Martha Wells's Blog, page 85
August 1, 2016
Storybundle with Heather Rose Jones
And Then History Took a Queer Turn
by Heather Rose Jones
A lot of good blog topics start out, “So somebody asked me about....” Well, nobody asked me about this, but it would be a very excellent question and I’m kind of surprised nobody has. Let’s pretend it happened. So nobody asked me, “Heather, given that you write stories with lesbian protagonists, why the heck do you put them in oppressive historic settings? Why not put them in contemporary settings? After all, it’s rather an exciting time to be non-heterosexual in the USA. Or why not put them in futuristic settings where we can imagine that prejudice will be entirely eliminated? If you’re going to create secondary world fantasies, why use ones that carry over prejudice from our own past? Why not create a fantasy world -- even a pseudo-medieval one -- where being LGBTQ simply isn’t an issue?”
I wrote a blog with that opening paragraph back two years ago. And my answer boils down to this: I refuse to cede history to straight people. I refuse to let stand the position that same-sex desire was invented by late 19th century sexologists. That lesbian history started in the ‘50s with butch-femme culture. That the only pre-20th century gay stories are tragic ones. I refuse to accept that it is not possible to find and write satisfying historic novels about queer people. I refuse to yield the stage, abandoning it to default to straight actors. I love the rich and detailed tapestry of history and I have as much right to own it as anyone else.
It seems I’m not the only author to take that position. The Historic Fantasy Storybundle has representation from a wide spectrum of sexualities. Character sexuality doesn’t alway fit well into a book blurb, but here’s what I’ve been able to identify, with the help of the authors.
Steel Blues by Melissa Scott and Jo Graham traces a coast-to-coast air race in the early 20th century, with the aviation team beset by both supernatural and human perils. One of the several protagonists is a gay man.
The Emperor's Agent by Jo Graham follows the exploits of a bisexual woman blackmailed into becoming an agent for the Emperor Napoleon in a France where not all the battlefields are mortal.
Daughter of Mystery by Heather Rose Jones plunges two young women into the excitement and danger of exploring mystical talents, while juggling the hazards of early 19th century high society and trying solve the mystery of their past. They add to those hazards by falling in love.
The Virtuous Feats of the Indomitable Miss Trafalgar and the Erudite Lady Boone by Geonn Cannon is a steampunk thriller in which several women, some of them lesbians, forge an unlikely partnership to stop an ancient evil.
The same author wrote Stag and Hound, an occult shape-shifter adventure set in WWII. The four protagonists include two gay men and two lesbians.
The Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells takes place in the gas-light world of Ile-Rien where noblemen, thieves, and necromancers clash wits. A significant supporting character, Captain Reynard Morane, is gay, and features as a protagonist in one of the stories in...
Between Worlds by Martha Wells, which collects shorter stories set in Ile-Rien.
The Armor of Light by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett brings real historic figures to its stage, including playwright Christopher Marlowe as one of the protagonists.
Similarly, Judith Tarr’s Lord of the Two Lands tackles the story of Alexander the Great, including a realistic portrayal of sexual attitudes of the times and his relationship with Hephaistion.
I haven’t been able to confirm whether the other two books in the StoryBundle (Pillar of Fire by Judith Tarr and The Orffyreus Wheel by David Niall Wilson) have any significant LGBTQ characters, but the bundle contains plenty to interest historic fantasy readers who wish to stray from the straight path.
(Apologies if I’ve misrepresented any of these characters or their settings. In writing brief sumaries, I may have emphasized aspects differently from what may strike the reader.)
You can buy the Historic Fantasy StoryBundle for as little as $5 for the basic bundle of five titles, or get an additional six titles if you pay more than $15. All details are explained at the website.
(Note: the storybundle offers ends in 10 days, on August 10, 2016)
July 27, 2016
News
For people who were asking, The Edge of Worlds will have a paperback edition out in April. (You can preorder it now.) The Harbors of the Sun is turned in and may be scheduled for July, but I'm hoping it moves up a little.
Thanks to everyone who's left comments or ratings on Amazon, B&N, GoodReads, LibraryThing, etc. It really does help. Also, remember you can request that your local library buy it for their collection. (And they may already have it in ebook if they have ebook lending services.)
I'll be at ArmadilloCon in Austin this weekend, and here's my schedule:
Sat 1100DR Autographing
Sat 11:00 AM-Noon Dealers' Room
Sa1300A Career Management for SFF Writers
Sat 1:00 PM-2:00 PM Southpark A
Cheney, Chu, Eudaly, Landon*, McKay, Wells
Sa1500CC Reading
Sat 3:00 PM-3:30 PM Conference Center
Martha Wells
(I'll probably read something from The Harbors of the Sun)
Sa1600A Gender Roles in Fantasy
Sat 4:00 PM-5:00 PM Southpark A
Clarke, Fischer, Moyer, Muenzler*, Wells
From fairy tales, to Tolkien, to today's urban fantasy and dark fantasy, how are authors experimenting (or not experimenting) with gender and gender roles?
***
Link: How Creating Inclusive Sci-Fi/Fantasy Sparked a Culture War by Lynne M. Thomas
Both Chicks Dig Time Lords and “Dinosaur” are routinely attacked on the Internet by certain people (a parody of “Dinosaur” made it onto this year’s Hugo Award ballot due to a slate and as part of a campaign of ongoing harassment directed at its writer). These works are derided by people who believe inclusive SF/F is bad for the genre, or just plain bad. These works were pointed to as the reasons for creating certain Hugo Award slates over the last few years. A well-known alt-right website weirdly implied that Tor Books was responsible for the Hugo nominations for those two works since they were so bad. (I’ve never worked for Tor.) There have been dozens of articles written about my work and what is wrong with it; most of them don’t mention my name.
Thanks to everyone who's left comments or ratings on Amazon, B&N, GoodReads, LibraryThing, etc. It really does help. Also, remember you can request that your local library buy it for their collection. (And they may already have it in ebook if they have ebook lending services.)
I'll be at ArmadilloCon in Austin this weekend, and here's my schedule:
Sat 1100DR Autographing
Sat 11:00 AM-Noon Dealers' Room
Sa1300A Career Management for SFF Writers
Sat 1:00 PM-2:00 PM Southpark A
Cheney, Chu, Eudaly, Landon*, McKay, Wells
Sa1500CC Reading
Sat 3:00 PM-3:30 PM Conference Center
Martha Wells
(I'll probably read something from The Harbors of the Sun)
Sa1600A Gender Roles in Fantasy
Sat 4:00 PM-5:00 PM Southpark A
Clarke, Fischer, Moyer, Muenzler*, Wells
From fairy tales, to Tolkien, to today's urban fantasy and dark fantasy, how are authors experimenting (or not experimenting) with gender and gender roles?
***
Link: How Creating Inclusive Sci-Fi/Fantasy Sparked a Culture War by Lynne M. Thomas
Both Chicks Dig Time Lords and “Dinosaur” are routinely attacked on the Internet by certain people (a parody of “Dinosaur” made it onto this year’s Hugo Award ballot due to a slate and as part of a campaign of ongoing harassment directed at its writer). These works are derided by people who believe inclusive SF/F is bad for the genre, or just plain bad. These works were pointed to as the reasons for creating certain Hugo Award slates over the last few years. A well-known alt-right website weirdly implied that Tor Books was responsible for the Hugo nominations for those two works since they were so bad. (I’ve never worked for Tor.) There have been dozens of articles written about my work and what is wrong with it; most of them don’t mention my name.
July 26, 2016
Storybundle with Heather Rose Jones
I have two books in this historical fantasy Storybundle https://storybundle.com/fantasy, which includes several great authors. One of them is Heather Rose Jones, who also noticed something about the books in the bundle:
The Historic Fantasy Storybundle has representation from a wide spectrum of sexualities. Character sexuality doesn't always fit well into a book blurb, but here’s what I've been able to identify, with the help of the authors. She has a post here: http://alpennia.com/blog/and-then-history-took-queer-turn which goes over the queer content of the books.
Below is a post on the women and their relationships in her fantasy novel Daughter of Mystery, which is included in the bundle:
A Web of Women
by Heather Rose Jones
My goal for Daughter of Mystery was to write a ripping good tale of adventure, love, and intrigue. Set in the fictitious country of Alpennia in the early 19th century, Margerit Sovitre is resigned to abandoning her philosophical studies for the approved goal of making a good marriage. When her godfather unexpectedly leaves her a fortune--including a mysterious bodyguard named Barbara--the world opens up along paths she never expected. But those paths, as well as her developing talent for thaumaturgy thrust her into the center of Alpennian politics and soon she and Barbara must flee an accusation of treason.
Beyond the straightforward mind-candy of the adventure (though I like to hope it’s in the “artisanal dark chocolate” category of mind-candy) one underlying theme began to pervade not only Daughter of Mystery but the initial sketches for its sequels: the networks and communities that women build in the face of a society that excludes them from the formal structures of power and agency. Men’s actions may precipitate both Margerit’s hazards and opportunities, but it’s among women that she finds the allies to achieve her goals.
The developing romance with Barbara is only the most obvious source of strength. A spinster aunt lends the orphaned Margerit the cover of her respectability, seeing in Margerit the opportunity to finally seize her own small measure of independence. In the capitol of Rotenek, Margerit is welcomed by a loose community of female scholars, from fashionable upper-class dilettantes to hard-headed working-class women hoping for a better life. Her inheritance gives Margerit entrée to a new social world in Rotenek, but it is the female allies she finds there who teach her how to use it for her own purposes. When disaster strikes, the nuns of Saint Orisul’s offer sanctuary both for body and mind, and in the final crisis Barbara’s ties to an ex-lover bring crucial assistance.
In the sequel, The Mystic Marriage, we see this web of women woven ever more strongly: bound as colleagues, patrons, friends, lovers, and kindred both by blood and choice. Or rather, more of this web is revealed to the reader, for Margerit and Barbara and their friends are only dipping into a vast river that has always flowed through their lives. In the third book, Mother of Souls, that web is harnessed to support each other in their endeavors: a college, an opera, protecting the very future of Alpennia.
Women’s ties and friendships often go overlooked, both in history and in literature. But because the very premise of my stories was to focus on women’s lives and their relationships to each other, it was easy and natural to bring these elements to the fore. Not that men have no place in the stories--far from it. They feature strongly as allies and adversaries. But the nature of early 19th century European society sets barriers between the lives of men and women that make the quality of the interactions distinct.
I didn’t consciously choose the setting of my story for this purpose, though my own historic interests made it a natural outgrowth. It’s hard to know who we are unless we know who we have been. So many aspects of the lives of women--and particularly of women who love women--have been dismissed or erased from the histories we are fed. Yet the traces and clues are there to follow and to build on. Although I write fiction, it is not necessary to invent whole-cloth to participate in the creation of a usable history of women’s lives and lesbian lives. Fortunately, the roads are better paved and more clearly marked these days than they were when I first started writing in the late ‘70s. My own preference is to ground my historic fiction in fact, not in wishful thinking. (Well, ok, except for the bits with magic.) And in this I am grateful to my own “web of women”: Judith Bennett, Lillian Faderman, Emma Donoghue, Barbara Hanawalt, Sahar Amer, Bernadette J. Brooten, Lotte C. van de Pol, Harriette Andreadis, Judith Brown, Valerie R. Hotchkiss, Carol J. Clover, Helena Whitbread, Edith Benkov, Jacqueline Murray, and so many others (whom I don’t mean to slight by this very partial listing, nor do I mean to slight the male scholars whose work has been useful).
One of the difficulties of writing the lives of lesbians--whether real or fictional--in history is to situate them in the context of a “community of the mind” of women-identified women. Without that context, it is hard to avoid an endless series of coming-out stories: “What is this thing I’m feeling? I must be the Only One!” That may have been the experience for many women, but when presented as the norm or as the only voice it becomes a dreary disempowering monotony. In writing the Alpennian novels, it was important to me to choose to write from that subset of stories where my characters operate within a history and a community, not only as women, but specifically as women who love other women. Historic fiction has a great power to grant the reader a share in ownership of the past. Daughter of Mystery may be meant to entertain, it is also meant to claim that ownership.
The Historic Fantasy Storybundle has representation from a wide spectrum of sexualities. Character sexuality doesn't always fit well into a book blurb, but here’s what I've been able to identify, with the help of the authors. She has a post here: http://alpennia.com/blog/and-then-history-took-queer-turn which goes over the queer content of the books.
Below is a post on the women and their relationships in her fantasy novel Daughter of Mystery, which is included in the bundle:
A Web of Women
by Heather Rose Jones
My goal for Daughter of Mystery was to write a ripping good tale of adventure, love, and intrigue. Set in the fictitious country of Alpennia in the early 19th century, Margerit Sovitre is resigned to abandoning her philosophical studies for the approved goal of making a good marriage. When her godfather unexpectedly leaves her a fortune--including a mysterious bodyguard named Barbara--the world opens up along paths she never expected. But those paths, as well as her developing talent for thaumaturgy thrust her into the center of Alpennian politics and soon she and Barbara must flee an accusation of treason.
Beyond the straightforward mind-candy of the adventure (though I like to hope it’s in the “artisanal dark chocolate” category of mind-candy) one underlying theme began to pervade not only Daughter of Mystery but the initial sketches for its sequels: the networks and communities that women build in the face of a society that excludes them from the formal structures of power and agency. Men’s actions may precipitate both Margerit’s hazards and opportunities, but it’s among women that she finds the allies to achieve her goals.
The developing romance with Barbara is only the most obvious source of strength. A spinster aunt lends the orphaned Margerit the cover of her respectability, seeing in Margerit the opportunity to finally seize her own small measure of independence. In the capitol of Rotenek, Margerit is welcomed by a loose community of female scholars, from fashionable upper-class dilettantes to hard-headed working-class women hoping for a better life. Her inheritance gives Margerit entrée to a new social world in Rotenek, but it is the female allies she finds there who teach her how to use it for her own purposes. When disaster strikes, the nuns of Saint Orisul’s offer sanctuary both for body and mind, and in the final crisis Barbara’s ties to an ex-lover bring crucial assistance.
In the sequel, The Mystic Marriage, we see this web of women woven ever more strongly: bound as colleagues, patrons, friends, lovers, and kindred both by blood and choice. Or rather, more of this web is revealed to the reader, for Margerit and Barbara and their friends are only dipping into a vast river that has always flowed through their lives. In the third book, Mother of Souls, that web is harnessed to support each other in their endeavors: a college, an opera, protecting the very future of Alpennia.
Women’s ties and friendships often go overlooked, both in history and in literature. But because the very premise of my stories was to focus on women’s lives and their relationships to each other, it was easy and natural to bring these elements to the fore. Not that men have no place in the stories--far from it. They feature strongly as allies and adversaries. But the nature of early 19th century European society sets barriers between the lives of men and women that make the quality of the interactions distinct.
I didn’t consciously choose the setting of my story for this purpose, though my own historic interests made it a natural outgrowth. It’s hard to know who we are unless we know who we have been. So many aspects of the lives of women--and particularly of women who love women--have been dismissed or erased from the histories we are fed. Yet the traces and clues are there to follow and to build on. Although I write fiction, it is not necessary to invent whole-cloth to participate in the creation of a usable history of women’s lives and lesbian lives. Fortunately, the roads are better paved and more clearly marked these days than they were when I first started writing in the late ‘70s. My own preference is to ground my historic fiction in fact, not in wishful thinking. (Well, ok, except for the bits with magic.) And in this I am grateful to my own “web of women”: Judith Bennett, Lillian Faderman, Emma Donoghue, Barbara Hanawalt, Sahar Amer, Bernadette J. Brooten, Lotte C. van de Pol, Harriette Andreadis, Judith Brown, Valerie R. Hotchkiss, Carol J. Clover, Helena Whitbread, Edith Benkov, Jacqueline Murray, and so many others (whom I don’t mean to slight by this very partial listing, nor do I mean to slight the male scholars whose work has been useful).
One of the difficulties of writing the lives of lesbians--whether real or fictional--in history is to situate them in the context of a “community of the mind” of women-identified women. Without that context, it is hard to avoid an endless series of coming-out stories: “What is this thing I’m feeling? I must be the Only One!” That may have been the experience for many women, but when presented as the norm or as the only voice it becomes a dreary disempowering monotony. In writing the Alpennian novels, it was important to me to choose to write from that subset of stories where my characters operate within a history and a community, not only as women, but specifically as women who love other women. Historic fiction has a great power to grant the reader a share in ownership of the past. Daughter of Mystery may be meant to entertain, it is also meant to claim that ownership.
July 21, 2016
Storybundle and Reynard!
This is an old post I did back in 2011, and I wanted to repost it for the Storybundle (https://storybundle.com/fantasy) curated by Melissa Scott, which has The Death of the Necromancer and Between Worlds: the Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories.
This is about when The Death of the Necromancer was first sold to a publisher, and how a rogue copyeditor tried to take out Reynard, who was gay.
Don’t Let Then Take Your Reynards
The Death of the Necromancer, published in 1998, was my third novel, and my first with a new publisher, Avon Eos. Everything went fine through the editorial process, right up until I received the copyedit, and found that one of the major supporting characters, Captain Reynard Morane, had been all but removed from the book. And it happened that Reynard was gay.
I’d worked hard on Reynard, and I liked him a lot. He had started out as a template. I wanted the main character, Nicholas Valiarde, to be Ile-Rien’s version of Moriarty, and Reynard was his Colonel Sebastian Moran. But in the writing, Reynard emerged immediately as funny and kind to his friends and deadly to his enemies. The one guy in the room that everybody knew they really didn’t want to get in a fight with. A very good soldier, a very good friend, and a very sexual person. He was kind of a weird combination of Oscar Wilde and Oliver Reed, but unlike Oscar Wilde he wasn’t going to come to a bad end because of a love affair. He was a little too old and too experienced and too much of a serial monogamist to fall too hard for anybody. I wanted him to be the polar opposite of the stereotypical gay character who suffers and dies because of his forbidden whatever, and to end the book better off than the other characters.
(One digression, for those who don’t know about the publishing process. The editor, usually the person who has acquired the book for the publisher, is the one who edits the book and suggests changes to improve plot, characterization, and other major elements. The copyeditor is the person who reads the book after it’s in its near-final form and checks for things like grammar, spelling, continuity, and style.)
By the time I got the copyedit, I had already revised The Death of the Necromancer based on the editor’s comments and things I realized I needed to fix, so the copyedit should have had only minor changes at best.
(To give you an idea how minor, back then the copyedit was handwritten marks done on the actual printed manuscript. The copyedited manuscript was shipped by mail to the author who would go through it and accept some of the copyeditor’s changes, stet others (an instruction that means the original text is supposed to be that way and to leave it alone) and handwrite additional changes on the pages. Then you ship it back and the publisher would take the whole thing and type it in, it would be printed in galley form (the actual printed pages that you see in books) and then shipped back to the author for a final proofread.)
But this copyedit came back with massive alterations handwritten on the manuscript, with bad grammar and incorrect word choices inserted, weird demands for all sorts of things to be explained that didn’t need to be explained (like the color of the tablecloth in a room description, or the main character’s choice of beverage), and odd demands for rewrites. (The copyeditor wanted me to rewrite one section because she thought it was too cold for the characters to be outside.)
(The publisher really doesn’t want you to rewrite the manuscript during the copyedit. They really, really don’t, to the point that there are sometimes clauses in the contracts stipulating what percentage of the manuscript can be changed during the copyedit. And they really don’t want a copyeditor to tell you to do rewrite.)
There were a lot of seemingly random deletions of descriptions, including whole scenes, conversations and other things you needed to understand the plot, but the thing that stood out to me was that Reynard’s dialogue had been all but excised from the book, and that the cuts to his part had started after it became apparent to the reader that Reynard was gay.
He was important to the plot in a number of ways and helped uncover some of the information that let Nicholas and Madeleine, the other viewpoint characters, solve the mystery before the Necromancer kills them. In the copyeditor’s expurgated version of the book, Reynard is still around for the first couple of chapters, but after the point where it was made clear that Reynard is gay, suddenly his dialogue was all marked as deleted.
The conclusion I instantly snapped to was that Reynard had been removed for his sexuality. Of course, I don’t know for certain if that was the case and I sure can’t prove it. I never found out why the copyeditor did what she did, or why she thought she could get away with it, if she thought it was really her job. (And some of the things she did were really strange, not like she had never read a fantasy novel before and didn’t understand the genre, but like she had never read fiction before.) But on that day, I would have sworn in court that Reynard was deleted because he was gay.
And it amounted to the same thing. He was gay and he was gone.
Would have been gone. It turned out fine. For my first two books I hadn’t encountered a problem even remotely like this, and this was my first time with this publisher, and I panicked. During a semi-hysterical sleepless night I carefully assembled a list of everything that was wrong with the copyedit, wrote down what I was going to say so I could pretend to be calm on the phone, then called my editor in the morning. I made it through maybe two items on my list before she stopped me. (Actually, she started laughing. I think it was the one where the copyeditor told me I couldn’t say that an evil sorcerer was buried in the crossroads because it was “a Christian concept.”)
The editor asked me if I could just stet everything, but I thought the book really needed a real copyedit, and it hadn’t gotten one. I sent back the mutilated manuscript and the editor ended up throwing out that copyedit entirely and having it redone, so everything was fine and my version of The Death of the Necromancer (with Reynard intact) was the one that got published. And the book ended up on the 1999 Nebula ballot.
This was an extreme case, and if I had been so dumb as to let this go by, my editor (who liked Reynard just fine) would have noticed that something had gone terribly wrong. (The copyedited expurgated version of the book was half the size it was supposed to be, for one thing.)
But I guess my point is, it’s your book, and don’t let anybody take your Reynards out of it.
(Note: Reynard appears again in "Night at the Opera," a new story in Between Worlds: the Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories, and it was a lot of fun for me to make his acquaintance again. Both books are in the Storybundle (https://storybundle.com/fantasy) along with several other fabulous books, and it’s an opportunity to make a donation to Girls Write Now and Mighty Writers.)
This is about when The Death of the Necromancer was first sold to a publisher, and how a rogue copyeditor tried to take out Reynard, who was gay.
Don’t Let Then Take Your Reynards
The Death of the Necromancer, published in 1998, was my third novel, and my first with a new publisher, Avon Eos. Everything went fine through the editorial process, right up until I received the copyedit, and found that one of the major supporting characters, Captain Reynard Morane, had been all but removed from the book. And it happened that Reynard was gay.
I’d worked hard on Reynard, and I liked him a lot. He had started out as a template. I wanted the main character, Nicholas Valiarde, to be Ile-Rien’s version of Moriarty, and Reynard was his Colonel Sebastian Moran. But in the writing, Reynard emerged immediately as funny and kind to his friends and deadly to his enemies. The one guy in the room that everybody knew they really didn’t want to get in a fight with. A very good soldier, a very good friend, and a very sexual person. He was kind of a weird combination of Oscar Wilde and Oliver Reed, but unlike Oscar Wilde he wasn’t going to come to a bad end because of a love affair. He was a little too old and too experienced and too much of a serial monogamist to fall too hard for anybody. I wanted him to be the polar opposite of the stereotypical gay character who suffers and dies because of his forbidden whatever, and to end the book better off than the other characters.
(One digression, for those who don’t know about the publishing process. The editor, usually the person who has acquired the book for the publisher, is the one who edits the book and suggests changes to improve plot, characterization, and other major elements. The copyeditor is the person who reads the book after it’s in its near-final form and checks for things like grammar, spelling, continuity, and style.)
By the time I got the copyedit, I had already revised The Death of the Necromancer based on the editor’s comments and things I realized I needed to fix, so the copyedit should have had only minor changes at best.
(To give you an idea how minor, back then the copyedit was handwritten marks done on the actual printed manuscript. The copyedited manuscript was shipped by mail to the author who would go through it and accept some of the copyeditor’s changes, stet others (an instruction that means the original text is supposed to be that way and to leave it alone) and handwrite additional changes on the pages. Then you ship it back and the publisher would take the whole thing and type it in, it would be printed in galley form (the actual printed pages that you see in books) and then shipped back to the author for a final proofread.)
But this copyedit came back with massive alterations handwritten on the manuscript, with bad grammar and incorrect word choices inserted, weird demands for all sorts of things to be explained that didn’t need to be explained (like the color of the tablecloth in a room description, or the main character’s choice of beverage), and odd demands for rewrites. (The copyeditor wanted me to rewrite one section because she thought it was too cold for the characters to be outside.)
(The publisher really doesn’t want you to rewrite the manuscript during the copyedit. They really, really don’t, to the point that there are sometimes clauses in the contracts stipulating what percentage of the manuscript can be changed during the copyedit. And they really don’t want a copyeditor to tell you to do rewrite.)
There were a lot of seemingly random deletions of descriptions, including whole scenes, conversations and other things you needed to understand the plot, but the thing that stood out to me was that Reynard’s dialogue had been all but excised from the book, and that the cuts to his part had started after it became apparent to the reader that Reynard was gay.
He was important to the plot in a number of ways and helped uncover some of the information that let Nicholas and Madeleine, the other viewpoint characters, solve the mystery before the Necromancer kills them. In the copyeditor’s expurgated version of the book, Reynard is still around for the first couple of chapters, but after the point where it was made clear that Reynard is gay, suddenly his dialogue was all marked as deleted.
The conclusion I instantly snapped to was that Reynard had been removed for his sexuality. Of course, I don’t know for certain if that was the case and I sure can’t prove it. I never found out why the copyeditor did what she did, or why she thought she could get away with it, if she thought it was really her job. (And some of the things she did were really strange, not like she had never read a fantasy novel before and didn’t understand the genre, but like she had never read fiction before.) But on that day, I would have sworn in court that Reynard was deleted because he was gay.
And it amounted to the same thing. He was gay and he was gone.
Would have been gone. It turned out fine. For my first two books I hadn’t encountered a problem even remotely like this, and this was my first time with this publisher, and I panicked. During a semi-hysterical sleepless night I carefully assembled a list of everything that was wrong with the copyedit, wrote down what I was going to say so I could pretend to be calm on the phone, then called my editor in the morning. I made it through maybe two items on my list before she stopped me. (Actually, she started laughing. I think it was the one where the copyeditor told me I couldn’t say that an evil sorcerer was buried in the crossroads because it was “a Christian concept.”)
The editor asked me if I could just stet everything, but I thought the book really needed a real copyedit, and it hadn’t gotten one. I sent back the mutilated manuscript and the editor ended up throwing out that copyedit entirely and having it redone, so everything was fine and my version of The Death of the Necromancer (with Reynard intact) was the one that got published. And the book ended up on the 1999 Nebula ballot.
This was an extreme case, and if I had been so dumb as to let this go by, my editor (who liked Reynard just fine) would have noticed that something had gone terribly wrong. (The copyedited expurgated version of the book was half the size it was supposed to be, for one thing.)
But I guess my point is, it’s your book, and don’t let anybody take your Reynards out of it.
(Note: Reynard appears again in "Night at the Opera," a new story in Between Worlds: the Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories, and it was a lot of fun for me to make his acquaintance again. Both books are in the Storybundle (https://storybundle.com/fantasy) along with several other fabulous books, and it’s an opportunity to make a donation to Girls Write Now and Mighty Writers.)
July 20, 2016
Storybundle!
I have two books in a DRM-free Storybundle curated by Melissa Scott!
Melissa says:
In this collection I've been able to bring together an extraordinary group of writers who draw their inspiration from Western history, in periods from Ancient Egypt through the Second World War. There are classics like the World Fantasy Award-nominated Lord of the Two Lands and the Nebula-nominated Death of the Necromancer, and newer novels like Daughter of Mystery and The Emperor's Agent — and Stag and Hound, just released in April. What these novels have in common, across these very different periods, is a depth to and delight in their worlds, in the precise detail and pitch-perfect moment that not only propels the story, but makes it utterly, dazzlingly real.
The initial titles in The Historical Fantasy Bundle (minimum $5 to purchase) are:
• The Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells
• The Emperor's Agent by Jo Graham
• Daughter of Mystery by Heather Rose Jones
• The Virtuous Feats of the Indomitable Miss Trafalgar and the Erudite Lady Boon e by Geonn Cannon
• The Orffyreus Wheel by David Niall Wilson
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July 18, 2016
Books for Monday
* Preorder: Everfair by Nisi Shawl
Everfair is a wonderful Neo-Victorian alternate history novel that explores the question of what might have come of Belgium's disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier. Fabian Socialists from Great Britian join forces with African-American missionaries to purchase land from the Belgian Congo's "owner," King Leopold II.
* Dead of Light by Chaz Brenchley
When Ben walked away from his family and the criminal life, he thought it would be forever. But then the talent begins to wake up in Ben. And his family starts to die, one by one, in vicious, gruesome, horrible deaths. There's someone in the city with as much talent as the Macallans, and they're using it to kill Ben's family.
* Time Siege by Wesley Chu
James has allies, scientists he rescued from previous centuries: Elise Kim, who believes she can renew Earth, given time; Grace Priestly, the venerated inventor of time travel herself; Levin, James's mentor and former pursuer, now disgraced; and the Elfreth, a population of downtrodden humans who want desperately to believe that James and his friends will heal their ailing home world.
* The Devourers by Indra Das
On a cool evening in Kolkata, India, beneath a full moon, as the whirling rhythms of traveling musicians fill the night, college professor Alok encounters a mysterious stranger with a bizarre confession and an extraordinary story. Tantalized by the man’s unfinished tale, Alok will do anything to hear its completion. So Alok agrees, at the stranger’s behest, to transcribe a collection of battered notebooks, weathered parchments, and once-living skins.
* Preorder: Congress of Secrets by Stephanie Burgis
The sinister forces that shattered Caroline's childhood still rule Vienna behind a glittering façade of balls and salons, Michael’s plan is fraught with danger, and both of their disguises are more fragile than they realize. What price will they pay to the darkness if either of them is to survive? I've read this already and given it a blurb. Really excellent historical fantasy.
* Preorder: The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin
Essun — once Damaya, once Syenite, now avenger — has found shelter, but not her daughter. Instead there is Alabaster Tenring, destroyer of the world, with a request. But if Essun does what he asks, it would seal the fate of the Stillness forever.
* Preorder: Cloudbound by Fran Wilde
With the Towers in disarray, without a governing body or any defense against the dangers lurking in the clouds, daily life is full of terror and strife. Naton, Kirit's wing-brother, sets out to be a hero in his own way--sitting on the new Council to cast votes protecting Tower-born, and exploring lower tiers to find more materials to repair the struggling City.
Everfair is a wonderful Neo-Victorian alternate history novel that explores the question of what might have come of Belgium's disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier. Fabian Socialists from Great Britian join forces with African-American missionaries to purchase land from the Belgian Congo's "owner," King Leopold II.
* Dead of Light by Chaz Brenchley
When Ben walked away from his family and the criminal life, he thought it would be forever. But then the talent begins to wake up in Ben. And his family starts to die, one by one, in vicious, gruesome, horrible deaths. There's someone in the city with as much talent as the Macallans, and they're using it to kill Ben's family.
* Time Siege by Wesley Chu
James has allies, scientists he rescued from previous centuries: Elise Kim, who believes she can renew Earth, given time; Grace Priestly, the venerated inventor of time travel herself; Levin, James's mentor and former pursuer, now disgraced; and the Elfreth, a population of downtrodden humans who want desperately to believe that James and his friends will heal their ailing home world.
* The Devourers by Indra Das
On a cool evening in Kolkata, India, beneath a full moon, as the whirling rhythms of traveling musicians fill the night, college professor Alok encounters a mysterious stranger with a bizarre confession and an extraordinary story. Tantalized by the man’s unfinished tale, Alok will do anything to hear its completion. So Alok agrees, at the stranger’s behest, to transcribe a collection of battered notebooks, weathered parchments, and once-living skins.
* Preorder: Congress of Secrets by Stephanie Burgis
The sinister forces that shattered Caroline's childhood still rule Vienna behind a glittering façade of balls and salons, Michael’s plan is fraught with danger, and both of their disguises are more fragile than they realize. What price will they pay to the darkness if either of them is to survive? I've read this already and given it a blurb. Really excellent historical fantasy.
* Preorder: The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin
Essun — once Damaya, once Syenite, now avenger — has found shelter, but not her daughter. Instead there is Alabaster Tenring, destroyer of the world, with a request. But if Essun does what he asks, it would seal the fate of the Stillness forever.
* Preorder: Cloudbound by Fran Wilde
With the Towers in disarray, without a governing body or any defense against the dangers lurking in the clouds, daily life is full of terror and strife. Naton, Kirit's wing-brother, sets out to be a hero in his own way--sitting on the new Council to cast votes protecting Tower-born, and exploring lower tiers to find more materials to repair the struggling City.
July 13, 2016
What I've been doing
I've mostly been feeling depressed and anxious, and like I'm not getting anything done. Except I did finish a novella last month, and today I'll probably finish the first light revision of The Harbors of the Sun. It hasn't gone into editorial yet, so there will probably be more revisions in its future, but it's in better shape than it was.
I also finished and posted another story for the Raksura Patreon. This is part 2 of a Stone and Azure story. There's at least one more part to go. It's the 17th story of the Patreon.
My back is better, though I'm still getting some pain on my left side. I did go back to aerobics class again yesterday, though I used the lightest weights.
It's been over 100 here, and crazy high humidity, so I've been trying to keep my plants alive.
I also finished and posted another story for the Raksura Patreon. This is part 2 of a Stone and Azure story. There's at least one more part to go. It's the 17th story of the Patreon.
My back is better, though I'm still getting some pain on my left side. I did go back to aerobics class again yesterday, though I used the lightest weights.
It's been over 100 here, and crazy high humidity, so I've been trying to keep my plants alive.
July 7, 2016
New Books Thursday
* Drinking Gourd by Barbara Hambly
The latest Benjamin January historical mystery
Benjamin January is called up to Vicksburg, deep in cotton-plantation country, to help a wounded “conductor” of the Underground Railroad – the secret network of safe-houses that guide escaping slaves to freedom. When the chief "conductor" of the "station" is found murdered, Jubal Cain – the coordinator of the whole Railroad system in Mississippi – is accused of the crime. Since Cain can’t expose the nature of his involvement in the railroad, January has to step in and find the true killer, before their covers are blown.
* Short story: The Red Thread by Sofia Samatar
* Bone Garden by Amanda Downum
Erisin is a haunted city, and her specters are hungry. When demons prowl the streets of Oldtown, preying on the poor and the weak, a young actor must face the ghosts of his past and of his family to protect his new home.
* Defying Doomsday, edited by Tsana Dolichva
Defying Doomsday is an anthology of apocalypse fiction featuring disabled and chronically ill protagonists, proving it's not always the "fittest" who survive - it's the most tenacious, stubborn, enduring and innovative characters who have the best chance of adapting when everything is lost.
* Short Story: Iron Aria by A. Merc Rustad
* Girl in the Shadows by Gwenda Bond
When an invitation to join the Cirque American mistakenly falls into Moira’s possession, she takes action. Instead of giving the highly coveted invitation to its intended recipient, Raleigh, her father’s handsome and worldly former apprentice, Moira takes off to join the Cirque. If she can perform alongside its world-famous acts, she knows she'll be able to convince her dad that magic is her future.
* Short Story: Whatever Else by J. Kathleen Cheney
* Heroine Complex by Sarah Kuhn
Evie Tanaka is the put-upon personal assistant to Aveda Jupiter, her childhood best friend and San Francisco’s most beloved superheroine. She's great at her job—blending into the background, handling her boss's epic diva tantrums, and getting demon blood out of leather pants.
* Paper and Fire by Rachel Caine
Jess Brightwell has survived his introduction to the sinister, seductive world of the Library, but serving in its army is nothing like he envisioned. His life and the lives of those he cares for have been altered forever. His best friend is lost, and Morgan, the girl he loves, is locked away in the Iron Tower and doomed to a life apart. Embarking on a mission to save one of their own, Jess and his band of allies make one wrong move and suddenly find themselves hunted by the Library’s deadly automata and forced to flee Alexandria, all the way to London.
The latest Benjamin January historical mystery
Benjamin January is called up to Vicksburg, deep in cotton-plantation country, to help a wounded “conductor” of the Underground Railroad – the secret network of safe-houses that guide escaping slaves to freedom. When the chief "conductor" of the "station" is found murdered, Jubal Cain – the coordinator of the whole Railroad system in Mississippi – is accused of the crime. Since Cain can’t expose the nature of his involvement in the railroad, January has to step in and find the true killer, before their covers are blown.
* Short story: The Red Thread by Sofia Samatar
* Bone Garden by Amanda Downum
Erisin is a haunted city, and her specters are hungry. When demons prowl the streets of Oldtown, preying on the poor and the weak, a young actor must face the ghosts of his past and of his family to protect his new home.
* Defying Doomsday, edited by Tsana Dolichva
Defying Doomsday is an anthology of apocalypse fiction featuring disabled and chronically ill protagonists, proving it's not always the "fittest" who survive - it's the most tenacious, stubborn, enduring and innovative characters who have the best chance of adapting when everything is lost.
* Short Story: Iron Aria by A. Merc Rustad
* Girl in the Shadows by Gwenda Bond
When an invitation to join the Cirque American mistakenly falls into Moira’s possession, she takes action. Instead of giving the highly coveted invitation to its intended recipient, Raleigh, her father’s handsome and worldly former apprentice, Moira takes off to join the Cirque. If she can perform alongside its world-famous acts, she knows she'll be able to convince her dad that magic is her future.
* Short Story: Whatever Else by J. Kathleen Cheney
* Heroine Complex by Sarah Kuhn
Evie Tanaka is the put-upon personal assistant to Aveda Jupiter, her childhood best friend and San Francisco’s most beloved superheroine. She's great at her job—blending into the background, handling her boss's epic diva tantrums, and getting demon blood out of leather pants.
* Paper and Fire by Rachel Caine
Jess Brightwell has survived his introduction to the sinister, seductive world of the Library, but serving in its army is nothing like he envisioned. His life and the lives of those he cares for have been altered forever. His best friend is lost, and Morgan, the girl he loves, is locked away in the Iron Tower and doomed to a life apart. Embarking on a mission to save one of their own, Jess and his band of allies make one wrong move and suddenly find themselves hunted by the Library’s deadly automata and forced to flee Alexandria, all the way to London.
June 29, 2016
Audiobook Contest!
I have five codes to give away for free downloads of the audiobook of The Edge of Worlds, narrated by Chris Kipiniak, from Audible.com. You can listen to a sample here.
To enter: Comment on this post (at Live Journal, Dreamwidth, or the GoodReads feed) and tell me why you want it. (The drawing is random and I'm not judging you, it just makes it more interesting to read the entries that way.) You'll also be able to enter on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr, but please only enter once (in total, not once on each site).
I'll be drawing the winners on Friday morning, July 1, 2016.
(I'd also really appreciate it if people left reviews, on Amazon, B&N, GoodReads, or LibraryThing (or just added the book to their lists there) but it isn't necessary to enter or win.)
June 28, 2016
News of Me
My back is doing much better, and yesterday I was able to drive for the first time in a couple weeks. I may try to get to the grocery store today.
I finished a 30,000 word SF novella and sent it off to my agent, so we'll see what she thinks about its prospects. I still have to do one more revision of The Harbors of the Sun before it gets turned in, and that should take up most of July.
Also finished and posted part one of a multipart Stone and Azure story for the Raksura Patreon.
If you missed it, the audiobook version of The Edge of Worlds was released early this month.
I finished a 30,000 word SF novella and sent it off to my agent, so we'll see what she thinks about its prospects. I still have to do one more revision of The Harbors of the Sun before it gets turned in, and that should take up most of July.
Also finished and posted part one of a multipart Stone and Azure story for the Raksura Patreon.
If you missed it, the audiobook version of The Edge of Worlds was released early this month.
