Outer Alliance Spotlight #23: Catherine Lundoff February 26, 2010
Posted by juliarios in : interviews , trackbackWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #23. Each Friday, 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 author and editor, Catherine Lundoff.
Catherine is a lesbian identified bisexual, who married her partner of 16 years last September. She’s been writing since 1996, and has amassed a long list of queer speculative and erotic fiction sales, including the recent “Great Reckonings, Little Rooms” in Time Well Bent: Queer Alternative History, and “The Egyptian Cat” in Tales of the Unanticipated #30.
She received a Lambda nomination for the lesbian ghost story collection, Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades in 2008, and also won the Golden Crown Literary Award in the Lesbian Erotica category that same year for her short story collection, Crave: Tales of Lust, Love and Longing. She is currently reading submissions for a new anthology, Hellebore and Rue, which she is co-editing with JoSelle Vanderhooft.
Catherine is a regular at WisCon and Gaylaxicon, and she’ll also be appearing at MarsCon next week in Bloomington, Minnesota. If you can’t make it out to see her in person, you may find her online on LiveJournal, MySpace, Facebook, and GoodReads. She lives in Minnesota with her wife and two cats.
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OA: You’re co-editing a new anthology, Hellebore and Rue, with JoSelle Vanderhooft. Can you tell us more about it? How long will the submissions window be open, and what kinds of stories are you looking for?
CL: For Hellebore and Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic, we’re looking for stories about lesbian magic users of all varieties. The definition of magic is pretty open to interpretation; we’d like to have everything from witches and sorceresses to stage magicians. We’re also open to historical settings and science fiction, and would love to see stories about non-Western magic. The submission window is open from Feb. 15 – May 15, 2010 and optimal word count is 3-8K. We are asking writers to query with their ideas first in an effort to make the process a little easier for everyone. The full guidelines and contact address are here.
OA: Erotica has been a mainstay of your writing career so far, but lately you’ve been turning more toward speculative fiction. What prompted this change, and what do you love about both of these genres?
CL: I’ve always written some speculative fiction so it’s not a completely new thing for me. What has changed for me as a writer is that I’ve said much of what I wanted to say with erotica at this point. I’ve really enjoyed writing erotica and erotic romance and I don’t expect that I’ll ever completely stop writing it, but my emphasis is changing. None of my current projects have much erotic content and I don’t expect that to alter in the immediate future. I’d say that what I love about both genres is that they both bring the opportunity to tell unique stories in unique ways, to be able to step outside of daily reality and play with something new and unusual and stretch the boundaries of story.
OA: You got married in Iowa not too long ago, though you live in Minnesota. Has this changed any of the practical aspects of your life? If not, was it worth it for the emotional significance?
CL: Back in September, 2009, I legally married my partner of fifteen years in one of the few locations in the United States where we can do that. A number of friends traveled in for the wedding, as well as the reception a few weeks later and it was a lovely, lovely experience. We felt very supported and were pretty thrilled about the whole thing. Probably the biggest impact on our daily lives has been that my wife’s family of origin, all of whom are members of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, has become a lot more accepting of our relationship. I will say that the change in attitude came as a pleasant surprise. Apart from that, we’ve made a public commitment to each other and I think that always changes a relationship. And we’re grateful to the Iowa Supreme Court for giving us that opportunity.
OA: Sapphic Shades and Haunted Hearths was nominated for a Lambda Award in 2008. Any chance of a second lesbian ghost story anthology somewhere down the road? Are there other themed anthologies you’d like to put together?
CL: A second ghost story antho is certainly a possibility, though there’s nothing in the works at the present time. I’d like to do a queer steampunk anthology at some point and maybe an anthology of swashbuckling women down the road apiece. I’ve got a thing for women with swords. JoSelle and I have kicked around a few ideas for future anthologies so we’ll have to see how things look after Hellebore is done.
OA: In addition to editing, you’ve written a lot of original fiction. Do you have any personal favorite pieces or characters? Any place you’d recommend as a good start for new readers?
CL: It’s hard to play favorites with the darling children but I’ll give it a shot. One of the stories I’m proudest of is “Great Reckonings, Little Rooms,” which appears in Time Well Bent: Queer Alternative Histories edited by Connie Wilkins. It’s a story about Christopher Marlowe, the gay Elizabethan playwright, Shakepeare’s lesbian sister, Judith, with a tip of the hat to Virginia Woolf, and the authorship of the plays. I’ve also got a story called “The Egyptian Cat” coming out next month in a magazine called Tales of the Unanticipated. This one is comic Lovecraftian-influenced pulp with lesbian protagonists. I’d say either of these would be a good introduction to my speculative fiction. For my erotica, Crave: Tales of Lust, Love and Longing (Lethe Press, 2007) has remained my favorite.
OA: What can we look forward to in the future?
CL: Right now, I’m working on a novel called Silver Moon. It’s about a woman who turns into a werewolf just as she enters menopause. She’s also coming out and falling in love at the same time so it’s a sort of multi-level coming out novel. Reader response has been very positive thus far and I’m hoping to start shopping it around later on this year.
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Thanks, Catherine! Join us next Friday for another Spotlight, and in the meantime, check out Time Well Bent, or consider submitting to Hellebore and Rue. And don’t forget to stop by MarsCon next week if you’re in the Twin Cities area.
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[...] Hellebore and Rue (edited by OA members, Catherine Lundoff and JoSelle Vanderhooft) is still open for submissions of lesbian magic user stories. Submissions [...]