Monday, March 23. 2020The Drowning Kings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhmAUZBnGSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3o6Gn-aa9M
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Friday, August 23. 2019New Novella!
I've always felt conflicted about the figure of Kign Arthur. As a historian of the early middle ages, he can be a problem, as the evidence for him is very thin, yet there are a lot of rather misleading books out there about him. As a writer, though, I find the whole canon of Arthurian works fascinating. We tend to tell the same story, these days, but in the 12th through 15th centuries, there were many many different stories told, with different heroes and different endings. Serpent Rose is one of those: I wrote it in an attempt to explore the characters of Lamorak de Galis, who is said to have been the third greatest of Arthur's knights, yet remains obscure in most retellings. The Prose Tristan contains elements of what may be lost stories about him, and I have used some of those. But his story wove its way into a story about the Orkney brothers, too, and particularly Gaheris. These days, he's one of the minor figures in the Arthur stories, but like his elder brother Gawain, he seems once to have been more significant, and, also like Gawain, his character has rather taken a beating from Sir Thomas Malory onwards. I've always rather liked him though, so... Serpent Rose is high Arthuriana, set in the imaginary world of tournaments, heroic knights, quests and castles, rather than in a pseudo-early mediaeval context. It has a companion piece already written, which focuses on Gareth's wife (Lyonese/Llinos) and her story, and there are a couple more planned.
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Saturday, July 27. 2019Worldcon in Dublin!
I will be reading from new work, as well as doing several panels. I hope to see some of you there.
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Monday, April 1. 2019
You can find me on Facebook these days, for updates on what I'm writing and what I'm doing.
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Tuesday, March 22. 2016My Mancunicon schedule
Mancunicon, the British National Science Fiction convention, is approaching rapidly and I have my schedule. I'm
particularly looking forward to interviewing Aliette de Bodard on Saturday and to the Tanith Lee tribute item. I hope to see at least some of you there! Revealing History, Revealing Now Friday 17:30 - 18:30, Room 8&9 (Hilton Deansgate) We think of historical fantasy and alternate history as changing the past: but can they be used, instead, to reveal it? How do the tools of SF and fantasy enable writers to tell stories that allow us to think differently about our understanding of history? How can such stories help us to better understand the present? (And which "us" is defining "our", in any case?) Susan Bartholomew (M), Jacey Bedford, Aliette de Bodard, Kari Sperring, Sarah Walters. A Tribute to Tanith Lee Saturday 14:30 - 15:30, Deansgate 3 (Hilton Deansgate) Tanith Lee was the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award, for Death's Master (1980). She was nominated for and won various World Fantasy Awards, and wrote over 90 novels, 300 short stories, poetry, a children's book and episodes of the TV show Blake's 7. Her work explored feminism and sexuality. In this discussion, five of her literary "nieces", who all have a short story in an anthology dedicated to her (to be published by Storm under the title Night's Nieces), enthuse about her works and what made her such a critical figure in female and British Fantasy until her untimely death in May 2015. Storm Constantine, Kari Sperring, Sarah Singleton, Freda Warrington, Liz Williams, John Kaiine Guest of Honour Interview - Aliette de Bodard Sunday 16:00 - 17:00, Deansgate 2&3 (Hilton Deansgate) Aliette de Bodard was born in the USA, and grew up in London and Paris, where she now lives and works. She began publishing short fiction in 2006, and gained rapid notice, particularly for work in her Xuya setting, including the Nebula Award-winning stories "Immersion" (2012) and "The Waiting Stars" (2013), and the Hugo-nominated novella On a Red Station, Drifting (2012). Her first novel Servant of the Underworld, published in 2010, began the Obsidian & Blood series of Aztec mysteries. Her most recent book is The House of Shattered Wings, a BSFA Award nominee this year. Kari Sperring (M), Aliette de Bodard. Historical Fiction and Fanfiction Sunday 17:30 - 18:30, Room 8&9 (Hilton Deansgate) Historical fiction is set in the past. Fanfiction is produced by fans, for fans, using famous people or source texts as an inspiration. Frequently the worlds overlap. This panel discusses the overlaps, benefits and pitfalls of them. The overlaps include writing fanfiction about historical fiction, setting fanfiction in an alternative universe by placing the narrative in a different historical era, fanworks about real-life historical figures (Historical RPF), or historical fanworks - any fanwork set in the past. Amanda Baker (M), V Allan, Kari Sperring, Zoe Sumra, ickle_tayto Science Fiction Criticism - Masterclass 1 Sunday 19:00 - 20:00, Room 10 (Hilton Deansgate) Every Summer the Science Fiction Foundation holds a Masterclass in Science Fiction Criticism with world-renowned critics, academics and authors. This session provides a taster. Participants are required to sign up in advance (at Ops) and should read the short story assigned for the session. There is a limit of ten participants. This session will be looking at Liz Williams, 'The Banquet of the Lords of Night', which can be found online athttps://clarkesworldmagazine.com/williams Tony Keen, Kari Sperring. I will also be working in Green Room (when aren't I? My favourite place!) and helping out with the bid for Follycon, so this is shaping up to be a busy convention.
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Thursday, January 22. 2015Picocon 32 14th and 15th February 2015I'm one of the guests of honour at this year's Picocon (which is number 32), alongside three great writers -- Frances Hardinge, Ian MacDonald and Cory Doctorow., at Imperial College, London. I'm delighted to be asked -- it's the second time I'm been one of their guests and I'm glad I was interesting enough last time that they wanted me back. It's one of my favourite cons: it's run by the members of the Imperial College Science Fiction and Fantasy Society, who are mostly students and they put on wonderfully imaginative, entertaining programmes. I came up through student sf societies and university-based cons, and going to Picocon is like going back to my roots. There's more information on their website here: https://www.union.ic.ac.uk/scc/icsf/picocon/
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Saturday, November 1. 2014Guest of Honour at Novacon 44I'm been invited to be Guest of Honour at Novacon 44, in Nottingham on 14 - 16 November at the Park Inn Nottingham. It's a real honour and I'm delighted to have been asked. You can find the details here: https://www.novacon.org.uk/n44/
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Saturday, May 10. 2014Writers who last?So, The Guardian has an interesting article today about forgotten writers. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/10/literary-reputations-zero-hero-dj-taylor Being me, I am of course certain that I will be forgotten myself (without having ever reached the heights of minor recognition, let alone 'hero') apart perhaps for some of my academic pieces. And that's fine with me, too. Also being me, I've read at least 3 of the 'forgotten' writers mentioned here (Morgan, Dreiser, Wilson) and heard of all the others apart from Mary Mann. But I'm not typical, I suspect (I have a widely -read mother and I have been known to read historical literary criticism for fun and then tracked down the books.) The article focuses on 'literary' writers. There are names it doesn't mention -- Rosamund Lehman, John Fowles, Elizabeth Taylor, Elizabeth Bowen -- which I hope means people are still assumed to be reading them. There are, of course, far more 'forgotten' genre writers who were huge in their time -- Weyman, Sabatini, even Michael Innes, who was A N Wilson under a pseudonym. As the article shows in the case of Virigina Woolf, writers can go out of fashion and be rediscovered, or indeed rescued from obscurity entirely. Dumas has never stopped being read or being in print but he has only begun to be accepted by the literary establishment as more than just a 'popular' writer in the last quarter century or so. On the flip side, Dickens was canonised almost at once, despite his popularity, and remains so despite the problems of misogyny, classism and sentimentality in is work. (I do not like Dickens. If I'm going to read social realism of that period, I'll take Balzac and Dostoyevsky.) Who are your favourite forgotten writers? And who do you predict may be the writers canonised into fame by later generations? I'd like to see a rise in the recognition of Anne Bronte over her sisters, of Emily Eden, Rosamund Lehman and Rumer Godden. And, moving closer to now, Patricia Geary, Pat Murphy, Tanith Lee (who really belongs up there with Angela Carter already), Justina Robson, Judith Tarr and Zenna Henderson.
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Monday, April 14. 2014
A quiet year so far: no that that's a bad thing! I shall be heading up to Glasgow to attend this year's Eastercon, Satellite 4. Hope to see some of you there!
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Wednesday, October 30. 2013World FantasyconTomorrow morning, I shall be setting off to Brighton for World Fantasycon. I'm not as ready as I'd like -- on the plus side, my hair has been cut and coloured -- I have purple streaks!! -- I have baked fairy cakes to take along (almost entirely lactose free [there are 4 with lemon curd in] plus some that are also gulten-free. All lemon flavoured, because, well, this is me.) I've done some packing. But I lost much of yesterday to a migraine and thus am behind. Bah. Skirts are being selected (of course): green cord mini with deer print; teal and fuchsia flippy; beautiful batik beaded (by request of the marquis). I'm now havering between blue blurred flower print (just about my knee) and silky silver and lilac pint (floor length). These decisions are important And I have programme: Thursday 3.00 pm. Living in the Past: Writing Historical Fantasy When writing historical fantasy, how important is it to stick to the facts, or is the past fair game for authors of fantastic fiction to manipulate how they wish? Aidan Harte, Helen Marshall (mod.), Sophia McDougall, Mark Charan Newton, Tim Powers, Kari Sperring. Friday 6.00 pm Reading I haven't decided exactly what to read yet. Any suggestions? I hope to see some of you there.
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Saturday, June 29. 2013What Safety Means to MeI wrote this, originally, back in 2010, for the UK fanzine Journey Planet and their issue focusing on sexual harassment. It seems germane to the current discussions. I don’t remember when I learnt that my body was not mine alone. That knowledge, that I am partly public, has been with me for years and years and years. I absorbed it in the comments of family and friends on how pretty – or, more often plain – I was. I drew it in from the pictures on the television, the Slimcea girl who was showing herself to the world, perfected through self-privation.; the Playtex girdle woman who knew that hours of discomfort was better by far than being seen to be imperfect; the Harmony girl on whose hair men always remarked. I knew it from my mother’s comments on actresses and models and friends. My mother is a kind woman, and her comments were seldom cutting, and yet I knew all the same from her that X wasn’t as pretty as she might be, due to the size of her hips, or that Y dressed badly for her shape. I knew it through the girls at school who were harsh in their judgement of everything – openly their enemies, privately, their friends, most privately of all, perhaps, of themselves. I’m so fat, I’m so plain, my nose is all wrong, I’m flat-chested, my boobs are too big. Not one of us was content with herself and nor were we encouraged to be. We were female in public, there to be seen and to remarked upon. Sometimes boys were remarked on also – for size, for hair colour – but it was only certain boys, not all boys. It was not all the time. There was no Slimcea boy, no girdle guy, and the Old Spice man was an adventurous surfer. People did not touch my brother in the same ways they tried to touch me, and they did not caution him that his behaviour must be modulated at all times to avoid the wrong kinds of attention from the opposite sex. Boys have powerful impulses. You mustn’t lead them on. It was a double warning: my body was not only mine, and it was up to me to police it at all times lest it cause problems. We are taught, all of us, from early on, that the female form is both desirable and dangerous. We are taught to feel ashamed of it or awed, covetous or intimidated, despairing or resentful. Girls are taught that it must be controlled and disciplined, pummelled and starved, before it can become acceptable – ‘figure faults’ must be corrected, different parts must be displayed or covered, stripped of hair, dyed, strapped in, or out, or down. Yes, some of us opt out of some or all of this. But whatever we do, there will likely be comments. And you’re wondering, out there, what all this has to do with anything, you’re wondering, and maybe saying, ‘well, men have body image issues too, and people yell things at them too’, and all that is true enough. But what I’m saying is this: we are taught as a culture that women are to be looked at, and both sides accept this. And this inevitably affects the ways in which we behave to ourselves and to each other. The female body is culturally packaged and sold back to us, not as it is – the shape of a person – but as something separate, something at once less and more, and it’s this attitude that leads to the Open Source Boob Project nonsense of a year or so ago (the promoters of that seemed to have forgotten that breasts come attached to people). Being female is an action, in every moment and every space, it is loaded, immanent with meaning, coded, complicated. When I was nineteen, a man I knew though fandom stalked me for about 6 months. I did not know it was stalking, though I knew it was worrying and distressing and undesirable. I didn’t know it wasn’t my fault. Some of that was down to circumstances – stalking had not at the time been widely discussed and I had no label for it. Part of it is down to my own education: I didn’t know what to do with the situation, how to deal with it. I’m not sure I told anyone, apart from my boyfriend of the time. He blamed me for it. I must have done something to make this happen. I spent 6 months feeling scared and culpable, trying to avoid the stalker and simultaneously feeling that I ought to be extra nice to him, because somehow I had made him do this, I had brought this on myself, while all the time inside me all I could hear was fear and revulsion and a desire to get him as far from me as I could. Another young woman might have reported him, made a fuss, made threats: I wasn’t that woman, I hadn’t been told that was allowed. I’m lucky: that man didn’t hurt me. In the end, he found another young woman who was actually interested in him and entered into a long relationship with her. But all these years later, I wish that 19-year-old self had known she was allowed to make a fuss, to summon college porters, to threaten him with the wrath of college authorities. Because I didn‘t have to endure that, I didn’t have to hide in my room like that for all that time, it had never been my fault. He was attracted to me. I was not attracted to him. That should have been the last of it. But my context – and that old boyfriend – convicted me of being female in public, contributory in my own fate. I was lucky. I’m not even sure I should write that, though my head is full of sentences which start that way. I’m lucky, I’ve never been raped. But what about the man – a different man, around that same time – who insisted on spending the night in my room despite my protests, and on handling me despite my protests, because he was unhappy and I owed him? What about the man who verbally coerced me into sex? The man who forced me into his car? The man – a complete stranger who openly groped my body in a con lounge? The man who informed me I would be providing him with sex due to my hair colour? What about all those men who looked and saw my shape or my clothes, saw Woman, but not Person? Was it luck that meant none of those situations got out of hand? Lots of time, no, it wasn’t, it was other people – the good guys and gals of fandom who came over and intervened, who protected and helped, who helped me when I didn’t know how to help myself. Sometimes it was… I don’t know. Not luck, just a sense that I had to get through this and out the other side. Not all the situations I’ve listed above happened within fandom, but all of them happened. I’m not particularly pretty: I was just sometimes in the wrong place. It’s a sad fact that most women have had brushes with this kind of thing. Which is not to say that all men are bastards, all men are abusers, all men are the enemy. Nothing is that simple. Nothing is that easy. And fandom can be extra-complicated, because it constructs itself as a safe space in many ways. It’s often said that fans include a fair number of people whose experience of wider society has not always been kind, and who are perhaps thinner skinned or less comfortable with some forms of socialisation. A lot of people expect to be more readily accepted within fandom. (I’m not 100% sure that this is true: fandom can look pretty unkind sometimes. But this is not the place for yet another discussion of the Myth of Fannish Tolerance.) Fans can be more touchy-feely with one another, they may dress a little (or a lot) oddly. It can be hard to see where boundaries lie. It can be very easy to cross those boundaries by accident. It happens. But there is a huge difference between accident and intent. And that’s where the difficulties arise. That’s when safety for one person becomes danger for another. If you dress like I do – I have done – then it will draw attention of all kinds. I accept that (and the only time I resented it involved a hotel employee who was hoping for a bribe). I accept that if I wear a short skirt, someone may comment and the comment may not be complimentary. I accept that I may be asked for contact or more. I dress as I do because it’s how I am, who I am. And I accept the consequences. Up to a point, and here it is: it’s still my body, my self. I’m still a person, under the clothes and the flesh. I have the right to say no. I have the right to say no and walk away. I have the right to say no and walk away and to have that respected. It was the chant of the Reclaim the Night marches: Whatever I wear and wherever I go, yes means yes and no means no. It ought to be easy. It isn’t, of course. People get confused, or resent what they see as rejection. People misinterpret, they hope, they imagine. We all do it. But the thing is that once that ‘no’ is established, that should be the end of it. My reactions are my responsibility. Yours are yours. I didn’t owe that young man who stalked me anything, but he didn’t understand that, and for month on month, he made my life unsafe. And it really is that simple. It’s okay to ask. But no is no, and that should get to be the end of it. Endnote: I'm 50. I'm average looking. These days, I'm fairly sharp-tongued. I've yet to get through a single con without someone behaving inappropriately to me. Touching, backing into corners, talking to my (modest) cleavage, asking creepy questions, standing too close. I am, I repeat, 50. I've been with the same man for nearly 26 years and we are usually together at cons. And men go on doing this, sometimes in front of him. This is not how the world should be. You can find more of this discussion by looking for the #sffragette hashtag on twitter
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Thursday, April 25. 2013#WomentoreadSo, yesterday I decided to indulge in another round of that intermittent habit, poking the internet with a stick, but starting a hashtag -- #womentoread -- over on Twitter. I asked people to recommend sff by women. The response was astonishing: I'd hoped that some of my friends would pick it up, but... One of the very first to do so was Seanan Mcguire (Thank you, Seanan!) and it just took off. All afternoon (my timezone) and well into the evening, people were naming their favourites, exchanging names and recommendations and ideas. It was huge fun and the enthusiasm and engagement and excitement was just wonderful. I am profoundly grateful to everyone who joined in and help this happen. Towards the end of the day (my time) writer Harry Connolly (gave me the idea of capitalising on all this momentum by linking it to a series of blogposts about specific women writers and post links to these pieces on twitter using the hashtag. (You can read Harry's article here I've written about women writers whose work I love before, of course, but the problem has been that relatively few people saw them -- mainly my existing social circle and readers. And that is a key issue for many women writers: underexposure. But the hashtag, as I said, has some momentum, so this seems like an opportunity to try and raise the profile of writing by women and to address that underexposure to some degree. But why now, exactly. I've done something like this before (last year with the fantasy by women thing). That's part of it. I am an activist to my bones: it's coded into me to try and do something when I see an injustice. And I know far too many really great women writers who are underrated, under-reviewed, under-recognised. I see male writers praised for doing things in books which women did before them, which women are doing as well as them -- but the women are ignored and sidelined. It is a fact that books by women are reviewed less frequently than books by men, and that prestigious review locales pay less attention to women than men. This year's review survey came out two days ago. During the day, my twitter feed was full of men -- many of them high-profile and influential -- decrying the under-representation of women writers in reviews (and I am very glad to see them recognising this and commenting on it) but immediately going back to talking about, promoting and praising works by other men. Last week, my friend and fellow writer Juliet E McKenna found ourselves in a major branch of a major UK book-chain in Oxford and noticed a promo table for fantasy. We're both fantasy authors, we took a look. The theme was clearly 'If you like George R R Martin, try this". It was a table about 4 foot x 4 foot square, piled high with fantasy. Great. Except... all but three of the writers represented were men. And of the remaining 3 -- the women -- two were not epic fantasy writers but established Big Name Bestsellers -- Stephenie Meyer and Suzanne Collins and the books by them on that table were both sf. That's fine. I love sf by women. But those two books -- The Host and The Hunger Games weren't there because they were 'like' A Game of Thrones; they were there because they're already bestsellers in a related field. The other women present was an epic fantasy author and a good one -- Robin Hobb. Who has a gender-neutral name. I'm not saying the men on that table aren't good: there were some excellent books there, by excellent writers. There were also books by men I've never heard of, which are quite probably also excellent books. But the overall impression was 'This is A Man's World'. Jules and I started making a list of who was not on that table, of women who are epic fantasy writers and published in the UK. Kate Elliott Judith Tarr Freda Warrington Gail Z Martin Trudy Canavan Karen Miller/K E Mills Glenda Larke Cecilia Dart-Thornton Gaie Sebold Juliet E McKenna Tanith Lee Amanda Downum That was in about a minute. Now, you can argue, very reasonably, that some of those women are out-of-print here (but you might like to think about how they came to fall out of print in this context, given that contracts depend on sales, sales depend on exposure -- and women do not get the exposure). A table that censored women from a genre. A twitter feed that decried a wrong -- and then went back to the male default. I saw red. At some point on the 22nd April, I asked, rather wistfully, if we could declare the next day -- yesterday -- promote women writers day. I got two responses, both from women, saying, yes, lets, and so... I did. You can see some of the responses and recommendations here. You can find more by going to twitter and hunting for the hashtag #womentoread. You can share the idea. You can write a review of a book by a woman. You can blog about a woman writer you admire. You can post a list of links to the websites of women writers you love. It doesn't have to be ep;ic fantasy or even sff. It can be any genre. And then, please, go to twitter and tweet that link with the #womentoread hashtag. If you're not on twitter, post the link here in the comments and I will tweet it for you.This isn't about me. I know how it can look, I'm a fantasy writer. But really, it isn't. This is about all those fantastic women writers whose books I've treasured for years, about Tanith Lee and Evangeline Walton, Judith Tarr and Kate Elliott, Anne Gay, Storm Constantine, Sherwood Smith, Rumer Godden, Juliet McKenna, Barabar Michaels, Elizabeth Goudge, Liz WIlliams, Dion Fortune, Sheila Gilluly, R A McAvoy, Barbara Hambly, Leah Bobet, Sarah Monette, Justina Robson, Amanda Downum, Claudia J Edwards, Sharan Newman, Freda Warrington, Stephanie Saulter, Lisanne Norman, Jaine Fenn... I could go on and one and on. Some of those writers are long-established, some are out of print and out of contract, some are new, some are dead. But they are all great. And me? Later today I'll be blogging here and on my livejournal blog about a woman whose books were a lightning bolt to my writing world, Nancy Springer.
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Tuesday, March 26. 2013EasterconEastercon (EightSquared Con https://www.eightsquaredcon.org/web/Welcome.html) is almost upon us, and this year I'm on the organising committee. So I am expecting a very busy weekend. I will be around for all of it -- I'll be the blur of speed in black and white -- but hopefully there will also be time for catching up with people and even sleeping. And to see our wonderful guests of honour, Walter Jon Williams, Freda Warrington, Anne Sudworth and Professor Edward James. I hope to see some of you there.
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Tuesday, October 30. 2012World Fantasy Convention
I shall be at World Fantasy con in Toronto this weekend (1st-4th Nov). I have one panel, on Faith and Fantasy, at 9 a.m. on Friday and otherwise will be round and about the place. It's my first trip to Toronto, and I'm very much looking forward to it!
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Thursday, August 23. 2012Worldcon scheduleOnly one more week until worldcon! I am really looking forward to it. I don't get to worldcons very often and I always have a blast at them. And this year it's in Chicago, which is one of my favourite US cities. Here's my schedule: Fri Aug 31 9:00 --10:30am, Anarchism in Fantasy and Science Fiction
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