Payal Dhar's Blog: Writer's Log, page 3

The annual update, version 43

Another trip around the sun and I live to tell the tale. A bit late with this update, mainly because there’s been a lot going on—such as, the #BDB campaign for which I’ve been doing much of the web admin work; a new YA book I started on; another regular assignment to fit into my carefree freelancer’s life; and a handful of work deadlines to be met. Anyhow…

Even though 2018 was a decent year, it ended on a low note. There was a lot of shock, anguish, anger and loss to process. Some things have sorted themselves out; for others, the fight goes on. On the bright side, I made some new friends from around the world, which proved yet again the power of online communities when you’re struggling. Recent despairs have also had the unprecedented effect of reminding me of the power of stories, of any creative endeavour really, to take us to great heights and ever greater depths. As a reaffirmation of my chosen career, it couldn’t have been better timing. It gives me great hope for 2019.

On to business. Let’s see how I did with my goals for 2018:

Flesh out a short story into a full-length novel: Well, I wrote 17,000 words and got a decent start. I also wrote about 45,000 words of another novel. Between the two of them, I’ve probably finished the equivalent of one book, even though that only leaves me with more frustration.
Fitness: All good here, except a dip in the last three months of the year.
Drawing: Ha ha ha.
Website redesign: YES, YES, YES! There are some bugs to iron out, such as reinstate all the disappeared media files. I also separated my author site from my freelance site, and made myself a Contently portfolio (what I’m trying to say is, please hire me.).

Score: 2.5 out of 4. I’ll take it, thank you!

Now on to the agenda for 2019:

Finish writing one book, any one, and submit to a publisher.
Stay fit.
Pitch more freelance writing ideas. Get into at least one of my dream publications.
Blog more regularly.
Visit Japan.
Find time for gaming.

Too ambitious? We’ll find out next year.

~PD

Falling from grace

I’ve been involved in many fandoms over the years. Most of them have taken a similar trajectory—the euphoria of discovery; a frenzy of inhaling anything and everything related to the fandom; finding out about the people behind (or part of) it; and either a tapering off of interest levels, or being let down by your heroes or the powers-that-be behind the object of your fascination.

You’d think that being let down would lead to disillusionment. Of course, that happens, it’s all part of the grieving process. However, both times when a once-happy pursuit ended up as a rock lodged in my stomach, there were positive outcomes. First, a book that ended up being nominated for an award. Second, being part of a global campaign for better representation for LGBT storylines on TV.

Cricket’s match-fixing scandal

Various sports fandoms were the highlight of my teens and 20s. At first it was cricket, then football. The football one petered out when I lost my partner-in-crime-and-other-things. The cricket one, which was more intense and involved, well, that’s another story.

But long before that, since I was 10 years old, I’d been crazy about cricket. This was kicked into a new gear when I met Swapna. We were 14 or 15 years old, reluctantly thrown together. (In the almost three decades that have followed, we’ve since bonded over other things, like Doctor Who.) This was the late 1980s and 1990s, so there was no internet to fuel our obsession passions. It was just us, the game, and our imaginations.

Towards the late 1990s, my hero was Azharuddin, and anyone who knows anything about cricket will recall why he fell from grace. At that time, however, I was able to redirect my love for the game into actually playing it. I played for my college for two years; we were university champions. The game proved itself bigger than an individual. Years later, Hit for a Six was born. It was nominated for a Crossword Award in 2019 (didn’t win). Watch this video to know more about how the story was born:

The fall of #Berena

Last year, one of the very few blog posts I wrote was about the #Berena storyline in BBC’s Holby City, a long-running hospital drama. When I started watching the series, lured by the knowledge of the Serena Campbell/Bernie Wolfe romance, I had no idea how deeply involved I would become in it. I won’t repeat all the reasons it was a groundbreaking story.

But it was too good to last, and when Holby City backed away their commitment to tell a responsible, trope-free story, the impact was shattering. I found myself grieving like it was a real-life tragedy. A reasonably sensible person, this effect on me of a work of fiction was a body blow of sorts. I wasn’t a teenager; I was in my 40s. I do know that Bernie and Serena don’t really exist. And yet, the pain was real.

Getting under your skin is the hallmark of a good story. When that story seeps into the lives of people across borders and cultures, it’s an indication that there’s something monumental afoot. Something monumental is exactly what happened when two middle-aged women kissed in a British TV series. Read on

Berena was a reiteration of the power of stories and their ability to mirror our world, especially when some of us don’t see ourselves represented. It was a hope for a future and a promise of a fairer world. But it turned its back on us. As did those who had taken on the responsibility of telling the story in a respectful manner. Allies became appropriators.

Then, something amazing happened. I found I wasn’t alone. This time around, the internet provided a lifeline to the fandom and I found a group of fellow sufferers from across the globe. Long story short, we were able to support each other and go from beating our chests to setting up a campaign for better representation. And equally important, we want to support those for whom story going wrong has caused real physical and mental injury and anguish.

Called #BerenaDeservedBetter, we want, first of all, an acknowledgement from the makers that they caused harm. Next, we hope that this will be a resource for better representation in future.

I’ve been a writer for 20 years, an author for over 10, but it’s taken me the last month to really appreciate the power of stories. They lift you up, they drag you down. Sometimes they make you create something new. They are never just stories.

~PD

No.12 of #52Stories: Lewis

My love of all things Jemma Redgrave led me to the pilot episode of Lewis, a spin-off of the crime series Inspector Morse, based on the books of Colin Dexter. Now, you might wonder what connection all of this has with Jemma Redgrave. Simple: she had a role in the story and I’m currently on a mission to watch everything with JR in it.

The pilot episode of the series sees Detective Inspector Lewis returning from secondment (I can’t recall where—was it South Africa?) and thrown head first into the murder of a promising mathematics student at Oxford. The prime suspect, Daniel Griffon (Jemma Redgrave plays Daniel Griffon’s mother), is linked to a prominent business family who featured in a murder case in Morse’s time. Lewis eventually cracks the case based on an obscure clue left in the old case file by Morse.

During the days of Inspector Morse, Lewis was quite my favourite. Now I find that Lewis’s , the taciturn Detective Sergeant James Hathaway, has taken on that mantle. Maybe there’s a pattern there.

Well, I came on board to watch the Redgrave—and she was superb in it, one of her better roles—but stayed also for the story. Particularly the pilot episode’s tip of the hat to Morse, not just with the cryptic lead left on a newspaper clipping, but also mention of the Endeavour Scholarship for music and a few other hints that mostly diehard Morse fans will get.

Does this mean I’ll be watching Lewis? Well, it’s early days. We’re watching many British crime dramas, but the criterion is that it must have a lead female detective. Now that Vera is back of air, Lewis has been pushed down the list, but it’s still very much there. On the other hand, I might just go down the JR route and move on to something else she’s in…

~PD

Monday to Sunday: What I’m watching these days

Every once in a blue moon, a reader stumbles upon my blog. I was reminded of that fact yesterday, which in turn reminded me how neglected Writer’s Log has been lately. What can I say? I’ve been too busy reading, writing and playing games (I’m so close to finishing Thief, Wolfenstein: The New Order and Mass Effect 3 [Marie, stop narrowing your eyes at me], and Sleeping Dogs and Life Is Strange are not going to play themselves, are they?). The other thing that has me occupied these days is TV serials. Funny, because I don’t have a TV; I do have a projector and an empty wall, though.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere earlier, I’ve been on the lookout for series with (good) stories about women. Turns out, this is exactly the right time to be searching for those. Though I can’t take full credit for the collection listed below, I can certainly share:

Mondays: Vera

This is an ITV series based on Ann Cleeves’ mystery novel series. Vera is all about DCI Vera Stanhope of Northumberland and City Police leading various murder investigations. Played to perfection by Brenda Blethyn, Vera is a straight-talking, no-nonsense police detective. You can count on her to spot things that no one else does and you won’t find anyone who works harder than her. Chances are, her sharp tongue will lash out at you, but you’re equally likely to be taken aback by glimpses of a kind heart. Vera is a maverick and incredibly sharp. She’s arguably one of the best older female characters on TV at the moment. Each episode is 1.5 hours long, so late-night writing on Mondays is a goner these days.

Tuesdays: Collateral

In the quest to devour everything with Nicola Walker in it, I stumbled upon Collateral. This is a four-part BBC drama, a police procedural investigating the killing of a London pizza delivery man. It also has Billie Piper and John Simm (of Doctor Who fame), an added bonus. Just watched the one episode (and loving Nicola Walker [of course]), so let’s see where this one goes.

Wednesdays: Holby City

Another BBC drama, a hospital story based in the fictional city of…you guessed it, Holby. The astounding thing about Holby City is that it’s in its 20th year; not just that, each episode is usually an hour long, and they manage to put out 52 episodes a year!!! So basically, it hasn’t been off air for 20 years. Imagine that. Anyhow, we started watching Holby City for the Serena Campbell and Bernie Wolfe story line — more on that here — but are now fully invested in the non-#Berena characters too. Yes, it helps that Serena is back in the story and Bernie is in the background, but there are plenty of other interesting characters (good, bad and downright ugly). Must say, though Holby City has a host of interesting women: Jac Naylor, Roxanna Macmillan and Frieda Petrenko, off the top of my head. I’m not ashamed to admit that I started watching Holby from series 18, episode 17, when Jemma Redgrave made her first appearance on the show.

Thursdays: Call the Midwife

Another one from the BBC stable (Are you seeing a pattern here? No? Oh well.), based on Jennifer Worth’s memoirs, also titled Call the Midwife. The series, I daresay, is somewhat more interesting and well-rounded than the book itself, expanding from Worth’s recorded experiences, and branching out from her somewhat judgemental (in places) observations coming from her middle-class upbringing. It tells the story of a team of nurses and midwives, some of whom are nuns, based in the poor London neighbourhood of Poplar in the 1950s and 1960s. Rather than just a collection of stories about children being born (and yes, there are a lot of gory birthing scenes with plenty of screaming [makes me wonder what the neighbours think we’re watching]), it depicts a rich tapestry of lives in an impoverished setting in difficult times. CTM touches upon events that are etched in stone in history, such as the thalidomide disaster, the introduction of oral contraceptive pills, immigration after WW II, incest, faith, sexuality, dementia and plenty more. Particularly fascinating is the choice of these women to take up nursing and/or midwifery as careers, and even to become nuns, as a means of gaining independence and living their lives on their own terms. All of this at a time when women were not expected to have careers, and expected to be wives and mothers to the exclusion of all else.

Fridays: Grey’s Anatomy

Since The Fosters finished, Grey’s Anatomy has been the only American series on the agenda for the moment. I’ve been a devotee of Grey’s since it first started 14 years ago, though my faith was shaken after Sandra Oh left the show, and then Sara Ramirez. I even stopped for a season (season 13). However, I was enticed to return to it in season 14, which has shown a remarkable improvement. This is a medical drama about a group of doctors in Seattle’s Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. I suppose I continue to watch to know what’s going to happen to a number of beloved characters, including Meredith Grey, Alex Karev, Miranda Bailey and Richard Webber. I haven’t found myself particularly invested in most of the more recent characters, though there are some interesting story arcs.

Saturdays: Weekly off
Sundays: Casualty

If you’re still reading, then, wow. I won’t keep you much longer. Casualty is what gave birth to Holby City, and is currently airing its 32nd series (each Casualty series has 40 to 45 episodes from what I gather, each episode an hour long). It is based in the Accidents and Emergency Department of the ficitonal Holby City Hospital. I’ve only watched one episode so far (series 32, episode 24, where the irascible Jac Naylor, cardiothoracic consultant from Holby City crosses over to Casualty, but I am absolutely sure I will continue to watch.

And that rounds up my weekly television schedule. This list is always chopping and changing, of course. Sometimes I mix it up a little with a bit of sitcom. The ones that don’t make me want to throw things at my screen are Mom and One Day at a Time.

~PD

Older and wiser…again

It’s stock-taking-of-the-year time and the only thing I can think of is, 2017 was the year I discovered Berena!

Well, in the larger scheme of things, the year that just went by was a horrible one. Right-wing bigots continued to be in power, the digital enslavement of Indian citizens went on, the economy remained effed, human beings found new ways to hurt, kill and maim each other…if I go on in this vein, I’m going to have to crawl back into bed and cry myself to sleep. Thus, I’m choosing selfishness, and will look inwards into the tiny confines of my own life for the moment.

From a personal perspective, fortunately, the past year has been pretty decent. There was reading and writing, travel to old and new destinations, the discovery of new TV content, and there was chocolate. Of course, there were troubled times, but one lived to tell the tale, so let’s chalk all that down to life experience.

How did I do on my to-do list from last year? Let’s see:

Writing: Though I didn’t exactly stick to my resolution of finishing a fantasy novel, this was a good year for writing. Also, Hit for a Six came out almost on the dot of the year end, while the US edition of Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean was published in March. A short story of mine was also accepted in Harper’s Flipped anthology. Finally, I submitted two other shorties for anthologies—one a spec fic collection on India in another 70 years, the other a volume on the theme of exams—both of which have been accepted.
Fitness: Late in 2016, I discovered FitnessBlender.com, and rebuilding my fitness regime ensued with great success.
Gaming: Could have gone better, but it wasn’t too bad. A brand new game, Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition is lying in wait for me to inaugurate (early birthday present from Marie). Oh also, a couple of weeks ago, after almost two decades of gaming, I finally managed multiplayer. The grand plans didn’t quite go as anticipated, but still, I’m not hard to please. Sometimes.
Travel: In June 2017, we were invited to the wedding of some friends in Germany. With them, we visited Rathendorf, a village in Saxony; Leipzig; and Mecklenberg, the German “lake district”. On the way back to India, we popped into Prague too.
Website redesign: Oh, shut up. x-(
Blogging: Well begun but not even half done. Sigh.
Self-publishing: To be fair, this was a good year on the writing front and not the right time for self-publishing.

So now on to the list of things I intend to tick off before I turn 43:

Write aforementioned fantasy novel: I wrote a short story in late 2017 that I’m keen to flesh out into a novel. Since the story is already there, I’m hoping this will actually work out pretty quickly. Just the little matter of a publisher saying yes…
Keep up with the fitness regime: Not expecting a problem on that front.
Take up drawing again: Well, yes.
Redo the website: Don’t laugh. I’m really sick of the design.

Check back here in 365 days to see how I did.

~PD

No.11 of #52Stories: Hit for a Six — The middle-of-the-book test

(Criminally late update? Let’s brush that under the carpet, shall we?)

Back in 2010, the Guardian suggested the page-99 test to find out if you want to read a book. In short, you read page 99 of the book in question to decide if it’s worth your time.

Since my new book, Hit for a Six, is a slim 148 pages long, I fear a page-99 test might be too much of a spoiler. Thus, here’s a middle-of-the-book test:

Chapter 8

“I’m not very interesting, I don’t know why you want do a biography of me,” said Laila.

“We are supposed to pick someone ordinary,” replied Samir. His eyes widened in shock immediately as he realized what he’d said. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that you were boring or anything!”

“It’s fine.” But she was slightly stung anyway.

She had agreed to meet him in Chandnisarai’s new coffee shop called Conversations. It was not a very apt name because the music was so loud, you could barely hear yourself think. Also, everything was very expensive. Laila had ordered the cheapest thing on the menu, which turned out to be black coffee and was revolting, even after emptying four sachets of sugar in it.

Sorry it’s such a short excerpt (chapter opening page), but what did you think? Would you buy this book? (Hint: You can get it here.)

~PD

No.10 of #52Stories: Frances Hardinge

Most of my August was spent in the brilliant mind of the British children’s and YA author, Frances Hardinge. I’ve been ploughing through her books and marvelling at the sheer brilliance of her imagination. I believe, like the protagonist of the latest book of hers I read, A Face Like Glass, Hardinge too is a little insane, and that insanity definitely makes her a genius unparalleled in the world of children’s writing. High praise? Yes. And she deserves it. I can’t imagine why the world isn’t talking about her more.

It all started when I need some inspiration to write a horror story for a Scholastic anthology. Horror can be such a versatile and imaginative genre, yet it is riddled with tired, old clichés. While I thoroughly regretted saying yes to attempting a horror story, the other part of me saw it as a challenge to write something “different”. (This might be the right place for a shoutout to Marie and Kate for helping me brainstorm and pin down an idea.) One such inspiration-generating exercises constituted picking up Frances Hardinge’s Cuckoo Song. This is what the blurb said:

When Triss wakes up after an accident, she knows that something is very wrong. She is insatiably hungry; her sister seems scared of her and her parents whisper behind closed doors. She looks through her diary to try to remember, but the pages have been ripped out.

Now tell me that isn’t completely creepy. What I realized from reading Cuckoo Song is that Hardinge is a complete whizz at four things: a) creating atmosphere; b) world building; c) fantastic female protagonists; and d) taking a dig at society. All of this was further underlined by the next two books of hers that I picked up, Fly by Night and A Face Like Glass.

Fly by Night was her first novel, a by-the-seat-of-your-pants fantasy adventure middle-grade novel featuring the irrepressible Mosca Mye, her homicidal gander, Saracen, and a decidedly shady travelling companion called Eponymous Clent. Mosca, all of 12, is a magnet for trouble and tumbles headfirst into political intrigue comprising secret guilds, floating coffeehousees, demented dukes and generally conniving townspeople. Though loosely set on 18th-century England, it is by no means historical fiction.

Next, I picked up A Face Like Glass, which has been my favourite so far. It features another fascinating 12-year-old as the main character, Neverfell, who falls into a vat of cheese as a little girl and is brought up by the reclusive cheesemaker, Grandible. The setting is the underground city of Caverna, where “the world’s most skilled craftsmen toil in the darkness to create delicacies beyond compare. They create wines that can remove memories, cheeses that can make you hallucinate and perfumes that convince you to trust the wearer even as they slit your throat.” Only, the people of Caverna have no expressions; they must, instead, learn Faces to be used depending on the occasion. Neverfell is an exception, for she has a face like glass, completely transparent to whatever she is thinking, and she must wear a mask to keep this horror from her fellow-Cavernans. However, while chasing a rabbit down a hole (yes, really!) Neverfell sets in motion a chain of events that leads to a revolution.

Hardinge has written many more books. Needless to say, they are on my reading list.

~PD

No.9 of #52Stories: Career of Evil — finish or abandon?

Should you review a book you’re not sure you’ll finish? Don’t know the answer to that one, so I just won’t call this a review.

To be fair, I wasn’t exactly champing at the bit to read Robert Galbraith’s Career of Evil so I can’t exactly moan about feeling let down. It sort dropped into my lap when a friend procured it and asked if I wanted to read it before she got around to it. I wanted a break from bingeing on Frances Hardinge, so I said yes. Verdict so far: bordering on the tedious.

Career of Evil is the third in the Cormoran Strike series. I’m not going to rehash the story, so suffice it to say that this is a different mystery for Strike and Robin Ellacot—instead of being hired by clients, they investigate a problem of their own, which is, to find out who has sent a severed leg to Ellacot and why. The investigation takes them deep into Strike’s past, and so far (about half way into the book) we are none the wiser what the answers might be.

I love reading crime, but somehow have never warmed to this series. There is no doubt that J.K. Rowling is a fantastic storyteller, but the Strike series has always seemed to many notches below the quality of work that the likes of Ian Rankin, Val McDermid and the late Reginald Hill, to name a few, have produced. Moreover, irrespective of media, I have grown tired of casual sexism in the stories I want to read and see. This, I am sorry to say, makes the Cormoran Strike novels somewhat difficult to plough through.

Rowling-as-Galbraith has the same lucidity to her writing that made Harry Potter such a joy. But while in the Potter books the sheer brilliance of the story and world building allowed you to ignore all else, in the Strike series this is not so. I’m referring mostly to the paternalistic treatment of Robin Ellacot, and I find it hard to reconcile the sorted and articulate Rowling on social media with the benevolent sexism and misogyny of Galbraith. In particular, I did not appreciate the back story suddenly thrust upon Robin.

I may finish this book, mostly because I have nothing else to read right now. (I hear the books are going to be made into a TV series. Hoping it’ll be better than the books.)

~PD

No.8 of #52Stories: Why I want you to watch Holby City

**Note: Here be spoilers.**

#1 Because representation matters

The older I get the less patience I have for stories about men, for men. It doesn’t help that this covers most of TV. This started me on a quest to seek out series featuring women or series that have stories about women (not the same thing). These women had to be well-developed characters, with stories of their own rather than furthering the storylines of their male counterparts. But it was more than that, and the search slowly started changing into a more specific one for better representation. It took me through (in no particular order) Grey’s Anatomy, The Good Wife, Orphan Black, Bad Girls, Scott & Bailey, The Fall, Orange is the New Black, Rizolli and Isles, The Good Fight, Vera, Last Tango in Halifax, Call the Midwife, Mom, The Fosters, Switched at Birth, Grace and Frankie, One Mississipi, Gilmore Girls, The Good Fight and many more. Some of them were ordinary, some great and some disappointing (I’m looking at you, Last Tango in Halifax). And then came Holby City where I was compelled to stop awhile. Of course, it is not the end of my quest, but it has been wholly satisfying for a variety of reasons, not least of which was the fact that they learnt from the mistakes of their predecessors.

#2 Because it was a good story

What was it with the Serena Campbell and Bernie Wolfe storyline that was so satisfying? Was it the story itself? Brilliant casting? Or maybe the great acting and fantastic onscreen chemistry between Catherine Russell and Jemma Redgrave? Or perhaps just…Jemma Redgrave? Jokes apart, for a drama series, #Berena was a surprisingly nuanced tale. There are many things in Holby City that are ridiculous (such as the fact that nobody ever seems to give notice or that entire departments can shut down in the course of half a day or that patients can look completely recovered about five minutes after life-changing surgery), but somehow with Serena/Bernie they managed to come up with a storyline befitting two middle-aged women with pasts and the inevitable baggage that entails. Serena Campbell, deputy CEO of Holby City Hospital and head of the Acute Admissions Unit, was a long-standing favourite in the Holby universe. Major Berenice Wolfe, acclaimed frontline trauma surgeon, British Army, was brought in as a romantic interest for her. She came in as a patient and later became a co-worker. Then dramatic things happened, including a romance that was “not exactly Mills and Boon”, a personal tragedy and finally a professional one. All part and parcel of being in a drama series.

#3 Because two 51-year-old women kissed in a family-time TV show

It was Holby City that made me fully realize that I had lost patience with simplistic storylines, token diversity and hetero-washing. Hard to say for sure, but it might have been because of the sheer ordinariness of the way Serena Campbell and Bernie Wolfe’s sapphic angst fest was portrayed and how off-the-scale it still was. Though this seems contradictory, the story was both direct as well as subtle. That is to say, they did not shy away from its portrayal, but this was no codified hearts-and-flowers type of romance, nor were there elaborate declarations of love. Yet there was never any doubt what was happening. And instead of going for the stale love-conquers-all route, it went for a more realistic one, where love wasn’t enough, but there was enough of it to let each other go, and yet letting go didn’t mean the end.

In fact, the series got it right right from the beginning. Here were two women in their 50s—and they weren’t “nice women” at all—who decided to support each other rather than be rivals. They became friends and then went on to fall in love. It was a complex and layered relationship that developed on screen via a slow burn now famously on record as having been scripted more by the two actors who played the roles than by the screentwriters. Despite the slow build-up and the understatedness, Holby City‘s exploration of sexuality in this pairing was refreshing. Serena did not stray into the borderline-homophobic “but I’m straight!” path. And equally important, Bernie never apologized for her fluidity, and in her failing marriage her husband was not cast as a homophobe. What upset him was not who his wife of 25 years had had an affair with—”I don’t care—woman, man, enemy of the state”—he was upset she hadn’t told him. Finally, neither Bernie nor Serena were ever looking for a happily-ever-after.

#4 Because nobody died

Queer women are all too used to seeing themselves killed off on television. For decades, gay and bisexual characters have met a series of unfortunate ends, usually in service of moving the plot forward, crushing the spirits of the partners they leave behind, or just making a straight person feel bad.
(From Vox.com/2016/3/25/11302564/lesbian-deaths-television-trope)

A significant proportion of queer women characters only ever get one type of ending—the sort you can’t come back from. This is a subset of a trope called “bury your gays”, and one sees it across media, not just on TV. It’s easy to miss it—we are all conditioned to seeing women and LGBTQ+ characters as more dispensible than straight (white) men—though once it’s pointed out, you can never unsee it. The dead lesbian/LGBTQ+ trope is more common than we think, and the showrunner being female or queer does not make a series immune to it. Examples off the top of my head: Sally Wainwright for Last Tango in Halifax and Russell T. Davies for Torchwood. Of course, this raises the argument that, for the sake of realism, queer women (or men or anyone else) must die too, and surely, in absolute numbers, more straight people die. Well, they do, but the representation is disproportionate in the first place, thus making a disproportionate number of queer characters dying. In the case of Holby City, not only did the creators of #Berena not take the lazy way out by playing the dead lesbian card, they even cocked a snook at it. This is especially significant in light of both actors being scheduled to leave Holby City during the course of their storyline.

#5 Because in her final episode Bernie Wolfe got on a Eurostar to the south of France…

…to join Serena Campbell. And we already know that their happy ending includes Serena coming back to Holby, while Bernie goes to serve in a British Army field hospital in Sudan. Even if you discount the fact that a significant proportion of lesbians in fiction die, how many stories featuring older queer women have even had a happy ending? Not only did Holby City give these two a happily-for-now, they redefined what that meant. It didn’t include a conventional domesticity, but in fact let each partner pursue their individual goals. A mature and realistic end (for now) to a well-thought-out story about friendship, falling in love, getting together, growing apart, letting go and then getting a chance at finding happiness without having to break up or die.

It has certainly helped that both Russell and Redgrave are politically engaged individuals who were aware that by playing lovers on a prime-time medical drama they were creating history because, in the first place, rarely have two middle-aged women been given the space to explore their sexuality in a family-friendly show, and second, older lesbians are more or less invisible in the portrayal of normal, everyday-ness on TV. Unlike some actors who chose to distance themselves from the roles they have played, especially when those roles have been even vaguely unconventional, neither Russell nor Redgrave have done so. They have also come out in support of the #Berena fandom and encouraged them on whether or not the #Berena canon is continued on TV. They have acknowledged the responsiblity of “getting it right” and the role the story they protrayed has played in the real lives of young queer women. “It’s amazing the power of that little box in your sitting room,” said Catherine Russell in an interview at the MCM ComicCon in London about Serena’s story with Bernie. Difficult to argue with that.

~PD

(Image copyright: BBC)

No.7 of #52Stories: A Helping Hand

Back in 2015, I was asked by Vidya Mani if I’d like to do a book on the theme of fitting in for the StoryWeaver open-source repository of stories. She was commissioning a set of books on the broad subject of emotional intelligence. Of course, the answer was yes.

The result was A Helping Hand, a story about a reluctant ‘mentor’ who slowly thaws towards the new girl in his class.

There’s a new girl in class and our teacher has asked me to be her friend and show her around. But I’m not sure I want to – she’s… not like the rest of us!

Vidya is an exacting editor, and refused to give up as the story went through a few “meh” drafts. The final result is what you see on StoryWeaver, illustrated wonderfully by Vartika Sharma. I loved how Vartika gave her own interpretation to the epistolary format of the story. It was interesting also that I imagined the protagonist as a boy (though chose not to give him a name) and she saw her as a girl. Such surprises are what make up a truly collaborative work. Vartika’s style and the silhouette-y nature of the figures are what keep the story from being just a collection of boring, childish notes.

You can read the whole story here right now:

A Helping Hand has since been translated many times—into Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Odia, Tamil, Telugu, Konkani and even Indonesian. Since it’s a StoryWeaver publication, it is available under a Creative Commons licence, open to being downloaded, read, read aloud, printed, translated, re-illustrated and more. So feel free to read it, share it, download it, and pass it around.

~PD