tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64770802066271371092024-03-18T15:51:33.625+00:00News & Press from The Future FireDjibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.comBlogger460125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-58290489959391061942024-03-18T15:51:00.067+00:002024-03-18T15:51:00.135+00:00Micro-interview with Jennifer R. Donohue<p>Jennifer R. Donohue, author of “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2024.68/fiction/ensanguined.html" target="_blank">The Ensanguined Shore</a>” in <i>The Future Fire</i> #68, joins us for a chat about mythology, mythography, and the sea.</p>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="http://futurefire.net/images/st-ensanguined2.png" width="256" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Art © 2024 Sebastian Timpe</span></td></tr></tbody></table>
<p><b>TFF: What does “The Ensanguined Shore” mean to you?</b></p>
<p><b>Jennifer R. Donohue</b>: I’ve been a reader of Greek mythology practically since I could read; D’Aulaire’s <i>Book of Greek Myths</i> is one of the first longer books I remember reading. I checked it out from my local public library, and pored over the stories and the illustrations. I even have a copy of that same edition now, that I bought at a church rummage sale. I don't have it at hand, so I can't double-check how whether/how detailed the material from the Iliad is there, but the Harpies and Sirens are definitely mentioned, and that’s largely where “my” sirens come from, bird people with wings, but also arms, and bird legs, and powerful voices that can hurt, or soothe, or beguile. I read the Fagles translation of the <i>Iliad</i> in college, and the detailing of everybody's interpersonal conflicts on the beach outside of Troy, in addition to the ongoing war, really gripped me. Transporting it to a future setting, and inserting a journalist like <i>National Geographic</i> or Evan Wright’s <i>Generation Kill</i>, was an approach that flowed freely once I happened upon it, and there were some scenes that I had crystal-clear in my mind's eye as I wrote them, like I was scrolling through the longform article that Patty would later publish.</p><p><b>TFF: What is your favourite (real or literary) sea creature and why?</b></p><p><b>JD</b>: I really like crabs, actually. Horseshoe crabs specifically, and that's reflected in my short story “<a href="https://swordandkettle.itch.io/nothing-left-but-mud" target="_blank">Nothing Left But Mud</a>,” which takes its title from “The Crab Who Played With the Sea” by Rudyard Kipling. I like crabs in general, though, I think that they're weird and interesting little guys, and certainly have more crab stories in me. I don't think it's because my Zodiac sign is Cancer, but maybe that's a strong contributor and I'm just in denial about it.</p><p><b>TFF: What are you working on next?</b></p><p><b>JD</b>: I've got <i>Run With the Hunted</i> 7: [title to be determined? maybe <i>The Casino Job</i>] started for its October release. I’m also releasing, throughout 2024, a werewolf trilogy! <a href="https://books2read.com/learntohowl/" target="_blank"><i>Learn to Howl</i></a> comes out on March 5, and the other books will come out in July and September.</p>
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<p><b>Extract</b>:</p>
<blockquote>Most of us have bags packed when it comes down from command that there’s
a freeze on leave, again. Groans and growls ripple through the ranks as
us officers are told via HUD, and we tell our soldiers.</blockquote>
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<p>Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at <a href="http://press.futurefire.net/2024/01/new-issue-202468.html">http://press.futurefire.net/2024/01/new-issue-202468.html</a>.</p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-43161888256083119512024-03-15T17:45:00.003+00:002024-03-15T20:40:04.061+00:00Micro-interview with Toeken<p>We’re pleased to have over for a chat our friend Toeken, artist of “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2024.68/fiction/bone.html" target="_blank">Bone Planet</a>” in <i>The Future Fire</i> #68.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="400" height="400" src="http://futurefire.net/images/tk-bone.png" width="267" /></div>
<p><b>TFF: How did you go about illustrating “Bone Planet”?</b></p><p><b>Toeken</b>: I read Petra Kupper’s fascinating poem quite a few times, making sure I could get a handle on it, then left it alone for a couple of days before firing up the digital tablet. Aside from a few pencilled layers the piece is a combination of photographs and digital art. For example, the initial background template is a shot I took of a sunset outside my home and then digitally painted over.</p><p><b>TFF: Tell us about an artist whose work you're particularly enjoying at the moment?</b></p><p><b>Tk</b>: There’s always a bunch but right now it’s Rahul Chakraborty, Rachael Mia Allen and Andrea Sorrentino.</p><p><b>TFF: What is your favourite example of hopeful, cosy or low-stakes SFF or horror?</b></p><p><b>Tk</b>: I just finished with Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s <i>The Shadow of the Wind</i>. Fantastic, creepy stuff.</p><p><b>TFF: What else are you working on now?</b></p><p><b>Tk</b>: I just finished some stuff for <i>Shoreline of Infinity</i> magazine, a couple of private commissions while working with the writer Phil Emery on a science fiction/noir project.</p>
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<p>Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at <a href="http://press.futurefire.net/2024/01/new-issue-202468.html">http://press.futurefire.net/2024/01/new-issue-202468.html</a>. </p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-30802233705481518182024-03-13T16:41:00.029+00:002024-03-13T16:41:00.133+00:00Micro-interview with Melkorka<p>Melkorka, artist of “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2024.68/fiction/homunculi.html" target="_blank">Humunculi of Creation</a>” in <i>The Future Fire</i> #68, joins us for a brief chat about her work in this issue.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="538" data-original-width="538" height="400" src="http://futurefire.net/images/mk-homunculi.png" width="400" /></div>
<p><b>TFF: How did you go about illustrating “Humunculi of Creation”?</b></p><p><b>Melkorka</b>: Before an illustration project like this, I plan a close reading of the text, and then create a mind map featuring words or phrases that stand out to me.</p><p><b>TFF: Who or what is the Sheela na gig, in origin?</b></p><p><b>M</b>: Sheela Na Gigs are stone carvings found in on Norman churches, and some secular buildings. They depict an old woman squatting and pulling apart her vulva. The carvings are old and often do not seem to be part of the church but have been taken from an older building. There is much controversy as to their age—historians claim they are no earlier than the 11th century but many people believe they are older. Even though the image is overtly sexual the representation is always grotesque, sometimes even comical. They can be found all over Britain, Ireland, France and Spain. The symbolism of Sheela is a mystery; neo-pagans call her a portal of transformation and fertility idol, while some historians argue she was a figure created by the Church to warn congregations of the dangers of lust.</p>
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<p>Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at <a href="http://press.futurefire.net/2024/01/new-issue-202468.html">http://press.futurefire.net/2024/01/new-issue-202468.html</a>.</p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-55815420302463853202024-03-11T17:33:00.052+00:002024-03-11T17:33:00.134+00:00Micro-interview with Sebastian Timpe<p>Today we’re chatting with Sebastian Timpe, artist of “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2024.68/fiction/ensanguined.html" target="_blank">The Ensanguined Shore</a>” in <i>The Future Fire</i> #68.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="650" data-original-width="520" height="400" src="http://futurefire.net/images/st-ensanguined1.png" width="320" /></div>
<p><b>TFF: How did you go about illustrating “The Ensanguined Shore”?</b></p><p><b>Sebastian Timpe</b>: While reading through “The Ensanguined Shore” I was gripped by the image of Patty’s best photograph. I knew that had to be one of the illustrations for this story. I scoured the story for all descriptions of the sirens, I love the way Jennifer Donohue gives us just enough detail to imagine them but not confine the audiences imagination. For the second illustration I had never created anything with a mech suit in it and I wanted a challenge.</p><p><b>TFF: Do you have a superstition or quirk you insist on while working/painting?</b></p><p><b>ST</b>: Given my most recent experience with extreme wind and rain storms knocking out the power to my house for a week, my new superstition is any time the wind blows make sure my computer is charged!</p><p><b>TFF: Would you rather be on a ship that is about to leave or that is bringing you home?</b></p><p><b>ST</b>: Headed home; home is where the cat is.</p><p><b>TFF: Tell us about an artist whose work you’re particularly enjoying at the moment?</b></p><p><b>ST</b>: Andrew Salgado is a painter I’ve admired since high school. I just adore his expressive portraits and use of color.</p><p><b>TFF: What is your favourite example of hopeful, cosy or low-stakes SFF or horror?</b></p><p><b>ST</b>: While <i>Star Trek</i> is my go to for the coziest of vibes, fan fiction always has something to warm my heart.</p><p><b>TFF: What else are you working on now?</b></p><p><b>ST</b>: In December I finally got my hands on the <i>Time Warp Puzzle: Rock the Cats Paw</i> which I created in collaboration with Da Vinci’s Room games. It was the first puzzle I have ever put together and it was a blast. Now I am on a mission to create art for puzzles—it’s such an exiting genre because you can create really detailed works meant for a large format.</p>
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<p>Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at <a href="http://press.futurefire.net/2024/01/new-issue-202468.html">http://press.futurefire.net/2024/01/new-issue-202468.html</a>.</p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-54047227395866993862024-03-01T15:13:00.062+00:002024-03-01T15:13:00.131+00:00Mirco-interview with Emma Burnett<p>We were delighted to invite Emma Burnett, author of “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2024.68/fiction/escape.html" target="_blank">Escape Choice</a>” in <i>TFF</i> #68, to join us for a chat about SF, the sea, and future work.</p>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://futurefire.net/images/cm-escape2.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="416" data-original-width="600" height="277" src="http://futurefire.net/images/cm-escape2.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Art © 2024 Cécile Matthey</span></td></tr></tbody></table>
<p><b>TFF: What does “Escape Choice” mean to you?</b></p>
<p><b>Emma Burnett</b>: The title, it just felt like a good fit for the things that come up in the story. People escaping from Earth. People escaping from a colony ship. People escaping from each other. They’re all choices that have to be made.</p>
<p>The story, I wanted Max’s decisions to be recognised as valid for him. Even if they don't always make sense to other people, his lived reality is legitimate, and I wanted him to have that space. Maybe because I haven’t, always.</p><p><b>TFF: Do you remember the first time you saw the sea?</b></p>
<p><b>EB</b>: No. But I remember the first time I nearly died in the sea. It was nothing, we were at the beach. But a wave caught me behind the knees, and suddenly I was under water and upside down, and I remember thinking very calmly, “Oh. This is how I die.” I must have been, like, 14. I didn’t die, obviously. Except maybe in another timeline where I did. It didn’t make me scared of the sea, but it did give me what might be considered empathy for those lost in it. She’s a powerful beast.</p>
<p><b>TFF: What are you working on next?</b></p>
<p><b>EB</b>: I’m always working on things all the time. I’ve always got a few short stories on the go. I’m about a third of the way through writing a novel, but then I have to type it up because I’m hand writing it like an epic loon. I'm also working on improving my handstands and learning to play the ukulele.</p>
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<p><b>Extract</b>:</p>
<blockquote>Max glanced at his mother’s face. She had that line between her
eyebrows, which sometimes meant that she was thinking, and sometimes
meant she was annoyed. He looked briefly at his teacher, sitting across
from them. Her face was too blank for him to interpret.</blockquote>
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<p>Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at <a href="http://press.futurefire.net/2024/01/new-issue-202468.html">http://press.futurefire.net/2024/01/new-issue-202468.html</a>.</p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-87736645179136290552024-02-28T16:05:00.048+00:002024-02-28T16:05:00.127+00:00Micro-interview with Sarah Salcedo<p>Welcome, Sarah Salcedo, artist of “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2024.68/fiction/witch.html" target="_blank">A Witch, a Wakening</a>” in <i>The Future Fire</i> #68, to our micro-interviews series!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://futurefire.net/images/ss-witch1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="450" height="400" src="http://futurefire.net/images/ss-witch1.jpg" width="267" /></a></div><p><b>TFF: How did you go about illustrating “A Witch, a Wakening”?</b></p><p><b>Sarah Salcedo</b>: I read the story and thought about the kind of cabins I tend to see while hiking: the type of forgotten home that seems always on the verge of being reclaimed by the woods. I dream about those from time to time, and it seemed a fitting image for the piece.</p><p><b>TFF: Have you ever tried to paint or write one of your own dreams?</b></p><p><b>SS</b>: I haven’t ever tried to draw a dream, but I have written many of them down. Especially the surreal ones. They're fun to chase, to try and stay creatively in that liminal space between a critical waking mind and the abstract freedom that dreams afford.</p><p><b>TFF: If you could shut down the power so we all just have to stare at the night, would you?</b></p><p><b>SS</b>: Probably not, but I’d definitely like to write a story about someone who would and the consequences that would follow, but for better and worse.</p><p><b>TFF: Tell us about an artist whose work you're particularly enjoying at the moment?</b></p><p><b>SS</b>: A visual artist I love, not only in the moment but for always, is Anselm Kiefer. His work has been amongst my favorite since I was really young and I'm excited to see the newest documentary featuring his work by Wim Wenders. I've also been revisiting Jean Giraud aka Mœbius’s <i>The World of Edena </i>lately, another artist I find constantly inspiring.</p><p>Aside from those two, a new artist I’m absolutely in love with is Dianna Settles. Her work is vibrant not only with color but collectivism. Her work makes me feel deeply about community, and finding joy in these uncertain times. I cannot state how big a fan I am of hers.</p><p><b>TFF: What is your favourite example of hopeful, cosy or low-stakes SFF or horror?</b></p><p><b>SS</b>: I haven't read anything cosy or low-stakes in a while, but a friend just lent me <i>Legends & Lattes</i> by Travis Baldree and pitched to me as exactly that.</p><p><b>TFF: What else are you working on now?</b></p><p><b>SS</b>: I am currently in the midst of two documentaries, a screenplay, and preparing to send my novel out to friends and colleagues for one final revision pass before it goes on submission. I miss short fiction, though (<a href="http://futurefire.net/2021.58/fiction/stitched.html" target="_blank">the work</a> that initially brought me to the digital pages of <i>The Future Fire</i>) and hope that this year I get to focus more on that. The last year has just been devoted to lengthy works, and there isn’t an end to that, but I'm eager to carve out some time for the more dreamlike prose you get to play with when you're working in shorter forms.</p>
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<p>Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at <a href="http://press.futurefire.net/2024/01/new-issue-202468.html">http://press.futurefire.net/2024/01/new-issue-202468.html</a>.</p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-2960249608549139232024-02-26T14:56:00.048+00:002024-02-26T14:56:00.144+00:00Micro-interview with Petra Kuppers<p>We’re delighted to have Petra Kuppers, author of the poem “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2024.68/fiction/bone.html" target="_blank">Bone Planet</a>” in <i>The Future Fire</i> #68, join us for a short chat.</p>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://futurefire.net/images/tk-bone.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="400" height="400" src="http://futurefire.net/images/tk-bone.png" width="267" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Art © 2024 Toeken</span></td></tr></tbody></table>
<p><b>TFF: What does “Bone Planet” mean to you?</b></p>
<p><b>Petra Kuppers</b>: “Bone Planet” is a poem about pain, and about my ongoing long-term speculative engagement with my deteriorating joints as a world of experience. As a somatic practitioner and dance artist, I often travel into my own body’s fields, and then through its sensations and imagery out into the wider cosmic world. So this sonnet is part of a crown (i.e. seven linked sonnets) that all travel around a planet of my inflamed interior.</p><p><b>TFF: If you moved to another planet, what animal from Earth would you bring with you?</b></p>
<p><b>PK</b>: As I do travel so often, all the time, to other planets, I take with me what lives in me: mitochondria and other organelles, bacteria, all the tiny creatures that surround the particular energy of my own conscious life.</p>
<p><b>TFF: Would you like to live forever?</b></p>
<p><b>PK</b>: In terms of material and energetics, I might anyway: stardust, transformed, vibrations, shimmerings… in terms of unified consciousness, probably not.</p>
<p><b>TFF: What are you working on next?</b></p>
<p><b>PK</b>: I have just released a poetry collection that brings together true crime, decaying bodies, horror tropes and ecopoetry, full of nematodes, springtails and worms and the aliveness of soil (<i>Diver Beneath the Street</i>, Wayne State University Press, 2024). Now I am working on the material this poem is part of, a kind of Starship Poetics, a science fiction pain/joy universe.</p>
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<p><b>Extract</b>:</p>
<blockquote>In the grey-green shelter of living bone, you grow ragged,
<br />edges blood-less, crusted. Leucocytes eat this brown lump</blockquote>
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<p>Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at <a href="http://press.futurefire.net/2024/01/new-issue-202468.htm">http://press.futurefire.net/2024/01/new-issue-202468.htm</a>. </p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-72829015926244473172024-02-20T17:18:00.001+00:002024-02-20T17:18:00.238+00:00Micro-interview with Susan Taitel<p>Welcome, Susan Taitel, author of “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2024.68/fiction/rose.html" target="_blank">The Rose Sisterhood</a>” in <i>The Future Fire</i> #68, to join the micro-interviews season!</p>
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<p><b><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://futurefire.net/images/fg-rose1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="633" data-original-width="405" height="400" src="http://futurefire.net/images/fg-rose1.png" width="256" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Art © 2024 Fluffgar<br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table>TFF: What does “The Rose Sisterhood” mean to you?</b></p>
<p><b>Susan Taitel</b>: “The Rose Sisterhood” has the strongest ending of any story I’d written to that point. If I were not the author, I would think that the seed of the story was the ending and the rest had been written to bring the reader to that final moment and final line. In truth I started writing with only with the premise of the Beast’s invisible servants being ghosts of girls who had previously failed to break his curse.</p>
<p><b>TFF: If you were a mermaid, would you try to save shipwrecked sailors or to drag them down to your coraly kingdom?</b></p>
<p><b>ST</b>: I strive to be helpful but I’m not a strong swimmer so I’d probably try to save the sailors but drag them down unintentionally.</p>
<p><b>TFF: What is your favourite example of hopeful, cosy or low-stakes SFF or horror?</b></p>
<p><b>ST</b>: “<a href="https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kritzer_01_15/" target="_blank">Cat Pictures Please</a>” by Naomi Kritzer is a great one. An AI that becomes self aware and able to break its programming but instead of going the Terminator route it uses its ability to hack websites to nudge people into making better choices for themselves. And all it wants in return is more cat pictures, very relatable.</p>
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<p><b>Extract:</b></p>
<blockquote>My Sisters and I await the next girl. She will be beautiful. We always
are. We hope she’ll be the one to break the curse, that she will have
the wherewithal to see our master as he truly is. To succeed where we
all failed.</blockquote>
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<p>Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at <a href="http://press.futurefire.net/2024/01/new-issue-202468.html">http://press.futurefire.net/2024/01/new-issue-202468.html</a>.</p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-56007965513027663372024-02-15T15:06:00.004+00:002024-02-15T22:32:13.493+00:00Micro-interview with Laura Blackwell<p>We invited Laura Blackwell, author of “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2024.68/fiction/witch.html" target="_blank">A Witch, a Wakening</a>” in <i>The Future Fire</i> #68, to join our micro-interview series.</p>
<hr />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="450" height="400" src="http://futurefire.net/images/ss-witch1.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: 2em;" width="267" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Art © 2024 Sarah Salcedo<br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p><b>TFF: What does “A Witch, a Wakening” mean to you?</b></p>
<p><b>Laura Blackwell</b>: I wanted to play with the idea that we can learn from our dreams even if we don't know what they are. I feel that the protagonist is very brave and hopeful to want to keep on being her best self even when that isn't welcomed.</p>
<p><b>TFF: Have you ever used your own dreams as inspiration for your writing or art?</b></p>
<p><b>LB</b>: Dreams do sometimes give me ideas, usually just images or notions that get me thinking. I'm honestly not sure if "A Witch, a Wakening" is one of them or not.</p>
<p><b>TFF: What are you working on next?</b></p>
<p><b>LB</b>: I'm usually working on something short (right now, a retelling of Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter"), something long (right now, a suburban fantasy novel), and some querying (right now, an exoplanetary Gothic novel).</p>
<hr style="clear: both;" />
<p><b>Extract:</b></p>
<blockquote><p>“I cannot read it,” says the boy in a regretful tone. “It is not in my language.”</p>
<p>“It’s not in mine, either,” I say, and
because this is a dream, it does not seem strange that I add, “but I can
read it. It says ‘Witch’s House.’”</p></blockquote>
<hr />
<p>Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at <a href="http://press.futurefire.net/2024/01/new-issue-202468.html">http://press.futurefire.net/2024/01/new-issue-202468.html</a>.</p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-48988698637105007402024-01-15T23:09:00.000+00:002024-02-14T22:11:28.764+00:00New Issue 2024.68<div style="background-color: #ffdddd; border-radius: 12px; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: smaller; margin: 1em; padding: 1.5em;">“I have always loved playing around with words. I
didn’t know it was called poetry. I was just an innocent kid messing
around with words.”
<br />
<br />—Benjamin Zephaniah, 1958–2023</div>
<h2>Issue 2024.68</h2>
<p><img alt="[ Issue 2024.68; Cover art © 2024 Cécile Matthey ]" border="0" class="wrapright" src="http://futurefire.net/images/f68cover.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" title="[ Issue 2024.68; Cover art © 2024 Cécile Matthey ]" />
<b>Short stories</b>
</p>
<ul><li>
<a href="http://futurefire.net/2024.68/fiction/rose.html">
‘The Rose Sisterhood’, Susan Taitel
</a>
<i> - art by Fluffgar</i>
</li><li>
<a href="http://futurefire.net/2024.68/fiction/escape.html">
‘Escape Choice’, Emma Burnett
</a>
<i> - art by Cécile Matthey</i>
</li><li>
<a href="http://futurefire.net/2024.68/fiction/witch.html">
‘A Witch, a Wakening’, Laura Blackwell
</a>
<i> - art by Sarah Salcedo</i>
</li></ul>
<p>
<b>Novelettes</b>
</p>
<ul><li>
<a href="http://futurefire.net/2024.68/fiction/ensanguined.html">
‘The Ensanguined Shore’, Jennifer R. Donohue
</a>
<i> - art by Sebastian Timpe</i>
</li></ul>
<p>
<b>Poetry</b>
</p>
<ul><li>
<a href="http://futurefire.net/2024.68/fiction/bone.html">
‘Bone Planet’, Petra Kuppers
</a>
<i> - art by Toeken</i>
</li><li>
<a href="http://futurefire.net/2024.68/fiction/homunculi.html">
‘Homunculi of Creation’, Avra Margariti
</a>
<i> - art by Melkorka</i>
</li></ul>
<p>Download e-book version: <b>
<a href="http://futurefire.net/issue/ff202468.pdf">PDF</a> | <a href="http://futurefire.net/issue/ff202468.epub">EPUB</a>
</b>
</p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-77213408407917157082024-01-14T10:00:00.032+00:002024-01-14T10:00:00.139+00:00Interview with Sarah Day<p>We are delighted to host on our blog a conversation with <b>Sarah Day</b>, author of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and many other flavors of speculative fiction. Her work is heavily influenced by festival culture, body modification, non-traditional relationships, and scary ghosts. Sarah has been published in <i>PseudoPod</i>, <i>Underland Arcana</i>, <i>The Future Fire</i> (see “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2022.62/fiction/heart.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The Heart of the Party</a>”), and many other fine places. She lives in the SF Bay Area with her cat. Connect with her at<a href="http://sarahday.org" style="text-decoration-line: none;"> sarahday.org</a>. Her novella, <i>Greyhowler</i>, is released today by <a href="https://underlandpress.gumroad.com/l/greyhowler" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Underland Press</a>.</p><hr /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd6mUqse8WhZHi7txOayenRTPUBoxB3AQPDeKnwAuGvSPhvvLyDrv7JnGrVGY6lHq7UBt8HYi7r5aG7pwYnsH5qu5P0KissEX4TExgImesDhZQ2iSermLDNUHlKgf6tvimU40tznNqdMNc9bErTWt2UhBjJ1Lw7MnQZts8wIYPlz6bKjSFMzF1uGTEmQJv/s1000/81s7Qd50ldL._AC_UF894,1000_QL80_.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="625" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd6mUqse8WhZHi7txOayenRTPUBoxB3AQPDeKnwAuGvSPhvvLyDrv7JnGrVGY6lHq7UBt8HYi7r5aG7pwYnsH5qu5P0KissEX4TExgImesDhZQ2iSermLDNUHlKgf6tvimU40tznNqdMNc9bErTWt2UhBjJ1Lw7MnQZts8wIYPlz6bKjSFMzF1uGTEmQJv/s320/81s7Qd50ldL._AC_UF894,1000_QL80_.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Rhia is a Courier, a transient messenger who freely travels the land without calling any town or port home. <p>The job suits her, for in a land ruled by the Temple, it is difficult to find your own way, especially when you have a Talent. Rhia's is water, and when she arrives in distant Cerretour to deliver a message, she finds a village wracked with suffering. </p><p>The well is dry. It hasn't rained. The only person who can save these villagers is missing. At night, a strange creature prowls the prairie. The villagers have a name for it: greyhowler.</p><hr /><p><b>The Future Fire: <i>Greyhowler</i> is both a story about freedom (from being tied to a place, from oppression) and being trapped (by secrets, by the past); can you tell us a bit more about how the story navigates these two seemingly contradictory states? Do you find a happy medium?</b></p><p><b>Sarah Day: </b>I think a big topic in <i>Greyhowler</i> is illusion, or self-deception. Some of the major characters are trapped by the lies they tell themselves. Being trapped by their secrets, or their circumstances, is a side effect of self-delusion. I think this is how a lot of people are, honestly—we make choices that we believe are only from a sense of agency or self-determination, but we’re often reacting to influences and experiences in our history that we can’t escape, and maybe aren’t even aware of.<b> </b></p><p>Connecting our present-day actions to the experiences buried in our past can be a rich vein for personal development–and, in fiction, for plot and character work. For example, Rhia would love to only be a Courier and not have to address her upbringing in the Temple at all… but she can’t help the people in Cerretour without the skills she learned in her past. That’s where her inner conflict comes from, and it’s really fun to write. Some of my favorite parts of <i>Greyhowler</i> are where the characters lean hard one way, either rejecting their self-delusions or embracing them.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG52gnOrWMQvn8Ym2aj3adQuBhM-bmZAViJdBnYaqActihJUpS7mvsLKWbEfw_niLaa2AZfPqghXu-4muFZvz5hfH1sfhfGrX5jyvcXPeTBZ4izV0uqqioSQ5k0ZdyjRPdtelEYpDfe1Kd1tQXr_9tZ_uRidtSHB8y4AM-cWoVbYs4jx-tkOBqBVd7pDnw/s400/sarahDay.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG52gnOrWMQvn8Ym2aj3adQuBhM-bmZAViJdBnYaqActihJUpS7mvsLKWbEfw_niLaa2AZfPqghXu-4muFZvz5hfH1sfhfGrX5jyvcXPeTBZ4izV0uqqioSQ5k0ZdyjRPdtelEYpDfe1Kd1tQXr_9tZ_uRidtSHB8y4AM-cWoVbYs4jx-tkOBqBVd7pDnw/w320-h320/sarahDay.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><p><b>TFF: Do you already know what is going to happen in the next book in the series?</b></p><p><b>SD</b>: I’ve written a couple of other books in this universe already; one about Rhia and her past, and one about two characters who don’t feature in <i>Greyhowler</i> at all. This universe is a land I visit when I want to write fantasy. I hope more of these books get to see daylight with an ISBN attached to them someday, but even if they don’t, I love the characters and have learned a lot from the experience.</p><p><b>TFF: Do you think that writing (and reading) speculative fiction—in particular fantasy that has sometimes been seen as pure escapism—can actually be an act of resistance?</b></p><p><b>SD</b>: Absolutely! I think reading for “escapism” gets a bad rap, and that when we say we’re reading for escapism, we’re actually recharging our emotional batteries in a way that can contribute to our resilience. Charging the batteries is important for long-term fights.</p><p>I spent a lot of 2022 taking care of someone close to me who was going through cancer treatment. For a couple of months during chemo, all he wanted to do was watch YouTube videos of old boxing matches. Neither of us have ever been boxers or done any kind of martial art, so it’s not like we were watching for our education… but he found it galvanizing and encouraging. There was strong symbolic resonance for him to watch smaller guys take on larger guys and win—it was a clear metaphor for his fight against cancer. Was that pure escapism? I don’t think so.</p><p><b>TFF: Your short story “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2022.62/fiction/heart.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The Heart of the Party</a>” both celebrates the anarchic joy of the free use of transformative technologies, and warns of its potential to aid in our repression by those in power. How do you see this tension?</b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvBzvDSzP7-IimF4WY2q0IlJlGypMWu2pVr7c9S6cRiq_8ylVshzBrhhKOi_ccdK0gLBsShs5n0x45o0pGk_BHhkyNkWYBZEpKysMGgj9fXGK2GoHVlHxEkX6vJeXs9F9pKcEBPqXi2WLdmNIdbYAc_y8TlyMfN3L1GVvumRS1jyAHYOVCbEqcDIRZ6hL5/s437/ms-heart1.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="310" data-original-width="437" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvBzvDSzP7-IimF4WY2q0IlJlGypMWu2pVr7c9S6cRiq_8ylVshzBrhhKOi_ccdK0gLBsShs5n0x45o0pGk_BHhkyNkWYBZEpKysMGgj9fXGK2GoHVlHxEkX6vJeXs9F9pKcEBPqXi2WLdmNIdbYAc_y8TlyMfN3L1GVvumRS1jyAHYOVCbEqcDIRZ6hL5/s320/ms-heart1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><b>SD</b>: Speculative fiction uses imagined technology or magic to explore different manifestations of power. Exploring or subverting hierarchical power structures is something I write about a lot. Systems of power constantly seek to shore themselves up, to reinforce themselves. The Temple in <i>Greyhowler</i> and the state police apparatus in “The Heart of the Party” both require compliance and punish deviation with disproportionate severity, because the ability to punish with impunity is part of how they reinforce their legitimacy. <p>You might notice that the protagonists in both works are people who have a lot of privilege assigned to them by the dominant power structures and are trying to divest from those structures, with varying degrees of success. The theme of privileged people wrestling with the things they have but have done nothing to deserve, or trying to reconcile their privilege with others’ circumstances, shows up a lot in my writing.</p><p><b>TFF: Have you ever killed a character that you loved?</b></p><p><b>SD</b>: Would I be a terrible person if I said I loved all my characters, even the bad guys? Every time one dies, I’ve killed someone I love. I don’t think I can write a believable character unless I can find them relatable somehow. I have to be a chameleon this way; each character I write has to have the strength of their own convictions. They might make terrible decisions, or do things I personally find morally indefensible, but have relatable motivations. Everyone’s morality is internally consistent. We’re each the hero of our own story.</p><p>At the end of <i>Greyhowler</i>, two characters discuss a third who has done terrible things, and whether actions like that can ever be understood or forgiven… I guess I think everything can be understood, even if it can’t be forgiven. To write a character well, I have to understand them, and by understanding them, I come to love them.</p><p><b>TFF: Thank you for being our guest, Sarah, we look forward to falling in love with the characters of the <i>Greyhowler</i>! Best of luck, and happy writing.</b></p><div><hr /><b><i>Greyhowler</i> is out today, and can be bought <a href="https://underlandpress.gumroad.com/l/greyhowler" style="text-decoration-line: none;">here</a>. </b></div>Valeria Vitalehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07575266222361802997noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-81401151550030423012024-01-11T22:53:00.003+00:002024-01-11T22:53:40.570+00:00Micro-interview with Cécile Matthey<p>We’re joined again by TFF team member and old friend Cécile Matthey, artist of “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2023.67/fiction/microseasons.html" target="_blank">Microseasons of the Dead</a>” in <i>The Future Fire</i> #67.</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://futurefire.net/images/cm-microseasons.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="516" height="400" src="http://futurefire.net/images/cm-microseasons.png" width="295" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Art © 2024 Cécile Matthey</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>
<p><b>TFF: How did you go about illustrating “Microseasons of the Dead”?</b></p>
<p><b>Cécile Matthey</b>: I’ve been wishing to combine illustration and collage for a long time, and this is my first attempt! The concept of micro-seasons comes from Japan, so naturally I explored Japanese art for inspiration. I came across a beautiful19th-century drawing, showing a large wave. I decomposed it and used it as a frame around the hands full of stones, to evoke the river of the dead but also the cycle they have to go through, again and again.</p>
<p><b>TFF: Where is the place, physical or metaphorical, where you feel “at home”?</b></p>
<p><b>CM</b>: I've always felt at home in libraries. I grew up surrounded by books, and I’ve always loved reading. What's more, they’re places where there's peace and quiet, which helps recharge my batteries. At school, going to the library was also a refuge. It was the only place where the other kids would leave me alone!</p>
<p><b>TFF: What is your favourite example of hopeful or fun speculative fiction (in any medium)?</b></p>
<p><b>CM</b>: Terry Pratchett's <i>Discworld</i> and James Gurney's illustrations are my favourites. Otherwise, I've just started reading Toshikazu Kawaguchi's book Before the Coffee Gets Cold. It features a very special café, where customers can travel back in time, enjoying a cup of coffee. But there are rules to this journey: it won't change the present, and it lasts as long as the coffee is still hot. It sounds interesting! ;-)</p>
<p><b>TFF: Tell us about an artist whose work you're particularly enjoying at the moment?</b></p>
<p><b>CM</b>: Visiting Neuchâtel's Museum of Natural History recently, I discovered the works by Philip Maire, a local artist who paints prehistoric animals on canvases he has collected at flea markets. It’s clever and fun. Example below (my photo), and see more of his work at: <a href="https://ajour.ch/fr/story/303538/quand-des-vaches-et-des-dinosaures-paissent-dans-une-prairie-de-larc-jurassien">https://ajour.ch/fr/story/303538/quand-des-vaches-et-des-dinosaures-paissent-dans-une-prairie-de-larc-jurassien</a>.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYMJdstVJ5mKUvt-w1Iola4g88UcT2b8gtNZOWD34zi_RCdZZIIzwMnO6tMGwpTY1a0i41rbNm01Uf6R47i0JOawEwADosJvcFHWcYoc44aisd8ATHXNRoFQLvq1SyC49s4AlQ1Y9yxrjfRZIvza0NrshAC8elLV5kcoQe1tvemWvzDth0-ON-MNcdEK0/w400-h300/Maire.jpg" width="400" /></div>
<p>Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at <a href="http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html">http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html</a>.</p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-6590567277444449572024-01-02T17:43:00.000+00:002024-01-02T17:43:31.903+00:00Worlds; and writing; and worlds without writing<p><b>Guest post by Juliet Kemp</b></p>
<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlUP8Uro4sC9PBIjgIxMEk9KYiAaWGl2ieIhvdDUUuD5poGAGtiHrbQhgQEJUcwUsmNlgxNABKsBmamhHOBIbAMJqWHOnZyGuyZb5rxKXKplXtRvTlUYkxws9IbOrCKNRiVHd9Ym20lowio73uqwBaO9hJMHC8GpuFEsP_NaeyxEtNwmqVuLJHZFCcrRg/s900/Song,%20Stone,%20Scale,%20Bone%20-%20RGB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="600" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlUP8Uro4sC9PBIjgIxMEk9KYiAaWGl2ieIhvdDUUuD5poGAGtiHrbQhgQEJUcwUsmNlgxNABKsBmamhHOBIbAMJqWHOnZyGuyZb5rxKXKplXtRvTlUYkxws9IbOrCKNRiVHd9Ym20lowio73uqwBaO9hJMHC8GpuFEsP_NaeyxEtNwmqVuLJHZFCcrRg/w266-h400/Song,%20Stone,%20Scale,%20Bone%20-%20RGB.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>For me, at least in English, ‘language’ and ‘written language’ are very nearly the same thing—when I think of words I see them written down (perhaps partly due to the fact that I read absurdly young). But even among literate people that experience is far from universal; and even in our highly literacy-dependent culture not everyone is literate; and then there are plenty of cultures (past and present) whose traditions are primarily or entirely oral, with the written word an afterthought or non-existent.<p></p>
<p>None of which I was thinking about when I first began to write my novella <i>Song, Stone, Scale, Bone</i>. I started off with a mental image of a knight guiding a noble through a catacomb, in search of a magic bone… and then I thought: why? Not why they were going there (that was the magic bone, although admittedly at that point I wasn’t quite sure what that was for either), but why was Sir Cade a guide as well as a guard, and why was she using a song to orient herself?</p><p>Perhaps, I thought, there’s no map. Perhaps, even, there can’t be a map. Perhaps directions, in this world, are kept in purely oral form, as songs and rhymes, and Cade’s order of knights holds the responsibility of keeping those directions.</p>
<p>Perhaps, I thought, they don’t have writing at all.</p>
<p>It’s harder than you might think—as someone from a very literacy-heavy culture—to remember all the things that aren’t there if you don’t have writing. Signposts, for example. What about coins? Drawings but no words? Numbers? Ideograms don’t quite count as writing, so coins could have something on those lines. (I fudged this slightly by not describing the money Cade uses.)</p>
<p>Given Cade’s job, I spent a while thinking about maps—which are basically drawings—but the use and accuracy of maps even in Western culture has varied substantially over the centuries. You’d struggle to use the <i>Imago Mundi</i> (below) to travel by, for example; although the <i>Tabula Peutingeriana</i> did a decent job of being a stylised route map (less good once you’re off-road).</p>
<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbJXYHrDUcF592inLZR92xNv1u5ApFCgAM2hTV8Bq2Lc9ityNwO9StP8msPMebQjTL-8X_jiaW83yVCIM5_mO64XvDpnLuOlLlqJHWRGed2vhFDOuUTRZQ9HMFWdjtJ9oDUQx6EOHkjfJap8OjRTFMXorFw1T_To4DQQWgcOan9a4e_3hFU6Iuv7Bvf-g/s768/525px-Imago_Mundi_de_Honorius_of_Autum_(editado_por_Henry_of_Mainz)_1190.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="525" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbJXYHrDUcF592inLZR92xNv1u5ApFCgAM2hTV8Bq2Lc9ityNwO9StP8msPMebQjTL-8X_jiaW83yVCIM5_mO64XvDpnLuOlLlqJHWRGed2vhFDOuUTRZQ9HMFWdjtJ9oDUQx6EOHkjfJap8OjRTFMXorFw1T_To4DQQWgcOan9a4e_3hFU6Iuv7Bvf-g/w274-h400/525px-Imago_Mundi_de_Honorius_of_Autum_(editado_por_Henry_of_Mainz)_1190.PNG" width="274" /></a></div>Some questions which didn’t come up in the story but which I’ve thought about since: the first known uses of writing were bureaucratic (recording agricultural products and contracts); with other functions of government like taxation swiftly following. Cade’s nearby city houses an Emperor; how is the Empire managed without writing? Do tally-sticks count as writing? As above, what about ideograms, or mnemonics, which aren’t quite writing (but might develop into writing in the future)? Perhaps the Empire employs rememberers to keep track of these bureaucratic issues and what people owe, just as Lady Arel has to recite the treaty she is trying to use to prevent war. Presumably storytellers are important in this culture, just as they were in (for example) Ancient Greece and in pre-10th centure Britain (the Iliad and Odyssey, and Beowulf, are all thought to have been later writings-down of stories told as part of an oral tradition).<p></p>
<p>The final thing that occupied me for a while when I was writing was that there’s no way, in a book with a close-third-person POV, of saying that this is a part of the worldbuilding. Because, obviously, my narrator, Sir Cade, doesn’t know that she doesn’t have the concept of the written word, because, well, she doesn’t have the concept of the written word. So here I am, telling people about it outside the book; but if you read it, I’m interested to hear about how it came across to you. (And I hope you enjoy the story!)</p>
<hr />
<p><b>Song, Stone, Scale, Bone</b></p><p>Sir Cade expected an easy afternoon’s guiding job. She didn’t expect it to end up sneaking her client over a border to avert a war, whilst being trailed by a bored dragon. And becoming haunted by the ghost of her best friend and sword-brother, that was definitely a surprise.<br /><br />But if it’s all her responsibility, well, that means it’s all down to her to fix it. Whatever the cost.<br />Right?<br /><br /><i>“</i>Song, Stone, Scale, Bone <i>is a deceptively rich and fulfilling work that blends together explorations of grief, friendship, obligation, and mutual support. With its combination of classic fantasy motifs, some lightly crafted magic, and a nuanced sense of where the personal and familial can meet the machinations of leadership and politics, I found </i>Song<i> an intriguing, well-constructed, and satisfying read.”</i>—Andi C. Buchanan, author of <i>Sanctuary</i><br /><br /><b>Buy links: <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CPFGTMFK" target="_blank">Amazon UK</a> (ebook/print), <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Song-Stone-Scale-Bone-Juliet-ebook/dp/B0CPFGTMFK" target="_blank">Amazon US</a> (ebook/print), or order from your local bookshop.</b><br /></p>
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<p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7Aj30F5Ci9pCppW_f8g4DLq8uSiYFbM2HFQpfa4a-4kOdxYJii74_8Y0XeQzslY5SMneGbpLUKgIhN3W6PIGnyqIObZuWF53h2cW6JB_bNuTDGfphQu219ycm_diUPeJER-Olu2Z6X5iCgkHjTN5bC6zjeUmktbQJP1YyU6gxLprPlmlSbWnSmiRXgcY/s896/julietkemp-headshot-20220530-credit-pete-gillin.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="896" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7Aj30F5Ci9pCppW_f8g4DLq8uSiYFbM2HFQpfa4a-4kOdxYJii74_8Y0XeQzslY5SMneGbpLUKgIhN3W6PIGnyqIObZuWF53h2cW6JB_bNuTDGfphQu219ycm_diUPeJER-Olu2Z6X5iCgkHjTN5bC6zjeUmktbQJP1YyU6gxLprPlmlSbWnSmiRXgcY/s320/julietkemp-headshot-20220530-credit-pete-gillin.JPG" width="286" /></a></div><p></p><p><b>Juliet Kemp</b> (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, writer. They live in London by the river, with their partners, kid, and dog. The first book of their fantasy series, <i>The Deep And Shining Dark</i> was on the Locus 2018 Recommended Reads list; the fourth and final book, <i>The City Revealed</i> came out in 2023. Their short fiction has appeared in venues including <i>Uncanny</i>, <i>Analog</i>, <i>Cast of Wonders</i>, as well of course as the three stories (“<a href="http://futurefire.net/2019.48/fiction/ithoughtofyou.html" target="_blank">I Thought of You</a>”, “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2020.54/fiction/dragon.html" target="_blank">Dragon Years</a>”, “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2023.67/fiction/just.html" target="_blank">Just as You Are</a>”) here in <i>The Future Fire</i>, and they were short-listed for the WSFA Small Press Award 2020. When not writing or child-wrangling, Juliet knits, indulges their fountain pen habit, and tries to fit an ever-increasing number of plants into a microscopic back garden. They can be found at <a href="http://julietkemp.com">julietkemp.com</a>, <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/julietk.bsky.social">@julietk.bsky.social</a> and <a href="https://zirk.us/@juliet" target="_blank">@juliet@zirk.us</a>.</p>
Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-42039716200998688162023-12-26T16:44:00.021+00:002023-12-26T16:44:00.237+00:00Micro-interview with L.E. Badillo<p>Welcome, L.E. Badillo, artist of “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2023.67/fiction/crumb.html" target="_blank">Crumb Cutie Exodus</a>” in <i>The Future Fire</i> #67, for one of the last micro-interviews of 2023!</p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://futurefire.net/images/lb-crumb1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="http://futurefire.net/images/lb-crumb1.jpg" width="512" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Art © 2023, L.E. Badillo</span></td></tr></tbody></table>
<p><b>TFF: How did you go about illustrating “Crumb Cutie Exodus”?</b></p><p><b>L.E. Badillo</b>: “Crumb Cutie Exodus” was a lot of fun to work with. Bernie Jean Schiebeling provided some really great visuals for this. There were a few ideas I didn't have enough time to explore but went with the ones I felt strongest about. Trying to capture the moment when the ’Cuties escaped from the ship was key as well as the feeling of dread with the bonfire before the realization that they were in fact alive. <br /><b>TFF: What is the most terrifying thing about the sea?</b></p><p><b>LEB</b>: There is so much about the sea that is awesome and terrifying. It's one thing to swim in a pool and another to find yourself unable to touch ground or see below you. With the discoveries of long thought extinct sea creatures happening with some regularity, it's not hard to let your imagination get the better of you. I prefer showers to baths thank you very much. </p><p><b>TFF: What else are you working on now?</b></p><p><b>LEB</b>: I'm currently pouring my energies into working as a storyboard artist. This is a really fun field to work in and not far from illustrating for stories since you work from scripts. You can see my latest work at https://www.elbad.net/boards.html.</p>
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<p>Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at <a href="http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html">http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html</a>. </p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-38832322070925639272023-12-21T17:32:00.001+00:002023-12-21T17:32:00.415+00:00Micro-interview with Elena S. Kotsile<p>We invited Elena S. Kotsile, author of “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2023.67/fiction/plant.html" target="_blank">How to plant an olive tree on the Moon when all is lost</a>” in <i>The Future Fire</i> #67, over for a brief chat about trees, planets and poetry.</p>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://futurefire.net/images/fg-plant.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="http://futurefire.net/images/fg-plant.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Art © 2023 Fluffgar</span></td></tr></tbody></table>
<p><b>TFF: What does “How to plant an olive tree on the Moon when all is lost” mean to you?</b></p><p><b>Elena S. Kotsile</b>: “How to plant an olive tree on the Moon when all is lost” is a poem that first came to me as an image. Olive tree, Olea europaea, is my favorite tree species and always somehow finds its way into my writing. I love how the silver-green leaves shine under the Mediterranean sun, reflecting the summer light like sardines on a sea’s surface. It breaks my heart to think about the decline of olive trees due to climate change.</p><p><b>TFF: If you could create a new planet, what would it look like?</b></p><p><b>ESK</b>: Earth is perfect exactly because it emerged from organized chaos and randomness. If I could create a new planet, it would be the same blue planet as Earth, with islands instead of continents and several moons that would be bigger and closer to Earth than our moon. Imagine lying on a beach, the cold ocean cooling your feet, and a cloudless sky with two or three colorful moons hanging above your head.</p><p><b>TFF: What are you working on next?</b></p><p><b>ESK</b>: I’m currently querying for my first speculative novel (dark urban fantasy) and working on a second novel and some short stories. Whatever I do, though, I always keep going with my poetry, either SFF or autobiographical.</p>
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<p><b>Extract</b>:</p>
<blockquote>Bring soil from Earth, regardless how spoiled—
<br />Lunar soil might not be polluted,
<br />but it is full of silicon.
<br />Do not use fertilizer.</blockquote>
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<p>Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at <a href="http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html">http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html</a>.</p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-81441772742273283662023-12-19T14:06:00.001+00:002023-12-19T14:06:00.130+00:00Micro-interview with Juliet Kemp<p>Very pleased to invite Juliet Kemp, author of “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2023.67/fiction/just.html" target="_blank">Just as You Are</a>” in <i>The Future Fire</i> #67, over for a wee chat.</p>
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<p><b>TFF: What does “Just as You Are” mean to you?</b></p><p><b>Juliet Kemp</b>: I was thinking about parenting and acceptance when I wrote it. Beyond that I'm not sure I can say it better than I said it in the story… </p><p><b>TFF: Given what we know about the failings of even the most advanced AI today, how long do you think it will be before we create anything that could be considered alive?</b></p><p><b>JK</b>: I think this depends on how we define ‘alive’ which is of course hugely complex. Our current definitions revolve around a form of organic bodily life which doesn't necessarily carry over to other potential forms of life. I think something mechanical that can perform appropriate functions to grow, maintain, and reproduce itself, and respond to external stimuli, might not be that far off. Something that's ‘conscious’ or ‘intelligent’ or similar is a more complicated question—and far harder to judge, especially given the human tendency to try to define humans as ‘special’ and therefore exclude other beings (such as ones we already share the planet with) from intelligence or consciousness.</p><p><b>TFF: What is your favourite example of hopeful or fun speculative fiction (in any medium)?</b></p><p><b>JK</b>: I really enjoyed Ruthanna Emrys’s <i>A Half-Built Garden</i>—I found it complicated but hopeful and fascinating. (I have many other favourites too!)</p>
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<p><b>Extract</b>:</p>
<blockquote>Jin’s wearing the expression which means they’re desperate to look at my code fork, though it’s probably not conscious. Jin’s lab is <i>the</i> preeminent AI research lab; all those half-dozen person-level AIs are in some way based on the code that we developed here. After the court case that gave the first, Aisha, human rights, we open-sourced the main code branch, figuring it was the only ethical decision. Aisha took control of her own code fork, and the cluster she runs on.</blockquote>
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<p>Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at <a href="http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html">http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html</a>. </p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-73047717727479820782023-12-14T16:45:00.048+00:002023-12-14T16:45:00.130+00:00Micro-interview with Beth Cato<p>We welcome Beth Cato, author of the poem “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2023.67/fiction/magic.html" target="_blank">How magic will help you take the bastards down</a>” in <i>The Future Fire</i> #67 for a short conversation.</p><hr />
<p><b><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://futurefire.net/images/mk-magic.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="483" height="320" src="http://futurefire.net/images/mk-magic.png" width="258" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Art © 2023 Melkorka</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>TFF: What does “How magic will help you take the bastards down” mean to you?</b></p><p><b>Beth Cato</b>: For me, it's a poem about anger and wit. Even if magic were to exist, its use is not an end-all. There will still be injustice. You fight back however you can.</p><p><b>TFF: What is your favourite example of hopeful or fun speculative fiction (in any medium)?</b></p><p><b>BC</b>: I love Becky Chambers' works, both her <i>Wayfarers</i> series and her <i>Monk and Robot</i> books. They are not for everyone, as they are not big on action or plot, but she has a graceful way of depicting humanity even in beings that are not human.</p><p><b>TFF: What are you working on next?</b></p><p><b>BC</b>: I'm gearing up for the January release of my next book, <i>A Feast for Starving Stone</i>. It finishes up my duology that began with <i>A Thousand Recipes for Revenge</i>. These books are packed with magical food and swashbuckling action. I don't recommend that people read them while they are hungry.</p>
<hr /><b>Extract:</b><blockquote>start the hot water kettle<br />with a glare fueled<br />by the infuriating recollection<br />of how your boss said<br />‘oh don’t worry, we’ll investigate’</blockquote>
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<p>Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at <a href="http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html">http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html</a>.</p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-18221263367641206912023-12-12T17:39:00.001+00:002023-12-12T17:39:00.133+00:00Micro-interview with Katharine A. Viola<p>Katharine A. Viola, artist of “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2023.67/fiction/woman.html" target="_blank">Woman, Soldier, Girl</a>” in <i>The Future Fire</i> #67, joins us for a quick chat about illustrating, family history and dreams.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://futurefire.net/images/kv-woman1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="356" data-original-width="483" height="356" src="http://futurefire.net/images/kv-woman1.jpg" width="483" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Art © 2023, Katharine A. Viola<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p><b>TFF: How did you go about illustrating “Woman, Soldier, Girl”?</b></p><p><b>Katharine A. Viola</b>: I loved the machine aspect of this story. The author painted such a vivid portrayal, not only in describing what the machines looked like, but the importance of these machines to the character(s) in the story. I felt it necessary to create these visuals to enhance the cultural aspects of the tale.</p><p><b>TFF: Is there one of your ancestors that you would particularly like to meet? What would you ask them?</b></p><p><b>KV</b>: As it happens to be, I am a descendant of John Hart, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America. I would have a million questions to ask, but mostly would pick his brain about the time period and the importance of fighting for what you believe in.</p><p><b>TFF: Have you ever tried to paint or write one of your own dreams?</b></p><p><b>KV</b>: Yes! Yet it is so hard to capture the images as they are often fleeting. Dreams can tell us so much, and sometimes the visuals can be extremely inspiring.</p><hr /><p>Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at <a href="http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html">http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html</a>.</p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-61647889479935827462023-12-07T16:46:00.062+00:002023-12-07T16:46:00.233+00:00Micro-interview with Vanessa Fogg<p>Welcome, Vanessa Fogg, author of “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2023.67/fiction/microseasons.html" target="_blank">Microseasons of the Dead</a>” in <i>The Future Fire</i> #67 (and many previous stories), to the micro-interview series, where today we focus a lot on seasons…</p>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: 1em;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="516" height="320" src="http://futurefire.net/images/cm-microseasons.png" width="236" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Art © 2023, Cécile Matthey</td></tr></tbody></table>
<p><b>TFF: What does “Microseasons of the Dead” mean to you?</b><p></p><p><b>Vanessa Fogg</b>: For me, “Microseasons of the Dead” is about using a calendar year format to work out some existential thoughts on life and death. It was inspired by the microseasons of the traditional Japanese calendar, which consist of 72 “microseasons” with beautiful names such as “East Melts the Ice” and “Evening Cicadas Sing” (translations taken from <a href="https://www.nippon.com/en/features/h00124/">this article</a>).</p><p> </p><p><b>TFF: What is your favorite day or season of the year?</b></p><p><b>VF</b>: Autumn, hands down. As Keats put it, Oh “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”! I love everything about fall: the mists, the rain, the brilliant colors, the clear light of fall. Cozy sweaters, fuzzy pajamas, soups and stews, everything pumpkin spice. If I could live in just one season, it would be fall.</p>
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<p><b>Extract</b>:</p>
<blockquote><p id="d137e675">Crack and splinter of heavy ice. Cold sunk deep in your
bones. (How is it that you can still feel your bones?) A mountain of
snow. White sky.</p></blockquote>
<hr />
<p>Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at <a href="http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html">http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html</a>.</p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-82271004846754766742023-12-05T13:23:00.043+00:002023-12-05T13:23:00.140+00:00Micro-interview with Jonathan Olfert<p>Jonathan Olfert, author of “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2023.67/fiction/collective.html" target="_blank">Collective Bargaining</a>” in <i>The Future Fire</i> #67, came by for a short chat about the story, equity, AI and the future of education.<br /></p>
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<p><b></b></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://futurefire.net/images/cm-collective.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="422" height="320" src="http://futurefire.net/images/cm-collective.jpg" width="225" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Art © 2023, Carmen Moran</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><b>TFF: What does “Collective Bargaining” mean to you?</b><p></p><p><b>Jonathan Olfert</b>: It's just a little story about how underresourced one-size-fits-all accommodations can be useless or worse. I first thought of it during the emergency remote delivery/remote proctoring debacle, at the same time as massive government cuts were forcing support staff layoffs. I came back to the idea several times during some of my own struggles with disability. I wondered what accommodations a hive mind would need, or would be forced to need by a system designed for boring old one-bodies like us.</p><p><b>TFF: Is gen-AI going to make examining fairly and equitably harder or easier?</b></p><p><b>JO</b>: Anyone who says they can reliably and consistently tell the difference between mildly edited gen-AI and a second-year undergrad's authentic paper (or online quiz response, or cover letter, or scholarship application) is dreaming. So a student's uncertainty about a fair assessment is only going to rise, and uncertainty comes with unevenly distributed hazards. Just as one example, I think of many international students I've known who've learned an extra-formal style that can have that gen-AI 'feel.' And since instructors often have the academic freedom to decide standards for gen-AI use in their classes, students may be juggling five different risk profiles a semester whether they've even used gen-AI or not. On a side note, want to hear something unsettling? I ran a survey on textbooks a couple of months ago at work, and out of almost 1100 undergrads, 4%—over forty of them—had explicitly used ChatGPT instead of buying a textbook. Which doesn't just speak to the quality of the information they and other gen-AI users are receiving, it can inform their writing style, so they may join the ranks of people more likely to get flagged even if they write all their own papers from scratch.</p><hr />
<b>Extract</b>
<blockquote><p id="d137e97">Jane swarmed up the chair legs and settled into a
rustling cluster. “All I want to do is write the exam,” they said
through many tiny voices.</p></blockquote>
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<p>Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at <a href="http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html">http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html</a>.<br /></p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-25151036609765186932023-11-30T16:26:00.034+00:002023-11-30T16:26:00.125+00:00Micro-interview with Melkorka<p>We had a bit of a chat with Melkorka, artist of “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2023.67/fiction/magic.html">How magic will help you take the bastards down</a>” in <i>The Future Fire</i> #67.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://futurefire.net/images/mk-magic.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="483" height="320" src="http://futurefire.net/images/mk-magic.png" width="258" /></a></div>
<p><b>The Future Fire: How did you go about illustrating “How magic will help you take the bastards down”?</b></p>
<p><b>Melkorka</b>: This piece deeply resonated on a personal level, so my illustration incorporated elements such as the Tarot and ritual that are also personally meaningful in the hope that they would convey my deep and authentic sense of solidarity with the narrator.</p>
<p><b>TFF: What spell would you like to be able to cast?</b></p>
<p><b>M</b>: An invisibility spell. It would be an invaluable tool for an introvert!</p>
<p><b>TFF: Do you have a lucky charm?</b></p>
<p><b>M</b>: Yes, a crescent moon pendant that I always have to have with me.</p>
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<p>Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at <a href="http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html">http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html</a>.</p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-24297591776897053422023-11-28T13:13:00.301+00:002023-11-28T23:10:52.803+00:00A Tribute to Joel Lane 1963-2013<p>Guest post by Rachel Verkade</p>
<img border="0" data-original-height="381" data-original-width="550" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDxsUUtHdxhnrkx8ojY0128jQiGIeoUz50yNgO64uN0tjdBHbF-GY1QoCwswJSaAklwnjZlz7Xceh56E6W2jG1IiLhyphenhyphenqTKDJCNOtn1dzKDBeWEX5QKnZk7ztx3tntScLXcaVuTL72DvfZm4nrfjxWyiDJwaQ8SUd1Ox548MV8v0R2oJYWAOduHxpv4Ywk/w400-h278/joellane.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" width="400" />
<p>If you dig through the refuse and litter of the old internet, you may come upon the ruins of old message boards. Scattered and context-less, these pages and words drift through the invisible ether of cyberspace, offering little snippets of life in the internet’s heydays.</p><p></p><p>Among these lost pages is the former message board of prolific, long-lived, and celebrated British author Ramsey Campbell. While perhaps not the most populated corner of the internet, Campbell’s message board became a haven for spec fic readers and writers, young and old, to congregate, share work and plans, discuss stories and novels, and generally make connections regarding the craft. Included in there are some names that dark fiction afficianados will recognise, talking amongst each other and their fans, sharing stories and news, planning meetups. It was a little haven for those who loved and created and consumed weird literature, a dark sanctuary where like-minded people found each other.</p><p>Sift through those old pages, and come upon an entry from mid-November 2013. At 7:24 PM, a user posted that Birmingham author Joel Lane had died in his sleep. What followed below was a raw outpouring of grief and shock.</p>
<blockquote><p><i>What?! You are sure it is no joke?</i></p>
<p><i>This is awful, awful news.</i></p>
<p><i>This is a joke, right?</i></p>
<p><i>This can’t be true. […] It just can’t be true.</i></p>
<p><i>Ah fuck, no.</i></p>
<p><i>This is like the most weird experience I’ve ever had. Crying over a man I’ve never met…</i></p>
<p><i>Life isn’t fucking fair.</i></p>
<p><i>No. […] for me, for now: no.<span></span></i></p><a name='more'></a><p></p></blockquote>
<p>These are just a few of the responses from people who were acquainted with Joel Lane, whether online or in the British streets and pubs he frequented. It seems that no one here was untouched by this loss. It’s clear that on this day, the British dark fiction community had lost someone remarkable. But despite this, outside of the British spec fic circles you will find few who even know Joel Lane’s name. And this is a tragedy; despite his relatively short life and small body of work (consisting almost entirely of short stories), Joel Lane is held up as one of the finest and most brilliant writers of modern weird fiction. The smoke-stained, fog swirled words of his tales crawl across the page, creeping into the smallest cracks of your vulnerabilities and straight into your heart. They are bleak, these stories, but deeply human, and despite their bleakness a deep core of compassion shines through. Lane’s stories are strange, surreal, sometimes difficult to unpick… but they are gems, every one of them.</p>
<p>This year will mark the tenth anniversary of Joel Lane’s death. To commemorate it, I sat down with two of Lane’s close friends to talk about him, his work, and his life.</p><img border="0" data-original-height="354" data-original-width="305" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwLyf1l5GrwloFkr_x9VOYBY3altVd3JrApxMR3G0mDXbG-zJ5aen3LmoxlMj5ND5bT5OpkXiiUp9hdo9_1A0L8efT4IGyhrvuM8VbvGtaHq4WKN0dFTkfHhPw30NCbDH7x-magR2ERjpCxv5ZJ105YlPMOrgoMzGfUFNTe6J3O9NjybAOvL61ZPCjd6A/w222-h257/bestwick.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" width="222" />
<p><b>Simon Bestwick</b> (right) is a British writer of horror and dark fiction who has published multiple novels and stories since the 1990s. His work has been selected for Ellen Datlow’s <i>Best Horror of the Year</i> collections multiple times, and he has been four times been nominated for the British Fantasy Award.</p>
<p><b>Mattie Joiner</b> (below) is a spec fic and poetry author who haunts the streets of Birmingham, Joel Lane’s hometown. Their short fiction has appeared in multiple anthologies and ‘zines including <i>Not One of Us</i>, <i>Lackington’s</i>, <i>Stone Telling</i>, and <i>Strange Horizons</i>. From 2014 to 2018 they co-edited the critically acclaimed poetry ‘zine <i>Liminality</i>.</p>
<img border="0" data-original-height="344" data-original-width="230" height="307" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIqQz83z-pj39wJVv2OOiv_16_6hfjP_TouBBJ_ruL8a1iAlF-QLmOREFwdBLhE6ERF57cmlMKuAgef_DmRirhyphenhyphenZKeRINNpkNm9Pbhcmxkp8YIv_8YiXWXpY1MY4YPUiYKEam8UVgPCjCNQYTu3BU8aepZGh9-plBcmGfbs462F0hR7Is13NFbpXEghz0/w205-h307/joiner.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" width="205" /><p>These two folks were kind enough to spend almost three hours of their Sunday afternoon chatting (and laughing, and rambling) with me and answering all of my questions. Ironically, I got to know both these wonderful people when I published a review of Joel Lane’s last anthology, <i>Scar City</i>. So even in death, Joel continues to bring people together, an irony I think that he would appreciate.</p><p></p>
<p>For clarity’s sake, my questions and interjections will be in plain text, Simon Bestwick’s words will be in bold, and Mattie Joiner’s words will be in italics.</p>
<p>RV: How long did you know Joel, and how did you meet?</p>
<p>MJ: <i>I met him in 2003 and I knew him up until his death in 2013. I’d already known Joel’s work from various anthologies, Best ofs, and I’d owned a copy of </i>The Earth Wire, From Blue to Black<i>, since about 2000. I even, I actually… I wrote him a gauche fan letter care of </i>Serpent’s Tail<i> which thankfully never reached him. I found that out later. Then, simply, I just met him at the bus stop in Birmingham. I was coming back from the pub, he was coming back from another pub. I recognised him, we started chatting, swapped numbers, and basically the rest is history. He was just… it was just quite a surprising end to a Friday night.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>It was either ‘98 or ‘99, and Joel had read a couple of magazines I’d appeared in, <i>Sackcloth & Ashes</i> and <i>Nasty Piece of Work</i>, and wrote to me. He was putting together what was his first anthology, <i>Beneath the Ground</i> at Alchemy Press, and invited me to contribute. Now, when he wrote to me, he made one terrible mistake. He included his phone number.</b></p>
<p><b>So, I was still a fairly lonely young man, single, living with my parents, I didn’t have… I was forming friendships with other writers, and of course those were scattered across the country. So any poor bastard that gave me his phone number could expect me to ring up and bend his ear as if he didn’t have anything better to do. Of course, a lot of the time possibly Joel didn’t have anything better to do, or he was just too polite to pretend otherwise. Because I babbled fairly nonsensically until he was like, “I have to go.”</b></p>
<p><b>I rang him back a couple of days later to apologise. And we just… fell into it.</b></p>
<p>RV: Tell me about your friendship/relationship. What kind of man was he?</p>
<p>SB: <b>We caught up in real life at a couple of writers’ get-togethers, we’d usually chat every week or two. But I think the real turning point in our friendship came in 2004, after the death of his father.</b></p>
<p><b>Because the death of his father had a huge, pretty much seismic effect on Joel. I don’t think anything was quite the same for him after that. It was while he was grieving and there was all sorts of chaos surrounding his dad’s death and the court case around it. And I just remember, we’d talked a bit about the court case, and he said, “Oh, there’s a documentary about Gil Scott-Heron over on BBC2. I think we should watch it.” We both put down the phone, watched this documentary, then rang back and talked about that. That’s Joel, to me.</b></p>
<p><b>A few months after his father died, he came up and visited me for a weekend, and we shared a bottle of cannabis vodka, and we talked all night about his life, his family.</b></p>
<p><b>His parents’ marriage was in a slow and painful decline for years, and they decided to stay together for the children. Which went about as well as you’d expect. And a lot of it was… there was not much overt conflict, it was more a constant state of tension and undeclared war, and almost anything he said or did was being interpreted as siding with this or that parent. He basically said it was hell. If you look at his stories with that knowledge, you can see an awful lot of it. Certainly his view of family life is a very jaundiced one. Not because he was a gay man, he just didn’t see the family unit as anything to aspire to. The idea of meeting a nice boy or a nice girl and settling down with them and living together just wasn’t something that I think he really felt entirely comfortable with.</b></p>
<p><b>And it’s really sad because he deserved to be happy, he deserved so much more happiness in life than I think he often got.</b></p>
<p><b>There’s a poem of his called “1001 Nights” in which he talks about how his love of fiction began as a way to escape the shouting and banging on walls. The final lines are “And the thousand and first night / Don’t ever ask me that.” And I knew what that must refer to.</b></p>
<p><b>I think if you knew him well enough, and he told you stuff like that, then you would see how so much of that is in so many of his stories. How personal a lot of them were. But while he would often expose himself, as it were, in his stories to that extent, he was often quite reserved about it in conversation. I was probably just in the right place in the right time when he told me all of this. And possibly the cannabis vodka. But that led to our relationship becoming a lot deeper. I got to know him so much better.</b></p>
<p><b>And in the aftermath of his father’s death we were speaking almost daily, because he was having to be there for everyone else and he needed to have someone to talk to.</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>Well, I always thought of him as a very modest guy. I didn’t know until after his death… I knew he’d been at Cambridge, but I didn’t know how successful he was academically. He apparently got straight As before he went there. And it just wouldn’t occur to him to be boastful about his background. He was never like that. He was a tremendously erudite guy, but he never lorded it over you in conversations. He’d always encourage you to bring your own interpretation of a text or music… because we chatted about music a hell of a lot as well. So he’d encourage you to bring your views to the table.</i></p>
<p><i>I remember we had a hell of a lot of conversations over pints at certain real ale pubs, and we had a lot of late night talks. We were dating for a short while, mid-naughties, probably about 2003, 2004, I’m hazy on the details. It was only for about three months, and I was going through quite a stressful time with my workplace, and it sort of bled through into the relationship. We just agreed we made better friends, which in hindsight was the best thing we could do. But that time has never gone away from me. I’d never forgot it.</i></p>
<p><i>He gave me a lot of copies of his books, and he’d always inscribe something in there. He’d often describe me as a comrade. He’d word it “Fellow comrade in the West Midlands Socialist Republic”, or something. Simon, I bet you have similar messages in your books.</i></p>
<p><img border="0" data-original-height="551" data-original-width="327" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5ExuBhWXAdvDrVl-rYoqr0miRGkPlTiZG_9o3YaWwZjHSCQhnz0CdRJVbhQGc_U-qyRWcFamJih9yLz2ybj878j9ZXLnAdt2hc9wF5Z2Kh4NjBdl9Vuv_z-7OcWSWDaPBMBWR-BNiZTSPiMrOstQK-MR3FXHI2kxGjBZdRqCYf493M9VeamRZc9NyC-A/s320/frombluetoblack.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" width="190" />SB: <b>Yes, probably my favourite one… I have to share this. One of the first times he crashed over at mine, we demolished a bottle of Slivovitz, which is an East European plum brandy that can double as fuel in tractors. At about four o’clock in the morning, I was like, “Oh, Joel, would you mind signing my copy of <i>From Blue to Black</i>?” And this is what he wrote:</b></p>
<p><b>It says, “To Simon, with inebriated best wishes, Jesus I’m pissed. Respect and best wishes to a serious and profound writer, Joel XX. Jesus, I’m wankered, nevermind.”</b></p>
<p><b>And there’s a little drawing of a heart underneath.</b></p>
<p>RV: I love that.</p>
<p>MJ: <i>Yeah, that’s very typical of him.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>He was a very careful writer. He planned all his stories out with quite copious notes beforehand, which is one of the reasons <i>Something Remains</i> happened.</b></p>
<p>EDITORIAL NOTE: <i>Something Remains</i> is an anthology created to memorialise Joel Lane in which his friends and colleagues wrote stories based around his notes and unused story concepts.</p>
<p>SB: <b>So when he made on of those little notes in your book, he’d want to do something memorable. Even if it was just a little note like that.</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>Oh yes, I remember he’d bring copies for me and our mutual friend to the pub. And when he’d sign them, he’d think about it long and hard. He was that sort of person, I think. He’d write some absolute filth in there. Don’t you have the best inscriptions though, Simon?</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>I think I may have. I think the <i>From Blue to Black</i> one is possibly…</b></p>
<p>RV: I’d have that framed. That’s wonderful.</p>
<p>MJ: <i>Oh, definitely. I feel like I got the clean ones instead. I’m quite jealous.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>As I say, I’ve got them all here. But, you know, he would always find something personal to say that made it far more than just another signed book. It was a gift from somebody who genuinely thought highly of you.</b></p>
<p><b>The last time we saw him, we got him one of those little desserts, those little cakes that were shaped like hedgehogs. Joel was very fond of hedgehogs. He felt an affinity, I think mainly because he liked the idea of being able to hibernate through the winter, emerge occasionally to forage for nuts and berries. That was the last time.</b></p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipuHEDcOCGBLtdPo1rHQjF8Pb5pd4EX4zhTvDn9mLgHPdFCCpJ6G_DtI9p00Ykk_Wp6ufmkkm5-juE7AiUjnVBDEMWpj-ziBqbndx-qiH_LFeflXmFMwPkTTqyUohyUVVYful2bJraGra2FHzUPtvpVEYEeY0-DI5KvgIFuQvACi4kgFyPuVpDXUdQ9Wc/s652/hedgehog.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="469" data-original-width="652" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipuHEDcOCGBLtdPo1rHQjF8Pb5pd4EX4zhTvDn9mLgHPdFCCpJ6G_DtI9p00Ykk_Wp6ufmkkm5-juE7AiUjnVBDEMWpj-ziBqbndx-qiH_LFeflXmFMwPkTTqyUohyUVVYful2bJraGra2FHzUPtvpVEYEeY0-DI5KvgIFuQvACi4kgFyPuVpDXUdQ9Wc/w400-h288/hedgehog.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Joel Lane with his hedgehog cakes</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p>
<p>MJ: <i>I heard the news of his death over Facebook. I can’t remember who broke the news first, and I was just absolutely gutted. I was staying at my boyfriend-at-the-time’s flat, and I was just… I phoned up a mutual friend to let him know. It was very brief, and our mutual friend sounded absolutely gutted too.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>I was luckily not on Facebook. My phone started ringing and it was Ramsey Campbell, who I knew a bit, but he’d never actually phoned me before. Straight away, he sounded very different. He was talking very slowly, as if he was in pain, and he said, “I just wanted to make sure you’d heard the sad news about Joel.”</b></p>
<p><b>I was kind of like, “… what?” Then my other phone was ringing. It was my then girlfriend, now wife, ringing because she’d just seen it online. So I got a phone from Ramsey, talked to Cate, and then the next thing I knew, the phone was ringing again, and it was Joel’s mother to tell me. And she actually seemed a bit put out that someone had gotten there first. And that… that was awful.</b></p>
<p><b>Joel was… because he was so almost pathologically unselfish, he was very vulnerable to people who were pathologically selfish. I can think of a couple of occasions where people took advantage of his good nature. He was very vulnerable to certain kinds of emotional blackmail, even when he could recognise it was being practised. And I think a lot of that came from the example of his mother.</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>Yeah, I think if there’s one phrase I’d use to describe Joel, he couldn’t stop caring. He didn’t like to not care about people, even if he knew he was being used. And I’ve often thought it burned him out before his time.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>I think so, yeah. I think if he’d just been a little more… not even necessarily selfish, but just had a little more in the way of enlightened self-interest… but of course, if he had, then he probably wouldn’t have been Joel. I did hear somebody say he was too gentle for this world, which is probably true in many ways.</b></p>
<p><b>He would criticise me when I wrote characters who were unadulteratedly loathsome and horrible, because I think he never liked the idea that anyone should be portrayed as irredeemably evil. You should never lose sight of their humanity. But I think there probably are people in this world who to all intents and purposes are irredeemable shit. And I think sometimes it can be necessary for your own psychological survival to think of certain people that way, to just be able to cut them off, or do whatever’s necessary not to have them in your life and not be vulnerable to them. And Joel was… I don’t think Joel was capable of that. He was very, very vulnerable in that respect, and he deserved far better. He deserved somebody who would have loved him, cared for him.</b></p>
<p><b>I think the happiest I knew him was in a relationship with Christina, a local writer. He identified as bisexual in the later years of his life. He used to joke, “I tend not to go out drinking on my own in the gay scene in Birmingham anymore because… well, you’re aware of the difference between a straight man and a bisexual man.”</b></p>
<p><b>I said, “Yes, about five pints, is that right?”</b></p>
<p><b>He said, “Yes, well, unfortunately the difference between a bisexual man and a screaming queen is about the same.”</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>Yeah, I remember once there was a joke I told him about how I came out. I told him I had a gay, deaf friend at college, and I told that guy I wore bifocals, and then he shagged me. That made Joel cackle. It’s a terrible joke, but he appreciated it.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>That is the kind of pun Joel loved. He loved to come up with ones that would take a half an hour for him to build. There’s a story of his which he was very disappointed that nobody got the reference to <i>Oklahoma!</i> in the opening line. It’s about two lovers in a predictably dysfunctional relationship, on a train travelling across Surrey, and the sky resembles a fringe.</b></p>
<p>RV: Oh, God!</p>
<p>MJ: <i>Oh, God! Oh, God, yeah! I’ve had this theory for years that the horror fiction was just an excuse for him to inflict terrible puns on a wider public.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>It could have been. There’s a story he wrote in the 2000s, and the whole thing was based on this joke: this guy catches up with an old friend, and they’re going through this increasingly sinister part of the woods, and the main character says, “Oh, this is scary.”</b></p>
<p><b>The other guy, “Oh, shut up, it’s all right for you. I’ve got to come back on my own.”</b></p>
<p><b>And you’ve heard this joke before, but this was like a 2000 or so word story that was all constructed so Joel could tell that joke.</b></p>
<p>RV: What do you guys feel was his masterpiece?</p>
<p><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="666" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwiZa8U2aszL8LzFdV2dWuRAHb9VuQEyxQIv6dB3Zd10Ei8lJWABwOLpgHqEtp1ZiXKJQGYShwMhTM84E-IPuQl7ctk7T7tLOpI9BD9A4XKGn7_0ocvCbXkPyMEPygG8ynkIOS3HfChmyJT3f8IWKjvKkm7jxFwKbpSrV3tBnr6qz7JSVfLdHRUtKZShg/s320/where%20furnaces%20burn%5BL%5D.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" width="213" />SB: <b><i>Where Furnaces Burn</i>. Joel shone, I think, greatest of all as a writer of short fiction. He was an undisputed genius at that. He wrote a couple of novels, but they were very much mainstream fiction. I would have dearly loved to have seen him write an actual out-and-out horror novel, or a crime novel.</b></p>
<p><b>And I think <i>Where Furnaces Burn</i> is first, on one hand, a collection of some of his finest short stories. It’s also the closest we’ve got to a horror novel from Joel. Because the stories in that all revolve around the same character, this unnamed detective in the West Midlands police. He wrote those stories over quite a few years, and <i>Where Furnaces Burn</i> finally arranged them into sort of chronological order. They don’t tell a single overarching story, but they do follow this guy’s career through the police.</b></p>
<p><b>To me, it’s got so much of what made Joel so great. It’s got the West Midlands, Birmingham in particular, as this brooding presence throughout, almost like a character in its own right. It’s got his sly humour, his beautiful skill with language, his deft characterisation, and his ability to just seed something deeply, deeply weird and unsettling into the most ordinary of settings, and to find some profound meaning with it. And it turns all that into, as I say, something that’s almost a novel in its own right.</b></p>
<p><b>I mean, everything he wrote is fantastic, but I think this is the thing of his that I would most like to be remembered in the future.</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>I found this was one of the toughest questions to answer, and I nearly picked his novella </i>The Witnesses are Gone<i>. But instead, what I’m choosing is an early short story of his. It’s called “The Foggy, Foggy Dew.”</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>I think that was his first published story.</b></p>
<p><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1142" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3fOn11UuMOxjxoD3n5W7ROl2nrnGdmEQWP94qDPZASsFUItCTJItZsERBrCZiQa7qvhf2Oj_dL2AVZi3L36xz8LW5zKyUnRp-DphsWkAcqQN1_9Q0-c-AWLGHxHYN9T_iPvuRWKtIO2UyjkfJ9f7dMHUqO3gaar4xwdgkB37UjsSFCC1OtREoENwFq1Q/s320/Foggy%20Foggy%20Dew%5BR%5D.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" width="228" />MJ: <i>Yeah. For Joel, it’s a very enigmatic story. It’s not quite Aickman-esque, but it’s… putting it bluntly, it’s about two young men who were school friends meeting each other in a dead-end job sweeping anonymous Birmingham factories clean of dust. The protagonist goes to see his friend in his childhood home. And it seems to imply that a contact has been made or is being made with the dead. It’s also conflated with visions of the dead being portrayed almost as animate dust. And there are also visions of a nuclear winter the protagonist keeps dreaming about, or seeing when his friend is playing this dust-choked piano in the music room. And one bleeds into the other.</i></p>
<p><i>The illustrations in the original chapbook are very evocative. The front cover is an image of the book of a piano keyboard, but the black keys are chimney pots. And you’ve got bleeding fingers trailing blood to form the white keys. It’s just tremendously spooky.</i></p>
<p><i>And it leaves things so open. There’s recurring images of chessboards. The mother is endlessly weaving a design you can’t quite make out. And at the very end, the mother is showing the protagonist a black and white checkerboard design, and she said, “Stand back from it, then you’ll see what it is.” It’s implied that this thing is a message. The protagonist claims he can’t see a design in it. Whether or not he’s lying is unimportant. And this woman just says, “Then you’ll be all right. It can’t hurt you.”</i></p>
<p><i>And upstairs his friend is just playing at the piano, almost obsessively, no tune coming out. Just endless wisps of dust. They might be the dead. It might just be conventional dust. But they’ve both been overtaken by something. It might be his lost father, playing back into what you said earlier, Simon, about his own family. And this protagonist walks out of the house just wishing it would rain.</i></p>
<p><i>It’s tremendously affecting. You can’t say exactly what’s happened in the story, and I think that’s why I love it. I’ve read it time and time again, and it just never quite yields up its mystery or its meaning. Something’s happened, but I’m not sure what, and I think that’s why it’s a haunting in itself just to read it.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>I was just looking through my copy, because there was a little passage which really caught me. When his friend’s playing piano and he’s got that whole vision of nuclear war, and also a bit of a chessboard as well. “Kings and knights turned to pawns and were captured. The curled bodies glowed faintly like their own ghosts until the grey covered them over.”</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>It just gives me shivers to hear that.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>I’d just like to be able to write one line like this. It would be amazing.</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>Yes, I know. I could just think, “There, I’ve done it.” I’d be happy. But it wasn’t enough for Joel. He just kept getting more polished and more brilliant. And the story came out in ’86, the same year as the Chernobyl Disaster. I wonder whether that news kind of infected the story. I could be wrong about it, but it’s something I’ve often suspected.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>I hadn’t even thought of that. But yeah the timing is… but then if Joel wrote it before the Chernobyl Disaster, we’d be saying “It’s your bloody fault, Lane! You caused Chernobyl!”</b></p>
<p>RV: And that kind of bleeds into my next question, which is about some of the over-arching themes of Joel’s works.</p>
<p>SB: <b>Wow. There’s a lot of them.</b></p>
<p>RV: I know that in the review I wrote for his collection <i>Scar City</i> I noted that loneliness seemed to be the antagonist in all the stories.</p>
<p>MJ: <i>Very much so. It’s almost like a negative character in his stories. It’s absence in the shape of a human being. I remember in one of his early stories in </i>The Earth Wire<i>…</i></p>
<p>SB: “<b>Waiting for a Train”, maybe?</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>I think so, yeah.</i></p>
<p><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="691" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_Gzh6v3T2RIIHUBBzlxUNclxtHNA3_cQtYm5POkmoatnhgnHukWmf0CeFjTnPmw5ZCcUQ7dIuBzdXWkc329HtrFJdUiTczJkMMYdcB4rOK0atz3F-fYUYqd7WEdwLfnxHWuVeGWmtKEhPy9gv-7y34U0Ef3ownlWKvEF9_u6ddypE50JRrSwOnHpWm8o/s320/earth%20wire.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" width="221" />SB: <b>Cause I remember Joel said the story was about loneliness and need. He said that when he was younger, he saw loneliness as an inevitable part of life, and now he sees it as something that can be avoided, but too many people miss the opportunity.</b></p>
<p><b>But loneliness… because he wasn’t someone who got into relationships very easily, I think he’d had a lot of casual encounters, but not many actual committed relationships. And I don’t think he found the idea of living with another person an easy concept to get with. He was somebody who didn’t want to be alone, but I think a lot of his experiences of the family unit he’d grown up with made him very, very leery about replicating it. Even in the sort of idea of finding a nice boyfriend and adopting a couple of cats together.</b></p>
<p>RV: It’s interesting you saying that, Simon, because one of my favourites of his stories was “Birds of Prey.” And that’s very much about the protagonist being stuck in a very toxic relationship with a boyfriend who could not seem to break himself out of this continuous cycle of violence and abuse. And the protagonist just having to watch him destroy himself.</p>
<p>SB: <b>Yeah… as Mattie was saying earlier, Joel could be very vulnerable to being taken advantage of. Even when he recognised that emotional blackmail was being done, he found it very, very hard to say no. So maybe there’s a certain fatalism, or a certain way of looking at relationships, in that you can always see the darker aspects of people, the things where conflicts are gonna be born. And it was hard to imagine that something as simple as human love could bridge those gaps.</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>And there’s a hell of a lot more in his work. But it seems like it’s almost always gay men. Not just looking for a quick fuck, but looking for a deeper connection, communication, contacts, and they never quite achieve it, but it’s about the attempts as much as the success.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>It’s one of the profound contradictions of Joel, that for someone who was a committed socialist and a confirmed atheist, he had this highly individual personality and worldview. And there is a deep, deep yearning in his fiction for something else. Something numinous.</b></p>
<p><b>I remember him saying after his father died that one of the things that haunted him was that he’d never properly said goodbye to him. And he said that even though he’d never believed in an afterlife, he was tempted to go to a spiritualist meeting just to be able to have that kind of peace, even if it was faked. It would at least be some way of doing that.</b></p>
<p><b>There was always that yearning for something more that you could never quite define. Which, of course, made the search a very painful one. There is that thing of wanting somewhere to belong, and at the same time being afraid of that and the loss of self that could possibly result. Because a relationship, a marriage… it changes you. I’m a different person now than I was before I met my wife. I’m a better one, in many respects, but there are things I used to enjoy that don’t do anymore. You wouldn’t trade it, but there’s change. And I think especially if you’ve been in bad relationships, it can make you very leery about going into another one. And if you’re someone like Joel, he was hugely vulnerable to that.</b></p>
<p><img border="0" data-original-height="645" data-original-width="420" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqA9YRmqlH7Ey_E14Kit2DKUNkpnu4BImxFp2WVL4_xNB2SWyzIaUgsdq4fx3BTBm3v5YSk0-aEBF6S249fp0pYmNfRx0ISN49ykDnupVK0B-Va07r21ItIXSqQi9uAlqhS1AtKNt-S_5dtlU5wYuFsja2_wYbI_VBkzYKrlrghXHnH_amZYMaoWi00lU/s320/lost_district.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" width="208" />MJ: <i>Yeah, he definitely believed in community, or at least reaching forwaard, but there was also a fear of… not friendship, but relationships. There’s that story, “The Pain Barrier,” in </i>The Lost District<i>. It’s another one night stand, but one of the protagonists has scar tissue. He and the other protagonist sleep together, they’re happy, but then the protagonist starts being absorbed through the scar tissue and has to physically pull away from this guy. The symbolism of it just gets me.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>There’s an early story of his as well called “And Make Us Whole,” where there’s a guy who’s been split apart into so many different versions of himself. Who is he anymore? He’s like all these multiple selves that have been pulled apart. That also seemed very symbolic.</b></p>
<p><b>He also had a real hatred of mimicry.</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>There’s a poem he wrote about that very subject, it’s called “Mimesis.”</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>Yeah, it’s in his first collection. That’s one of the poems that really stood out for me when I first read the collection. It’s about a childhood bully imitating him.</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>It’s chilling.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>There’s also a line at the end of <i>From Blue to Black</i> on how one of the characters has a hatred of fakes and of mimicry. Joel was very much someone who was trying to take the weird tale and use it to say what he wanted, what he needed to say. I suppose he was looking for answers out of that.</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>I don’t think he wanted to say something about the world we’re in. I don’t think he was necessarily proposing solutions in his weird fiction. It was more like saying that we should strive, not give up hope. And bleak as a lot of these stories often are, you always get the feeling that people hold onto their idealism. Even if it’s quite deeply buried. And the important thing for Joel was to hang onto that, no matter how brutal things were.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>There’s a story of his called “The Only Game.” And the character’s father in “The Only Game” often talks about his time at the railway union and trying to fight the bosses. And he said that it was a fight you could never win, but that was never a good enough reason to give up. I think that’s quite possibly coming near the core of Joel’s political philosophy.</b></p>
<p>RV: There’s our lead in, let’s talk politics. Joel was very famously left-wing, socialist, antifa… would you say his politics bled into his work?</p>
<p>SB: <b>No, not at all! </b>*laughing*</p>
<p>MJ: <i>More like was utterly steeped in it. So many of his heroes and heroines are activists. And I think a lot of these experiences where, say, you’ve got some hardline gammon pulling a guard dog out on some luckless activist came from his own experiences.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>Oh, yeah. He did a lot of leafletting with the anti-Nazi league, possibly later on with UAF. There was a poem about this, about some guy ripping down one of their pamphlets and saying the firm’s on their way, and Joel was like, shit, we’ve got to get out of here, they’ve been known to use paving slabs.</b></p>
<p><b>One of the things we would disagree on is… I have a propensity for using shooty-bang-sticks in my fiction. And Joel was very, very much against the idea of violence ever being a solution. When one of his fellow activists said “We should have guns,” Joel replied that he was completely mad. He said that if you depart from rational and democratic means to achieve your ends, then the ends you achieve will ultimately be neither rational nor democratic. The idea that you can harness the methods of right-wing vigilantism to achieve the goals of social justice is a bit like saying a loving relationship can start with rape.</b></p>
<p><b>I don’t necessarily think he was a pacifist, I think if somebody attacked him he was quite capable of hitting back. But in terms of his activism, he was very much of the opinion that you don’t use violence. He took it seriously.</b></p>
<p>RV: I definitely did get the sense that his stories had a strong anti-capitalist and anti-industrialist bent.</p>
<p>SB: <b>Very much so.</b></p>
<p>RV: There was one story in particular that I recall about a father searching for his teenage son. And he eventually finds him strapped to the machinery in an underground factory, mindlessly working, but he can’t break him free.</p>
<p>SB: <b>Yes, that was a Hindu protagonist, which was quite unusual for Joel. I’m pretty sure I remember he actually wanted to make that father a practicing but moderate Muslim, but the editors overruled him.</b></p>
<p>RV: Oh, really? That’s interesting.</p>
<p>SB: <b>This would have been early 2000s, not long after 9-11. There was a lot of paranoia especially around representing Muslim characters. Either you were a terrorist sympathiser or you’re gonna inadvertently caricature Muslims.</b></p>
<p>RV: That story particularly struck me both because it seemed very anti-capitalist, but also that it was terribly bleak, the ending. When he finally finds his son, strapped to the machine, he stares at him for a moment and says, “Well, what time do you call this, then?”</p>
<p>MJ: <i>It’s such a bitter punchline.</i></p>
<p>RV: I know! And then just leaves him there! You find your son trapped within the industrial framework of this capitalist regime, but all you can do is leave him.</p>
<p>SB: <b>Caught in the same prison you are. I have a slightly more optimistic example, certainly with more of Joel’s trademark black humour. It’s called “Among the Dead.” One of the characters is working for the union, and he finally realises he’s had enough, and he goes into the bathroom and vomits. All that comes out are coins. He didn’t remember swallowing them. No one ever does. And once he’s vomited them out, he walks out, and he kept on walking out of the building, so at least he’s found some sort of escape.</b></p>
<p><b>Those ones were certainly a relief from the otherwise “we’re all fucked” kind of thing, which I don’t think was what Joel wanted to say anyway. I don’t think he wanted to say “we’re all fucked and there’s nothing we can do about it”. We can find meaning if only in trying to resist the awful shittiness of things and trying to do what little good we can.</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>Yeah, I don’t think he wanted to be regarded as a miserabilist, but I think he was wary of becoming glib.</i></p>
<p><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="652" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-DEqvFe2bb6170pbv3oG05mAZhSdvkk5BWpuWviwZHT3ucXuIQFB31bD19pHm56HMOEsBiNts_H5d2gzoWjAhv-7XzaVEmMibQQMZxodPJaQP0SQcM3mWr2uNfb44rGm136nndVVvdFrnuCzxlOzVyBZoASpJGilkD-_vjtH2nP2JYtmdV8wlOa0qK6g/s320/blue%20mask.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" width="209" />SB: <b>Yeah, Joel wasn’t dressing up in any kind of colours. What he wrote came from a very fundamental part of him. It was what he needed to say and how he needed to say it.</b></p>
<p><b>There’s a fair bit of politics in <i>The Blue Mask</i>, as well. The characters in that are initially campaigning for the Labour party, but eventually say that now they’re in we can stop pretending to support them, we can stop pretending we think Tony Blair is great, and then when Labour brings in tuition fees, they cut up their membership cards.</b></p>
<p><b>I struggled with <i>The Blue Mask</i> a little bit, because there are big passages about politics where it feels like I’m being preached to. But after a second reading you realise how they do fit into the plot. But it’s not an easy or mainstream read by any means.</b></p>
<p><b>There was a chapter in <i>From Blue to Black</i> where the character Karl talks about his early sexual experiences with a lover who used to beat him but also fuck him, and it’s just after the 1992 election when the Tories have got back in again, and Karl says, “You wonder why a victim can fall for a bully and go on taking abuse without trying to stop it? I bet those fuckers know the answer.” He was not shy about going there.</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>No, he never pulled his punches.</i></p>
<p>RV: I hear he hated <i>Last House on the Left</i>.</p>
<p>SB: <b>Oh, God, yes. <i>Last House on the Left</i> and <i>Suspiria</i> in particular. He referred to Wes Craven once as the Brian Ferry of horror, which was not a compliment.</b></p>
<p><b>I think it was particularly because he loved <i>The Virgin Spring</i>, but he pretty much detested Wes Craven. One of the things that made Joel a very interesting horror writer was he had a very left wing, intellectual perspective on things. He was often at odds with a lot of horror tropes, which made him do interesting things. But it also meant there was a lot of horror he didn’t have much interest in. Once he decided something was crap, he wasn’t interested in being swayed. It was part of what made him who he was.</b></p>
<p>RV: I’d be quite curious as to what he would make of a lot of the horror coming out in the last five, ten years, the more socially conscious horror like <i>Get Out</i>, or <i>The Babadook</i>, or <i>Barbarian</i>.</p>
<p>SB: <b>I think he’d be very interested in that. He would have seen that as positive development. I would dearly love to hear what he thought of something like <i>Get Out</i>. Though he’d probably also say that <i>The Twilight Zone</i> did something like that 30 years ago. He could be pretty terrible for finding something where the same thing had been done better before, in his view.</b></p>
<p>RV: Do you think Joel’s experiences as a gay man living under Section 28 influenced his work? Talk about the queer themes he explored.</p>
<p>SB: <b>There is so much humour in <i>The Blue Mask</i> about gay sex. We often talk about how bleak Joel could be, and how he was a poet of the abandoned, the broken, the desolate. It’s easy to overlook how fucking funny he was. He was incredibly funny.</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>I don’t think he’d want to be bracketed as just a socialist horror writer or a queer horror writer, but you can’t separate sexuality from his fiction. He’d got ten years on me, so he was growing up as a young man under Section 28, and I’m old enough to remember the horror of that.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>I went to an all-boys’ school where the homophobia was intense, and to call somebody gay was one of the worst insults they could throw. There was an incredibly vicious homophobic culture, and boys there who I think were actually gay… I cannot even imagine. I know at least one who attempted suicide, another who would down copious amounts of vodka during his lunch break. It was atrocious. Joel was about ten years ahead of myself and Mattie, so I can imagine…</b></p>
<p><b>He was born in ’63, so he would have hit maturity around the beginning of the 80s. So just as AIDs was becoming a thing, and the first wave of gay liberation running aground on the conservatism of the Reagan and Thatcher years. There’s a line in <i>From Blue to Black</i> where the protagonist talks about how he and Karl belonged to that generation who escaped the first wave of the AIDS epidemic. They were just young enough to have hit sexual maturity after it broke. “Like the survivors of a bombing raid.”</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>I remember one night, a while after Joel and I had stopped dating, but we were still meeting up a lot of Saturday nights. I was walking up to my boyfriend’s tower block, and somebody tried to do a queer bash. The guy picked up a wooden slat, waved it in my direction. “Oi, queer, oi, four eyes.” A couple of people went past, and he dropped the slat and said, “You’ve been lucky this time.” I was just fucking shaking. It was the closest I’ve come. I’ve seen the odd thing, I’ve been walking hand-in-hand with a guy and people spit on the pavement, but I’ve been lucky. I told Joel about it, and he was very huggy and sympathetic of course, but I was still shaking… it felt like it could have come from one of his stories. You get a lot of homophobic prejudice in his stories. </i>The Blue Mask<i> revolves around an unprovoked attack on a gay man, and the character trying to find his sense of self afterward, to the extent of changing his name, icing out people, and claiming a different identity. It’s quite a terrifying little book, in its way.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>Oh, yeah. There’s the whole thing with his boyfriend in that.</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>Who’s called Matt. I always had to laugh at that. I think it’s also, a lot of his gay protagonists are pretty spiky, lonely people. Even if they’ve got a boyfriend, happiness is not assured. Although it seems there is a chance of happier future relationships, but we just don’t know.</i></p>
<p><i>And I think it’s that just because a character’s gay or bi doesn’t mean he’s free of what we now call toxic masculinity. Look at Karl in </i>From Blue to Black<i>; he’s a complete arsehole. He sleeps around behind his boyfriend’s back, frequently in front of him as well. There’s no attempt to glamourise that. But at the same time, what resonated for me with that book… I think he wasn’t trying to say that bi men are complete sluts, which I was relieved to see. He wasn’t going for an easy, glib characterisation. But then later on, the boyfriend has a brief affair with a female friend, and it’s very sympathetically portrayed. They have this brief, nice, gentle love affair, and it’s a relief for them both after being involved with Karl.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>Joel would later define himself as being bi, though he’d had more boyfriends than girlfriends, certainly. But I think the overwhelming majority of his protagonists are queer men, people who had a lot in common with Joel himself. In many ways, his characters are everyman characters. They’re just everyman where the men are like Joel, and not like a lot of people in mainstream society. They’re coming from a very different cultural background, in many respects, despite being born and bred in the UK. He comes from these different marginalized communities, the gay community, the Jewish community, but he’s not wholly part of them. He just can’t subsume himself into that.</b></p>
<p>RV: Joel used urban Birmingham as a frequent setting for his work. Are you familiar with the area? What do you think inspired him about it?</p>
<p>MJ: <i>I think it’s partially write what you know. But I think he just seriously loved the city. And Birmingham always gets a bad rap from people. We’re all dismissed as thickies, and it’s unlovely, and it’s just brutal, and Brummies don’t help themselves because they’re too self-effacing. You don’t get this problem so much in the black country, where they’re quite proud of their culture. I think Joel wanted to celebrate the city, and all its ugliness and strange beauty.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>I think he used his own life and what was around him as the raw material for his stories. I do remember asking him if when he was a kid he used to ask, “Mummy, Daddy, can we go out and look at the urban desolation today?”</b></p>
<p>*laughter from all*</p>
<p><b>I think… is it the Wren’s Nest in Birmingham?</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>Oh, yes.</i></p>
<p><img border="0" data-original-height="239" data-original-width="354" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj5xM0jDb1vwCvNEvjIyJVHQT5yHEaHjkr9KsUjicwJy3jBWp3GoIsPRtadu_EPJLpN2lFIQPq8IjV3hHQV2nY-FN-t9BcAfZKRiyD6dV4NgWIYeEOlP3xqJoP0U0FN0G8F1xND2nVFpIeUQ0_Z6qraXSC8GgnaBxbfiseTFrDJI-ejmd8zilomrTHjhw/s320/wrensnest.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" width="320" />SB: <b>One of his favourite places. There’s a lovely photo of him there. One of the very few pictures where he looks genuinely happy. He was not without an appreciation of nature, but you could be forgiven for thinking that his idea of fun was to wander through the desolate, decaying, post-industrial wasteland. “Where are you going on holiday, Joel?” “Oh, I thought Detroit.”</b></p>
<p>RV: Has Joel’s work influenced your own in any way?</p>
<p>MJ: <i>Oh, for me very definitely. And the shame of it is, he didn’t live to see most of it. It’s one great regret. We managed to do one collaborative story together, “Ashes in the Water,” which got reprinted twice. I was quite proud of that, and I always wished we’d done more together.</i></p>
<p><i>A few years ago, there was a tribute anthology called </i>Something Remains<i>, where every story was based on notes he’d left behind for works he’d never started or weren’t finished. And I put together one which actually, weirdly enough, felt very much like a combo of mine and Joel’s styles, and I was very proud of it. Even managed to put in some quite barbed comments that I thought Joel would have appreciated. There was a line from my narrator: “People say of a face that it’s lived in, but somebody has used Mark’s as a squat.” I thought Joel would have loved that.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>Oh yeah, that could almost be one of his. I did one called “And Ashes in her Hair.”</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>Oh, yes! That was so good.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>Oh, thank you! It was based on some of Joel’s notes and some of my grim experiences of working in a corporate culture. And that particular kind of horrendous kind of thing where language is restricted in a way, making it impossible to say anything that the company’s doing wrong. It’s truly horrible. And, of course, Joel knew all about that kind of crap. It was great to be able to pick up some of his notes and work with them.</b></p>
<p><b>As an influence, huge. I didn’t realise how incredibly lucky I was that in the last decade of his life, we became very close, and for a long time we would be sending each other our stories, poems, works in progress, stuff like that. Looking back, I was incredibly privileged to be getting my stories beta read by one of the most amazing writers was brilliant. I often feel bad that… I don’t know if I gave as much, anything like the same kind of depth with his stuff. You keep thinking that this is brilliant, it’s a work of genius, and you forget that he was often his own harshest critic.</b></p>
<p><b>But in terms of that influence, having had his critical eye, his feedback, having learned his lessons… one of the lessons I learned was to trust the intelligence of your readers. Pay your readers the compliment of assuming they have the brainpower to figure things out, that they don’t need everything spelled out in tiny detail. It helped me to write stuff that was more brief and more allusive, and to have that attention to detail in terms of individual phrasing.</b></p>
<p><b>I’m a better person and a better writer for having known him.</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>I definitely agree with you. I think part of the reason he was so important to me, as an influence, a friend… sometimes, it sounds a bit shit to say this, a bit naff perhaps, but one thing that was so important to me, was he put the West Midlands into weird fiction. And it gave me the courage to write about the landscapes I knew.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>I think my favourite comment of Joel’s on the internet may well be a paraphrase of Lovecraft: “Things have learned to type that ought to scrawl.”</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>I’ve not heard that one. That is a good one.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>There should be a book of Joel’s one-liners and witticisms collected from online and his published books. There are so many great little examples of his wits, his humour, and with the kind of person he was, they really deserve to be preserved almost as much as his work does. God, I wish we still had him around.</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>Oh, I miss him.</i></p>
<p>SB: <b>The shock of it is that it’s been 10 years since he died. He’d be 60 now.</b></p>
<p><b>He came from these very different cultures, the left-wing political culture, the gay culture, the music he loved, his Jewish background, all those different things… but he would never just disappear into any of those. He always felt there was something that set him slightly apart. And that’s part of what made him and his work so individual.</b></p>
<hr />
<p>I admit that I was somewhat at a loss of how to conclude this piece. It would be easier, perhaps, had I known Joel Lane personally, but I did not have that privilege. I know him only through his fiction and through speaking to his friends. But the portrait that has been painted for me is of a man who, while faced with the horrors and cruelties and injustices of life, still also saw the beauty in it. A man who also saw the value in warmth, and kindness, and community, who still believed in fighting against the worst life had to offer, even if that fight was futile. What mattered was the fight itself, not the outcome.</p>
<p>He was also a man who did not realise the depth of his own abilities, or the wonder that his work brought to others. Simon and Mattie had this to say:</p>
<p>SB: <b>I always remember saying at the time when he died, that if there was an afterlife, and it had any form of internet access, he would have been absolutely astonished at how much love and admiration there was for him. He was always genuinely shocked when anything like that showed up. He often assumed that nobody had the slightest interest in his work.</b></p>
<p><b>In the run-up to the 2013 World Fantasy Convention, Joel was on the shortlist for <i>When Furnaces Burn</i>. It was him and Rob Shearman, and Joel said, “There is no shortlist, only the books that Rob Shearman has allowed to exist.” And he refused to come to the ceremony. Despite the fact that Steve Jones and a couple of others had been hinting that he should come. He said, “Oh, no, I can’t. I’ve got to look after Mum. She’s broken her hip.”</b></p>
<p><b>They kept saying, you could just come down for the day, we’ll pay your train fare… and I was kind of like, “Joel, I think you may have won this award.”</b></p>
<p><b>And he said, “No, I don’t think so. I don’t.” And of course, he did.</b></p>
<p><b>I never got a chance to talk to him about that and say “I told you so.” I left a message or two on his phone. I’d wanted to say to his face and how proud we were, and how happy we were for him. I left the message to say congratulations and send our love. And that was the night he died.</b></p>
<p>MJ: <i>When we met, I told him how much I loved his work, and he literally said this, this is how modest he was… “I didn’t think anybody had heard of me.”</i></p>
<hr />
<p><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpoz8-S-aMmSxsa-Fim8Mvc5TE53EOFL81FDm4ZQj_yaWbZxM7gyVGSibqUj-eXx7OPbC6NtyKMM-v1imLc4gD2ZozPOLtNdaRBgAwP-ISJ2Mce4tIws7jtQR4vY7sFNCWXHS3acb5cbwQcs_jSQjB1NG3Vi93I195PK4cfcGNQFlBcYfXuT9miuob1yU/s320/something%20remains.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" width="192" />We have heard of you, Joel. And your work continues to be read, and shared, and evoke terror and sadness and wonder all together. And your friends still miss you.</p>
<p>I’ll end with a final quote from C.S. Lewis, after the death of one of his own dear friends:</p>
<div style="text-align: center;"><blockquote>“In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s [Tolkien’s] reaction to a specifically Charles joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him “to myself” now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald.”</blockquote></div>
<p>As Mattie shall never again see the part of Simon that Joel brought out, Simon shall never see that part of Mattie. And in that way, the death of one can be, in many ways, a thousand little deaths, a prisming of deaths, especially when the deceased is loved by so many. And it seems to me that in the loss of Joel Lane, we have lost a multitude. Perhaps this is the numinosity that Simon suggested Joel sought.</p>
<p>Wherever Joel is, I hope that he has some sense of that now.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><i>As I gulped bitter coffee and dressed,<br />it occurred to me that hope did not lie in kings and heroes<br />but in the hands of ordinary men and women.<br />The ruined city belonged to all of us,<br />and so did the struggle to bring it down and build one worthy to be lived in.</i></p>
<p style="text-align: center;">-Joel Lane</p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-5872931746931297092023-11-23T12:15:00.001+00:002023-11-23T12:15:00.150+00:00Micro-interview with Priya Chand<p>We invited Priya Chand, author of “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2023.67/fiction/woman.html">Woman, Soldier, Girl</a>” in <i>The Future Fire</i> #67, over for a brief chat.</p>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://futurefire.net/images/kv-woman2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="590" data-original-width="489" height="320" src="http://futurefire.net/images/kv-woman2.jpg" width="265" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Art # 2023 Katharine A. Viola</span></td></tr></tbody></table>
<p><b>The Future Fire: What does “Woman, Soldier, Girl” mean to you?</b></p>
<p><b>Priya Chand</b>: I read Madhusree Mukherjee's <i>Churchill's Secret War</i> and basically… processing learning about the Bengal famine, plus my love of the steampunk aesthetic contrasted against the way that, at the time, a lot of it went hand-in-hand with effectively glorifying the imposition of Victorian aesthetics and empire. I'd also read this bit about how it's flattening to exclusively cast the colonized as victims, and the colonizers as all-powerful, because local allies made a lot of difference in how successful colonization ultimately was (there were examples, the only one I remember is La Malinche). So I also wanted to capture some of that nuance, and show some complicity as well.</p>
<p><b>TFF: What is your favorite progressive SFF movie or TV show?</b></p>
<p><b>PC</b>: Does <i>Everything Everywhere, All At Once</i> count?? I feel like it should. That movie was way too damn relatable though, haha. I avoided watching it with my mom because I didn't want to be glared at every time Evelyn was disrespected by her daughter.</p><p><b>TFF: Tell us about one of your favourite underrated artists or authors?</b></p>
<p><b>PC</b>: Fargo Tbakhi. I've loved everything of his I've read so far. His written work is both lyrical and sharp.</p>
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<p><b>Extract</b></p>
<blockquote>Decades later, there will be a memorial, and tourists who mostly walk past the memorial—there’s plenty of shopping, the latest fashions and a myriad of clever trinkets in the artisans’ district, where people are still discovering techniques and ideas lost during the war and subsequent occupation. It’s astounding, some say, that their ancestors didn’t do more to preserve these things. The occupation didn’t last that long, after all, and such an illustrious heritage cannot be so easily erased.</blockquote>
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<p>Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at <a href="http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html">http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html</a>.</p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-38378436978075026262023-11-21T12:04:00.039+00:002023-11-21T12:04:00.140+00:00Micro-interview with Carmen Moran<p>Welcome to Carmen Moran, artist of “<a href="http://futurefire.net/2023.67/fiction/collective.html">Collective Bargaining</a>” in <i>The Future Fire</i> #67, and our long-time illustrator and collaborator, to the micro-interview season.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://futurefire.net/images/cm-collective.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="422" height="320" src="http://futurefire.net/images/cm-collective.jpg" width="225" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Art © 2023 Carmen Moran<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p><b>The Future Fire: How did you go about illustrating “Collective Bargaining”?</b></p><p><b>Carmen Moran</b>: Very slowly. It took me quite a while to work out what I was going for. The image that struck me most from the piece was the fourteen thousand eyes, so I wanted them to be a prominent feature, while also showing the erasure that sets in when someone doesn’t fit the shape of the "standard human".</p><p><b>TFF: You're not a fan of spiders yourself. What small animals do you like, and do you think you can communicate with them?</b></p><p><b>CM</b>: Well, when I say I'm not a fan, I mean them suddenly appearing in my field of vision freaks me out a little (or a lot, depending on size), but of course I love them as very cool parts of our ecosystem, and in their symbolic role as creators of art and weavers of tales—how could I not? As for communicating with them, there is actually a fleet of cellar spiders in my house that I have a contract with: I leave them alone as long as they don't suddenly drop from the ceiling into my face (which they sometimes do for some reason), and in turn they eat the really scary massive spiders that wander in from the garden. It's working well, for both parties as far as I can tell.</p><p><b>TFF: What else are you working on now?</b></p><p><b>CM</b>: Mostly random personal projects at the moment. One of them is my random knowledge zine Emmeline (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/emmeline.zine/">@emmeline.zine</a> on Insta), which I've been publishing with a group of friends since 2003. I only just worked out this week that that was twenty years ago… There were some breaks in the middle, but we resuscitated it in 2019 and it's been going strong since then. It's my longest running project, and I love how it's brought a bunch of people together that wouldn't otherwise be connected, and that it teaches me new things all the time. Most recently it caused me to learn about grasshopper mice (Onychomys). If you've never heard of them, I suggest you look them up.</p>
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<p>Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at <a href="http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html">http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html</a>.</p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6477080206627137109.post-48470681659995294132023-11-16T18:12:00.063+00:002023-11-18T12:14:22.537+00:00Microinterview with Bernie Jean Schiebeling<p>We’re very pleased to have Bernie Jean Schiebeling, author of “Crumb Cutie Exodus” in <i>The Future Fire</i> #67, over for a chat about help, hope, and projects.</p>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://futurefire.net/images/lb-crumb2.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="400" height="316" src="http://futurefire.net/images/lb-crumb2.jpg" width="197" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Art © 2023 L.E. Badillo</span></td></tr></tbody></table>
<p><b>TFF: What does “Crumb Cutie Exodus” mean to you?</b></p>
<p><b>Bernie Jean Schiebeling</b>: "Crumb Cutie Exodus" is about the need to take immediate action to help others despite possible consequences. Personally, I sometimes have trouble acting quickly, so writing characters who do is kind of like… practice for future situations.</p>
<p><b>TFF: </b><b>What is your favourite example of hopeful or fun speculative fiction (in any medium)?</b></p>
<p><b>BJS</b>: "D.I.Y." by John Wiswell and <i>The Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe</i> by Kij Johnson are great hopeful fiction—both have clever and compassionate protagonists who take on powerful institutions that seem immune to change, and they win. I've also been having a wonderful time with <i>I Was a Teenage Exocolonist</i> from Northway Games, where the player character experiences a time loop and attempts to create a better (or at least different) life for themself each playthrough.</p>
<p><b>TFF: </b><b>What are you working on next?</b></p>
<p><b>BJS</b>: It's a busy transitional time—I've recently finished a contemporary queer Gothic novella, so I'm seeking publication for that and working on a backlog of short story drafts. My partner and I are also starting preproduction on our new spec-fic podcast after wrapping season 2 of our last audio project, <i>Gastronaut</i>.</p>
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<p><b>Extract:</b> </p><blockquote>During the early hours of the Paris morning, someone flings a lilac bear from a high hotel balcony, and she tumbles, tumbles, tumbles through the freezing night air. The shiny gold tag in her ear, a plump star shape, flutters and flickers as it catches the wind. She lands with a soft <i>pash</i> of polyvinyl beans on cobblestones.</blockquote>
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<p>Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at <a href="http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html">http://press.futurefire.net/2023/10/new-issue-202367.html</a>.<br /></p>Djibrilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06382333338207409292noreply@blogger.com0