Our guest this month is Sarah Monette, author of The Bone Key, which is just out in its shiny second edition with an introduction by Lynne M. Thomas (astute listeners may remember her as the guest on last month’s OA podcast). After the interview, Sarah also reads an excerpt from one of the stories in The Bone Key.

Annnnnnd…

She’s graciously donated a signed copy for our birthday giveaway, and we have two other books as well! Signed copies of Vintage by Steve Berman, and Hollowstone by Dennis Upkins are also up for grabs. Three lucky listeners will win one of these haunting tomes. The contest is open until the end of November. I’ll draw winners in December. To enter, send me an e-mail (julia@juliarios.com) with “Podcast Contest” in the subject line. I will ship anywhere in the world, and everyone who is not actually me is eligible. This means you!

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Notes:

News
*Malinda Lo has redesigned her website, and is also giving away books to celebrate!
*The World Fantasy Awards happened last month, and Alisa Krasnostein won in the Special Award Non-Professional category for Twelfth Planet Press. Hurray! If you would like to read some awesome Australian specfic (often with queer content), Twelfth Planet Press is a great place to look!
*The Tiptree Recommended Reading List  is full of awesome stories, many of which are by OA members! There is still time to recommend books and stories to the Tiptree jury, so if you’ve read something this year which explores or expands our notions of gender, do go tell them about it!
*Maria Lima‘s Bood Sacrifice has been nominated in the Best Urban Fantasy Protagonist category for the RT Awards! Hurray, and best of luck to you, Maria!
*It’s [Inter]National Novel Writing Month! Bon Courage to all the wrimos in the OA crowd!
*Dennis Upkins will be signing books at The Great Escape in Madison, TN on the 19th of this month
*Sarah Monette will be signing books on that very same day (with Elizabeth Bear) at Pandemonium Books in Cambridge, MA.

Sarah’s Work
*The Bone Key and Somewhere Beneath Those Waves are her two short story collections, available from Prime Books.
*“After the Dragon” and “The Devil in Gaylord’s Creek” are the two stories we talked about that appeared in Fantasy Magazine.
*“Letter From a Teddy Bear on Veteran’s Day” is one of the first stories Sarah successfully wrote (the other is the opening story in The Bone Key, “Bringing Helena Back”).
*Here is Sarah Monette’s Author Page on Amazon, where you can find all of her novels.

Other Works We Mentioned
*The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
*“Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” and “The Wailing Well” by M.R. James
*“The Statement of Randolph Carter” by H.P. Lovecraft (the inspiration for “Bringing Helena Back”)
*“The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath” by H.P. Lovecraft (Sarah’s favorite Lovecraft story)
*The Dead Zone by Stephen King (in Sarah’s estimation, one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century)
*P.G. Wodehouse (whose work, like Sarah’s Booth stories, features eccentric characters with strong personalities)
*Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner (which Sarah says is a huge influence on her fantasy novels)

That’s it for this episode. If you have feedback for me, please leave a comment here, talk to us on the Google Group, or e-mail me at julia@juliarios.com. And do enter to win one of the three books in our Birthday Ghost Story Giveaway!

Maria was born in Cuba and emigrated to the United States as a child. She began writing fiction eight years ago, and has worked writing non-fiction for over twenty years. Maria identifies as bisexual, and includes various types of queer characters in her stories, so she’s very happy to promote LGBTQI  speculative fiction with The Outer Alliance.

When she’s not writing, Maria works for an interactive web agency in the Washington DC area. She also keeps a blog at www.chickwriter.com, and posts to Twitter as chickwriter. Maria’s short story, “The Butler Didn’t Do It” received an Agatha Award nomination in 2004. Pocket Books reprinted her novels Matters of the Blood (originally published in 2007) and Blood Bargain (originally published in 2008) in August and September of 2009, and the third in her Blood Lines series, Blood Kin will be available for the first time on the 27th of October.

Your series is set in the Texas Hill Country, a distinctive choice. Do you have any personal connections to that area? If not, how did you end up deciding to use it as a setting?

Yes, I spent a good deal of my high school days in the Hill Country, then moved away for a time and came back to San Antonio (near Hill Country) to stay, until 2000. I love the area! It has beautiful countryside, lakes, people of all sorts. Small towns, medium size, etc. Though close to big cities, the Hill Country area retains a certain quality of being out of place and time; a perfect setting for my books.

Can you tell us a little bit about your queer characters? Do you have any favorites?

All my characters, except for the humans could be queer identified. In Keira’s family (my protagonist), since they have such extremely long lives, the accepted one man/one woman couple arrangement doesn’t make sense to them. They are primarily omnisexual–it’s the person, not the gender (or the people, in the case of the group marriages). For the vampires, same goes. They are less likely to form a marriage, per se, but a blood bond–a contractual partnership that may or may not include sex. In my books, I try to explore several facets of romantic love/sex–Keira with Adam Walker, a het couple, but there’s more to it than traditional het pairings. Tucker, Keira’s brother pairs up with Niko, Adam’s 2nd–a committed and loving male/male partnership that seems to be a favorite with many readers…including me. ::g:: In Blood Kin, I mention that two other brothers are in a trio relationship, a pattern that will continue more prominently in book 4 (which I’m currently writing).

Urban fantasy and paranormal romance are very popular genres right now. What sets your stories apart?

I like twisting tropes and messing with the standards. In my books, Keira isn’t the traditional human hot chick in leather sent out to fight the bad guys. Though strong and very self-aware, she’s not human, not a fighter–she’d rather just be left alone. Unfortunately for her, things don’t work out that way.  My vampires aren’t emo-tastic angst-ridden creatures, nor are they vicious killers. Again, they are mostly just people, with a certain dangerous bent, of course, but with all the emotions and concerns of others. Their challenge is to live within a human community without exposing their secrets, plus, learning to live with the pressures and issues that come from family–whether blood family or chosen family. Granted, their issues are *very* different from what most of us would ever experience!

What has your publication journey been like? How long did it take you to write and sell the first three books in the Blood Lines series?

My road to publication was fairly rocky – a study in how not to do it. I’d written Matters of the Blood over about 5 years, several versions/drafts and eventually sold it to a small press. Sadly, shortly thereafter, they went under. Lucky for me, Wildside was just starting a paranormal romance line, Juno Books, and I’d met the owner, John Betancourt, at a local convention. John offered to reprint Matters, then subsequently offered for 2 more books in the series. After researching their history, I signed the contract. Then, in January 2009, Pocket Books took over Juno Books and reprinted Matters and Blood Bargain, and are releasing Blood Kin (book 3) in late October. Via my new agent, I sold book 4 in the series, due out sometime in late 2010.

And finally, do you have any book recommendations for us?

Tanya Huff’s Smoke series, which are a follow up to her Vicky Nelson books. The Smoke series features Tony Foster, a young gay man, as their main character. Fabulous books! I also recommend her Keeper’s Chronicles series, humorous and fantastic reads. The protagonist’s sister is a lesbian.

I’ve got tons and tons of other book recs, I’m sure, but my brain is just going blank right now.

***

Thanks, Maria! Look out for another Outer Alliance Spotlight Post next Friday, and in the meantime, check out Matters of the Blood.