'Nathan Burgoine's Blog, page 71

Judging for Yourself

Both the Lammies and the RITAs have announced their finalist lists for the year. Now, before anything else, I want to make sure I begin with a simple declarative here: there are some really great things that are happening on both lists.

And there’s some buts. I don’t know how coherent I’m going to be today, either, because it’s exhausting and it’s not new and… yeah.

Most centrally? Oh holy crap are the RITAs white. They’re super-white. There is so other way to put it, there’s no point (but a lot of harm) in not calling it what it is: a sincerely racist problem systemic to the whole shebang of the RWA and the RITAs and pretty much romance as it’s covered, read, reported on, bought (by agents or publishers), represented, and marketed in general, and definitely as it’s awarded.

There are other people talking about this, and talking about it brilliantly. Romancelandia has a terrible history (and present) with Black Women and this is another damn example. So. Yeah. Check out Courtney Milan or Bree (Kit Rocha) or Rebekah Weatherspoon or…

You get the idea. The math doesn’t lie. It’s just freaking impossible for the RITA finalist list to be anything other than a racist mess.

I don’t want to detract the focus from that point at all, but I’m also not going to stand here and try to speak for black women because the white guy—queer or not—is so not the person to do that.

I’m gonna start firmly in my lane, and talk about queerness, though, because the RITAs and the Lammies both had some stuff there, too.

Queerness in the RITAs

The one thing that gave me the biggest jolt of happiness (pretty much the only jolt of happiness) in the RITAs was seeing Aurora Rey’s “Lead Counsel” from The Boss of Her: Office Romance Novellas in the RITAs for Romance Novella. You know how I adore novellas, and I love reading women-loving women romance, so seeing the RITAs give love to an #ownvoice lesbian romance? That’s so worth celebrating. Even if it is one out of—sigh, again—forty-five super-white books on the RITA finalist list.

I’m going to pause here to tell anyone reading who hasn’t heard of Aurora Rey just how amazing she is. I adore her books. I’ve listened to a half-dozen of her books on audio, and enjoyed them all. Her women often have curves, the settings are vibrant, the scorch does indeed sizzle, and you should totally bring snacks because I always end up hungry at the descriptions of the food. I particularly loved Autumn’s Light, the last in Rey’s Provincetown-set Cape End Romance quartet, which is also a finalist for the Lammy for lesbian romance, too.

Given the RWA’s recent letters to the editor discussion (if you missed that, I responded here), seeing that queerness represented on the finalist list felt good. And I’m going to admit when I saw it there, I stopped looking at the list for a while, just to enjoy the moment. And then people came over and we played board game and it was a good night and then I went back to see the rest of the list and…

Well. Of those forty-five books on the RITA finalist list? There’s Rey’s queer women, and then there’s some m/m romance: Relay by Layla Reyne, Out of Body by Suzanne Brockmann, Loving a Warrior by Melanie Hansen, and A Fool and His Manny by Amy Lane. There’s also a polyamorous romance with two men and a woman, Three-Way Split by Elia Winters (which I haven’t read by by all accounts is freaking solid on the polyamourous front, and doesn’t shy away from the men having feelings for each other as well as the woman and that, my friends, is so fantastic and queer).

So, on the one hand, six titles with queer characters feels like a win on that front. It was, what, 2013 when there was a book that included a scene with two men together that made it to the finalist list (a menage, I believe), and by 2015 there were three finalists (all m/m), so this is a double in the space of three years, I guess?

But, truly, yay for Aurora Rey. More m/m is also not unwelcome, though I’d really have loved to see any #ownvoice in there, too—that’s another part of the “buts” I’m talking about here, because it’s really frustrating to see—and if I side-step over to the Lammies for a moment, something happened in the Gay Romance category that’s super disheartening as a queer man who sometimes writes queer romance with queer men characters.

Gay Romance and the Lammies

Oof. I’m not gonna lie, seeing the Gay Romance finalist list was a gut-punch.

This year’s finalists for the Lambda Literary Gay Romance category are The CEO’s Christmas Manny, Angela McCallister, Crashing Upwards, S.C. Wynne, Detour, Reesa Herberth & Michelle Moore, Learn with Me, Kris Jacen, No Luck, Kayleigh Sky, Of Sunlight and Stardust, Christina Lee & Riley Hart, Point of Contact, Melanie Hansen, and Undue Influence: A Persuasion Retelling, Jenny Holiday.

It is really hard as a queer man to look at that list and not notice the lack of queer men authors. Gay men absolutely submitted titles for consideration this year (the submissions list is always public and my eyeball math says somewhere around 30% of the submissions were written by men) so just on the basis of math alone, out of eight finalists, having two #ownvoice queer men on that finalist list shouldn’t have been too high a bar, and would have been representative of the authors involved.

Now, that’s not how it works, I know, and believe me I know someone will happily tell me it’s totally possible the judges just felt stronger about the other books. The books aren’t judged by author, but by content. Absolutely. And I know that Lambda reaches out, in part, to previous winners to make up the more than sixty judges who read the (more than a) thousand books this year. But I can’t help but look at the other categories—all the other categories—where the #ownvoice content on the finalist lists is much, much higher (often completely so), and feel that sense of dejection.

So how does it work?

Judging For Yourself

This year, I got to be a judge for the RITAs. If you don’t know how judging works for the RITAs, the bare-bones version is this: if you enter your book(s), you’re not allowed to judge books in the same category as the one(s) you entered, and you’re randomly assigned books in the categories you didn’t enter. Five people read each book, and you submit your judge results via four questions, the first three a yes/no, and the fourth is a score of how much you enjoyed the book.

Does the entry contain a central love story?
Is the resolution of the romance emotionally satisfying and optimistic?
Does the entry fall within the category description?

Assuming there aren’t too many “No” answers to the questions above (which, by the way, is a really big problem with polyamorous romance if your random judges believe that the only HEA or HFN is between two people, say, or with queer romance were a judge to decide they just don’t “believe in that”), the highest and lowest scores of the five are then dropped, and the finalists are selected from the top scorers as a percentage to create a list.

The notion here is that authors are being judged by their peers, but… are they? I mean, from the results, it’s obvious there’s significant bias in place against black authors, and given the general make-up of the population, as Courtney Milan said, this is just impossible to attribute to anything else. It’s also, as she said, systemic. Like, even on the most basic level: the RWA sure isn’t a friendly place to exist as a black woman (or, again, to stay in my lane, a queer guy), which makes it far less likely for someone so marginalized to want to pay to be a member. Which means entering a submission to be judged for the RITAs will cost more (because it costs less to submit a book if you’re a member). And also means that the judges are less likely to—wait for it—be your actual peers. If the only people judging the contest are the people who are a part of the status quo who don’t see the problem how can anything possibly change? But what I so often see—asking people to pony up cash for the chance to maybe, perhaps, make it a bit better—added with the cost of them having to watch themselves be erased and ignored and diminished in every discussion? That’s insult to injury.

Lest it sound like I’m only grousing at the RITAs, I’m not. This cash/status quo systemic gatekeeping also happens with the Lammies, by the way. You can’t submit if your book is only an e-format, so there’s the cost of physical copies and the narrowing of the field away from smaller e-publishers, which, surprise!, means more favouring to the larger, wealthier publishing world, which is heavily biased to the cisgender and male and white—so while the Lammies certainly have more racial diversity on display in their finalists than the RITAs (but, again, that’s a bar is set to the lowest setting), it’s still a really, really white list of finalists.

Now, when you agree to judge for the RITAs, you also agree not to speak identifying specifics about books you’ve read (ie: no author names or titles) but this year I had my first shot at judging for the RITAs and it was not a pleasant experience—and I mean this specifically as a queer man.

I joined the RWA last year because I wanted to get more involved and see if I could nudge things from within, and I signed up to be a judge as part of that. And then I proceeded to have to read multiple books where the only queer characters in the entire book were killed off. I can’t be more specific than that (again, that’s part of the rules) but my point here is this: those authors, who saw absolutely nothing wrong with killing off the only queer characters in their books, could absolutely be the authors judging my queer romances.

It wasn’t every book. Most of the books had zero queer characters at all. But if a queer character showed up? BLAM. They were dead before the final chapter. The worlds in these books were either (a) completely without queer people, or (b) killed them.

That doesn’t make me feel like the judges are my peers. And I gotta tell you, this whole “kill off the only queer” thing? It’s not new. It’s never been okay. And it’s not just me.

As for the Lammies? I honestly don’t know. I have anecdotal stories from people who took part as judges (who, of course, can’t give a lot of specifics since nondisclosure is in play), but it sounds like judges are drawn from previous winners as well as people in the field. Also, a few of these have judged multiple times, and how things worked changed each time.

I tried to track down an official system for how the Lammies are judged, and as far as I can tell (from a document that may be outdated, since it’s from 2012, but it was the only thing I could find), there isn’t really a system in place to judge categories. The group of judges for each category (hopefully more than four people, but with a single administrator in charge to do their best to break ties, also gathered with an aim for diversity among the judges) more or less just figure out amongst themselves how they want to select finalists/winners. It’s not a scoring system (though they can use one if they like), or a ranking system (again, that might be what they decide to do) or anything else specific. They discuss and debate. The LGBT+ content has to be there, but the measure of artistic quality—which of course is subjective and is going to need discussion—isn’t assigned any sort of specific framework.

So, the RITAs are judged by authors who belong to the RWA who are not currently also submitting to the category in question with a three-question binary and single score system aiming for the winner to be chosen from among peers, and the Lammies are judged by a panel of over 60 literary professionals (this year) who, uh… come up with something they agree to do ahead of time to choose finalists and declare a winner, the system for which could be widely different category by category.

Okay, So Now What, Smart Guy?

So. What’s the point of it? Why rage at the lack of black women in the finalist lists—again—and not just write off the whole organization? Why work to try and make the RITAs a more inclusive place where queer lady romances showing up on the finalist list isn’t a surprise (pleasant or otherwise)? Why not be content to see gay romance characters if not gay author voices? Why look at a sub-category of the Lammies and raise a brow when there’s no authors listed who belong to the category itself as an #ownvoice?

And what can we even do about it? How do you even start to fix that?

I have no freaking idea. I’m tired. I give up.

No, that’s not true. It matters because it’s important to see yourself represented, in general and specifically in discourse about you (and yes, even when it’s fictional). So. It’s another year. Another string of awards. Another sign that we’re not doing better. And that sucks. It’s also another chance to make a concerted effort to raise voices.

I have the privilege of having cash enough to continue to join the RWA, which means I can continue to be a judge, and boost voices (especially the voices of black women), and continue to speak up, and use my vote for more diversity within the organization (especially black women), and do what I can to push for changes in the way the awards are handled (specifically by listening to black women, many of whom I’m seeing offering concrete ideas online already) and, and, and… Basically, I can try to do whatever the hell I can. And I will.

But first I’m gonna go read a book or two or three, and try to reclaim some joy from the genre.

 

 

 

Friday Flash Fics — Merrily, Merrily

Today’s Friday Flash Fics rides the coat-tails of another one I wrote a while back, Gently Down the ‘Stream. We once again have a time-traveler arriving who’s there to do a good deed, but this time it’s the someone from the “now” of the last piece, heading into the a then. The photo reminded me of a particular piece of history I found fascinating when I was younger, so it became that, and after a few days of pondering, I leaned into it.

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Merrily, Merrily

Well, at least Ty knew he was on target.

He couldn’t see the target, but he was definitely on it.

Now he just needed to move. Like, even a little would be good?

Instead, he clung to his umbrella and barely managed to stay upright. And most of that was by keeping his weight on the umbrella in question.

Which wasn’t even an umbrella.

Agent Grant said the downstream was harder than upstream, he reminded himself. But holy flying crap, there’s harder and there’s harder.

Which made him think of Agent Grant again, in a different way, and he choked off a small laugh before he ended up falling over on the ancient sidewalk and collapsed. Or took a deep breath.

This smog sure was something.

So was Grant. He rolled his eyes at himself. Okay, apparently time-travel made him horny? Or regressed him to teenage mentality?

He recited the alphabet to himself, trying to recover his mental balance, and purposefully not allowing himself to think about a particular pair of hands or a particular gaze coming from a particularly handsome face and…

Wow. Time travel. It does a libido good.

The weakness and the wobbles finally started to fade, and Ty straightened. He took a second to make sure his top-hat was on straight—I am wearing a freaking top-hat!—and then peered around him. There was some sort of light source to the left. If he strained his ears, he could hear noises from all around him, half-swallowed by the smog.

He caught the sound of accents, too. Definitely British.

This was London. December 1952. And hopefully still December 5th. If it was the 5th, he could save three people. If he missed the 5th and it was already the 6th or 7th? It might only be two.

He needed to find out.

Another reminder of Agent Grant had him smiling. The way he frowned at laptops and iPhones and iPads like they were somehow cute and retro, which they were, from Grant’s point of view, but he’d gotten used to the “slow and clunky” technology. And he’d arrived with something that looked like an iPhone and could act like an iPhone but definitely wasn’t. He’d had tech to help him connect immediately to wireless networks and figure out if he was on target to save someone’s life.

Ty’s life.

Which, hey, bully for him. It had worked. Ty lived and breathed beyond the day where some horrible people had decided he should die just for existing.

After that came the offer. I’ve saved your life in order to change the future. We can only reach back so far beyond the point of our own birth. Saving you, here, means we can go further back. We have targets in the 1950’s. You can reach those. We can train you.

How could he say no?

Ty reached the light source. A street lamp barely fighting the Great Smog. Once he was there, he opened his umbrella, and waited, holding it up in the air.

They didn’t have iPhones in the 1950’s, so they’d had to be all the more creative with some technology he could bring back that wouldn’t stand out. They also didn’t have handy wireless networks to synch to or sat-nav, which meant no GPS, no internet, and a lot less options to help Ty figure out where the hell he was.

They did, however, have maps and historical records, and access to technology that went all the way back up the chain. So he had an interesting pocket watch, and an umbrella currently sending out low-grade sounds through the fog to bounce off all the buildings nearby and cross-reference with those maps, stored in the database in the handle, which, if there was a good enough match, would tell him…

His pocket watch vibrated, and he flipped it open. The glass lit with a map and a dot.

He was only a few blocks off from where he was supposed to be.

“Okay,” he said, turning his head to look in a direction that was, apparently, the way he needed to go. He took a deep breath, trusting the filters that had been implanted to deal with the smog, and started walking toward the empty building that would be his safe-house.

He also needed to find a newspaper. If it was the 5th, he had a very early appointment in the morning to save a nurse’s life.

Bells started chiming, and Ty finally let himself laugh.

He was supposed to be dead. He wasn’t even born yet. He was in freaking England.

Life was awesome, really, when you thought about it.

 

Sunday Shorts—A Good Home, by Karin Lowachee

[image error]Oh wow, how I loved this story. The perfect way to open People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction, “A Good Home” weaves a few key elements into a single narrative, and does it freaking flawlessly.

First? We’ve got a PTSD suffering soldier (an android, which is a key component of the story: that we created soldiers capable of enough emotional awareness to be soldiers, but the fallout is they can end up emotionally damaged, just like us). Second? We’ve got another veteran, a disabled one, who is living alone and who offers to take in the android and try to help with the rehabilitation—or at the very least, offer care and something better than what those who created the android can deliver. Third? We’ve got a family relationship that’s strained at best: the soldier’s mother, who refuses to see her child’s reality, presumes to know what’s better. Fourth? Everyone else—the neighbourhood, the kids, the world around the android and the veteran, both of whom have to navigate the stigma pushed on them for just existing. Each piece is handled with such a deft, understated touch, which just gave the emotional moments all the more punch. There is a scene with Scrabble tiles that had me pausing to inhale sharply.

Those four threads weave into a story that had me from start to finish, and the end result was a tale that made me put down the collection for the rest of the evening to just consider how amazingly well all those pieces were juggled.

Sunday Shorts—Lava Falls by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

[image error]Lava Falls is the novella for which Lucy Jane Bledsoe’s collection is named, and I while I mentioned the first story in the collection (Girl with Boat) way back in January as one of the best opening tales in a collection I’ve ever read, this novella? Masterful.

I’m not sure I can do the narrative justice beyond the barest sketches: it’s about a group of women who gather to raft down the Grand Canyon. They are of different ages, include a mother-daughter pair, and the story weaves and shifts through their points of view in a beautifully paced tumble, much like the river they’re traveling. The changes are deft, done at key moments and with such cleverness the story becomes a whole and its parts, and then there’s a further layer on top woven throughout—glimpses of visions, brief echoes of the past, perhaps, or potentially just hallucinations—that pays off in the final moments. I inhaled after reading Lava Falls, and my spec-fic heart was really, really happy. Such a fantastic novella.

I’d also like to point out here the whole collection was packed with tales that really grabbed me—Wildcat, The Found Child, The Antarctic, My Beautiful Awakening, The End of Jesus—and the collection as a whole was just freaking stunning. If you’re at all a lover of short fiction, do yourself a favour and pick this up.

Friday Flash Fics—A Touch of Psychometry

This week’s Friday Flash Fics hit me in a three ways. One: her dress (which made me think of a local comic book convention). Two: her gloves (which made me think of “The Psychometry of Snow”). Three: the bookshelves (which made me think of The Second Page, my fictional bookstore in the Village, which Ian Simon runs). Then I decided to back-date it just a little bit, and got to play with Danya again, reworking something from a story that didn’t make it into Of Echoes Born.

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A Touch of Psychometry

“I have a double-sweet coffee for a double-sweet boss,” Ian said.

Danya Marunchak stood behind the counter at The Second Page. The smile that spread across the old man’s face warmed Ian right through to his core.

“It’s your day off. You shouldn’t be here,” Danya said. “But I love you for it.”

The second-hand bookstore was located off the Market, and for Ian, it had become a second home. The first year Ian had been in Ottawa, when it had all hit the fan with his family and he’d been left completely on his own, Mr. Marunchak had hired him to work at the store and he’d worked there ever since. Over the years, he’d become a good friend as well as a boss. Grey-haired and too thin for Ian’s liking, Ian loved the little old man like no one else, and as Danya had introduced him to some of the classics of queer literature, he’d even found the words to describe it.

Danya was part of his logical family. The family that counted. Years later, it was all the more true.

“So, how did your exam go?” Danya asked, taking the cup. He held it between his hands for a few seconds, and Ian noticed the flicker of the man’s aura around his knuckles. His arthritis.

“Well,” Ian said. “Your hands bad today?”

“I don’t know how you do that,” Danya said. “But yes. Old bones.”

“Tell you what, I can finish off the day. You go have a hot bubble bath or something.”

“What did I ever do in my youth to deserve you?”

“According to gossip? Most of the Village.”

Danya laughed, a loud, braying laugh that Ian never got tired of hearing. “That’s not the half of it. I was the Queen of the Lord Organ, thank you very much. At least before I got married.”

Ian raised a hand. “Spare me the tales of your debauchery. You give me an inferiority complex.”

“If I had your looks? I’d still be the Queen of the Lord Organ, with my late Hans’s blessing, I’m sure.”

“I don’t think many gay men go to the Lord Elgin anymore.”

Danya’s smile faded. “Most of those men are gone, dear boy. But I’m sure you have no trouble finding company.”

“Who has time?”

“You do, now your exam is done.”

“Please stop,” Ian said. “I’m begging you.”

Danya left with a wave and the coffee and Ian tried not to focus on the places the man’s aura flickered. Illnesses showed as absences to Ian’s other sight, so he wasn’t worried, just concerned. Danya needed more rest. Hopefully, now Ian was done his final summer class they could move ahead with their plans sooner rather than later.

Ian smiled at the tall shelves completely filled with books. He intended to buy The Second Page.

He also intended to replace the shelves, reorganize things a whole lot more than he’d managed thus far working for Danya in between his classes, and had a least a dozen other plans to work through, too.

“Excuse me?”

Ian turned. A woman in a really striking dress was smiling at him. She rested one knee on one of the stools Danya kept around the shop floor for customers, and had leaned forward, but she was by no means tall, and the shelves went almost to the ceiling. She aimed her gaze a couple of shelves up. “There is no way I can reach,” she said. “Can I borrow your height?”

“Absolutely,” Ian said, coming over. When he got close enough, he realized her dress was made up with a fabric printed with various newspaper headlines and stories, and then had another jolt of realization when he saw the newspapers in question were both fictional and wizardly.

“Oh wow, I love your Harry Potter dress.”

She grinned. “Thank you.”

“Which book were you trying to get?” Ian said.

She nodded at the shelf again. “It’s the pink one. Psychometry.”

“Simon Guishart,” Ian said, reaching easily up to the shelf and pulling the paperback free. He handed it to her, then blinked.

She wore gloves. He’d have noticed, only the dress sort of grabbed all the attention, as did her hair, which was almost raven black and fall in waves and curls. It was a bit too warm for gloves, and though they could be for fashion he supposed, Ian looked.

A swirl of nervous blue-green shimmered in her chest, but behind her eyes, a soft yellow that edged almost on gold glowed, spreading in tiny increments around her face.

Relief warring with hope.

“It’s a great book,” Ian said.

A small line formed between her eyebrows. “You’ve read it?”

“Yes. Don’t judge it by its cover.” Bright pink, an atrocious font, and a random pile of objects made the book look less than professional, to put it mildly. But Ian had read it, and he’d come away thinking he and Simon Guishart had a lot in common, though Simon had had a much harder time of it to begin with. “And give it three or four chapters. It’s a bit of a rough start—it took him a while to get a handle on things.”

She stared at him for a few long seconds. “I’m so glad I came in. I’m only here for a couple of days.” She looked down at the book. “But I had a feeling I should check this place out. I’ve been looking for a copy of this for a while.”

“What brings you to Ottawa?” Ian said.

“Comic-Con,” she said.

“That explains the awesome dress,” he said.

She grinned. “You should see my Tardis ball gown.”

“Wait. You made this?”

She did a little twirl.

“Okay, I’m officially impressed.”

She paid for the book and thanked him again. By the time she left, the yellow and gold had won out over the greens, and Ian let out a deep breath. She’d be okay. Or at least, if he was right about the gloves he hoped Simon Guishart’s book would help her get a little closer to okay.

 

An Update on the Availability of Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks

[image error]Hi everyone! I’ve had a lot of you reach out to me over the last few weeks about trying to get hold of Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks and how it’s not happening, and I wanted to update everyone.

First? Beyond anything else, thank you. The reason this happened turns out to be how awesome you all are (no, really), and so while this isn’t a fun position to be in (like, at all), it turns out the reason the book is showing as “not released” or “out of stock” or “unavailable”?

All the copies were snapped up.

My publisher ordered a generous print run based on how well my previous books have sold at release. Now, there was also a paper shortage and some supply issues in December, but the copies more-or-less got snapped up by one distributor (the middle-step companies who get the books from publishers to the various retailers of physical books).

Which gets us to the second part: if that distributor isn’t the distributor your local brick-and-mortar (or chain brick-and-mortar) tends to use, then unless they do an end-run around their own ordering system, they don’t have a way to get it. This is, I believe, what happened in Canada (which is, unfortunately, a small market, so not every distributor deals with all the crossing-the-border taxes/tariffs/whatever because it’s not worth it to them financially)—I don’t have 100% confirmation on this, but it would explain why Indigo, for example, still lists my book as “not yet released.” It sure was released in December right on schedule, but until the first shipment arrives in their hand, their system won’t update it to “released” and… well, if they didn’t order the book from the distributor who gobbled up the print run, it just didn’t happen.

Which is also why some of you had pre-orders just get canceled from Canadian e-tailers and retailers (including Amazon-dot-ca and Indigo). And in the states, this happened to some people’s pre-orders from Barnes & Noble, too.

It kills me that pre-orders didn’t happen. I’m so sorry. It kills me more that the books still haven’t shipped, two months later. My publisher has been scrambling to get copies to alternate distributors, and hopefully that means orders will ship, but I know that’s not helpful for orders that were already canceled.

If you’re at all a reader of e-books, those aren’t affected given they’re not physical copies that can run out, so there’s that option (especially through the publisher website itself, over at Bold Strokes Books).

All I can offer is my apologies and my thanks—my apologies because it does indeed suck to order a book and have it just not arrive, and my thanks because I’m lucky enough to be in a position where I’ve got readers like you who want more copies of the book than was thought would be wanted. You rock, really.

So, hopefully, things will flip soon to orderable/available again. I’ll keep checking, and I’ll update again when it happens.

 

Four for Forty-Four

[image error]A huge thank you to everyone who participated yesterday in my birthday “make noise about a book” day. In honour of my being forty-four, I figured I’d pick four of the responses here and give them an extra boost.

First off, the winner of my wee random-number-generated draw’s pick, was Heather, who described this particular book so brilliantly that I immediately added it to my want list:

Imagine that Pixar decided to go on an absinthe bender with Kafka, and together they created something like Toy Story meets Orpheus and Eurydice. That story, essentially, would be Keith Donohue’s The Motion of Puppets, and it’s every bit as beautiful, sad, and captivating as you can imagine. 

Next up is Rebecca, who said:

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline! A FANTASTIC #ownvoices YA dystopian book, the Indigenous characters are being hunted for their marrow. This book is heartbreaking, beautiful, & hopeful. There are so many powerful themes throughout this book – I need to revisit it soon.

Followed by Larry, who followed my three-sentence review and said:

1. What can you expect from the book? Jazz Moon (Joe Okonkwo, 2016) is a Black gay romance set against the backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance.

2. What was unique about the book? See #1 above.

3. Using a better-known author or genre, which readers do you think would enjoy this book? Readers who like James Baldwin, James Earl Hardy, Larry Duplechan…

P.S.: I blurbed this book, which I don’t do very often.

And the fourth (but neither the last nor the least) from Sandy, who went all in on more-than-three-sentences, gushed:

When I decided February would be “finish series I started and then didn’t get back to for some unknown reason” month, I knew Chaos Station would have to be one of the series. I had read the first one some time ago and loved it. But there are so many good books out there, y’all. I think there was a new release or five that I just had to get to, and somehow I never got back to Felix and Zed and the gang. My loss. And now that I’m finished, I want to start over again (which I won’t, because, yeah, there’s another whole set of other good books still out there, but still.) Jenn and Kelly did such a great job with these characters, making them so fully fleshed out that you feel you KNOW them as well as your closest friends. I adored Felix and Zed from the beginning – they both nearly broke my heart in the beginning, and I wondered how J&K would make this OK (there were 3 more books, so I figured they would somehow, but damn…) And the “supporting cast” are just as good. I want a big brother like Elias (even though I wanted to hurt him briefly in Inversion Point and I never got the grovelling scene I wanted.) I want a friend like Qek. And I want to be Nessa when I grow up.

I love it when authors give both main characters a voice, but J&K give us more – we also get Elias’ and Nessa’s POV frequently. It’s great seeing Felix and Zed from “objective” angles.

I realize I’m going on and on about how much I love these characters and not so much about the plots and such. It’s a space opera . Real space, with other galaxies and civilizations and species. With the aftermath of interspecies and intergalactic war. And super soldiers. And space craft. And cool gadgets and really cool medical stuff (as a nurse, I’d love some of that stuff!) And families who love you no matter what. Just read them. And don’t spread them out.

So there you go! Four new titles for your to-be-read mountain (technically more like nine, since the last book is the end of a series). I added these suggestions to my own reading list, and I hope at least one of these caught your interest.

Here’s to another great year of reading!

Birthday Presence (and Giveaway!)

[image error]It’s that time of the year again! I have made it around the sun once more without being taken down by a large predator or other natural disaster, big or small. This is traditionally celebrated with burning an ever-increasing number of wax effigies atop a confection and ritual chanting, followed by uncovering offerings (as I understand it) but I’m not one for tradition most of the time.

So, as always, I’m going to make this whole birthday thing book-related. As an author, the biggest best thing in the world is noise. (Well, okay, let me qualify that with happy noise, but I’d say critical noise is also a positive, even if it stings.) So, just like I told my in-laws and husband, “I don’t need any presents.”

But presence? Every author loves presence.

Now, I’m not gonna be mister selfish here. After all, this is my blog, so chances are if you’re reading it, you probably already know me. But! There are people you know that I don’t know, and people you’ve read that I haven’t, so this’ll still work. Also, I’ll give out a prize, because birthday presents don’t totally suck, but I don’t need anything as I said, but I will totally give something away.

What am I talking about? My annual birthday request for you to write a review about a book you loved.

Now, it doesn’t have to feel like homework. Honest! In fact, I’ve said it a few times before, but a review can be three sentences. Here’s my go-to example, a quickie review of Jeffrey Ricker’s The Unwanted (you should read it, by the way):

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The Three Sentence Review

So, for my birthday, grab a book you loved and throw a review out there somewhere into the world (again, totally doesn’t have to be one of mine). At an online e-tailer, at your library website, a tweet, a FB post, you name it. If writing even a three sentence review is too daunting, don’t worry. Go find a book you loved, see if there’s a great review out there, and boost the signal. Or go make a request for the title at your library. Or just link the publisher’s website link to the book with a little “I loved this!” Or, or, or. I promise, there’s ways to do this that require almost no effort. As someone who has just orbited the sun for the mumble-mumbleth time, I’m down with almost no effort.

No matter which way, once you’ve made noise today, link it back here for me to see (or on my FB page, or my Twitter feed, wherever you saw this post) and we can make some noise for some loved books today (March 5th, wherever you are). And I’ll write all those down and first thing tomorrow (March 6th) I’ll do a draw from all the people who made noise about books they loved they can have a copy of Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks or Of Echoes Born or any of the books I’ve put words in that they haven’t yet read (or have, hey, maybe they want another copy, that’s totally allowed).

Either way? Better than ritual chanting.

Sunday Shorts—Trickier With Each Translation, by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

[image error]This story, included in Queers Destroy Science Fiction, was such a tone-perfect use of so many moving parts that I sat back and just enjoyed myself the first time, and then went back to start it again to pay more attention for a quick Sunday Shorts review.

“Trickier With Each Translation” juggles a few things, but first and foremost, it’s a flipping clever story with elements of time-travel. Centred on a woman who is adrift in her own timeline, reliving moments of her life thus far, each “translation” to a new time period in her life is an abrupt—and often somehow alien—reflection of who she was versus who she is. In and of itself, this is fascinating, but then we learn this isn’t an accident, or a random encounter.

This has been done to her, on purpose, and with malice born of unrequited—and toxic—attention from a man with a gift over time.

Stufflebeam juggles bisexuality (and biphobia), the hateful toxic “friend-zone” garbage, the confusing sense of “what is normal?” even supposed to be, and so much more in this short piece. And the sheer characterization and world-building going on alongside the narrative was fantastic. Time-travel, super-powers borne of bacterial infections, outwitting someone more powerful than you, loving women, loving men… the heroine here just shines, even as she lives through something horrifying and cruel.

Friday Flash Fics—Change, Home, Water

Another Village story this week, inspired by the Friday Flash Fics photo here. NiceTeas gets a mention in “A Little Village Magic,” (included in Of Echoes Born) and I’ve got a novella almost polished called “A Little Village Blend,” where you get to spend more time with Ivan, the proprietor who makes the tea blends (and his sister, Anya, who appears in this flash piece today). They’re both gifted in that way people in the Village seem to have, and Anya shows that off a bit here.

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Change, Home, Water

A tea-shop seemed like an odd place to meet, but after so many years, Owen wasn’t going to argue on a detail as small as that. Also, once he stepped inside, Owen had to admit that NiceTeas was, well, nice.

He was early. He was always early, but forty-five minutes was overkill even on the Owen scale of over preparedness, so he went to the counter and checked the boards. Fresh sandwiches, fruit, and a few baked goods that looked suspiciously healthy were marked on the chalkboards alongside custom tea blends named things like “Second Wind,” and “Deep Breath.”

“May I help you?” The woman behind the counter smiled at him.

“Uh,” Owen said. “I’m…” He eyed the boards. “Overwhelmed.”

“Not a tea drinker?” she said.

He smiled, feeling himself blush. “Is it terrible to admit I usually just use a tea-bag, and really only drink tea when I’m sick?”

The woman put a finger over her lips. For just a second, she seemed familiar. Which made no sense. He didn’t know anyone in Ottawa. This was his first visit. Then she smiled. “I won’t tell if you don’t. There’s a tea for everything, though. My brother—we own this place—he blends them himself. So, what brings you here? Are you meeting someone?”

Owen nodded. “Yeah. Haven’t seen him in six years.” Why had he said that?

The woman tilted her head, and again he had the strangest sense he’d met her before. “Is this an ‘I need willpower’ meeting, or a ‘happy reunion’ meeting?”

Owen blew out a breath. “I don’t know.” He glanced behind him, but there was no one else in line, and he found he did want to talk about it. “We didn’t lose touch, exactly, it was…” It was what? “Complicated.”

The woman leaned forward on the counter. “So, between you and me, I’m totally engrossed in this story now, and need all the details.”

The impish smile did it. He recognized her.

“Swishy Tails!” he blurted.

She laughed. “Yes. I’m the face of Swishy Tails. The human face, at least. The Turkish Angora gets all the credit, even though I do all the work.”

“I have a cat,” Owen said, because he felt ridiculous. Though telling her he had a cat actually made it worse. The woman in front of him was the woman from the cat food commercial with the adorable white kitten. “It’s not a Turkish Angora. It’s a rescue.”

“FurEver would be proud,” the woman said.

“Forever?”

“FurEver. It’s the local pet-shop. They run a rescue, too.”

“Ah,” Owen said, still feeling ridiculous. “Sorry. You probably get that a lot, eh?”

She shook her head. “You’re the first.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“This week,” she said. “It’s possible my brother did a lot of bragging on my behalf.”

Owen smiled. “I’m going to go with the willpower, I think. And not just because Earl Grey is one of the few kinds of tea I’ve actually heard about.”

“Does this mean I don’t get the story?” she said.

The door opened and bells rang behind them. Owen turned. He wasn’t the only one who was early. Finn looked so much older, but it was definitely him. He took a shaky breath, then waved. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Finn said.

Owen glanced back at the woman. “How about I tell you after?” he said, sotto voice.

She smiled encouragingly, and then started to make his tea.

When Owen turned again, Finn had crossed the store to meet him. He found himself looking up. “You’re taller than me.”

Finn laughed. “It happens.”

Then they were hugging. Owen’s eyes filled with tears, and when they broke apart, Finn bit his bottom lip. “Don’t you dare.”

“Sorry,” Owen said, forcing a smile.

“I’m making a pot of Earl Grey for your friend here,” the woman said. “What would you like, Finn?”

Owen turned. The woman knew Finn by name. Huh.

“This is my brother,” Finn said. “Owen, this is Anya. Anya, this is Owen. Get her to read your tea leaves. It’s life-changing.”

Brother. The word made Owen’s chest go tight.

“Nice to meet you,” Anya said, though Owen saw the skepticism. It wasn’t like Owen and Finn looked remotely alike. Finn was tall and lanky, with soft blond hair he wore really, really short now compared to Owen’s dark waves, and Finn had a chiseled chin to Owen’s rounder, softer face. And Finn didn’t have dimples. They looked nothing alike.

“Let’s go sit,” Finn said.

Once sitting, the thing Owen had been most afraid of happened: silence fell. He looked at Finn and though he tried, he couldn’t find a single way to start. I’m sorry… I wish… I’m so glad… None of them seemed like enough. He fidgeted, and was so grateful when Anya arrived with the tea pot and cups to have something to do, except when he reached for the teapot, Anya shook her head.

“Give it another minute,” she said, then stepped away.

Owen lowered his hand, resting it on the plush arm of the chair.

“Oh wow,” Finn said.

Owen glanced up. “What?” It took him a second to realize Finn was staring not at the tabletop, but at Owen’s hand. At the tattoo on his right hand, to be specific. The bird-cage with the open door. It was the only tattoo Owen had.

“Right,” Owen said. The tears were threatening again, and this time, he could see them in Finn’s eyes, too.

Finn put his hand on the table and then reached forward. Owen took it, and squeezed. In the same place on Finn’s left hand was the tattooed silhouette of a bird. It was small, and at the time he’d gotten it, six years ago, it had been Finn’s second tattoo. And it had been the cause of that final argument and started everything.

Or ended it, he supposed. Finn had obviously kept going with ink, though—his left forearm was completely covered, or at least as much as Owen could see of it before it went into his shirt sleeve. His right arm, too.

“That’s beautiful,” Finn said, still looking at the birdcage.

The silence broke. They poured the tea, and drank while they talked. Finn filled him in on a life lived on an edge that didn’t quite tip over though at first it had come close a few times, and Owen felt his heart break over and over with both relief and guilt. Guilt that he’d been the one to put Finn there, relief that nothing truly bad had happened. In turn, Owen told him of his own final two years, and then the four that came after. And then he finally said the thing he’d wanted to say from the start.

“I should have tried to find you earlier.”

Finn frowned. “Hey. It’s okay.”

Owen shook his head. “I was afraid…” He blew out a breath. “I guess I was afraid if I found out something went wrong, it would be my fault. I’m so glad you’re okay.”

Finn’s frown grew. “Your fault? Dude. I asked. Everything after that? It was my choice.” He smiled. “And it is okay. I love my life.”

The final knots in Owen’s chest unraveled. “Okay.”

Finn shook his head. “You always were over-responsible.”

“Guilty.”

“That, too.” Finn grinned, and Owen laughed.

Owen finished his tea. “This is really good.”

“NiceTeas is magic,” Finn said. Then he tilted his head. “How long are you here?”

“Right now? For the week. I got a solid deal at the B&B, just off Bank. It’s, like, a block that way.” He bit his lip, feeling almost like he was lying. He wasn’t. Not exactly. This visit was for a week.

“I have to get back to work, but when I’m done, let’s do dinner. And I’m off Wednesday. Want to do spectacularly stereotypical tourist things? Like hit a gallery? Are you still a giant nerd?”

“Excuse me?” Owen pointed at the table. “Which one of us suggested we meet at a tea shop for lunch?”

“Fair enough.” Finn rose. “It’s great to see you. I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Me too.” They hugged again, longer and stronger. Less tears.

After he left, Owen leaned back in his chair, taking a moment to breathe.

Anya returned. “So that seemed to go well.” She picked his cup and saucer and raised an eyebrow. “May I?”

He nodded, and she flipped the cup, closing her eyes dramatically before she turned the cup back over and stared into it. He found himself smiling. The Swishy Tails woman was reading his tea leaves. Life was weird.

“That big change you’re thinking of making is a good idea,” she said. “You’ve got an opportunity to make a home for yourself. Finding a True North sort of deal. I take it you’ve never really had a home before?” She paused. “Like, a home-home?”

“Wow,” he said. That was… really on the nose.

She nodded, looking back into the cup. “Take the chance. Give it a shot. You’ll be glad you did, and—if you’d like some news on the potential relationship front?”

“I am both terrified and captivated.” He gestured. “Please continue.”

She winked. “Good things in store. And something to do with water, I’d say. A bumpy start, but a good finish.” She raised an eyebrow. “You won’t go there willingly, but you’ll go there.”

Owen stared. “Okay, so either Finn filled you in, or you’re some sort of savant.” Not that he got the water part, but everything else? Wow.

“I prefer goddess,” she said. “And Finn isn’t super forthcoming. He’s a hard nut to crack about himself—too busy taking care of everyone else. For example, I had no idea he had a brother.”

“I suppose I did say I’d tell you the story.”

“You did.” Anya sat down across from him, eyes lighting up. “Spill.”

He shook his head, amused. “Why does this feel like talking to a best friend?”

“I am both approachable and wise,” Anya said.

“We’re foster brothers. Or we were. We were in a…” Owen paused. “Less than great house together. I was fifteen, and Finn was sixteen. It was worse for him.” He toyed with the tea-pot, remembering. “I had this… business.”

“At fifteen?”

“I wrote essays for kids at school. Good essays.” Owen blushed, remembering. “I turned a tidy profit: they’d pay me, and if they didn’t get at least a B+, I’d give them half their money back.”

Anya’s eyebrows rose. “See, as your best friend, this only makes me like you more. You’re an honest kind of criminal.”

“Thanks. So, I had cash. But as much as it was rule-breaking in high-school that got me cash, it wasn’t about bucking the system. I wanted to go to university, which meant staying in school, which meant staying with our not-so-great family and saving cash however I could. And the not-so-great got worse and worse. The foster parents we were with, they drank.”

Anya nodded sympathetically, and to his surprise he got the sense she understood. A second later, she confirmed that. “My father was an alcoholic. Well, is. Many years sober now, but you know.”

He did. He nodded. “Finn got a tattoo. It sent our foster-father over the edge. It was… bad. And Finn wanted to run away. I tried to get him to stay in school, but it wasn’t his path, and I knew that. So, I gave Finn all my cash when things got really bad, and he ran. At sixteen. I made him promise not to tell me anything, so I couldn’t rat him out. I thought I was doing the right thing…” He smiled. “And I guess I did? But to be honest, for the last six years I’d wondered. I didn’t know where he was. I couldn’t bring myself to do so much as an internet search. I think I was afraid I’d find out…” He shrugged.

Anya nodded. “If it helps, Finn is amazing. You should stop by the Centre and check it out. He volunteers with the local shelter, too.”

“I know,” Owen said. “An article about his work was the first thing that showed up when I finally went looking for him.”

Anya smiled. “So what changed your mind? About looking for him?”

Owen pointed at his cup. “I got a job offer. A good job that I really want. I’d have to move, but I’ve moved a lot. It would be a chance to settle down. Make a home.” He remembered her words. “A home-home.”

“That sounds fantastic.”

“It’s even more than that,” Owen admitted. “It’s here. In Ottawa. Or, well, Kanata, but…” He shrugged.

“That’s fantastic! Did you tell him?” Anya said.

Owen shook his head. “I just needed to see if… I guess…” He blew out a breath.

The door opened and the bells jingled. Anya rose from the table, gathering the cups and teapot. “I think you’re going to love it here. Besides, we’re already best friends. You can’t skip town now.”

Then she was gone.

The place was really picking up now, the lunch rush starting in earnest. A second worker was there now, too, and there was a line forming at the counter. Owen gathered his stuff, and waved at the door. Anya waved back.

“See you later, bestie,” he said.

She blew him a kiss.