'Nathan Burgoine's Blog, page 36

Short Stories 366:236 — “Cold Beer, No Flies,” by Greg Herren

[image error]One of the themes in Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories is Greg Herren’s ability with the unreliable narrator, or characters the reader trusts with a kind of shaky awareness that things are likely not entirely as they seem. “Cold Beer, No Flies” is one such story, and it delivers the punches after leading the reader to a place of empathetic buy-in for the character. Or at least sympathetic.

Here we meet a man in a dead-end town who works at a bar where he’s been entrusted to open five days a week. He’s young enough to still want to leave town, and dented and damaged enough from both his family life and his aborted time in high school to merit the sympathy and empathy I was talking about. His restriction to getting out of town is financial and educational: but he figures if he gets enough cash to take off (like his mother did) then he’ll be able to get his GED and find a job to at least be comfortable. He doesn’t want to end up stuck, not like a man he knows here in town better than many think he does.

The crux of the tale balances on this second man: a closeted, married man with whom the narrator had a clumsy kiss in high school before being outed himself and then violently assaulted—and then leaving school. That man witnessed the attack (he didn’t take part in it, but he did witness it) and while their initial interactions in the bar are awkward because of it, over time they restore something of a friendship. And then more. And then Herren turns it all on a dime with violence and death that are perfectly presented as simple choices that still bear the reader’s empathy—before a final twist that left me breathing out with something I wanted to be denunciation, but honestly was more of a sense of admiration, which only goes to show how well Herren crafts these characters. Well, that or it shows off my revenge streak. Probably both.

Short Stories 366:235 — “Cinnamon Sticks,” by B. Morris Allen

[image error]I keep mentioning this while I stroll through The Clan Chronicles: Tales from Plexis, but one thing I really like about science fiction is how authors can use an alien race to highlight or discuss some facet of humanity, and spin it in a speculative direction. Here we meet Keevor, a member of an alien race who excrete what humans might call “slime” but is actually one of their key communicative devices: the sensory input from interacting with another of their race’s trail is a deeply immersive experience where they can truly get to know each other. Which, for Keevor, is kind of a problem, because the one he loved most interacted with his trail and found him… nice. Safe. Not at all interesting, really, though pleasant enough.

Keevor finds himself on Plexis in the way many seem to do in Czerneda’s shared world: out of a mix of desperation and innovation. Innately good at chemistry by virtue of his species, Keevor quickly becomes a master of mixing up new drugs (among other things), and cements a place for himself, gains a Human friend of sorts, and tries to do the impossible: to change himself to be something other than nice, and safe, and not at all interesting. All the while, the human friend is there providing a kind of anchored-and-outside point of view, and it’s with her that Keevor’s breadth and depth of changes are noted, even though Keevor doesn’t really “get” most of the cues the human is offering him.

Ultimately, this story read to me to be about about changing yourself to please another, and the folly thereof. Keevor isn’t bettering himself, or trying new things out of enthusiasm, and the end result is a bit heartbreaking and melancholy on multiple levels as the tale wraps up. But this is Plexis, after all. If you want it, it’s here. It just might turn out that what you wanted isn’t what you needed after all. B. Morris Allen spins a tale that’s as cautionary as it is spec-fic, and I really enjoyed it.

Short Stories 366:234 — “The Last Page,” by Barbara Monajem

[image error]While many of the stories in Crime Travel tackle serious crimes (often murder) alongside the theme of time travel, I have to admit I have a soft spot for the tales that aimed things in a more capery direction, and “The Last Page,” by Barbara Monajem, has that delightful “unplanned chaos” aspect of capers that I love. The protagonist, Lise, a former resident of Montreal who worked as a bartender at a strip club and only later learned just how criminal her bosses were (and ended up in over her head and then bolting with some of the bosses cash) has since fled to Britain, gotten a job at a castle, and thinks she’s likely safe right up until her former boss arrives.

We start the tale with Lise hiding in the supposedly haunted room of the castle, where she hopes the ghost might lend a hand with her immediate problem. As Lise hides, she also ruminates on the history of the castle, a particular missing treasure that her ancestors claim they brought to Quebec, her boss’s scholarly writings on the castle (soon to be published), and Lise’s general ability to always do the slightly wrong and reckless thing. In a panicked moment of self-defence, she grabs a historical pistol (as historian herself, she knows how to prep and fire it), races to the room to barricade and hide herself, and then things take a turn for the paranormal, and Lise finds herself holding a literal smoking gun, a missing treasure, and the ire of a historical figure she knows very, very well (seriously, she’s read his whole diary, with the exception of the titular missing last page).

The time travel is mystical in this story, and the results are super charming. I adore how Lise rolls with the punches, realizes there’s no easy way out of the situation she’s in, and then relies on her historical knowledge to do what she hopes is the right thing. The connection between what Lise was wishing for at the worst moment in her life and how the treasure delivers on that is a borderline meet-cute, and honestly, I’d cheerfully read more about this couple if the author were willing to do it.

Short Stories 366:233 — “South Congress,” by Bryan Washington

[image error]Prior to this story from Lot: Stories, I’m not sure I’ve ever read a story centred around dealing drugs evoking this much empathy. Even that’s not right, not the right words, but I can’t think of better ones right now, so it’s how I’ll put it. “South Congress” follows Raúl, a Guatemalan who is in the US without documentation or work, and who drives for a drug dealer. His English is too heavily accented (and broken) to garner him access to much else, and the string of smaller jobs that he’d previously managed all dry up. So, through an accident of timing, he drives.

There are two relationships at the core of this story, but at first you only really see the one between Raúl and the other man in the car, Avery, an older Black man who has definitely seen more, and who is the first to really look and see Raúl in a meaningful way, and their progression from strangers to their kind of amiable friendship or partnership or mentorship in dealing drugs is… well, it’s kind of wonderful. Warm. It’s not a word I imagined using to describe selling drugs, but there you go. You can feel Raúl, and feel for him, and it’s honestly reads as a kind and solid friendship throughout most of the tale, building up in layers the way friendships do, all while they deal drugs to locals, and Avery chats about his life, and—most of all—his son, of whom the man is incredibly proud for finding a way out/onward from all of this.

Avery isn’t by any means a saint, and there is a lot of cold, jaded, and careless lack of empathy in his declarations of the world to Raúl, so when the story turns at the end, I don’t think I can say it’s shocking, since Washington leaves enough crumbs in place to let you feel a rising tension. But it feels all the more fragile and painful for what has come before it, and we see everything through Raúl’s eyes, which adds another layer of pain and loss. Ultimately, “South Congress” left me feeling damaged, which I suppose is very much the point, but still in a kind of wonder at the two relationships: one I just watched unfold, and the one I didn’t get to see as it crumbled.

Just Another Baseball Game

By now, you’ve likely heard about Thom Brennaman’s “accident.” He said something homophobic on a hot mic. It went on the air at a baseball game. And, happily, there were consequences for him. He’s been suspended, is my understanding. And the Reds put out an almost-decent apology, even.

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I say “almost decent” because if they’d dropped everything after the word “sorry” they’d have been fine. Instead, they added that “anyone who has been offended” and… Well. More on that in a second.

Now, you all know how much I follow baseball (not at all) and you all know how much I care about Thom Brennaman (I’d never heard of this man until this morning), but here’s the thing about Thom Brennaman that I want to explain for my non-queer readers: this moment isn’t just what he said, or how he got caught, or whether or not that’s the kind of person he is, or if he deserves the kind of censure he’ll get.

The discourse will be all about that, though. Promise.

But I’m here to point out the thing that actually matters? It’s primarily the queer viewer, and then secondarily all the damn rest of us. But especially the not-out, questioning, queerling viewer.

Why? Because this is a perfect example of just another day of living while queer. I talk about this a lot in my workshops, about how living while queer is this ongoing, conscious experience of “am I safe right now?” It’s one of the reasons our own homes (if we’ve got them, if they’re supportive) and specifically queer spaces are so important: they’re a place we can finally let down our guard.

So. Imagine. You go to watch a baseball game. And, out of nowhere, when you’re not in a frame of mind of “protect myself”—because you’re just watching a baseball game, after all—someone reminds you you’re considered less than human. That’s what Thom Brennaman did.

Now, drill down a bit. Imagine the closeted queerling watching this with a parent. Imagine the parent chuckles. Imagine there’s discourse now in the household from the parent (and maybe other parents and other siblings) about how people are over-reacting, how it was an accident, how it doesn’t mean anything.

Those moments are excruciating, and so damn damaging to closeted queer people.

Thom Brennaman’s use of that slur has created those moments all over the place. The discourse will happen, is already happening. People who have no idea they’re talking in front of other queer people will happily defend Thom, talk about snowflakes, roll their eyes, dismiss it all as ridiculousness and being “offended.”

(Now we’re back to “offended.” It’s always the people “being offended” notice? Never the person “acting offensive.” Subtle shift of focus there, and definitely a shifting of blame—people were offended, not someone acted offensive. It puts the blame and the onus on queer people for having their gosh-darned feelings hurt.)

Anyway. Even for openly out, queer adults who are in secure positions in their life, for whom this barely scratches the surface of the crap we get day-in, day-out? This still sucks. Because thanks to Thom, we’ll get shoved into “teacher” discussions.

Well-meaning friends and “allies”—and also people who are neither—will bring it up, and ask us what we think, or to explain it to their friends who aren’t getting why it’s bad, or or or.

Cue the “I’ve heard gays use that word, though!”

Cue the “Is that really bad enough to cut off his livelihood?” like *we* somehow did this to him.

Cue “Cancel culture!” rants when what is happening is “Consequence culture.”

So many cues. Sealioning, gaslighting, “I’m just asking a question!”

Thom did all that.

I don’t even give a shit about baseball, and my feed is full of it. I can’t imagine what exhausted queer people who love baseball must be seeing. I imagine they’re wondering if it’s one more thing they should just give up on. I hope they don’t, but I get it if they do.

Short Stories 366:232 — “The Cartography of Sudden Death,” by Charlie Jane Anders

[image error]Charlie Jane Anders is basically magic, so I’m sure I’m not surprising anyone when I say I’ve loved everything of hers I’ve read, but this was my first brush with an audiobook she’d written, and… well, again, no surprise, I loved it. I listened to it more-or-less compulsively, rather than spreading it out over multiple dog-walks, and blasted through the novella in about a day, around frustrating interruptions like “talking to people” and “eating food.” “The Cartography of Sudden Death” is a Tor original (you can go read it at that link, but I can heartily suggest the audio, too) and has one of the most unique concepts for time-travel I’ve ever read: doorways in time open when people of high enough historical and cultural impact die suddenly.

If that doesn’t make immediate sense, then you’re going to be in the same boat as the main character of the story, Athena, who watches as the woman she serves (as part of a contingent of 1,000 others serving her) dies suddenly and unexpectedly—and then a red-haired woman arrives seemingly out of nowhere. The woman explains a bit about who she is—time traveller, the whole notion of time-travel through death, which she’s trying to create a complete map for—and then everything goes pear shaped when another time-traveller using the same method but with zero compunction about making deaths happen to fuel his trips arrives and… well. Athena ends up going on a time-travel chase alongside the woman after the assassin.

“The Cartography of Sudden Death” is perfection when it comes to immersive world-building: Athena’s lot in life is described, but not overtly explained, and Anders leaves it to the reader to infer what isn’t said. The empire that Athena belongs to, and the various jaunts through time that she goes on, all provide just enough of a glimpse to give a core construct of the culture, with the time-traveler explaining a few key details to Athena on a more-or-less needs-to-know basis. And Athena’s characterization is suited so perfectly to this story that everything flows so smoothly. Honestly, it’s one of the best time travel stories I’ve ever read in my life. And the audio performer, Imani Jade Powers, does an equally wonderful job as well.

Short Stories 366:231 — “Coalrose,” by Craig Laurance Gidney

[image error]Before anything else, I need to say this story is phenomenal. I’ve spoken with a lot of authors of collections and editors of anthologies, and one thing that comes up a lot is the choosing of the first story and the last story, and let me tell you, “Coalrose” ends Skin Deep Magic: Short Fiction to sheer freaking perfection. It also shouldn’t have gone anywhere else in the collection because when I finished it I had to put down my copy and just breathe.

We begin with a description of a woman, Zoë Coalrose, in a poster. From this opening, Gidney spins the mythos of Coalrose without a single wasted word: Zoë’s appearance, her pose, the glimpse of a tongue, or a tear, or the tattoo visible by her breast, it all conjures something more. Then the vignettes appear, starting back in 1930 with the woman who would become Zoë, and the unlocking of her sort of power or gift to see and know and affect people. Then we shift again and again, moving forward in time through different decades to witness intersections of other people with Zoë. A man who is the starting point of Zoë’s career. A tattoo artist. A woman lost and damaged. A man in mourning.

By the time we reach 1962, the story has built, vignette by vignette, into a whole about a woman with real power—a power she’s willing to admit from the start might be evil—and how that power has affected so many people. That she’s an artist—and entertainer, a singer—felt like an extra wink for the reader, and as the story turns to the unknown narrator discussing the collection of moments around Zoë Coalrose with their own thoughts on what she might have been, Skin Deep Magic closes: on that brilliant sense of power in sharing moments of artistry.

Corey Alexander Interview

Yesterday, the world lost Corey Alexander/Xan West, and I’m reeling from it. Sometimes, I catch myself forgetting that friendships that are “just” online are often much more than that among marginalized communities, and this was a very painful reminder.

I try to be someone who uses my words for a living, but I’m at a loss as to explain the impact of losing their voice. In Romancelandia, especially, to me Corey/Xan was so devoted to raising the bar on discussions and representation of queerness in erotica, especially trans voices and trans characters, but also so many important intersections (of race, disability, and trauma/survival). There are few people who led discussions as carefully or as well as they did.

Back on February 21st, 2018, I was lucky enough to drop by Corey Alexander’s blog for a guest Q&A when Saving the Date came out, and I won’t lie: when Corey offered the spot after reading the novella—They liked what I’d written!—I truly felt like I’d accomplished something I’d set out to do.

I don’t know what will happen to Corey’s Book Corner or their Xan West page, so I’ve cut-and-pasted the Q&A below.

I am excited to have ‘Nathan Burgoine here today talking about his upcoming m/m romance release, Saving the Date which is out this Friday! This story, which he co-wrote with Angela S. Stone, centers a gay trauma survivor who wants to give himself a new memory, a positive memory, to associate with the anniversary of his queer bashing. It’s a short meet-cute erotic romance with a matchmaking theme, and it centers a one night stand.

A Bit About ‘Nathan

‘Nathan Burgoine grew up a reader and studied literature in university while making a living as a bookseller. His first published short story was “Heart” in the collection Fool for Love: New Gay Fiction. Since then, he has had dozens of short stories published. He has also released two gay romance novellas, In Memoriam, and Handmade Holidays. ’Nathan’s first novel, Light, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Since then, he’s written Triad Blood and Triad Soul.

A cat lover, ‘Nathan managed to fall in love and marry Daniel, who is a confirmed dog person. Their ongoing “cat or dog” détente ended with the rescue of a husky named Coach. They live in Ottawa, Canada, where they bake, go snow-shoeing, and play board games like the geeky nerds they are.

An Interview with ‘Nathan
C: How would you describe yourself to a new reader just discovering your work?

N: I mostly inhabit contemporary spec-fic; generally speaking a reader is most likely to get our world but with a dash of something magic, psychic, or other, but I do also write contemporary without that spec-fic. The latter is less often (and includes Saving the Date). I write queer, though, no matter what I’m writing. Usually my POV character(s) inhabit a queer male voice, but they live in a queer world as much like my own as I can make it (albeit often with access to magic of some kind).

That’s all really wordy, though, so how about: mostly queer shorter fiction with a dash of magic, though sometimes novels happen despite my best efforts.

C: What sparked Saving the Date for you? What made you want to write this particular story?

N: There’s a local romance con, Romancing the Capital, where I met Angela S. Stone (among many other awesome authors) and she introduced me to the concept of the 1Night Stand series: it’s a very large series many authors have written where the commonality seed is a woman, Madame Eve, who has a perfect ability to match people. And although many sign up for just a one night stand, they often find much, much more than they were looking for.

We were discussing how some of the authors in that series had paired men up for their titles, and Angela herself had done a couple of them, and she put forth the idea of co-writing one. I’d never co-written before, and I’d never been a part of a multi-author series before, either. The temptation was there, and it took root. Over the next few months we began batting ideas back and forth. We decided to take turns with character POVs, and picked our characters.

When I pondered a character who’d be using a service like 1Night Stand, it clicked for me that this was an opportunity to tell a story about someone surviving/thriving after violence, and in a way that spoke a bit to my own experience: an active seeking out of a way to reclaim a calendar date from a bad memory.

C: I was struck by the role queer bashing takes in this m/m romance, partly because it’s such a stark contrast to how this kind of trauma often occurs in m/m romance, where it often occurs during the timeline of the story. You placed it in the past, after Morgan has been working on recovery from this trauma for quite a while. It makes for a very different kind of story, and a different kind of engagement with queer hatred, I think. Can you talk about this choice, and where you see this story in the context of m/m romance as a genre?

N: I very purposefully placed Morgan’s bashing three years into his past. My own experiences were this: the first anniversary, many people remember, and gather to help. It was a horrible day, but I had so much backup if I wanted it. The second anniversary? Less people rallied, and I handled it. The third? I was on my own and really resenting the power the day had over me. I specifically set up an alternative—I took a short vacation—and that helped rob the day of some of its power.

And it was all done with the help of therapist and friends both. That was a huge piece I wanted included in Morgan’s back-story. There’s this awful “time heals all wounds” thought that sometimes gets bandied about I think is applied too easily to the trauma of others. For many, many people recovery is work. Hard, exhausting work.

So by placing Morgan’s bashing three years in the past, I could frame him as being in a particular emotional and mental place, and not feel like I was cheapening the impact of the violence on his life. It happened, and it has had a very real and harsh impact on his life, but three years later Morgan is feeling more in control of his life. He’s ready for a new step. He’s not rushing. He’s trusting his therapist to help. I wanted it to be about him, not the violent thing that happened to him.

I often struggle with the representation of bashings in m/m romance. A person’s reaction to violence is individual, of course, but the volume of hurt/comfort built around bashing often disconnects me as a reader, as it rarely strikes a chord with my experiences.

C: It’s clear that one of the core things you wanted to do in this book was to center a character who is reclaiming the date of an anniversary of his hate crime and making it into something else. Can you tell me about why that’s important to you?

N: Morgan is probably one of the most “goal oriented” characters I’ve ever written, in the sense that his character is all about trying to accomplish something very specific, and he vocalizes it from the get-go. Given that he’s in an erotic romance, his goals are also sexual, but reclaiming a sense of sexuality after a bashing can be a huge deal. And going back to m/m romance, it’s not generally something I’d bumped into before.

Anniversaries and holidays have power, often regardless of whether or not we’d like them to. In the same way Handmade Holidays dealt with Christmas for a queer kid kicked to the curb, Saving the Date let me explore something similar but without the cultural relentlessness. Unless others are told or are in the know, an anniversary of violence remains personal. It’s not like Christmas, which is a loud, brash, unescapable noise for weeks. A character like Morgan let me put a voice to something I rarely saw in romance, and in an organic way.

The importance of it to me, personally, comes from the same place, though. Whether it’s Christmas or a personal anniversary of violence, I try to write stories to resonate with my lived queer experience. I know I’m by no means the only person out there who looks at Christmas with trepidation, and I’m sure the same holds true here. I like not feeling alone myself, and much of the positive reader feedback I got from Handmade Holidays included other queer people who’d made their own good things from the holidays when what was “supposed” to happen wasn’t available.

C: One of the things that really resonated for me as a reader was how Morgan has a complex relationship to being touched; there are some kinds of touch that are triggering and difficult for him as a result of the trauma he’s experienced. This is something that comes up organically during the sex scene with Zach, which made so much sense, as it’s his first time having sex after the bashing, and not something that’s often predictable. One of the more interesting aspects of this moment in the story is that it is told from Zach’s POV. What motivated that choice? What does Zach’s POV bring to those moments?

N: This was a big choice, and if I remember correctly, Angela and I were sitting on a couch in between panels at last year’s Romancing the Capital when we were really working on those scenes, and we did make the conscious decision to keep a few key moments in Zach’s POV. It became about finding the balance between some authenticity in Morgan’s processes and not forgetting that the readership of the story in question is reading an erotic romance, and was probably the piece we went back-and-forth over the most.

The very first move (which is also in Zach’s POV) is Morgan kissing Zach in one of the changing booths on the canal. That was on purpose, and communicated Morgan’s intent for the date. Zach interprets that for what it is, and they head to the hotel. Once at the hotel, Zach moves at a pace that isn’t unusual for two queer men in their situation.

And then things go a bit wrong. Morgan shuts down.

So why Zach’s POV?

For one thing, as an erotic romance and part of an established series with a particular tone, we needed to balance Morgan’s reality with—I’ll speak bluntly—not being completely overwhelming or potentially too dark. Seeing him from the outside takes the reader a step away from that moment, while still giving us a window through someone living that moment—Zach—who realizes and reacts pretty close to perfectly, given the situation.

And it gave us an opportunity to do exactly that: show a character reacting well to someone shutting down. Zach communicates, supports, and is patient. Angela and I both have very strong opinions on the intersection of consent and erotica, and it was a great opportunity to show how checking in is sexy, for example. How changing the pace for someone can be necessary.

C: I liked that the story doesn’t automatically assume that Morgan getting triggered meant that sex would stop. That instead it’s assumed that they can figure out a way to have sex that will work for Morgan, as that’s what he wants. Zach comes up with a strategy that sparks one of the hottest moments in the book. That moment in the story, and Zach’s creative approach to it, feels like it’s very much about honoring consent in complicated ways. Can you tell me more about consent in your writing, and how you navigate the complexities of it?

N: The chair scene was the first scene to occur to me when I tried to frame a thriving/surviving story in my head as an erotic romance.

I wanted to show how specific a trigger can be, even when it’s something many people would think of as anything but. Morgan struggles with the physical size of Zach (even though that’s also something he finds attractive), and sometimes it is just as simple as how someone moves. Removing that movement, or circumventing that movement, with clear communication and stated intent and putting all the power back into Morgan’s hands?

I wanted to make that sexy.

I also wanted it to be a moment of triumph for Morgan, so while he stumbled, he stumbled with someone who understood enough to know that it didn’t mean everything had to stop, just that things needed to change direction if they wanted to go forward. They talk to each other. Zach makes an offer, and Morgan accepts—and Morgan also knows he can call a halt at any point, and in that moment achieves a level of trust with Zach that lets him continue.

I tried to show every step of those consents in action, and stated very clearly when possible. Zach backing off. Morgan making it clear he’d still like to keep going, but that he’s feeling stymied and why. Zach coming up with a potential solution and offering it. Morgan taking time to digest that offer, to test how it felt to him, and then to accept it. And then, after all that, to give Zach permission to move forward again.

Consent is always on my mind when I write erotic content, and Morgan’s frame of mind made me consider it all the more carefully. The difference in the scene with the chair from the scene where the two men first arrive in the hotel room was entirely about clear communication, and I wanted to underline it.

C: I’d love to hear a bit about your co-writing process. How did collaboration work on this story?

N: One of the nice things about splitting character POVs was we mapped out the events and narrative, wrote our scenes, and often left in place-holder statements in dialog. Most of our input in each other’s chapters were about our own character’s dialog or characterization. There was lots of “How would Morgan answer this question?” and “How would Zach say this?”

Having two authors work two different POVs made keeping the character voices pretty organic. I’d never co-written anything before, so I had no idea how it would go, but Angela had done it before, so before I knew it, there were shared files and tracked comments and little dialog boxes everywhere. It threw me a bit at first—I’m not used to getting feedback while I write (literally while I was writing, feedback could pop up!) but it certainly kept us on track.

Our backgrounds came into play, too. Zach’s bisexuality, and how his sexuality was presented and written was key to his POV. And Angela helped me tone down some of Morgan’s darker tone in places, for example. And I think we each stole one block of dialog from the other and moved it to our own chapters, so that balanced out.

C: I really appreciated the bisexual representation in the story; it resonated for me, and felt very real. Particularly the moment that references Zach’s distance from queer community because of how bi folks are often treated when they speak openly about their lives. Can you talk a bit about Zach and your other bisexual characters?

N: Full props to Angela for that moment. We worked that scene a few different ways to get it right, so it dropped organically, didn’t make Morgan out to be too much of a jerk, but had the right level of biphobia/sting/frustration for Zach’s lived experience.

One of the reasons I call myself a queer man is I struggled with “bisexual enough” and find no one argues with me calling myself queer, but even some good friends made (unintentionally) frustrating comments along the lines of “I guess you’re pretty much gay now” once I married my husband. Depending on the crowd I’m in, I’ll adjust how I introduce myself, using queer or gay.

Angela wanted to write Zach as clearly bisexual-but-leaning-to-women, and that meant it was easy to explore the kind of biphobia that comes into play from within the queer community and leads to bisexuals-in-relationships never coming out. Certainly there was zero reason for married Zach to come out given his life, family, and career. Now divorced and facing a moment where he’s feeling actively closeted in a different way, he’s faced with a different scenario. That’s a very real frustration, and I think Angela wrote it clearly and cleverly.

In my own writing, I get to be emphatic with intent and statement. Matt (in Triad Soul) is on-page stated pansexual, Rebekah and Luc (Triad Blood) are bisexual, Pheobe’s boyfriend Dennis (Handmade Holidays) is bisexual, Pheobe (Handmade Holidays) is a straight trans woman, and I think Nico, one of her trans man friends, is mentioned in Saving the Date, too. I like being specific. Using the words, using the identities, is important especially in my representations of fictional chosen queer families, because that’s my lived culture. So often I bump into romances where the only two queer characters are the two gay men falling in love. They don’t even have queer friends. That never feels authentic.

C: This story has crossover with another story of yours, Handmade Holidays, which centers queer chosen family. Can you tell me about why writing stories that center queer characters who are connected to queer community and queer chosen family is important to you?

N: In many ways, writing for me is a form of time-travel wish-fulfillment. I write the stories I never found and wish I could have found when I was first looking for them. I don’t think that’s uncommon for queer writers—we never got to see ourselves growing up, let alone thriving versions of ourselves. And even though strides are being made in some places, for some notions of queerness, there are still characters that go missing.

One of my particular focuses is queer chosen families specifically because it’s my reality, but in fiction—especially mainstream fiction—it’s not there. If there are disowned queer kids, it’s all wrapped up in a fictional arc and everyone ends up reunited with their families with rainbow and glitter and it’s a Very Special Episode, and everyone learns their lesson.

Except I don’t believe the lesson is for (or even about) queer people in those stories, so it misses the mark for me. That isn’t to say every parent of every queer I write is going to be awful (because that’s not my lived reality, either). It’s just that I pretty much owe my own survival after I came out to a particular group of drag queens and the local bear community, and a growing circle of queer friends were there for me through the worst of it, and it’s important to me those kinds of stories are told for other people in the same situation.

C: What’s next on the horizon for you? What stories are you working on?

N: This June I’m releasing my first collection of short fiction, Of Echoes Born, and I’m beyond excited. Short fiction is my first and best love in the world of writing. The dozen stories in the collection (half of which are new including one novelette) interconnect—I like to share characters in my fictional Village—and it includes a few references to Handmade Holidays and other stories I’ve written even if they’re not in the collection. All the stories are speculative fiction, in that there’s the dash of magic, or psychic, or other, and is bookended with a pair of new stories with a character, Ian Simon, I’ve been working on for over a decade.

I’ve also got a YA in the pipeline, Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks, about a somewhat hyper-organized gay teen who has his whole life plan ready to go and is just waiting to graduate high school and then develops a teleportation problem.

Currently, I’m working on Triad Magic (the third in my paranormal Ottawa series) as well as another holiday novella I’m hoping to have done for this Christmas, Faux-Ho-Ho, which is a fake-relationship holiday romance and the inciting plot incident is more-or-less where Handmade Holidays ended.

And somewhere in there? I’m going to try to write more short stories for anthology calls, too.

Note: In addition to this interview, ‘Nathan has written about Saving the Date on his blog. I highly recommend reading this post about scars, in particular. 

More about Saving the Date:

After a vicious gay bashing, Morgan has spent the last three years working hard to survive and thrive. His latest plan? Using Madame Evangeline’s high-end dating service, 1NightStand, to take the anniversary of the worst night of his life and replace it with a good—and maybe even sexy—memory.

Zach, a police officer with the Hate & Bias Crime Unit, is still coming to terms with his divorce and struggling to move on with his life. Using a matchmaking service is so very not his style, but sometimes a guy has to trust his friends—even if they don’t know everything about him, and he’s not sure they ever will.

Face-to-face, however, it becomes clear that despite an attraction, there’s a problem. Morgan and Zach have already met—three years ago. But with some courage, a couple of pairs of skates, and a leap of faith? Morgan and Zach have a shot at saving more than one day. Together? They might just make a future.

Relevant Links

‘Nathan’s website

Angela’s website

Pre-order this book on Amazon

Add this book on Goodreads

Short Stories 366:230 — “At Mother Laurie’s House of Bliss,” by Catherine Lundoff

[image error]Today’s entry in my journey through Catherine Lundoff’s Out of this World: Queer Speculative Fiction Stories is one of my favourite of the collection. We follow a young sex-worker in a “House of Bliss” who is with an influential client (not that he’s supposed to know that). The man he’s with is very close to the King, and is more than a little infatuated with this worker, and we’re watching him read some poetry he’s written while living inside the head of his guy and I have to admit, I was chuckling my butt off at his train-of-thought as he did his best to force a façade of arousal in the face of bad poetry. Then the influential client takes a swig of wine and promptly chokes to death on some poison.

What follows is another example of Lundoff’s ability to world-build in short fiction at the intersection of perfect amounts and perfect pacing thereof. We learn each little detail of how the young man came to work here, how he was trained, how magic works in this world, how he’s in way, way over his head, and how he’s very likely not to make it much longer, what with likely being blamed for murdering the influential client in question. The owner of the House of Bliss gets involved, as does the witch who lives there, and between the three characters, a lot of manipulation and revelation, and a healthy dose of frightening magic, the murder is solved.

I think I like my fantasy stories best when they’re an admixture of another genre as well (in this case, a murder mystery) which is why “At Mother Laurie’s House of Bliss” resonated so well with me as a reader. I also really have a thing for characters who have little-to-no recourse finding the wiggle room with what they’ve got, and this story has that, too.

Once again, I got to ask Catherine Lundoff where the notion for this one came from, and it turns out it was crafted for a call:

Editor Lee Martindale was editing an anthology of fantasy tales about sex workers (nonerotic) and I was thinking about closed room mysteries and this was the result! I always meant to go back and do more with this world and these characters.

I second returning to this world, too!

Short Stories 366:229 — “Humans ‘n’ Hot Dogs,” My Melissa Yuan-Innes

[image error]I love science fiction, and I think by now that’s probably clear. But I’ll also be the first to admit that sometimes science fiction is, well… grim. It’s probably not surprising, given everything going on in the world that science fiction—and most of the genres, honestly—seem to be shifting to grim-dark (hello, DC Cinematic Universe), but I think this trend making me treasure the cute, light, upbeat stories I find all the more. Enter Melissa Yuan-Innes with “Humans ‘n’ Hot Dogs.”

This short story features an alien, ‘Charlie’ in his human guise, who has been given a rather specific mission: he’s to sell hot dogs to humans on that backwater little blue planet and get recordings that his supervisors are going to use to… uh… well, he doesn’t know what the point is, but he’s going to do this, okay? They’ve given him so many advantages (not the least of which is having his human guise look like the tall, tan, lead actor from the ‘Baywatch’ entertainment), and he is not going to fail. Except his cart ends up across the street from another hot dog cart—Earl’s Hot Dogs—and although his dogs are cheaper, and he offers great sauces, and he’s much, much faster than Earl… people prefer Earl’s dogs.

This will not stand, and no matter what it takes, Charlie is going to get to the bottom of this. What follows is one of the silliest, cutest, and whimsical little science fiction stories I’ve read in years, about an alien manipulating human capitalism for hot-dog gains, and a few clever reveals and a dash of social commentary to boot, all in a shiny, upbeat package. I listened to this one as an audio short, and the performer, Rico E. Anderson, put the perfect amount of genuine desire into Charlie’s voice, pushing right to the edge of parody without going too far. The end result? Some well-wanted laughs…and a desire for a hot dog.

I’m lucky enough to have met Melissa Yuan-Inness at a couple of conventions, so I asked her where the notion for this wee tale came from. Here it is:

Stuart McLean, of CBC’s Vinyl Cafe, wrote about loyalty, as illustrated by Ernie the hot dog vendor. My immediate response: “What a great idea! But what if the hot dog vendor was an alien?” Thus was born a story of an alien in Toronto, hawking hot dogs and learning about capitalism vs. friendship on earth.