Coming Out #2: Jennifer Pelland on Machine January 31, 2012
Posted by juliarios in : Coming Out, publications , 1 comment so farWelcome to Coming Out #2! Coming Out is a series of guest posts in which creators talk about specific newly available works. We based this loosely on John Scalzi’s The Big Idea series, except, since we’re The Outer Alliance, you can expect all the projects to involve QUILTBAG people and/or content. Our guest poster this time is Jennifer Pelland, author of Machine.
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Machine
-or-
why everyone should fall in with kinky genderqueer pagans in their early 20s
by Jennifer Pelland
Binaries suck.
Although I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that.
I started getting my education in the fallacy of binaries when several biracial friends in the early- and mid-80s taught me that A + B did not equal AB, but rather that 1 + 1 equaled 1. (In other words, a human being cannot be two diametrically-opposed halves sutured down the middle — a human being
can only be a whole, indivisible person.) That education continued in college with my own burgeoning bisexuality, although I’ll admit that before I came to that realization about myself, I was one of those annoying people who thought that bisexuals should just pick a side and not be so damned indecisive.
Then, just as I was graduating from college, I fell in with the pagans, and in Boston at that time, the intersection of the pagan and bisexual circles was a queer pagan group called Q-Moon. In Q-Moon, I met several “gender-fuck” transsexuals, as they called the movement at the time, several of whom were into sacred sexuality and BDSM. And they blew the lid off of my brain in the best possible way.
Picture a 21-year-old recent women’s college graduate having lunch with one of these new friends, who asks her, “Have you ever questioned your gender identity?” No, I hadn’t. The new friend smiles and asks, “Why?”
Whoa.
Later on during that same lunch, picture the 21-year-old’s face as her new friend says, “I really want to have a cunt, but I have nothing against my cock. And that doesn’t make me any less a woman.”
Again, whoa.
Picture a ritual in someone’s basement for that same new friend, a dedication to a goddess, involving a nude postulant,chakra anointing, and the sacred consumption of estrogen pills. Picture one member of the circle being kept to the side throughout the proceedings because she’s currently undergoing a BDSM initiation of her own, involving bondage and a horse-tailed butt plug.
Picture the 21-year-old’s brain exploding like the Death Star.
Fast-forward fifteen years. There I am, coming up with the cast of characters for a novel about love, loss, and illegal body-hacking. Of course there’s going to be a character who wants both a cunt and a cock. Of course there are going to be characters with fluid sexuality. Of course there’s going to be a character who erases gender altogether. Of course there’s extreme BDSM. Of course my protagonist, a biracial lesbian, is going to get the lid blown off of her brain by all of this. And of course I’m going to feel like I didn’t go far enough.
So I would like to take a moment to thank the wonderful people of Q-Moon for giving this cisgendered, vanilla, bisexual feminist the education of a lifetime. I honestly think I’m a better person for having been forced to explain why I’ve never questioned my gender identity. Why should people outside the so-called “normal” paradigm be the only ones who routinely have to do that? And I honestly think I’m a better person for being exposed to such a bold group of people who went out of their way to make others uncomfortable with their gender nonconformity. I may not have emulated them, but I learned a lot from them. Most importantly, from them I learned that terms like “gender” and “sexuality” are far broader than their dictionary definitions would lead one to believe, and that we do the human species a disservice by pretending that those definitions are accurate and complete.
To conclude, I’d like to encourage all young people out there who aren’t already kinky genderqueer pagans to find a similar group to fall in with during your most impressionable years. You can’t reassemble a blown mind, and that’s a damned good thing.
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Jennifer Pelland lives outside Boston with an Andy, three cats, an impractical amount of books, and an ever-growing collection of belly dance gear and radio theater scripts. She’s garnered two Nebula nominations, and many of her short stories were collected in Unwelcome Bodies, put out by Apex in 2008.
Machine is available in paperback and as an e-book from Apex Book Company.
Stories! Free for your enjoyment! November 25, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : links, publications, queer-friendly publishers , 5commentsIn the United States, today is commercially known as Black Friday. It’s a day when people are urged to buy All The Things. Ads on television, in newspapers, and on billboards pester us for weeks in anticipation of this day. Stores plan giant sales. Some of them open at midnight, others at four or five in the morning. All the messages tell us that we should be embracing our national identity as consumers, and that Christmas (one of the biggest shopping holidays of the year for the culturally Christian among us) is officially coming.
Me? I’m a bit of a rebel. I hate shopping usually, and I loathe giant crowds. I tend to fall by default into the segment of the population which calls this day Buy Nothing Day. Some of my compatriots feel passionately political about their choice. I mostly just feel relieved not to be in the middle of that fevered mess of acquisition. This year, though, I thought maybe it would be fun to do a little more. Instead of just quietly hiding from the world, or (horror of horrors) going out and joining the hordes of consumers, what if I offered an alternative? Whether or not you’re in the US, if you’d rather spend a bit of time reading free fiction than shopping today (or even in addition to shopping), this post is for you.
One of the neat things about the OA is that so many of the members are writers as well as readers. This means that, as a group, we produce a lot of awesome fiction. Much of that is for sale, but thanks to this wonderful internet, there’s a lot of great free stuff out there, too. Below are a few stories by OA members which have appeared online this month. Enjoy!
“Conjuring Shadows” by Craig Laurance Gidney is a story about a transgender conjure woman in 1920s Harlem. Since November is the month in which the Transgender Day of Remembrance falls, I thought we’d lead with this one. It’s a lovely fantasy, which will take only a few minutes to read, but which might linger in your mind for quite a while after you’ve finished it. You may read it at Expanded Horizons (and if you’re unfamiliar with that magazine, I highly recommend it in general. It’s full of gems, and makes a point of celebrating diversity in specfic).
“Cockatrice Girl Meets Statue Boy” by Willow Fagan is a funny and sweet story about… well, the title says it all. It doesn’t feature overtly QUILTBAG content, but it does playfully examine gender assumptions, and the author identifies as genderqueer. The bio accompanying this story on the Cast of Wonders page explains that, “… they feel more like a pirate princess than like a man or a woman.” Rock on, Pirate Princess Willow! I love that description! You may listen to this story in two parts here and here.
“Eight” by Corinne Duyvis is a more somber exploration of personal sacrifice, war, and alternate timelines. The protagonist is a bisexual woman, though this is neither integral to the plot, nor really mentioned in more than a passing sentence. This is a story which suggests a hundred other stories, and given its subject matter and prose style, it might especially appeal to fans of Elizabeth Bear’s Jenny Casey books. “Eight” is available at Strange Horizons.
“The Day Alan Turing Came Out” by Leonard Richardson explores alternate timelines from a different perspective. This one has a bittersweetness, which comes from knowing that in our current timeline, history unfolded less pleasantly. This story first appeared in the Retro Spec: tales of fantasy and nostalgia, but the author has now put it up on his own website. If you are curious about the background on this one, you can find a brief interview with Leonard as part of the OA Spotlight post about Retro Spec.
That’s all I’ve got for today, but if you have recommendations for great free fiction, I’d love to see them! Please consider leaving them in the comments!
Coming Out #1: Catherine Lundoff on A Day at the Inn, A Night at the Palace October 25, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : Coming Out, publications , 2commentsWelcome to Coming Out #1! Coming Out is a series of guest posts in which creators talk about specific newly available works. We based this loosely on John Scalzi’s The Big Idea series, except, since we’re The Outer Alliance, you can expect all the projects to involve QUILTBAG people and/or content. Our first guest poster is Catherine Lundoff, writing about her new collection, A Day at the Inn, A Night at the Palace.
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I suspect it’s easier to find a single overarching “Big Idea” in a novel than in a collection of short fiction. Part of me wanted to be completely smart-alecky and say, “It’s a bunch of stories by Me” and leave the whole Big Idea notion at that.
But the more I thought about it, the more I recognized that the book does have some overarching common themes. It represents a certain kind of story that I’ve written over the course of the last sixteen years. All the stories in this book have lesbian or queer female protagonists. And all of those characters appear in fictional roles commonly assigned to men: pirate, playwright, private detective, bard, swordswoman. Some of them are very handy with a sword. Some of them are not. Still it is one of the other elements they all have in common: they’re doing the kind of things that I would have loved to read about when I was a teenager and power-reading my way through novels by Dumas, Sabatini, Pyle and Hope. I always loved a good swashbuckler, full of sword fights and deeds of derring-do, where honor trumps almost everything else.
But in those stories, women are love interests to be rescued, or more rarely, villains who are killed like Dumas’ Milady. I always liked Milady. She got a raw deal. She was an entirely memorable character and fiercely, uncompromisingly strong. When I started writing, I wanted to write about characters who shared some of those characteristics: strong women, fighters, though not always with swords. Women I could relate to, but who weren’t me. I tend to write to write about queer women because that’s how many of my characters come to me. The truth is, though, that I want to write about queer women doing things that are about doing things. A writer friend recently pointed out that the majority of my characters take being queer for granted. It’s part of who they are, but it’s not the engine that drives the plot. That would be my worldview working its way through my imagination and looking for inspiration in all sorts of places.
My inspiration for these particular stories was fairly wide-ranging. Some were written because I read about a real woman who fascinated me, like Julie d’Aubigny La Maupin, seventeenth century opera singer and professional duelist or her contemporary, Caribbean pirate Jacquotte Delahaye. Other stories were inspired by editorial guidelines like the one I wrote for the themed anthology that didn’t happen: supernatural mysteries with lesbian protagonists stylistically influenced by Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.
Story inspirations are always a grab-bag, at least for me. I run across a reference and think “what if?” Or a first line comes to me out of the blue. From there, if all goes well, I get a scene, a paragraph or two that kicks things off. After that it’s all about trying to figure out what would happen next to this protagonist in this given situation. I’m not one of those writers who know how the story ends when I start it. I have to follow it on all its twists and turns. Sometimes, the writing flows easily and a story gets written in a few sessions. Sometimes, I go through multiple false starts, working and reworking voice, plot and perspective before the story gels.
For me, putting a collection of those same stories together is all about opportunity. First, I figure out what I have that’s available from the stories I’ve already written: nothing that’s under contract that hasn’t been published yet and which hasn’t reverted back to me, for example. Then I need something to tie the work together so it’s a matter of figuring out what these particular stories have in common. Some will just jump out at me as playing on themes I like to work with, while others are just as clearly a bad fit.
At that point, I also need to figure out what I have that’s unpublished; I always want to give my readers something new. Then once all the selecting and editing and writing of individual stories is done, I get to tackle the magic of story order. Trying to figure out what stories will flow into each other without jarring the reader out of the text is an art in itself.
The truth is, though, that hardly anyone ever reads stories in the order I put them in, but the illusion of control is part of the fun of being a writer in the first place, isn’t it?
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Catherine Lundoff is the award-winning author of Crave: Tales of Lust, Love and Longing (Lethe Press, 2007), Night’s Kiss (Lethe Press, 2009) and A Day at the Inn, A Night at the Palace and Other Stories (Lethe Press, 2011). She is also the editor of Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades: Lesbian Ghost Stories (Lethe Press, 2008) and co-editor, with JoSelle Vanderhooft, of Hellebore and Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic (Drollerie Press/Lethe Press 2011). Her website can be found at www.catherinelundoff.com.
A few Friday tidbits June 24, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : announcements, events, links, news, publications , 1 comment so farFollowing up on the internet hoaxes discussion, here are two links sent in by JoSelle Vanderhooft:
A Gay (Straight) Girl (Man) in Damascus (Edinburgh) by Ali Abbas and Assia Boundaoui is an explanation of the damage the Amina hoax did from two “New York based writers and freelance-journalists that submitted a blood test and birth certificate to affirm that the above thoughts are their own analysis based on a lifetime of Arab and or queer and or American and or woman identification.”
White Privilege and the ‘Gay Girl in Damascus’ is an NPR segment in which Brian Spears (a white man) talks about white male privilege and why it’s not okay to co-opt the voices of marginalized people.
Sara Amis will be moderating a Feminist SF Twitter chat on Sunday at 2pm EST. The theme of this discussion is worldbuilding. If you want to participate, just follow the FeministSF hashtag.
And while we’re talking about #FeministSF, NPR is asking people to share their favorite SF/F books with the goal of ultimately making a top 100 books list. Nicola Griffith reminds everyone to consider including books by women on the list. I’ll add a bid for considering including books by queer people and people of color.
Finally, Ladies of Trade Town is available now at HarpHaven Publishing. I talked to Lee Martindale about this in the big Gaylaxicon podcast episode–it’s an anthology of stories about the oldest profession, with stories by Catherine Lundoff and Cecilia Tan.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #71: Shweta Narayan and J. C. Runolfson April 8, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : announcements, interviews, links, news, publications, queer-friendly publishers, submissions , 5commentsWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #71. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. This week our guests are Shweta Narayan and J. C. Runolfson, co-editors of Stone Telling #4.
Before we get to our main dish, though, there are some news tidbits to share.
*The Jessica Verday situation has developed and drawn further comment from many people since OA Spotlight #70 went up two weeks ago. Charles A. Tan has a good summary at Bibliophile Stalker.
*This week marked the release of Malinda Lo‘s second YA fantasy novel, Huntress. Happy release week, Malinda! Huntress is set in the same world as Ash (a retelling of Cinderella with a lesbian protagonist), but several hundred years earlier. Malinda will be traveling with the Diversity in YA Fiction Tour in May, so you might want to check and see if she’ll be visiting your area.
*And, finally, Lauren McLaughlin and K. T. Holt weigh in on the proposal to cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood. Lauren explains why this is not actually about abortion, while Kay offers a Super Uterus t-shirt to anyone who wishes to make a fashion statement. All the profits from t-shirt sales go to Planned Parenthood.
And, on to our awesome interviewees!
Shweta Narayan is a writer and visual artist. She received the Octavia Butler Memorial Scholarship for the Clarion Writers Workshop in 2007, and is an active proponent of diversity in speculative fiction. Her stories and poems have appeared in Steam Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories, Clockwork Phoenix 3, Jabberwocky 5, and Apex, among other places. Her novelette, “Pisaach”, which appeared in The Beastly Bride, is currently up for the Nebula Award.
J. C. Runolfson is a poet, reviewer, and knitter. Her reviews have appeared in The Fix and Strange Horizons. Several of her poems have been Rhysling nominees, and she has new ones forthcoming in Goblin Fruit and Mythic Delirium.
Stone Telling is a quarterly poetry magazine published (and usually edited by) Rose Lemberg. Stone Telling welcomes queer content any time, but Shweta and Jules wanted to come talk about what kind of poems they’re especially hoping to see for Issue #4. They have a general guideline theme of inter- intersectional, international, interstitial, and the reading period for this issue is open until the 25th of May.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #65: OA Podcast #4 February 14, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : interviews, Outer Alliance Podcast, publications , 2commentsWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #65. 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 fourth Outer Alliance Podcast episode for you!
In this episode, Nora Olsen talks to me about her book, The End: Five Queer Kids Save the World, and Brandon Bell and Frank Ard talk to me about Fantastique Unfettered. After the interviews, Nora reads from her book, and I read an excerpt of Frank’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:
Nora’s book is available through Prizm Books, and you can sign up to win a free copy by filling out this form. The End was originally written during National Novel Writing Month. If after hearing this interview you’re interested in creating your own emergency survival kit, Jim Macdonald has a great guide for you.
Brandon’s current major fiction project is a novella called Elegant Threat, which will be available soon in a double issue of M-Brane SF.
Frank’s stories are listed here, including links to those available online, and information about upcoming releases, like “Chickadee” in the Jazz Age anthology Jaym Gates and Erika Holt are putting together.
Submit to Fantastique Unfettered‘s second issue through the end of February. Guidelines are available here, and you can learn more about the Creative Commons license here.
Resoures for writers: Brandon mentioned Absolute Write, a website where writers share advice and information about the publishing world, and Frank waxed ecstatic about the Clarion West Writers Workshop (and the Leslie and Neile he mentioned are Leslie Howle and Neile Graham). Clarion West is open for submissions until the first of March.
Thanks for listening, and please do feel free to leave feedback here, on the google group, or by e-mailing me at julia@juliarios.com. I’d love to hear from you.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #63: OA Podcast #3 January 21, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : interviews, Outer Alliance Podcast, publications, submissions , add a commentWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #63. 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 third Outer Alliance Podcast episode for you!
In this episode, JoSelle Vanderhooft, Amal El-Mohtar, and Mike Allen join me to talk about Steam Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories. Mike and Amal also read excerpts of their stories after the interview. This podcast episode does contain a bit of profanity as well as some mentions of a certain part of male anatomy (yes, in an excerpt of a story about lesbians–the irony has not escaped us), so if that kind of thing puts you off, be forewarned. I hope you’ll decide to listen, though, as these three have a lot of really interesting things to say about editing, what they like to see in reviews, encouraging diversity, and how to pronounce Amal’s name, among other things.
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 is co-editing Hellebore and Rue with Catherine Lundoff. This anthology about lesbian magic users is forthcoming from Drollerie Press. JoSelle also edited Sleeping Beauty Indeed, an anthology of lesbian fairy tales available through Lethe Press.
Mike Allen is the former president of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, editor of the poetry magazine, Mythic Delirium, and of the Clockwork Phoenix anthologies.
Amal El-Mohtar co-edits Goblin Fruit with Jessica Wick. She’s also a Rhysling winning poet. Amal and Jess officially own Mike since they bestowed a fabulous poetry hat (seen below) upon him. The woman peeking over Mike’s shoulder is his wife, Anita, who added embellishments to the hat.
Photo by Anjeli Stewart
The critically objective review of Steam Powered, which we referred to twice during the interview is by Rush-That-Speaks, and can be found here.
Art inspired by Steam Powered includes work by Tooth-And-Claw, these teasers by Shweta Narayan, and jewelry by JoSelle.
Amal’s story, “To Follow the Waves” is available in full on Podcastle #139, read by Marguerite Croft.
Guidelines for Steam Powered 2 are available here
Thanks for listening, and please do feel free to leave feedback here, on the google group, or by e-mailing me at julia@juliarios.com. I’d love to hear from you.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #60: OA Podcast #2 December 17, 2010
Posted by juliarios in : interviews, links, news, Outer Alliance Podcast, publications , 4commentsWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #60. 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 second Outer Alliance Podcast episode for you!
In this episode, Natania Barron talks about her work and how she started the Outer Alliance, Lynn Flewelling talks about writing sex scenes and teaching a writing workshop on a cruise ship, and we have an excerpt of Georgina Bruce’s story from Aether Age: Helios.
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:
Gender Playful Marketplace is collecting startup funds over here.
Elisa Rolle hosted the 2010 Rainbow Awards, which recognized works by several Outer Alliance members. Congratulations, winners!
Hayden Thorne’s historical fantasy comedy (not a problem novel!) Desmond and Garrick Book One is available now at Prizm books.
Natania Barron’s website has all kinds of info about her fiction and non-fiction. Go there to find out all about stories available now and coming soon.
Lynn Flewelling has links to signups for the cruise workshop and place to buy her work (including the sexy Nightrunner short story collection that flustered prim and proper me in the interview) over on her website.
Aether Age: Helios is out now. You can find out more at Aether-Age.com. Author Georgina Bruce maintains a blog at thebeardedlady.wordpress.com, and you can learn more about narrator T.C. Parmalee at Aural Spice.
Thanks for listening, and please do feel free to leave feedback here, on the google group, or by e-mailing me at julia@juliarios.com. I’d love to hear from you.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #53: Kathe Koja October 22, 2010
Posted by juliarios in : interviews, publications , 4commentsWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #53. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. Our guest this week is Kathe Koja, author of Under the Poppy.
Kathe is a straight ally whose short stories and novels feature a diverse range of characters in a variety of genres including fantasy, horror, historical, and young adult. She began seriously writing after she attended the Clarion workshop, and her first novel, The Cipher won the Bram Stoker and Locus Awards. Following that success, she went on to write several more novels for adults before turning a short story for younger readers into her first YA novel, straydog. Several YA novels followed straydog, including Talk, a story about a closeted teenager, which was named a YALSA Best Book for Young Adults in 2006.
Most recently, Kathe has returned to writing for adults with her new novel, Under the Poppy, which will be released on the 26th through Small Beer Press. This romp through war-torn nineteenth century Europe is a story of love, betrayal, fidelity, and some very naughty puppets. Kathe has also adapted the story into an immersive stage show, which will debut in Detroit in 2011.
Kathe lives in Michigan with her husband, son, and three cats. She keeps her main journal on her website, and also has a Facebook page and a website specifically for news and notes about Under the Poppy. She’ll be appearing in person in Ohio next weekend at the World Fantasy Convention, in Michigan on the 10th and 11th of November at the Common Language Bookstore in Ann Arbor and Five 15 in Royal Oak, and in New York on the 17th of November at KGB Bar.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #52: Coming Out 2010 October 15, 2010
Posted by juliarios in : links, news, publications, queer-friendly publishers, submissions , add a commentWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #52. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. Coming out Day was Monday the 11th (Tuesday the 12th in the UK), so that’s our focus this week.
OA Members Talk About Coming Out:
Nicola Griffith shared an excerpt from her memoir, And Now We Are Going to Have a Party: Liner Notes to a Writer’s Early Life. This is a sad, alarming, amusing, and sweet glimpse of Nicola’s teen years before she became a well-adjusted and happily out adult.
Cheryl Morgan reminded us that being out is not always simple, easy, or safe with a post examining some of the challenges trans people face.
Catherine Lundoff agrees that being out is a privilege, and asks that we consider supporting organizations which help queer youth like District 202.
New Releases:
Rigor Amortis, the anthology of zombie erotica edited by Jaym Gates and Erika Holt is available at amazon, and contains stories by OA members Kay Holt and Kaolin Fire.
The Little Death of Crossed Genres, edited by Chris Fletcher and Jaym Gates is available in both electronic and print formats through the Crossed Genres website.
The latest issue of Weird Tales contains Natania Barron’s three part poem about “made” women in mythology. “The Wakened Image” appears alongside pictures by Brigid Ashwood.
Calls for Submissions by Queer-friendly Publishers:
Rose Lemberg would love to see poems with LGBTQI voices for Stone Telling. The current submission window is open until the 21st of November, and at present, Rose says there hasn’t been nearly enough queer content in the submissions pile.
Port Iris Zine is accepting submissions for issue #4 until the 5th of November. See their guidelines for more details.
Karen Romanko is looking for Halloween themed stories for her next anthology, Jack-o’-Spec.
That’s all for this time. Join us again next week, and please share any news you might have here in the comments, on the Outer Alliance google group, or via Twitter (mention either @omgjulia, or @outeralliance)