Interview with Margrét Helgadottír

Margrét Helgadottír, editor of the Books of Monsters series, is an old friend of TFF: we have reviewed several of the previous volumes (European, African, Asian, Pacific), and interviewed many of the individual authors and contributors (Michael Lujan Bevacqua, Tihema Baker, Brian Kamaoli Kuwada, Raymond Gates, Iona Winter, Isabel Yap, Yukimi Ogawa, Eve Shi, and Margrét herself), and she wrote about the series for our Making Monsters anthology. The seventh and final volume in the award-winning series, Eurasian Monsters, appeared in December 2020, featuring 17 authors and including seven translated works.

Margrét joins us today to talk a bit about this new anthology, and the series, and monsters.

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TFF: Could you tell us a bit about the thinking behind editing a volume of Eurasian Monsters specifically, since it’s a slightly different concept from the other six volumes in the series? Were there gaps in the European and Asian volumes that you designed it to fill?

Margrét Helgadottír: The book embraces the vast region stretching from the Chinese border (but not including China) to eastern parts of Europe. The profile of the book is the same as for the first six volumes, it’s just the geographical area that is different. It’s been challenging since it is actually covering two continents. This is the book in the series I have spent most time on preparing. I was forced to make decisions, and I chose not to include stories from the Asian parts covered in Asian Monsters. I also chose not to include stories from the Baltic, or from the western parts of Balkan, mostly because that would mean including 5-10 more stories, if done properly. There seems to be different definitions of what is Eurasia, but I hope I am forgiven to have included a few stories from eastern Europe, a part neglected in the first monster volume covering Europe. I struggled most with locating authors from Central Eurasia, but I managed to get stories from Georgia and Kazakhstan. I am also proud to have stories from Russian authors from several parts of the huge country, not just Moscow. So all in all, I hope the readers feel they get some glimpses of some of the cultures within this vast region.

TFF: Can you describe the process of commissioning and editing Eurasian Monsters? For instance, did you have a call for submissions, or was everything commissioned or reprints? Did you have to deal with translators, or did you only look at work that was already in English?

MH: I worked with tracking down authors and artists to Eurasian Monsters the same way as for the other monster volumes. These books have been invitation-only anthologies. I had a number of available slots, I wanted a balanced representation—mostly covering as many countries in the region as possible, but also gender, sexuality, indigenous backgrounds etc. So what I did was carefully send out the invitations, only one at the time, building up the table of contents slowly, to make sure the representation became good. For some books I have used 4-5 months before being able to finish the contributor list. Some times I had a story I wanted to publish before contacting the author, but mostly I’ve invited the authors to write a new story within a set of guidelines.

We have had translations in several of the volumes. I have had no other choice than using the translator tools available, just to get a feeling about the author’s voice, and to be able to consider if the story fits the anthology. In Eurasian Monsters I had seven translations by four translators, six stories exclusively for the book. Of these a few reprints but also newly written stories. So that has been challenging because I have not been able to start the editing work until the translation work is done. I have learned a lot, and I do hope the translators feel happy about how the stories turned out.

TFF: Now that you’ve been around the world in eighty monsters, are there any patterns that you have noticed in stories and beliefs about the mythological creatures, or does each region have its own unique kinds of monsters and relationships to them?

MH: It is a difficult question. In general, humans of all times have created stories and myths about beasts, dark creatures, and monsters. You can find traces of them in old texts, architecture, art, in legends and myths, and even in old sea maps. Monster folklore is passed down from generation to generation, and these stories are not just for fun, but often teach a lesson as well, or make sure that curious people stay away from specific areas (like haunted houses). No matter where you are in the world, monsters have been there to take the blame when bad things happen—like shipwrecks or sudden deaths, or they can be a way to explain frightening phenomena like thunder and lightning.

Some monsters are universal. You will always find the shapeshifters, the flesh-eating walking dead and the great monsters of the lakes and sea. But just like the everyday lives of humans are influenced by whether their home is at the coastline, in the desert, in the jungle, or in the mountains—the monsters attracted to these different geographical conditional possibilities are also different. A vampire avoiding the sun might not find it pleasant to stay in the Sahara desert, nor would the hyena shapeshifter thrive in the Arctic either.

It might be a coincidence but I do believe I’ve spotted some regional differences, while editing the monster volumes. To name a few observations: Magic is for instance a strong theme in monster narratives from Africa and South America, though it manifests in slightly different ways. The volume focused on North America has many human-made monsters, or monsters with human-like attributes. The Africa and the Pacific volumes have more beasts, when compared to the other volumes in the series. These two volumes and Eurasia also have a multitude of dark creatures from the wilderness or oceans, or with a connection to natural forces such as thunder storms. In both the Eurasia and Africa volumes several of the stories are concerned with place and origin, about immigration and going home. But Eurasian Monsters feels closer to the feeling of home created in the Asia volume, where it is not so much about the place but more about the family itself and the strong relationships between loved ones—dead, living or absent. The spirits, ghosts and demons create an almost floating atmosphere.

TFF: What about the oral tradition of sharing scary tales? Do you think that an anthology is its natural descendant, or that we are missing out on something?

MH: That is an interesting thought. An themed anthology like this could indeed fill some of the need to share the scary tale by the camp fire, both because short stories are shorter snippets with different author voices, and here you would have voices from different geographical places telling you tales about frightening creatures you’ve never heard about. What you would miss out is the sharing: People like to get scared together. And an anthology is (usually) about the relationship between only the author and the sole reader.

TFF: Could you invent and briefly describe a totally made-up monster that somehow clearly belongs in the Eurasian as opposed to any other volume in the Books of Monsters series?

MH: I was surprised there weren’t that many classical shapeshifters in Eurasian Monsters since so much of this region is vast wilderness, and the winters are cold and long. So I would nominate shapeshifter monsters with jaws, like the big brown bear or the giant grey wolf. But of course all these would also be able to exist in many parts of the Northern world. But if you combined it with the many beliefs in ghosts and spirits, especially house spirits, it could be a quite scary monster who lurked between your kitchen and other dimensions, and between a manlike form and an animalform.

Or even a cranky and bloodthirsty version of the prehistoric gigantic mammoth, maybe trampling people to death or piercing them with its long teeth. This latter is actually an intriguing idea, if you picture it in tunnels and not on the Siberian tundra. According to the great interwebs, there existed a belief among indigenous peoples of Siberia, that the mammoth was a creature that lived underground, burrowing tunnels as it went, and would die if reaching the surface.

TFF: Thanks for joining us, Margrét!

MH: Thanks for having me!

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Margrét Helgadottír’s Eurasian Monsters, and the other six volumes in the series, can be found at Fox Spirit Books, links at Margrét’s website, and many other online bookstores and libraries.

What is Noir? (Baby don't hurt me)

I’ve always found Noir difficult to define. Compared to other genres, it seems to be more about the atmosphere and the aesthetic than a set of rules. This may be the reason why in Noir stories clichés seem to be not something to avoid, but a beloved ingredient that readers expect to find. Italian writer Gesualdo Bufalino once said that detective stories are very popular because they are reassuring, maybe even cathartic: the culprit is discovered, questions are answered, justice is restored. Everything finds its resolution. Noir, on the other hand, gives us the opposite experience: things remain unsolved and often criminals get away; a sense of loss and futility assails the protagonist who is usually worse off at the end of the story than they were at the beginning.

What then is it exactly that attracts us to these stories? And in what ways has the genre managed to evolve and change by contamination with other genres and literary traditions, while remaining recognisable? What are the elements that must be present in a story to be a Noir? What can be removed or substituted or played with? I don’t have the answers, of course. Just the opinions of a reader and spectator who has voraciously consumed Noir for more than 20 years, and never stopped enjoying it. What I can do is walk through some of those clichés we have all fallen in love with, and discuss them with you. Are you ready?

It rains. Always

Eric Asaris © 2016

If we were in a Noir story, I would be probably sitting behind my desk, in a shabby office in a big city. That’s all I can afford. You would be coming to talk to me, strangely after office hours, when even my secretary is not in the lobby. I should know better than to receive strangers at these times, but if I were a reasonable woman I wouldn’t be doing this job. You would sit in front of me, in the only available chair. We wouldn’t really need to turn on the lights, because, as in the iconic scene from Vertigo, the green neon of the nearby hotel would light up the room enough, albeit intermittently. And it would rain, of course. It always does. You’re wet, your trench coat is wet, the hat that you don’t remove is wet.

In an interview, Alfred Hitchcock spoke about the clichés in the Noir genre, and how sick of them he was. He mentioned the urban alley, lit by a street light, the cobblestones wet with rain... Try conveying the same feeling, but in a sunny landscape, he provoked. There isn’t a single cloud in the sky when a biplane starts flying lower and lower, while Cary Grant throws himself on the ground of a cornfield. Likewise, rain-level is not that high in the luminous streets of Cairo, where Refaat Ismail, the character created by Ahmed Khaled Tawfik, is forced to investigate some mysterious events that are tormenting his loved ones. So I guess it’s not about the wet concrete after all.

The City’s Viscera

The rain hammers against the window, making the city outside a blur of moving lights. There is a strong bond between cities and Noirs, as if the crime were wounding the city and she were crying for help. And sometimes noir detectives can’t help hearing that cry, in the night, almost swallowed by the rain. Joe Miller in the Expanse, and Mieville’s Tyador Borlú are both creatures of their city, and cities, with their unique messy stories and continuous evolutions, play an important role in how the events unfold. While I look outside the window, half lost in my thoughts, you start telling me why you need my help. It’s a story I’ve heard a million times already (no offence), but we both know it is just a pretext to get me involved in something way more tangled and dangerous than you are willing to admit. You say that you need me because I am streetwise. You know, here is where things are gonna take a crucial turn. Because we both know what kinds of people populate the underbelly of a big town: people who struggle, who are marginalised, who don’t fit in, for one reason or another. And it is here that our ways will either part—or not. Because, you see, there are fundamentally two types of clients, and two types of Noir novels. One in which all the worst stereotypes about race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability surface and make the story move. I have a zero tolerance for those. I won’t read that shit. And if you are that type of client, then you can save the both of us some time and show yourself out.

But if you are a decent client, and if we are in a decent story, then the people who lay low, for one reason or another, can surely tell very interesting tales. Different from those the clichés may have conditioned us to expect, and, for this reason, even more powerful. If Noir has been used countless times as the setting for homophobic, xenophobic and racist stories, it has also been used to unveil different sides of those narratives. Like Mosley did with Easy Rawlins and the ugly US racism, or Jean Claude Izzo, who sang the stories of crime and desperation of the darker sides of Marseille. And the change of setting is not just something to bring in some refreshing variety. It’s not exoticism, but it’s a radical change of perspective. Walter Mosley’s LA and Raymond Chandler’s LA might be located at the same coordinates in space and time, but they are two very different places, and tell very different stories.

Cherchez la femme

You thought my conditions were fair, so it’s time to get practical: what do you want me to do? You pretend to be embarrassed, I pour myself some cheap bourbon in a not-too-clean glass. I know what’s coming: you want me to find a woman. Let me guess, she is beautiful and dangerous. If I had a dollar for each time someone has asked me to look for such a woman, I could treat myself to better bourbon.

Let’s be honest here: Noir stories are almost a manifesto of misogyny. Too often women are either criminally seductive or naïve damsels in distress. So why have I chosen to be a woman detective in a Noir universe? I could have been the heroine in an historical drama, like my mum wanted. But no, I actually like it here. And it is because even in those old B&W Hollywood movies, femmes fatales tend to have way more agency than other female characters in many other genres. They are not just beautiful, they have quite good plans, and write their own stories. You know they mean trouble the first time you meet them, and yet they are irresistible. They are stunning, surely, but they are also smart, strong, charismatic. In no other genres are there as many women villains as in Noir. The shabbiest femme fatale can at least convince a man to kill for her. I mean, that’s Femme Fatale 101. You give me a picture, and I can’t help whistling. Her eyes seem to burn the photograph.

I always liked a good femme fatale. They do what most women have been doing for centuries in order to survive: pretend to be the person a man has always dreamed of meeting. They have just decided that, if they have to go through this socially construed charade, at least it will be to their criminal advantage. I know, I know: they are still, most of the time, flat characters, and the male gaze is ubiquitous. And yet, some of those characters managed to be very, very good.

You are getting nervous. You start fearing for your belle. Or is it for yourself? Can we still have a Noir without a femme fatale, you whine. You want me to say yes, so you can believe that the woman in the picture is not already sipping cocktails on some faraway beach. But you are right, somehow. No, you don’t need a femme fatale. Or, better, you don’t need a cliché femme fatale. Of course, you usually need a woman writer to get that right. If you’re lucky, you can meet a woman villain that doesn’t look like Ava Gardner or Barbara Stanwyck but is described as “ordinary,” can you believe that? Someone like Lucia, the protagonist of The Blank Wall, an American middle aged mother and wife who bakes pies and organises picnics with the neighbours. How did she end up killing a man? Well, that’s not my story to tell, but there you go, one of the most engaging Noir novels features a murderess who doesn’t seductively puff smoke in your face. Not even once.

Do you know what else women writers bring to Noir? Good women detectives. V.I. Warshawski and Aud Torvingen are as hard-core as any of their male colleagues. And the best thing is that, in the story, it is just normal. They are women, no big deal. As it should be.

Don’t trust anyone (why do you always forget this one?)

You have put together quite a story to convince me. I’ll take your case. Mostly because I am now curious about the woman in the picture. Maybe we can become friends, she and I. Maybe she’ll buy me one of those fancy cocktails, with your money. I’d like that, to be honest. I won’t let her deceive me, though. Oh no, not me. I have seen so many cases, I have dealt with so many liars. I mean, what do you think, that I’m a complete idiot? I’ve seen them all. That’s what we all say. We kinda have to say it, at least once per chapter, that we don’t trust anyone, we don’t love anyone, we don’t give two shits about anything. I’m surprised anyone actually believes it. I mean, if that were true why should I go into the trouble of overstating it?

You seem confused, and a little disappointed. Did you really believe my world was all cynicism? Were you convinced that’s what makes a story a Noir? Well, after the third glass I’m in the mood for sharing: you’re wrong. Many Noirs start (I mean, really take off) exactly when the protagonist, a hardened criminal or a disenchanted detective, who has vowed to never trust anyone ever again, to never get attached to anyone, thinks they can make an exception for that one person. And you can almost see it, that from that moment on they have started walking with a bad omen following them. That single exception is gonna cost them everything. Look at Burt Lancaster in The Killers. How can someone look so big and tough, and so naïve at the same time? No wonder Siodmak wanted him back to star in Criss Cross, the guy basically walks with a “Please, betray me” sign on his back! Don’t get me wrong, it’s not just about having your heart broken by one or another type of dark lady (or gentleman), who is betraying you either for greed or for love (yes, they are capable of love. Just not for you…). Some of the most unforgettable Noir stories are about other feelings, other forms of love, that get massacred. When a ruthless gangster like Gloria Denton gets attached to her protégé. When a lowlife like Donnelly decides to help Lucia, even though he has just met her and she happens to be a murderess. Think of, possibly, the most iconic Noir: The Long Goodbye. Isn’t the most heart-breaking bit about a friend being betrayed and lied to? And if you think that this narrative actually reminds you of Lucia and Donnelly and what Sanxay Holding did in The Blank Wall, that’s probably not an accident. Chandler admired Sanxay Holding, and couldn’t understand why she was not sought after by all publishers. Me too, friend, me too.

So, you came here, in a Noir story and you know someone is gonna get hurt. It’s not safe here. And I think that the feeling of loss and defeat is something that really gives Noir its dark colours. But loss doesn’t have to be the only feeling the protagonist is left with. All the loners, the marginalised, the queer, the weird, the powerless can decide to stick together. And it doesn’t matter how many times you have seen your ideals shattered. You may, like V.I Warshawski in Sarah Paretski’s novels, realise that, even if justice is not met, you have done something good. You have helped someone, you are building a network of good people. Solidarity doesn’t make a story less interesting or, indeed, less Noir. On the contrary. We really can’t do this alone.

Pandora’s black (noir?) box

Miguel Santos © 2016

So, why do we read Noir? What do we find in these stories with no resolution and filled with pain? I think that what makes Noir interesting is that, in spite of all the tough talk, our anti-heroes have human decency, and endeavour to keep it alive. Beyond what they say, their actions suggest that they do believe in friendship, loyalty, solidarity. Sometimes in love. Some others even in justice. If they have seen enough during their lives not to expect the good guys to win, they still struggle to be better than  the crooks, the traitors, the polluters, the abusers, the corrupted and the corruptors. They will fail, but, you can bet, they will try again. Like Pandora who after releasing all the darkest shit in the world, still sees Hope at the bottom of her box. That is, I think, what we love in Noir, that Hope survives against all odds, sometimes even against the protagonist’s will. But it’s there. Hope that maybe not this time, and maybe not the next either, but one day, one day we will do something worth it, we will make this right. We just have to put some ice on our black eye, and try again.

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The Future Fire will be publishing a Noir-themed issue later this year. If you have a speculative or progressive Noir story that you think might appear to us, see the Call for Submissions here.

New issue: 2021.56

“Per tal que ningú no oblidi la teva lluita incondicional per un món millor”

—Epitaph for Gerda Taro (1910–1937)

Issue 2021.56

Flash fiction

• ‘Gendered Anatomy’, R.E. Andeen (illustrated by Gwen C. Katz)

Novelettes

• ‘k.a. (birthright)’, Lam Ning (illustrated by Eric Asaris)
• ‘The Listener’, Sim Kern (illustrated by Cécile Matthey)

Poetry

• ‘Rumors of Women’, Laura Cranehill (illustrated by Carmen Moran)
• ‘The Risk of Embarking’, Lynne Sargent (illustrated by Katharine A. Viola)
• ‘Rain on St Andrew’s Night’, Ana Gardner (illustrated by Josep Lledó)
• ‘How to Dismantle a Defective Sex Droid’, Ashley Bao

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Call for Submissions: TFF Noir

This Call for Submissions is now closed

Call for stories and poems for a Noir-themed issue/anthology from The Future Fire to be published in early 2022, guest edited by Valeria Vitale.

We are looking for stories that combine themes or aesthetic from Noir fiction and cinema with the existing goals of TFF (progressive, feminist, queer, postcolonial, inclusive, accessible, ecological and international speculative and genre fiction). Stories by authors from under-represented groups are especially welcome, although you are not expected or required to self-identify in any way.

Submissions need not include science-fictional or fantastic settings, but we are mostly likely to be interested in those that play with genre and Noir aesthetic in some way, including cyberpunk. Tropes we are not generally interested in include:

1. Women who die just to make the male protagonist sad
2. Characters committing or enabling crimes to hide their sexual orientation/preferences
3. Other plots whose impact revolves entirely around normative/puritanical/prejudiced assumptions (characters may have such opinions, but the story shouldn’t validate them)
4. Detective stories where law and order unproblematically win the day

Please submit stories for the attention of the editors of this issue by sending as a .docx or .doc attachment to fiction@futurefire.net with subject line “TFF NOIR (title) (wordcount),” before the end of December 24, 2021.

• TFF Noir will pay $50 (US) for each original short story or novelette (up to 17,500 words) or $25 for flash (up to 1000 words) or poem (up to 100 lines). (Please note that for some longer stories this will amount to under 1¢/word, and you will no longer be able to sell “first publication rights” to this story in the future.)
• Reprints are welcome, but the pay rate will be half that for original works ($25 for shorts/novellettes; $12.50 for flash/poems).
• Please do not send work that is also under consideration elsewhere (no simultaneous submission).
• We will consider stories from the regular TFF slushpile for the TFF Noir anthology (and vice versa), so you do not need to send the story to both places.
  

Mini-interviews with authors and artists of #55

As usual, we’ve been running tiny interviews with the author and illustrators of the stories and poems in TFF #55. We ask a couple of questions, they give short answers of not much more than a sentence or two, and we post them to FB along with links back to the stories over a couple weeks. In case you’re not a follower of thefuturefire over there, we’ve compiled list of links to the interviews here. (More will be added as they appear the next few days.)

• Davian Aw, author of the poem “Time Traveller’s Memory”
  
• Cécile Matthey, illustrator of “Mijara’s Freedom”
  
• Danielle Jorgenson-Murray, author of “The Good Hawks”
• Valeria Vitale, illustrator of “Neith and Her Women”
• Jennifer R. Donohue, author of “Know They Will Die under the Salt of It”
  
• Rachel Linn, illustrator of “Time Traveller’s Memory”
• Benjanun Sriduangkaew, author of “We Will Become as Monsters”
  
• Toeken, illustrator of “Scaled Soul”
  
• Fiona M. Jones, author and photographer of the poem “Oak Tree”
• Gerri Leen, author of the poem “Neith and Her Women”
• Fluffgar, illustrator of “Know They Will Die under the Salt of It”
• Eleanor Glewwe, author of “Mijara’s Freedom”
• Gwen C. Katz, illustrator of “The Good Hawks”
• Rhianwen Phillips, author of “Scaled Soul”

If you want to see these interviews as they come along, you can “like” or follow thefuturefire’s page on FB, or follow @thefuturefire on Twitter, where we’ll try to post these links from time to time as well.

Trending: Tiny Tales

Trending: Tiny Tales

Guest post by Fiona Jones

Micro-literature is a big trend right now. Something to do with the glimpsiness of screen-scrolling and the needle-sharp joy of haiku, mixed in a shot glass and taken at a gulp.

I’m not dissing full-length novels. They’ll always be in, forever, because a good novel is like a holiday abroad: immersive, luxurious, refreshing. But, by destiny or gnatlike attention span, I’m a micro writer. Most of what I’ve written is under 500 words. I’ve got micro-fiction and micro-CNF scattered halfway round the Internet, plus now and then on paper. And I’m touting these anthologies because some of my work’s inside:

• Trickster’s Treats #4
• Nano Nightmares, edited by Shirley Dee and others
• Teach.Write Fall/Winter 2020
• Prepositionally Challenged volume 1

Where to send your own finely-cut gemstones? I started with Friday Flash Fiction (they publish shedloads of drabbles a week, plus occasional longer flashes). From there I went on to The Drabble, Dribble Drabble, 50-Word Stories, 101 Words, Montana Mouthful, Tiger Moth Review and actually anywhere that doesn’t stipulate a minimum wordcount. The number of publishers asking for micros seems to grow every year. Most venues don’t pay for micro-stories, but Longleaf Review did, Mothers Always Write and All Guts No Glory did too, and Folded Word used to.

It’s hard to choose a favourite among my own micro-pieces—either the stories or the essays. I think the one that’s travelled the farthest is my speculative fiction about the inventor of the wheel, who watches his invention progressing down through the centuries. This story appeared first on 50-Word Fiction, then a second website, and finally someone requested to republish it in Arabic.

Or maybe it’s not finally. Maybe it’s still got places to go, people to meet. The best thing about stories is that sometimes they just keep going.

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Fiona M. Jones’s poem “Oak Tree” can be found in TFF #55.

New issue: 2020.55

“Now is the time to warrior up and empower each other to take a stand for our planet. We need to sustain the little we have now, and develop ways not to pollute the environment, and sustain relationships with Mother Earth and save what we have left.”

—Autumn Peltier

Issue 2020.55

Short stories

• ‘We Will Become as Monsters’, Benjanun Sriduangkaew
• ‘Know They Will Die under the Salt of It’, Jennifer R. Donohue
• ‘Mijara’s Freedom’, Eleanor Glewwe
• ‘Scaled Soul’, Rhianwen Phillips

Novelettes

• ‘The Good Hawks’, Danielle Jorgenson-Murray

Poetry

• ‘Whistling Trees and Ironwood’, Hester J. Rook
• ‘Oak Tree’, Fiona M. Jones
• ‘Time Traveller's Memory’, Davian Aw
• ‘Neith and Her Women’, Gerri Leen

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Interview with Juliet Kemp

Juliet Kemp is a queer, non-binary writer (pronouns they/them). They live in London by the river, with their partners, kid, and dog. Their recent works include the fantasy novel The Deep and Shining Dark (featured on the Locus 2018 Recommended Reads list, under ‘first novel’), and this year’s sequel Shadow and Storm, also published by Elsewhen Press. They also published the YA SF novella A Glimmer Of Silver in 2018. When not writing, child-wrangling, or dog-wrangling, Juliet knits, indulges their fountain pen habit, and goes bouldering.

In 2019 we published Juliet’s short story “I Thought of You” in TFF, and eighteen months later “Dragon Years” also graced our pages. This week they came by to talk to us a bit about their work. Stick around to the end for a chance to win a copy of the two Marek novels.

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The Future Fire: You recently published a new novel in the Marek saga. Was the first book, The Deep and Shining Dark, always meant to be part of a longer story? How many books will compose the Marek series ultimately? Do you already know how events will unfold after Shadow and Storm, or will you follow your characters where they take you? 

Juliet Kemp: I always knew that there could be more books — I’d started drafting a second one when I was first sending The Deep And Shining Dark out. But I wasn’t sure at that point if it would be possible to publish that one, never mind more! I have a plan in mind for two more books (so four total), and I think I might then be done, at least for now. 

I usually start off with a rough outline, and then end up going off on various tangents while I’m writing. The editing process is about making another outline that fits what I now have, and making that work. Often that means cutting out things that won’t fit, or saving them for later. I really enjoy those sudden bursts of inspiration, even if they end up not being what I wanted or what the book needed. I always get something useful out of them. However I’m going to have to plan book 4 more tightly as book 3 is going to set up some things that I need to be able to resolve in book 4. I don’t want to write myself into an impossible corner! I imagine I’ll still end up following characters off into the weeds while I’m writing and having to pull it all back together during the editing process. I do really enjoy those sudden bursts of inspiration while I’m writing. 

TFF: Can you give us any sneak previews of what readers can expect to find in the third Marek book?

Juliet Kemp: Radicals, refugees, and more of the nascent printing industry (which goes well with radicals, historically speaking). And one of my characters gets pregnant. I’m keen to write about that, and about dealing with a young baby, as parenting is not something we see all that often in trad SFF.

TFF: This year, we published ‘Dragon Years,’ a delicate story about doing things only when we feel that they are right. Do you feel like your dragon is still waiting for you, or you have already taken off together?

Juliet Kemp: Part of the seed for that was realising that if the TARDIS turned up on the doorstep, or a portal to another world opened in the back garden, I’d wouldn’t want to accept the opportunity, because I have a young child. But kids grow up, and things change again, so in another decade I’ll start keeping my eyes and ears open again. You never know your luck…

I am sadly still awaiting an actual real dragon, with wings and all; but in a more metaphorical sense I think I’m doing pretty well on pursuing the things that are important to me.

TFF: If you woke up having forgotten all you knew before, what would be the first thing that you’d start learning again? 

Juliet Kemp: Typing would be high up the list — I learnt to touch type as a kid and it has stood me in very good stead ever since. But if I was relearning I might take the opportunity to switch to Dvorak or another non-Qwerty layout to see if it did anything good for my dodgy shoulders! I did try Dvorak once for a couple of months and got up to about 50wpm but I was so tense all the time it made things worse. Of course, on further reflection, if I’d forgotten skills as well as factual knowledge presumably I might have forgotten how to read, and that would have to be right at the top of the list. But I was a very early reader and I genuinely don’t know what my brain would be like without being able to read so I’ll assume I get to keep that one!

TFF: What can you be found doing when you’re not creating/writing?

Juliet Kemp: In the Before Times I used to go bouldering, but although my local climbing gym has reopened I’m not comfortable yet going back there, and central London is not a place with much outdoor bouldering (though there is a big rock over the river in Shoreditch Park!).

I read a lot, of course; and I knit. I’m currently working on a shawl, but it’s nearly time to start on the Christmas knitting (nice and early so I don’t wind up knitting in a panic on Christmas Eve!). I sew as well, but sewing is more a practical than a fun thing. I also have a kid and a dog to wrangle — my kid is home educated so that’s a fair time commitment in itself!

TFF: Thank you Juliet, we look forward to reading your latest novel, Shadow and Storm!

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To celebrate the release of Shadow and Storm, Juliet is offering a paperback copy of both novels in the Marek series, The Deep and Shining Dark and Shadow and Storm, as a giveaway to one reader of this blog post. Simply leave a comment below this post with your own answer to the question, “If you woke up having forgotten all you knew before, what would be the first thing that you'd start learning again?” and if we have received at least 10 replies by Wednesday September 30, one will be chosen to receive the books. Make sure that we have a way to get in touch with you, if you want to receive your prize! Add your Twitter handle, FB page, email or any other way we can contact you in your comment, so that we can notify you if you are the lucky winner. 

TFF #54 micro-interviews

We’ve been running a series of micro-interviews with the authors, poets and artists in the latest issue of The Future Fire, in which we ask a couple of questions, they give short answers, and we post them to FB spread out over a couple weeks. I know not all of you follow us over there, so we’ve started to compile a list of links to the interviews here.

• Juliet Kemp, author of “Dragon Years”
• Vanessa Fogg, author of “The Shadow Catchers”
• Joyce Chng, illustrator of “The Foraging”
• Jordan Taylor, author of “Strange Engines”
• A.J. Fitzwater, author of “Cascade”
• Celia Neri, author of “A Stereoscopic Landscape View of Torino with Damsels and Distress”
• Katharine A. Viola, illustrator of “The Shadow Catchers”
• Shelly Jones, author of “The Foraging”
• Martin Hanford, illustrator of “Dragon Years”
• Avra Margariti, author of the poem “Demon Summoning for the Modern Femme”
• Josep Lledó, illustrator of “A Stereoscopic Landscape View of Torino with Damsels and Distress”
• Cécile Matthey, illustrator of “The Facts Are These”

I’ll add more interviews here as they appear, but you can also follow the series by following or “liking” our FB page, or linking up with us on Twitter.

A Quiet Afternoon anthology (and food pairings!)

Guest post: Laura DeHaan from our friends at Grace & Victory.

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Hello! This is Laura DeHaan, slush goblin for Grace&Victory’s A Quiet Afternoon anthology of Low-Fi speculative fiction.

Low-Fi stories are comfort reads, slices of life with low stakes and reasonable expectations for what the characters in the story can accomplish, preferably (though not always) with a speculative slant. I’ve spoken elsewhere about wanting a feeling of instant nostalgia when I’m reading Low-Fi, so here I thought I’d delve a little deeper into why each of these stories caught my attention as being specifically (and wonderfully!) Low-Fi. As a bonus, I’ll be offering up my ideal comfort food pairings to enjoy with these stories.

“The Baker’s Cat” by Elizabeth Hart Bergstrom: Fittingly, our first story is all about comfort food! How could I resist the loving descriptions of the bread and desserts? And who wouldn’t want a helpful trio of charming talking animals to teach them how to knead dough? There is a wealth of kindness and gentleness in this story, and it was perfect for A Quiet Afternoon.

Food pairing: Vanilla creamhorns and a steamy chai latte.

“An Inconvenient Quest” by Rebecca Gomez Farrell: From taste to smell, we get another sensory overload in “An Inconvenient Quest.” While on paper it appears to be the standard high-fantasy tale of a dangerous quest to save a fairy queen, there’s so much whimsy in the telling—and such an improbable cure!—that it stays a very comfortable read.

Food pairing: Deep fried delights! Shrimp tempura, arancini, mashed potato croquettes!

“Rising Tides” by Mary Alexandra Agner: I’m a sucker for stories about magical robots, but I always thought their magic would be treated like another programming language, or maybe involve fireballs instead of laser beams. I certainly wasn’t expecting a robot to perform stage magic! The unexpected pairing of sentient tech with such benign magic (especially in a moody seaside setting) made it an instant win.

Food pairing: Sourdough with melty peanut butter and cold ginger beer.

“After Bots” by Rachael Maltbie: The second of our magical robots stories, though here it’s more like hauntings and sculptures. I was happy to see a story with an older protagonist, especially a LADY (gasp!) being a MECHANIC (double gasp!) but also (is it allowed??) having FEELINGS (the most gasps!). Plus it’s a blue-collar setting with ghosts! There’s so much here that should be more mainstream.

Food pairing: Grilled cheese with pickles on the side, along with a chocolate milkshake thick enough to stand a spoon in.

“It’s All in the Sauce” by Elizabeth Hirst: I love the idea of solving one problem with a different problem. It’s a very relatable real-life scenario. And as “The Baker’s Cat” has proven, food descriptions are always welcome in Low-Fi.

Food pairing: Once a year my brother will have a backyard barbecue, and his ribs paired with a rye and Coke (heavy on the rye, light on the Coke… or whiskey instead, whatever’s on the shelf) leave me as satiated as reading “It’s All In The Sauce.”

“Sarah, Spare Some Change” by Ziggy Schutz: I was immediately drawn to the dreamlike narrative. What’s happened to the world where students slip their bodies during school? How do you gamble on clouds? I don’t know, and I do not care. I love being thrown into a world and not having the rules explained. I love not having fifty pages of backstory and ten of glossary. Let me enjoy what’s right here.

Food pairing: A creamy seafood chowder, where you can’t identify all the bits until you put them in your mouth.

“Ink Stains” by Tamoha Sengupta: Remember when every protagonist of spec fic was a male writer? I think it was so he could have a lot of free time to just fart around and not worry about whether his adventures could fit into a 9-5 job. So how pleased was I to see this trope subverted and follow instead the writer’s son—and then have the ink itself become the hero of the story?

VERY. I was VERY pleased.

Food pairing: Being from Toronto, I already knew about Indian rotis—butter chicken, saag paneer, all great. Then I went to Ottawa and learned about Sri Lankan kottu roti from a VERY enthusiastic patron at a one-man hole-in-the-wall take-out place. “You’ve had roti before? Oh no, not like THESE!” she said. I have never met anyone so delighted to share her favourite restaurant’s menu before. Anyway, kottu roti. Great stuff.

“Salt Tears and Sweet Honey” by Aimee Ogden: So often when mythological sea creatures forsake the waves to live on land, we see only the start of it: stolen selkie skins, or a desire for legs. In this story of a life well lived, we see what might keep a mermaid from wanting to return to her former home. Like the ocean, there’s a lot beneath the surface in this story, and it raises a lot of questions about the culture the protagonist left behind.

Food pairing: Chocolate mead and lemon-custard scones.

“12 Attempts at Telling about the Flower Shop man (New York New York)” by Stephanie Barbé Hammer: Sometimes you want to create a new genre and you set yourself rules (not even a lot of rules!) and then a story comes along and you say, “Well, whatever, I’m buying it.” It’s remarkably satisfying. We’d been a bit hesitant to buy this one because we wanted this anthology to be all about that speculative fiction and “12 Attempts” simply wasn’t. It was, however, charming AF, and what’s the point of making a new genre-breaking genre if you can’t do exactly as you please?

Food pairing: Fresh Rice Krispies squares, still gooey and hot from the pot.

“The Dragon Peddler” by Maria Cook: Just because we wanted to publish speculative fiction didn’t mean we wanted to be inundated with dragons. ONE dragon, that was IT. And like “Ink Stains”, where the male writer doesn’t take up the protagonist mantle, in “The Dragon Peddler,” the dragon doesn’t take centre stage, either. It’s the motivating factor and a reward, but its loss or gain isn’t the defining characteristic for the protagonist. It’s a bonus.

Food pairing: Mac’n’cheese with cut-up hot dogs.

“Tomorrow’s Friend” by Dantzel Cherry: It’s a simple little tale, and it’s cute, and it’s nice. It’s reassuring without being patronizing and even when the protagonist is shown that what she wants is attainable, she still has to put the work in to get it. That’s low stakes and reasonable expectations, right there.

Food pairing: Fairground waffle ice cream sandwiches.

“Hollow” by Melissa DeHaan: Full disclosure, Melissa’s my sister and I asked her to write a story for A Quiet Afternoon. Though she’s never tried writing short stories professionally, she’s been writing fanfic for ages as well as running a few webcomics (her current one being Harbourmaster and I am absolutely plugging it because it is entirely Low-Fi), so I knew she’d come up with something. That something is our third magical robots story. Our protagonists don’t like each other. They never end up really liking each other. But they can work as a team to get a job done and after that they need never see each other again. And for those of us raised as girls, where we’re taught we must befriend everyone and heaven help you if you aren’t instant besties and caretakers and therapists for all you meet, it’s real refreshing reading a story that says NOPE to that idea.

Food pairing: Boba—matcha milk tea, 20% sugar, regular ice, with tapioca. A little bitter, earthy, filling, and unashamed. LOOK THOU WHAT BOBA MAY BE.

“Of Buckwheat and Garlic Braids” by Adriana C. Grigore: This is exactly what we wanted Low-Fi to be. A protagonist from an underrepresented group (trans men), whose transness is shown succinctly and sympathetically, who Uses His Words to solve a problem. And! The potentially dangerous monster ALSO uses her words! LET’S EVERYONE USE OUR WORDS!

Food pairing: The cheesy garlic bread absolutely drenched with butter from the Italian joint near my old highschool. Utterly satisfying.

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You can find out more about or buy the A Quiet Afternoon anthology from Grace&Victory publications or Payhip.

New issue: 2020.54

“It hurts me that, if global warming still continues, if global warming continues on a large scale, it’s going to affect our future only; we the children and the coming future generation is going to suffer. So I wanted to do something about that, and that’s why I sued my government.”

—Ridhima Pandey

Issue 2020.54

Flash fiction

• ‘Dragon Years’, Juliet Kemp (illustrated by Martin Hanford)

Short stories

• ‘A Stereoscopic Landscape View of Torino with Damsels and Distress’, Celia Neri (illustrated by Josep Lledó)
• ‘The Foraging’, Shelly Jones (illustrated by Joyce Chng)
• ‘Strange Engines’, Jordan Taylor (illustrated by Eric Asaris)
• ‘The Facts Are These’, M. Bennardo (illustrated by Cécile Matthey)
• ‘The Shadow Catchers’, Vanessa Fogg (illustrated by Katharine A. Viola)
• ‘Cascade’, A.J. Fitzwater (illustrated by Fluffgar)

Poetry

• ‘Demon Summoning for the Modern Femme’, Avra Margariti (illustrated by L.E. Badillo)
• ‘This Soundless Murk’, Hester J. Rook (illustrated by Miguel Santos)

Download e-book version: PDF | EPUB | Mobi

Full issue and editorial.

Review this issue on Goodreads.

TFF #53 Microinterviews

As usual we followed the release of TFF #53, the LIIIES issue, with mini-interviews with each of the authors and artists over on Fb. For those of you who don’t book the face, I’ve collected all the links so far in this post, and will add anything else that comes up as it appears. Please feel free to ask any other questions you’d like the authors to answer in the comments, and we’ll do our best to get them to look at them…

• Fabio Fernandes, reviewer of “The Birth of Free Will”
• Michael M. Jones, reviewer of “Ambiguity Sky”
• Djibril Ayad, author of “Wickchester University Library special collections”
• Gwen C. Katz, reviewer of “Surradia: Portrait of Three Women with an Owl” and cover artist
• J. Moufawad-Paul, reviewer of “Velocity of Inertia”
• Djibril Ayad, reviewer of “Lake Wildwood”
• Ari Kaness, author of “The Tildenville Skeleton”
• J. Rama Stephens, author of “Retrospective on Sepulveda Baron”
• Valeria Vitale, reviewer of “Non sorrideva mai”
• Djibril Ayad, author of “Profile of Octavia Flora Fabian”

For more micro-interviews, reviews, and other games please feel free to “like” or follow the TFF Fb page or Twitter accounts, where we'll post things like this as often as we can.