Interview with Tihema Baker

One more visit from an author with a story in the Pacific Monsters anthology published by our friends at Fox Spirit Books and edited by Margrét Helgadóttir. We always love hearing from authors, and Tihema Baker was kind enough to answer a few questions about his writing, culture and literature in Aotearoa New Zealand, translation and childhood fears. Read on, and then go check out his fabulous published work.

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Tihema Baker is a young Māori writer, belonging to the iwi (nations) of Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga, Te Āti Awa ki Whakarongotai, and Ngāti Toa Rangatira. He grew up and lives on the Kāpiti Coast of Aotearoa New Zealand. He currently works full-time at Parliament in Wellington as Private Secretary to the Minister for Crown/Māori Relations. He is the author of Watched, a YA novel about teenagers with superpowers, which was a finalist for Best Youth Novel at the Sir Julius Vogel Awards 2015, and earned a finalist position in the Best New Talent category at the same awards. He also has a short story published in Huia Short Stories 10 called “Kei Wareware Tātou”; which won Best Short Story in te reo Māori (the Māori language) at the Pikihuia Māori Writers Awards 2013. He is on Facebook as Tihema Baker - Author, and blogs at Tihema's Dilemmas.

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TFF: Could you tell us more about the Patupaiarehe people who appear in your Pacific Monsters story? What would usually happen when the human characters like those in your story “Children of the Mist” meet them?

Tihema Baker: Accounts vary between iwi and regions, but I guess the fairly common threads between them all are that Patupaiarehe are an ancient people who inhabit the mountains and forests of Aotearoa New Zealand and are believed to have done so since before Māori arrived somewhere around 1000-1200AD. Sightings of them are almost always at night or under the cover of mist, and they are characterised as fair-skinned and -haired, which is where we get the term “Urukehu” from; in older times fair-skinned and -haired Māori were believed by some to be the offspring of human-Patupaiarehe relationships and they were referred to as Urukehu, literally meaning “red-haired.” Similarities between accounts probably stop there; I’ve heard stories of Patupaiarehe being giants, or walking on legs like rabbits’. In some stories Patupaiarehe were kind to humans, showed them how to hunt and fish, and even fell in love with them—and vice versa. In darker stories Patupaiarehe weren’t kind to humans at all, bewitching them with cruel magic. Wherever the truth lies, I think any encounter with them should be treated with respect.

Is there a tradition of Māori science fiction, fantasy or horror (books, films, or other media)? Does Māori literature influence New Zealand culture more widely very much?

I’m not aware of a real tradition of Māori speculative fiction. In my personal opinion, there exists in Aotearoa New Zealand a hierarchy within Māori literature, and Māori speculative fiction is at the bottom. Our big name Māori writers—and I do not say this to undermine them in any way—are not typically speculative fiction writers. I’ve personally found it difficult as a Māori writer to find support for my speculative fiction writing and I believe this to be because the genre is not taken seriously by the Māori literary community at large. As an example, my sci-fi novel Watched was a Best Youth Novel finalist at the Sir Julius Vogel Awards for science fiction, fantasy, and horror, yet the publisher—our leading publisher of Māori literature—declined to take on the sequel. It’s not a criticism but just the reality I’ve experienced as a Māori writer of speculative fiction.

Do you think that any kind of story could be told to children or young adults or are there limits?

I thought for a while about this. My first reaction was yes, there are limits. But then I thought about my childhood/adolescence and remembered that I was reading things I probably wasn’t supposed to years in advance. I don’t mean that in an arrogant way; I mean it in the way that, as children typically are, I was hungry to “know” things. At times, that hunger for knowledge led me to things that my parents probably would have preferred I come across at a later stage in life. I guess my point is that I think we sometimes underestimate the ability of young people to understand what we do as adults or grasp certain concepts. That doesn’t mean I think we should tell all sorts of gruesome stories to children, but just respect their ability to understand, to show empathy. I think it’s about how you tell a story, not necessarily the story itself.

Do you translate your own stories from Māori to English? How different do they feel to you afterwards?

I don’t actually write primarily in te reo Māori. The reason for this is, while I have a decent understanding of the language, I’m still far from what I would consider to be fluent. When I write I need to be able to express myself as fully as I can, and unfortunately my proficiency with te reo Māori is just not yet at a stage that allows me to do that. What I will say, though, is that I often have to translate things from Māori to English for colleagues in my day-to-day work. I find te reo Māori to be a very poetic, metaphoric language, and one of the beautiful things about it—like any other language, I assume—is that ideas are often expressed in ways they just can’t be in English. This can make translating from Māori to English challenging when there just aren’t the words to describe a fundamentally “Māori” idea, or when the depth of that idea or word is lost in English. I think in those instances the Māori word should just be left as is—there are plenty of phrases in other languages that English has adopted because they need no translation, so maybe we should do that for Māori phrases more often too!

Could you give an example of such an untranslatable word?

A good example is the word “mana”—common translations would be “authority”, “prestige”, “respect”, or even “power”. Those single words don’t convey the depth of the concept, though; in my view (and I stress I am not an expert, and my understanding may be very different from those far more knowledgeable than I am), one can have great mana but not necessarily respect, or have great mana but no authority. It's relative, and one person's mana may always trump another's depending on the circumstances and/or the relationship between the two. Mana is inherited but it can also be bestowed—and removed, sometimes irrevocably. It's a spiritual concept just as much as it is societal, and there are different expressions of it; mana wahine describes the mana specifically held by women, while mana whenua refers to those who have mana over land or a certain geographical area. Land itself can be perceived to have mana, as can water. I’ve just written a paragraph and I’m still probably miles away from giving it an accurate description! But when you understand the meaning that the word "mana" encapsulates, you also understand why it can't be translated.

If you could choose a superpower for yourself, which one would you pick?

I get asked this all the time and I’m afraid I have a very clichéd answer! I would love the ability to fly. I don’t care how: gravity- or wind-manipulation, shape-shifting, I’ll take anything that gets me airborne.

Illustration by Eugene Smith,
for “Children of the Mist” (Pacific Monsters)

What is the oldest memory you have?

My oldest memory is of my mum. I must have been about three years old; I walked into my bedroom, where I think Mum was sitting on my bed, folding clothes, and went up to her for a cuddle.

I don’t think I’ve shared this before but I actually have another very early, bizarrely vivid memory from around the same age. It was the moment I realised my own mortality. I just remember sobbing to my mum with the realisation that one day, inevitably, I was going to die and I didn’t want to. She did her best to console me by saying that I had a long, happy life ahead of me before then. She also said that everybody dies, and one day she will too. That didn’t make me feel better. I don’t know why that memory is so clear; maybe that was a life-defining moment, or maybe I was just a weird kid. Probably both.

What is your favorite progressive SFF movie or TV show?

Black Mirror has to be one of my favourite shows, hands-down. It often makes me feel uncomfortable, makes me think about our society and our future, and makes me confront things about myself I probably don’t want to. But that’s the great thing about it. It makes me think. Any piece of art that makes someone question their understanding of the world (and in some episodes, reality!) is great, in my opinion.

Can I also branch out a little bit; I’m a gamer, too, and I believe video games are quickly becoming a powerful art form in their own right. In terms of progressive SFF games, it’s hard to go past the Mass Effect series (or anything from Bioware, really). It’s one thing to have a well-written story supported by excellent characters and engaging gameplay mechanics, but another when that story is dictated by the player, who can customise their character however they wish, pursue romances with characters of any gender, both human and alien, and whose actions have consequences that carry across games. It’s a series that forces players to make choices, and live with the effects of those decisions on themselves and others. There hasn’t really been another video game experience that has stayed with me in the same way that my character and my decisions in that game have.


What are you working on next-what can fans of your writing look forward to?

My immediate priority is getting my second novel, the sequel to Watched, published. I have a completed manuscript so now it’s just a matter of finding a publisher. I’ve also just started work on the third and I’m really enjoying it! Aside from that I have some other ideas I’d like to dedicate more time and research to; a historical novel exploring the relationships between my three iwi in the 1800s, and I’d also love to write something fantastical set in space.

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You can find Tihema’s story “Children of the Mist” in Pacific Monsters, and his novel Watched from Huia Books.

Interview with Bart & Kay from Crossed Genres

Hidden Youth cover (Julie Dillon)

Our friends over at Crossed Genres Publications (whom someone once described as “justly famous for producing high quality, genre-bending, innovative and inclusive magazine issues, anthologies, and the occasional novel”) are currently running a fundraiser for a new anthology, Hidden Youth: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History, edited by Mikki Kendall and Chesya Burke, a follow-up to the acclaimed Long Hidden (which was edited by Rose Fox and Daniel J. Older). They need to raise $23,000 to pay everyone involved fairly, and as usual the rewards, whether electronic or physical copies of the anthologies, stickers or poster prints, or higher echelons such as the opportunity to pick the brains of the publishers, are remarkably good value.

Support the Hidden Youth fundraiser at Kickstarter

Crossed Genres co-publishers Bart R. Leib and Kay T. Holt joined us to answer a few questions about Crossed Genres’ work.

TFF: Long Hidden was an amazing and hugely successful anthology—your fundraiser was big enough to expand it in size and ambition, even add illustrations; the editors were both rising stars, the stories have been widely acclaimed and the anthology was nominated for two major awards. Tell us how this project met and surpassed your expectations.

Long Hidden cover (Julie Dillon)

CG: Long Hidden surpassed pretty much every expectation we had. We thought our initial goal of $12,000 would be tough to reach, and we made it in a week. Stretch goals we never thought would be factors ended up adding 50% more words and interior art. It’s the first title we published to be nominated for a major SFF award (the World Fantasy Award). We knew that this type of story was something a lot of people wanted, but we had no idea how important it was.

How did you decide to follow that up with Hidden Youth?

Funny story. We were driving our son and his cousin somewhere, answering their questions about Long Hidden and our other books, and they flat out asked us when we would make a book for them. We brought their question to social media, and the idea of a YA sequel to Long Hidden emerged almost immediately.

Will the third volume be untold stories of old age? Hidden Elders, perhaps?

That’s not a bad idea! We have several related project ideas, but a third volume might not happen for a long time. (We did already publish a collection of 4 novellas starring older protagonists, called Winter Well.)

Without dwelling on the difficulties or delays, is there anything about the project that you’d like to clarify or inform people about?

We talked about the delays in a blog post. This has definitely been a difficult project, and not just because of the project itself. But we love Hidden Youth and feel it’s very important.

Also, since several people have asked: While Hidden Youth’s protagonists are all under 18, the stories deal with very adult topics. It would not be considered a MG anthology, and possibly not even a YA depending on who you ask. Whether it’s appropriate for kids to read is subjective, and we’d recommend anyone to read it and consider the kid in question before handing it over to them.

What’s the best thing about this project, for you, for the contributors, for the future readers?

For us, one of the very best things about publishing has been accepting authors for their very first publications. That continues with some of the Hidden Youth authors, but Long Hidden and Hidden Youth have taken that a step further: publishing stories where contributors and readers get to see themselves in published stories to extents they never have before.

Interior art from Long Hidden #20
(Artist: Nilah Magruder)

What is the fundraiser paying for? What happens if you don’t make the full amount? What happens if you make more than you’re asking?

Almost all the money we’re raising funds for is to pay the editors, authors and artists. Another portion will go to production and shipping of the book itself, and the other Kickstarter rewards, and the rest will pay the Kickstarter and Amazon fees.

If we don’t make the goal, as per the rules of Kickstarter, we don’t get any of it. And that would mean that Hidden Youth won’t happen, since there’s no way we can afford it otherwise. If we do somehow surpass our goal with time to spare, we’ll consider a stretch goal - we have a few ideas but don’t really anticipate it being a factor. Really, if we reach the primary goal and get to make Hidden Youth, we’ll be ecstatic.

Children are often braver and more determined than adults tend to believe. Do you remember a very courageous thing you did as a child?

Kay: This is a tough subject for me because of my PTSD, but by the time I was old enough to leave home for college, I’d been shot at, hit by trucks, beaten, sexually assaulted, and attacked with knives, usually by men, who could not handle being told NO by a little girl. About anything.

That’s really the best courage I ever had, growing up. Saying no. Loudly and often, even if they came to kill me for it.

And, kind of like the story of my childhood, some stories in Hidden Youth deal with very adult subjects. Including sex, abuse, and violence. This book is about young people, and it is FOR young people, but it will probably be shelved with books for adults in spite of its title.

Interior art from Long Hidden #25 (Artist: Esme Baran)

What’s next for Crossed Genres Publications? Or, if you don’t know yet, what’s your dream project?

We have so many ideas, picking just one would be impossible! We’ve talked about publishing an anthology in two languages - both in the same book. We’d also love to branch into visual stories with a comic anthology (another potential Long Hidden-type project). But we’ll have to see how things go with Hidden Youth, both the funding and the publication, before we decide what Crossed Genres’ next step will be.

Thanks, Bart and Kay, for taking time from your hectic fundraising month to come talk to us.

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You can support the Hidden Youth fundraiser at Kickstarter, and pick up an early e- or print copy of the anthology. You won't regret it!

Artist Interview: Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein

Artist and illustrator Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein (web page) first illustrated for TFF in our November 2009 issue. She hails from Hawai’i, studies fine art and printmaking, works with a small YA press, and has an obsession with things with claws. She was kind enough to answer a few questions and give us the excuse to show some of her wonderful work.

The Future Fire: For the story ‘Nasmina’s Black Box’, you produced very striking black and white images, including the piece showing the soldier and the corrupt priest that we loved so much we used for the cover image of that issue. Could you describe the process of creating these images, from deciding what scenes in the story to illustrate, through to the technical production of the art?

Rhiannon Rasmussen-Silverstein: I think that this would be easier to demonstrate as describe (as many visual processes are). That said, I start every illustration by reading the story I’m working with and noting down which scenes stand out to me. Then I read it again the next day, this time with an eye for details or anything I might have overlooked the first read-through, and do a few rough thumbnail sketches.

For Nasmina’s Black Box, what immediately struck me was the main character, Nasmina, a girl stranded in a conflict that she’s really too young to understand. I wanted the uncertainty, alone-ness and danger to come across, so I chose to do the illustrations as stark black and white ink drawings. The first image came to me strongly (Nasmina encircled by a supportive shadow) which represented her family, but the second image, of the church, I struggled with more. I knew I wanted to do the scene in the church, since that’s the climax point of the story, but the final illustration really arose out of my frustration with executing the image. I think the finished one is the third attempt. The first two had a lot more white in them, and at some point on the second I got fed up, took my brush and covered most of the image in ink. Since it looked a lot better than I’d expected, I redid the picture with black instead of white, and then did a few final tweaks in Photoshop, most notably making Nasmina slightly transparent.

In my opinion, getting angry with one’s work is often an undervalued part of the creative process. It’s definitely crucial to my process!

TFF: I understand you’re studying art at Portland State University. How is that going? What have you learned in the course of this study?

RRS: I’m currently in the Fine Arts department at Portland State, which is a brand new program (it’s in it’s second year). Its a tiny program (thirteen students total), which I love, because we have a lot of one on one time with both the instructors and each other. I’m due to graduate in June, which is very exciting. Anyone who knows me knows that I’ve had a tumultuous relationship with school at best throughout my career as a student and I am definitely not terribly broken up about moving past this stage in my life.

That said, school has given me opportunities and taught me things that I wouldn’t have otherwise learned. Mostly related to life and talking about art. If I had to choose one thing that I treasure above everything else I’ve learned, it’s printmaking. And astrogeology. Okay, so they’re not related...

TFF: How do you think art makes a difference in the world?

RRS: To be frank, I don’t think art itself can or does make a difference in the world. People make a difference in the world, and one way we communicate or express opinions is through art. What art can do is plant ideas. Without action also being taken to follow up those convictions, art is just window trappings. Decoration. And that’s fine.

TFF: What or who inspires you?

RRS: Illustration-wise, I tend to draw a lot of my inspirations from older works by printmakers like Yoshitoshi Tsukioka and Käthe Kollwitz. The contemporary artist Lee Bul continually does work that blows my mind. She works in this huge, elaborate installations, but the compositions and forms she’s working with are beautiful and disturbing, monochromatic, and expertly composed, something that I work for in my own illustrations.

Fiction-wise, I’m currently reading the David Hawke translation of The Story in the Stone (also titled as Dream of the Red Mansions) which is just crazy inspiring and I’m not even a fifth of the way through yet. Anyone interested in world fiction, Chinese history and culture, good literature, or just an entertaining story should pick these books up.

I also love comics! I work in an editorial capacity with a host of incredibly talented artists on an annual comics anthology, Tankadere, which can be found at the small press Crab Tank’s website, and working with them is fun and incredibly rewarding. There’s nothing like holding a finished book in your hands and knowing that it’s filled with amazing stories and that you had a role in bringing it about.

Y is for Young Adult

The Young Adult (YA) genre has come a long way since I was a teenager. Back in my day (!) we had to supplement books by the likes of S.E. Hinton with novels for adults. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing; it meant that I was introduced to fully-realised feminist role models such as Dr Susan Calvin in Asimov’s "Robot" series and Patricia Luisa Vasquez in Greg Bear’s "Eon". But even though these strong female role models were a vital part of my formative years, I would have loved to have read about characters I could have identified with more.

The emergence in recent times of a wider YA body of fiction is both reassuring and welcome. Being a young adult can be so challenging that it is important that these readers have plenty of material to see them through their often difficult adolescent and teenage years.

But how much of present-day YA fiction is speculative?

Contemporary YA showcases recognizable science fiction tropes, such as time-travel in Rebecca Stead’s "When you Reach Me". But it is in the dystopian themes that socio-political elements are more prominent, for example in YA books such as Scott Westerfield’s "Uglies" series, where the pursuit of the body beautiful is taking to devastating degrees or the setting of "The Chaos Walking" trilogy by Patrick Ness, where not even an individual’s thoughts are private.

By contrast, another sub-genre in YA fiction — paranormal romance — could not be deemed speculative. The most famous female character in this genre, Bella in Stephanie Meyer’s "Twilight" novels, is neither empowered nor independent; she doesn’t care about her schooling or future career, and neglects her friends in favour of spending time with her boyfriend. This submissive streak can also be seen in the mortal female counterparts to the male fallen angels in Lauren Kate’s books and again with those of the sexy fairy kings in Melissa Marr’s "Wicked Lovely" series.

Luckily there are plenty of alternatives to this paranormal romance category. The most influential book I read as a young adult was Isabel Allende’s "The House of the Spirits", so it made me very happy to see such an accomplished speculative fiction author writing for young adults. In her YA books "The City of the Beasts", "The Kingdom of the Golden Dragon" and "The Forest of the Pygmies", Allende touches on humanitarian issues such as child slavery and inequalities between the developed and developing world. She also sets out to challenge perceptions about what makes a culture “civilised”.

No article on YA speculative fiction can fail to mention the legacy of the masterful storyteller Ursula le Guin. "The Wizard of Earthsea" spawned a legion of young adult novels that followed the pattern of its story: a setting in a walled city where a young person of humble origins becomes an apprentice to a sorcerer. Books such as Joseph Delaney’s "Wardstone Chronicles", Trudy Canavan’s "The Black Magician" trilogy, Garth Nix’ "Old Kingdom Series" and William Nicholson’s "Wind on Fire" trilogy all pay homage to this original idea. Ursula le Guin’s contribution to speculative fiction has been phenomenal - for example with her exploration of gender in "The Left Hand of Darkness" or her strong female characters in her YA novel "Tehanu".

Speculative fiction for young adults offers an exciting opportunity to forge a storyworld where limits can be pushed to the extreme to shed light on the problems facing our society. An author has the power to make her readers think differently, and this is especially true for YA authors whose audience is in the process of learning about themselves and the world around them. So if you’d like to submit a YA speculative fiction story to "The Future Fire", push boundaries as far as you can. Your readers will love you for it.

Expanding review activities

Recently we've been keeping my eye open for opportunities to expand our reviewing activities beyond books and magazines, while keeping our focus on speculative and weird fiction and the small and independent press.

Just in case anyone's listening and might have review items to offer, some of the areas that have occured to us recently are:

1. Young Adult/children's literature: the crossover between genre publications and YA novels is strong (see previous post), and I feel that titles in this area need to be reviewed with a focus on their intended audience, rather than just as "lightweight" specfic;
2. Interactive fiction: there's a growing medium of interactive fiction in e-books (with iPad apps receiving the most attention); a book that you interact with rather than just reading is a good part of the way toward being a computer game, and I think both deserve the attention of speculative readers and reviewers;
3. Performance: we're very keen to feature occasional reviews of local theatre productions, interpretive dance, or whatever else might class as "performance" with a speculative element.

Do you publish/produce/perform in any of these areas? Do you review these kinds of works? Do you have any suggestions for publishers/producers we should get in touch with to ask for review copies? Any other neglected areas you think we should be looking into? Please let us know.

Indie/Small Press YA publishers of genre

So I've been wondering for a while if there are many small presses that publish genre novels for a young adult readership. (By "genre" I mainly mean speculative and weird, or sci-fi/fantasy/horror, if you prefer.) My main interest is that I'd like TFF to move in the direction of reviewing children's and YA literature in addition to the material we currently cover, and we focus on the small and indie press. Others will have different uses for this information (if they're writers, readers, artists or publishers themselves, say). And that said, I don't know what we'll actually do with this list when we have it.

I should confess I haven't been looking very hard; I asked around on Twitter a few weeks ago, and I've done a bit of Googling and browsing Duotrope, so I bet I've missed plenty. (Not checked Litmags, Ralan or E-Zines, for example. Not looked at the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook.) But I thought I'd post the results of my first trawl to see what others can add.

Here's the preliminary list of small or indie presses who seem to have interest both in YA novels and in speculative/weird fiction (except where noted, I've not always yet been able to ascertain that they have published anything that is both at once; bolded titles seem the most focused on the combination in question).

• 4GenresPress (unclear what focus, but website lists both speculative and juvenile)
• Bell Bridge Books (Southern): "fantasy, horror, young adult, mystery"
• Big Mouth House (YA imprint of Small Beer Press)
• Bold Strokes Books (includes LGBT, speculative, and YA)
• Coteau Books (Canadian writers)
• Cyberwizard Productions: includes speculative and other genre lines, and a children's books line
• Diversion Press
• Drollerie Press: fantasy and genre books including "Kettlestitch" YA imprint
• Eternal Press: erotic and paranormal publisher including a YA line
• Etopia Press: focus on erotic and romance, but strong speculative holdings and a YA line
• Helm Publishing
• Medallion Press (young adult imprint)
• Mundania Press: will consider YA if in their target genres (esp UF/PR)
• Nightfall Publications: horror/paranormal/genre; seems to include YA line
• Sumach Press (feminist and inspirational books)
• Tu Books (an imprint of Lee & Low): "fantasy, science fiction, mystery--diversity for children and young adults"

We'd be very grateful to be told of any omissions from this list, or anything I've erroneously included. (I have consciously excluded any press that explicitly rejects any LGBT or "alternative" content, or that seems only or primarily to deal in religious/spiritual material.)