same. Having done a bit of research (thanks, Which?), I opted for a Tefal Actifry. It was expensive, but the considered opinion of reviewers was that cheaper models didn’t do the job, whereas this one did. With some trepidation, I made myself chips to go with the venison steak for my Solstice meal.

And they were great. Considering that this was my first time using the thing, I was really pleased. There are supposedly lots of other things you can cook in the machine, but even if all I use it for is making decent chips then I shall be very satisfied.

Happy Solstice

~ Cheryl


With this year being decidedly weird, I have not being terribly efficient when it comes to holiday cards. I did get some off in time, but I totally failed to buy any from Dru Marland. The image above is what I would have sent out had I been more together. Sorry Dru, I will order some early in the new year.

One interesting side effect of the pandemic is that both Stonehenge and Newgrange have been live streaming the solstice. English Heritage have just provided camera images set to music. Sunset yesterday was pretty good, but sadly today was overcast and dull.

In contrast, Heritage Ireland has provided a hosted TV show which talks about how the Newgrange site works. Yesterday morning’s show got a pretty good performance from the sun. You can watch it here (you need to fast-forward to about 14 minutes).

In today’s show from Newgrange, Clare Tuffy notes that while there are still a few days left in the Julian calendar, as far as the solar calendar is concerned, 2020 is over and done. Welcome to the new solar year, everyone. Here’s hoping this one is less scary.

Coronavirus – Day #265

~ Cheryl

There is much excitement here is plague-ridden Brexitland. New cases of the virus are now running at over 30,000 per day, and the rolling 7-day average is up to 29,000. There is much talk of a scary new mutant version of the virus which has allegedly just been discovered. No one knows whether this new threat is a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, or an independent operative, but I fully expect Bozo to announce that he is seeking advice from Charles Xavier any day now.

The reality of the situation seems to be that there are many mutant strains of the virus, and that this one has been known about for weeks, if not months. The suspicion is that Bozo and his spinmasters are using the idea of a deadly new strain of COVID-19 as an excuse for the government’s manifest failure in ending Lockdown #2 too early in the hope of “saving Christmas”.

However, the idea of a deadly new version of the virus running unchecked in the UK has taken root elsewhere in the world. Other countries have accepted the narrative of the UK as a plague ship that must be kept quarantined. Consequently many countries have now banned travel to and from the UK. This includes closing the Channel Tunnel.

You may think that the Brexiter hordes would be cheering with glee. Huzzah! Britain is finally cut off from the Continent! We are safe from foreigners. But of course the Brexiters are Libertarians. Therefore they firmly believe that they should be free to control their own borders, but that equally no other country should be allowed to close its borders to them. There is much outrage.

All of which is largely irrelevant to your average Briton hoping to enjoy the holiday season. Londoners are already furious at new restrictions being suddenly imposed when they had been promised a free and merry Christmas. Now the entire country is worrying whether there will be enough food to last the holidays if shipments from the Continent cannot get through. Thankfully most people will already have stocked up on huge quantities of food by now, but it does look like we’ll be getting a taste of No Deal Brexit a few days early.

Talking of No Deal, we have now passed the point by which the European Parliament will be able to ratify any trade deal. Therefore No Deal has happened. Negotiations could still continue, if diplomats are able to meet, but there will at least be a short period of No Deal happening.

Given all of this, Her Majesty’s Opposition has swung into action. In order to stand up for the country, Kier Starmer has issued a demand… that under no circumstances should Brexit be delayed. There must be no extension of the transition period.

Hopeless, the lot of them.

Up On The Aqueduct

~ Cheryl

It being that time of year, I have once again contributed to the annual Aqueduct Press “The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening” series. If you want to know what I have been spending my leisure time on over the past year, you can read all about it here.

There have been a bunch of other great posts in the series this far, and I’m sure there will be many more to come.

Coronavirus – Day #262

~ Cheryl

Last week I wrote that by Christmas I expected the situation in the UK to be back where it was prior to Lockdown #2, if not worse. Well, it is no fun to be proved right, but…

Yesterday saw over 35,000 new cases, which is a record. Today was only 28,500, which is the third highest daily total since the pandemic began. The rate of deaths is now trended upwards. But Bozo has “saved Christmas” so we are all supposed to be happy.

Thankfully the local situation is still good, and I probably only need to make one more shopping trip this year.

Talking of Romans…

~ Cheryl


I have a blog post up on the Women’s Classical Committee UK website today. If you happen to be interested in trans history in the ancient world, the book whose editor I am interviewing is well worth a read. The rest of you can just be happy that some people care about this stuff and want to get it right.

Io Saturnalia!

~ Cheryl


Today, December 17th, is the first day of the Roman midwinter festival of Saturnalia. It started out as a one-day thing, and through the long history of Rome morphed into a multi-day epic holiday incorporating the solstice and terminating in the birthday of the sun god, Sol Invictus, on the 25th. Among other things, it has given us the concept of the Lord of Misrule.

As I have been doing a lot of Roman stuff recently, I figured that I should celebrate properly, which means Roman food. For lunch I had bread, olives, feta cheese and octopus. It was yummy. But what to cook for the evening meal?

The Romans didn’t have turkey. They didn’t have tomatoes or potatoes either. But they did have a vast empire, and if you were rich enough you could bring in food from the far flung corners of the empire. So what might Romans have in place of turkey? Ostrich seemed like a good idea.

Obviously I don’t need a whole ostrich, and I don’t have the means of cooking one, but Tesco does sell ostrich steaks. All I need is something to do with them. Does Apicius have a recipe for ostrich? Of course, he has two. I’ll be experimenting with the first of them. I’ll be serving it with one of Apicius’s mushroom dishes, and some green vegetables.

There will be wine, of course. Mustn’t forget to show respect to dear Dionysus.

Pissing in the Wind

~ Cheryl

This morning I RT’d a thread by a Scottish trans person about the futility of arguing with transphobes on Twitter. They’re right, of course. There is no point in arguing with someone who isn’t engaging in good faith and doesn’t want to listen to what you have to say. That point was made very forcibly by another tweet I saw in which a trans woman was told that proving anti-trans people wrong was a form of “rape”, because it violated their “autonomy of opinion”. The whole discourse jumped the shark long ago.

The problem with the UK at the moment is that this sort of thing isn’t just true of Twitter, it has permeated the whole of society. There’s the BBC, for example, where transphobic journalists are allowed to make their own news and then report dishonestly on it as if it were unconnected with them. And then there’s the courts.

I had written something about the shameful decision by the High Court on medical treatment for trans youth, but I haven’t published it. What’s the point? If you want a medical view, here’s a very good one from an Australian doctor. Experts in trans health from countries such as the USA and Canada will say very similar things. But the court decision was easily predictable from the fact that they refused to allow trans advocates to testify, but did take “expert” testimony from people whose only qualifications were membership of anti-trans organisations.

Because of the work I do, I see quite a bit of this sort of thing from the inside, and it is everywhere right now. Organisations go through the motions, but it is very clear that decisions have been made in advance, and reports are written to justify the results that are required. Engaging in due process gets you nowhere.

It isn’t just trans people, of course. The same sort of thing is being done to the Windrush families, to the families of the Grenfell fire victims, and to many other victims of the current government’s passion for cruelty. I worry a lot about my friends of European heritage who are still in the UK, because they are going to be made scapegoats for the Brexit disaster.

There are still people who are able to engage in the political process, and some are kindly willing to carry on fighting for others even though the game is clearly rigged against them. For those of us on the bottom of the pile, however, self-care needs to come first. Enjoy the holidays, folks. Next year is going to be brutal.

Coronavirus – Day #255

~ Cheryl

Gosh, it has been a long time since I did one of these.

Anyway, the UK came out of Lockdown #2 on December 2nd. The rate of new cases of COVID-19 had been falling for a while, and the death rate had started to fall as well. Predictably, as soon as Lockdown ended, the rate of new cases started to rise again. We had over 20,000 yesterday. Deaths are still falling as they tend to lag a week or two behind the new cases, but by Christmas I expect things to be back where they were at the last peak, if not higher.

Thankfully the situation locally is very good. There were fewer than 10 new cases in Trowbridge in the past week, and much of the town is currently rated “supressed”. I’m not planning to go anywhere much over the holidays.

The vaccine is now being rolled out, and a few people in Bristol have already got their jabs. I am by no means vulnerable or essential, so I expect it to be many months before my turn comes around.

Meanwhile Bozo has managed to thoroughly piss off the EU leadership and major European heads of state. A “no deal” exit from the EU now seems inevitable, and indeed Bozo has been on the BBC boasting about how good this will be for the country him and his cronies. Indeed, if news reports are to be believed, they have something like £8bn staked on a collapse of the pound.

As I am paid primarily in US dollars, I’m not too worried about collapse of the economy. I am very worried about what the next year will bring for the trans community in the UK. Because of the work I do, I get to see some of what is being done behind the scenes to dismantle trans rights. You don’t need government action to take people’s rights away. Just as the value of the Equality Act has been people knowing that discrimination was illegal, so the government flagging its desire to dismantle that Act leaves people feeling free to ignore it. Or, if it is more convenient, interpreting the EA in such a way as to conclude that trans people are a danger to everyone else and need to be denied services.

Oh well, in 50 years time historians will have a lot to write about.