Books

Kickstarting Upside Down

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

There’s an interesting new anthology being Kickstarted at the moment. Titled, Upside Down: Inverted Tropes in Storytelling, it aims to present new twists on tired story tropes. The book is edited by Monica Valentinelli and Jaym Gates, and will include stories by Haralambi Markov, Nisi Shawl and Alyssa Wong, amongst others.

It is also very cheap — just a $5 pledge for the ebook. Though if you want paper and are outside of the USA the cost shoots up.

I really liked the idea of this one and actually sent them a story. It didn’t get in, which doesn’t surprise me because I don’t think I’m good enough for professional rates. But it was a lot of fun to do. If anyone out there is looking for a different take on the Wicked Stepmother meme, let me know.

Schools & Families Day – Museum of London

~ Cheryl

Sir Derek Jacobi learns his lines
The final part of my weekend in London was the Schools & Families Day put on by Schools Out at the Museum of London. Whereas on Saturday I had been mainly supporting trans friends, and speaking myself, on Sunday I got to see new stuff. I had a fabulous day.

One of the first thing I noticed on arrival was a book stall. It turned out to be run by Letterbox Library, who specialize in books for children that have equality and diversity themes. I immediately encouraged them to get in touch with Fox and Sarah about stocking Are You a Boy or are You a Girl?, but I was delighted to see that they had 10,000 Dresses and I snapped a picture to send to Marcus Ewert. The day sort of took off from there.

Stuart Milk was due to read from the children’s book about his uncle, so I wandered along to say hello and ended up doing gopher work as he was expecting some people to come to interview him. I was passing through the museum lobby when I spotted a familiar looking gentleman looking a bit lost. So I introduced myself and took Sir Derek Jacobi up to where our event was taking place. He was due to read some children’s books later in the day, and to my delight he picked Marcus’s book as one of the ones to use. I snapped the picture above and sent it off to go viral, which it duly did.

Then it was back to the lecture theatre to catch up with Juno Dawson. I’d not read any of her stuff before, but having now heard some of it I can thoroughly recommend it. She’s also lovely. We had a bit of a chat about transitioning in the public eye.

Sir Derek was up next, and I managed to get a quick chat with him. I told him how his old friend Claudius had been responsible for making the Rites of Attis part of the official Roman Religious Calendar. (There’s even an official Castration Day, when Roman trans girls got their op done.) His readings of the kids books were fabulous. There was video taken, so hopefully one day I’ll be able to share his reading of 10,000 Dresses with you.

Little did I know that Chris Riddell was also in the audience. He did a few sketches, including this one (thanks to Marjorie for the link):

Next up I went to see a great presentation by Subodh Rathod about gender fluidity in Hindu religion. Vishnu has a female avatar called Mohini who is, naturally, incredibly beautiful. She has a famous dance. Obviously Mohini is of great interest to the hijra community. Subodh was assisted by Kali Chandrasegaram who performed the dance at the end of the talk.

That was at least 2000 years of living trans history right in front of our eyes.

Sir Derek Jacobi learns his lines

I also got to meet the fabulous Juno Roche, got to hear my new pal Laila El-Metoui talk about the amazing work she does on diversity in adult education, and saw the Gay Men’s Choir perform. All in all, it was a pretty fabulous day.

Huge congratulations to Niranjan Kamatkar and his team for putting on a great weekend, and to Sue Sanders for the fabulous work that she does making these things happen. Bristol has a lot to live up to. No pressure, eh?

Crawford Award Results

~ Cheryl

I’m a bit late with this — sorry Gary — but the results of this year’s Crawford Award (for a debut fantasy book) have been announced. The winner was The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson which is indeed a very fine book. With so many books to cover these days, not all of the judging group gets to read every book, but I can also recommend The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (Natasha Pulley), The Grace of Kings (Ken Liu) and The Traitor Baru Cormorant (Seth Dickinson). The Devourers (Indra Das) was only published in India but will apparently be out in the USA this year so I’ll snap up a copy. I know nothing about The Daughters (Adrienne Celt), but those who read it spoke highly of it so I’ll look for that one too.

Maybe this year I can get started on the reading list early. Hmm, what’s this All the Birds in the Sky thing…

Cover Girl

~ Cheryl

Locus - February 2016So yeah, that’s the cover of the new issue of Locus. As you can see, it has my name on it. Obviously there are a lot of other names too. That’s because it is the Recommended Reading List issue, and a whole bunch of us who contributed to that list have been asked to write short “year in review” pieces. Mine is sort of an “Own Voices” thing, and yes I do talk about trans stuff. I also talk about Sami and Arabic fantasy, and as wide a range of other stuff as I could fit in.

You can find the whole Recommended Reading List here. If your favorite book isn’t on it, please don’t yell at me. Firstly, I can’t read everything, and secondly they don’t allow a book onto the list on just one person’s say-so.

Elsewhere in the issue I am delighted to see some good coverage for Carter & Lovecraft. Well done, Jonathan!

The Cis Gaze at Work

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Bad toilet signage
Today The Guardian has an article titled, “Top 10 books about gender identity”. It is written by a cis person, for cis people. Here’s why.

Let’s start with that photo, which gets bathrooms wrong in just about every way possible.

No, wait, let’s start with the fact that it’s a picture of a bathroom being used to illustrate an article about books. OK, so I have been guilty of reading on the loo from time to time, but surely books and toilets are not that closely related, are they? No, of course not. Trans people and toilets, on the other hand, well there’s your word association test right there. Mention trans people and what comes immediately to mind for way too many cis people? Toilets. That’s what we are about: threatening their toilets.

Next up, why is this a combined trans and accessible toilet? Accessible toilets are there for a reason, because some people need them. Putting a trans sign on the accessible toilet will mean lots of able-bodied people using that toilet when they don’t need the special facilities.

And the sign, what does it mean? As far as I can see it says, “this is the toilet for trans people, because we don’t want you perverts in our toilets.”

Look, I have been using women’s toilets for over 20 years. No one has complained. I have not sexually assaulted anyone in the process. I do not appreciate being told that I now have to use a different toilet because trans people are suddenly in the public eye and loads of people have become obsessed with bathroom panic.

Of course there are some trans people who do identify outside of the binary, and would prefer a separate toilet. That’s fine, but that’s not what that sign says.

It does of course say “inclusive”. As far as I can make out that means “inclusive of all the icky people we don’t want in our toilets”. I am only mildly surprised that there wasn’t a little picture of a woman in a hijab along with it.

On now to the article. Top ten books on gender identity, eh? Are any of them written by trans people? Well if they are there are no names that I recognize. Those books I do know about are written by cis people. I’ve only read one of them, but it is #1 on the list, and it is a book I absolutely do not recommend as being good about gender identity.

There is a trans person in Luna, by Julie Anne Peters, but the book isn’t about her. It is about Luna’s sister, Regan, and how hard it is on a girl to have a trans sibling. There’s no question that Regan is the character we are supposed to sympathize with, and given Luna’s behavior at times that’s not hard to do. Thankfully for Regan, the book has a happy ending. Luna comes into some money and is able to leave home. Great.

Looking at the descriptions of the other books, most of them focus on how awful trans people’s lives are. Which of course they are at times, but the message I’m getting here is that trans people are pathetic individuals whom we should all pity because they are so tragic. Could we maybe have something a little bit positive?

This is probably a good point to give another recommendation for Vee’s great article on the “acceptance narrative” that informs so many books about trans people. That narrative is popular because it allows cis people to feel squicked out by trans folk and tells them that’s OK. That’s the sort of book about trans people that cis people seem to want to read. It is certainly the sort of book that publishers want to publish, which perhaps says rather a lot about the attitudes of commissioning editors.

That’s really what this is all about. In the same way that many men won’t read books about women, many white people won’t read books about non-white people, and so on, many cis people don’t want to read books about trans people. They might want to read books about cis people having to come to terms with the existence of trans people. That’s what The Guardian means when it talks about books being good on the subject of gender identity.

Oh, and to all of those people thinking, “but we must have an easily understood sign for a toilet that can be used by anyone,” what’s wrong with a little picture of a toilet?

Juliet Is Busy

~ Cheryl

As I mentioned over the weekend, Western Shore, the latest Juliet McKenna novel from Wizard’s Tower, is now available in the usual shops. Meanwhile Juliet, bless her, has been very busy.

First up on her own website she has posted a fascinating article about the worldbuilding process that was necessary to create the book. Lots of geography research was involved.

Also, on SciFi Fantasy Network, she has an article about the need to get feedback on your novel during the writing process.

Finally, if you happen to be anywhere near Lancaster University on Thursday evening, Juliet will be giving a talk:

I do love those Ben Baldwin covers, and I see that Juliet has a new author photo. Yes, that’s Lou Abercrombie at work again.

Best Trans Fiction of 2015

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

The lovely people at Lethe Press are already well known for producing the Wilde Stories and Heiresses of Russ series of anthologies which collect, respectively, the best gay and the best lesbian speculative short fiction of the year. Now at last there will be a trans-themed companion series. Transcendent, edited by K.M. Szpara, will look for the best speculative short stories featuring trans characters. The call for submissions for stories published in 2015 is here.

Please note that this is a “best of” series. They want reprints, not original fiction. Pay is correspondingly lower.

Also the requirement is that the story should contain a trans character of some sort. The author does not have to be trans-identified. However, the editor is someone I would trust to filter out anything hamfisted or offensive.

The call for submissions is a classic example of the dangers of trying to list every sort of identity you want to include. It manages to not list how I identify, and it includes at least one category that will have some activists furious. Don’t try to cover all of the bases, folks, it always ends badly. Thankfully I know it is being done in good faith.

I don’t have anything to submit from 2015, but I will have at least one story from 2016 because I have sold one with a trans character to Holdfast Magazine. So I want this thing to be a success, OK?

Coming Soon – Western Shore

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Western Shore - Juliet E. McKenna
Barring unforeseen disasters, the latest Juliet E. McKenna novel should be in ebook stores later this week. Western Shore continues the saga of the Aldabreshin Compass. More fabulous Ben Baldwin artwork. Next up, Eastern Tide. I’m looking forward to being able to show you the full cover set.

October Fringe – Joanne Hall & Jonathan L Howard

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Here’s a nicely horrifying way to start the new year: the Halloween special edition of BristolCon Fringe. It features some deeply creepy readings and a great deal of swearing (we love that explicit tag on iTunes).

First up is Jo Hall who is more generally known for being the Queen of Grimdark. There is no mass slaughter in this excerpt from her latest novel, Spark & Carousel, which was launched at BristolCon. Instead there’s something cold, calculated and ultimately horrible.

Next we have Jonathan L. Howard who launches his latest novel, Carter & Lovecraft. There are no tentacled horrors from beyond the stars in the excerpt that he reads (you’ll need to buy the book for them). However, there is a particularly nasty serial killer. The cops get very sweary.

Finally I get to put both of our readers to the question. Jo reveals her inner darkness, and Jonathan describes how Carter & Lovecraft came to be written.

This BristolCon Fringe event was staged as part of the Bristol Festival of Literature. There are quite a few announcements to do with forthcoming LitFest events, all of which you will have missed, but hopefully it will tempt you to find your way to Bristol this October. BristolCon is back in its normal date, so if you come a few days early you can catch some of the LitFest too.

Hopefully I will get the November readings online later this month. I’d like to say I’ll have the December and January readings up in February. It should be OK as far as Podbean bandwidth goes, but given how busy I’ll be in February I’m not hopeful.

New Year Things

~ Cheryl

I don’t see any point in making resolutions that I’m not going to keep, so for now I’m just going to try to say “no” a bit more often, especially when it involves people asking me to do work for free. In any case, to be honest my planning horizon doesn’t extend much beyond February. If I manage to get through that month without any major disasters the year will have gone well and I can start thinking about other things. I’ve just had to turn down an event in Bath because I’ll be in London at the time. February is that sort of busy.

Meanwhile some of my friends are resolving to do good things. Jo Hall is once again going to read more women authors, which is a fine and wonderful thing. I understand that Pete Sutton will be joining her in the challenge this year. I’ve just been looking at a year in review piece I have written for someone, and the stats look like this:

Male authors: Ian McDonald, Paul Cornell, David Barnett, Ken Liu, Hannu Rajaniemi, Ante Aikio, Robert Irwin. 7 in total.

Female authors: Catherynne Valente, Emma Newman, Sylvia Moreno-Garcia, Aliette de Bodard, Nnedi Okorafor, Naomi Novik, Elizabeth Hand, Carolyn Ives Gilman, Rachel Hartman, Justina Robson, Ann Leckie, Stephanie Saulter, Natasha Pulley, Zen Cho, Leena Krohn, Maria Turtschaninoff. 16 in total.

PoC count: 6 of 23 (possibly 7 if you count Sami as PoC, which I think you probably should).

Translated works: 4 of 23.

The list isn’t very good with regard to actual LGBT authors, but in terms of books with major LGBT characters I have 12 of 23.

The obvious conclusions from this are that a) I’m a hideously bigoted feminazi who is out to destroy all men, and b) that I need to read some non-binary authors.

A Little Gay YA(-ish) Fantasy

~ Cheryl

Accepted wisdom in the blogosphere these days seems to be that diversity simply didn’t exist in SF&F prior to 2014 (or prior to the advent of YA, depending on which theory you subscribe to). Before that all of SF&F was written and read by Old White Men like me.

Well, people can believe what they like, but I seem to remember people like Samuel Delany, Joanna Russ and Rachel Pollack. There was plenty of other LGBT content as well, if you knew where to look. Sometimes I ran across it, and sometimes I even read and reviewed it.

The sad death of David Rain has reminded me of his wonderful fantasy series, The Orokon. It contained gay characters, and as they were teenagers it would probably class as YA if it were written today. Details of how to get the books are in my obituary for David.

In addition there was the Outremer series by Chaz Brenchley. As you might guess from the title, these were set in the lands of the crusades, or rather a fictionalized version thereof. They too featured young people, some of whom happened to be gay. Chaz also demonstrated his expertise as a romance writer. The books were published as three (fat) volumes in the UK and six (more sensibly-sized) volumes in the USA. Here are links to my reviews.

Finding these books is a little more difficult, partly because they are not available as ebooks, and partly because it isn’t always easy to tell if a book being offered second hand is part of the 3-volume UK series or the 6-volume US series.

Chaz sweetie, you wouldn’t happen to need someone to do ebook editions for you, would you?

Anyhow, these are two good fantasy series, each featuring gay boys, and each written by people who have an intimate knowledge of what being a gay boy is like. And if they were published today I’m pretty sure they would be packaged as YA. Why not give them a try?

And yes, I know I described a 5-book series and 6-book series as “a little” fantasy. It’s not like this is Robert Jordan territory now, is it?

Get Your African Monsters Here

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

African Monsters - Margret Helgadottir & Jo Thomas (eds.)


The good folks at Fox Spirit are doing an excellent series of books looking at monster legends around the world. Significantly they are asking writers from other countries to write about their own monsters. The first volume, European Monsters, has been available for some time, and you can now buy volume two, African Monsters. Here’s the Table of Contents.

  • Nnedi Okorafor: On the Road
  • Joan de la Haye: Impundulu
  • Tade Thompson: One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sunlight
  • Jayne Bauling: Severed
  • Su Opperman: The Death of One
  • T.L. Huchu: Chikwambo
  • Dilman Dila: Monwor
  • S. Lotz: That Woman
  • Toby Bennett: Sacrament of Tears
  • Chikodili Emelumadu: Bush Baby
  • Joe Vaz: After The Rain
  • Dave-Brendon de Burgh: Taraab and Terror in Zanzibar
  • Nerine Dorman: A Whisper in the Reeds
  • Vianne Venter: Acid Test
  • Nick Wood: Thandiwe’s Tokoloshe
  • James Bennett and Dave Johnson (artist): A Divided Sun

Yes, that last one is in comic form. The book also has illustrations from Su Opperman, Kieran Walsh, Mariam Ibrahim, Eugene Smith and Benali Amine.

Nnedi’s story was previously published in Eclipse 3 from Nightshade. Tade’s story was in Mothership but has been substantially re-written for this book. All of the other stories are original.

Some of the authors have been supplying some background about the monsters featured in their stories at the Fox Spirit blog.

So, all of you people asking for more diversity in fantasy, here’s your chance.

David Rain (Tom Arden) – R.I.P.

~ Cheryl

I’ve just had the sad news that David Rain died this morning after a long battle with cancer. Most of you won’t know David by that name, but as Tom Arden he produced a fabulous fantasy series — The Orokon — which I reviewed all five volumes of for Emerald City.

While the Orokon books were big, fat epic fantasy, they absolutely refused to take themselves seriously. They were irreverent, they were sharply witty, and they were outrageously camp at a time when diversity wasn’t a thing. At times they were so grotesque as to remind me of Gormenghast, at others they were pure pantomime. There were some great characters too, including the bumbling guards, Morven & Crum, the voracious Aunt Umbecca, and of course Penge the penis (who belonged to the bullying Polty but was very much a character in his own right).

I met David a couple of times. He lived in Brighton. He was a really lovely man and, I gather from tributes on Facebook, a great teacher to his students at Middlesex University.

Earlier this year David and his partner, Antony, reissued the Orokon series as Kindle books in the UK under David’s own name. I guess the lack of US editions is to do with rights issues. If there’s anything Wizard’s Tower can do to help, Antony, please let me know. Here are links to my reviews:

You can buy the books here.

Me On The Aqueduct

~ Cheryl

It is that time of year again, so I have written my post for the traditional end of year review series on the Aqueduct Press website. If you want to know what I have been enjoying reading, watching and listening to over the year, go here and I will tell you. Thanks as ever to Timmi and the Aquedistas for giving me the space.

By the way, since writing that I have raced through Dark Orbit by Carolyn Ives Gilman. It is a fascinating book. Review coming soon.

Book Review – Radiance

~ Cheryl

Radiance - Catherynne M Valente

Every time I write a review of one of Cat Valente’s books I end up feeling horribly inadequate. I’m sure that there are subtleties of the plot that I haven’t grasped. I’m sure that I have failed to convey the beauty of Cat’s prose. I’m sure that I haven’t managed to convince my readers that this book is just the Best Thing Ever.

There’s a spoiler issue too. I find myself unable to avoid explaining just a little bit of the plot, because it is so lovely. And the books are so complex that I feel that people need a little help, just in case. Of course with Radiance there’s also the issue that we get told that Severin Unck is dead right there in the chronology that Cat presents at the start. Radiance is one of those books in which you get told what has happened and then have to go back and find out why. Sorry, authors do that sometimes. I don’t think I have told you too much. I hope so anyway.

I suck. I want you to love this book as much as I do. That may not be possible.

Ah well, I have written something. You can find it here. Or just take my word for it and buy the book.

The VanderMeer Winter Mix Tape StoryBundle

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The BestiaryThe fabulous Ann & Jeff VanderMeer have a thing going over at StoryBundle. It is a collection of works that they have been involved in, and which will make up one of those bundle things that people seem so obsessed with these days. I haven’t really caught up with this trend yet, but Ann & Jeff sent me the bundle as a holiday present (because they are lovely people) and anyway it is an excuse to run this gorgeous piece of art by Ivica Stevanovic which forms the cover of one of the included titles.

The bundle is notable to me because it contains a lot of translated fiction. In particular it includes the fabulous Leena Krohn’s Collected Fiction (in two volumes). Krohn is one of Finland’s finest writers and has a deeply weird imagination. As I understand it, the two volumes contain everything of hers that it available in English. That’s a bundle in itself.

Then again, there’s also The Best of Spanish Steampunk, and there’s The Eisenberg Constant by German writer, Eugen Egner, which The Times compared to Kafka and Monty Python. The English language material contains Clarkesworld: Year 6, and the World Fantasy Award winning Crandolin from the talented Anna Tambour.

And of course there is The Bestiary, which includes stories by Karen Lord, Rochita Loenin-Ruiz, Cat Valente, Karin Tidbeck, Vandana Singh, China Miéville and many others.

Go ye forth and bundle, people (or whatever the appropriate verb is).

Airship Pirates

~ Cheryl

Airship Shape & Bristol FashionPiracy is a fact of life in the ebook business. I get regular reports from Juliet on the game of Whack-a-Mole required to keep on top of the problem with regard to her novels. However, not everything gets pirated. The pirates want to attract people to their sites (to inadvertently download the malware they have lurking there, which is what pays their bills), so they make a point of pirating popular books.

I’m therefore rather pleased to learn that Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion is being pirated. The book has done remarkably well for an anthology by local writers. To date we’ve sold over 650 copies in all formats, and sales show no sign of slowing down. Why not check out what all of the excitement is about? Sales links here.

Today on Ujima: Lovecraft, Planetfall, AIDS and Cinders

~ Cheryl

Today’s show on Ujima began with me interviewing local writer, Jonathan L Howard, about his new book, Carter & Lovecraft (which I reviewed here). We talked a fair amount about Lovecraft the man, about the World Fantasy Awards and the controversy surrounding the trophy, and about how and why Lovecraft might be relevant today.

Next up was Emma Newman. She couldn’t make it into the studio (too busy) so we did a pre-record over Skype. Emma and I talked mainly about Planetfall (which is excellent): about 3D printing, small isolated communities, mental illness and the need for diverse characters in books. We also talked a bit about Emma’s year of horror, about Tea & Jeopardy, and about the forthcoming Split Worlds live role-playing game and masked ball (tickets for which are available here).

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

The second hour began with Sheila Ollis from The Brigstowe Project talking about the current state of the AIDS epidemic, both in Zimbabwe and among immigrant communities in Bristol. While it is good to know that AIDS is now survivable, it was clear from talking to Sheila that there is still a very long way to go, especially in communities were myths about the disease are still widely believed.

Finally I welcomed my colleague, Andreeja, and Nick Young from The Creative Youth Network. Nick is directing a modern re-imagining of Cinderella using the young people from CYN as his cast and crew. Andreeja, as well as working for Ujima, is the social media guru for CYN. Nick and I could probably have talked for a very long time about fairy tales, and I did send him away with a recommendation to read Cat Valente. Along the way we referred to this article in Bristol 24/7, and I had a bit of a rant about this particular show at the Hippodrome.

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

The playlist for today’s show was:

  • Lucky Star – Labi Siffre
  • Tokyo – Lianne La Havas
  • Take the A Train – Duke Ellington
  • We were Rock n Roll – Janelle Monáe
  • Hound Dog – Big Mama Thornton
  • Together Again – Janet Jackson
  • Independent Woman Part I – Destiny’s Child
  • Unstoppable – Lianne La Havas

I was particularly pleased to play Big Mama Thornton. Her version of Hound Dog was #1 on Billboard for seven weeks in 1952, selling almost 2 million copies. But because that Presley guy covered it no one remembers her any more.

My next show is going to be on December 30th. I rather suspect that no one will want to be on it and I’ll just play music for two hours, but if anyone is keen to be interviewed let me know. I can do pre-records on Skype so it doesn’t matter where in the world you are.

The Storm Has Arrived

~ Cheryl

Northern Storm - Juliet E McKenna
And not just the weather outside either. No, I’m talking about the latest release from Wizard’s Tower: Northern Storm, book 2 in the Aldabreshin Compass series by Juliet E McKenna. The book is available in most of the usual stores now, and I’m sure Nook will get things sorted soon.

You can find the purchase links here. Google Books appear to have it on sale, should you be after an epub.

Over on her blog, Juliet is doing a bit PR by way of a short story set in the Aldabreshin Archipelago and featuring a minor character from Southern Fire. You can find that, and Juliet’s introduction to it, here.

By the way, the new book has a bit of background on the role of eunuchs in Aldabreshin society. Juliet’s degree is in Classics, so she’s well informed about such things. We have been having an interesting chat. For now let’s just say that Byzantium is a fascinating place, and not just because of Theodora.