Micro-interview with Alexandra Brandt

We’re joined by Alexandra Brandt, author of “The Shape of Her Shadow” in The Future Fire #70, for a quick chat about monsters, #metoo and magic.

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Art © 2024 Fluffgar

 

 TFF: What does “The Shape of Her Shadow” mean to you?

Alexandra Brandt: I wrote this story in early 2018, in the middle of all the #MeToo revelations, and completed it the day after the Women's March in Washington, DC. We know who was in power in the US at the time. As an American and a woman, I was… really angry. Prior to that, I don't think I'd ever written a story while angry! I felt powerless (and to be honest, I still do)—but I needed to write something in the face of all that. Something that didn't give in to despair. For me, “The Shape of Her Shadow” is both rage and hope.

TFF: Who or what is your favourite monster?

AB: I don't think I have a favorite, but I did just watch Nimona last night, and she's pretty delightful.

TFF: What magical power would you like to possess?

AB: To open a door and have it go anywhere in the world in an instant. Preferably in a way that I could bring people along with me. (If I asked for any world-changing powers, I fear that I would abuse them in the name of "fixing" everything…)

TFF: What are you working on next?

AB: I have these three Sapphic fey historical romantasy novellas out right now, but they really need to be a proper novel. So my next goal is to make the novel happen and publish it by December.    

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Extract:

I wonder which monsters they mean: the shadowy creatures lurking deep in the Wilds that I and mine must soon enter… or these warlike men who now claim to protect my daughters from them.

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Reminder: You can comment on any of the writing or art in this issue at http://press.futurefire.net/2024/07/new-issue-202470.html.

Giveaway: post images of ancient magic

Our friends at the Institute of Classical Studies (who helped fund and publish the Making Monsters anthology), and our co-editor Emma Bridges, are running another public engagement event at the end of this month—on Hallowe'en, no less!—on the theme of Ancient Magic. (See poster to right for registration information: it's free, but booking is required.)

You may remember that the monster-themed anthology came out of a similar public event last year ("Why do we need monsters?"), so we have fond memories and high hopes for this evening!

To celebrate the Ancient Magic event, which will include presentations as well as hands-on activities, and will be family-friendly, we are offering a free paperback copy of the Making Monsters anthology as a prize in the social media image contest. Simply post an image (it can be an archaeological object, ancient or modern artwork, painting, character, or your own work) that makes you think of ancient magic, with the hashtag #ICSmagic by midnight on Wednesday Oct 17th, and tell us why you like it, and we'll choose a winner right after that. There are some examples there already, if you're looking for ideas of the sort of thing that might work.

(I note that they're encouraging ancient magic-themed fancy dress at the Hallowe'en event, so maybe they're looking for inspiration for costumes in the images people send!)

Wickchester University Library special collections

Last week a couple of the TFF editors paid a visit to the special collections department of the Mary Anning Library, at Wickchester University. As well as the manuscripts we were there to consult (probably not of much interest to you), some of the more unusual items and curiosities the very friendly curator showed us were super interesting, and might serve as writing prompts or inspirations to any of you. Sadly we were asked not to take photographs inside, but some of our favorite items included:

• Several boxes of historical wax seals, dating from Elizabethan England to the Victorian colonial administration, mostly in a poor state of preservation, but one famous example (which we weren’t allowed to touch) is a poorly copied but generally believed contemporary forgery of the seal of Robert Carr Viscount Rochester, dated 1612. It’s impossible to disprove the theory that a third party forged an official letter from Rochester as part of some political intrigue, but the whole story is lost to history.
• A late Victorian Handbook of Botany for Ladies entirely embroidered (including the words) on thin linen sheets. Not a huge book, the 60-odd pages already make it thicker than most print volumes, and the spine is now in bad shape, but as far as we know this is a unique copy, not a mass-produced title. The curator suggests that this was an attempt to make the formal study of science by young women acceptable, by combining it with home economics!
• A former curator’s handwritten notes for a never-executed exhibition of fakes, including 19th cent. forged Greek vases; a rubbing of the epitaph of Christopher Marlowe; a clumsily emulated and photocopied “manuscript” of Mary Shelley; a collection of modified playing cards used by medium and charlatan Eusebius Shaw in the early 1900s (that was sold for surprisingly high price at an auction in 1937, before being donated to the library in the 60s); letters negotiating the loan of 20th century forged Latin lead curse tablets from the local archaeological museum; an “Egyptian” figurine gifted to a Wickchester biology professor as a bribe by a student; the Rochester Seal mentioned just now; a draft proposal (never sent, and presumably doomed to failure) to request the loan of the Piltdown Skull from the Natural History Museum in London; a spurious plaster model purporting to be a cast of the right hand of the composer Arthur Sullivan, clearly made well into the 20th century.
• Collection of photograph albums, rubbings, and notebooks full of transcriptions from a local graveyard enthusiast. Very incomplete, dated 1922-24 and 34-38, and with an eccentric focus—perhaps (we wondered) on cemeteries where relatives of the enthusiast were buried.
• A set of 17 scrapbooks filled with newspapers cuttings, pasted over every inch of the page, often overlapping or exceeding the margins, detailing every murder committed in Wickchester between 1968 and 1992, the death of the compiler. This item is on restricted access because of some disturbing hand-written comments in coloured pencil. The librarians apparently gossip that police were briefly considering whether this should be considered evidence.

I bet every research library has a collection of shit like this! If you ask your local librarian and come up with any good stories, please let us know.