'Nathan Burgoine's Blog, page 120

Writing Wednesday – So. How’ve you Been?

While I was writing Triad Blood I enacted this policy of “Writing Wednesdays” as a public check-in. I figured if I held myself accountable, out loud where everyone could see me, to my writing goals, that I’d do a better job at keeping on track. And it totally worked. I got my manuscript drafted over a month early, which gave me a month to send it to beta folk and time to really hack it down and do more revision before it was due in to the publisher for the first round of edits. It was fantastic. Writing Wednesdays were a huge success.

Then I didn’t have a novel due.

Now, I’d been holding myself to a particular schedule throughout the process of Triad Blood – Mondays and Tuesdays I worked on the novel, Wednesdays I worked on some short fiction for open calls for submission or a project to which I’d been invited, and then Thursdays and Fridays I went back to the novel. On weekends, I would write if I felt particularly inspired, but I didn’t force myself.

Again, that worked. I even held to my goal of submitting something every month – be that a short piece to an open call for submission or a contest or a private submission for something I’d been asked for. It didn’t matter. Once a month I was to send something off.

I also succeeded at that.

Then I didn’t have a novel due.

So… The good news is I still managed to maintain sending in a monthly submission since then, the bad news is I’m completely out of the habit of writing every week-day. And now that it’s October, I’ve decided the month of September was like a milk “vacation/reward” for being done, and it’s time to get back in the saddle.

So. New plan?

Mondays and Tuesdays on Story or Piece “A” – which is for a current open call and aimed at maintaining my once-a-month submission rate (at minimum).

Wednesdays are for updating this list, and working on an outline/pitch for what will be Novel 3 – I haven’t decided here what to go with at all. I have a YA idea, there’s a sequel to Light floating in my head, I know that Triad Soul and Triad Magic have potential futures… I’m not sure. But brainstorming is good for my creative health.

Thursdays and Fridays on Stories for my own project – I have an idea, and it’s bare-bones, but I’m going to move forward with it at least until the time at which I get my edits back for Triad Blood. I’m not sure exactly what I’d like to do with a finished collection of these stories, but first I’d like to write them. The rest I can untangle later.

So I should be back, with word-counts and discussion, on Wednesdays again.

Don’t let me punk out.

Open Calls I Know About

I also got out of touch with keeping up with this list, but here we go again…

Nine Star Press has a call open for Valentine’s themed stories, but no concrete deadline listed.

Torquere Press has quite a few themed submission calls up right now, the earliest deadline for which is October 15th, 2015.

The Saints and Sinners Literary Festival Short Fiction Contest – Deadline extended; loose theme of ‘Saints’ and/or ‘Sinners’ fiction; new deadline November 2nd, 2015.

Men in Love – M/M Romance; deadline November 15th, 2015.

Covalent Bonds – Geeks in Love; deadline December 15th, 2015.

Year of the Superhero – The Book Smugglers, looking for superhero short fiction; Deadline December 31st, 2015.

Friends of Hyakinthos – Fantastical gay male-themed stories set during the time of Ancient Greece or involving Hellenism in later cultures; Deadline January 1st, 2016.

Other places to always check include the Lambda Literary Calls of Submission page.

Know of any other short fiction open calls for submission? Let me know in the comments.

Naked Heart – Toronto, October 16th to 18th, 2015.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned Naked Heart yet here on the blog, but it’s a brand new LGBTQ Festival of Words hitting Toronto in two weeks. Wait. No. Less than to weeks. Egad.

I’m going to be there, reading (from an as yet undecided upon piece of work), and I’m also going to be taking in as many of the panels as I can manage around said reading and making sure I don’t pass out from poor food-intake planning (this is always a concern for me at conventions, as I forget that going to something every hour of the day leaves zero hours for maintenance of blood sugar levels).

Why am I bringing this up today? It’s the last day to buy a Festival pass at $39 before the price rises. So, it’s worth heading on over if you’re in the Toronto area from October 16th to October 18th, and getting over $150 worth of workshops and events (if you were to buy ’em individually) for the awesome event price of $39.

There are going to be so many LGBTQ writers. Seriously. Over 120. So hey, even if I’m kind of a dud and you’re all *yawn*, him, really? there are some pretty awesome people to go see while you snub me.

Anyway. I’m excited about this. I’m so chuffed to see LGBTQ festivals happening, let alone a brand new one coming into being. Firsts can be scary, and I’m sure the organizers are going to be sweating over all the details, but the biggest thing of all is for people to show up. So, if you can… Do.

And if you can’t get to all the events or don’t have the freedom to devote a whole weekend to the event, the individual events are available at individual attendance prices (some as wee as $5), which means if there’s that one thing really catching your eye, you’re still golden.

Anyway. Huge kudos to Glad Day Bookshop. I can’t wait.

The direct link to buy a pass:

http://www.gladdaybookshop.com/products/naked-heart-festival-pass

Easter Eggs

I was reading a status update from the wonderful Jeff Mann the other day, and he mentioned that Travis, the fantastic character from his YA/NA novel Cub makes an appearance in his upcoming novel about a gay country singer. I said something about loving Easter Eggs like that, and it led to a fun conversation.

I’ve always called those little throwbacks to other novels Easter Eggs after the same idea in television, movies, video games, and computer programs. The basic premise is this: they’re a little detail or a character or some other “nod” to another work. They can be tiny and unimportant or significant and plot-related, but they’ve always struck me as a small reward for readers, too.

I love them. I love finding them, recognizing them, and – as a writer – I love including them.

I generally approach Easter Eggs from two directions. One is the more direct route, and I admit it’s also a crutch for something that always gives me difficulty when I’m writing: character names. A significant majority of my characters, whether they be in short story format, or my novels, are in fact named after people I know, or “know” online. I have an entire album on my author Facebook page devoted to pictures of the pages where those character names appear. When my trick of looking up name meanings to have the character names suit some part of their personality or plot-point fails, I often post something on Facebook along the lines of, “who wants to be a vampire snack?”

Yep. High qualifications to get name-dropped in my work, I tell you.

On one notable occasion, I misread a submission deadline date, reversing numbers. I was – I thought – well ahead of deadline when I went back to the page to see what formatting the editors would prefer the document to be in when I saw the deadline was not weeks away, but hours. I hadn’t named a single character in the entire story. Everyone was still [Sister] or [Husband] or [Doctor]. In a near panic, I wrote down the names of every current employee I had at the bookstore where I worked at the time, and it worked out to fill every character naming need. I even used the bookstore as a surname for the main character. When that story was accepted, that little naming anecdote became my go-to introduction to the story whenever I get to do a reading from This is How You Die.

Oddly enough, the staff were really open to trying to hand-sell that book, come to think of it.

I also hat-tip to other authors like crazy, especially authors I adore or who inspire me on a near daily basis. I’ve named characters after many of my author friends, and sometimes there’s a little “extra” inside joke there, too, if it makes sense. I may or may not have named a character after Michael Thomas Ford and had a misunderstanding about the character’s potential clown fetish. If you’ve met Michael Thomas Ford, or have seen his feed on Facebook, you won’t find that as odd as it may sound.

The second type of Easter Egg is a little more involved, and is an Easter Egg more in line with the media version: you can blink and miss it, or if you didn’t already know the connection, it won’t really come across as one. I have a few staples – there’s a small chain of fictional coffee shops in my various stories set in Ottawa called Bittersweets, and a few scenes have happened in one of those shops in my novel, Light, as well as in more than one short story. I actually have an idea bubbling in my head for a story set that features the coffee shop, too, and if I do, I’m pretty sure I’ll pepper the customers that may walk through the door from various other tales.

I named a seedy bar the Brass Rail as a tip of the hat to Greg Herren‘s awesome mysteries – he told me once it’s his “go-to” name for a bar, and I was writing a mystery for the first time to submit to Men of the Mean Streets, which he was co-editing.

One of my most purposeful Easter Eggs was to have Kieran, my hero in Light, go to an author reading during pride week and pick up a bunch of books. At one point, he sits down to read, and finds himself lost in a great book about “the joys and plights of a gay man who was getting himself messed up with the mafia by falling for a mafia don’s son.” That’s a shout out to The Night We Met by Rob Byrnes. That book inspired me to try writing seriously, as it was the first gay book I’d ever read that was fun. I wrote a review of that book, which led to an e-mail with Rob, which led me to meeting Timothy James Beck (all four of them) and if it hadn’t been for that, I would never have been published at all.

I could go on and on. I think the Easter Egg thing happens more in series, too; there’s a joke in “Possession” that refers to the set-up in “Three.” As I was writing Triad Blood, I was well aware I was building on something that already had four stories worth of “canon” to work with, and it was quite enjoyable. Oh, and there’s also a reference in the novel (and one of the stories) to the aforementioned Jeff Mann, come to think of it, to bring this back to where the conversation started.

So, do you write Easter Eggs into your work? How purposefully? And what have been your favourites, whether in your own work or the work of others?

Throwback Thursday – Siblings

I don’t always do Throwback Thursdays, and I often can’t think of anything to flash back to. The results of coming out and the lack of photographs also make it a bit harder, in that for most people, Throwback Thursdays involve a photo. I have almost none.

But I do have posts and journal entries (both on paper and digital) from many different years, and sometimes something clicks in my head and reminds me of something from long ago, and that’s about as close as I can come to Throwback Thursdays.

The post below is a bit odd, and was born of a meme where there was a list of topics you discussed for a month, one topic a day. As I imagine quite a few of you know, growing up, I had one older sister, a mother, and a father – and that was pretty much my entire biological family (I do have an uncle, his wife, and two cousins in the UK, but I’ve not seen them in many a year, and we were never close). We moved often, I wasn’t exceptionally gifted at making friends, and I often wished for more.

As you get older, you often learn things about your family that help other things make sense. After I learned about something, I began to dream, quite often, of a particular more. This is an amalgamation of many of those dreams, with a dash of editing for consistency and to fill in the gaps my subconscious didn’t draft for me.

This post is rescued from Livejournal, dated August 23rd, 2010.

*

The first born child was Samantha. The second born child was Katherine. Both were very difficult pregnancies for their mother, and both times she was told not to try again. After the second birth, which was traumatic and much more difficult than the first, their father had a vasectomy. Samantha was popular, outspoken, and brash from nearly day one; an oft repeated story is of toddler-aged Samantha walking up to a police officer and demanding he arrest her mummy because she wouldn’t get her a baby (a doll). Katherine, born three years later, was a calm and quiet girl – odd for a red-headed girl, she would be told over and over for the rest of her life – and destined to be compared always to her three year older sister.

At age six, Samantha realized that she was being usurped by this new addition to the family, and threw tantrums over not being the baby anymore, but Katherine followed Samantha around like a puppy, yearning for her attention. In the same afternoon as Samantha would throw things and scream, they’d be seen later giggling in a corner while Samantha brushed Katherine’s hair or tied it in “braids” (knots that my poor mother would then spend hours undoing, and on two very memorable occasions, would cut off completely, with tears in her eyes, while Katherine patted her cheeks and said “No cry, mummy!”)

By ten, Samantha grew to be athletic in the way of young British girls – she loved horses, and swimming, but didn’t like team sports or contact sports. My father, the captain of his rugby team throughout his university days (having just finished his third doctorate) could at least connect with Samantha’s poor attitude about losing and her desire to be first, if not her lack of interest in proper football or rugby.

Katherine was more her mother’s child – she picked up the language and love of botany from her mother, though never desired to study it, even in grade school. While seven year old boys would chant the names of dinosaurs, Katherine could rattle off the taxonomy of roses and orchids and purple coneflowers. She liked the names, and had a facility for language that would follow her throughout her life.

They moved often, and as a result ended up with a friendlier relationship than two sisters might otherwise have had – they were the only other constant girl they had in their lives, and even though Katherine was the quiet one and Samantha was the loud one, together they were the Burgoine girls, and everyone would know them as the daughters of the man in charge of the company.

They moved overseas with the sense of adventure after a holiday there and a job opportunity both charmed their father. Samantha thought of Canada as a new place to conquer, while Katherine fell in love with the names of things – a mix of native and French and all sorts of other cultures that seemed to sprout everywhere in the country.

Samantha’s ability to become the star of any crowd served her well in Canada, her accent a benefit that she used to exude a kind of exotic sassy charm, and hitting puberty with a vengeance at fifteen and worrying her father constantly as she became a tall, beautiful woman seemingly overnight. Katherine’s talent for languages began to really show by the time was twelve, and she mirrored her Canadian teacher’s French accent excellently, despite having the “disability” of a Geordie accent of her own.

Katherine loved to read, but wasn’t much for classics. Here she and her older sister connected completely – loving the tales of “the five” and pop magazines with equal abandon, and finding that by the time both were in their teens, those three years didn’t matter much, especially once Samantha got her driver’s license, and she started asking Katherine to cover for her when she’d take Katherine “out shopping” (which meant hanging out with friends, and having her red-headed sister cover for her as a living, breathing – and far more believable – alibi).

They’d adjusted differently to life in Canada, though both loved it. Samantha loved the space, the hierarchy of small town schools (she found it easy to rise to the top of the social ladders), and the freedoms born of long travel times to anything interesting. Samantha was a good student, particularly at maths and accounting, a field her father was keen for her to enter, and by the time she reached the end of high school – and had managed to have an excruciating year long relationship with a disaster of a young man named Todd, often crying on Katherine’s shoulder on the many occasions they broke up before getting back together – she was willing to give that career a go, and applied to university.

Katherine was bright, and in the Canadian school system, she was bumped ahead a year, and still did remarkably well in all her subjects (thought Geography and History bored her to tears, with all the rote memorization). Katherine was still a quiet girl, and though both were beautiful, her freckles embarrassed her, and Samantha’s outspoken nature made her the one people noticed. Still, Katherine gathered a small group of friends, and of the two, was always the more heartbroken when the family moved again and again and again.

Their father had lung cancer, three times, and underwent surgery to have portions of his lungs removed. Samantha was shattered by this, and Katherine often was the one putting on the brave face and explaining things to their mother, who didn’t quite understand the biology of it all. Katherine had a way of speaking with her mother that calmed her mother down, something Samantha had no patience to attempt. If they had unequal relationships with their parents, neither minded much.

The first time the sisters were apart was British Columbia, where their father’s career took him just as Samantha was about to start university, and Katherine was about to start twelfth grade. Separated for the first time in their lives, Katherine wrote Samantha nearly every week, and Samantha wrote short notes back, or called and racked up long distance phone calls.

In B.C., Katherine learned something about herself – she was competent socially. To her surprise, people liked her, spoke with her, laughed at her jokes, and she didn’t actually need a brassy older sister to introduce her to the right people. Instead, she found them on her own, and secretly wondered if she had found better people than she might have been introduced to by her elder sister. She formed an especially close bond with a old widower neighbour who had served in France during World War Two, and when she graduated high school, he presented her with a medal he had been given, saying that if he’d had any children, he would have liked them to be like her, and making her cry in front of everyone, though she wasn’t embarrassed.

Her parents were just as proud of her, and when she told them she planned to attend the University of Victoria and study languages in the fall, they might not have been thrilled at her choice of major, but were very happy she was attending a university, as by this point, Samantha had dropped out of her accounting program, and was working full time at a paint and wallpaper shop, and dating a man from the “entertainment industry.”

Possession of their parents swapped hands after that one year, and never quite returned. The branch of their father’s company in Castlegar was shut down, and he led his wife back to Ontario, but Katherine remained behind in B.C. to attend university.

Their father had cancer again, this time in his brain, which scared them both, and Katherine flew back for a week during his recovery. Her mother, it was obvious, missed Katherine fiercely, but it was just as obvious that Samantha was happy to try and be everything to both of her parents, though she still had a “do first and think later” attitude that led her astray more than once, and left her with another unfinished degree, and another boyfriend – this one suffering from being chronically late to everything.

Samantha moved back in with her parents for a while – then moved out – then moved back in – and then moved out again, eventually finishing night school and becoming an administrator for a food supply company, then a water purifying company, and many other companies, and finding a married man named Andrew. They dated, he divorced, and they married.

Katherine, on the opposite side of the country, graduated with honours, working as a translator for very little pay and enjoying every article she worked on, and especially when she worked on translating kids books, at which she learned she had quite a bit of skill. She began learning the languages of the local native populations, and put together a collection of original peoples tales and stories, translated into English and French, and had minor successes with the help of Canadian arts grants. She also met a Metis man, Ben, fell for him in her usual way – quietly and totally – and they announced their engagement at Christmas, when she introduced him to her parents.

Their father had bone cancer, and lost his leg. Katherine offered to come home, but Samantha was already nearby, and having married Andrew and moved less than fifteen minutes away, it was decided that she didn’t need to upset her career or her life. Katherine consented, though she visited a few times, bringing her fiancé with her.

Her father struggled with accepting that Ben was the right one for Katherine, and wondered if Andrew had been a good choice for Samantha. Ben was a liberal, and generous with his emotions and an enthusiastic man with a desire to see the world a better place. Katherine bloomed around him, and her mother liked him a lot. Andrew had, it seemed, no desire to become more than he was, and no real desire to be a parent, even though Samantha had had a son, and was on her way to delivering a daughter as well. Still, if nothing else, their father loved having grandchildren.

Samantha’s marriage disintegrated at the same time as her father’s health, and had moved in with her parents with her two children at the time leading up to her father’s death of a rare heart cancer. Katherine and Ben came home for the last weeks of his life, and Samantha became focused on the funeral above all else, turning it into a major event, handling every detail, and being the centre of it all with great energy and magnetism. She was strong, and capable, and Katherine tried to talk to her many times but was rebuffed. Ben spoke with Andrew at the funeral, who admitted he had no idea what had happened, and when Katherine and Ben flew back to British Columbia, they were both more grateful than ever for each other.

Katherine began teaching English as a second language. Ben opened an art gallery. Samantha and her mother opened a school – despite Katherine’s protests that they didn’t perhaps know what they were doing – and Samantha met a new man, Barry, who she married six months later but Katherine couldn’t attend the wedding because she was eight months pregnant and didn’t want to risk the flight, having had a difficult pregnancy just like her own mother. Her daughter was born early, but healthy, and the doctors warned her that it might be a bad idea to have another child, and Katherine listened to their advice. Ben had a vasectomy.

The school fell apart, and although their father had left their mother a lot of money, it was all gone, and Samantha and her mother found themselves facing bankruptcy. Katherine found it in herself to help as much as she was able, but didn’t jeopardize her own financial stability.

You’re not supposed to have favourites, but my favourite sister is Katherine. Except, of course, she and I can’t both be. We’re both the second children, but only one of us exists – my mother’s difficulties with pregnancy were extreme, and although Samantha was born healthy, Katherine passed at birth. Two years after Katherine’s birth – and passing – I was born.

I sometimes wonder about Katherine, who had red hair and such a brief stay. I wonder how another sister would have changed things, and if I’d have still been around, or if two would have been enough. Would we have been close, or would she have gravitated more to her elder sister? We would have both been in B.C. when I first kissed a boy and would have loved to have been able to talk to someone about it. Would she have listened?

I’ll never know, of course.

Katherine herself is buried in a cemetery in Oxford, where my parents lived at the time. I’ve seen her grave once, and it is indelible in my mind.

I’m willing to bet she would have had a great laugh. And Ben was one lucky guy.

Pseudonyms vs. Identities

That discussion about pseudonyms is happening again.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, the briefest version is this: once again, for what feels like the millionth time, it turns out there’s another female author who writes under a male pseudonym while writing m/m fiction (and/or gay fiction, which is another huge debate I won’t get into with this post, I don’t think).

Now, for the most part, the vast majority of feedback has been, simply put: Oh, who cares? I read the book for the content, not for the gender of the author. If the book is good, it doesn’t matter.

Do I agree? Yes.

And, deep breath, also no.

Now, please, understand. There’s a lot more to it than that statement, and I want to draw a very important divide between a pseudonym and an identity. I also want to talk a little bit about appropriation, about minorities (visible and nay), and – hopefully – make some sense in the process about why I both agree and disagree with shrugging off all instances of women-writing-as-men-while-writing-about-gays on the sole merit of the content.

I’m actually going to start outside of the m/m genre completely, and bring up two things I think are somewhat parallel to the discussion. First, Rachel Dolezal; and second, Yi-Fen Chou.

You’ve likely heard of the first. Rachel Dolezal is a woman whose parents “outed” her as not black. She worked as the president of a local chapter of the NAACP, and reaction to her outing was divided. Understand, she had been hired at events to speak about her experience as a black woman. To quote wikipedia: “Dolezal’s critics contend that she has committed cultural appropriation and fraud; Dolezal and her supporters contend that her racial identity is genuine, although not based on biology or ancestry.”

The second, unless you’re much into poetry or follow diversity discussions, might have slid under your radar. Basically, Yi-Fen Chou was a pseudonym (and falsely presented biographical detail) put forth by a poet accepted for The Best American Poetry 2015 who turned out to not be of Asian descent at all, and instead a white guy who’d figured this increased his chance of publication. And, as the editor himself points out, “in keeping the poem, I am quite aware that I am also committing an injustice against poets of color, and against Chinese and Asian poets in particular.”

Now, in these cases, I’m going to take what might be a very unpopular opinion and say that, yes, both these folks did indeed commit cultural appropriation and fraud. They took facets of an identity that was not theirs to leverage what comes with that identity to their advantage.

But that’s not a pseudonym.

The way I think most people use pseudonyms is basically branding. The first time I wrote erotica, I considered a pseudonym, but I decided not to. I don’t regret that, but a lot of authors do use a different name to differentiate between different genres or themes. Having a name for erotica different from romance can be a really smart idea if your romances, say, are super-cozy and very fade-to-black. You don’t want a reader to pick up your super-smutty BDSM book and freak out when they they think they’re getting another super-cozy fade-to-black romance. Similarly, authors will sometimes do the same thing when they’re crossing from romance into mystery, or chick-lit into thrillers, or… well, you get the idea. The author bios might be a wee bit fantastical, author photos might have different angles or outfits, but it’s the same person. Many of them will even point out the other names the author writes under – which does open up readers to crossover, but without the jarring impact of “Woah! BDSM!” like in my example.

Pseudonyms can also be for group authors – be it Frank Dixon or Carolyn Keene – and again, that’s about branding (and, frankly, shelving the darned books). One of my favourite authors, Timothy James Beck, is actually four authors working together.

Those situations are what I’d happily consign to the “shrug and read” response to pseudonyms. It doesn’t matter, right? The book is what the book is, and the names used aren’t anything more than a way to shelve the book alphabetically.

I’d say the same for the vast majority of women authors who write under male pseudonyms, and having worked at a bookstore for twenty years, I also know the inherent misogyny in a huge chunk of the reading public. Believe me, I’ve had more than enough readers tell me, “Oh, I don’t read women mystery authors, they’re just not very good,” and then pick up the next P.D. James when I recommend it (for example), because it’s not obvious a woman wrote it to their casual and stupid misogynist ears. I also delighted in letting them know they’d read a woman author the next time I saw them, but maybe that’s just me being petty and trying to crusade just a little bit. I also know the reverse occurs in the romance section, where male authors writing straight romances use female pseudonyms for more or less the same reason (though, in general, I found most women readers were far less likely to care whether or not an author in most sections was male or female, though even there I can think of exceptions, like erotica).

So, when I see an m/m author with a male name or initials, I don’t much care. I’m also likely to assume – after decades in bookselling – that nearly any contemporary name that begins with initials is probably a woman. I have zero stats to back that up – like I said, it’s an assumption. And, again, I don’t much care. I want to read the story. I do pay attention to whether the book is marketed as m/m romance or gay romance, as I’ve generally come to expect something different from the two labels, but I don’t care about the gender of the author much.

Let me make that clearer: I do not believe the quality of writing in any genre has anything to do with gender. I also think that argument gets conflated with the notion of pseudonyms in the world of m/m or gay writing, and I think it’s a crap argument. Elizabeth Lister, Kayleigh Malcolm, Rebekah Weatherspoon… I could go on and on listing awesome women who write fantastic queer characters. That’s what authors do. Authors write. They can attempt to write any voice, any setting, any character. Whether or not they do it well doesn’t depend on their gender, it depends on how hard they work. Is it easier for me to write a character that is like me? For sure. Does that mean I should only write those characters? Nope. Not at all.

Now, way back at the beginning, I said I agreed and didn’t agree with giving any thought to whether or not a male pseudonym belonged to a female author in the m/m or gay fiction world.

There’s pseudonym, and then there’s identity.

There are instances I know of where an author used a male pseudonym, or adopted the bio of a gay man, or even sent a man to an author appearance to take the place of that author. There was also a piece where an author claiming a gay male identity did a lengthy Q&A interview piece about why “he” chose not to use condoms in the age of HIV/AIDS.

In those instances a line is crossed. That’s claiming an identity. That’s not a brand, or making a distinction between different genres, or just not having an author photo and dodging pronouns.

When an author presents themselves as a member of a different culture, minority, or oppressed group, they’ve taken a voice that belongs to that oppressed or silenced group. They are now using a brand based on a projected falsity.

Put as kindly as possible, that’s problematic. It’s appropriation. It’s dismissive, and is like “playing” at being a culture without suffering any of the negative realities of belonging to that culture and history. It also adds a kind of authenticity to anything said outside the prose. If someone who has claimed this gay male identity posts a review of another book and speaks personally about how real or unreal the gay culture represented in the book being reviewed, there’s a weight given to those words. Weigh in on a debate about equality under that identity? You are speaking with a voice that – frankly – hasn’t been earned.

Now, the thing about queer culture that’s different from a lot of other cultures is that many of us can “pass,” and that there’s usually no inherited continuance. It’s not the same as race (though I’d also point out that intersections exist), but if I draw an imperfect parallel, were I to craft a pseudonym of, say, a black man, and used that voice online – even if I thought I was saying good things and fighting the right causes and reviewing books positively – I do not have the right – because I do not have the life experience to claim the voice of a black man. I really don’t think anyone would argue with me about that, and yet when this situation arises with women adopting gay male personas as writers – and then blogging, reviewing, and otherwise using that voice – I don’t see much of a difference.

Now, I hope I’m being very clear about some key things. I absolutely don’t think women can’t write m/m or gay fiction (please re-read that as many times as you need to believe me, okay?) I also don’t see anything wrong with using a pseudonym. I don’t even think there’s anything inherently off about using a pseudonym that isn’t aligned with the gender you identify with. But if you’re adopting a whole persona and identity from a culture – be it a race, sexual orientation, gender, neurotype or any other group to which you don’t belong – and you choose to speak from that role, you’re stepping over a line.

Let me offer up one last way to think about it. I’m a white gay man. If I write a YA book where the main characters are all deaf or hard of hearing, you bet your butt I’m going to do a tonne of research, and you bet I’m going to communicate with as many deaf or hard of hearing people as I can. I’m also probably still going to make mistakes, though I would do my damnedest not to. Now, let’s say that book gets an amazing response and something awesome happens: I get listed for an award. Awesome, right? Yes. Totally.

Now let’s pretend that since I was releasing a YA book for the first time that I used a pseudonym, so my YA author name wasn’t linked to the same author name I have for gay erotica. I would probably do that. And let’s say I decide to market that book to as many deaf and hard of hearing organizations as I can.

In a moment of stupidity, I decide to present that pseudonym as a deaf man. Now I’m in trouble. Anything this persona now says has an authority that isn’t real, from a culture that is very real. I’ve screwed up. Now let’s say that award I was talking about isn’t just an award for a YA novel, or even an award for a YA novel featuring characters with disabilities. No, it’s an award for a debut author who has a disability.

I’d turn that down in a heartbeat. Same as if I’d written under a female pseudonym and somehow managed to get nominated for a Bailey’s Woman’s Prize.

After using that example, I feel like I need to clarify that I’m not talking about the Lambda Literary Awards here specifically because the Lammies are awarded for content, not the orientation of the author, but the Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award, the Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize and the Pioneer Award do take the queerness of the author as necessary for consideration.

It doesn’t take winning an award, though, to see where this gets problematic. If I present myself as something I am not, I don’t have the life experience to back up the opinions I am presenting as belonging to a group that already has to fight to be heard. As a white guy – even though I’m queer – one of the things I try to do as much as I can is “pass the mic” to those who have less voice than I do. If I start to “speak” as a woman, or as a person of colour, or as though I were transgender, I am doing active damage. I am not helping – I am silencing. I am taking voice, not giving it.

There’s also the reader’s choices. One of the things a reader can do as a consumer to support voices fighting for air time is to actively seek out and purchase works by those voices. In my own personal reading, one of the things I try to do is to ensure I’m reading diversely – I’ve been consciously trying to go out of my way to find books written by authors of colour, and review them, for example. I also find books written by trans* authors. My support of voices – even just as one reader, even just a wee bit – helps combat a mainstream publishing where authors are underrepresented by a system that’s biased to the white, cis, and male voice.

Finding out an author I chose to support wasn’t who they said they were, when I was specifically trying to put support into a specific voice? That’s not the kind of vibe I imagine a writer ever wants to give their reader.

I realize this post is super-long. I probably TL;DR’d it a bit. And I really hope I didn’t do the one thing I’m most afraid I might have done, which is somehow give you the impression I think authors shouldn’t write characters that aren’t like them. All I wanted to do was spark some thought about what it can mean when an author takes a pseudonym further than a very basic brand – especially when that brand steps into an oppressed culture of any kind.

Write This Picture! (#2 – Sunlit, part two)

At Romancing the Capital, I met Kayleigh Malcolm, who is hysterical, talented, and you should be following her and reading her stuff if you’re at all interested in some smoking hot romance. She also organized a monthly photo prompt.

Now, “Write this picture!” doesn’t have a lot of rules around it (another reason to love Kayleigh Malcolm), but the bare-bones idea is to once a month use a photo as a writing prompt. Beyond that, what each author does with it is up to them, but as the other authors post their prompts, I’ll link to these posts so you can see how a single picture is worth so much more than a thousand words.

The first photo last month reminded me of one of my favourite places – Sooke, B.C. I began writing stories set in a fictional – but similar – town called Fuca a while back, and have been there twice in published short fiction. Last month’s photo prompt was Sunlit, a short piece introducing two guys from Fuca having a very unscheduled meeting.

When I saw this month’s picture, I decided to keep going with the Fuca tale, and shifted to Ashley Bradley for this piece, which takes place shortly after the first.

*

*

“Can I talk to you?”

Ash looked up from his desk, surprised. “Michiko?” He blinked. “Sorry. I mean, yes, of course. Hi.”

Michiko’s eyebrows rose. “I’m interrupting.”

“No,” Ash said, but he closed his lap-top. The search page full of results for Samuel Avner was still on the screen. Most were stories of the assault. “I was just…” He wasn’t sure where to go after that. He shook his head. “It’s nothing. Please, have a seat.” He gestured to the chair opposite his desk in the small office.

Michiko sat. Tall and beautiful, she wore an ivory blouse, a dark blue pencil skirt, and heels that made him wonder how she could possibly have walked on the grass outside. She had a soft leather bag with her that he assumed was from a top-end designer. He’d always thought she’d look more at home as a high-powered CEO than as an interior decorator. Then again, if someone had told him he’d be running his uncle’s rental cabins, he’d probably have laughed in their faces.

He waited for Michiko to speak.

She didn’t. She just kept looking at him with that patient almost-smile.

“So…” he said, annoyed at himself for breaking the silence. This was a game he never won with her.

“Is there anything you want to talk to me about?” she asked.

“Nope. No. Everything’s good.”

Michiko’s perfectly groomed left eyebrow rose just enough to tell him what she thought of that.

He leaned forward. “I thought you weren’t delving into other people’s lives any more.” He tried to sound annoyed by what she’d obviously done, but it was hard. Michiko had gotten him through some pretty rough times when he was younger. She was from another one of the families in Fuca like his, and had a similar inheritance.

“I’m not. But sometimes I don’t get a choice, as you know.”

He glanced back to the closed lap top. “Dare I ask?”

Michiko smiled at him. “Sunlight. Fire. A version of you I haven’t seen before.”

Ash leaned back. “A version of me you haven’t seen before.”

She nodded. “You were laughing. Smiling. You looked – what’s the word? I never use it with you…” She tapped her finger against her temple. “Oh! Right. Happy.”

“Ouch,” Ash said.

“Seriously,” Michiko said. “It was a quick vision, but it was pretty powerful. And it was very much about you.”

“Being happy with sunlight and fire. So I’m a pyromaniac, maybe?”

Michiko shook her head. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“I don’t want to sound crazy.”

Michiko laughed. “You heard me just now mentioning having visions, right? You do remember high school, no?”

Ash flinched. She noticed, and her smile faded.

“Yeah, I remember,” he said.

Michiko softened. “I’m sorry. Wasn’t much fun for either of us.”

Ash nodded.

They sat in silence for a while, but it was comfortable.

“So. This vision,” Ash said.

Michiko leaned forward again.

“Tell me,” he said.

She closed her eyes. “You’re in the woods, by the Strait, I think. You’re looking at the sunset, and then you’re not alone. There’s a fire near you, and it’s suddenly very bright. And then you turn and you smile and…” She opened her eyes, but didn’t quite meet his gaze. “You’re, uh, happy.”

Ash frowned. “Happy.”

“Yes.” She still wasn’t looking at him.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“You’re very happy,” she said. Was she blushing?

“I don’t follow,” he said.

“You’re maybe not wearing any clothes,” Michiko said. “So when I say ‘happy’ I mean—”

“Stop!” Ash threw his hands up. “Enough. Got it. Thanks.”

Michiko grinned at him. “I like your tattoo.”

“Okay! Already mortified, now you’re making it worse.”

She chuckled. “I brought my crystals.” She reached into the leather bag and pulled out a small satchel and a large glass orb. “I thought maybe you might want a reading? It’s clearer if I’m near you, you know that, and maybe we can figure out who’s triggering this vision.”

“Samuel Avery.”

Michiko blinked, lowering the ball. “What?” Her voice was barely a whisper.

“He sort of… popped in… the other day.”

She looked surprised. “Popped in.” She raised her free hand. “Here. He just… popped in.”

“It was outside, but yeah.” Ash leaned forward. “Is he…” He frowned, then shook his head. “Did you know he was… like us?”

Michiko’s eyes widened. “Sam?”

“When I say he ‘popped in’ I mean… literally. Like, ‘poof!’ Or, I guess, he popped out – I didn’t see him arrive, but I was there when he left.”

Michiko was staring at him, open mouthed.

“That was more or less my reaction,” Ash said. “I touched his arm, before… uh… the outbound poofing, and there was a…” Connection? Soul-searing shock? Jolt to the heart? “Kind of pulse. Between us. I get that from you sometimes, too. And my uncle. The others.”

Michiko nodded, but she was looking into her glass ball now. “I didn’t know about Sam. His family isn’t…” She shook her head. “I have no idea. But…” She frowned. “Have you noticed we’re all coming back?”

Ash frowned. “What?”

“Dylan Hurley. And your uncle’s boyfriend. Oh, and I hear Jennifer’s niece, too – I always wondered about whether or not she inherited anything. You. Me. Over the last year or so, a lot of us have come back. Why?”

“Dylan came back because his father died. You had the opportunity to open your dream business. My uncle never left. And I just needed a job.”

“Because your other job fell through – and uncle happened to have a spot for you here.”

“You’re telling me fate got me fired and decided I should manage cabin rentals?”

Michiko shook her head. “Not exactly. It’s just…” She sighed. “Look, your parents won’t talk to you about it, mine wouldn’t talk to me. If it hadn’t been for your uncle and Jennifer, we’d have been completely in the dark. They thought… I think they thought it was never going to happen again. Like, the blood was too thin, and it wouldn’t pass on anymore. Our parents don’t have anything. And then we came along, and… something’s starting.”

“Something,” Ash said.

“The best part of my visions has always been how incredibly concise and straightforward they are,” Michiko deadpanned.

Ash laughed. “Fair enough.” He bit his bottom lip. “So, Sam.”

Michiko nodded. “Sam.”

“He grew up well.” Ash knew he was blushing.

“All I remember are his eyes.”

“Well, they’re still amazing. As is pretty much the whole package.”

“Ah. He has an amazing package.”

“You are a filthy pervert,” Ash said.

“It’s why we get along,” Michiko said. She lifted her crystal ball. “Do you want me to maybe see what I can see?”

Ash hesitated. Samuel Avner. They’d barely spoken a few words to each other. But he remembered when Sam had been friends with his older brother, and he remembered how the whole town had reacted after the incident. Fuca wasn’t a cruel place, and in his heart, Ash knew the town’s pity had come from a place of compassion, but that didn’t mean Sam had suffered any less. He could only imagine.

Now he wasn’t even sure anyone had known what had really happened. It might have been something very different. Something uniquely Fuca after all, like his own family tree.

And if that was the case… If it was possible…

“I hope he comes back,” Ash said. He looked at Michiko. “I really hope he comes back.”

Michiko smiled, and raised the ball. “Let’s find out.”

Writing Wednesday – Blocks

This last week I ground to a halt.

Normally, I use Writing Wednesdays to hold myself publicly accountable for how far I’m getting on projects, and to keep my pace reasonably on-track. This was fantastic for the novel and worked brilliantly. I sent it in to the editor, and leaned back in my chair and exhaled. I had a day to sit back and think, took a deep breath and thought, what next?

My brain was full of ideas. I have a window right now where I can work on pretty much whatever I’d like until January when the edits come back. I have two projects I’m working on for short pieces, one creative nonfiction, one fiction based on an image. I opened up those files…

…and nothing.

Now, I know part of this is shifting gears from novel-brain into short-piece brain. I know an even bigger part of this is the reality of a renovation that was supposed to be three weeks and is now three months (and not done, but thanks for asking!) I’m in such a bad place emotionally, it’s pathetic. And I’m getting mad at myself for feeling that way – seriously, my life freaking rocks, and it’s just a renovation, for crying out loud! – but it is what it is. I learned the hard way that getting angry at yourself for how you feel is one of the single most counterproductive things one can do. Coming from someone who felt miserable and guilty that he didn’t feel miserable and guilty enough when something horrible happened, let me tell you, that was a weird lesson to learn.

That doesn’t mean I have to let the block endure. I’m reworking my writing schedule. Wednesdays I worked on short fiction while I worked on the novel Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. I’m going to flip that and work on short fiction Mondays and Tuesdays (project short story), take Wednesday for any-damn-thing-I’d-like, and Thursday and Friday for the creative nonfiction.

All of that to say, I’m still checking in, holding myself accountable, and that’s why this blog has been nigh on silent lately.

Hugs to you all if you need them. And hey – let me know if you’ve got any tricks you use when you’re blocked. My usual processes are the following:

What ‘Nathan Does When He Has Writer’s Block

Eat chocolate.

Remember that chocolate causes headaches. Have aspirin and lie down.

Open up the Writer’s Book of Matches and strike one. This has actually resulted in multiple published short stories, and I recommend this book.

Blog post.

Idea session – sometimes I just sit down and work on characters, backgrounds, ideas for future pieces.

Edit something I’m already working on.

Read. Shut down the attempt and just read something.

Write anyway. Be okay with it being total crap, keep going, and sometimes find something salvageable in the word vomit.

Writing Wednesday – September

Holy crap, it’s September.

Now, I know this happens every year, and it happens at the same time every year (amazing, that) but this year it feels like it snuck up on me. Partly it’s the home renovations, and partly it’s the last few weeks of getting Triad Blood ready to go off and be submitted.

Which, by the way, I did. Boom. Whoosh. Gone.

Huge “thank you!” to my beta reader folk – you guys made it so much better. And now, since Bold Strokes Books is an amazingly oiled machine of scheduling and functionality, I’ve got until January with no immediate work to do on the novel – my editor has it now.

I’m feeling a wee bit adrift, and mostly okay with that. I’ve had that one major focus for almost a year. By the way, isn’t it insane that I’m approaching a year since I left my job? I’m sure that was just a few weeks ago.

I have a couple of short stories due for some anthologies over the next month, and I have an idea I’m pursuing where I could finally dip my toes into releasing short fiction as individual downloadable e-books (which is terrifying, but I think maybe it’s time I tried it).

Anyway. Writing Wednesday is when I come here and be honest about how far I’ve come and how focused I’ve been, as I’m better motivated when I hold myself accountable out loud. Usually, there are two parts – I mention the novel, and then I mention short stuff.

The Novel

Uh. Done. Submitted. Now I wait for edits to come back in January.

Short Stuff

I didn’t submit something short last month, but with the push on the novel, I’m going to let that be okay if I submit two this month. Yes, the goal was to do one a month, but I’ve already had months where I did more than one, so I’m not going to freak out about missing the month where my manuscript was due.

Open Calls I Know About

Torquere Press has quite a few themed submission calls up right now, the earliest deadline for which is August 15th, 2015.

Unconventional Love – Short romantic fiction that revolves around attending a convention; deadline September 15th, 2015.

Girls on Campus: Lesbian Erotica – College setting lesbian erotica. Erotic romance also accepted; deadline September 15th, 2015.

Burning Bright – An anthology looking for stories exploring the darker side of Shifter romance; deadline September 30th, 2015.

Ink Stained Succubus – quite a few different calls, including M/f, F/m, M/M, and lots of different genre calls; earliest deadline is September 15th, 2015.

Men in Love – M/M Romance; deadline November 15th, 2015.

Covalent Bonds – Geeks in Love; deadline December 15th, 2015.

Year of the Superhero – The Book Smugglers, looking for superhero short fiction; Deadline December 31st, 2015.

Friends of Hyakinthos – Fantastical gay male-themed stories set during the time of Ancient Greece or involving Hellenism in later cultures; Deadline January 1st, 2016.

Other places to always check include the Lambda Literary Calls of Submission page.

Know of any other short fiction open calls for submission? Let me know in the comments.

Pride

I had a blast yesterday working at After Stonewall during Pride, and it was a real joy to see our wee gay village full of people. The parade was rerouted this year and the new path is fantastic – it begins on one end of the gay village, loops around, and ends at the other end – leading everyone into the village thereafter. It was a fantastic route, and I liked the notion very much: it started and ended in just the right place.

Capital Pride has had a rough road these past few years, and I was so relieved to enjoy so very much the day’s activities (and a Pride party at The Gilmour Inn, which was awesome). After many years of working retail for a chain, I often missed pride. In fact, I usually missed pride, since I had to work weekends.

This year? I happily worked through Pride because I was working right in the middle of pride at a gay business in the gay village. And it was so much fun.

That’s not to say it was perfect – I had to raise an eyebrow at some of the wee booths in the community fair. I’m not sure what Directbuy has to do with queer folk, but okay. You pays your money, you gets your booth, no?

As the day progressed, a lot of fellow queerfolk stepped into the store (and to all who did so, thank you, you totally made our day and it was so awesome to see you) but a few times over, a conversation happened that gave me pause. The conversation was varied, but the notion was the same: I don’t like what the Pride Parade has become. I remember when it began, and it wasn’t so commercial, or sex-centric, or alcohol related, or… There were many “or” statements. You get the idea.

Now, on one hand, I can understand this notion. I think in some way, the time period in which I came out puts me in a middle ground. I saw enough HIV/AIDS death to remember with honest pain the loss of those who left the world darker and sadder for their passing. I was queer at a time where we were considered illegal, or mentally ill. I took part in marches were I did not feel safe, in rallies where I wondered if I was about to get hurt. Being queer thrust me out of my family, left me flying completely solo, cost me on a visceral level and left me bleeding. The community I found, first alone, then through the university queer community, and after that through a bear group and a book club and other organizations, was huge in my recovery. I became who I am because of the idea of the “chosen family.” My logical — rather than biological — family, were everything I had. That little gay village was a refuge. The original After Stonewall was where I found my first few gay books, saw that I wasn’t alone. It was huge, and amazing.

And it’s not the same these days.

That nostalgia over the sense of community and strength that so many of my generation (and even more potently, those from years even earlier than mine) is what I understand. I can indeed see the point of those who point out our villages are fading with time, that our Pride Parades are more about showing flesh than fighting for rights.

But here’s the thing: I wouldn’t go back for the world. Not that it matters. Because that parade? It does so many things. When we walk in that parade, there is so much we can do.

But we can’t lead the dead from the camps, or the ditches, or the fences where they were tied and left to die. We can’t walk with the ones who chose to leave everyone, forever, when those who raised them decided they could not love a child who didn’t fit the definitions of what they’d thought a child could be. We can’t march beside those who never said a word and lived lies of silent loneliness, lest everyone they knew deemed them as living a sort of sin.

We can’t walk back in time and fix any of those injustices. We just can’t.

But every time we walk, we walk a little further into the future. Every victory has freed us to fight for the next thing. Our signs used to have to say “Gay is Not a Crime.” Corporate sponsorship was never going happen in those days. In yesterday’s Pride Parade, Amnesty International was walking, and individuals wore the flags of countries where LGBTQ people are still persecuted, and bore banners saying things like, “Jamaica, Amnesty International Stands With You.” We can widen our nets, and – yes – celebrate our victories.

We’ve won so many of these victories, but it’s not like the job is done. Trans* people are especially at risk. Intersectionality needs to come more front and centre. Those other countries need the kind of pressure put on them that organizations like Amnesty International can do. Marriage Equality was a huge focus – and post-victory, it’s time to shift that energy and effort to something else. Bullying. Suicide. LGBTQ Homelessness. Inclusive Sex Education.

We’re not done. And though it can be hard to see some of the benefits of the hard fight wane, I don’t want the world that had us fighting the hard fights back. Not at all.

I think when we march, we march with a beat. That noise, that sound, needs to be as joyous as it is righteous, and needs to be about the stories of all the ones who walked before, and died before, and that we make sure those stories echo for as long as they can. That’s a huge thing for me, and I know I’ve said it so often you’re probably sick to death of it – but here it is again: we don’t inherit our history. Queer people aren’t (usually) born to other queer people. It’s not like my gay parents told me about what life was like for them as queer people in their generation, and that gave me perspective before I came out. It didn’t work like that, it doesn’t work like that. We have to seek out our own stories if we want to know them, and often we don’t even know where to look. That’s a fight I think worth our attention.

I want to tell the next generation what it was like to – finally – see marriage equality pass, and how I got to propose to my husband on Canada day. I want to see their faces cloud with confusion when I talk about queer people being disowned, and hear their shock that people would think that way. I want to tell them about Stonewall, or Emma Golden, and the pink and black triangles. I want them to know that the things they have that they didn’t have to fight for did come at a cost, but that they should enjoy them, and that I don’t begrudge them. They are the whole point. I want to tell them about the days where I gathered with my queer community and we had to be careful about when we were loud, but that every time we were loud, it was worth it and it was so damn wonderful.

I don’t want to to back to those days – as much as I treasure that time and that version of queer community, for me it came just as much from being excluded as it did from feeling included. My in-laws are wonderful. My co-workers, even before I moved to a gay business, are brilliant. My neighbours are friendly. When I walk down the street, there are times I hold my husband’s hand. I have the right to have a husband at all. No one can put me in a cell for being gay, or a mental hospital. I would not give any of those things up for nostalgia.

Nor do I think the queer community is gone. I don’t think it will ever be, but I certainly don’t hope for some sort of eventual assimilation. I want to be a freak – without being treated as freakish – and find my fellow freaks and laugh. I want all the same rights and equalities, including the right not to choose to do any of those things fought for. I want queer couples to have no extra hurdles to jump through for adoptions or child-rearing, and I never want to have a kid, ever. I want my poly friends to be respected, my trans* friends to be whoever the hell they are, and I want it now.

It won’t happen now, but I want it.

So when the parade goes by, and I hear the criticism, I try to look again. Because when I see the half-naked go-go boys and the leatherfolk and the corporate sponsors, I smile. I’m happy no one has to carry a sign saying “decriminalize gay people!” here in Canada any more. Believe me, we have different signs we can carry. I doubt we’ll run out of things to fight for before I die, and that’s okay as long as we keep moving forward. And in the meantime, how awesome is it that topless lesbians drive by on motorcycles and no one thinks the world is going to end because of it?

I hear people say “this isn’t what I fought for,” and I can’t help but want to say: “yes, yes it is. You fought for all of us to be whoever the fuck we wanted to be, no matter whether or not anyone – and that includes you yourself – would choose to be the same thing. If you were only fighting for the right for queer people to be as ‘normal’ as possible, and don’t want to include the leather guys or the drag kings or the kink community or the poly families… then I think you might have missed the point.” I’m way too self conscious to groove in my underwear on a stage float, and I love that someone else can. My kink level is pretty tame, but I will toss bones to the puppy players as they crawl by. Bisexual dads fighting for better paternal leave? Hand me the petition. Beer float actively creating ads that include queer folk that the rest of the world will see? Fantastic, I can’t wait to see it, and I still don’t want to drink a microbrew.

Between my then and this now, though, I see so much that’s different. Teens come out. Hell, tweens come out. There are gay YA books, people. When I think back to my time in grade school or high school, this astounds me. And while I know full well that some of these kids have it as rough as (or worse than) I did, the fact of the matter is things are changing, and these kids often at least have the language to discuss what’s going on in their heads and hearts and bodies. They have a good chance of having friends who will love them – even teachers – and, yes, even families.

It’s not perfect. But it’s better.

And despite the logos, the gyrating, the condom-flinging, the wonderfully perverted and freakish everything all hanging out, I think that’s still what we march for: the better.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Sunday Shorts – “The Witch of Tarup,” by Claire Humphrey

I could probably write a massive post on my thoughts about the Hugo Awards and the end result of the whole sad/rabid puppy thing, but – as is often the case – Chuck Wendig does a brilliant job and has way more insider insight, and, well… yeah. Go read that.

As a vague after-the-fact amusement, I couldn’t help but decide to revisit Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History for today’s Sunday Shorts. It’s a collection edited by Rose Fox and Daniel José Older, and is exactly as labeled on the box. It’s also freaking good and I’ve been enjoying my trek through the pages.

*

“The Witch of Tarup,” by Claire Humphrey

Tarup, Denmark in 1886 isn’t exactly a place I daresay I’ve visited before in any fiction or literature, but I’m glad I came. The setting in which Humphrey weaves a lovely story of a new marriage, an old magic, and – potentially – something new and unique coming from an unexpected place.

The narrative seems straighforward: Dagny, a woman newly wed to a man who has since suffered apoplexy, is trying to make the windmill turn before they run out of the flour they’ve managed to grind. The wind does not blow, the wheel does not turn, and the only solution that presents itself to her is – despite her husband’s obvious agitation at the suggestion – to go find the town’s witch.

There’s a gentle folklore at work in this story that I found rich despite the soft touch. I fell easily into the world, and as Dagny tries to uncover who might have the ability to help her in this new (to her) town, the slow untangle left me with a huge smile on my face. If it’s possible to write a short story that is mystery, speculative historical fiction, folklore, and romance, I’d Humphrey succeeds.

I’ve read quite a few of Claire Humphrey’s stories now, in various anthologies, and I’ve always been pleasantly surprised by how varied the voices of her characters are. This is no exception. I can’t wait to hear the next member of her chorus.