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Tuesday, May 23, 2017 - 07:00
I pulled the titles to include in this blog series from a variety of sources: SFF lists, lesfic lists, LGBTQ lists. I don't exactly remember where I turned up Cristina Sánchez-Andrade's The Winterlings. From the blurb, it could have been any of several. The description sounds as if it's being pitched as a "literary novel" (in the genre sense) but I most likely found it recommended in an SFF context.
Galicia, Spain’s northwest region, in the 1950s. After a childhood in exile, two sisters return to their grandfather’s cottage for the first time since his shocking murder during the civil war. “The Winterlings” try to keep their dark secrets buried and carve out a peaceful existence in Tierra de Chá, an idyllic village host to a cast of grotesque but charming characters: a powerful psychic, a madman who believes he is a bus, a woman who refuses to die and the obese priest who heaves up a steep hill each day to give her last rites, a cross-dressing dentist who plants the teeth of the deceased in his patients’ mouths. Tension mounts when the sisters, once united by their passion for Hollywood cinema, compete for the chance to stand in for Ava Gardner in the nearby filming of Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. Meanwhile, a mutual suspicion develops between the mysterious sisters and the eccentric villagers: Why have the women returned, and what are they hiding? What perverse business arrangement did the townspeople make with their grandfather, and why won’t they speak of his death? Enchanting as a spell, The Winterlings blends Spanish oral tradition, Latin American magic realism, and the American gothic fiction of Flannery O’Connor and Shirley Jackson into an intoxicating story of romance, violent history, and the mysterious forces that move us.
Sometimes categorization of books can be confusing...or even feel misleading. Readers rarely approach a book without a "reading protocol" (to use Samuel Delany's term). Should The Winterlings be read through a fantasy lens? A magical realist lens? Or simply as a realistic story that may surprise you? The Alpennia novels have a tendency to confound expected reading protocols, whether the reader expects a romance novel, a lesfic novel, a swashbuckling fantasy, or a tale of magic. Mother of Souls breaks even the tenuous expectation of a romance plot that the previous books offered. If I could advise readers, I'd beg them to read Alpennia simply as stories of complex human beings, seeking purpose, connection, and community. If you find love, magic, and adventure, consider it a bonus.
The Great November Book Release Re-Boot is a blog series talking about November 2016 releases that may have been overshadowed by unfortunate political events.
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Monday, May 22, 2017 - 15:00
OK, so I have to confess that the main reason I own a copy of this book was that I went to a book release party for it at a local bookstore and felt embarrassed not to buy a copy. So my copy is personally inscribed!
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LHMPFull citation:
Conner, Randy P., David Hatfield Sparks, & Mariya Sparks. 1997. Cassell’s Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol, and Spirit: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Lore. Cassell, London. ISBN 0-304-33760-9
Publication summary:
An encyclopedia of persons, vocabulary, and concepts relevant to queer spirituality.
[The following is duplicated from the associated blog. I'm trying to standardize the organization of associated content.]
OK, so I have to confess that the main reason I own a copy of this book was that I went to a book release party for it at a local bookstore and felt embarrassed not to buy a copy. So my copy is personally inscribed!
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ETA 2025/08/21: One of the authors of this work contacted me to let me know that a revised and expanded edition of the book is in process with the following changes: "The entry level references have been restored that were cut by Cassell. Our use of gender and how so named has also been revised with a passage in the foreword explaining how that apply depending on time, culture, and era." As the lack of references at the entry level was one of my criticisms, this is positive news.
The is intended to be an encyclopedic work of persons and concepts relating to the scope as stated in the title: “queer myth, symbol, and spirit[uality]”. It begins with a set of overview summaries of attitudes towards gender/sexuality from various religious and spiritual traditions. While the history of religion is not a specialty of mine, my sense of these overviews is that they are fairly simplistic and perhaps overly optimistic regarding positive attitudes towards variant gender and sexuality. There’s also a significant amount of lumping unlike things together in the same discussion (e.g., “Ancient Near Eastern and Western Antiquity” which pretty much combines all of pre-Christian Europe and the Near East in a single discussion). As the book is aimed at modern spiritual experiences, there is perhaps an understandable focus on fairly recent attitudes and philosophies. For example, the discussion of “goddess Reverence” is primarily concerned with later 20th century neo-paganism and related movements.
The bulk of the book is an alphabetic encyclopedia with entries of variable length on persons (both historic and mythic), concepts, and symbols with queer spiritual significance.
The scope of the work is enormous and ambitious, but is weakened somewhat by a lack of references and sources for most material. While this may be of small import for significant cultural figures and concepts, it makes further research and contextualization difficult or impossible for less familiar items. As a random example, there is an entry for “Alfhild (fl. tenth century CE), the daughter of a Gothic king who cross-dressed and participated in Viking raids and fought alongside her shieldmaiden and comrade-lover Groa.” The entry does not point the reader to the literary source (Saxo Grammaticus), is misleading in identifying the cultural context as “Viking,” and simply wrong in identifying the figure as 10th century. All of this together makes it harder to evaluate the context in which she is described as having a female “comrade-lover”. These sorts of flaws make it hard for me to have confidence in the accuracy of the entries for cultures I’m less familiar with. I’m also wary of the encyclopedia’s tendency to describe cultural concepts on non-temporal terms, creating an implication of timelessness rather than identifying a specific historic and cultural context in which they developed.
There is a general bibliography, but the sources listed don’t increase my confidence in the material. (It has long been a basic principle of mine that any piece of research that cites Barbara Walker’s The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets is not to be relied on for factual information.) One useful feature is a thematic index that groups entry names by cultural origins or motif (e.g., “African and African-Diasporic Traditions” or “Alchemy, Divination, Magic”).
Given that the purpose of this Project is to point to useful source material for authors who want historically accurate inspiration for fiction, I hesitate to endorse this work even as a source of inspiration and brainstorming, due to my concerns about the accuracy and lack of context, especially for marginalized cultures. If, for example, one wanted to write a queer story set in the 18th century involving Native American spirituality, I have little confidence that this book would be a good resource.
Monday, May 22, 2017 - 07:00
By delightful coincidence Claudie Arseneault's book Viral Airwaves is not only a November 2016 release (for the 2nd edition) but will be on sale this week. Check Claudie's blog for details.
Henry Schmitt wants nothing more than a quiet life and a daily ration of instant noodles. At least until he learns the terrible secret that drove his father away—the Plague that killed his mother and ravaged his country was created by those now in power. He has one chance to help expose the conspiracy: a ragtag band of rebels needs a pilot for their hot air balloon, where they can launch a broadcast revealing the truth. If Henry accepts, he can experience his dream of flight. But he would have to leave his safe, tranquil life behind … and bring the wrath of a corrupt government upon his head.
I'm always delighted when I have an opportunity to promote the work of writers who are also fans of the Alpennia books. Claudie featured the series several month ago in her occasional twitter series #indiemanche (it's a bilingual pun) that promotes the work of indie authors and creators. She has also created a database for science fiction and fantasy with characters on the asexual and aromantic spectrums.
The Great November Book Release Re-Boot is a blog series talking about November 2016 releases that--like the third Alpennia novel, Mother of Souls--may have been overshadowed by unfortunate political events.
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PromotionSunday, May 21, 2017 - 09:44
One of the awkward things about re-booting November books is that several of them have been clearly marketed for the December holiday season. I decided to slip this novella by Tansy Rayner Roberts in anyway and do a two-fer by also mentioning the novel it's linked to, Musketeer Space (even though that isn't a November release). Gender-swapped musketeers in space? If that sounds like your catnip, this was written for you.
It’s festival time on Paris Satellite: a seven day whirl of drunken bets, poor decision-making, religious contemplation and tinsel. But mostly, poor decision-making.
Porthos and Athos aren’t going to sleep together, no matter what Aramis says. Aramis isn’t going to marry her girlfriend, Minister Chevreuse, which probably means they’re breaking up. Athos is not prepared to be visited by the ghost of his dead husband. Oh, and the Duchess of Buckingham is totally not going to hook up with the Prince Consort thereby causing an interplanetary diplomatic disaster… right?
When a group of “festive terrorists” start inflicting traditions from a very different midwinter festival on the space station via nano-virus, the Musketeers and the Red Guard are expected to work together to protect Paris Satellite. This isn’t going to end well.
Joyeux is the prequel novella to Musketeer Space, an epic gender-swapped space opera retelling of The Three Musketeers.
And here's the blurb for Musketeer Space itself:
“I haven’t got a blade. I haven’t got a ship. I washed out of the Musketeers. If this is your idea of honour, put down the swords and I’ll take you on with my bare hands.”
Dana D'Artagnan longs for a life of adventure as a Musketeer pilot in the Royal Fleet on Paris Satellite. When her dream crashes and burns, she gains a friendship she never expected, with three of the city's most infamous sword-fighting scoundrels: the Musketeers known as Athos, Porthos and Aramis.
Even as a mecha grunt, Dana has a knack for getting into trouble. She pushes her way into a dangerous political conspiracy involving royal scandals, disguised spaceships, a tailor who keeps getting himself kidnapped, and a seductive spy with far too many secrets.
With the Solar System on the brink of war, Dana is given a chance to prove herself once and for all. But is it worth becoming a Musketeer if she has to sacrifice her friends along the way?
Adventures and duels and intrigues and the long, complex process of disparate personalities coming together to form a bond that goes beyond friendship! That was one of the atmospheres I wanted to evoke when I began writing the Alpennia series. My women lean more heavily toward intellectual duels and philosophical challenges, but there are still a scattering of swordfights, daring rescues, and breathless escapes. In Mother of Souls the stakes go beyond battles of honor to put the fate of Europe in play. And who would think that a composer's hidden mystical talents would prove the key?
The Great November Book Release Re-Boot is a blog series talking about November 2016 releases that may have been overshadowed by unfortunate political events.
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PromotionSaturday, May 20, 2017 - 14:40
Every once in a while, I see a movie because I don't feel like sitting in traffic. I was feeling rather dragged out yesterday after work, and even after my gym workout the traffic app showed red most of the way home, so I pulled up a movie app to see what was showing in the Berkeley/Emeryville area. Not feeling the love for the latest SFF releases, but one of the local art-house type theaters had an intriguing listing for A Quiet Passion, about 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson and starring Cynthia Nixon (as Emily) and Jennifer Ehle (as her sister Lavinia). Well, that sounded like a winner, with the bonus of comfy chairs and a bar-cafe in addition to the usual popcorn stand. How could I lose? Well...
Now it is true that Dickinson's life was not exactly a story of fame, fortune, and glorious literary and personal triumph. She had chronic physical and psychological conditions that overshadowed her entire adult life, including bouts of depression triggered by the deaths of friends and mentors, something akin to agoraphobia, and chronic physical conditions that may have included epilepsy. Her mother was chronically ill for most of Emily's adult life. But this film seems to take delight in emphasizing the miseries and anti-social aspects of Dickinson's life and to downplay her intellectual achievements. We see only a couple glimpses of praise and interest in her poetry from the men (always men) whose respect she desires, and a great deal of minimizing and mean-spirited taunting about it, particularly from her brother Austin.
While the movie passively gives a good depiction of how gender-segregated the social life of an unmarried woman of that era was, it comes close to entirely erasing the elements of romantic friendship that thread through her correspondence and poetry. Her intense friendship with her sister-in-law Susan Gilbert, supported through a voluminous correspondence, is reduced to a quiet confession from Susan that her marriage is troubled by her aversion to sex, later followed by Emily's angry reaction to her brother's extra-marital affair. This version of Emily's story takes the version where her singlehood (in addition to being motivated by her quirks of personality) was due to unhappy attachments to various unavailable men, or to older mentor/father-figures, and to a preoccupation with what she considered to be her physical unattractiveness. (I am agnostic on the question of Dickinson's self-understanding of her affections, but the erasure of the close relationship with Susan Gilbert is not forgivable.)
As the movie progresses (and it runs for slightly over two hours and you feel every minute of that) a combination of moody music, gloomy candlelit settings, long scenes of illness and affliction, and constant bickering interactions with her siblings make you feel that Dickinson as well as the viewer must have been longing for the release of the closing credits.
Pros: Excerpts from Dickinson's poetry are used to good effect in communicating mood and setting. The costuming looks pretty solid, although there were a few outfits that looked badly fitted in the upper torso. Cynthia Nixon does an excellent job of inhabiting the role of Emily DIckinson as depicted in this script.
Cons: The movie makes you wonder why everyone in the 19th century didn't just take to their beds and embrace oblivion in order to get all this dreary business of existence out of the way and move on to salvation. This is the most depressing movie I've seen in a long time, and that includes Lost and Delirious which is so evil I think no one should ever watch it again.
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ReviewsSaturday, May 20, 2017 - 13:08
It's fascinating how the different communities we live in will shift and intersect in unexpected ways over time. Way back in the early '90s Kathleen Knowles and I worked at the same biotech company. I went off to grad school and then to a different biotech company, and she went in other professional directions as well. And then one day I went to a bookstore reading in San Francisco and found we'd come back on an intersection course as authors of lesbian fiction. Two Souls is the most recent book in a loose series beginning with Awake Unto Me, and A Spark of Heavenly Fire, set in turn of the century San Francisco and involving a social network of professional women. Two Souls brings the series up to the 1906 earthquake, which is a guarantee of drama for any historical San Francisco story!
Abigail Eliot is a brilliant naturalist whose entire life is dedicated to her work. When she meets an earnest doctor, Norah Stratton who’s new to San Francisco, they start an unlikely friendship. When the 1906 earthquake and fire strike, they’re both caught up in the event in very different ways. Will their tentative connection turn to a lasting love or will San Francisco’s great tragedy drive them apart?
One of the challenges in writing lesbian historical fiction set before the mid-20th century is to show women in the context of a like-minded community. How did they find and recognize each other? How did they come out to each other in a context when indiscretion could destroy lives? And how did that closed and secret aspect of their lives affect their personal relationships? One of the challenges and joys I've had in writing the Alpennia series--including the most recent book, Mother of Souls--is to create networks of this sort that are as realistic and believable as the rest of the historic setting.
The Great November Book Release Re-Boot is a blog series talking about November 2016 releases that may have been overshadowed by unfortunate political events.
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PromotionFriday, May 19, 2017 - 07:00
I've listened to Lauren Beukes talk about her books on a number of podcasts. This collection--Slipping--looks like an excellent introduction to the range of her writing.
A Punk Lolita fighter-pilot rescues Tokyo from a marauding art installation. Corporate recruits harvest poisonous plants on an inhospitable planet. An inquisitive adolescent ghost disrupts the life of a young architect. Product loyalty is addictive when the brand appears under one’s skin. Award-winning Cape Town author and journalist Lauren Beukes (Zoo City, Moxyland, Broken Monsters) spares no targets in this edgy and satiric retrospective collection. In her fiction and nonfiction, ranging from Johannesburg across the galaxy, Beukes is a fierce, captivating presence throughout the literary landscape.
The Great November Book Release Re-Boot is a blog series talking about November 2016 releases that may have been overshadowed by unfortunate political events. And I'm at a loss to come up with a clever way to tie in a reference to Mother of Souls on this one. Look: I wrote this fabulous book and more people should know about it and read it and tell their friends about how fabulous it is. That's all I've got this time.
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PromotionThursday, May 18, 2017 - 07:00
Back when my first novel was just barely out on the shelves, Tami Veldura interviewed me for the newsletter she sends out to her fans and readers. It meant a lot to me to have someone treat me like a real author at that point. I'm delighted to return the favor by featuring Tami's book Learning to Want as part of the Great November Book Release Re-Boot. It's an erotic story of dominance and submission in a science-fictional setting.
Khoram is an enforcer, a bodyguard, but his boss has just betrayed him. Now he's stranded on a desert planet he's never heard of, chained to the only other human around.
Atash grew up in the cracks of Dulia's complex social structure, where dominance and submission are a man's worth. He's struggled for years on a lower caste but Khoram could be his ticket to a better life if they can find common ground.
Atash wants to teach Khoram the art of submitting by choice and maybe make a name for himself along the way. Khoram, however, isn't here to play Atash's political games. He's going to escape, if his former employer doesn't see him killed first.
I really appreciate the way networks of independent and small-press authors support each other in carving out niches in the publishing market. In many ways, they're reminiscent of the networks of connections and support built by the women of the Alpennia novels to carve out a place in a society that sees them as lesser creatures. Mother of Souls features networks of all kinds: of blood, of desire, of aspiration, of common purpose.
The Great November Book Release Re-Boot is a blog series talking about November 2016 releases that may have been overshadowed by unfortunate political events.
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PromotionWednesday, May 17, 2017 - 07:00
This is the only non-fiction post in the Great November Book Release Re-Boot: a biography of Barbara Grier, one of the founders of Naiad Press and a long-time lesbian activist. Indomitable: The Life of Barbara Grier by historian Joanne Passett chronicles her complex and jam-packed life.
Barbara Grier—feminist, activist, publisher, and archivist—was many things to different people. Perhaps most well known as one of the founders of Naiad Press, Barbara’s unapologetic drive to make sure that lesbians everywhere had access to books with stories that reflected their lives in positive ways was legendary. Barbara changed the lives of thousands of women in her lifetime.
For the first time, historian Joanne Passet uncovers the controversial and often polarizing life of this firebrand editor and publisher with new and never before published letters, interviews, and other personal material from Grier’s own papers. Passet takes readers behind the scenes of The Ladder, offering a rare window onto the isolated and bereft lives lesbians experienced before the feminist movement and during the earliest days of gay political organizing. Through extensive letters between Grier and her friend novelist Jane Rule, Passet offers a virtual diary of this dramatic and repressive era. Passet also looks at Grier’s infamous “theft” of The Ladder’s mailing list, which in turn allowed her to launch and promote Naiad Press, the groundbreaking women’s publishing company she founded with partner Donna McBride in 1973. Naiad went on to become one of the leaders in gay and lesbian book publishing and for years helped sustain lesbian and feminist bookstores—and readers—across the country.
Back when I started reading lesbian fiction in the 1980s, Naiad Press was one of the few companies publishing it, possibly the only one exclusively focusing on lesbian stories. Bella Books is something of a loosely-connected heir to Naiad, having picked up their inventory and continuing to publish many of their authors when the Naiad proprietors wanted to retire. That history was one of the reasons that Bella was at the top of my list when I was ready to submit Daughter of Mystery to publishers. As it happened, I didn't need to work further down the list. My most recent novel, Mother of Souls carries the heritage of a pubishing line that first and foremost supports the right of fictional women to love other fictional women, without apology or flinching.
The Great November Book Release Re-Boot is a blog series talking about November 2016 releases that may have been overshadowed by unfortunate political events.
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PromotionTuesday, May 16, 2017 - 12:50
One of the protections that my Alpennian ladies have for their personal lives is the willingness of Rotenek society to look the other way. To enter enthusiastically into the belief that “nice women don’t do that sort of thing” and therefore that two women who are well-born and respectable could be the closest of romantic friends without ever stepping across the line into forbidden desires.
This attitude is grounded in the contradictory attitudes of the times. The people who celebrated and praised women’s devoted romantic friendships were able to reconcile that with their moral beliefs because they considered that love to be elevated and non-sexual. It wasn’t that they didn’t think women might be sexual with each other, but female homoeroticism was strictly Othered in their minds. It was a thing that foreigners might do, or lower class people, but not People Like Us. And it was that admission that lesbian sexuality could exist that served to place limits on romantic friendship and keep it from entirely subverting heteronormativity. Two women who rejected the pressure to marry men in favor of being devoted to each other risked the possibility of being accused of unnatural desires if their relationship were seen to threaten social norms.
Margerit and Barbara’s relationship may seem “safe” but it treads a tightrope. Despite Margerit’s various expensive projects, she’s still an unmarried heiress. And Barbara is still an unmarried member of the titled nobility. Both states can be viewed as depriving some hypothetical man of what he considers his right to take advantage of those open positions for a spouse. There are men who are not above hinting at the consequences of gossip in order to convince one or the other to choose a more traditional life path.
At the same time, women who aren’t protected by society’s willingness to be oblivious walk an even more dangerous tightrope. And the divide of class can be wider than any commonality of desire. One of the things I wanted to do in Floodtide was to explore this contradiction. Even Roz (our narrator) has been blinded by the assumption that maisetras and mesneras “don’t do things like that.” But when she does see the light, she knows how little it means to her own life.
(from Floodtide, chapter not yet determined)
When I figured it out, my stomach knotted up as tight as a cramp. I knew the maisetra and the baroness were friends who loved each other, but I’d never thought about them being in love. Not like me and Nan. I never imagined them doing the things we had done. Maybe it should have made me feel glad to think the maisetra and I were alike that way, but instead I was frightened. It was one of those dangerous secrets Tavit had warned me about. The kind you didn’t want to know and you didn’t want people to know you knew. I thought about how the maisetra had hired me, even knowing why I’d lost my last place. Maybe that had been a part of it—thinking that we were just a little bit alike--but it wouldn’t go any further than that.
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FloodtidePages
