Lauren’s fiction debuted in 1992 with the collection, Mate: And More Stories from the Erotic Edge of SF/Fantasy. Since then she’s written several more pieces, both long and short. Most recently Torquere Books released her m/m romance, Wishbone,  and her short story, “Double Edged Bomb” appeared in the collection of erotic superhero stories, Like a Mask Removed. As an editor, she works on single author projects and anthologies such as the transgendered themed Up For Grabs, the BDSM themed Kneel to Me, and the M/M SFF erotica collection, Wired Hard 4. She is currently editing the sequel to Up For Grabs, and writing a cookbook for people with Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome.

Lauren lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near the Circlet Press headquarters. If you’d like to catch up with her in person, she’ll be attending Readercon in July.

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OA: Your first collection of stories, Mate, was first published nearly 20 years ago, and has a cyberpunk feel to it. How has your vision of the future changed since then? How has it remained constant?

LB: For me, science fiction is less about the future than the present. Cyberpunk was 1990 remixed, shinier, with room more room to play and new ways of looking at the world.

Then we met the future of 1990, and it’s not as fun to live in as we imagined.  It’s made of ComCast and Facebook and Windows.

Now all the cool kids have gone steampunk–H.G. Well’s future, where science could solve all of our problems and men still knew how to dress.  I’d like to build worlds that the reader has never seen before, and I hope they’ll stay for a while.  “When” the world is may not matter to the reader as much as how well it is constructed and who lives in it.  In that way my current writing most resembles the middle story in Mate.  That story was told from the point of view of a straight young man in a world ruled by lesbian warriors.

OA: Circlet Press exists to fill a niche for erotic speculative fiction because the other speculative fiction publishers seem unwilling to take erotica. What draws you to the genre, and why do you think it’s a difficult sell for most houses?

LB: I’ve never understood why we don’t see more books that explore sexuality. Faster-than-light travel gets all the attention. I’m not sure why; when we get it, it will be just as buggy and overpriced as the internet.  Sexuality, on the other hand, is something we think about all day, every day. I want to explore sex because FTL has been done to death.

On the other hand, what are my chances of being a break-out author in science fiction? Science fiction publishers are drowning in slush, and their sales are shrinking.

We joke that science fiction editors think that all their readers are fourteen year old boys, and that any sex will upset their mothers. It’s not a joke. Sure, we get some awesome exceptions, like Catherynne M. Valente’s Palimpsest. But they are exceptions, not the rule.

Meanwhile, the 14 year old boys are playing video games and watching DVDs, and women purchase more than half the books sold every year. But they’re not buying from science fiction houses. They’re buying romances, because they like fiction about relationships. If you look at a romance publisher’s catalog, you’ll see urban fantasy romances, science fiction romances, heroic fantasy romances, vampire and werewolf romances. You could certainly argue that romances are poorly-written and repetitive, but they’re what readers want. Or so says my last royalty statement.

OA: You’ve edited several anthologies for Circlet. What is the most rewarding aspect of the editing process for you? How does it compare to the rewards of writing?

LB: You know how excited you get when you sell something? When I edit an anthology, I get to make a bunch of people that happy. It’s just as much fun as you might expect.

Of course, the rejections outnumber the acceptances. Sending rejections is sad, because I know most authors sweat over their story every bit as much as I sweat over mine. The saddest part is that if everyone sent me a winner, I wouldn’t necessarily have to reject some of them. I could put out a second or third volume of stories, because e-publishing is flexible. That’s why it depresses me to get trunk stories from someone who woke up that morning and decided to submit to every publisher that starts with “C.”

Editing also requires a whole new set of skills. You’re still writing, but now it’s introductions and press releases. Some stories are good, but need re-writes to be better. I find it tricky to improve an author’s voice without imposing my own, but it’s worth the work. I think that being the editor who bought the first story from an author who subsequently takes off is as exciting as selling a novel. That makes up for all the rejection letters I have to write.

OA: You’re working on a cookbook for people with Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome. As someone with Asperger’s, you are coming at this from a place of personal experience. What sets this apart from other cookbooks?

LB: Recently I was making chicken stock. Stock takes all day. My last step is to reduce the strained stock by boiling it so it will take less room in the freezer. Then in the middle of the night one of our cats woke us up with that plaintive cry that says something is wrong with the world. I took one sniff and knew that I had left the stock cooking. It had cooked down and just started to burn. I spent a couple of hours the next day cleaning the pot.

Well, that showed me. I’d be more careful the next time. Except I did it again. The cat was too disgusted with me to bother, and I spent the next day cleaning the pot again.

And then I did it a third time.

After that, I set an alarm to go off every hour while I was making stock, so I would have stock at the end, not a dirty pot.

In my cookbook, recipes will include instructions for setting alarms, because I know I’m not the only Aspie who does silly things like that.

OA: In January, Torquere published your m/m romance, Wishbone. Can you tell us more about that? Do you anticipate writing more m/m romance books in the future? Are there any other genres you’d like to explore?

LB: I’m currently writing the sequel to Wishbone. However, I tend to get bored if I do the same thing over and over. My next work after that may be a traditional heterosexual romance, just to prove I can do it. After that I may go back to Wishbone’s world. It’s got a lot of room for stories.

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Thanks, Lauren! Join us next Friday for another Spotlight, and in the meantime, check out Wishbone.

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.

Chris and his longtime partner Jeff moved from St. Louis, Missouri to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 2007, after the restaurant they’d run together failed financially. Chris took that failure as an opportunity to reboot his creative writing side, and in February of 2009, started the magazine, M-Brane SF.

As one of the very first people to join The Outer Alliance, Chris has been an active Outer Alliance blogger and advocate from the start. In addition to M-Brane SF, he also recently edited an anthology of queer speculative fiction called Things We Are Not, which contains several stories by other Outer Alliance members. On the horizon, slated for a June 2010 release is another anthology to be published by Hadley Rille Books called The Aether Age, which Chris is co-editing with Outer Alliance member, Brandon Bell.

Chris keeps a personal blog at mbranesf.livejournal.com and is active on Twitter as mbranesf. He has two cats names Maus and Jack.

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Would you tell us a bit about Things We Are Not? How many of the contributors are Outer Alliance members, and what kinds of LGBTQI themes are included in the collection?

I am very pleased with this book. It is my first such project, and I am really proud of the great work that the writers did for it. Nearly all of the writers in it ended up joining the Outer Alliance either early on or a bit later, including the straight allies, which I found very gratifying. I was pleased that some straight-identifying writers wanted to contribute to my queer book, and then even more so when they all supported the Alliance (which was founded right around the time that I was finalizing content and starting to promote the book).

The project formed when I decided that I wanted to read and publish some queer science fiction and realized that none of was showing up in the normal M-Brane slush. Though the zine is not queer-focused, I would have been happy to publish more queer material if I ever received any. So one day I decided to see if I could manage to do a stand-alone book. I put out a call for submissions and was amazed at the number of stories that showed up.

I decided from the beginning that I wanted the collection represent a lot of points of views and orientations. In particular, I didn’t want it to be too gay male-oriented or too focused on sexual matters or erotica. As it turned out, however, I didn’t need to think about it too much, nor apply any kind of quotas to my selections. It just happened to work out that the stories that I liked best also represented a lot of diversity. Several items are gay male stories, but just as many are about lesbian characters. Some of the other stories feature variations that are probably only possible in science fiction (a young man’s love affair with a giant sentient machine, for example). Some of them deal with other issues, such as reproduction and marriage, in a quite subversive way. One disappointment that I had with the selection of stories is that I did not end up with anything that I can point to as a “real” trans or intersex story. There are certainly some items in the book that get away from the gender binary, but which might do it in too science fictional a way to really satisfy someone looking for transgender content. It’s just the way it ended up this time, but if I ever do another queer anthology, I may make a more deliberate effort to find more stories that fit under the “T” in LGBT. I was a bit surprised that I didn’t see more of it when submissions were coming in.

You’ve been an active Outer Alliance member since the beginning. What has your experience with that been like? Do you have any goals or wishes for the future of the group?

I think I might have been the first or second person that joined it, literally moments after Natania Barron announced on Twitter that she wanted to start this organization. It just seemed like it was the right time for something like the Outer Alliance. As members recall, it started in part as a mobilization against the homophobic attitudes expressed by John C. Wright in his psychotic screed about the Syfy channel. But even if there had not been something really outrageous like that to stand against, I think it was still time to gather together queer and queer-allied writers and publishers into an association like this. A number of queer sf/fantasy groups exist that one can join—in fact, I belong to a couple of them—but they are mostly focused on visual media fandom and not so much on reading and writing. I don’t mean to knock movies or TV or fandom in general, but it’s really nice to have a group that is focused on the written genres, has a lot of creators in its membership, and which also has a pro-queer stance.

Since the group is still very new, it’s hard to know how it will grow or what it will be like in the future. We’ve already demonstrated that we can put together a respectable group action, such as the Pride Day on 9/1, and also our very measured and reasonable handling of the Flash Fiction Online controversy. The latter was really quite remarkable since no one was formally “in charge” of the situation and it could so easily have spiraled into a loud, ugly “fail” thing. So we’re already pretty good at things like that when they come up, and I expect we’ll have more chances to face bad situations or put together positive events as a group. Also, I see the Alliance potentially being a terrific networking resource for its members. I’ve already made contact with so many cool people that I did not know before, and I’ve enjoyed that a lot.

M-Brane SF has been going for several months now, and you’ve just put an anthology out. How hard was it to start these things? Do you have any advice for other individuals who might like to venture into the world of indie publishing?

It’s certainly been a lot of work in that it consumes a great deal of the time that I am not at my day job. But it gets easier with time, too. The monthly issues of the zine get easier each month because I learn new things about how to work better and more efficiently with each issue. If it were still as hard now to complete my tenth issue as it was to do the first one, then I probably would not have taken on the anthology. But I’ve found ways to work smarter and I now feel that I have the ability to do other projects like that anthology and still manage everything else. I can see it coming to a point where I will need help if I want to grow as a little indie publisher, but we’ll see how it goes. Right now, it doesn’t generate real income, and so it remains more-or-less a one-man show until I find a way to make some money from it.

I don’t know that my advice to anyone else that wants to venture into something like this would be any good. I am no expert. I just do what seems right and what seems to work, and then keep trying to learn from my mistakes and build on my successes. Most people who want to publish zines are basically out of their minds. It’s like some kind of chronic illness that can only be treated by publishing stuff. Fortunately, effective treatments are now within the easy reach of people who have computers and internet access. It’s become quite easy and inexpensive to launch a blog or a webzine or a publication like M-Brane SF where I am able to do electronic and print editions with no real up-front cost other than buying fiction. Even publishing a book using the new tools is not that difficult or costly. The biggest challenge seems to be getting the word out about what you are doing and convincing other people that it is good and worthwhile and that they ought to care about it. So you have to have a lot of patience and perseverance because people will probably not respond in great numbers right away. I am only just now starting to feel the beginnings of some progress toward the next level, so I am glad that I didn’t quit after a couple months.

You took a break from writing for several years in order to pursue a culinary career. Do you ever think about going back into the restaurant business? What are some of your favorite foods?

During the good years of my culinary career, I always did a little bit of writing but never in a way that yielded any finished manuscripts. I also toyed around with an early version of M-Brane that never got launched. During the last couple of years, where my day jobs are much less demanding, I’ve had the time and motivation to get more serious about it. Though I am in no way making any money off of writing or publishing yet, I have committed myself to the idea that I am publisher and a writer, and that’s what I do now as my real profession whether it pays the bills yet or not. I have no interest in returning to high-end restaurant work. I love cooking and still do it everyday at home, but I feel that I accomplished professionally everything that I could accomplish in that business and it no longer holds the appeal. My partner is also a fine cook (and gardener), and we enjoy doing that together at home nowadays. It’s hard for me to specify favorite foods because I am very curious about all cuisines and I move with great enthusiasm from one to the other. When I’ve had chances to travel abroad, I am the guy eating one of everything from the street vendors and the shabbiest dives so that I can learn something new. I’m sometimes mistaken for a food snob because I reject chain restaurants for various reasons, not all of them food-related. I’m not a snob at all, but I tend to be impatient with people who claim that they don’t like stuff that they have either never tried or not tried when properly prepared. Our everyday casual food around the house is currently pretty heavy on Mexican dishes, Asian-style items, curries, stews and pastas. These all have the virtue of being very economical yet delicious.

What’s next? Can we look forward to reading more anthologies in the future, or seeing you at any cons?

In addition to continuing the zine, I have a number of other book projects in the works. I recently announced The Aether Age, which will be an anthology of short fiction set in an alternate historical universe. Alliance member and writer Brandon Bell originally suggested the idea, and we are pretty excited about it. The shared universe will be a Creative Commons-licensed project that we hope will inspire some other projects as well. Hadley Rille Books has partnered with me as the publisher, and this should be a big benefit as far as getting the book distributed. We are aiming for June 2010 for this. I am also planning a couple of single-author short fiction collections. I can’t reveal details on these right now, though by the time this appears, I may have made an announcement or two. And there may be a second queer anthology, but a decision on that is at least several months away.

I definitely hope to make it to a con or two next year. I couldn’t fit any travel into the budget this year, but hopefully that will change, and hopefully I’ll be able to meet some Outer Alliance members in person!

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Thanks, Chris! Join us next week for another Spotlight, and in the meantime, check out M-Brane SF and Things We Are Not, or consider submitting to The Aether Age.

K.T. (Kay) and Bart are married, and both of them are bisexual. They started Crossed Genres together in 2008, and decided in the first couple of months that they wanted to do an extra large LGBTQ themed issue for the magazine’s first anniversary. The idea for Crossed Genres, which features stories that combine SF/F and another genre, grew out of Bart’s Genre Challenge community. Genre Challenge (which prompts members to write in a new genre each month) is still going, but has a new moderator now that Crossed Genres has taken off.

Kay’s love of speculative fiction runs deep. She wrote her first story (about a talking dolphin and his pet boy) at the age of six, and later got into college because of an essay on worldbuilding. Bart started writing poetry when he was in 8th grade, and took up prose fiction the next year. His non-fiction piece, “The Successful Hero’s List”, appeared in the April 2009 issue of Fantasy Magazine.

Bart and Kay live in Somerville, Massachusetts with their 3-year-old son, Bastian, and two cats named Romeo and Scout. In addition to writing and editing, both Kay and Bart take a keen interest in science. Kay works a day job in medical research administration, and is appalled at how little money brilliant researchers make. Bart’s particular scientific area of interest is sustainability, and people who use minimal resources to do amazing things. Kay and Bart encourage anyone with an interest in the future to blog about their favorite science news stories, and to fund research if possible.

What’s the story behind Crossed Genres? How did you come up with that particular idea for a magazine, and how do you choose the theme for each issue?

K: Bart tells this story better than I do.

B: I do? News to me!

It started with the Genre Challenge, which was something I came up with to help myself as a writer: each month I picked a new genre and had to write a story of at least 1000 words in that genre (without mixing it with genres that I found easier, like SFF). I’d originally intended to only do it myself, and spontaneously decided at the last minute to open the idea up to others. Now the Livejournal community has 250-plus members. See how I failed at that?

We’d talked about the idea of converting Genre Challenge into a magazine, but felt it wouldn’t work for a variety of reasons. Kay was the one who came up with the idea of having each month combine a new genre with SFF. Some conversations we had at Denvention III (WorldCon 2008 in Denver, CO) solidified the idea, and we decided to go for it very shortly after.

How we choose the genres varies. We want to encourage as much diversity in submissions as possible, and from all over the world, so we try not to pick any genre that’s too narrow. We never want to have any that are too similar too close to each other. We also really like pushing the boundaries of what defines a “genre”, which is how we’ve ended up with themes like Child Fiction (September 2009) and Antihero (accepting submissions in February (2010). We’ve got some real doozies on our list but we’re saving the really tough ones for further down the road.

In the current LGBTQ themed issue, how varied is the queer content? Did the submissions trend toward any particular part of the LGBTQ spectrum? Were there any types of characters you would have liked to see more of?

B: I think it’s not surprising that we received a lot of stories about transsexual and transgender characters – SFF has a long history of playing with the definition of gender. But for the same reason, I was pretty surprised at the lack of genderless or intersex characters. Still, overall I was very pleased with the diversity of submissions we got.

One other thing I was surprised at was how few stories we received that had human/alien pairings. But in retrospect I can see how that type of story might be seen as drawing a parallel (however unintentionally) between queer relationships and something literally alien.

How is it working as a husband and wife editing team?

K: Well, I think it’s more relevant that we’re best friends than that we’re married. First and foremost, we have fun running CG together. The fact of our marriage just means that we can run it from our living room. Spending this much time together is certainly good for our marriage, but I doubt that would be so if we didn’t both enjoy the work so much.

B: If we didn’t love doing it then we’d have quit long ago, married or not. But one of the biggest things that brought us together as a couple in the first place was a shared love of literature, fandom and geekery. Crossed Genres is essentially an extension of our shared passions, which makes it so easy to enjoy together.

Bart, you gave Kay an amazing birthday surprise at WorldCon this year. How did you manage to pull that off? And Kay, just how excellent and unexpected was it? Have you been getting a lot of use out of your CINTIQ in the past couple of months?

B: Rather than try to condense what happened, I think it would be easier if people read my after-the-fact blog post. It’s long but worth the read.

Pulling it off was… well read the post to see just how tricky it was. But it’s the first time I ever spent 5 solid months on a birthday surprise, I’ll tell you that. (And another HUGE thank you to all the wonderful conspirators!)

K: Completely unexpected. It was good enough for me that I was attending WorldCon for the second birthday in a row!

I’ve been having a lot of fun with the Cintiq, though of course I wish I had more time to spend making art. Soon after I started playing around with the Cintiq, I was honored with an invitation to do a guest comic for The Apple of Discord. And since then I’ve been posting the occasional doodle to my DeviantArt gallery, not counting the still-secret art gigs I’ve been doing for very patient friends.

Crossed Genres is a year old, and it’s still going strong. Do you have any advice or resources for other people who might want to start zines of their own?

K: The learning curve is steep; if you’re honest about the mistakes you make and learn from them, most people will understand. You don’t have to pander to the masses; it’s okay to start small and stay small. Don’t quit your day job. And get some sleep, for goodness sake!

B: Remember that you won’t make money – if you do it, you’re doing it because you love it. If you don’t love it, don’t start, because it won’t last. Set deadlines and stick to them, because the second one thing falls behind, everything will. Plan as far in advance as possible – in fact, set aside time just for planning ahead. And I’ll second what Kay said about starting and staying small. If that’s what you love, it’s what you should do. Don’t allow your zine to be forced to be something you don’t enjoy yourself. Keep it yours.

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Thanks, Bart and Kay! Join us next Friday for another Spotlight, and in the meantime, go check out the LGBTQ issue of Crossed Genres!

Nicola’s first novel, Ammonite, won the Premio Italia, Lambda, and Tiptree awards. She went on to win the Nebula, Spectrum, World Fantasy Award and  5 more Lambdas before joining the Lambda Literary Foundation Board of Trustees in June of 2009. In addition to writing 5 novels, a memoir, and several shorter works, she also co-edited (with Stephen Pagel) the Bending the Landscape series of LGBTQ science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies. She keeps a blog at http://asknicola.blogspot.com/.

Originally from the UK, Nicola now lives in Seattle with her partner, Kelley Eskridge, with whom she recently started Sterling Editing (an editing, mentoring, and coaching service for writers). Both Nicola and Kelley will be appearing alongside futuristic heavy metal band, BloodHag, on October 24th at Olympia Washington’s first SciFiFest.

You’ve won six Lambda Literary Awards, and now you’re on the Lambda Literary Foundation board. Can you weigh in on the controversy surrounding the new nomination guidelines? How did the board come to the decision to only accept nominations for books by people who identify as LGBT, and why is that a good choice for the Lammies?

I’m a brand new member of the board; I joined in June.  Not long before that, the board adopted a new mission statement.  “The Lambda Literary Foundation seeks to elevate the status of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people throughout society by rewarding and promoting excellence among openly LGBT writers who use their work to explore LGBT lives.”  This influenced the award guidelines.  Our explicit mission is to honour and reward openly LGBT writers.  It’s that simple.

Publishing, though, is changing.  The position of LGBT people in society at large is changing.  I have no doubt that LLF’s mission will also change.

The Nomination window for the Lammies is open right now. Who can nominate, and where should nominators go to submit their favorite LGBT books?

A book may be nominated only by its publisher or author.  The full guidelines are here.

If you have a favourite novel, nag the author and/or publisher to submit.  If they can’t afford the postage and fees (it costs $30 and five copies per title), pass the hat.  That’s what community is for: to support each other.  Sometimes that takes cold, hard cash.

I wish LLF could make the submission process free, but we have to cover our administrative costs.  This year, Richard Labonte is coordinating the awards process. I think he’ll do a knockout job.  We’ll have finalists in all 22 categories early next year.  (The f/sf shortlist is a great way to select titles for your TBR pile–and to persuade your library to order.)  The big gala ceremony will be in New York in May, during BEA.

You met your partner at the Clarion workshop, and have since won the Nebula, World Fantasy, and James Tiptree Jr. awards, so clearly you know your way around speculative fiction. Have you ever found interactions within the genre difficult because of your orientation? Have you got any suggestions about how fandom might become more welcoming to a diverse spectrum of fans?

I haven’t written an sf novel since Slow River (though of course I co-edited the Bending the Landscape series and have written short fiction–the most recent, “It Takes Two,” is due out any day in Eclipse 3, ed. Jonathan Strahan, which has an absolutely knockout lineup).  I have a big old sword-swangin’ fantasy/alternate history all planned out but simply haven’t found the time to work on it.  My focus now is on my novel about Hild of Whitby (set in seventh century England).  I keep a blog about the process here: http://gemaecca.blogspot.com/.

I’ve never had a minute’s problem being a dyke in f/sf world.  I enter a room expecting to be treated at least as well as anyone else, and so I am.  Some people occasionally say clumsy things but generally they mean well.  Conversation over a beer usually clears things up.  I’ve never had a problem, either, in editorial terms–never had a problem selling novels or stories stuffed with dykes to the trade press.  In my experience publishers just don’t care who your characters have sex with, as long as they’re really well written characters.

However I have had problems with an agent (I fired her) and the critical reception of my work.

My first agent was Fran Collin.  After I’d already got an offer for my first novel, Ammonite, from Malcolm Edwards at HarperCollins UK, Fran took me on and got an offer from St. Martin’s and Avon for a US hard/soft deal.  Two slight snags.

One, they wanted me to change the title:

“No one knows what it means!” the editor said.

“Then they should fucking look it up,” I said.

Two, they wanted me to lose 20 percent of the text:

“Which 20 percent?” I said.

“We don’t care,” the editor said.  “But it exceeds the optimum product size for a first novel.”

“You show me where the book sags and I’ll think about it.”

They couldn’t.  I turned down the offer.

Then Fran got an offer from Del Rey.  (For nearly twice the money St. Martin’s/Avon had offered, woo-hoo!)  The book won the Lambda Literary Award and the Tiptree (and got short-listed for a bunch of other things, like the Arthur C. Clarke Award: I smiled a lot).  So when it was time to outline my second novel, my hopes were high.  I wrote an ambitious (my friends called it career-suicidal) proposal (sex! sewage! tense & POV games!) and sent it to Fran.  She phoned me:

“This isn’t a selling outline,” she said.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Well, okay, look.  I understood why Marghe in Ammonite had sex with a girl–it was a women-only planet, she didn’t have a choice, poor thing–but why does Lore have to have a girlfriend?”

“Because she’s a dyke, Fran.”  And I fired her.  My new agent, Shawna McCarthy, had no trouble selling Slow River, again to Del Rey.  The reviews were stellar.

The reviews for Ammonite had been mixed.  The mainstream press loved it.  But the genre press was a bit puzzled.  Take, for example, the Locus review, which opined that it was all very nice, but, oh, how much powerful it might have been if only Marghe had had a brother we could have identified with…  Also, several of the Grand Old Men of the genre were rather dismissive: Ah, they’d say, yes, not bad–for a minor work from a sad little sub-genre.  To which I replied: Eat my fucking shorts.

Ah, but I’ve written about all this a lot, most recently in “War Machine, Time Machine” and “As We Mean to Go On,” both written with Kelley, both available for free.

If I had to sum up my dyke-in-publishing trajectory I’d say that the farther up the hierarchy I climb–from Del Rey mass market paperback to Nan A. Talese hardcover–the less reviewers mention the fact that my protagonists are always lesbians.

The f/sf community, while good at learning inclusiveness, when pushed, needs to work just a little harder.  The default is still straight and white (and male and able-bodied, etc.).  The genre still has a tendency to Other us queers.  But the Othering game does, to some degree, take two to play.  I refuse the game.  Mostly, it works.  For the other times, we have each other: we can educate and befriend and, when all else fails, name and shame.  Meanwhile, we need to be visible–which The Outer Alliance is doing brilliantly.  We need to ordinary people and extraordinary writers.

Your latest big project is Sterling Editing, which you just started with your partner, Kelley Eskridge. Judging by the sheer number of awards you’ve accumulated, you have serious writing chops. How does that translate into editing, and why did you choose to pursue this route?

Why do I do this? Because I can. Because it gives me joy.

I’ve been teaching since I was four, when I taught my little sister to tie her shoes (and then to make a bow and arrow–but that’s another story).  All through my 20s I was a women’s self-defense teacher.  I gave my first talk about story–what it is, how it works–to a class of nine-year-olds the month my first short story hit the shelves. (I still have some of their thank-you letters.)  I taught my first writing class three months later at the local women’s center, to eight women: one very young, one white-haired, the rest in their 30s and 40s. Three months after that, I was teaching a weekend course for SF writers.  I’ll teach anything to anybody.  I can’t help it.

When I came to Atlanta from the UK (I was 29), I reverted to teaching self-defense for a while.  (An all day date-rape class delivered to 70 Girl Scouts and their mothers was particularly memorable.)  Then, in 1993, just as my first novel was published, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.  Teaching self-defense became impossible.  Instead, I fell back on giving guest lectures and creative writing workshops (for local arts centers, for local colleges–anyone who asked).

My second novel came out in 1995 and Kelley and I moved to Seattle.   About this time, I began to edit the Bending the Landscape series of original anthologies.

It was a revelation.  I edited first-time authors, giants in the literary field who were trying their hand at writing speculative fiction, and some stalwarts of the f/sf field who were being brave and stepping outside their comfort zone.  I was astounded at how satisfying it was to help a writer lift a sleek 8,000 word story from a 14,000 word swamp.  I swelled with pride when I explained why something should be in first person and the writer said “Oh!” and then rewrote her submission piece into the best story of her life.

Teaching, coaching, and editing, then, are part of who I am.  The beauty of Sterling Editing is that I don’t have to travel.  Writers come to me (by email and phone and occasionally in person): writers who are a joy to work with, whose craft I can improve, whose careers I can nurture.  I’m also discovering the pleasure of working with those who don’t consider themselves writers, people who nonetheless have a story–their own, or another’s–to tell.

Yes, Sterling Editing work does use time and energy which could be spent on my novels–but it helps my writing in the long run. I learn from teaching.  It thrills me to the core of my being.  I like to connect with other artists and pass on my skills.  I need it.

Of course some of us can’t afford to pay for editing services, no matter how much we might want to. Are there any free or cheap writing resources you’d recommend for people who are serious about improving their craft, but sadly short on cash?

The single best way for a writer to learn is to read.  I don’t mean s/he should read books on how to write, but s/he should read novels.  Read everything.  Read poetry and short stories and nineteenth century epics.  Read every twentieth century sf novel you can get your hands on.  Read historical fiction.  Read Booker Prize winners.  (Oh, oops, the gatekeepers are finally admitting they’re the same thing…)  Read ravenously and with joy.

As writers, we are what we read.  It’s the font from which all springs.

Think about your favourite novel, the one you return to time and again, the one you read when you’re ill or tired or stressed out of your mind.  That’s the book that helped form the writer you are today.  So when you get stuck, when you don’t know how to achieve something–write an action scene, switch point of view, convey information without boring your reader rigid–go to your comfort read and find out how your favourite author did it.  It’s free if you use the library–and think of the joy you’ll take in the process.

***

Thanks, Nicola! Join us again next Friday for another Spotlight. In the meantime, why not take a look the editcast videos on the Sterling Editing website, or make sure you favorite LGBT author has been nominated for a Lammie? And if you’re in the Olympia, Washington area, don’t forget to check out SciFiFest!

OA members Nicola Griffith and Kelley Eskridge have just announced the formation of Sterling Editing, an editing, coaching and mentoring service for writers. As Nicola says:

If you want to make your writing better, we can help you.

We’ve both done a lot of teaching (Clarion West, Arts Council of Great Britain, Emory) and have been mentoring and coaching informally with those students and friends, but now it’s time to codify and formalise what we do.

We love to teach.  We love to share.

From the site:

Many people who offer editing services have never had a story, essay or book professionally published. They’ve never worked with an agent or publisher. They may have excellent theoretical knowledge — but we believe there’s no substitute for experience.

We are expert writers with excellent editing, teaching and coaching skills. We can help you both improve your writing and meet the challenges of a writer’s life, whether you’re trying to build a career, make a mid-career transition, carve out time from your busy life to work, or understand how the money works.

Serious congratulations are in order! Best of luck to you both. A truly wonderful resource for writers.