Before we dive into the wide world of writerly education, there’s one bit of news I wanted to share. A lot of OA members have said they’re fans of Diane Duane, and cited her as an influence on their own work, so I thought I should pass on her call for help. Earlier this week someone fraudulently cleared out her bank account, and she’s scrambling to make ends meet while the bank sorts through fraud paperwork. A quick infusion of cash would be very welcome, so she’s offering a 20% discount on her personal e-book store. If you’d like to help her out and get some excellent books at a bargain price, just go over there and use the promotional code DDGOTSKIMMED.

Okay! Writing workshops!

The beginning of the calendar year is one of those times when a lot of people resolve to improve and grow. If you’re a writer, you might be drawing up plans to complete big projects, or making goals for submissions counts, or you might be trying to figure out how best to learn more about your craft. There are a lot of writing classes out there. Here are a few which are QUILTBAG friendly. All of these have either been recommended by OA members, or are taught by OA members.

I’m going to list these in order of pricing from high to low. I’m not valuing any workshop or class over another, though, just to be clear.

Clarion Workshops — These are six week intensive workshops. They’re competitive, and they’ll set you back a couple thousand dollars (though there are a few scholarships available). Several OA members have praised them for the diverse and knowledgeable instructors, and the residential setting, which focuses students on learning and making connections with their peers. Many Clarion students go on to sell a lot of work. If this sounds like your cup of tea, applications are open until the 1st of March for both Clarion and Clarion West. Both workshops this year feature instructors who have written stories with QUILTBAG content themselves, so it’s safe to assume they’ll be supportive of yours if you bring it.

Viable Paradise — Like Clarion, this is a residential intensive workshop with several instructors, and it’s also going to cost you a couple thousand dollars when all is said and done. Unlike Clarion, all the instructors are there together, and the whole experience lasts one week instead of six. It’s also competitive, and many Viable Paradise students go on to sell a lot of work. If the intensive residency idea appeals, but you have a job or family you can’t leave for long, this might be a good choice for you. Applications  for Viable Paradise are open until the 15th of June.  Again, the instructors here have written (or published) QUILTBAG material, so yours will be welcome.

Lambda Literary Writing Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices – If you want to spend time with other QUILTBAG writers, this might be a good choice for you. It’s another weeklong intensive residency program, which, again, will cost a couple thousand dollars after you’ve accounted for transportation and room and board on top of the tuition (though there are scholarships available).  Applications are open until mid-April. Lambda Literary has more information here.

Loft Classes — The Literary Loft is a Minneapolis area organization which offers lots of different classes for writers both in person and online. These are a good option for people who have less money to spend, and they’re not competitive–anyone may enroll. If you live in the area, you might consider taking Catherine Lundoff’s one day class on writing and selling QUILTBAG fiction on the 18th of February (a steal at $46.50). If you don’t live in the area, you might like Lyda Morehouse’s science fiction class, Mars Needs Writers ($425.00 for six weeks of online coursework starting on the 6th of February–video introduction here). Both of these instructors are most certainly open to QUILTBAG work. To find either class, visit the Loft site, and look them up under the teaching artists field in the search page.

Cat Rambo’s Online Classes — For the writer who wants to experience a workshop classroom environment without leaving home, this is a great choice. These classes run from $99 to $249, and Cat teaches over Google+ hangouts, which are video chats. I’m currently taking one, and can personally attest it’s been helpful. Again, this is a non-competitive open enrollment situation, so your class will likely contain people at different levels. I’ve found that perfectly agreeable, as Cat gives equal time and attention to everyone and is very good about tailoring classes to specific students’ needs. And Cat’s an OA member, so you know QUILTBAG content is welcome. You may find info on how to sign up at Cat’s blog.

That’s what I’ve got for now. If you have other QUILTBAG friendly writing education recommendations, please tell us about them in the comments!

Finally, there are still a few days left to enter the drawing for a signed copy of Natania Barron’s Pilgrim of the Sky. Just comment on this post to get your name into the hat!

Rose and Shweta have both been guests here before, so if you want to find further information about their taste in poetry and vision for Stone Telling, please check out Outer Alliance Spotlight #39 with Rose, and Outer Alliance Spotlight #71 with Shweta (who was not yet co-editor, but was guest editing an issue at that time with J.C. Runolfson).

For up to the date insights to help you figure out what to submit for this current issue, read on!

***

RL: I feel that Stone Telling has grown more and more into itself with each issue, and I feel that our submitters have a much clearer picture of what it is that we are looking for. Definitely I consider our last two issues to be the best so far. It is what I expected the magazine to become, and more – not unlike discovering one’s best poem in the process of writing it. I did, however, expect the magazine to be more whimsical on occasion (hence the Whimsy issue) – certainly an experience I would love to repeat!

One of the things that happened in 2011 is the expansion of the team; first, Shweta Narayan and J.C. Runolfson edited the fourth issue; subsequently, Shweta Narayan joined as a full-time co-editor . Shweta brings a unique poetic and intersectional vision to the team; it is a delight to work with her, because we are very much in tune both aesthetically and viewpoint-wise. The only downside of this is the ongoing editorial spoonie tango, since both of us are dealing with chronic health issues; Shweta’s are significantly more serious than mine, but I am also parenting a child with a disability, so the end of 2011 was especially interesting, in the proverbial sense. I am very proud of what we accomplished, despite those shortcomings, and this would not be possible without our assistant editor, Jennifer Smith. Jenn joined the team as of Issue 3. She does most, if not all of the coding and proofreading for the magazine, and lends her opinion on submissions as well.

RL: Oh yes. Shira Lipkin’s genderqueer “The Changeling’s Lament” has gone viral – people were reposting and discussing it all over the internet! It has 111,000 hits on Stumbleupon as of now. I am also very proud to have published a poem by JT Stewart in the Mythic issue.  When Shweta and Jules were guest-editing this summer, they published a powerful, immense poem by Nisi Shawl; and then I asked Nisi to reprint that poem in my feminist speculative poetry anthology The Moment of Change, Nisi told JT about me and my anthology, and we started talking. I hope that more and more of the speculative poetry community will get to know JT Stewart’s work; she is one of our elders – she co-founded Clarion West! – and I am thrilled to bring her work to more readers. I am probably most proud of publishing emerging voices, including people’s very first poems – for example Peer Dudda’s “Train Go Sorry”, Tara Barnett’s “The Star Reservation”, Koel Mukherjee’s “Sita Reflects”; and though Sofia Samatar had one poem accepted (“The Year of Disasters”, forthcoming at Bull Spec and reprinted in the Moment of Change), I think that “The Sand Diviner” was technically her first published poem. Her science poem, “Girl Hours” opens Issue 6; it is tremendous. I have no doubt Sofia will become an important voice in the genre.

Another thing I am very proud of is changing the scene  somewhat regarding queer speculative poetry. When I read for issue 1 I was very upset about what I perceived as dearth of queer speculative poetry in the inbox. I talked about it non-stop, and when Shweta joined the team, we both talked about it non-stop. Over time, the number of queer submissions in our inbox grew – some were even written with the thought of submitting to us, such as Alex Dally MacFarlane’s “Sung Around Alsar-Scented Fires” and Tori Truslow’s “Terrunform” in the Science/Science Fiction issue. It gives me warm fuzzies to think that we have encouraged such excellent queer poetry to come into existence.

RL: We hope never to see another homophobic poem in the inbox ever again. Unfortunately, homophobic poetry does occasionally land in our inbox, as (somewhat more frequently) does poetry with racist undertones. One again, with feeling: we are anti-racist and queer-friendly!

As to what we hope to see: the full spectrum of queer viewpoints. Really looking forward to some bisexual, genderqueer and trans* poetry; really looking forward for gay and lesbian viewpoints as well.. For this issue, we would actually love to take a look at things that fall outside the heteronormative paradigm. We want to read about poly relationships, for example.  Clueful treatments of power exchange -  again, clueful treatments of power exchange would be great to see. I have not yet read a speculative poem that treats asexuality; perhaps I am missing something – but would love to see that.

RL: Well. I am starting to be worried about gender balance. The submissions pile seems to be more or less equally divided when it comes to gender (though I have not run the numbers), but a lot of times it feels like many of the guys are submitting work that is great, but would better fit some other magazine. So yes, I want to see more wonderful work from guys that fits the magazine. In general, I hope to get poems that will grip me from the first line and never let go, that will stay with me for months and years.  I want the magic. Send it to me, please.

OA: When is the reading period for that issue?

RL: We have opened to submissions on the 25^th of December, and will stay open to submissions until February 20^th.

OA: You’re editing a book of feminist poetry. Can you tell us more about that? And is there anything else you’d like to share with us?

RL: I talked a bit about the Moment of Change above. It’s the first anthology of feminist speculative poetry, and it is about time! I am actually done with the actual editing, and the full ToC is here. The anthology is wonderful, even if I say so myself – it is intersectional, vibrant, diverse, and magical. There are many queer poems in it, even though I had to work hard to get some of the perspectives – but I am so proud of the result. There will hopefully be an event at WisCon 2012, which is when the book will be coming out. 

***
Thanks, Rose! For anyone who might be interested in submitting to Stone Telling (and I, personally, would love to see lots of OA members in the QUILTBAG issue), here are the magazine’s guidelines.

KV Taylor is an avid reader and writer of urban fantasy and dark speculative fiction, even though the only degree she holds is in the history of art. (Or, possibly, because the only degree she holds is in the history of art.) Originally from the Appalachian foothills of West Virginia, she currently lives in the D.C. Metro Area with her husband and mutant cat. In her spare time she enjoys comic books, Himalayan Buddhist art, loud music, her Epiphone, and Black Bush. She lives at kvtaylor.com, edits for Morrigan Books, and collects The Red Penny Papers in her dining room.

***

OA: Scripped has a fascinating and creepy fae society. How did you first think of mixing Faerie with coal mining, and how did that develop?

KVT: Oh awesome — this is the whole reason I wrote it, actually.

One day I suddenly realized that fairy stories were a kind of funhouse mirror image of the culture from which they came. Which in retrospect seems obvious, but like most kids raised on western euro-centric lit, I’ve been buried up to my eyeballs in fairy tales since before I could talk. Forest, trees, etc.

There are loads of examples, but more recently I remember reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell  for the first time and just going, “God, that’s so… English.” Which of course I love — that’s one of my favorite books. But I’m a West Virginia kid, so I naturally wondered what fae that grew from the coalmine culture would look like.

It ended up kind of freaky, but I guess it wouldn’t be fae, otherwise. It was really fun to play with the conventions of fae-napping, water-crossing, fairy mounds, fairy food, all that good stuff, in an Appalachian context, too. Reinventing the rules is always the best part of writing.

Until you have to follow them

OA: I’ve seen people call Scripped an unconventional love story, but I think it also has a lot to do with how things like class and experience shape our lives. What kind of story do you think it is, and is it the one you expected to tell when you started writing it?

KVT: I think it’s a story about class and society and belonging — or being lost — within those constructs. And yeah, it’s experience-based. Jonah’s losing pieces of himself from the very beginning, which echoes the fae coal town getting lost back in the day, its people being stripped of their humanity. In the real life version of that, it was an absolute class struggle. Scripped doesn’t refer to any specific historical incident, more a surreal amalgam that’d give the general impression — being fae, and all. Obviously the Matewan Massacre was in my head, but a lot of Appalachian towns bled during the struggle to unionize in the Mother Jones years, not to mention the decades before when they did it in silence.

I didn’t think of it as any kind of romance until my brother read it and said, “That is one screwed up love story, Kate.” And he’s right. Everything I write has something of that in it, and this time it’s a personalized version of the larger problem: if you’re stripped of all your human connections, then you’re only at home with others as lost as you.

I don’t think I knew what I expected, maybe because the subject matter is pretty near and dear. Obviously I didn’t live through those massive social changes, but they shaped the way I look at the world. And then when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s the local mines started to shut down, and though I didn’t understand as a kid, I now see how it changed everything for the whole area, just like that. There are still some things that go on even today… let’s just say it’s not so hard to connect with people from a century ago, after all.

Which is not to say that I’m trying to make a point with the book. It’s really just a story about a guy who gets lost, though it incorporates those themes, for sure.

OA: A while ago you wrote a guest post for Corinne Duyvis about the need to be responsible when writing about others. You mentioned some New York Times articles which sketched unfortunate caricatures of people in the West Virginia county where you grew up, and said that the articles showed you that you needed to try harder not to do that in your own writing. How did you approach that responsibility while writing Scripped?

KVT: Yeah those articles had me spitting… but that’s unfair, since I’m sure I’ve been guilty of it in the past, too.

The best part of writing this kind of thing is that it strips the supposed otherness from characters and places we might not normally identify with, makes it all about the human experience. As opposed to hitting that weird nerve where it’s all about exoticism. I can’t even name the number of specials I’ve watched on the Hatfields and McCoys or whatever where they interview brilliant academics and make them stand in front of trucks on cinder-blocks and ask them nothing but super patronizing stereotype questions.

Don’t get me wrong, I definitely have a sense of humor about WV — I don’t know anyone from there who doesn’t. But come on.

(On the other hand, as a side note, the Appalachia miniseries that ran on PBS? So good.)

But this one was relatively easy for me because I do feel as if I was writing what I know. I’m not saying I got it perfect, because there’s no such thing — and there are people who would think that someone from as far north as I am can’t possibly get it right, or my family isn’t from there, or my hint of a regional accent only manifests after so many beers, and so on. But I kept it in mind and didn’t expect my WV origins to excuse any screw-ups.

And though it’s not a big issue within the plot, the same goes for having a bisexual protagonist. Though he’s uncertain when the it starts, it’s fair to say that accepting that part of himself is the biggest positive experience Jonah has as the story progresses. It’s a very different experience from my own, and it won’t be perfect for everyone, but not much of a stretch.

OA: Can you expand on that last bit?

KVT: Jonah buries himself in the water and ignores things as long as he can. I tend to just take things, at least, things about myself, as they come and be very whatever. So do most of the people around me. That much is just a personality difference.

But the other thing, and this is a really common story: I don’t think I understood that bisexuality was a thing, in spite of feeling it. I clearly remember my first girlcrush at the age of 11, long before my first boycrush, and my best friend and I laugh about it today. But if you like boys you like boys, and we have to default to that, right? And, I mean, boys are kind of cute — not the ones in class, but the rock stars, anyhow — so I must like them all right.

Part of that is where and how I grew up, but more than that, I think it’s when. A lot has changed in 20 years, thank god. Hell, I’m typing this ridiculous answer out right now because people doing this is how it changed. So when I finally shook off that conditioning a decade later and realized, I was more of the, “Oh, now that makes sense…” person. So I won’t pretend it wasn’t an important moment, but after that it was all very whatever, like I say.

Jonah knows from the beginning that his attraction doesn’t discriminate on the basis of anatomy, but he does this, “Let’s just not think about that…” thing. He doesn’t dislike it about himself; he’s just really awkward and clueless. He has it built up in his mind that he would somehow royally screw it up if he flirted with a man, like it’s disarming a nuclear bomb or something. He doesn’t really flirt with women, either, he just kind of hooks up with them if they express an interest. And is really awkward about it.

When circumstances force him to openly acknowledge that part of himself, he’s a lot more comfortable in his skin and grateful for it. By that time it’s about the only thing he’s comfortable with in his life, hence the sole positive experience. Again, it’s not a huge point or anything — the sex and gender identity of the person he ultimately falls for is incidental to the plot. Just happens to be a guy because that’s how it worked out with the characters.

Kinda like life.

OA: Okay, so, if you accidentally wandered into your version of Faerie, how would you do? Do you think you’d manage to get away, or would you end up stuck there forever?

KVT: I’d be screwed. Writing it, I would get frustrated with Jonah for his reactions, but mostly because I knew they were honest. I don’t think anyone gets away from them, really — which is the point. And I can’t resist mushrooms, so yeah, totally screwed.

Which is why I have a policy not to follow random people who appear in the woods and invite me home with them, actually.

It’s harder than it sounds.

Think you’d make it out?

OA: I’m pretty sure I’d be a goner. I am shuddering at the very thought. Anyway… On Twitter, I often see you posting about music. Do you listen to it when you write? Does Scripped have a playlist or theme song in your mind?

KVT: Busted. I have a serious music habit. There’s a playlist in my iTunes for it, most of which happened when I was writing it. I actually put it all up on my tumblr account one month just for kicks. There are about two pages of songs, 15 all told. I think they’re all still there, but they’ve all got little snippets from the text that went with them in my brain. I can’t help myself.

OA: In addition to writing, you’re also an editor. How does that work affect your writing and vice versa?

KVT: That’s a mixed blessing. On the one hand, one of my editors, Raven, seems to like that I give her really clean manuscripts. On the other, I am a nitpicky jerk after the fact, which can cause some serious headaches both for me and editors  when I want to comb back over something. Jodi at Belfire has been incredibly cool about that. It’s definitely improved my writing from a technical standpoint, though that’s a serious work in progress.

Probably makes me more understanding as an editor, too. I love editing, so long as it’s not my own stuff, and I’m probably a little more sensitive than average to the writer’s, um, artistic vision. Though I don’t know if anyone who’s been edited by me would agree.

OA: You’ve got several things either just out or on the horizon. In addition to Scripped, there’s Riot Boy (written as Katey Hawthorne), and the Fish anthology you edited for Dagan Books. Can you tell us a bit about these things, and give us a hint about what might be coming up in the future? Do you think you’ll ever revisit the Scripped world?

KVT: Riot Boy is really fun — it’s pure romance with a side of superpowers. I usually write pretty dark stuff, but the romance thing happened when real life got dark, and I needed some happily ever after. I love doing it, and as a bonus, it’s a cool way for me to support The Red Penny Papers. Creative lit mag funding, heck yes.

Always looking for pulpy goodness at RPP, by the way. We don’t see enough in the LGBTQIA vein. I merely mention this.

Fish is pure magic. Carrie Cuinn at Dagan Books was kind enough to ask me to work with her on it, and I couldn’t be happier with the way it’s going. We have sci-fi, urban fantasy, historical fantasy, magical realism, all kinds of great spec fic lined up from some lovely authors. Galen Dara is dong the art and she’s just brilliant. That’s all slated for February.

And late next year I’ll publish the first of a vampire series called The Family with Belfire Press, the publishers of Scripped, that deals with some pretty dark and uncomfortable stuff. The first one is, unsurprisingly, a bit of a disturbing romance, but it starts off the proverbial snowball rolling down the hill. So that should be good fun, too.

Assuming you like your fun disturbing.

Sometimes I think about revisiting the Scripped world, especially in light of the previously mentioned nasty stuff that makes me feel like nothing’s changed. There are a lot of directions to go, a lot of issues I’d like to tackle in a similar, kind of personalized way. But no, no firm plans yet.

***

Thanks, Katey! That’s it for now, but if you’re hankering for more, there’s lots of info about Scripped (including an excerpt, and ways to buy it) on the book’s web page.

Crossed Genres has been actively involved in the Outer Alliance from the start. I interviewed owners Bart and Kay back in 2009 for OA Spotlight #8, and they’ve been industriously celebrating, promoting, and soliciting queer content for the duration of Crossed Genres Magazine‘s run.

Earlier this month, they announced that the magazine will be closing. This is sad news for those of us who have loved anticipating each new theme for the past three years, but it’s actually great news, too. The reason Bart and Kay are closing the magazine is so that they’ll have more time to concentrate on anthologies and novels, like Fat Girl in a Strange Land (whose table of contents just went live today!)  and Broken Slate (which was the subject of OA Podcast #9).

With a solid track record of diverse content, we can certainly look forward to excellent things once the magazine closes, but first, Crossed Genres Magazine is having one last major hurrah. Issue 36, which will come out in December, has the theme: Different. Submissions are open until the 31st of this month, and they’re accepting all sorts of different things for this one.

For this issue, we are open to all types of media. Previously we haven’t accepted poetry, or podcasts, or photography; now we are. We’ll even consider longer or shorter pieces of writing. (maximum 10,000 words though!) This will make the final issue – well, different from anything we’ve published before.

And we’re looking for as diverse a body of submissions as possible to choose from! We want submissions with characters of color, quiltbag characters, disabled characters, elderly or child M/C’s. We want underrepresented perspectives!

Wouldn’t it be lovely to see a lot of OA members in that last issue? I think so! If you have something Different for Bart and Kay to look at, do send it in!

Kyle Aisteach lives in Fresno with his husband, and writes hard science fiction. His alter ego, James Ipse writes urban fantasy mystery stories, the first of which just came out. Kyle joined me to discuss James Ipse’s The Case of the Basher.

***

The Case of the Basher takes place in your hometown of Fresno, California. The book opens with a description of how awful that city is for gay people, though. Is it really that bad? And if so, what makes people like you (and Colm Ramirez) stick around?

I think it’s more accurate to say that Colm describes his world exactly as he sees it. I, personally, don’t think it’s as bad as he describes. I mean, Fresno is one of the places where the bigots outnumber the good people by a significant margin, but there are lots and lots of good people here, and the number is growing. I wouldn’t describe our mayor as “actively hostile” [as Colm does]. I think she’s just ignorant. Which, in an elected official amounts to the same thing, but it’s a matter of perspective. Yes, most gay and lesbian and trans folks who live here have had to put up with the hostility, but at the same time, I was the victim of a hate crime in Beverly Hills, so I don’t see that zip code is as much of a factor as Colm does.

But as for why we’re still here, a lot of that is simple economics. You’ve heard of the “gay tax”? The sad truth is that most of the places where it’s safe to live openly are the most expensive places in the country. We’re here because my husband’s job is here, and we can afford to live on his salary here. We can’t do that in San Francisco, or Manhattan, or West Hollywood. So, instead, I’d rather stick my roots in the ground somewhere that’s more good than bad and refuse to back down, and hopefully if enough people do that kids won’t need to flee their hometowns to major cities just to feel safe any more.

Maybe I’m particularly biased because I was raised in California by a WASP mother and a Mexican Catholic father, but Colm Ramirez seemed like a very believable Californian to me. How did you get the idea for his character?

I wish I could say that he’s based on a real person or that he came to me in a blinding flash of inspiration, but the reality is much more mechanical. I’m very fond of mysteries, and I’m particularly fond of mysteries where the first-person heroine is a three-dimensional, amusing, and fallible individual. Sue Grafton and Sarah Graves’ work, for example. I’d also been reading a fair amount of urban fantasy, and I’d been impressed by all the kick-ass female characters. I started wondering what an urban fantasy would look like with a gay man in that role instead of a young woman. And at the same time I was experimenting with writing a mystery where the snarky detective is a gay man. Neither really gelled for me, until I combined the two. Then the character and the stories started to feel real. The fact that he’s young is simply a story necessity, and so I spent some time sussing out how attitudes and worldviews are different in the younger generation, and he just, little by little, came to life.

The book hints at a very interesting back story. Will we learn more of that in future Colm Ramirez stories? What do you have in store for him?

I don’t think I’m likely to go back and write up those adventures as their own stories. But Colm has a history with a lot of folks, and his circle of friends is a lot larger than you saw in Basher. So it’s safe to say that there’s going to be a little more backstory in each of the stories.

As for what’s in store for him, I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s just say there’s a reason why I decided that every pantheon in existence is equally real.

This is your first book as James Ipse, but you’ve written other things as Kyle Aisteach. Why did you choose to switch names for this one?

I’d actually originally intended to publish Basher as Kyle Aisteach, but then something interesting happened. I sold a bunch of hard science fiction, and folks at cons and online kept commenting that they were looking forward to my next story because they love how I work in real science and engineering. Well, Basher couldn’t be more different.

I tend to think of an author’s byline as being like a brand name. I like Pepsi. I like root beer. But if I pick up something labeled “Pepsi” and it turns out to be a root beer, I’m probably going to be disappointed, because it’s not what I was expecting. I don’t want folks who are looking for hard science fiction to have a bad reaction to this story just because it’s not what they thought it was going to be. And, similarly, I don’t want folks who like this story and seek out my other work to be disappointed because it’s radically different in tone and style. If folks like both genres, that’s great, I’m happy to have them read both. Just like I’m happy to grab either a “Mug” root beer or a “Pepsi” cola even though I know it’s all PepsiCo.

What sort of science work do you do in your non-writing life, and how do you use it in your SF work? Can you tell us a little about your SF stories?

I don’t actually do science myself. I’m actively dangerous to have in the lab. Seriously. If there’s a way to make an experiment spew toxic gasses, I’ll find it every time. And if there isn’t, I’ll find a way to break it. $100,000 microscopes fail catastrophically when I walk by. If there’s 300 vials, 299 of which contain water, I’ll spill the one that contains concentrated acid. I don’t try to be a jinx on all science. I just am. Murphy runs very strong in my family.

But I love science. I read other people’s results voraciously. I debate the implications of various studies with people who actually do the research, and hold my own. Most people assume I’ve got a science degree. But I don’t. Not really.

It’s actually kind of a long story.

I was a Geology minor in college, but I didn’t finish it. I was a double major, carrying more than a full load, and the student loans were piling up. I hit a point in my senior year where I just couldn’t keep up, and something had to go. If I’d stayed an extra semester I could’ve still finished, but I decided to graduate on time instead, and so I dropped the minor. I love Geology. I was a lot less dangerous in the field than I am in the lab — which means I only injured myself — and I was especially interested in geomorphology and planetary weathering. Whenever I could get away with it, I did my research papers on extraterrestrial analogs to whatever we were studying, so I know more about SNC meteorites than anyone ought to, and I’m sure I got myself on a government watch list by trying to find as much Soviet data from the Venera missions as I could. I don’t read Russian. I was so glad when the Magellan data started being published. I still wish the U.S. would put a few landers down on that planet. Those basalt fields are incredible, and we’ve never seen the continents up close.

So when I have to give a short answer when people ask me what my field is, I tend to say “Planetary Science.” I spend a lot of time moving in the Astronomy community these days. I used to work in the Education and Public Outreach team for one of NASA’s space telescopes, trying to make the astronomy understandable to non-scientists. I still freelance back to NASA occasionally, mostly as a science writer at this point but occasionally as a video producer, too. So I still follow Astronomy results pretty closely, and if you follow my twitter feed I occasionally mouth off when the press is screwing up a result. And I’m particularly interested in the moons and the terrestrial planets.

And that’s what led me to write “Pressure and the Argument Tree.” It’s part of a cycle of science fiction stories I’m working on about the colonization of Venus. The engineering is real. That came out of conversations I had with the folks at JPL whose job it is to come up with strategies for doing exactly that sort of thing. What I love to do is to look at real science and engineering, and then ask myself what could go wrong if and when we actually do this. So as I was writing something else, I had a character who fell from 55km above the surface. So, being the sort of writer I am, I looked up the density of the atmosphere to see what a body’s terminal velocity would be. And then I realized that the atmosphere was dense enough that a person in a space suit might go neutrally buoyant. And I thought, here’s a story! What if someone fell and survived? So I pinged the physics teachers I know — my mom’s one of them, by the way — and we worked out how far down a space suit would start to float. And the answer was “just above the surface,” which is far to deep for a human to survive, even in a space suit. Which created that gruesome image of dead bodies drifting away from the point where they fell, and what poor person is going to have to go down there to fetch them?

I think I’m also especially interested in space travel because my dad spent 20 years in the U.S. Navy. I’m one of the few civilians who has spent time in a working, nuclear submarine. I think that experience is the best analog we’ve got for what living on another planet would be like. Think about it. When you’re in a submarine, you’re completely surrounded by an atmosphere you can’t breathe. You’ve got to keep it out. You’ve got to keep your atmosphere in. You’ve got to keep the pressure at a safe level, and if you screw up, you die. And you’ve got to do all that in as compact a space as possible, while still giving yourself room to move and work. Seriously, if you’re going to write space travel or colonization stories, go find a retired submarine you can tour. That’ll knock you out of the Hollywood sensibilities real quick.

And I think any science is fair game. I’ve got a story I’m shopping right now which is entirely based on sociology. I’m very proud of that one, but it’ s a really uncomfortable look at the direction society is moving, so I’m not surprised it’s having a hard time finding a home. It really gets the most complimentary rejection letters, though. But that’s the joy of e-publishing. I can release what I believe in. And I’m sure a short story collection is coming. It’s just a matter of when the right time is going to be.

What else do you have in the works, and where can we find it?

Well, there’s at least two more Colm Ramirez stories written, and I’ve got ideas for, oh, at least a hundred more. I’m not putting them out right away because I’m hoping I can convince a couple of the traditional publishers to buy first rights to them so I can introduce the character to their readers. Unfortunately, that takes time. The top market for supernatural mysteries is also one of the slowest to respond to submissions, so I’ve just got to be patient, and I hope readers will be, too.

On the hard science fiction front, I’ve got a new story in Pressure Suite – Digital Science Fiction Anthology 3  — “Pressure and the Argument Tree” by Kyle Aisteach — which was just released last month. I’m sharing a table of contents with a couple of authors I really like, so that’s actually really exciting for me. You can find it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.

I also just released another e-book, just slightly longer than Basher, called The Survivors’ Menagerie (also by Kyle Aisteach). It’s a time-travel story, which runs really counter to all my “get the science right” instincts, but I did a lot of research and I think that even though the science is fanciful it’s still rooted in reality, and I put a lot of emphasis on getting the history right — to the point where the story bears almost no resemblance to the story I set out to write, because the research kept shooting holes in my original ideas but at the same time suggesting even better possibilities. I totally don’t find research limiting at all. It’s where my best ideas tend to come from. You can find it on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and hopefully soon in a couple of independent online bookstores.

And, of course, The Case of the Basher is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

***

Thanks, Kyle! That’s it for today, but coming up very soon we’ll have OA Podcast #12 with Lynne Thomas. In the meantime, check out The Case of the Basher!

This month our guests are Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond of The Writer and the Critic.

This episode has an explicit tag! You are warned! Unlike the last time we used an explicit tag, when Amal El-Mohtar said one swear word, and Mike Allen read one bit of story which referenced male anatomy, this explicit tag means serious business. We all use salty language and touch on mature content (by which I mean the sorts of things that are sure to titillate all of our inner twelve-year-olds). So. Keep that in mind before turning this on at work, or around your young kids or sensitive friends.

I’ve cut an hour’s worth of stuff from our original conversation, but this podcast episode still runs just shy of two hours. Because it’s a long one, and in case you don’t want to be spoiled for any of the stories we discuss, here are some time cues for you:

We have general interview chat until the 43 minute mark. At around 43 minutes in we begin to discuss Peter M. Ball’s Horn and Bleed (as recommended by Ian). At about 1:09, we begin to discuss Hal Duncan’s “The Behold of the Eye” (as recommended by me), and at about 1:26, we begin to discuss Kim Westwood’s “Nighship” (as recommended by Kirstyn).

You can subscribe to the podcast RSS feed here or use this link to subscribe with iTunes. You can also hit play on the embedded player in this post and listen to the podcast on the web, or visit the individual episode page to download this episode as an MP3 without subscribing.

Notes:

Kirstyn and Ian’s Projects Mentioned in this Episode
*Madigan Mine is Kirstyn’s novel (which has won all the Aurealis and Chronos awards, and which is available on Kindle in the US). We didn’t get the chance to discuss the book, but if you’d like to hear Kirstyn speak more about it, you can listen to her interview on Galactichat.
*Last Short Story is the short story review project Ian’s taking part in.
*Ian wrote several stories for Big Finish Audio’s Doctor Who Short Trips series.
*Ian’s other podcast is Shooting the Poo.
*Kirstyn and Ian co-edited the first issue of Midnight Echo, the magazine of the Australian Horror Writers Association.
*Bloodsongs was another magazine with which they both had some affiliation back in the day.

Writers/Projects/Pieces We Mentioned
*Peter M. Ball (Author of Horn and Bleed–e-books at Smashwords).
*Hal Duncan (author of “The Behold of the Eye”).
*Kim Westwood (author of “Nightship”).
*Felicity Dowker (guest on Writer and Critic Episode #4, Australian Horror Writer, and undeserving victim of Ian’s rumor-spreading impulse).
*Trent Jamieson (nice guy of Australian specfic).
*John Richards (part of the Boxcutters podcast team, and TV writer who created Outland, the series about a group of queer fans–he’ll be a guest on The Writer and the Critic in November).
*Tansy Rayner Roberts (One third of the Galactic Suburbia team, and writer of a trilogy, the first two books of which Kirstyn is hoarding unread until  such time as the third one comes out).
*Alisa Krasnostein (One third of the Galactic Suburbia team, and the World Fantasy Award nominated person behind Twelfth Planet Press).
*Catherynne M. Valente (Writer, past Writer and Critic guest, and person who is not responsible for Ian’s guilt).
*Caitlín R. Kiernan (Author of The Red Tree, a book with queer content, which Ian and Kirstyn both liked).
*Kathe Koja (author of Under the Poppy, another queer content heavy story, which Ian and Kirstyn both liked).
*Rose Fox’s Genreville Post calling for honest reviews.
*Jennifer Pelland (author of some Nebula nominated stories, and person whose reading provided me with a safe place to hide during my first traumatic con experience).
*Nicole Kornher-Stace (whose stories, like Kim Westwood’s, are beautiful and hard to categorize).
*Wilde Stories ( 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011–the best gay stories collected each year by Steve Berman).
*Icarus (the magazine of gay speculative fiction)
*Poppy Z. Brite (author of many horror books with gay content, which Kirstyn’s ex used to imagine didn’t exist).
*Charles Tan and Cheryl Morgan (who Ian rightly called out as awesome specfic news resources).
*Mary Robinette Kowal (who put out her Hugo winning short story as an e-book with the first draft and commentary on the story’s evolution).
*Fran Drescher on Wikipedia.
*Coode Street Podcast (whose beginning we took for our ending).

If you have feedback, please leave a comment, tell us on the google group, or e-mail me directly at julia@juliarios.com. I’d love to hear from you!

Pi-Con is this weekend in Enfield, Connecticut. Hurricane Irene is heading up the East coast, but Pi-Con is still happening. If you’re in New England and feel like venturing out (or in New York and forced to evacuate…), you can come see several OA members like Jennifer Pelland and Shira Lipkin. I’ll be there, too!

If you’re near Austin, Texas this weekend, you might want to check out ArmadilloCon. It’s also got some OA members on the program, including JoSelle Vanderhooft, Lee Thomas, and Elizabeth Bear.

Dragon*Con is next weekend in Atlanta, Georgia. It will be giant as usual, but if you’re there and want to hang out with some awesome LGBTQ people, Outlantacon is hosting a Rainbow Flag Party on Saturday night. You can meet all kinds of excellent queer fans and allies there, and get the chance to purchase a 2012 Outlantacon membership at a discount.

That’s it for this week. See you at Pi-Con if you’re there! And Congratulations to all the Hugo winners! We’re especially pleased to note that Lynne Thomas and Cheryl Morgan snagged shiny new rocket ships this year. Hurray!

The Hugo Awards ceremony is tomorrow! If, like me, you’re unable to make it to Reno, you can still watch a live video stream at 8pm Pacific Time. Jay Lake and Ken Scholes are hosting the ceremony, and lots of fine people and works are up for consideration. It’s too late to vote if you haven’t already, but it’s not too late to get some some last minute reading in.

Rachel Swirsky’s novella, The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window, may be of particular interest to the OA membership, as it explores gender roles and expectations, and has a queer protagonist.

In tangentially-related-if-we-stretch-pretty-hard news, Lynne M. Thomas (a nominee in the Best Related Work category for Chicks Dig Time Lords) is stepping up as editor of Apex Magazine. She’ll be taking over where Cat Valente left off, and will undoubtedly continue to welcome submissions with queer content. Hurray!

Do you want to talk about the Hugos on Twitter? The women of Galactic Suburbia will be live tweeting as they watch the stream with their @galacticsuburbs account, Mur Lafferty and Kevin Standlee will be doing official text coverage, incorporating Hugo-specific hashtags like #hugos and #hugoawards, and I’ll be around, too. Do say hello if you join the fun. I’m @omgjulia, and I love hearing from people.

Best of luck to OA members who’ve been nominated this year!

The World SF Travel Fund is something Lavie Tidhar is overseeing, and it’s an awesome idea. Its goal is to send one person to an international event every year. This year the person is Charles Tan, who does all sorts of excellent internet promotion and review and discussion of SF and fandom from his home in the Philippines. The SF Travel Fund wants to send him to San Diego, CA for the World Fantasy Convention this October. So far they’ve reached 70% of their fundraising goal (which will be enough to send Charles to World Fantasy and to seed the fun for next year so that it can be sure to continue). The board for this project is a fantastic group of diverse people, who I’m hopeful will choose candidates to further diversity at major SF events in the future, so I’d love to see them reach their goal. They’re offering donors e-books as a thank you for donating, too! Go check it out!

Con or Bust is an ongoing project which aims to get people of color to conventions. Kate Nepveu oversees this one, which runs on an auction system, and takes requests for help from individuals. It’s a pretty fantastic thing! If you ‘re a person of color who wants to attend a convention in October or November, you can request help between the 15th and 25th of this month. Darkovercon has donated a membership for someone, which is totally awesome because their GOH lineup is full of queertastic goodness.

Shveta Thakrar is taking matters into her own hands. Shveta is one of the contributors to Steam Powered II, and she’s written a paper about women and monsters in South Asian folklore and sacred myth, which she’d like to present at the Sirens conference in October. She’s not far from her goal, and is busily thinking up ways to thank people who donate. It would be excellent if we could all make this happen for her.

Okay, so that’s it for travel funds. We have a bunch of other stuff to share this week, too! Yay, we’re rich in LGBTQI news!

Cheryl Morgan recorded a panel about gender in SF at Eurocon in June, and put it up as a podcast this week. You can download it free and hear Elizabeth Bear, Johan Jönsson, Kristina Knaving, Ian McDonald, and Cheryl Morgan talking about Gender with Kari Sperring as the moderator. Charles Stross also participates from the audience. They cover all sorts of interesting territory in the 50 minutes of panel time.

Galactic Suburbia’s Joanna Russ discussion episode happened a few weeks ago, but I was so busy preparing for Readercon that I forgot to mention it was up! You can get that here, and I highly recommend it. They cover How to Suppress Women’s Writing, “When it Changed”, and The Female Man, and they explore both the awesome things and the not so awesome things about Russ’s work. In the following episode, they also present some thoughtful listener feedback.

Jessica Verday’s queer YA story is now available! Back in March, Jessica Verday pulled a story from a YA anthology after the editor asked her to change her gay protagonists to straight ones. That story is now available as an e-book on Amazon.

The Outwrite LGBT Book Fair is happening this weekend in Washington, DC. Lethe Press will be there along with a bunch of other awesome queer publishers. Details here. Do let us know if you attend!

Apex is hosting a Twitter chat tomorrow with Jennifer Pelland at 3pm EST. Jennifer is an OA member with lots of great queer short fiction out there (and a novel with a bi protagonist forthcoming). Apex has all the details on how you can ask her questions.

Okay, that wraps up this week’s news. If you’ve got anything to share, please let us know here in the comments, on the google group, or by e-mailing me personally at julia@juliarios.com.

Ellen Klages joined me at a coffee shop to talk about her work, queer history, and other awesomeness.

You can subscribe to the podcast RSS feed here or use this link to subscribe with iTunes. You can also hit play on the embedded player in this post and listen to the podcast on the web, or visit the individual episode page to download this episode as an MP3 without subscribing.

Notes:

Congratulations to N. K. Jemisin, Elizabeth Bear, and all the other World Fantasy Award nominees!

Ellen Klages’s Work (and things she’s been involved with):
*The Green Glass Sea and White Sands, Red Menace are novels about kids whose parents worked on the Manhattan Project.
*Portable Childhoods is the short story collection, which contains her two overtly queer stories, “Triangle” and “Time Gypsy”.
*The GLBT Historical Society
*Exploratorium: the museum of science, art and human perception

Some of the Historical Details We Discussed:
*Here’s a photo of the 1956 raid at Hazel’s in San Mateo County (as described in the lesbian time travel revenge story, “Time Gypsy”).
*The Stonewall riots (which Ellen mentioned in passing) were a major turning point in US LGBTQ civil rights history.
*San Francisco Pride, and the Dyke March are awesome reminders of how far we’ve come in the past 50 years.
*pink-triangle.org has some information about the experience of gay people in Nazi Germany. This page does not go into much gruesome detail, but keep in mind that even so, it’s awful stuff.
*Here’s a state by state breakdown of anti-miscegenation laws in the United States.
*Here’s a brief explanation of Loving Vs. Virginia, the Supreme Court Case that marked the end of anti-miscegentation laws in the US in 1967 (not 1970 as Ellen guessed, nor 1968 as I guessed).

Some things that have given me hope lately:
*The first legal same sex marriage in New York–two grandmothers at Niagara Falls, which was all lit up with rainbow colored lights!
*More pictures of couples getting married in New York!
*Lesbian married couple saves 40 people in Norway. I’m in serious awe of these women for doing what they did, and also really happy that we live in a time when they can be married, and it’s okay to report that as one of the facts. No one’s going to arrest them for being married, or loving each other, and it’s not the most important thing about this story at all.

Stuff we’ll be discussing in the next podcast in late August:
*Hal Duncan‘s Spectrum winning story, “The Behold of the Eye”. Read it for free online, buy it in Wilde Stories 2009, or listen to it for free at Podcastle.
*Kim Westwood‘s story, “Nightship”. Buy it in Dreaming Again, or listen to it free at Terra Incognita.
*Peter M. Ball‘s novellas, Horn and Bleed. Buy them in print or e-book format from Twelfth Planet Press, or get the instant dowload e-book versions from Smashwords. Trigger warning! Horn contains graphic sexual violence.

That’s it for this time. If you have feedback, please leave a comment here, tell us on the google group, or e-mail me personally at julia@juliarios.com.