πόθος

This time tomorrow I will be on a plane. I arrive in Madison at 15.56, so I’ll be at the hotel after however long it takes me to get there from the airport. I’m leaving at the crack of dawn on Monday, to go a-visiting friends for another week.

I will be on 3 panels and at 2 readings! I will otherwise be lurking around other panels, the dealers’ room, the Genderfloomp party, the Strange Horizons tea party and assorted places of gathering.

For identification purposes: tall (5’11”), fairly slim, fairly pale, long curly dark hair either in a braid or loose.

See you there! =D

Originally published at Alex Dally MacFarlane. You can comment here or there.

Powerful words from Catherynne M Valente, talking about writing the second Fairyland book:

“I have tried to write stories that go into the underworld of myth and bring out life and fire—where the old world looked at a woman alone and immortal and said: she must long to die, I have tried to say: look at her live!”

Originally published at Alex Dally MacFarlane. You can comment here or there.

These arrived recently:

The UK edition is out now, while Amazon says the US edition is due out on 5 June (although the Kindle version looks available now). It contains my story “Numismatics in the Reigns of Naranh and Viu”, which is secondary world steampunk with coins and empire-upheaval, as well as stories by a lot of excellent people: Jeff VanderMeer, Genevieve Valentine, Cat Rambo, Shweta Narayan, Aliette de Bodard, Catherynne M Valente, Amal El-Mohtar, Jeffrey Ford, Nicole Kornher-Stace, Lavie Tidhar and many more!

Most exciting of all, this is my first publication in an anthology that I can find on bookshelves! I’ve seen it at several Waterstones, as well as at the Forbidden Planet table at Eastercon. I like this milestone. =D

Here’s a snippet of my story:

The First Coins

For a single day, the royal mint in the City of the Shining Sea struck gold and silver siluhs of Naranh and Viu together in profile. They appeared side-by-side on the obverse face, looking right. The creator of the stamp chose to exaggerate their similarities: their small noses, high brows and gently waving hair. Only Naranh’s youthful beard allowed identification. In truth, they were not so similar as that.

The heavy emphasis on their eyelashes represented the mark of their royal blood: born with lashes of silver, that gleamed even when clouds covered the sky.

The reverse face showed the city’s emblem, the falcon, with billowing wings like clouds of steam.

Originally published at Alex Dally MacFarlane. You can comment here or there.

I’ve been reminded about another story I want to write, now that I’m dedicating a few months solely to short stories.

Back in 2009, I wrote a story called “The Inheritance of Conquest” about travelling and a fictional Alexander, which was very fun to write – but not, in retrospect, a particularly good story. Partly because it was too much a novel-in-miniature. Partly because it was about how magical travel is and how it’s the ~best way to live~ which is very sweet of me but not particularly true. I wrote it at the beginning of a year spent travelling, during which I developed much more complicated views about travel – I love it, still, and would love to go off for an extended period of time again, but there’s a lot more in my thoughts than just “squee new place!” which is about as complex as Nila gets in the story.

But there’s one bit of the story that I can’t shake, years later: the middle segment, which took place in a temple on the edge of a desert. It begins:

The desert covered the horizon with yellow, like endless turmeric, shimmering in the heat. Before it, at the base of the dry mountains, lay Uulin, a cluster of white houses around the pool where a stream disappeared into the ground.

The people of Uulin specialised in the production of bell-figures, so that as Nila walked from the bus stop to the travellers’ lodge she heard, above the whistling of wind and people’s voices, thousands of chiming, tinkling, ringing, gonging mouths. Their figures stood on windowsills, walls, roadsides, ceilings, shrines and shops. Their bodies, carved into clothing, and their plain faces were made of sandstone. The only facial feature was the metal bell, each unique.

Nila spent a day wandering the town, admiring the figures, before visiting the temple: the last building before the desert. It rose higher than the city, desert-yellow, carved into more bell-figures than Nila could count, like a sea rock covered in nesting birds. These gods of Uulin had quite different needs to those of her land. She stared up at it until someone laughed.

“Your mouth is hanging open like a bell,” said the yellow-garbed woman. “I wonder, if the wind blows between your teeth, will you clang or chime.”

Bells bells bells bells.

(One day I will stop comparing deserts to turmeric but that day is not today. And yes I have seen sand a brilliant yellow that justifies the comparison: Australiaaa.)

And another bit:

“On the walls,” the woman said, indicating ladders to the doors that hung at various heights, like paintings. “We will take the highest. Leave your bag at the base.”

The climb wearied Nila’s arms.

Through the door, the woman led her onto a narrow path between the figures, like a sheep-trail on a mountainside. Nila clung to the nearest one, a female with a silver bell — exquisitely carved dragon on its side, tiny jades for eyes, and a gentle ring like a girl’s song — and stared: at the city spread out in front of her, at the ankle-high, knee-high and life-size figures surrounding her, at the sound of bells here where nothing else tainted the ear. At the woman, who knelt in front of a teak-belled figure and sang like the wind — rushing, a high whistling — and at the bell that rang louder and louder.

I want to write about this temple. It’s too awesome not to. I want to write about what it is to be one of the final, important waystations on a rather questionable pilgrimage – to the last place my fictional Alexander was known to reach before disappearing/dying. What do the women/winds of the temple think of all this? What do they do when someone claiming to be his descendent arrives?

So that’s another one for the to-write list.

Originally published at Tales and Foreign Markets. You can comment here or there.

I’m researching for a story set in the time when humans had potentially interesting relationships with foxes (the Kebaran period), which means reading various interesting articles about this period and the following Natufian period (there’s a lot on the Natufian because it marks some interesting changes towards sedentary living, and it comes with a lot of “this is how the Natufian differed to previous cultures” which is useful for me – also it’s really interesting). An amazing number of these articles are available online through what look like legal means, which saves me having to go to the British Library to access JSTOR. I may yet need a day there, but it’s great being able to get most of the research done from home, especially as my home is open in the evenings and on Sundays.

When I’m done I’ll post a bibliography, for anyone who shares my interest in such things, but for now I bring you a source of amusement to me this afternoon.

I’m reading an article about a particular Kebaran site and it has some pie charts showing the percentages of animal remains found on the site.

‘sup Starfox team.

Originally published at Tales and Foreign Markets. You can comment here or there.

The state of various projects/life things:

The Bone Queen

Sent back to the agent who was interested in it.

Hopefully he will think it works now. If not, I will need to dig up my spreadsheet of agent submissions and see who I haven’t submitted it to yet. I like this book far too much to let it languish. (Arguably I could re-submit to agents who have seen it, because I’ve made some substantial changes, especially to the first half – but hopefully it won’t come to this anyway.)

Anxiety, hello. Ahhhhhhh. I want so much for the book to be good enough. Ahhh.

Onwards.

ETA: Very quick reply from him to say that he’s incredibly busy for the next 6 months. This gives me several choices, which I will consider when it’s not midnight.

Akkadian

The classes ended in March, but I still have to do the final assignment. This is due before the end of the month. Hopefully I haven’t forgotten how Akkadian works in all this work on bones and deserts and stories and no šumma.

Sadly the intermediate Akkadian course isn’t being offered next academic year – but Sumerian is being offered instead! I am obviously going to do that. :>

SF novella

This is the one set among the same people as in “Sung Around Alsar-Scented Fires”, several generations later when the problems have worsened. I have 2,000 words so far. Tentative title is “Under Falna’s Mask”, as the protagonist, Mar-teri, is in dialogue with the kind of story that Falna’s song tells.

Mar-teri is interesting to write, because she’s young, but she’s dealing with adult concerns – and, prior to the novella, has made a decision that might be called her growing-up decision. Now she’s finding that even adults have an ongoing learning process, especially ones who have to lead a group of people to safety. Getting the perfect balance for this isn’t easy, but it’s fun. It helps, of course, that Mar-teri is competent and passionate and a bit flawed but mostly good at her role.

I’m going to enjoy writing this novella.

Stories

So many stories to work on! I have two that need small edits before being sent back out on submission. I want to have another go at the SF story I’ve been calling “Spices in SPAAAACE”, which I had critiqued at Wiscon back in 2008 but was unable, at the time, to fix to my satisfaction. It’s set in the same future as Falna and Mar-teri, but several centuries earlier and in a different part of their star system. (I really want to be writing and publishing more SF. I hope this story will be a strong step in that direction.) I need to research the historical period in which people lived with foxes so I can write a story about that. I also need to research my currently vague idea for a historical and/or SF story about propaganda posters. (Research, research, research! I need more some story-ideas that won’t become entire projects – except that the heftier they feel in my head, the better I suspect they will be.) Then there’s a weird Fox Confessor IN SPAAAACE retelling that I started…

And that’s just the stories I want to work on immediately.

And now I can actually work on them instead of imagining them! I was hoping to be able to do this at the beginning of April, not the end, but oh well. Stories! And a poem that needs rewriting! And stories!

I think it’s a joke to expect that I’ll be less busy now that I’m no longer editing The Bone Queen. XD

Originally published at Tales and Foreign Markets. You can comment here or there.

As I think I briefly mentioned, I will be at Wiscon this year, and here are the panels/readings at which you will be able to find me:

The Moment of Change: Feminist SFF Poetry Open Mic, Fri 9:00–10:15 pm, Michelangelos
Reading: Rose Lemberg, Shira Lipkin, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Sofia Samatar and anyone else who wants to celebrate The Moment of Change and feminist poetry in general!

The Powerless Heroine, Sat 10:00–11:15 am, Capitol A
Nancy Werlin, Beth Friedman, Anna Black, Michael J. “Orange Mike” Lowrey, Alex Dally MacFarlane
YA fantasy is filled with kick-ass competent heroines. But what about the girl who can’t wield a weapon or use magic? Can she even be a heroine? What kind of power can she have? In other words, does a writer always need to bestow powers that are unlikely in the real world on a girl, in order to have her be powerful and important in a fantasy landscape? Or are there other metaphors for power?

The Wild Ones, Sat 4:00–5:15 pm, Conference 2
Reading: Rose Lemberg, Shira Lipkin, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Patty Templeton

It’s Actually Quite Hard to Rip a Bodice: How to Use (and Not Abuse) Historical Details in Fiction, Sun 1:00–2:15 pm, Capitol B
Vylar Kaftan, Lucy Adlington, Ellen Klages, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Elizabeth Bear
Anachronisms can really get a person’s stockings in a twist. A 19th-Century heroine stalking the land in stiletto heels? Or, worse, being assaulted by a hunk who has no idea how to access a body bound by corsetry? But readers don’t want the story derailed by an author’s excessive display of “see-what-I-know-itis.” There are an increasing number of online sources for historical research. How do you gauge their accuracy? When telling your story, how do you strike a balance between imaginative flair and downright pedantry?

Creating Your Own Religion, Sun 10:00–11:15 pm, Conference 4
K. Tempest Bradford, Ann Leckie, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Deirdre M. Murphy, Larissa N. Niec
Which SF authors create interesting, believable religions, and which get religion wrong? (What does it mean to “get religion wrong” anyway?) Do made-up religions with intervening gods work better than those without? How can we as writers avoid making mistakes when creating and writing about fictional religions?

Many things! Exciting! Less than a month and a half away! =D

Originally published at Tales and Foreign Markets. You can comment here or there.

Ready your bingo cards, for we are about to descend into the pit of fools people responding to my Eastercon post on Twitter.

I posted it at lunchtime and got a few positive replies/mentions/retweets during the afternoon. Then I got home from work to find, alongside another couple of positive mentions, this first set of gems:

While he doesn’t use the word “censorship”, I can’t help but see that kind of idea lurking behind the bottom tweet: it’s upsetting that I’m denying the worth of idiots’ statements? Really? I didn’t say this on Twitter because 140 characters, but I give an ever-decreasing shit about how well-travelled someone is. Expats can spew some of the worst racist garbage out there, so visiting another country clearly doesn’t grant someone automatic knowledge. The point of my post isn’t to say “Oh no you haven’t been to China or read a book about China, you can’t comment!” but to say “Do not make blanket statements about something you are ignorant of!” Own your ignorance, people.

The top tweet seems to place the responsibility on me to fix this, which, LOL. Next!

As I said in reply to this person, we are not in primary school: no one gets gold stars – or exemption from criticism – just for trying. Racist shit went down at Eastercon and we will do the con and its attendees much more of a disservice by not talking about it. I do appreciate the efforts of the con staff, but they cannot pretend that racism (and other fails) did not happen!

I feel that my position is neatly summed up in this exchange:

Fuck the Cult of Nice. I am not here to be nice. I am calling attention to a problem, because otherwise I am complicit. Apparently this is not as important as saving face? HOKAY THEN.

Because, you see, it is upsetting that people are being critical of the con. It makes people sad!

I am going to table-flip FOR ALL FUCKING TIME.

Do you know what makes people sad? What makes people feel that they don’t belong in what should be their own community, their own country? What makes people isolated and alone and afraid and depressed? RACISM DOES THOSE THINGS.

GROW THE FUCK UP, PEOPLE.

I have now been accused of bullying Emmzzi, who has left Twitter as a result of what I’ve said. This is what I said to Emmzzi:

I’m one of those apparently rare geeks who was never bullied (ignored and friendless for certain periods of time, but not actively bullied) so idk, I’m no expert on bullying.

Yes, Emmzzi was helping to organise the con and did a lot of hard, admirable work – but denying that faily things happened at Eastercon is actively harmful to the people who are consistently ignored and marginalised and misrepresented and attacked by the white-dominated world of Western cons. What a twist: this situation is complicated! The con did some excellent things. It also did some bad things. WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS.

We actively need to talk about this, or it is never going to stop.

As long as you criticise me for speaking out, I am going to do everything I fucking can to speak louder.

Originally published at Tales and Foreign Markets. You can comment here or there.

I spent a sizeable chunk of this past weekend at Eastercon – the biggest SF con in the UK – and overall had an excellent time: hanging out with friends, meeting some people for the first time offline, and talking to some people I hadn’t ever expected to talk to. I was on my first ever panel. Aside from feeling very introverted by the end of it, I should be able to report that it was a wonderful weekend and Easteron is glorious and leave it at that.

I can’t.

This isn’t a post about John Meaney’s almost impressively offensive attempt to perform stand-up comedy at the BSFA Awards, for which he has fauxpologised, although it partly is. If Meaney’s speech had been the only instance of fail at Eastercon, we would probably gather round, mock him, call him an idiotic fuckwit and go home. But it really, really wasn’t the only fail.

I went to a number of panels about a wide range of topics this weekend. By Friday afternoon – that’s the first day of the con – I was already suggesting that we start a drinking game for people who mention China. (That’s the country, not the writer that Meaney “comedically” thinks is Vin Diesel.) From blithe remarks along the lines of “totalitarian regimes like China” to the utterly baffling, almost no one at Eastercon seemed to have any idea about China the real country, rather than China the caricature as portrayed in scaremongering Western media.

Did you know that in China, people are forced into the fields to hand-pollinate the flowers because all the bees are dead?

Well, now you know.

The one person who did seem to know something about China was Dr Leah-Nani Alconel, who talked about China’s incredible investment in space exploration technology. This is pertinent to my recent post about non-white SF: China is putting lots of money, training and resource into space science. SF authors, take note. You’ll be shocked to know that unlike everyone else making sweeping statements about China, Dr Alconel – who gave specific examples from her own experience of talking to Chinese scientists – is not white.

In a panel on Saturday about fantastic landscapes, the panellists started talking about London and how it can seem both real and science fictional. However, when one panellist started describing Lima (a city in Peru), she talked only about how it was science fictional. The idea that Lima is a real city in which real people live is apparently not worthy of comment. (This same panellist also described her book, in which there are very poor people and very rich people, and said the poor people are happy with their lives and even look down on the rich people.)

Later on this panel, the discrepancy between a very pricey hotel and the regular people of Hong Kong was described as an embodiment of Ying-Yang.

On a related note: while I wasn’t at the panel where Damien Walter felt the need to explain Buddhism, I hear that it was quite something.

And Lavie Tidhar reports that after the non-Anglophone SF panel (which featured non-Anglophone panellists), the following “compliment” was given: “For people who don’t speak English as a first language – your English is VERY GOOD!”

On my panel, “The Personal is Political”, which was about taking responsibility for fail (haha), the sole male panellist reported that To Kill A Mockingbird made him ~understand~ racism (Edit: although, when called on this by Jude, he amended his wording) and repeatedly told us all how diverse his award-winning books are and stressed that white males are ~trying their best~. Perhaps I put him on the defensive by saying quite early on that I no longer trust unknown male authors as much as I trust unknown female authors, but that’s not an excuse for his cookie-seeking antics. (Edit: What I think I failed to emphasise here is that it was his whole attitude that bothered me. Everyone says stupid things, but he persistently drew attention to him and his personal attempts to be a good person, rather than discussing the wider issues like the rest of us.) Additionally, while this panel represented a number of female and queer voices, it was strikingly all-white; given its subject matter, this is a glaring problem.

Then there’s the BSFA Awards speech, which was… something else. John Meaney went on for 40 minutes. We got Lauren Beukes being reduced to her looks, we got Ian McDonald being somehow capable of talking to Beukes even though she’s so so good looking (gosh, maybe McDonald sees Beukes as a human being?), we got something about Israelis liking to punch people in the face and how strange it is that someone called Lavie Tidhar could write a book called Osama, we got male allies being called “new men” in a very mocking way, we got a woman liking muscle cars OH MY GOD HOW BIZARRE, we got an impression of a stereotypical working class plumber whose girlfriend likes to go to Ibiza, and by that point I was walking out the door. Given that I was sitting by the door, I can tell you that quite a lot of people were walking out.

In the same ceremony (although before John Meaney got on the stage), Tori Truslow was commended in the James White Award for her story “Train in Vain”. You would think that this, at least, is a cause for 100% joy. Sadly not, as one of the judges described her story (set in Thailand) as containing “exotic intrigue” and “exotic imagery”. She talks about how damaging the word “exotic” is over here.

I think that’s all. But I’m sure it’s not, because I’m white and I only went to so many panels and only talked to so many people. As a woman and a queer person, I felt welcome at the con, but the continual current of fail – especially towards non-white people and countries and cultures – was un-ignorable.

Look. I don’t want to piss over the fun everyone had at Eastercon, I really don’t, because there was a lot of positivity at the con too, but all of the above is shitty and unacceptable and needs to stop, and I can’t not call attention to it.

Originally published at Tales and Foreign Markets. You can comment here or there.

Eastercon starts tomorrow! I will be there on Friday, Saturday and Sunday from late morning until the evening, lurking around wherever there is good lurking to be had. At about 10pm every night I will turn into a pumpkin and take the tube home, because staying in a London hotel would make my wallet tearbend.

I will also be on a panel.

Sunday 7pm – room 38 (Edwardian) – “The personal is political”
Nic Clarke, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Simon Morden, Jude Roberts and Celeste R West
What responsibility do you have for what you write? Does a work exist in isolation? How do you account for personal reactions to a work? To what extent does the quality of the writing and authorial intent matter? Who decides what is gratuitous?

Come and see me being opinionated about writing! I think you all know where I’m going to fall on those questions. >:D

I hope to see you there!

Originally published at Tales and Foreign Markets. You can comment here or there.