Outer Alliance Podcast #16: The “Queer SF&F” Panel at Arisia January 20, 2012
Posted by juliarios in : events, interviews, Outer Alliance Podcast , 7commentsIt’s the first episode of 2012! I started the year off with a big convention weekend, and decided to share it with you. JoSelle Vanderhooft, Meredith Schwartz, and Don Sakers joined me on a panel about Queer SF&F at Arisia in Boston, Massachusetts. Raven Kaldera was unable to make the panel, but sent in some of his thoughts via e-mail, and I read those out after the panel recording finishes.
Thanks to everyone who came to be part of the conversation in person! We had a fantastic audience, especially for ten in the morning on the last day of a con. Below, as promised, are links to everything people recommended during that session. Comments and further recommendations are always welcome, and if you’d like to say anything to me directly, my e-mail address is julia@juliarios.com.
You can subscribe to the podcast RSS feed here or use this link to subscribe with iTunes. You can also hit play on the embedded player in this post and listen to the podcast on the web, or visit the individual episode page to download this episode as an MP3 without subscribing.
Notes:
JoSelle Vanderhooft’s Work
*Jo’s website.
*SteamPowered and SteamPowered II are the lesbian steampunk anthologies Jo edits with an eye toward diverse content and viewpoints. SteamPowered III will be accepting submissions in February.
*Sleeping Beauty Indeed is an anthology of lesbian fairy tales, which includes a story by Meredith.
*Heiresses of Russ is the best lesbian stories of 2010 Jo collected co-edited with Steve Berman. Jo says Steve’s contribution (a retelling of Swan Lake) is the best short story she’s ever read.
*Bitten By Moonlight is the lesbian werewolf anthology that came up during the horror and dark fantazy recommendations part of the panel.
Meredith Schwartz’s Work
*Alleys and Doorways is the anthology Meredith edited, which contains Jo’s butch werebunny story (why have I not read this yet?).
*Meredith is also running this year’s program for LunaCon.
Don Sakers’s Work
*Meerkat Meade is Don’s home page.
*Dance for the Ivory Madonna is Don’s all-inclusive “Meta Gay” book (though no one’s been able to explain what Meta Gay means without taking at least three pages, apparently). It was a finalist for the Spectrum Award, and almost made the final Hugo ballot as well.
*Curse of the Zwiling is Don’s dark fantasy, which came up during the horror and dark fantasy recommendations part of the panel.
*Don also has a regular column in Analog Science Fiction and Fact.
Raven Kaldera’s Work
*Raven’s website.
*Raven’s books (including Best Transgender Erotica, and Double-Edge: The Intersection of Transgender and BDSM).
*Raven’s list of Female to Male non-fiction and fiction books.
Other Recommended Works
*Everyone recommended Catherynne Valente (whose work was, at one point, described as “relentlessly queer”–there’s a quote for the next book cover). Jo particularly singled out Palimpsest and Silently and Very Fast.
*Don recommended Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series and The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins as examples of bestselling books with prominent and complex QUILTBAG characters.
*Meredith recommended Amanda Downum’s The Bone Palace, which she said she read first even though it is the second of a trilogy, and she believes it stands alone. This book was also on the Tiptree shortlist in 2011.
*When an audience member asked about Twilight‘s influence on YA, Jo mentioned Melissa Marr’s Wicked Lovely Things, and I mentioned Justine Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan’s Team Human as books with protagonists who don’t think dating supernatural creatures is a very good idea.
*Jo recommended Steve Berman in general and Meredith recommended his YA novel, Vintage, in particular.
*Jo also recommended Erekos by A.M. Tuomolo.
*Don recommended Melissa Scott, particularly Trouble and Her Friends and Shadow Man. Meredith added that Trouble and Her Friends is a good example of cyberpunk that doesn’t feel dated.
*Don also recommended Open Your Eyes by Paul Jessup.
*Simoun was Jo’s anime recommendation, which she says will appeal to fans of Revolutionary Girl Utena, and which features supernatural aircraft powered by lesbian kisses.
*Meredith recommended Lynn Flewelling’s Nightrunner series and Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint (which is now also available as an audiobook with an exciting cast of voice actors as part of the Neil Gaiman Presents series).
*Melissa Scott and Jo both recommended the lesbian zombie novella, Eat Your Heart Out by Dayna Ingram. And this starts our run of dark fantasy and horror recommendations, which an audience member requested.
*Meredith and Jo recommended Ginn Hale’s Lord of the White Hell for dark fantasy fans.
*I recommended Lee Thomas in general for horror fans, and specifically mention The Dust of Wonderland, which won a Lambda Award.
*Meredith recommended A Companion to Wolves for fantasy fans, which led me to recommend The Bone Key for horror fans, and then all of us to recommend Sarah Monette’s work in general.
*Don recommended Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman series for dark fantasy fans.
*An audience member recommended Joanna Russ.
*Adrienne Odasso recommended Clive Barker for horror fans.
*Another audience member recommended the television series Carnivàle for horror fans.
*And our final recommendation from the panel was Maureen McHugh’s China Mountain Zhang, which Meredith started and I jumped all over, and then Jo got in on it, too.
*Raven recommends Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series, particularly citing Bel Thorne and Lord Dono Vorrutyer as well drawn intersex and trans characters.
*Raven also recommends Steel Beach by John Varley.
*Raven also felt it worth mentioning Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover series, and Mary Gentle’s Ilario series.
Finally, I noted on the podcast, and I’ll note again here that not all books work for all people, and that books might have problems, but still work for a lot of people, and be worth reading, considering and talking about. Opinions tend to vary greatly around books with trans and/or intersex content because every person experiences gender and orientation differently, and because there are so few of those books to begin with. All of these recommendations did work for the recommenders, but I do want to acknowledge that they may not work for everyone, and that people who disagree with these recommendations also have valid experiences and opinions. Individual experience is, after all, highly subjective. We’re open to discussion, and happy to collect more suggestions if you’ve got them.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #94: Stone Telling’s LGBTQ Issue January 6, 2012
Posted by juliarios in : interviews, queer-friendly publishers, submissions , 1 comment so farWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #94. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating QUILTBAG speculative fiction. Our guest today is Rose Lemberg, who is currently reading for a QUILTBAG issue of Stone Telling. Unfortunately, health issues prevented Rose’s co-editor, Shweta Narayan from joining this discussion.
Rose and Shweta have both been guests here before, so if you want to find further information about their taste in poetry and vision for Stone Telling, please check out Outer Alliance Spotlight #39 with Rose, and Outer Alliance Spotlight #71 with Shweta (who was not yet co-editor, but was guest editing an issue at that time with J.C. Runolfson).
For up to the date insights to help you figure out what to submit for this current issue, read on!
Outer Alliance Podcast #15: Steampunk December (Part 2) December 30, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : interviews, Outer Alliance Podcast , 11commentsIt’s the last OA Podcast episode for 2011!
We’re wrapping up the year with the second half of our Steampunk Extravaganza. Conni Covington and Natania Barron join me to talk about ConTemporal (a steampunk convention that’s happening in June of 2012 in North Carolina), Natania’s new book, Pilgrim of the Sky (a steampunk interdimensional travel adventure with a bisexual protagonist), and what steampunk is all about.
After the interviews, I read an excerpt of A Spell of Passion Or Fear by T.C. Mill (a gay steampunk romance in a dystopian Greek city, the Kalliopolis). This book is forthcoming, and we’ll update you as soon as we have more information on how you can order it.
Lots of good conversation and exploration of steampunk as a genre, as an aesthetic, and as a mirror of our current society in this podcast. And! We’d love to hear your take, too! If you have any thoughts, please share them in the comments. As an added bonus, each commenter will be automatically entered into a drawing to win one of two signed copies of Natania’s Pilgrim of the Sky.
To enter, all you have to do is comment on this post anytime through the 16th of January. We’ll be drawing the two winning names on the 17th. You don’t have to be a podcast listener to win, and any comment will get you a chance (one per person, regardless of how many comments you leave). You don’t have to have any deep thoughts about steampunk in order to win, though we’d be happy to see them if you do have some!
You can subscribe to the podcast RSS feed here or use this link to subscribe with iTunes. You can also hit play on the embedded player in this post and listen to the podcast on the web, or visit the individual episode page to download this episode as an MP3 without subscribing.
Notes:
Stuff I wanted to call to everyone’s attention
*The conversation about H.P. Lovecraft, which Nnedi Okorafor started, and which I posted about earlier in the month. I’d love to see more responses to this topic. If you have one, please share it!
*Catherine Lundoff’s collection of recommended QUILTBAG books first published in 2011–well worth a look, and also a great place to share your favorites.
Steampunk Stuff
*ConTemporal, the steampunk convention set on an airship which travels through space and time, which will be docking for the weekend of June 21st-24th 2012 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
*Studio Foglio, ConTemporal’s comics guests of honor.
*Cherie Priest, ConTemporal’s literary guest of honor (whose novel, Boneshaker, is one of Natania’s steampunk recommended reads).
*Sara Harvey and JoSelle Vanderhooft, literary guests at ConTemporal who have written and edited awesome steampunk stories with QUILTBAG content.
*Clay Griffin and Susan Griffith and John Claude Bemis, literary guests at ConTemporal who have written steampunk trilogies about vampires and American tall tales.
*Steampunk, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, another recommendation from Natania
*“Just Glue Some Gears On It (And Call It Steampunk)” is a Barbershop Quartet and rap video criticizing the trendiness of steampunk from a steampunk purist’s perspective.
*Natania’s Pilgrim of the Sky launch party is happening on the 28th of January in Durham, North Carolina.
Assorted Other Stuff
*Jennie Breeden, a comics guest at ConTemporal, who also takes a leafblower to kilt-wearers at Dragon*Con.
*Conni recommends Germline by T.C. McCarthy, even though it has nothing to do with steampunk or QUILTBAG themes. She just really liked it.
*Conni also recommends Broken and Fly Into Fire by Susan Jane Bigelow, noting that the main character of Fly Into Fire is a transwoman, but her being trans is not the main point of the story.
*The Society for Creative Anachronism (or SCA) is made up of people who are interested in historical accuracy in their medieval costumes and reenactments.
*John Henry is the American folk hero who raced a steam powered hammer and won.
*Natania mentioned The Biltmore Estate as a Victorian era anomaly for having state of the art indoor plumbing with pull chain toilets back when it was first built.
Outer Alliance Podcast #14: Steampunk December (part 1) December 10, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : interviews, links, news, Outer Alliance Podcast , 1 comment so farThis month on the Outer Alliance Podcast, we’re celebrating Steampunk! The subject is big enough that we’re splitting it into two episodes. This first one is all about SteamPowered II: More Lesbian Steampunk Stories. Zen Cho, Shveta Thakrar, and Patty Templeton join me to discuss their stories and read short excerpts.
Although this episode has an explicit tag, most of it is fine for everyone to consume. If you are concerned about exposing your delicate ears to a bit of salty language, however, you should avoid listening to the very last excerpt (from Patty Templeton’s story).
You can subscribe to the podcast RSS feed here or use this link to subscribe with iTunes. You can also hit play on the embedded player in this post and listen to the podcast on the web, or visit the individual episode page to download this episode as an MP3 without subscribing.
Notes:
Awards!
*The Gaylactic Spectrum Awards writeup is here. The OA sends hearty congratulations to all!
*Elisa Rolle’s Rainbow Awards list is here. So many OA members to congratulate! Excellent job all around! Particular congratulations to JoSelle Vanderhooft and Catherine Lundoff, Cecilia Tan, Lauren Burka, Lee Thomas, Lee Benoit, and Kyell Gold!
Zen Cho’s Links
*Zen’s blog, which has links to all her stories.
*Eileen Chang‘s stories were part of the inspiration for Zen’s story in SteamPowered II.
*Malaysian and Singaporean writers: Jaymee Goh, Stephanie Lai, Fadzlishah Johanabas, Ika Koeck, Alfian Sa’at, Eeleen Lee, Joyce Chng.
*Ken Liu and Aliette de Bodard are not Malaysian or Singaporean, but Zen recommends their work, too.
Shveta Thakrar’s Links
*Shveta’s blog.
*“Lavanya and Deepika” is Shveta’s retelling of “The Beautiful Twin and the Ugly Twin” in Demeter’s Spicebox.
*Shveta recommends the Hindu myth comic books from Amar Chitra Katha.
Patty Templeton’s Links
*Patty Templeton’s blog.
*The Foxfire Books seek to preserve and celebrate the culture of Southern Appalachia.
*Naked Girls Reading is a group of women who like to read in the nude (yes, this page does contain pictures of naked women). They also give out a Literary Honors Award, which Patty won in 2010.
More About SteamPowered II
*Jaymee Goh interviewed every contributor for this volume on her blog. See the collected interviews here.
*The Skiffy and Fanty Show (a podcast co-hosted by OA member, Shaun Duke) had an LGBTQ themed episode with SteamPowered editor, JoSelle Vanderhooft this month.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #93: KV Taylor November 18, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : interviews , 1 comment so farWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #93. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction.Our guest today is KV Taylor, author of Scripped.
KV Taylor is an avid reader and writer of urban fantasy and dark speculative fiction, even though the only degree she holds is in the history of art. (Or, possibly, because the only degree she holds is in the history of art.) Originally from the Appalachian foothills of West Virginia, she currently lives in the D.C. Metro Area with her husband and mutant cat. In her spare time she enjoys comic books, Himalayan Buddhist art, loud music, her Epiphone, and Black Bush. She lives at kvtaylor.com, edits for Morrigan Books, and collects The Red Penny Papers in her dining room.
*** (more…)
Outer Alliance Podcast #13 November 8, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : interviews, links, news, Outer Alliance Podcast, queer-friendly publishers , 1 comment so farIt’s the first anniversary of the Outer Alliance Podcast! Because I love ghost stories, I decided to run with that as our Birthday Podcast Theme, and to make the month extra exciting, we’re giving away books!
Our guest this month is Sarah Monette, author of The Bone Key, which is just out in its shiny second edition with an introduction by Lynne M. Thomas (astute listeners may remember her as the guest on last month’s OA podcast). After the interview, Sarah also reads an excerpt from one of the stories in The Bone Key.
Annnnnnd…
She’s graciously donated a signed copy for our birthday giveaway, and we have two other books as well! Signed copies of Vintage by Steve Berman, and Hollowstone by Dennis Upkins are also up for grabs. Three lucky listeners will win one of these haunting tomes. The contest is open until the end of November. I’ll draw winners in December. To enter, send me an e-mail (julia@juliarios.com) with “Podcast Contest” in the subject line. I will ship anywhere in the world, and everyone who is not actually me is eligible. This means you!
You can subscribe to the podcast RSS feed here or use this link to subscribe with iTunes. You can also hit play on the embedded player in this post and listen to the podcast on the web, or visit the individual episode page to download this episode as an MP3 without subscribing
Notes:
News
*Malinda Lo has redesigned her website, and is also giving away books to celebrate!
*The World Fantasy Awards happened last month, and Alisa Krasnostein won in the Special Award Non-Professional category for Twelfth Planet Press. Hurray! If you would like to read some awesome Australian specfic (often with queer content), Twelfth Planet Press is a great place to look!
*The Tiptree Recommended Reading List is full of awesome stories, many of which are by OA members! There is still time to recommend books and stories to the Tiptree jury, so if you’ve read something this year which explores or expands our notions of gender, do go tell them about it!
*Maria Lima‘s Bood Sacrifice has been nominated in the Best Urban Fantasy Protagonist category for the RT Awards! Hurray, and best of luck to you, Maria!
*It’s [Inter]National Novel Writing Month! Bon Courage to all the wrimos in the OA crowd!
*Dennis Upkins will be signing books at The Great Escape in Madison, TN on the 19th of this month
*Sarah Monette will be signing books on that very same day (with Elizabeth Bear) at Pandemonium Books in Cambridge, MA.
Sarah’s Work
*The Bone Key and Somewhere Beneath Those Waves are her two short story collections, available from Prime Books.
*“After the Dragon” and “The Devil in Gaylord’s Creek” are the two stories we talked about that appeared in Fantasy Magazine.
*“Letter From a Teddy Bear on Veteran’s Day” is one of the first stories Sarah successfully wrote (the other is the opening story in The Bone Key, “Bringing Helena Back”).
*Here is Sarah Monette’s Author Page on Amazon, where you can find all of her novels.
Other Works We Mentioned
*The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
*“Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” and “The Wailing Well” by M.R. James
*“The Statement of Randolph Carter” by H.P. Lovecraft (the inspiration for “Bringing Helena Back”)
*“The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” by H.P. Lovecraft (Sarah’s favorite Lovecraft story)
*The Dead Zone by Stephen King (in Sarah’s estimation, one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century)
*P.G. Wodehouse (whose work, like Sarah’s Booth stories, features eccentric characters with strong personalities)
*Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner (which Sarah says is a huge influence on her fantasy novels)
That’s it for this episode. If you have feedback for me, please leave a comment here, talk to us on the Google Group, or e-mail me at julia@juliarios.com. And do enter to win one of the three books in our Birthday Ghost Story Giveaway!
Outer Alliance Podcast #12 October 17, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : interviews, Outer Alliance Podcast , 5commentsIt’s the twelfth episode of the Outer Alliance Podcast! Next month will mark one whole year of OA Podcast goodness! We’ll have to make a cake or something.
Our guest this month is Lynne M. Thomas, Hugo winning editor of Chicks Dig Time Lords. She’s also the moderator of the SF Squeecast, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections (including the papers of over 50 SF writers!) at Northern Illinois University, and she’ll be taking over as editor of Apex Magazine next month.
We had a crunchy, hour long chat, and Lynne was very patient with me as my migraine-fogged brain slipped into incoherence at a few points. I’ve edited the conversation for maximum clarity, but trust me: Lynne deserves a Gracious Guest Award to put on her mantel next to the rocket ship. She made sure our conversation was full of fascinating stuff from reflections on fashion, feminism, and fandom to what kinds of stories she wants for Apex.
You can subscribe to the podcast RSS feed here or use this link to subscribe with iTunes. You can also hit play on the embedded player in this post and listen to the podcast on the web, or visit the individual episode page to download this episode as an MP3 without subscribing
Notes:
Lynne’s Stuff
*You can watch a video of The 2011 Hugo Awards, and see Lynne accept her rocket ship with her co-editor, Tara O’Shea. Their speech (and fabulous dresses!) are at the 2:30:30 mark in the video.
*Here are pictures of Lynne’s Hugo and Hugo Shoes on her LiveJournal.
*The Hugo winning essay collection by female fans of Doctor Who is Chicks Dig Time Lords (available through Mad Norwegian Press. Other essay collections include Whedonistas and the forthcoming Chicks Dig Comics.
*Lynne’s work blog is Confessions of a Curator, where you can learn more about her Librarian Super Powers.
*Lynne Moderates The SF Squeecast, wherein the contributors each squee about SF things they’ve enjoyed. Episode 4 came out in between the time we recorded this interview and the time this podcast went live, and I highly recommend it–the explanation of why Seanan McGuire is not allowed to read Little Big made me laugh out loud in public.
*Lynne will be editing Apex Magazine starting in November. She’s actively seeking stories which present a diverse picture of the world, including QUILTBAG stories, stories by and about people of color, and stories which subvert traditional tropes.
Other Stuff We Mentioned
*”If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution.” — Lynne mentioned this, but couldn’t remember who said it. The quote is usually attributed to Emma Goldman, but in all likelihood, she never said those particular words. In 1991, Alix Kates Shulman explained the story behind that very popular quote.
*Lynne and I both listen to Galactic Suburbia, which is one of the many Australian SF podcasts I’m addicted to. I also ended the intro to this episode with a reference to another Australian podcast: Notes From Coode Street. “I think we’re rambling,” is a common Coode Street refrain. There’s even a T-shirt for it.
*Lynne mentioned liking The Seventh Doctor (played by Sylvester McCoy). River Song was the inspiration for Lynne’s Hugo dress.
*Conventions Lynne will be attending include WindyCon, Chicago TARDIS, Capricon, and WisCon (where I will also be, and where there may be an Outer Alliance party and/or a Chicks Dig Comics party).
*We both enjoy Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, which is the intelligent and irreverent blog about romance novels by people who love them. Their books include Everything I Know About Love, I Learned From Romance Novels, and Beyond Heaving Bosoms (which is the one I have read, and recommended to Lynne).
*Stories Lynne loves and thinks have the feel of things she hopes to see for Apex Magazine include Memorare by Gene Wolfe, “Ponies” by Kij Johnson, “Ghosts of New York” by Jennifer Pelland, “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window” by Rachel Swirsky, The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia, Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente, and Sarah Monette’s Kyle Murchison Booth stories as collected in The Bone Key.
*I devolved into squee mode when Lynne mentioned Erasure. Lynne and I share a favorite Erasure album: I Say I Say I Say. I saw them live for the first time ever just a couple of days before I interviewed Lynne, and then I made a fan video thank you note for Andy Bell and Vince Clarke. File under: things I was not expecting to come up on the OA Podcast… Ha.
*The other band you can always find on Lynne’s iPod is Belle and Sebastian, and her never fail comfort and cheer song is “Dancing Queen” by ABBA.
Recommendations From OA Members!
*Tansy Rayner Roberts (@tansyrr) recommends Nightsiders by Sue Isle. She says the story “Nation of the Night” has a compelling teen hero questing for trans surgery as the world falls apart.”
*Cheryl Morgan (@CherylMorgan) recommends Shadoweyes by Ross Campbell. This moody vigilante comic features an intersex character.
*Charles Tan (@charlesatan) recommends Haikasoru’s The Cage of Zeus by Sayuri Ueda. He says it’s an interesting Japanese novel with a race of bi-genders, but a different approach from the one Ursula Le Guin took.
*Kevin McVeigh (@kevmcveigh) recommends “13 Days of Glory” by Scott A. Cupp. He says it, “… brilliantly shows how the cause of equality is the same whatever equality you’re fighting for.”
Outer Alliance Spotlight #91: James Ipse / Kyle Aisteach October 14, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : interviews , 2commentsWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #91. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. Today our guest is Kyle Aisteach, who also writes as James Ipse.
Kyle Aisteach lives in Fresno with his husband, and writes hard science fiction. His alter ego, James Ipse writes urban fantasy mystery stories, the first of which just came out. Kyle joined me to discuss James Ipse’s The Case of the Basher.
***
The Case of the Basher takes place in your hometown of Fresno, California. The book opens with a description of how awful that city is for gay people, though. Is it really that bad? And if so, what makes people like you (and Colm Ramirez) stick around?
I think it’s more accurate to say that Colm describes his world exactly as he sees it. I, personally, don’t think it’s as bad as he describes. I mean, Fresno is one of the places where the bigots outnumber the good people by a significant margin, but there are lots and lots of good people here, and the number is growing. I wouldn’t describe our mayor as “actively hostile” [as Colm does]. I think she’s just ignorant. Which, in an elected official amounts to the same thing, but it’s a matter of perspective. Yes, most gay and lesbian and trans folks who live here have had to put up with the hostility, but at the same time, I was the victim of a hate crime in Beverly Hills, so I don’t see that zip code is as much of a factor as Colm does.
But as for why we’re still here, a lot of that is simple economics. You’ve heard of the “gay tax”? The sad truth is that most of the places where it’s safe to live openly are the most expensive places in the country. We’re here because my husband’s job is here, and we can afford to live on his salary here. We can’t do that in San Francisco, or Manhattan, or West Hollywood. So, instead, I’d rather stick my roots in the ground somewhere that’s more good than bad and refuse to back down, and hopefully if enough people do that kids won’t need to flee their hometowns to major cities just to feel safe any more.
Maybe I’m particularly biased because I was raised in California by a WASP mother and a Mexican Catholic father, but Colm Ramirez seemed like a very believable Californian to me. How did you get the idea for his character?
I wish I could say that he’s based on a real person or that he came to me in a blinding flash of inspiration, but the reality is much more mechanical. I’m very fond of mysteries, and I’m particularly fond of mysteries where the first-person heroine is a three-dimensional, amusing, and fallible individual. Sue Grafton and Sarah Graves’ work, for example. I’d also been reading a fair amount of urban fantasy, and I’d been impressed by all the kick-ass female characters. I started wondering what an urban fantasy would look like with a gay man in that role instead of a young woman. And at the same time I was experimenting with writing a mystery where the snarky detective is a gay man. Neither really gelled for me, until I combined the two. Then the character and the stories started to feel real. The fact that he’s young is simply a story necessity, and so I spent some time sussing out how attitudes and worldviews are different in the younger generation, and he just, little by little, came to life.
The book hints at a very interesting back story. Will we learn more of that in future Colm Ramirez stories? What do you have in store for him?
I don’t think I’m likely to go back and write up those adventures as their own stories. But Colm has a history with a lot of folks, and his circle of friends is a lot larger than you saw in Basher. So it’s safe to say that there’s going to be a little more backstory in each of the stories.
As for what’s in store for him, I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say there’s a reason why I decided that every pantheon in existence is equally real.
This is your first book as James Ipse, but you’ve written other things as Kyle Aisteach. Why did you choose to switch names for this one?
I’d actually originally intended to publish Basher as Kyle Aisteach, but then something interesting happened. I sold a bunch of hard science fiction, and folks at cons and online kept commenting that they were looking forward to my next story because they love how I work in real science and engineering. Well, Basher couldn’t be more different.
I tend to think of an author’s byline as being like a brand name. I like Pepsi. I like root beer. But if I pick up something labeled “Pepsi” and it turns out to be a root beer, I’m probably going to be disappointed, because it’s not what I was expecting. I don’t want folks who are looking for hard science fiction to have a bad reaction to this story just because it’s not what they thought it was going to be. And, similarly, I don’t want folks who like this story and seek out my other work to be disappointed because it’s radically different in tone and style. If folks like both genres, that’s great, I’m happy to have them read both. Just like I’m happy to grab either a “Mug” root beer or a “Pepsi” cola even though I know it’s all PepsiCo.
What sort of science work do you do in your non-writing life, and how do you use it in your SF work? Can you tell us a little about your SF stories?
I don’t actually do science myself. I’m actively dangerous to have in the lab. Seriously. If there’s a way to make an experiment spew toxic gasses, I’ll find it every time. And if there isn’t, I’ll find a way to break it. $100,000 microscopes fail catastrophically when I walk by. If there’s 300 vials, 299 of which contain water, I’ll spill the one that contains concentrated acid. I don’t try to be a jinx on all science. I just am. Murphy runs very strong in my family.
But I love science. I read other people’s results voraciously. I debate the implications of various studies with people who actually do the research, and hold my own. Most people assume I’ve got a science degree. But I don’t. Not really.
It’s actually kind of a long story.
I was a Geology minor in college, but I didn’t finish it. I was a double major, carrying more than a full load, and the student loans were piling up. I hit a point in my senior year where I just couldn’t keep up, and something had to go. If I’d stayed an extra semester I could’ve still finished, but I decided to graduate on time instead, and so I dropped the minor. I love Geology. I was a lot less dangerous in the field than I am in the lab — which means I only injured myself — and I was especially interested in geomorphology and planetary weathering. Whenever I could get away with it, I did my research papers on extraterrestrial analogs to whatever we were studying, so I know more about SNC meteorites than anyone ought to, and I’m sure I got myself on a government watch list by trying to find as much Soviet data from the Venera missions as I could. I don’t read Russian. I was so glad when the Magellan data started being published. I still wish the U.S. would put a few landers down on that planet. Those basalt fields are incredible, and we’ve never seen the continents up close.
So when I have to give a short answer when people ask me what my field is, I tend to say “Planetary Science.” I spend a lot of time moving in the Astronomy community these days. I used to work in the Education and Public Outreach team for one of NASA’s space telescopes, trying to make the astronomy understandable to non-scientists. I still freelance back to NASA occasionally, mostly as a science writer at this point but occasionally as a video producer, too. So I still follow Astronomy results pretty closely, and if you follow my twitter feed I occasionally mouth off when the press is screwing up a result. And I’m particularly interested in the moons and the terrestrial planets.
And that’s what led me to write “Pressure and the Argument Tree.” It’s part of a cycle of science fiction stories I’m working on about the colonization of Venus. The engineering is real. That came out of conversations I had with the folks at JPL whose job it is to come up with strategies for doing exactly that sort of thing. What I love to do is to look at real science and engineering, and then ask myself what could go wrong if and when we actually do this. So as I was writing something else, I had a character who fell from 55km above the surface. So, being the sort of writer I am, I looked up the density of the atmosphere to see what a body’s terminal velocity would be. And then I realized that the atmosphere was dense enough that a person in a space suit might go neutrally buoyant. And I thought, here’s a story! What if someone fell and survived? So I pinged the physics teachers I know — my mom’s one of them, by the way — and we worked out how far down a space suit would start to float. And the answer was “just above the surface,” which is far to deep for a human to survive, even in a space suit. Which created that gruesome image of dead bodies drifting away from the point where they fell, and what poor person is going to have to go down there to fetch them?
I think I’m also especially interested in space travel because my dad spent 20 years in the U.S. Navy. I’m one of the few civilians who has spent time in a working, nuclear submarine. I think that experience is the best analog we’ve got for what living on another planet would be like. Think about it. When you’re in a submarine, you’re completely surrounded by an atmosphere you can’t breathe. You’ve got to keep it out. You’ve got to keep your atmosphere in. You’ve got to keep the pressure at a safe level, and if you screw up, you die. And you’ve got to do all that in as compact a space as possible, while still giving yourself room to move and work. Seriously, if you’re going to write space travel or colonization stories, go find a retired submarine you can tour. That’ll knock you out of the Hollywood sensibilities real quick.
And I think any science is fair game. I’ve got a story I’m shopping right now which is entirely based on sociology. I’m very proud of that one, but it’ s a really uncomfortable look at the direction society is moving, so I’m not surprised it’s having a hard time finding a home. It really gets the most complimentary rejection letters, though. But that’s the joy of e-publishing. I can release what I believe in. And I’m sure a short story collection is coming. It’s just a matter of when the right time is going to be.
What else do you have in the works, and where can we find it?
Well, there’s at least two more Colm Ramirez stories written, and I’ve got ideas for, oh, at least a hundred more. I’m not putting them out right away because I’m hoping I can convince a couple of the traditional publishers to buy first rights to them so I can introduce the character to their readers. Unfortunately, that takes time. The top market for supernatural mysteries is also one of the slowest to respond to submissions, so I’ve just got to be patient, and I hope readers will be, too.
On the hard science fiction front, I’ve got a new story in Pressure Suite – Digital Science Fiction Anthology 3 — “Pressure and the Argument Tree” by Kyle Aisteach — which was just released last month. I’m sharing a table of contents with a couple of authors I really like, so that’s actually really exciting for me. You can find it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.
I also just released another e-book, just slightly longer than Basher, called The Survivors’ Menagerie (also by Kyle Aisteach). It’s a time-travel story, which runs really counter to all my “get the science right” instincts, but I did a lot of research and I think that even though the science is fanciful it’s still rooted in reality, and I put a lot of emphasis on getting the history right — to the point where the story bears almost no resemblance to the story I set out to write, because the research kept shooting holes in my original ideas but at the same time suggesting even better possibilities. I totally don’t find research limiting at all. It’s where my best ideas tend to come from. You can find it on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and hopefully soon in a couple of independent online bookstores.
And, of course, The Case of the Basher is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
***
Thanks, Kyle! That’s it for today, but coming up very soon we’ll have OA Podcast #12 with Lynne Thomas. In the meantime, check out The Case of the Basher!
Outer Alliance Spotlight #90: OA Podcast #11 September 7, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : interviews, Outer Alliance Podcast, reviews , 8commentsWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #90. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. Today we’ve got the eleventh Outer Alliance Podcast episode for you!
This month our guests are Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond of The Writer and the Critic.
This episode has an explicit tag! You are warned! Unlike the last time we used an explicit tag, when Amal El-Mohtar said one swear word, and Mike Allen read one bit of story which referenced male anatomy, this explicit tag means serious business. We all use salty language and touch on mature content (by which I mean the sorts of things that are sure to titillate all of our inner twelve-year-olds). So. Keep that in mind before turning this on at work, or around your young kids or sensitive friends.
I’ve cut an hour’s worth of stuff from our original conversation, but this podcast episode still runs just shy of two hours. Because it’s a long one, and in case you don’t want to be spoiled for any of the stories we discuss, here are some time cues for you:
We have general interview chat until the 43 minute mark. At around 43 minutes in we begin to discuss Peter M. Ball’s Horn and Bleed (as recommended by Ian). At about 1:09, we begin to discuss Hal Duncan’s “The Behold of the Eye” (as recommended by me), and at about 1:26, we begin to discuss Kim Westwood’s “Nighship” (as recommended by Kirstyn).
You can subscribe to the podcast RSS feed here or use this link to subscribe with iTunes. You can also hit play on the embedded player in this post and listen to the podcast on the web, or visit the individual episode page to download this episode as an MP3 without subscribing.
Notes:
Kirstyn and Ian’s Projects Mentioned in this Episode
*Madigan Mine is Kirstyn’s novel (which has won all the Aurealis and Chronos awards, and which is available on Kindle in the US). We didn’t get the chance to discuss the book, but if you’d like to hear Kirstyn speak more about it, you can listen to her interview on Galactichat.
*Last Short Story is the short story review project Ian’s taking part in.
*Ian wrote several stories for Big Finish Audio’s Doctor Who Short Trips series.
*Ian’s other podcast is Shooting the Poo.
*Kirstyn and Ian co-edited the first issue of Midnight Echo, the magazine of the Australian Horror Writers Association.
*Bloodsongs was another magazine with which they both had some affiliation back in the day.
Writers/Projects/Pieces We Mentioned
*Peter M. Ball (Author of Horn and Bleed–e-books at Smashwords).
*Hal Duncan (author of “The Behold of the Eye”).
*Kim Westwood (author of “Nightship”).
*Felicity Dowker (guest on Writer and Critic Episode #4, Australian Horror Writer, and undeserving victim of Ian’s rumor-spreading impulse).
*Trent Jamieson (nice guy of Australian specfic).
*John Richards (part of the Boxcutters podcast team, and TV writer who created Outland, the series about a group of queer fans–he’ll be a guest on The Writer and the Critic in November).
*Tansy Rayner Roberts (One third of the Galactic Suburbia team, and writer of a trilogy, the first two books of which Kirstyn is hoarding unread until such time as the third one comes out).
*Alisa Krasnostein (One third of the Galactic Suburbia team, and the World Fantasy Award nominated person behind Twelfth Planet Press).
*Catherynne M. Valente (Writer, past Writer and Critic guest, and person who is not responsible for Ian’s guilt).
*Caitlín R. Kiernan (Author of The Red Tree, a book with queer content, which Ian and Kirstyn both liked).
*Kathe Koja (author of Under the Poppy, another queer content heavy story, which Ian and Kirstyn both liked).
*Rose Fox’s Genreville Post calling for honest reviews.
*Jennifer Pelland (author of some Nebula nominated stories, and person whose reading provided me with a safe place to hide during my first traumatic con experience).
*Nicole Kornher-Stace (whose stories, like Kim Westwood’s, are beautiful and hard to categorize).
*Wilde Stories ( 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011–the best gay stories collected each year by Steve Berman).
*Icarus (the magazine of gay speculative fiction)
*Poppy Z. Brite (author of many horror books with gay content, which Kirstyn’s ex used to imagine didn’t exist).
*Charles Tan and Cheryl Morgan (who Ian rightly called out as awesome specfic news resources).
*Mary Robinette Kowal (who put out her Hugo winning short story as an e-book with the first draft and commentary on the story’s evolution).
*Fran Drescher on Wikipedia.
*Coode Street Podcast (whose beginning we took for our ending).
If you have feedback, please leave a comment, tell us on the google group, or e-mail me directly at julia@juliarios.com. I’d love to hear from you!
Outer Alliance Spotlight #86: OA Podcast #10 July 31, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : interviews, Outer Alliance Podcast , 4commentsWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #86. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. This week we’ve got the tenth Outer Alliance Podcast episode for you!
Ellen Klages joined me at a coffee shop to talk about her work, queer history, and other awesomeness.
You can subscribe to the podcast RSS feed here or use this link to subscribe with iTunes. You can also hit play on the embedded player in this post and listen to the podcast on the web, or visit the individual episode page to download this episode as an MP3 without subscribing.
Notes:
Congratulations to N. K. Jemisin, Elizabeth Bear, and all the other World Fantasy Award nominees!
Ellen Klages’s Work (and things she’s been involved with):
*The Green Glass Sea and White Sands, Red Menace are novels about kids whose parents worked on the Manhattan Project.
*Portable Childhoods is the short story collection, which contains her two overtly queer stories, “Triangle” and “Time Gypsy”.
*The GLBT Historical Society
*Exploratorium: the museum of science, art and human perception
Some of the Historical Details We Discussed:
*Here’s a photo of the 1956 raid at Hazel’s in San Mateo County (as described in the lesbian time travel revenge story, “Time Gypsy”).
*The Stonewall riots (which Ellen mentioned in passing) were a major turning point in US LGBTQ civil rights history.
*San Francisco Pride, and the Dyke March are awesome reminders of how far we’ve come in the past 50 years.
*pink-triangle.org has some information about the experience of gay people in Nazi Germany. This page does not go into much gruesome detail, but keep in mind that even so, it’s awful stuff.
*Here’s a state by state breakdown of anti-miscegenation laws in the United States.
*Here’s a brief explanation of Loving Vs. Virginia, the Supreme Court Case that marked the end of anti-miscegentation laws in the US in 1967 (not 1970 as Ellen guessed, nor 1968 as I guessed).
Some things that have given me hope lately:
*The first legal same sex marriage in New York–two grandmothers at Niagara Falls, which was all lit up with rainbow colored lights!
*More pictures of couples getting married in New York!
*Lesbian married couple saves 40 people in Norway. I’m in serious awe of these women for doing what they did, and also really happy that we live in a time when they can be married, and it’s okay to report that as one of the facts. No one’s going to arrest them for being married, or loving each other, and it’s not the most important thing about this story at all.
Stuff we’ll be discussing in the next podcast in late August:
*Hal Duncan‘s Spectrum winning story, “The Behold of the Eye”. Read it for free online, buy it in Wilde Stories 2009, or listen to it for free at Podcastle.
*Kim Westwood‘s story, “Nightship”. Buy it in Dreaming Again, or listen to it free at Terra Incognita.
*Peter M. Ball‘s novellas, Horn and Bleed. Buy them in print or e-book format from Twelfth Planet Press, or get the instant dowload e-book versions from Smashwords. Trigger warning! Horn contains graphic sexual violence.
That’s it for this time. If you have feedback, please leave a comment here, tell us on the google group, or e-mail me personally at julia@juliarios.com.