Personal

Last Lap

~ Cheryl

Those of you who have been following my fundraising challenge for One25 will know that I am almost up to 100 miles. I expect to pass that milestone later today, and I’m hoping that I will have passed the target of 125 miles by the end of Sunday. The main reason for that is that I will be leaving for Ã…con on Monday and I’m unsure how much time I’ll be able to get for walking while I’m away. (Obviously I have several hours to walk on the boat, but I can’t track that through GPS.)

The other thing I need to do it get the funding up to 100%. We are currently less than £50 short of the target, so I don’t need many of you to help, but I do need some people to step up, please.

The good news is that as of yesterday the campaign had raised £8,743 thanks to all of the people involved. That’s amazing news, and it is going to make a big difference to the lives of street sex workers in Bristol over the coming year.

Great show, people!

Story Sale

~ Cheryl

This one appears to be official now. At least one of my fellow authors has written about it. So I guess I can celebrate too. I am delighted that I will be having a story in Rainbow Bouquet, an anthology of queer love stories to be published on Valentine’s Day. The editor is Farah Mendlesohn, and one of my fellow authors is Sarah Ash, so I’m in excellent company already. Here’s the full ToC:

  • The Man of My Dreams by Harry Roberts
  • Proof of Evil by Ed Ahern
  • A Hatred of Wednesdays by Victoria-Melita Zammit
  • Ubytok — umu pribytok by Erin Horáková
  • The Poet’s Daughter by Cheryl Morgan
  • Duet for Piano, Four Hands by Sarah Ash
  • Stronger Than Death by Kathleen Jowitt
  • More than Starlight, More than Rain by Sean R. Robinson
  • O’Canada by Garrick Jones
  • Firebrand by MJ Logue

I can tell you that my story is not trans-themed. I also note that the publishers, Manifold Press, specialise in queer historical fantasy. No more clues.

Awards Eligibility Post

~ Cheryl

As you may have noticed, the Hugo Award nominating period has opened for this year. Consequently everyone is making eligibility posts. I wasn’t too fussed about that until I discovered that Jim Fitzpatrick is designing this year’s trophy base. As he is one of my favorite artists, I can’t wait to see what it looks like. And obviously I would love to have one.

Unfortunately I haven’t done much award-worthy in the past year. I have been too busy doing trans stuff. Technically I am eligible for Fan Writer, but I have done so little that it would be wrong to nominate me. And anyway, I have one of those already.

I do have one published short story from last year. It is called “A Piece of the Puzzle” and it appeared in the anthology, The Hotwells Horror, which a bunch of us put together to celebrate the life of the late David J Rodger. The story is set in Prohibition-era New York and features a young woman called Sonia Greene who has ambitions to be a writer. All of the profits from the sale of the book go to the mental health charity, MIND, so you would be doing a good thing by buying a copy.

It also occurs to me that my keynote speech from Worlding SF is a Related Work of sorts. You can watch the whole thing for free here.

Most importantly, however, The Green Man’s Heir is an eligible novel. Competition in the Hugos is fierce, but I would love to see Juliet appear in the also-ran list. And if you happen to be a member of the British Fantasy Society, you know what you need to do.

This Year’s Card

~ Cheryl


I still have a few, mostly elderly, friends and relatives to whom I send cards. I always buy my cards from my friend Dru Marland. The design I chose for this year is shown above. So for everyone who isn’t getting a phsyical card, here’s your holiday greetings thing. May you have a fabulous end of the year celebration.

And if you fancy buying cards from Dru, you can do so here.

No Eurocon or Finncon for Me

~ Cheryl

Earlier this year I was looking forward to spending much of July in Europe. I very much wanted to go to the Eurocon in France, and the fabulous Lauren Beukes is a GoH at Finncon this year. Sadly there is so much politics going on in the UK at the moment, with the release of the Gender Recognition Act consultation, that I simply can’t afford to be away, even for the odd weekend. In particular I absolutely have to be around for Bristol Pride on the 14th.

Profuse apologies to anyone who was expecting to see me at one of those conventions, and to anyone who was hoping to buy a copy of The Green Man’s Heir from me.

Film Preview Night #LGBT247

~ Cheryl

Some of you may remember that the lovely people at Bristol 24/7 have been working on a film project about LGBT life in the city. I got asked to be it in, as did many of my friends. Tonight at the Arnolfini there will be a preview screening. I think there are still tickets left if you are interested. And if you can’t make it, the film will be screened a lot on Pride weekend.

Here’s a sneak peek.

I Get Royalties

~ Cheryl

It is always a pleasure to get royalties on a book you have been involved in. This time I am even more pleased, because I’m actually being paid for writing about trans characters in SF&F. My essay is part of a great book too: Gender Identity and Sexuality in Current Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Francesca Barbini. It includes Juliet McKenna’s BSFA Award nominated essay on the barriers for women and minorities in the publishing industry. Clearly other people have enjoyed the book (and I know that Luna Press sold out of the copies they had brought to Worldcon in Helsinki), so why not get a copy?

Handfasted

~ Cheryl


I spent Friday in Glastonbury where my boss at The Diversity Trust, Berkeley Wilde, was celebrating his handfasting to his partner, Duncan. They have been legally married for a few months, but being pagans it was important to them to have a proper handfasting ceremony at a significant time of the year. I was delighted to be asked to attend the ceremony.

This is actually the first time I have been to a formal handfasting. That’s partly because I haven’t been to a wedding for any sort in decades, and partly because I am a very independent neo-pagan and not part of any official group. However, I was very impressed with the ceremony and pleasantly surprised at how well I could fit it to my own rituals.

A great time was had by all, and I surprised myself by surviving the vegan banquet without eating any of the herbivores. Cat genes can be a pain at times.

Obviously no wedding is complete without a picture of the happy couple, so here they are.

In Mourning

~ Cheryl

The news broke last night that Ursula K Le Guin had died. Since then my social media streams have been full of very sad posts from distraught people. Yeah.

Many of my friends, of course, knew Le Guin well, and/or had consciously modeled their writing on hers. I only met her once. As I recall I was so terrified that I didn’t manage to say more than, “hello”.

One of the things about getting old is that you check obituaries for the age of the deceased. These days far too many of the people I see dying are younger than me. 88, however, is what we Brits call a “good innings”. And in this case it is very much a life well lived.

If I manage to reach that age I shall be delightedly astonished. However, even given all those extra years, I don’t expect to produce work as brilliant as Le Guin’s, nor do I expect to have anywhere near the profound influence on the world that she had.

That doesn’t mean that I will stop trying.

“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.” — Ursula K Le Guin, The Dispossessed

Award Eligibility Post

~ Cheryl

It is that time of year again when I do an award eligibility post to make my author friends less self-conscious about doing their own.

I have very little eligible work this year.

Technically this blog is fan writing, but I’ve already won a Hugo for that.

I did have one story published: “Camelot Girls Gone Wild” in Fantastically Horny from Far Horizons. Few of you will have read that, and frankly I don’t expect to win any awards for comedy erotica about a gay satyr.

The one thing I have done that might be award-worthy is my essay on trans characters in SF&F in Gender Identity and Sexuality in Fantasy and Science Fiction from Luna Press. However, that’s just one essay in a book full of good stuff. If you are going to nominate this I’d prefer you nominated the whole book and gave the award to the editor, Francesca T Barbini.

The Hotwells Horror

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Well, today seems to be a day for book announcements.

The Hotwells Horror is an anthology put together by my friend Pete Sutton in honor of local writer, David J Rodger who sadly took his own life in 2015. The book is named after one of David’s own stories and features contributions from a number of authors who knew David, including me.

There is a launch party planned for Saturday Jan. 13th. The venue hasn’t been confirmed yet. I have to be in Bath that afternoon, but as the event is scheduled to run until 19:00 I hope to make it to Bristol before the end.

All proceeds from sale of the book will be devoted to Mind, the mental health charity. This delights me as they have been very supportive of trans people over the past year.

In case anyone is interested, my story is set in New York in the 1920s and is told from the point of view of a Mrs. Sonia Greene. There may be hideous creatures from beyond the stars too.

And if you want to know a little bit more about David work, he did a reading at BristolCon Fringe back in 2014.

Solstice Card

~ Cheryl


Yes, it is that time of year again. And because I am still in the Northern Hemisphere today is the Winter Solstice and a wintery card is required. If you were among the small group of people to whom I still send paper cards (mostly ancient relatives who don’t do the Internet much) this is what you would have got in the mail. The art is, as always, by my very talented friend, Dru Marland. You can find her Etsy shop here.

Happy Solstice, everyone! Thanks for being here over the past circuit around the sun.

History Goes Viral

~ Cheryl

No, I’m not referring to the ongoing-nonsense about whether people of color existed before they were “discovered” by European colonialists. While I was down in Hove I spotted this tweet from one of the best satirical accounts on Twitter:

Naturally I couldn’t resist offering a few comments. Somewhat to my surprise, some of those tweets I made have over 900 likes. One has over 1000. And it is still going, well over a week later.

Interestingly, despite all of the attention, I haven’t got much in the way of new followers. I’m not overly upset over that. After all, hordes of followers generally means endless harassment. As it is I check new followers for TERFs and block them on sight. But this has been something of a window on what social media popularity is like. I’m rather glad it doesn’t happen often.

Oh, and that tweet has lots of very funny replies. The whole thread is worth reading.

Missing in Blogdom

~ Cheryl

Yeah, I know it has been very quiet here of late. When I got back from Worldcon I basically had to do a whole month’s worth of day job in two weeks. I really shouldn’t have taken a couple of days off to go to Hove for the cricket, because things have been a bit crazy since then. Of course it was glorious, so I don’t regret it, but it made the past week even more frantic than it needed to be. I took yesterday off, but today it is back at work again and the coming week looks like being equally busy.

Anyway, I’ll have a little bloggery today, and tomorrow I must do the post for last week’s Ujima show. Other stuff may or may not happen. I will at least be on social media a bit.

It is @StonewallUK #ComeOutForLGBT Day

~ Cheryl


It is campaign time with Stonewall again, and the current message is that, while we might have come along way, there is still a long way to go.

A centerpiece of the campaign is a new survey which reveals that anti-LGB hate crime has increased by 79% since their previous survey in 2013. There’s no comparison figure for anti-trans hate crime because Stonewall wasn’t advocating for trans people in 2013, but the current survey shows that 41% of trans people have experienced hate crime in the past year, compared to only 16% for LGB people.

The report also reveals that 81% of the people who experienced hate crime did not report it to the police. 71% did not report the incident to anyone other than the Stonewall survey. These numbers are not broken down between LGB and T, but one of the submissions to the government’s 2016 Trans Equality Inquiry — from hate crime specialist, Professor Neil Chakraborti — stated that many trans people don’t bother to report hate crime because for them it is a daily occurrence.

It is also worth noting that the report says 25% of trans people who contacted the “emergency services” felt that they had been discriminated by the people they were dealing with. It appears from the report that by “emergency services” Stonewall primarily means calling 111 for medical assistance, but there are equivalent fears about reporting hate crime to the police.

Anyway, one of the things Stonewall asked people to do is get a photo taken with their slogan and an ally. I haven’t had time to do that, so I make something using the slogan and the most recent photo I have of Kevin and I together (at Worldcon in Helsinki which is why we have the massive badges). As I am sure I have said before, without Kevin’s love and support I would probably not have survived transition. Stand up for your friends, people. Even if it is only one life you save, you have still made a difference.

My Hugos Dress

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment


Having got back to Helsinki, I have been able to pick up all of the photos that Paula Heinonen took at the Hugo Awards. Here are Kevin and myself all dressed up ready for the show.

Say Goodbye, Parsley

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The UK papers are all full of fine obituaries for Michael Bond, the creator of Paddington Bear, who died yesterday. Like many people of my age, I loved Paddington as a kid, but I have never been a huge fan because, well, I don’t much like marmalade.

Bond, however, created much more than Paddington. My favorite of his creations is The Herbs, an animated TV series that ran on BBC and featured a group of zoomorphic and anthropomorphic herbs. There were Parsley the Lion, Dill the Dog and Sage the Owl. There were Sir Basil and Lady Rosemary, and their rustic gardener, Bayleaf. There was bumbling Constable Knapweed. There were Mr & Mrs Onion and all the little Chives. And there were occasional guest characters such as Belladonna the Witch, and Tarragon.

Who was Tarragon? Well the best thing to do is show you. Here is the story of how Bayleaf spilled his sack of plant food, and how Tarragon (with a little help from Parsley and Sage) came to live in the magic herb garden.

Old

~ Cheryl

As those of you on Facebook will know by now, today is my birthday. It is also one of those birthdays with a zero on the end, which tends to prompt a bit of self-reflection.

I’m doing this post for two reasons. Firstly I’m not going to be online much today. I’ll be off to Plymouth to do some trans awareness training at the university. So I’m scheduling this post to go up tomorrow to apologize to people for not responding much to any well wishing that might be happening online.

Also at this sort of age you tend to get a bit morbid, so I’m working my angst out on you lot, OK?

Yeah, no. Who cares, right? I’m still fit enough (physically and mentally) to carry on working. I’m still enjoying life. And I have now lived for 10 more years than I expected to when I first decided to undergo gender transition. This is all a bonus.

OK, I might be a little more reluctant to take on new, long-term projects. And I do need to actually have plans in place, just in case my health takes a sudden turn for the worse. Other than that, I plan to carry on having fun.

Barcelona Thanks

~ Cheryl

I wasn’t very awake yesterday, and managed to write a whole blog post on the Barcelona trip without doing the most important thing: thanking everyone. I shall rectify that now.

First up, thanks to Agnès Garcia-Ventura and Saana Svärd who organized the whole thing. Some of you folks will know a bit about event organizing. The conference was only about 50 people, but it was 3 days of intense programming, two major social events, one catered lunch plus break refreshments on all three days. There was no attendance fee. I’m seriously impressed with the job that Agnès and Saana did.

Secondly, huge thanks to everyone who made me so welcome throughout the week. I was a total outsider with no formal qualifications in history or archaeology, but I was accepted instantly and feel like I have made a bunch of great new friends (most of whom are young enough to be my children). I learned a lot during the week, and hope to be able to do much better history because of it.