Outer Alliance Spotlight #16: Angelia Sparrow January 8, 2010
Posted by juliarios in : interviews , trackbackWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #16. Each Friday (except for last Friday, when your correspondent was busy welcoming the new year), the Spotlight features an ally who writes, reviews, publishes, or is in some other way involved with LGBTQI speculative fiction. Our guest this week is erotic writer, Angelia Sparrow.
Since 2004, Angelia since written seven novels, ten novellas, and many more short stories both on her own and together with her writing partner, Naomi Brooks. Their latest novel, Alive on the Inside, came out in December. An erotic horror novel about a traveling circus, Alive on the Inside has been nominated as a candidate for Best Horror Novel in the Preditors and Editors Readers’ Poll for works published in 2009.
Angelia and Naomi are planning to release a Western in 2010. Showdown at Yellowstone River will feature a drag king gunslinger and a bisexual sheriff. In addition to that novel, a couple of collections of previously published short stories are on the horizon. Angelia will be making appearances at several cons and events including MidSouthCon in March, Southern Delta Church of Wicca‘s Beltane, Hypericon in June, Either Memphit FurMeet or Dragon*Con in September, MidSouth Pride, Summerland Grove‘s Festival of Souls in October, and ConTraception in November.
Angelia is a truck driver and mother of four, who identifies as a bisexual, Butch Earth Mother. She grew up in Peculiar, Missouri, but has lived in the greater Memphis area for the past twelve years. She blogs about her writing at http://angelsparrow.blogspot.com/ (syndicated on LiveJournal here), and maintains a personal blog at http://valarltd.livejournal.com/. Angelia enjoys crochet and old movies, and donates both time and money to Memphis Area Gay Youth.
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OA: Alive on the Inside came out in December, and is up for Best Horror Novel in the Preditors and Editors Readers’ Poll. Can you tell us a bit about it?
AS: Nick Harper, small-town car salesman, gets swept away from his closeted little life by a dark carnival. He falls and falls hard for Jacob Plum, aka Torturo the Pain King. But as he is with the show, his toxic religion, Jacob’s abusiveness and the general weirdness come into harsher and harsher conflict.
Everyone reading it keeps saying “Not for the faint of heart,” and my publisher felt a warning was in order. There is also a fair bit of heterosexuality, since the acts in the Adult Show are all het, including Torturo and the conjoined twins. Torturo doesn’t just bear a passing resemblance to Errol Flynn, he is omnivorously sexual and lives by Flynn’s preferred epitaph: “If it moved, [he] fucked it.” And I know a lot of m/m only readers don’t like bisexuality (or omnisexuality) in their stories.
OA: Where did the idea for a twisted circus come from?
AS: Oh so MANY sources, fictional and real-life. Is there really anything creepier than a closed or deserted amusement park? I lived in Peculiar during the era described and visited the dying park, Fairyland, in its last season. I was 9 and it has stuck with me. And clowns? Who isn’t scared of clowns and mirror mazes, honestly?
The most immediate answer on the literary front is Bryan Smith’s The Freakshow, a horror novel I picked up the summer before I wrote Alive on the Inside. Bryan’s a lovely guy and gave us a nice blurb for Alive, by the way. But I’d been kicking around the idea of full-length horror instead of just paranormal romance shorts as we’d been doing. So, with some rereadings of Ray Bradbury and Tom Reamy (I always loved Bradbury’s dark carnival short stories), a few viewings of the movie Freaks, and a lot of web exploration on carnival illusions, deserted theme parks and the like, Naomi and I managed to get it together.
OA: You’ve written a lot of different kinds of queer characters from lesbian and gay to bi and trans, and currently Shell Shocked is in the number one spot for Best Gay Romance with a Disabled Lead at Good Reads. What were some of your most fun and/or most challenging characters to write?
The most fun were definitely Robin and Marion, along with Bess and Little John. How can you NOT have fun writing Robin Hood in love with King Richard’s bastard son, who has been raised as a princess? The fun we had really shows through Heart of a Forest. Edward Kilsby and Charlie Doyle from Curse of the Pharoah’s Manicurists were great guys. We’re glad they took us along on that trip and they’ve invited us along on a polar expedition very soon.
The challenging characters would be Chuck Hummingbird from Glad Hands and Adlai Goodman from Kestrel on the Horizon. They required a great deal or research on religion (Chuck’s), attitudes and mindsets. Chuck, I could do more with because he is a futuristic. He has some issues, but for the most part, he’s very comfortable with himself. But Adlai, being a character of color in the early 1800s, has ideas that are very different than our own 21st century ones. There’s always some doubt in a white writer’s mind when she sets down to write characters of color as to whether she is walking the fine line between stereotype and what Harlan Ellison calls “Julie Andrews in Man-Tan.”
OA: Do you have plans for further diversity in future books?
AS: Oh yes. We write as the muses move us. Most of our books have some sort of diversity, racial, ethnic, religious or class.
At the moment, we have a cross-dressing space chanteuse, Commander Cliff Cody and his two husbands facing down space-faring brain-eating dark elves, a useless young man being taken in by a wealthy benefactor, flower fairies and a vampire apocalypse, which includes immortals of every race and era, especially Samil, a soldier in the armies of King David who died under a Hittite sword, and Ursula, who was tortured to death for witchcraft in colonial New England. My dark future universe, with a Balkanized US, is moving into the third novel, Nick & Corban, and James Ligatos’ Jewish faith will be more prominent, as will the whole dominionist theocracy that runs the Confederated States of America.
OA: How did you and Naomi Brooks become writing partners, and how do you decide who writes what? Is there a methodical process there, or is it more random?
AS: Once upon a business class, Han Solo and Bagoas fell in love. We met in an online role-playing game called Fandom High. Although we both had to leave the game for work-related reasons, we continued writing together.
We each have stock characters, muses we call them. One of us will hit on a story idea and we’ll poke around to see who wants to play, to see who will fit the story line.
[The process] starts random. Then it grows out of AIM role-play and we find our plot. I usually do the outlining, with Naomi suggesting plot-twists. Sometimes I write, show her what there is and the muses pipe up with dialogue or actions.
She does a read of the rough draft before I ever touch it. Then we both work on re-writes.
OA: For writers everything is story fodder. How has your job as a truck driver influenced your writing?
AS: It has gotten me out, let me see more places, including a very creepy motel that is going to show up soon. It has given me a different skill set, which allows me to write more realistic trucker characters. You’ll never see mine lounging in the driver’s seat in his undershorts with a bottle of Jack Daniels. (the booze can cost him his license, even if he’s not driving impaired) Truckers are very popular in m/m, being all butch and macho.
Also, the sheer length of time behind the wheel lets me work out plot points, meditate on characters and even do dialogue. I’m not a long haul driver. I have a dedicated run and spend about 6 hours a day driving.
OA: As the mother of a queer teen, do you have any advice for other parents with queer kids?
AS: First and foremost: get support. Get it for yourself, get it for your child. The earlier a child comes out, the more peer group problems there can be. My daughter had other children (yes, age 13-15 is children) trying to kill her. Our local gay and lesbian youth group was a great help to her during the rougher patches.
Second, don’t be a hypocrite. If your straight child can date, let the queer one date, too. Don’t freak out over the same-sex kissing anymore than you freak out over the opposite sex kissing. Sleepovers are problematic, but know your child and who ze is romantically involved with and who ze considers a friend.
Third: safe sex. Talk about it. Provide for it. You cannot tell a queer teen “wait until you’re married” when they can’t marry in 45 states. Condoms and dental dams, learn them and be prepared to talk about them.
OA: Are there any resources you’d particularly recommend?
AS: PFLAG is an excellent one, especially if one parent is having problems with the notion.
Your local GLBT community center may have programs for youth or be able to direct you that way.
The Trevor Project is the only nationwide 24 hour help and suicide prevention hotline specifically for queer youth. Our kids commit suicide at a rate three times that of their straight peers. Consider supporting this.
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Thank you, Angelia! Join us next Friday for another Spotlight, and in the meantime, check out Alive on the Inside.
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