'Nathan Burgoine's Blog, page 22

The Shoulder Check Problem

A couple of days ago, there was a discussion that sort of flashed past my timeline. An author of gay romance who is also a gay man was expressing the frustration over a sentiment in an m/m group that was posted—“women write the best m/m”—and how unwelcoming it can feel to gay men writing gay romance. At no point did the author say anything about who should or shouldn’t write gay characters, he just pointed out how—especially from a group of people often so vocal about being supportive allies—the sentiment wasn’t particularly supportive or welcoming.

I want to underline one part of that again: at no point was he saying that women (queer or non-queer) shouldn’t write m/m. The discussion took an immediate turn into that topic (as it always does), but that wasn’t at all what he was talking about. He was talking about how those blanket statements are unwelcoming.

It’s not a new discussion and it’s certainly not one that’s likely to ever be resolved, but as the discourse continued there were a few patterns I noticed that play out pretty much every time. This discussion also aligned with another sentiment I get quite often, and as it happened, I received a short direct message from an m/m reader about one of my novellas. Though it was a genuinely positive experience for them, they offered one critical comment.

Which brings me to the first piece of this blog: The Shoulder Check Problem.

The Shoulder Check Problem

Dino leaned over and kissed the top of his head. Silas glanced around the restaurant, but they were tucked in a corner, mostly out of sight.

“Careful. This isn’t the Village,” he reminded Dino.

— from “Faux Ho Ho,” by ‘Nathan Burgoine

Okay, so going back to the feedback from that reader: what was the comment?

“I don’t like it when you have them check to see if anyone’s looking when they kiss. It’s sad. It kicks me out of the moment.”

That’s a paraphrase of this most recent comment, obviously, but I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve had some variation of that feedback from women reading my queer romances, or had them bring it up face-to-face at conventions. As a counterpoint, I’ve never had it so much as mentioned by queer men who’ve read my queer romances.

It’s the smallest thing, really. Or at least, it seems small, right? It’s something I mention when I give writing workshops on writing with an eye for queer inclusivity as an easy win. It’s literally just a note on a list of quick and easy tips writers can use to make their stories a bit more welcoming to queer readers: a dash of reality about what it’s like to be a queer guy in a public space with another queer guy and considering a kiss.

A shoulder check, just to make sure the surroundings are such that said kiss is going to be safe. It’s a reflex. It’s a safety thing. It’s almost unconscious (though not unconscious, because I do have to consider my safety if I’m out in public somewhere). It’s one of the reasons being somewhere that’s safe—our own home, a friend’s home, a queer bar—is so special: those places are places where I can just express affection freely. It’s why those places matter.

I’m always nervous when I write these sorts of posts (fun fact: I still get hateful comments on my Pseudonyms vs. Identities post), so I feel like I need to be super-clear here about how I’m reacting to the criticism of the shoulder-check. I’m not offended. I don’t even necessarily think the reader is wrong to find that moment jarring, nor was it too harsh for her to tell me that moment knocked her out of enjoying the romantic narrative. Like I said, this is by no means the first time I’ve gotten this feedback—I get variations of it all the time, and not just about shoulder checks, but I’ll expand on that in a moment. Heck, at those workshops I talked about? I’ve had people challenge me and say “But what if I’m writing romance? Romance is about happy endings, and that’s not happy. Why include them at all? It doesn’t have to be realistic. It’s fiction.”

The why of it is this: it’s an example of a moment I’ve written into my fiction that reflects my lived reality, and when I write those happy endings—and in romance, yes, the characters get happy endings—those happy endings still include those doses of reality because I want the happy endings to feel as real as I can make them, even in fiction. Verisimilitude matters. To me, as a writer, that means writing those happy endings in a world as much like the one I see around me as I can, including facets of existing while queer.

That’s why Nick is disowned in “Handmade Holidays,” finds a chosen family, and his biological family exit the tale and are never seen again. That’s not a happy starting place for Nick, but his happy ending doesn’t have to include his biological family, and for my queer readers who are in that very situation, I wrote a holiday story where the people who kicked him to the curb are gone and he is happy.

Did I get feedback from readers about his biological family? Yes. But from queer reader reviews, it was often noted as a strength of the story. And I treasure those reviews all the more because I know, just by virtue of numbers, that my queer readers are outnumbered by non-queer readers, just like queer authors writing m/m are outnumbered by non-queer authors writing m/m.

Outnumbered

Wait, what? Outnumbered?

Yep. I mean, okay, finding numbers in Canada isn’t easy, but: in 2018, one particular survey of women-only hit something like 8% who identified as gay or bisexual; if you go to the various Canadian Community Health Surveys (which were all-gender), there’s a 1.7% gay and 1.3% bisexual result in 2014 (so, 3% gay or lesbian) in 2014. An anonymous phone survey that asked about more than just gay/lesbian and bisexual received a 5.3% result of people who were gay, lesbian, bisexual and/or transgender. And so on. No matter where you look for the numbers, generally speaking you end up with the same result: queer people are marginalized in the numerical sense of the word: we’re outnumbered.

As a queer person, I know and am reminded of this pretty clearly on a day to day basis. It just is. And as a queer author, it’s no different. I mean, by writing about queer characters, I absolutely have a queer readership just by virtue of what I write, but even among my readers, there are more non-queer readers than queer.

It’s by no means proportional to the population given who wants to read about queer people, but even just anecdotally given my experiences at romance conventions, e-mails and messages from readers, and online discussions there are still far more non-queer people reading what I write than not, is what I’m saying.

I want to be clear here I’m not saying that’s a negative thing. At all. Given the small slice of the population who are queer in the first place, and then the smaller slice of queer people who want to read about nerdy geeky queer guys falling in love (a much smaller sub-set, let’s be honest), then consider in those queer people who want to read the kind of stories I write actually finding my stories and…

Well, you get the idea. I absolutely consider myself lucky that there are non-queer people who like to read what I write, because if my audience was limited to people like me, that’d be endgame on the whole publishing thing. It is fantastic people like to read characters outside of their own lived experiences. I mean, I’m like that as a reader, too. Many of my favourite romance reads from last year were about (and written by) lesbian or bisexual women.

So why do I bring up the outnumbered thing? Well, it goes back to The Shoulder Check Problem, and dovetails with the discussion on my author friend’s post, which—as always—derailed into whether or not it matters who writes m/m and was met by a (mostly) resounding ‘Of course it doesn’t,’ (to repeat: I agree) but then delved into something I find a bit more of a struggle: ‘What really matters is if the story is good/well-researched/well-written.’

It should be right. It sounds right. And, all things being equal, it is right.

It’s also not.

Good

Okay, this is the part of this post that’s making me nervous, and this is the part I’m going to try really hard to make as clear as I can. And it’s all back to that (seemingly) correct defense of the writing of m/m romance: “I don’t care about the gender of the author. I care whether or not the story is good.” You can swap out pretty much anything similar to “good” here: well-written, high-quality, properly-researched, whatever. The quality of the piece being unrelated to the author’s gender, basically.

So, what’s that got to do with The Shoulder Check Problem? And why does it give me pause?

The “I don’t care about who the author is, it’s whoever writes the best story/does the most research/writes the best characters” stops short of taking into account who decides which narratives have quality in the first place.

Like I said, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been told “I don’t like that you make your queer characters shoulder check before they kiss.” On my worst days, I have to bite back a snarky reply: I promise you I don’t like living that more than you don’t like reading it. But as I said, when I write my queer characters, they get their happy ever afters while still living in this world, which includes shoulder checks. But “quality” or “good” from many readers says that living, breathing experience of my life as a queer guy “kicks them out of the romance experience” and so it’s…not as good as writers who don’t include that moment reflecting lived, breathed experience.

Now, I’m not just talking shoulder checks. It’s just an easy example. I’ve had similar critical feedback for including political commentary, especially in “Faux Ho Ho” where Silas’s family is a politically active in big-C Conservative politics. Similarly, more than a few times I’ve had readers annoyed that I even mention that Dino, who is bisexual, has had previous relationships with women, as they come to m/m as readers looking for romances between men. I wrote those scenes knowing full well that would happen. And, again, those criticisms haven’t come from the queer men reading my books. Quite the opposite, they’re often instead included as positives.

I cannot overstate enough my admiration for the ability to write a story that is light and captivating whilst also adroitly folding in subtle aspects of queer life—code-switching; the ill-fitting position within a superficially accepting family; the scarcity of queer heritage; the power of chosen family—that resonate with something deeply felt.

–from my favourite view of “Faux Ho Ho.”

It might sound like I’m comparing two different types of readers here: people who read purely for escapism, and people who read wanting representation, and honestly? In a way, yes, though there are some caveats to that simplification coming.

I’m not claiming that either approach to reading is wrong, either. They’re not wrong, at all.

But the thing is? Both those types of readers directly affect what gets considered “good” (for any iteration of “good,” including “well-written,” or “romantic” or whatever you’d like) thanks to ratings and rankings and algorithms and categorizations, and that’s where I’m heading with this. “Whoever writes the best story” is of course subjective, and driven by a majority consensus. So, when the non-queer readers reach out to tell me they don’t particularly like even the small slices of my real queer life I include in my romances, I know that’s playing into how my writing is received as a greater whole. The people who’ve reached out to me about those facets of my romances outnumber the queer readers who’ve let me know they feel differently (especially the queer men, specifically).

So, the reason the idea of “it’s about whether or not the story is good” leaves me so uncertain is because I know, first hand, me writing my queer characters living their queer lives like I live mine isn’t what a lot of non-queer m/m readers want. They’ve told me they don’t want that realism; they prefer the unrealistic. Even when it’s a happy ending queer romance in every other way, it fails a piece of expectation they desire in an m/m romance. If queer men writing from their lived, breathed experiences aren’t “good” because a majority of readers don’t want their reading experiences to include even those tiniest of microaggressions, what does that do?

Not to put too fine a point on it: it shapes which narratives are considered worthy (or “good”), and, conversely, which are less so. It doesn’t matter if one group is reading for zero-microaggression escapism and happy endings and one (much smaller) group is reading for more realistic representation and happy endings when the lists and rankings (and therefore visibility) is all drawn from the combined whole.

This “combined whole” bias also works both ways.

Nothing About Us Without Us

I read quite a bit of m/m written by a variety of authors, quite a few of whom aren’t men or aren’t queer (or both). I’m especially drawn to anthologies because I love short fiction, and I like to find new-to-me authors. As part of my Short Stories 366 Project last year, I read a tonne of short fiction and novellas, and a lot of them were queer romance or m/m romance. In case it’s not completely clear, I know I keep talking about m/m romance and queer romance and gay romance differently, but I know they’re not separate entities. It’s more like a Venn Diagram with overlapping circles, and there are absolutely queer authors write what they call and market as “m/m romance” that absolutely includes the verisimilitude. Like everything else queer, none of this is particularly binary.

While reading, more than a few of last year’s m/m romances, to use the same phrase, “kicked me out of the moment.” Not because of the inclusion of microaggressions, but the opposite. This is the caveats thing about the two types of readers I was talking about earlier: as a queer reader, what I consider reading for escape will have those representation shoulder check moments (or, put another way, needs to have that dose of realism), or it’ll kick me out.

Off the top of my head, these are some of the situations and scenarios I’ve encountered in various m/m narratives over the last year or so, even despite doing my best to read blurbs and dodge narratives I already know I’m likely to dislike:

A gay man working at a gentleman’s club that specializes in—or at least, was well populated by—closeted men of power, presented as conservative senators or judges or the like, many of whom were on the down-low and/or also married. At no point did anyone involved in the romance consider how these men are often ones doing major political damage to openly queer people, nor did the man working there have even a moment of self-reflection about his role supporting these men.

Multiple plots involving intolerant families where everyone around the queer character reiterates how important family is and how important it is that they keep trying and offer forgiveness and give the family another chance. I’ve talked about that one before.

Instances where gay men (often ones who are very demonstrative) were considering vacations to places where gay men (and often any queer people) are illegal. In some cases, the vacations being considered were to places where being caught in the act would lead to execution. At no point did the characters consider their safety, or consider the lives of queer people who already live in those places and how they remain safe, or find each other, or the like.

Recurring instances of anal virginity behind held up as a gift offered only in cases of true love. This sort of “your virginity is a one-use tissue that is inherently important” thing can’t end fast enough for me, but it’s amazing how prevalent it shows up in m/m romance, especially alongside another oft-repeating penetrative sex theme I find in m/m: “I don’t really enjoy it, but because I love you, I’ll do this for you if you want.” The moment a partner says they don’t like something it seems to me the romantic trajectory there is to have another partner respect this isn’t something they want to do, and step back and find something they both enjoy.

“Clean” used to refer to men who are STI-negative (and the inference, then, that who have STIs are “dirty”). Just stop this.

A lot of “gay-for-you” plots that failed to even have a single reference to the possibility of bisexuality or pansexuality in any form. I’ve talked about that one at length, so I’m not going to repeat it. I actively go out of my way to avoid these, but man, they find their way through. Especially in anthologies.

Okay, so what do I do when these stories kick me out? Well, I tend to review almost everything I read, though in general I’m a very forgiving reviewer, and if I don’t like something I try to be very specific because one-reader’s-trash-is-another-reader’s-treasure. Some of these things above are absolutely just to-taste, but I can (and do) argue that some of them do active harm and propagate harmful frames of mind or messages. I try to speak out about those where I can, but it comes back to The Shoulder Check Problem and being outnumbered again.

Other readers don’t mind, and they outnumber readers like me. So that “combined whole” works against my voice. It’s not malicious (though it might be ignorant—every time I bring up the “clean infers dirty” STI example at a writing workshop I’ve seen the lightbulb moment go on). People don’t know what they don’t know, and that includes queer people. We aren’t born to a continuance of heritage, which I talk about a lot. This is where the whole “nothing about us without us” is so important: if we don’t include queer men when we write about queer men, the sometimes harmful stuff that sneaks in is far more likely to go unnoticed, even by those of us within the community who don’t know what we don’t know.

I try to speak up about those things. I review them, or I discuss them here on the blog or on my social media sites. But I am one queer man, and even if a lot of queer men said the same things (and sometimes we do exactly that), the outnumbered thing still holds. My review might be one of a hundred, and all the rest are glowing. My post about the issue might flash in a pan. The social media feed scrolls on.

And sometimes I get absolutely blasted for suggesting those narratives do harm.

So What’s the Solution, Wise-Guy?

I don’t have one, sorry. If there’s a magical ratio of About Us to With Us, I don’t know it. There was the year where the finalists for the Lambda Literary Gay Romance category didn’t have a single gay man romance author in the mix, and I can pretty confidently say that’s a problem: not even one of us? That can’t be too high a goal to reach. It’s a literal “not zero” minimum. Is one gay man author on a list of top ten gay character romances “enough”? How about top-twenty? I have no idea. But zero? Zero is pretty darn awful and often one doesn’t feel any better.

I can definitely say it’s important to listen to queer men talk about stories written about queer men, but I already do that, and even when I try my absolute damnedest to be calm and polite I get blasted with “It’s not for you!” and “Women invented m/m!” and various invectives. Even if it isn’t for us, it’s about us, so it matters how we’re represented. And whoever invented it (I don’t even what to start with that), the reality is m/m romance shows up the most when searching for gay romance or queer romance so the reality is readers like me are left trying to figure out to navigate toward what we hope to find in the genre. I tend to hunt for ownvoice as much as I can, and I’m careful to read blurbs, but visibility and discoverability are impacted by the collectiveness of m/m romance and gay romance and queer romance. There is definite overlap between m/m romance and queer romance and gay romance and it’s not a simple, clean-cut division.

But I think the main thing I want to underline here is how it’s complicated and oversimplifying to say “it’s whether or not the story is good that matters,” because the way stories are determined to be “good” leaves the people the stories are about outnumbered.

In the meanwhile, though, I’m keeping my shoulder checks. And at least now I’ve got a single place to send someone when they ask me why I write my queer romances the way I do.  

Audiobooks, 2020

Last year, the vast majority of my reading was short fiction, which was by design, as I’m really, really good at buying collections and anthologies and then a new anthology or collection comes out and repeat and suddenly I’ve read one story from eleven different books. This led to my Short Stories 366 Project last year, which was about finishing those magazines, collections, and anthologies, and absolutely not buying new ones.

Okay, so that last part didn’t happen. At all. I bought so many new short story collections and anthologies. But I did finish many of the ones I already had coming into 2020, so it was still a win.

That isn’t to say I only read short fiction, just that it was the majority. Even more so if you include novellas (which I do).

So, all that said to hopefully not end up with tilted heads at “Why are so many of his favourites collections or anthologies?” I’m going to take a whirl at some Books of 2020 posts over the next little while.

First stop? Audio. I listened to a lot of audiobooks this year, though probably less than usual. I’m the sort who gets motion sick when I read in a moving vehicle, so I started on audiobooks back when I was working retail and had massive commutes because I live in Ottawa and our public transit system is designed to get people to the downtown core, not out from one end of the city to malls at the other end, and so I’d blast through audiobooks by virtue of my hour-and-a-half coming home and hour-or-so of getting to work (often more than that in both directions). I also listen to books while walking Max, which is my post-retail career largest slice of audiobook listening, but given 2020 did its whole 2020 thing, my husband is now working from home and so I’m walking the dog solo about half the time or less than I used to. He’d likely not like it were I to pop in earbuds and listen to a book while we walk together.

Still, a lot of audiobook love was still to be had, and these were my favourite listens of 2020, in no particular order:

Her Body and Other Parties is first, a brilliant flipping collection from Carmen Maria Machado that I know I likely discovered a year or two after everyone else, but holy crap. The slice of spec-fic was air-kiss perfect throughout this collection, and the range and breadth of tone was incredible. I think every story landed for me as a reader, and that included a specific story based on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, where Machado took the titles of episodes and spun out an alternate version of the episodes in little blurb formats. I’ve never seen the show. I was still completely rapt. I imagine anyone who had seen the show would be just amazed. (I reviewed each story as I read it as part of that Short Stories 366 Project, and you can read them with this tag.)

Xeni, by Rebekah Weatherspoon was a re-read, except this time in audiobook, and if anything I loved it all the more the second time around. Burly Scottish fellow and Black witchy teacher enter into a marriage of inconvenience (it’s a whole family drama thing, one of those ‘you can inherit all this fortune if you agree to remain married for thirty days) and they’re basically the best ever for each other. To say this one had sizzle is to understate to the nth, and the audio performer’s rumbly voice kind of made the whole Scotsman thing all the more knee-melting. Also? Doubling down on awesome bisexual rep for the win. (Tripling down on Weatherspoon audiobooks here with A Cowboy to Remember, which reminded me of how impeccable Weatherspoon’s handling of supportive friend groups are, and also hot cowboys, and Rafe, which, I mean, hot inked manny.)

Bet Against Me, by Fiona Riley did the impossible and gave me an enemies-to-lovers plot where I did want the two women to end up together, and I need to be honest here: after the first couple of chapters, I was worried, y’all. I love Riley’s books, but enemies-to-lovers is so not my thing, and the things one character said to another were awful, beyond-the-pale sort of insults and I had no idea how I was going to get past it, let alone root for them to be together. I should know to trust Riley, though. I’m still not sold on the trope as a whole, but this instance goes down as a solid exception to my rule.

Twice Shy, by Aurora Rey, is another staple author bringing me the comforting joy I wanted so much in 2020. This brings a baker and an architect into each other’s orbits, and it lives up to all the usual Rey joys: food, butch and femme dynamics without any toxicity, and gentle levels of angst. More, I liked that both women were gun-shy thanks to their previous relationships, settled in their lives and careers, and older. The usual warning applies, however: have snacks handy. Rey describes food in the best ways, and this time it was baked goods. (Doubling down with Rey audiobooks here, as I also loved The Last Place You Look, for pretty much all the same reasons, but especially that non-toxic butch masculinity thing.)

Finally, The Cartography of Sudden Death, by Charlie Jane Anders was another favourite (and a novella-length audio) that I freaking adored this year. Sci-fi with a time-travel flair that I’ve never encountered before: the process of traveling through time happens via the death of impactful people—meaning you can find these doors through time if you’re there when someone important to history (not necessarily in a positive way, mind) dies. The world-building was brilliant, the arc of the point of view character was entrancing, and I sank right into this one from the opening to the final lines (I also reviewed this one as part of my SS366 project, here).

Short Stories 366:366 — “Molecular Rage,” by Marie Bilodeau

This may seem like an odd short story title to end the year on, but I honestly think it’s kind of perfect, and a fantastic thematic story for this, our year of endless trashfire 2020. Originally published in the 2019 September/October Analog, “Molecular Rage” is so very Marie Bilodeau. What do I mean? First, Marie Bilodeau is, as always, this incredible mix of whimsy, chaos, and yet deeply seated emotionally drawn characters, and in “Molecular Rage” we get that—and aliens, too. That’s also very Bilodeau: world-building at the drop of a hat. We meet a fellow (alien fellow) who is part of the scheduling department for a teleportation network on his planet, and he’s late. The thing is? That shouldn’t be possible. Teleportation might have a few hiccoughs every now and then, but the built in safety means any snarls or crossovers just get bounced a bit until there’s room to put things back on track and deliver the person to where they’re going. There is no possibly reason for this alien to be forty-odd minutes late, but he is. And he’s been getting more and more late every week, and he’s sure it’s not just him, but he’s in charge of scheduling, so he gets the blame and gets fired.

Oh, and his home life falls to pieces, too. He’s basically left only with his daughter, an alien who has pheromones that aren’t “right” (queer me loved this character, and this casual aside of an alien being different, kind of misunderstood and sort of left out of the world because she was different and different freaked everyone else right out, and Bilodeau handled the character brilliantly: she knows she’s an outsider, and it’s not like it’s joyful, but she also isn’t trying to change herself). Now without a job, and only his odd offspring for company, our hero decides to figure out what the actual hell is wrong with the teleportation network, and… well. “Wrong” is an understatement.

Ultimately, this story is about someone realizing that the solution for everyone is going to come at a personal cost—sound familiar, 2020?—and making the choice to put themselves in a less-than-ideal position (to say the least) for the greatest good. And after being with this odd alien and his pheromones and his addiction to caffeine pods and his strange offspring? I cared. And thankfully, Bilodeau gives the reader just enough of a denouement to let you know things worked out about as perfectly as they could possibly have done. It’s a brilliant little story, and I freaking loved it.

Also? Reached out to Marie Bilodeau and asked her where this one came from. So, for the last time in 2020, here we go:

A few years ago, I got caught in an amazing traffic jam heading to the grocery store. By the much later than anticipated time we arrived, we’d witnessed many amazingly ridiculous incidents of road rage. While looking at cucumbers, I thought “teleportation would stop road rage.” By the tomatoes, I raised an eyebrow and asked: “but would it?” While selecting bagels, I giggled at the thought of a really pissed off government employee who’s continuously late (I live in a government town so added bonus!)  By the time we were paying, the basic concept had forged in my mind, and I discovered Stan the next day, my time engineer hero who’s life crumbles because he just can’t get anywhere on time despite his carefully crafted schedules. I hope you enjoy this journey into the ultimate “road rage.” 

—Marie Bilodeau

Short Stories 366:365 — “The Prisoner,” by Richard Lee Byers

I’m back to Powered Up! An Earth Prime Anthology today, and this time I’m basically reading what felt more-or-less like Captain America and John Constantine team-up fanfic, and I say that with the utmost respect and joy. Because Richard Lee Byers’s “The Prisoner” combines the “modified soldier” hero of Victor (“the Sentinel”) with an Irish mystical detective, Rhymer (no codename), as they try to solve a series of beheadings, the end result is kind of an odd-couple superhero yarn, and it works because it’s so darn charming. Victor doesn’t trust Rhymer in the slightest, and Rhymer keeps referring to Victor as a gorilla with a ray-gun, so really, they’re not off to a great start. But between old-fashioned investigation and some mystic visions, they realize they’re on a time crunch before something truly bad happens, and start to work together as best they can.

It’s the banter that makes this one shine, but also exploring some of the mystical in the Mutants & Masterminds Prime Earth setting is also nice. More, I think the setting of Emerald City is so complete (thanks to the source books) that there’s a kind of effortless world-building happening: where the writer knows enough about a make-up location and world that everything just feels connected and complete, even when only partially referenced. This is one of my favourite facets of shared world fiction, and this story is a great example of it.

All in all, “The Prisoner” has a fun streak, banter, and solid mystery to it, and by the end I was smiling and happy at how Byers managed to wrap up two apparently contradictory conditions for “win” between the two heroes. I’d love to see these two characters butt heads a second time, and I think that’s just about the highest praise I think I could give to a story, really. (And, as always, these stories really make me want to play the game they’re based on, so extra kudos for the cross-marketing points to all involved.)

Short Stories 366:364 — “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel,” by Christopher Caldwell

I was nervous picking up a book about apocalypse fiction given, y’know, everything, but happily, after reading the foreword, I knew to expect Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World that Wouldn’t Die would hit on the queer theme and a theme of triumph in the face of adversity. This wasn’t going to be an endless parade of relentless loss, but rather stories of coming together and survival, and that’s totally the kind of stories I love to read when it comes to apocalyptic worlds. “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel” delivers exactly that in both tone and narrative: this isn’t a tale of loss and slow eventual decline, but of people standing up for each other, and guiding those more vulnerable to safety.

We enter a world post “Breaking.” With no real sense of what “the Breaking” was ever clearly stated, Caldwell nevertheless unfolds a world where everyone (at least, those who’ve survived) having gifts. It struck me as borderline X-Men as the tale unfolded: the main POV character having a gift for healing and plants agreeing to help someone he used to date collect and bring some youths to somewhere safer, where the Breaking isn’t as prominent and the world isn’t as warped. That his ex, Eli, has only appeared to these younger people as Eden, a grandmother-type leader whose abilities seem to bolster others while draining herself, is only part of their history of conflict, but together the two set out to do exactly that: bring the younger members of their group to somewhere safer.

I think this caretaking of the new generation is the thing I loved the most, and definitely felt so very queer. Thematically, it felt very much the queer elder sense; At one point, the main character learns one of the children is young enough not to remember the world before the Breaking, and he feels a kind of envy for not knowing what was lost, and wow, did that strike a chord. I also appreciated Caldwell’s balance of loss with hope and looking forward. All in all, after this story, I felt like this anthology was absolutely going to deliver what I’d hoped for, and I realized I was oddly looking forward to the rest of the various endings of the world.

Short Stories 366:363 — “Love and the Floppy Musketeer Hat,” by Hank Edwards

First off, the title. Can we just stop and tilt our heads in happy wonder at “Love and the Floppy Musketeer Hat”? It’s the title of the collection and a particular story therein, and though it’s not the first in the collection, I couldn’t help but start there because, I mean, title. Right? And it’s cute as all heck. Now, one thing to know about this collection is how Hank Edwards collected all these tales together: they were prompts from a project he used to take part in called ‘Story Orgy’ (heh), and so content-wise, the tales don’t have a tonne of crossover or shared aspects. Well, beyond Hank Edwards’s usual upbeat/funny/quirky/romantic takes. You can always count on Edwards for some snark among the fun, is what I’m saying, and this is no different.

“Love and the Floppy Musketeer” hat begins in a restaurant where two co-worker friends are getting through a typical hectic day when the arrival of a very handsome jock stops our main character from being quite as productive as usual at his work. His friend notices, and sets a series of events in play so she can get the two men to interact—and it is, of course, revealed that said hot fellow is also gay, the woman he appears with isn’t therefore his girlfriend, and both the women are sick of the two mooning over each other and basically shove them together.

It’s a meet-cute that involves the aforementioned floppy hat (thanks to an ill-timed declarative nick-name from the server’s friend), a large group of circus workers (no, really), and a last-minute shift at the restaurant that might ruin the happy-ever-after chances for these two guys. It’s just the kind of avalanche of “wait, what?” I expect from a funny Hank Edwards story, coming just to the edge of over-the-top without quite tipping over. And of course, the fellows find a way, the story continues to be cute and quirky, and I was left with a wee smile and a happy chuckle or two, which is just the right tone for this week, frankly.

Short Stories 366:362 — “A Big Surprise for Valentine’s Day,” by Jackie Lau

I sometimes think the final books in romance series have an unfair advantage, because by the time you get to them, you’re so immersed to the particular author’s world building it’s like pulling on a warm sweater, and so I often find myself thinking “this was the best one!” when in reality they’re all wonderful, but the whole is added to with each part. Anyway, that’s a long-winded way of saying I ended up with a wide-grin on my face by the time I closed this last book in the Holidays with Wongs series, “A Big Surprise for Valentines Day.” I freaking loved Amber and Sebastian.

Amber is the youngest (and only daughter) of the Wongs, and she’s watched her family meddle with the love-lives of her older brothers enough to put a pretty firm foot down about how her family is not going to do that for her. Her version of this is to keep them as much out of the details of her love life as possible—which has her family thinking she used to be much wilder, but has settled down without finding someone. The truth is, Amber has definitely been dating, she’s just had terrible luck and considers herself borderline cursed to find only terrible men to date. So, above her bed, hand-stitched and framed, the plan: “Rule #1: No Dating.”

But that shouldn’t mean she can’t have sex, right? A run-in with someone she knew from childhood, Sebastian—who has filled out and gotten very handsome—in the grocery store could be an opportunity. That it starts when she’s trying to buy condoms and they sort of collide while he’s picking up magnums is all the more meet-cute (or, well, disaster-cute?) and Amber can’t help herself from snorting at his choice of condom size (men, right?), but he pushes back that those are the size he needs and… something sizzles there between them and she’s not looking for a date, so… why not? What follows is a great ride. From Amber’s realization that, yep, Sebastian is not mistaken about his condom size needs, to Amber’s wilful dismissal of anything but lusty thoughts, to Sebastian trying to be the “good son” until he finally stands up to his parents, and to Amber’s friends giving her a not-so-gentle tap with a clue-by-four… it all reads in Lau’s wonderfully paced style, and the dashes of food and humour throughout are fast becoming a favourite.

I got to ask Lau about this final book in the series, and here’s what she said:

I have a trunked manuscript (that will never see that light of day) which opens with the heroine buying condoms because hers have expired, and she runs into someone she knows at the store. I changed it up and had her running into the hero, a family friend, in this novella.

One thing I’ve come across in several m/f romance novels is the heroine thinking “It’s too big, it’ll never fit” the first time she’s about to have sex with the hero…and it always fits. So, I wanted to write a scene in which it doesn’t fit initially, and they need lots of lube and foreplay.

Short Stories 366:361 — “The Fabulous Animal Jamboree,” by Paul Magrs

Okay, I know Christmas is done, but there was one more of the stories in this collection, Christmassy Tales, that I really wanted to talk about before the closing of the year, so consider it a Boxing Day theme, and I promise it even suits, what with Boxing Day begin about repurposing things and the like. See, it’s about animals in a museum. Rather, the stuffed kind, and in particular it’s about a Dodo (who really, only her beak is technically real, the rest of her having been patched together from other stuff including papier maché) and a Tigon, and—as we all know—at night the stuffed museum animals become real and hang out and chat and have friendships, and the friendship between Maude (the Tigon) and Diedre (the Dodo) is resplendent with the usual “buddy friendship” magic that Paul Magrs crafts so well (see pretty much everything he’s ever written, but most especially the brilliant Brenda and Effie series).

So. It’s night in the museum, Maude and Diedre are chatting it up, and Maude, who had been “in the back” since the 1940’s and has just come back around again on display, mentions the Fabulous Animal Jamboree in Paris on Christmas, and Diedre has no idea what she’s talking about and it turns out no one really remembers and now they’re on a mission. Because, you see, the Fabulous Animal Jamboree (held in Paris) is a night where all the stuffed extinct animals gather and have a marvellous party, and having been in the back of the museum for so long, Maude is missing it and determined to go. But she starts to worry about how well Diedre might be received: she is, after all, only somewhat authentic, but with some magic, some hope, and a great deal of bravery (which comes less naturally to a Dodo), there’s a will and a way.

The adventure of these two would be a brilliantly illustrated Children’s book, frankly, and by virtue of the Dodo’s woes about her own authenticity, I can’t help but think it would be a marvellously queer children’s book, with the message of what feels to us as being us is truly what matters. Regardless of its format, however, I’m just glad I bumped into this one during the trash-fire of this our year 2020 of endless awful, because it was such a bright little spark in my day, and for a little bit, I imagined myself magicked away to Paris, surrounded by animals who had more than enough life left to party, thank you very much.

Short Stories 366:360 — “The Greatest Gift,” by Philip Van Doren Stern

Every now and then I realize there’s a hole in my reading, and this was this year’s holiday realization: I’d never actually read the short story “It’s a Wonderful Life” was based on. It turns out, like most classic tales, it seems, Philip Van Doren Stern couldn’t find anyone to take the tale, and had to print this one himself, which he sent as a folio/Christmas Card to a few hundred people, and resulted in the story getting picked up by the people who would turn it into “It’s a Wonderful Life.” So, as is so often the case, the big publishers dropped the ball and figured something new and interesting wouldn’t fly, and he had to get it out there himself. Huh. Plus que change, eh?

Called “The Greatest Gift,” the short story is like a streamlined version of the movie plot, though toned a little bit down from the film, and without that ghastly final line from the kid (I know, I know, I’m a monster, but I’m sorry, that line is so awkward and so blurted and it’s unfair to expect child actors to carry important lines). There isn’t a catastrophic beginning, but rather a man who just feels like his life has done nothing of merit and is exhausted at feeling as though he’s done nothing impactful. The angel in question is more of an odd stranger, and he gives the man a bag of brushes so he can pose as a brush salesman to get himself in the door of the homes of people who no longer know him, since he was never born. This plays out thereafter, as he interacts with his wife, different versions of his children, his parents, and friends and co-workers.

Of course, he learns he’s had far more impact than he thought, begs the strange fellow for his life back, and learns his lesson after all: that being alive is the greatest gift, and the tale rests on something underlining that his experience wasn’t a hallucination (which was a nice touch, frankly). I think I find this story a bit more charming than the movie, if I’m honest, because it doesn’t quite hammer the angel/Heaven angle as heavily, and—I know, I’m a monster—no kid actor delivering cringeworthy lines about what the teacher says.

Short Stories 366:359 — “Collie Jolly,” by Leigh Landry

Okay, it’s probably time for me to just give up on the whole “but really, I’m a Cat Person” and admit two huskies have changed my mind and I am approaching the middle position in the Dog-Cat spectrum of personhood, and roll with it. “Collie Jolly,” by Leigh Landry is an excellent example of this change in action, as the plot sparks and often centres around a Collie in New Orleans, Bacchus (perfect name, no?) and a particular holiday season that brings together two women who are in very different places in their lives this year. Ashley is recently unemployed and scrambling for any job, and Madison is facing a holiday alone after losing the one she thought might be the love of her life to an accident.

Ashley is very much an optimistic, energetic, upbeat sort, so when she realizes her job prospects are slight, she widens her search for anything, and lands on dog-walker and dog-trainer, despite having no experience whatsoever in either role. That said, I appreciated that she did her research and picked up some training guides and even looked into the breed of the dog in question—the aforementioned Collie—before she got started. Madison, on the other hand, has her heart pretty walled off, and this includes to Bacchus to some degree: as he was her girlfriend’s dog, and part of why he’s so untrained and wild is because she can’t bring herself to really interact with him, thanks to the painful memories. She’s closed herself off from many of her friends, too, though as the story progresses you see the cracks form and the walls coming down—in no small part due to Ashley (and Bacchus).

What follows is a gentle story that is founded on a lot of pain. There’s a New Orleans version of forced proximity (a small amount of ice forms, which shuts the city down), a party or two, a reveal that puts a timer on what might happen between the two women, one steps over the line… It’s a holiday story with the usual beats, is what I’m saying, and yet it holds a nice shine of the holiday thanks to Bacchus and the way Landry writes the two women. Also? The support networks of both were really appreciated by me as a reader, especially in seeing bi women, queer men, and a “chosen family” aspect in play, more-so when we casually learn that Madison’s former girlfriend didn’t have a close relationship with her biological family, who reacted poorly to her coming out. It’s a small thing, but I always appreciate these glimpses of queer fictional lives that are so much closer to my own lived experiences. And, of course, given it’s a romance, things absolutely work out for the best for all involved. (Especially Bacchus.)