Books

Yesterday on Ujima – Art, Books, Steampunk

~ Cheryl

It was a busy Women’s Outlook show on Ujima yesterday. It started with a full studio as three artists came to tell me all about this year’s North Bristol Arts Trail. SF&F readers will be most interested in the work of Lou Gray who is a set designer, costume maker and puppet maker. I’m very sad that I’ll be out of town the weekend of the Trail because I would love to see her work.

For the second segment I welcomed Rebecca Lloyd, whom some of you may remember was a World Fantasy nominee last year for her collection, Mercy and Other Stories. Her latest book is Oothngbart, which is one of those delightfully uncategorizable novels. Hopefully the interview will give you some idea of the flavor of the book. I’ll try to get a review soon, because it is a lovely story.

You can listen to the first hour of the show here.

Next up were Kate and Tina, two fabulous ladies who are setting up the Bristol Steampunk Museum. They are looking for all sorts of fun steampunk things to exhibit and sell. They plan to have an online shop as well, so steampunk fans around the world will be able to order from them. The major interest from my point of view is that they also want to host readings of steampunk stories, and I happen to have an entire anthology full of them. I may end up buying some clothing and jewelry too.

Finally I had a pre-recorded interview with Tade Thompson about his newly released novel, Rosewater (which I warmly recommend) and other forthcoming work. We also discussed the newly-formed African Speculative Fiction Society, and there was brief mention of Piracity.

There’s a lot more of that Tade interview. Some of it has been badly mangled by the Internet, but I hope to be able to post a much longer version on Salon Futura in due course.

You can listen to the second hour of the show here.

The playlist for yesterday’s show was as follows:

  • Get Up, Stand Up – Bob Marley
  • Expression – Salt ‘n’ Pepa
  • You Gotta Be – Des’ree
  • Working Day ‘n’ Night – Michael Jackson
  • Night Train – James Brown
  • The Ascent – Ren Stedman
  • Automatic – Pointer Sisters
  • Loving the Alien – David Bowie

I’d like to draw your attention in particular to the new Ren Stedman single. It is a charity record. All proceeds are donated to Hesten Lodge Activity & Wellbeing Centre to raise the money to build a sensory room for adults with severe learning disabilities. You can buy it for as little as £1 here.

Book Review – Dreadnought

~ Cheryl

dreadnoughtI suspect that I am probably a little too close to this book to be fully objective about it. A superhero novel about a trans girl, written by a trans woman? Of course I lapped it up. But it is a fun book, and it does also make some fine and sharp political points.

Dreadnought, by April Daniels, will not be published until January. I got a copy off Net Galley. I’m publishing the review now for two reasons. Firstly I needed to read the book now as I have an essay on trans-related speculative fiction due at the end of this month. Secondly it is Trans Awareness Week and I wanted something light-hearted to go along with all of the doom and gloom of the Trans Day of Remembrance.

Mention of Trans Awareness Week reminds me that The Gay YA is doing a whole series of posts on trans characters in YA this week. By fortunate coincidence the first one is by April, and she says all the things in it that I would expect her to say having written a book like Dreadnought.

In the process of writing the review I managed to do a brief history of trans characters in YA, which may also be of interest.

If, after all that, you want to read the review, you can find it here.

A Virtual Pirate Party

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Thanks to some conversations during Eurocon, the lovely people at The Future Fire have offered to run a virtual pirate party this coming weekend to help raise awareness for the Piracity crowdfunding campaign. Details are available here.

I’m going to be very busy towards the end of the week with Trans Day of Remembrance things. Thankfully, because the official day falls on a Sunday, everyone seems to be scheduling events for earlier in the week. Come the weekend I am going to be in need of something cheerful to think about.

Of course the Piracity campaign is ongoing. Tomorrow we’ll have an update from Eugene Byrne about some of Bristol’s pirate connections. Hopefully we will have made it to 20% funded before then. You can pledge here.

Eurocon Day 2

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Kevin and I were planning to spend the morning on Ian Watson’s Orwell Walking Tour, which visited locations in the city mentioned in the author’s book, Homage to Catalonia. However, the tour group ended up being so large that it was hard to get close enough to Ian to hear what he was saying, so we bunked off and headed down to the waterfront. The Columbus Monument is a masterpiece of colonialist art, managing to be deeply offensive in a variety of ways.

On the way back we visited the main market, which is awesome. So Much Food. In particular lots of fish and squid and shellfish and off-beat stuff like sea urchins. There was meat too, including lamb’s heads which are apparently a local delicacy.

After eating rather a lot of seafood we headed for the convention and did a tour of the dealers’ room. I made sure I had a membership to Dortmund next year, and we signed up as pre-supporters of the Belfast bid for 2019. Kevin passed the Banner of WSFS on to the Helsinki people. There was a stall selling the most beautiful patterned leggings, but the XL size was too small for me. *sigh*

Then it was time for the panel on Spanish science fiction. Because fabulous Spanish fans have been doing such a great job of promoting local writers there wasn’t much new for me, but for you folks here’s a few recommendations that are translated into English.

  • The Map of Time – Felix J Palma (novel)
  • Castles in Spain (anthology of the best of Spanish SF)
  • Terra Nova (anthology of contemporary Spanish SF
  • Spanish Women of Wonder (anthology of Spanish SF by women)

I’m not sure on the availability of the women’s anthology. I got my copy through their Kickstarter. I can’t see it for sale yet, but the book only arrived the other week so maybe it will go live once people have recovered from the convention.

Generally the con seems to be going pretty well, but we have noticed a few small things that experienced con runners would not do. First up, don’t segregate your registration lines by membership number, because no one can remember their number when they get to the con; use last name instead. Second, don’t have different streams of programming starting at staggered times. That will lead to people getting up and walking out in the middle of one panel to get to a different one they want to see more that is just starting.

We went back to the hotel early because the Finns were holding a 50th birthday celebration for TJ, one of the regular Finncon attendees. Jeff VanderMeer may remember him as the guy who wiped the floor with us in the Mad Scientist Laugh competition a few years back.

Then it was time for the second Business Meeting. Amiens was duly elected as the 2018 Eurocon. Kevin, as a neutral observer, was asked to count the votes, which he did with his usual efficiency. He’s very good at this stuff.

The existing ESFS Board was re-elected unopposed saved for Bridget Wilkinson who is stepping down after 25 years. We gave her some presents and a standing ovation. Her place as Awards Administrator is being taken by Carol Connelly from Ireland.

I did my delegate duty and voted in the ESFS Awards. The results will be announced tomorrow.

And now we are making dinner plans. More seafood may be consumed.

River Kingdom Availability

~ Cheryl

River Kingdom cover - Ben Baldwin
Copies of Shadow Histories of the River Kingdom are available through all of the usual channels now. Links are provided here.

Amazon will probably tell you that the book is out of stock and will take weeks to re-order. That’s because they do that to all small presses who don’t print through CreateSpace. They can get the book from our printers very quickly if they want to.

UK readers may prefer to buy the print edition from Tangent Books rather than Amazon. Turnaround will be a few days until I can get some stock to Richard, which I will do as soon as I get back from Barcelona.

The other thing I’d like you to do is go into your local bookstore and ask them to order the book. They should be able to do so very easily. I know that Mr. B’s has ordered some in, and if they found it in wholesale catalogues any other store can too. This goes for people in North America as well. The book is available for printing in the USA, so it should be no more expensive to get it than it is here. Sorting out printing in Australia is on my list of things to do.

If you are going to be at Eurocon, I will have some copies with me. If you want one, tell me, because I can’t carry that many and I don’t want to run out.

Some #Piracity FAQs

~ Cheryl

I have posted a bunch of FAQs on the Piracity campaign page (go here, scroll to the bottom).

The most important stuff is about the size of the final book, and how the money will be used. As I say in the FAQ, the plan is for 18 stories of not more than 7,000 words. If everyone maxes out that’s 126,000 words, which is a pretty substantial book. I haven’t made that a specific campaign promise because a whole variety of factors may prevent us from doing exactly that. As for the money, most of it will go to pay the authors, printers and Kickstarter. We’ll need a cover, and I want to pay Roz and Jo as well. I’m not going to get any money until the project makes a profit, which I doubt will happen until well after publication.

Strong Women of Bristol

~ Cheryl

Arnos Vale
Photo by Becky Walsh. Panel is (left to right) Jean Burnett, Lucienne Boyce, Deenagh Miller and me.
Yesterday I did a Festival of Literature panel (“Storied of Strong Women”) in a cemetery. Well, in the Anglian Chapel at a cemetery. As houses of the dead goes, Arnos Vale in Bristol is pretty spectacular. Long-time readers may remember when my friends Eugene Byrne and Simon Gurr created an illustrated guide to the site.

The chapel is a fabulous venue, as you can see from Becky’s picture above. It has a crypt too. One day I want to do a book launch there. Has to be the right book, obviously.

I thought the panel went very well. Becky knows how to run this sort of thing, the panelists all had interesting and different contributions to make, and the audience chipped in with some good questions.

Obviously I plugged books. I talked about Fight Like A Girl, and about Juliet McKenna being able to beat up most men I know. It turns out that Jean Burnett is an even bigger Amelia Edwards fan than me. Deenagh Miller had some fairly horrifying personal stories to tell, as well as some amazing art. Lucienne made some impassioned pleas about not adopting violence to fight the Patriarchy. And Becky had some interesting things to say about neuroscience and the different effects of testosterone and estrogen on the brain.

The most interesting question I got asked was about what I thought had made the biggest difference to women’s lives over the course of history. My answer was the invention of the contraceptive pill. Women can no have children only when and if they want. Our role in the world is no longer simply to make babies as quickly as possible. That’s a change that has happened in my lifetime, and human society is still working through the consequences. It is also a change that, as William Gibson would note, is unevenly distributed. Given a few more generations, if we manage to avoid doing anything stupid in that time, the effects will be much more pronounced.

Becky also asked me about my view of the future of gender. As I always do in such circumstances, I talked about Elizabeth Bear’s Jacob’s Ladder trilogy.

My thanks to Helen for organizing the event and to the Arnos Vale people for giving us the venue and making us so welcome.

I spent the afternoon in a historical fiction writing workshop being run by Lucienne and Mike Manson. It was very interesting, and I met Tamsin from the Popelei Theatre Company who I hope will be appearing on my radio show in December.

Introducing Piracity

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Piracity
Well, here we go, wayyyyy out of the comfort zone. Wizard’s Tower has launched its first Kickstarter project.

What does that mean? I means I get to publish a book that pays professional rates, and that means that Jo and Roz get to work with some top class authors. But we very much hope we’ll have some new and up-coming writers too, because we are looking for a specific mix of contributors.

Piracity is, in some ways, a follow-up to Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion. That is, it is a book that uses Bristol’s history and will feature local writers. It is not steampunk. As you must have guessed, it is about pirates. Arrr!

But, as I explain in the mortifyingly embarrassing video that I made for the Kickstarter campaign, you can’t write about pirates and Bristol without writing about the Caribbean, and therefore we are not just looking for local writers, we are looking for Caribbean writers too. We have three very good ones signed up, and we are hoping to get more.

The upshot of all this is that I will be saying Arrrr! rather a lot in the coming months. You will get heartily sick of That Hat, and of Aloysious the Squid. I may get fed up of rum. The campaign will run through the whole of November and may end up with something rather fun for locals. Can’t tell you about that one yet.

Along the way, to keep people interested, there will be updates. Karen Lord has promised me something about rum. Eugene Byrne will be writing about Bristol’s piratical history. And because we cannot ignore these things Dr. Olivette Otele will be writing about Bristol and the slave trade. If anyone else has a good idea for an update, do get in touch. If we raise enough money I may be able to pay to include them in the book.

Of course Halloween is right around the corner, which is one reason why we are launching now. You can guess what that means, can’t you. More about that later in the week.

In the meantime, please tell all of your friends. We do need to get this thing funded.

Bristol Weather Hates Me

~ Cheryl

When I did the event with Stuart Milk at Bristol University in February it rained heavily. Bristol traffic is bad enough at the best of times, but when it rains the city hits gridlock very quickly. The combination of bad weather and impossible traffic puts people off attending events, no matter how good.

Last night was the first evening event I had arranged at the University since then. It rained heavily. Traffic hit gridlock. And yet out of 46 people registered to attend 32 turned up. We had some great contributions from the panel, and some equally good feedback from the audience. I was very pleased. Thank you, everyone.

There’s no recording of the event as far as I know, but a reporter from ShoutOut Radio was there and she’ll be doing interviews with some of the panelists for a show at a later date, so the discussion will go on.

Alan Clark’s book is very funny, and less than a fiver on Kindle. Jane Traies’ book is very accessible for an academic text. It is inevitably hugely expensive, but if you still have a local library you should be able to order it.

River Kingdom Availability Update

~ Cheryl

Having made the paper edition of Shadow Histories of the River Kingdom available for pre-order, Amazon appears to have withdrawn it again. I’m assuming it will come back in a few days when it hits the publication date.

In the meantime they have put the Kindle edition up for pre-order. You can also pre-order it from Google who are running a pre-order offer. Kobo apparently has a large backlog in getting books on sale, and Nook doesn’t seem to want to do pre-orders. I’ll update this page with links as and when things change.

As a reminder, there will be copies available at BristolCon, Eurocon and Novacon. If you want to be sure of getting one, please tell me and I’ll reserve one for you. (That’s especially true of Eurocon as I won’t be able to carry many copies.)

Book Review – Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time

~ Cheryl

Love Beyond Body, Space, and TimeAs I noted earlier today, one of the panels I am on at BristolCon is about how small presses can publish books with much more diversity in them than those of mainstream publishers. We aren’t trapped by the need to find bestsellers so that we can continue to pay people’s salaries. If there was ever an example of such an effect in action it has to be Love Beyond Body, Space, and Time. No mainstream publisher is going to risk money on an anthology by and about LGBT people of Native North American descent.

And yet, here one is. And not only does it have some good stories in it, it also has some fascinating history as well. Beautiful cover too. If you want to know more, my review is here.

Book Review – When The Moon Was Ours

~ Cheryl

When The Moon Was OursIt is a rare thing to read a book by a young author new to you and think, “wow, here’s a superstar in the making”. It is also a rare thing to read a book and think, “wow, this is a really good book about trans issues”. If you can say those two things about the same book, well, that’s pretty special.

I’m not entirely without reservations about When the Moon was Ours. The more YA I read, the more I come to think that real YA — books that YA fans would recognize as YA rather than books with teen characters that are written by adults for adults — is not for me. I’m much too old and cynical. Also I had quite enough teenage angst to last me a lifetime when I was a teenager. I don’t need any more of it now. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t appreciate writing craft, and there is plenty of that on show here.

If you would like to lean more about this book, my review is here.

Bristol LitFest Reminder

~ Cheryl

The Bristol Festival of Literature is now underway. The first events took place last night. This is therefore a good opportunity to remind you of where I will be next week.

Tomorrow I’ll be popping into Bristol Museum to hear “Ancient Egyptian Storytelling”. A group of writers will be telling stories about Egypt in the Egyptian gallery of the museum. They will include Justin Newland, Piotr Åšwietlik and Amanda Huskisson, all of whom have read at BristolCon Fringe. It’s free and a 3:00pm start. Get there early, it may be busy than the museum expects.

On Monday I am chairing “Ageing in the LGBT Community” at Bristol University. That will feature Alan Clark talking about Rory’s Boys, his comedy novel set in a retirement home for gay men (something that may become a reality soon), and Dr. Jane Traies talking about her history book about the lives of older lesbians. With them will be Dr. Paul Willis of Bristol University, and my colleague Berkeley Wilde of the Diversity Trust, who will provide a local and practical view of the problem. There are (free) tickets available here.

Tuesday is my day for getting the day job done, and on Wednesday I’m doing a guest lecturer slot for a gender course at Bath Spa University. Then on Thursday morning I will be part of a panel discussing “Stories of Strong Women”. That is apparently sold out, but as it is a free event some people may not bother to turn up so if you have the time free you might drop by Arnos Vale and see if you can get in.

With me on the panel will be my good friend Lucienne Boyce. In the afternoon she and Mike Mason are running a workshop on writing historical fiction. I have signed up for this. So if you want to see me making an idiot of myself by trying to write, that should be some good entertainment. And you’ll learn a lot too. Tickets are £20 and are available here.

On Friday night and Saturday I will be at BristolCon. I’ll be reading at the Open Mic, and I’m on two panels: “SF&F On the Margins” will talk about using small presses to create diversity where mainstream publishing won’t go, while “It Takes A Village” is all about the journey of a book from idea to finished artifact. I will also, of course, be selling copies of Shadow Histories of the River Kingdom. Juliet will be on hand to sign your copy. And Pete Sutton will be selling Fantastically Horny which has my story, “Camelot Girls Gone Wild”, in it.

Sunday I start packing for Barcelona.

Of course there is lots of other good stuff going on. If you are in the Bristol area, do check out the Festival website for more information.

Yesterday on Ujima – Bristol Festival of Literature

~ Cheryl

I was hosting the Women’s Outlook show on Ujima again yesterday. The entire show was devoted to the Bristol Festival of Literature, which starts today.

The first half hour was devoted to the panel that I am chairing on Monday 24th. This will be on ageing in the LGBT community. We have some excellent guests speakers. Full details here. In the studio with me was one of those speakers, Dr Paul Willis of Bristol University, who has done a lot of research on the issue.

At 12:30 I was joined by Pete Sutton and Gavin Watkins of the Festival of Literature. They talked through many of the events that will be taking place next week. At 13:00 Jo Hall joined us, which was a good excuse to talk about the panel I’m doing on Thursday 27th on Stories of Strong Women. That one is sold out, I understand. We also talked about BristolCon.

In the final half hour, Jo and I talked about her latest novel, The Summer Goddess, which I very much enjoyed reading.

You can listen to the first hour of the show here, and the second hour here.

The playlist for yesterdays show was as follows:

  • Old Folks Boogie – Little Feat
  • Emma-Jean – Amazing Rythym Aces
  • Dark Moon, High Tide – Afro Celt Sound System
  • Captain Dread – Dreadzone
  • Sun Goddess – Ramsey Lewis & Earth, Wind & Fire
  • Farewell, My Summer Love – Jackson 5
  • Thieves in the Temple – Prince
  • Big Cat – Afro Celt Sound System

My next show will be on November 16th when, if all goes according to plan, I will be talking to Rebecca Lloyd and Tade Thompson about their new books. There should also be more talk about pirates.

River Kingdom on Amazon

~ Cheryl

Shadow Histories of the River Kingdom
Those of you keen to get hold of a copy of the new Juliet McKenna book, Shadow Histories of the River Kingdom, can now find it available to pre-order on Amazon. The US page is here, the Canadian page is here, and the UK page is here. Doing something about Australian availability is on my list.

I was hoping to have a non-Amazon option, but sadly life appears to have got in the way of that.

Of course if you are going to be at BristolCon, Eurocon or Novacon you can get a copy direct from me, which is a win-win-win because you get the book cheaper and both Juliet and I get more of the money. BASFA members, I’ll be getting a box of them shipped to Kevin so you’ll be able to get it from him.

Ben Baldwin tells me that he’s happy to do signed A4 prints of his work at £10 a pop, presumably plus postage. That includes the four Aldabreshin Compass covers as well as River Kingdom. More details can be found at his website. We are talking to Sophie about prints of the map as well.

And because any excuse to re-post this is a good excuse, this is the art I’m talking about.

River Kingdom full cover

River Kingdom Map

A Day in Cheltenham

~ Cheryl

I spent Friday in Cheltenham where the Festival of Literature is in full swing. The main reason that I went is because David Barnett (who should be familiar to you from his Guardian articles and the Gideon Smith books) was going to be there. He has a book coming out next year from Trapeze, a new imprint being launched by Orion. The fiction editor is Sam Eades, whom some of you may remember from her time as a publicist.

David’s book, Calling Major Tom, is not being marketed as science fiction, despite the fact that it involves a voyage to Mars. Nor is it being marketed as alternate history, despite the fact that it involves a British space program. It isn’t exactly being marketed as comedy, though it does appear to be very funny. Mainly it is about people. If you want to know more, I bagged an interview with David which I’m planning to use on Ujima nearer the publication date.

The other two Trapeze authors on show were Sarah J Naughton whose Tattertale is a move from YA into psychological thrillers, and Peter Dunne whose 50 Things is derived from a blog he wrote giving fatherly advice to his children.

They made for a very interesting bunch. Sarah is very much a “writing novels is my job” person who religiously produces 500 words a day. David is much more of a “journalism is my job and I’ll write fiction when the muse strikes” person; while Peter was all, “I wrote a blog, and to my surprise someone offered to publish it”.

Anyway, it was a fun day out. It was great to get to meet David at last, and lovely to catch up with Sam. It was also great to spend the day hanging out with book people.

Book Review – The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe

~ Cheryl

The Dream-Quest of Vellitt BoeIt is more than two years since I saw Kij Johnson give the Tolkien Memorial Lecture in Oxford. We’ve both been busy in that time, and one of the things Kij has done is write this lovely little novella. I’m pretty sure that she wrote it after her visit to Oxford, because the central character is a professor at a university in a fantasy world and the descriptions of her home in the first few chapters could easily be descriptions of Pembroke College.

Oxford, of course, is not Ulthar. There is doubtless a large feline population in the city, but the city does not belong the cats in the same way that Ulthar does. Nor do they exert the same influence.

The cute stuff doesn’t last long. As you will have guessed from the title, this story riffs off HP Lovecraft’s The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. Kij’s story visits many of the same places, and features a lot of the same characters, but there the resemblance ends. There is so much interesting, and occasionally brilliant, in what Lovecraft did, but this book makes me wish he had been a better writer.

You can read my review here.

While you are doing that, I’m going to continue to ponder on one of the great questions of the Dreamlands, which Kij alluded to but did not answer: just who is it that is buried in that bridge outside of Ulthar, and why?

Signal to Noise Wins Copper Cylinder

~ Cheryl

The Copper Cylinder Award is a juried award for Canadian fantasy fiction. This year the adult category was won by Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, a book I love.

Congratulations are also due to Leah Bobet who won the YA category with An Inheritance of Ashes. I’ve not read it, but clearly a bunch of keen readers were very impressed.

This is also a good opportunity to remind you that Sylvia has a new book out this month. Isn’t this a lovely cover?

certaindarkthings

River Kingdom Map Reveal

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

River Kingdom Map - Sophie E Tallis
Hello, lucky people, we have more River Kingdom goodness for you.

This is the map of Juliet McKenna’s new world. It was drawn for us by the fabulous Sophie E. Tallis (who is also a fine writer). You can learn more about Sophie at her website.

What you see above is obviously well shrunk for web display. However, if you click on the image above you can see a full size version. The paperback, sadly, will only have a black and white map, but the ebook version is in color. Hopefully Sophie and I can put together a means for people to get full color copies if they want one.

Talking of the book, the paperback is currently undergoing validation at Lightningsource and the ebook is almost ready. It won’t be available to the public until BristolCon, but if you are a reviewer and would like an ebook version do let me know. We’ll have epub, mobi or PDF.

Arrangements for ordering the paper book from non-piranha sources are underway and will hopefully be announced soon. I’ll also have the book available to buy (at a discount) at BristolCon, Eurocon and Novacon. If you want to make sure you get a copy, please let me know and I’ll reserve one for you. It will be £10 at the conventions.