Lee has been writing for as long as he can remember, but only submitting stories for publication since 2001. He won a Stoker Award for his first novel, Stained, and went on to win  a Lambda Award for The Dust of Wonderland. Currently his short story collection, In the Closet, Under the Bed, is up for another Stoker.

Lee is gay, and writes horror feautring queer and straight protagonists for adults and young adults under the names Lee Thomas, Thomas Pendleton, and Dallas Reed. He has short fiction forthcoming in Dead Set, Darkness on the Edge, Armageddon Lightshow (Bloodletting Books), and Best Gay Stories 2010 (Lethe Press). Two of Lee’s novellas, The Black Sun Set (Burning Effigy Press) and Focus, co-written with Nate Southard, will also be released this year as standalone books.

In addition to his personal website, Lee maintains a LiveJournal and a Facebook page. He is the chair of the 2011 World Horror Convention, which will take place in his current hometown of Austin, Texas. He lives with one good dog, one good cat, and one evil cat.

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OA: You’ve already got one Stoker and one Lambda Award under your belt for Stained and The Dust of Wonderland, and now In the Closet, Under the Bed is up for another Stoker. How does it feel? Are you excited, or is it old hat by now?

LT: Excited. It never gets to be old hat.  I love to hear that a single reader has enjoyed my work, so for a group to come together and honor it with an award nomination is thrilling. I’ve been nominated for a number of awards multiple times (this is my fourth Stoker nomination), and it remains just as exciting now as when I received the first one.

OA: Stained and The Dust of Wonderland are both set in Louisiana. What keeps you coming back there in your fiction? Is there a personal connection, or does it fascinate you for other reasons entirely?

LT: Years ago, I flew to New Orleans to attend my first Mardi Gras, and I felt the oddest thing upon stepping off the plane.  I hadn’t seen the city or experienced a single thing in Louisiana yet, but there was this overwhelming sense of being “home.”  Strange.  I ended up moving to New Orleans for several years and loved every minute of it. It’s an amazing, unique place that nurtures the creative mind. Sadly, work took me to other parts of the country, but I still hope to move back one of these days.

OA: In the Closet, Under the Bed is a collection of stories featuring gay men. Did you set out to create the collection on that theme, or was it a matter of serendipity?

LT: Serendipity I suppose. I had written a number of stories featuring queer characters – quite a few about closeted men – and many had been published in horror magazines and anthologies.  A friend and fellow writer, Steve Berman, suggested I collect the stories and even suggested a publisher – an imprint of Haworth Press. Well, they bought the collection and then the imprint folded, leaving the collection orphaned. A new press (Dark Scribe) emerged a bit later. They were very open to horror and didn’t shy away from queer content, so when I proposed the collection, they snatched it up.

OA: As the chair of the 2011 World Horror Convention, you’re obviously very involved in the horror community. How do you feel it treats queerness? Have you encountered a lot of discrimination, or has your experience been mostly one of acceptance? Are there any things you’d like to see change?

LT: I’ve been fortunate. When I first started publishing, I made a number of friends and built a good readership in the horror community. They were open and friendly to me, and my work appeared in a number of publications that contained primarily “straight” content. That noted, horror is a conservative genre with a number of conservative people involved. Thirty years ago it was a club for straight white guys, and queer characters – along with women and people of color – were rarely treated with any level of respect. That was perfectly acceptable to the audience then, because it represented the status quo. What’s frustrating is that some writers (and editors) don’t seem to realize that the status quo has shifted in the last three decades, and this clinging to an outdated social norm severely limits the potential of horror fiction as social commentary. Certainly, there are instances of homophobia and a desperate clinging to tradition by some, but most horror writers and readers – as with any intelligent group – see beyond issues of sexual orientation and can assess the value of a work (and a writer) using legitimate criteria. So yeah, “it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” Prejudice exists, but I don’t think it’s dominating the genre.

Still selling gay-themed books to mainstream publishers is difficult, not because they hate the gay community, but because the sales numbers on previous gay-themed works – with minor exception – have not been particularly high. Whether they’ve put promotion dollars behind those titles or not, who can say? I consider this an economic prejudice, and it applies to a number of minority groups. The track record for queer titles isn’t good so it makes it easy for editors to pass on them, even if they feel the work is exceptional. I’d like to see that change, but it will require a vocal and active readership, using their wallets to move things forward.

Fortunately, we have a thriving small press industry for queer books, and many of those publishers are open to speculative lit, whether it’s science fiction, fantasy, or horror. Titles can reach an audience. I’d just like to see them reach a much larger one.

OA: You write under several different names. Is there a logic behind which books are credited to which name? If so, how does that break down, and if not, how did that happen?

LT: I’ll try to make this comprehensible.  My given name is Thomas Lee Pendleton (friends call me “Lee.”) When I began submitting fiction, I did so under the name Lee Thomas, because I liked the way it sounded. It struck me as simple yet memorable. When I began writing for the Young Adult market, I wanted to delineate that work from my adult work so I used my given name. More or less, it was a courtesy to readers, because someone who likes what Lee Thomas writes may find what Thomas Pendleton writes a bit soft. I didn’t hide behind either name – never made it a secret I was the same guy. In the span of a little over a year, I had five or six titles coming out under the Thomas Pendleton name, so to keep the market flooding down, Dallas Reed was born. So far, those are the only names I’ve published under, but it’s still early in my career so who knows what people will be calling me in the years to come. Ha!

OA: How do you know your evil cat is evil? Are there signs the rest of us should be looking for in our own pets?

LT: There’s knowledge in his eyes – calculation and intent. The mayhem he creates has purpose, and I feel one day his dark plans will be revealed, and he will rise, but it will be too late for mankind by then.

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Thanks, Lee! Join us next Friday for another Spotlight, and in the meantime, check out In the Closet, Under the Bed.

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.

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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!

The American Library Association (ALA) celebrated Banned Books Week from 26 September – 3 October this year. Their 2009 list of challenged/banned books (PDF, 8.4MB) includes “And Tango Makes Three”, “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding”, “King & King”, “Girl, Interrupted”, “The Joy of Gay Sex” and “The Lesbian Kama Sutra”, among others. (Speculative fiction books included “The Golden Compass” “The Great Tree of Avalon”, “Brave New World”, and more.) For the curious, past lists of challenged/banned books are also available.

If you come across any links to share for next week’s linkdump, please post them to the Outer Alliance forum or bookmark them on delicious or diigo with tag “outeralliancelinks”.

Benjamin Solah reviews Tom Cho’s short story collection Look Who’s Morphing.

As part of a series on American women athletes, the Angry Black Woman writes about transgender athletes.

• Benjamin Solah also blogs about the recent media circus surrounding Caster Semenya.
• On the same topic, Chris / M-Brane SF says Do we ask if Michael Phelps is really a human male and not half fish?

Anna Caro writes City of Possibilities as part of New Zealand Speculative Fiction Blogging Week.

The Lambda Literary Foundation has announced changes in its board of trustees and its executive director position. These have coincided with a clarification of the Lambda Literary Award guidelines (see the guidelines at the LLF website).

Coming Out in Middle School in the New York Times explores the trend of gay and bisexual middle-schoolers increasingly being able to come out to friends, family, and adults at school. Benoit Denizet-Lewis talks to students, parents, and educators:

Though many of the parents I spoke to needed a period of adjustment before accepting their children’s announcement that they were gay or bisexual, others offered immediate and unequivocal support. “The biggest difference I’ve seen in the last 10 years isn’t with gay kids — it’s with their families,” says Dan Woog, an openly gay varsity boys’ soccer coach at Staples High School in Westport, Conn., who helped found a gay-straight alliance at his school in 1993. “Many parents just don’t assume anymore that their kids will have a sad, difficult life just because they’re gay.”

If you come across any links to share for next week’s linkdump, please post them to the Outer Alliance forum or bookmark them on delicious or diigo with tag “outeralliancelinks”.

Just got this. It looks like a great opportunity for queer writers of all stripes and persuasions to meet, drink some free wine, eat some fab free food, chat–and even sell books. Think of it as a mini-festival. I wish I could be there.

Dear LGBT authors:

The Board of Directors of the Lambda Literary Foundation and Ed Hermance, owner of Giovanni’s Room, would like to invite you to read at our first “Read-a-thon”. The event, to be held at 7:30pm on Saturday November 21, 2009, at Giovanni’s Room in Philadelphia, will be a benefit for both the Foundation and the bookstore. We’d like to invite LGBT authors to read from a recent or classic book and answer questions for approximately 15 minutes each. 100% of the proceeds from the event will go to the two beneficiaries. We will be serving donated wine and snacks during the marathon reading. While the foundation and the bookstore can’t offset any expenses authors might incur participating in this benefit, we can possibly arrange housing in local homes. Both the Foundation and Giovanni’s Room will be very grateful for your help in these trying economic times. While this is a fundraising event, we’re hoping it will be a lot of fun for a community of people who treasure our words and writers.

The Lambda Literary Foundation is dedicated to raising the status of openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people throughout society by rewarding and promoting excellence among LGBT writers who use their work to explore LGBT lives. The Foundation sponsors the annual Lambda Literary Awards and held its first Writer’s Retreat in 2007.

Giovanni’s Room, located at 12th & Pine in Center City Philadelphia, is the oldest LGBT bookstore in the USA. The store is faced with a financial challenge as their front wall of their historic structure is being replaced. The queer community of Philadelphia, rather than lose their cherished bookstore, is organizing fund-raising events through the fall to ensure the store’s survival.

We hope that we’ve enticed you to participate at this, sure to be wonderful, event. If you would like to read, or have any questions/comments/suggestions, please contact Scott Cranin at scranin@tlavideo.com or 267-765-9840.