Secret Identities : The Many Faces of a Chinese Woman in Publishing.

by Xueting Christine Ni

Let me tell you a secret.

I lead a double life.

By day, I work at one of the UK’s largest publishing houses, producing illustrated novelty books, helping to develop them from concepts to finished products, negotiating with suppliers and collaborating with sales teams and creative professionals to ensure the books are to spec, within budget, manufactured correctly and delivered on time across the globe.

By night, I am China Woman, delivering talks, articles, books and translations to further the understanding of China, protect Chinese Culture from misrepresentation, fighting Sinophobia and stereotyping wherever I go.

Lately, I am finding that in order to rise up and respond to the challenges posed by the current politics of fear, my two roles are coming into contact and beginning to clash…

For nearly a decade and a half, my day job has afforded me little to no opportunities to interact my heritage. Day in day out, I am finding China being confused with Japan or Korea, where my culture deliberately avoided or ignored, by colleagues who wish to gush about their adopted pet Asian country, or by senior management who would resort to Google Translate, Wikipedia and other great lengths to hide their ignorance, rather than consult a native resource within their workforce, even as the majority of suppliers we use across the industry shifts to my homeland. When I start talking about Chinese culture, magically, the whole office becomes an expert on the subject, and whilst the mainly middleclass office takes great pains to be considerate of minorities, from queerness to religion, to gluten intolerance, derogatory insinuations to the Yellow Race as well as the belief that “made in china” may as well continue “..out of radioactive third rate plastic” persist.

I have generally responded to these by keeping my head down, and turning them into fuel for my Chinese culture work when I get home.

I could be kind, if I were inclined to, and say that China doesn’t do a lot to promote its cultural highlights. My social circles have consisted of largely occidental geeks and Japanophiles, the UK geek convention scene has heavily promoted Japan, and despite my efforts to make these gatherings into Pan-Asian culture festivals. Even the BBCs (British Born Chinese), have exhibited an aversion when it comes to their heritage, preferring anime style avatars, Japanese net names and turning up to events in kimonos and Gothic Lolita dresses. At the same time, my friends who’ve come over from Mainland China, have tended towards Anglophilia, desperate to fit in and sublimating their native culture to do so. This self-loathing by the Chinese was something I saw very visibly in the 1990s and early 2000s, and was one of the factors that motivated me in my work to make traditional Chinese culture accessible, as well as showcase the fantastic range of nascent pop culture coming out of a society changing at an astonishing pace.

I could also say, if I felt like being kind, that it’s not as if they have a lot of contact with Chinese colleagues. Like many BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic), I had to jump over the hurdle of Family. For Chinese parents, the only jobs one should even consider going into are Banking, Finance and “The Professions”. At gatherings of my family and their friends, you could be assured of bankers to recommend investments, stock brokers who’d try and double it for you, doctors who could write out a handy little prescriptions for pick-me-ups to help them through 20-hour work days, and friendly lawyers who’d get you acquitted if those pills caused someone’s heart to explode. It was a respectable cabal of the soulless, and whilst they may all take day trips out to country houses, none of them seemed interested in the great tradition and culture behind these, a tradition that produced the likes of Brontes, Gaskell, Collins and Foster.

These were the writers who accompanied me through my adolescence. My love of literature was dismissed as ‘a hobby’, until I told my parents I wanted to decline my UCAS offers in Economics, to study English Literature, and study that at university. It was half a year before my mother spoke to me again, despite living in the same house, and I took a part time job to pay for my college fees (something absolutely unheard of in my family social circle). English literature is one of the most popular arts and humanities degree in the country, and Publishing, the most common career of choice for graduates of this subject, yet for me, they were hard won life choices.

Even when we make that leap into the industry, it’s often just the beginning of the battle for BAME. Like everyone who loves literature, I thought I would be working up through the various iterations of editorial assistance, to become an editor. Soon after I had landed my first job at a major publishing group, I was already getting commissions for fiction translation in my “vigilante” capacity, so I felt assured of my dreams.

When an internal vacancy came up, I leapt at the opportunity, and was not at all surprised when I was asked in for an interview.  Little did I know though, that the interview would be one of the shortest I’d ever had; how all the literary talent and organizational know-how with which I was going to impress my interviewer, would remain unsaid, and that the first question I was asked, “is English your first language?”, would in their minds, bar me from that whole side of the industry. The dejection I felt at this off-hand rejection was light compared to the years of self-doubt that followed, exacerbating the fractured sense of identity I’d already been struggling with, and the thought that maybe my parents had been right, and all we were good for was statistics and money. It has been a long battle, and I now have a string of successes and milestones I can use to remind myself that in fact, I’m damn good at this, and in many cases, maybe down to the effort I have had to spend to achieve these skills, far better than a native speaker who has had the English language handed to them on a plate.

I would like to say my work as “China Woman” has been plain sailing, but alas, nothing worthwhile is ever easy.  Even though I was moved to the UK just before my teens, I had always kept myself aware of what was happening in China. Not just the news, but what my friends were spending their pocket money on, or watching on TV. As a grown-up I was lucky enough to return, and study my home country’s literature and culture in more depth, reconnect with old friends, and make plenty of new acquaintances. When I came back to the UK at the end of the 2000s, I fully launched myself into my Chinese culture work, relying on an unique insight that comes from total immersion in both China and Britain, combined with incisive abilities in cultural and literary analysis, and a passion for research, and most importantly, a desire to bring the best of China out and put it on display for my second home country. Yet I found myself competing against the confident, authoritative voices of white academics, who dominate China-related media circles in the West, and my work being used wholesale and uncredited on several occasions. It was grating to find these people, who had never set foot on anything but a main street, and whose Mandarin did not extend past “Wo Yao Yi Bei Zhong Bei Na Tie”, appearing on national radio to exploit whichever strain of Sinophobia that was doing the rounds, in order promote their field of expertise or full series on Sky Arts. Some, who quite happily ignored China for decades while they eulogized manga and anime in their book deals and public appearances, are suddenly jumping on the China bandwagon; often with such low levels of knowledge of the country’s history, culture, and outlook, that I’m often surprised they don’t burst into flames when they present themselves as the fount of wisdom for another culture.  

Over a decade of learning, commentary and development would gather some critical mass, against whatever odds. Eight years after my rejection by the editor and several unpleasant incidents at other publishers that happened due to a lack of understanding of minority perspectives, I finally found confidence in being myself, both as a person and as a writer. The growth of internet usage, especially social media, both in China and around the world, have not only widened my audience and readership, but facilitated direct contact with them. My website and my posts are now a lot more visible to festivals, organisations and institutions around the world, who can easily reach out to me for talks, commentary and interviews via email, Twitter, or WeChat. It was thanks to this shrinking of the canyons between creators and publishers that I got my first non-fiction commission from a US publisher a few years ago. Chinese deities was hardly a subject I’d dreamt of writing on, but a hungry female BAME author makes the most every opportunity she is offered, and rather than a book on religion, I moulded my creation into a window into Chinese society and culture.

There has been a positive shift to embrace cultural and ethical change around the world. It has led to multiple campaigns, movements, support groups, and many parts of the media to move from mere tolerance to integration, even to the active embracing of diversity. It’s not all Utopian peace and harmony yet, but the subjects are being broached, and where one organization may still be as white as a roll of Gardapat Bianka, others have been actively redressing the balance and seeking out more representation where it is needed.

It has been my pleasure to be invited to teach Chinese cinema, as part of one of the only Contemporary World Cinema courses in the whole country, and although I had to practically start my own press junket on the UK release of Big Fish & Begonia, cinemas such as The Genesis, are starting to recognize the value of having a bicultural speaker introduce films steeped in Chinese tradition and culture to the British audience, rather than just picking the loudest white hack they could most easily get hold of. It has taken me ten years since my last one to find another suitable opportunity to publish my translations in print, but with this coming collection of Chinese Science Fiction, I hope to help English-language readers discover the fantastic range of genre fiction coming out of China.

China’s economic rise has led to a new-found domestic confidence and prompted many around the world to seek opportunities within the country. Together with the accessibility of online platforms, this has encouraged well-researched, accurate and in-depth reportage of China to the West. We no longer have to view China entirely through the lenses of international and colonial politics that traditional media outlets have tended to adopt, though even these are starting to improve. I have been lucky enough to be invited by the BBC to produce content on Chinese sci-fi cinema following the success of “The Wandering Earth”, and Disney’s upcoming live action “Mulan”.

As China becomes a bigger player on the world stage, fear of it, is, I’m afraid, again on the rise, and with it, a targeted attack of stereotyping and misperceptions of China. It serves certain organisations to present China as a land of mindless automatons flooding the West with cheap goods, a nation that can produce but not create. But even this hideous view is now being overshadowed by more modern Fu-Manchu villainy, depicting the country as a powerful polluter, sinister spy or a monstrous monoculture thirsting for world domination. The super-heroine, China Woman, has her work cut out for her, and the next time someone in the office talks of fake rice and spying cell phones, I might not just bite my tongue.

Visit Xueting Christine Ni’s website

Waxing Lyrical : Online Fiction

On the subject of online fiction, we welcome Jenny Barber. 

Waxing Lyrical: Online Fiction by Jenny Barber

So there I was, not at Worldcon and living vicariously through everyone’s tweets, when reports of the short fiction panel started popping up. Specifically, the view that print magazines were going to die and hopefully online providers would start selling short fiction.

Start selling?  Start…?  (Looks at calendar. Sees that it is, in fact, still 2017. Shakes head.) If I had been drinking tea, it would have sprayed all over the screen.

I don’t remember exactly when I discovered that online magazines existed (I started slushing for the late Fantasy Magazine [http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/] around 2009-ish so it was probably a couple of years before that), but I do remember the rampant glee at finding so much quality short fiction available for free. Free was important back then as I couldn’t afford print subscriptions to the magazines I knew about, but still had a short fiction addiction that needed feeding. 

What really cinched my newfound love for online fiction was the sheer range of stories available.  I’d spent a good decade or so reviewing predominantly UK horror ‘zines for the British Fantasy Society and while I do enjoy a good horror story, online fiction opened the SFF world up much wider.  New authors, new styles, stories from all over the world and all a mouse click away! Amazing!

Since then, the online markets have expanded: bigger, better, and more beautiful, there are more magazines, more diversity, more ways to support the publications and more ways to read (and listen) to their fiction. 

Online fiction and their venues regularly win Hugos, Nebulas, British Fantasy Awards, British Science Fiction Awards, World Fantasy Awards, Locus Awards, Aurealis Awards, Shirley Jackson Awards, Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Awards & Parsec Awards (to name but a few!) so you can be sure of the highest quality fiction for the low, low price of (mostly) free!

But if you have the spare cash, you can get handy subscriptions (with bonus and/or advanced content) or single issues of titles delivered in the ebook format of your choice – available either directly through the magazines own sites; or from digital stores like Weightless Books [https://weightlessbooks.com/], Smashwords [https://www.smashwords.com] or Amazon.  Those that don’t have subscription options usually have ways to donate via paypal or funding sites, so watch out for the publisher patreons and kickstarters to show your love and pick up some fantastic fiction to boot.

But where can you find some of this award-worthy, affordable, accessible fiction?

::Link-fest mode engaged, Cap’n!::

Strange Horizons [http://www.strangehorizons.com/] is one of my firm favourites and Beneath Ceaseless Skies [http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/] is another top one. Uncanny Magazine [http://uncannymagazine.com/] is not to be missed and if you want some Chinese translation (and other) SFF head over to Clarkesworld [http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/].

Lightspeed [http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/] publish some awesome fantasy and science fiction, and their sister magazine Nightmare [http://nightmare-magazine.com] is perfect for the horror aficionados, with more horror shorts found at The Dark.  [http://thedarkmagazine.com]

But also! Have a look at Apex Magazine [http://www.apex-magazine.com/], Shimmer [https://www.shimmerzine.com/], Holdfast [http://www.holdfastmagazine.com/], Abyss & Apex [http://www.abyssapexzine.com/], Heroic Fantasy Quarterly [http://www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com/], Fireside Fiction [http://firesidefiction.com/], Kaleidotrope [http://www.kaleidotrope.net/], and Tor.Com [http://www.tor.com]

If you like longer fiction, then may I point you at GigaNotoSaurus [http://giganotosaurus.org/] for all your novella pleasures. If you prefer flash, then Daily Science Fiction [http://dailysciencefiction.com/] will give you flash fiction five days a week (and free subscription if you want the stories delivered via email.)

Don’t want to sit staring at a screen? No problem! Many magazines do audio versions of their stories, and if you really want a treat, go check out some of the excellent dedicated podcast magazines.  The Escape Artists clutch of ‘casts are highly recommended and cover a broad range of genre in Escape Pod [http://escapepod.org/], Pseudopod [http://pseudopod.org/], PodCastle [http://podcastle.org/] and Cast of Wonders [http://www.castofwonders.org/].  Also check out StarShipSofa [http://www.starshipsofa.com/], Toasted Cake [http://toastedcake.com/] and The Drabble Cast [http://www.drabblecast.org/] for more audio goodness.

shameless book plug

So whatever the current state of print magazines may be, online short fiction is ready and waiting to welcome you into its digital folds!

Waxing Lyrical : Asexuality in Fantasy

Images added by Aunty Fox, also check this out for some illustrations of asexuality and dumb things people say.

Asexuality in Fantasy

By Joel Cornah

Writing characters is so often about letting the reader know what they are, rather than what they are not. In our world, so much of how people’s identities are perceived is bound up in ideas of sexuality and romance that, in the words of comedian Charlie Brooker;

We’ve become so accustomed to seeing characters pairing off with one another that it’s now almost impossible to see a man and a woman together on screen at once without internally speculating about whether they’re going to have sex or not.”

 Indeed, the trope of having two people (often of different genders) who do little but argue and despise one another but end up falling madly in love is incredibly prominent. I might even go so far as to say that for a lot of people, seeing two characters bicker has become an almost sure-fire way of predicting if they’ll end up together. But even in these cases, the writers will often tie them together through some reconciliation scene that ends with physical intimacy of some sort. Just to hammer home the point.

When it comes to writing asexual characters, those who lack sexual attraction, it can be somewhat jarring to audiences who are used to characters getting off with one another simply by being in the same room. I think this might be the source of some anti-ace feeling some publishers may have, especially as a sexual or romantic subplot is expected of most stories as a matter of course.

With the world I created for The Sea-Stone Sword and The Sky Slayer, I decided that prejudices based on sexuality were not really a thing in most societies. It made the writing process a lot more open and gave me much more creative freedom. Openly gay and bisexual characters are comparatively easy to show through the relationships and romances the characters endure and pursue. The age old ‘show don’t tell’ rule runs smoothly in these cases. But when it comes to asexual characters it’s much harder to make it explicit.

So how do you address it in a way that can be easily grasped? Is it as simple as having characters who just never experience sexual attraction or is it something we should actively point out in a character? Should they internally reflect on their lack of attraction, should they explain it to others, should it be discussed openly or simply allowed to exist.

I have one ace character in The Sea-Stone Sword, but it is not explicit because the issue doesn’t come up. She is quite young, and there were also other aspects to her character that were a lot more active and so became the focal point.

For asexual characters, the temptation for me was to simply never address it at all, and to delve into nonsexual aspects of their relationships. I wanted to explore the friendships they made, the loyalties they formed and causes for which they fought. It was important to me to flesh them out as characters and how they related to others and have that be the focus.

However, asexuality is, perhaps by its nature, something of an invisible identity. Easily overlooked, easily ignored. As such, many of us feel decidedly alone, left out, and isolated. Rarely do we see explicate representation of people who feel the way we feel and experience the world as we do. Part of this is down to social assumptions where we automatically expect characters to be sexual in some way. This worried me as I continued to write.

In my second novel, The Sky Slayer, there is another ace character, but this time I made it explicit. She’s a smartass, a sarcastic brains-of-the-outfit who pulls everyone’s strings. As a result, other character slowly start asking her advice. Once you get past the put-downs and jibes, she can be quite wise, so it made sense to me. This I immediately saw as a way in to give her sexuality some notice. When asked for relationship advice, she raises an eyebrow and informs them, “Ask the Doctor. I have no interest or experience with these carnal matters.”

It was also important to me that the character accept this, rather than pressing her into something with the old ‘go on just try it!’ routine. When another character shows an interest in her, they are told, “She doesn’t feel that kind of attraction.” and all parties accept this as a real answer, rather than objecting or insisting on pushing her.

I think it is important to have multiple ace characters, to explore the variety of ways asexuality can be experienced. As with any demographic, the less characters within it you have, the less fairly you will represent it.

But even these examples from my own work sometimes make me cringe a little and I feel uncertain about whether I took the right path. On the one hand, I want it to be respected and given a real place in a characters’ identity. But on the other hand, I don’t want to bring it up for the sake of bringing it up. So how do we tackle this issue?

Being asexual myself, it isn’t an issue that comes up terribly often. I don’t have conversations about it, I don’t go out and tell my story precisely because, so often, if feels like there isn’t a story to tell. How many ways can you say, ‘nothing happened’ and have it be interesting? Except by way of contrast to the expected norm, it has rarely felt like an aspect of my life that is ripe for creative exploration.

The obvious answer is to look to other people’s experiences. Talking to other asexual people from different background and cultures grants a view into the wide range of stories that are there. The struggles and triumphs, the attitudes and fears, and the whole spectrum of people. That is where the spark of creativity lies.

I think this allies to a lot of aspects of writing, not just regarding sexuality. Our own life can seem mundane to us simply because we experience them every day and end up thinking they are unremarkable. The remarkable only becomes so when compared to other things, and if we don’t seek out other experiences and stories, we might not find the spark at all.

 

Links for books;

The Sea-Stone Sword

The Sky Slayer

Waxing Lyrical : On Covers

Waxing Lyrical is an occasional series of blog posts. If you are interested in submitting an article please contact adele@foxspirit.co.uk a small fee is paid. 
The images are added by Aunty Fox.

Waxing Lyrical :On Covers by Tabby Stirling

Hello Authors!

My name is Tabby Stirling and I am a book-cover designer and author.  I’ve been asked to jot down a few ideas about how to make your cover really stand out and look ultra professional.  So here goes!

It is true that everyone can design a book cover.  But it is also true that not everyone can design a ‘good’ cover?

What do I mean by ‘good’.  Well, of course, it is very subjective but I always try to design a cover that would sit well on a major bookshop’s shelf.   A design where font and graphics work together to demonstrate the themes of the book and something about the author too.  Where colour balances with everything and a few risks are taken in the spirit of artistic endeavor.

I don’t believe that you have to have been to Art school to get it right but an ‘eye’ is very useful and that, much like the ‘voice’ in writing, cannot be taught (in my opinion).

So how can you design a cover that will be the envy of your friends and appear professional and creative?

Here are a few tips that I’ve discovered during my time as a designer.

FONT

 

There are a rich variety of free fonts that are accessible to the designer so be bold and don’t just stick to the fonts that come with Word and I have put a couple of links down the bottom to start you off.

However, fonts can make or break a cover and just because you love the swirling, medieval capitals sprawling across the cover of your historical romance – it doesn’t mean they work.  

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

A good idea is to remember the old adage about women’s fashion.  You can show off your legs or cleavage but never both at the same time after a certain age.

This is also true of design.  If you want 1000-volt cover you can achieve this by using graphics that ‘pop’ with a plain font and colours that balance.

Experiment with graphic placing – sometimes a slightly off-centre graphic can distribute menace much better than those Horror Fonts that are great on a 40’s film poster but not much else.

Less is more.  Please go with your instincts.  Being bold doesn’t mean that you have to have outrageous fonts, colour and graphics simultaneously.  Experiment with colour and font. Always back away from something you are not quite sure of.  And don’t ever feel that something isn’t quite bright enough without the hot pink graphics (especially if it is a book on chemical engineering).

COLOUR

 

Probably the trickiest one to handle, at least for me.  I love colour and often find myself  cavorting with highly inappropriate pantone colours for long periods of times.  It’s good to experiment, this is how we achieve the final result, but don’t let your experiments get the better of you.  One of the easiest ways to spot an amateur cover is the colour scheme used (or not). 

Great roaring oceans of colour, spewing like a Finnish volcano is not always a positive thing.  Think about how it will be perceived by others.  Try to become less self-indulgent about what you like and what you think will sell. 

LASTLY

Be prepared to put time and effort into your design.  A full book-cover  may take me 12 hours just for the initial mock up before it goes back to the client.  And then the inevitable to and fro where ideas are discussed and the design begins to come to life.  This is one of my favourite bits – being creative with the client. 

What I start with is invariably nothing like the final, approved design and it can be frustrating at times.

I think it is important to treat the author with great respect because writing a book is no easy thing and their ‘baby’ deserves attention. 

However, I would not be doing my job if I didn’t gently point out an idea that I don’t think would work.  I will always try it, if the client insists, because book cover design is a collaboration and a journey.  A quite magical thing really. 

I hope this has been helpful.  Please feel free to email me with any questions – my portfolio can be found at tabathadesigns.tumblr.com  but not all my work is there by a long shot.

Tabby J

Free Fonts

www.fontsquirrel.com

www.dafont.com

Graphics Programmes

Adobe Indesign  (Paid)

Pic Monkey  (free)

Waxing Lyrical : Reading to Save your Soul

Reading to Save Your Soul
Alex Bean

A few nights ago I noticed a recent shift in my reading habits.  In a post on Facebook I mused that since the US Presidential election in November I had begun reading a lot more fiction than usual. My habit generally being rather massive works of non-fiction and history, this seemed notable. In the comments on my Facebook post a friend, himself a writer, told me to keep it up. “Read all the fictions. Fiction will save your soul, if not your life.”

That idea has really struck a chord with me, especially in a domestic political climate mired in the toxic racism and incompetent xenophobia of a populist demagogue. To that end, much of the fiction I’ve been consuming at a faster-than-usual pace has incidentally turned out to be the perfect antidote to the uninformed hatred and suspicion permeating from the White House.

In November, right after the election, I felt completely unmoored. My whole sense of the foundations that underlie my society felt undone. So I went all the way back to the source and re-read Gilgamesh. It’s always sort of awesome (in the Old Testament sense of the word) to go back and read texts from the very origins of human civilization. Glimpsing the formal and dramatic power of literature already being harnessed so far back in the fog of time is intimidating and impressive. I also couldn’t help but be amused that the city vs. country divide made so stark in the election can just as easily be found in the wrestling match between Gilgamesh and Enkidu.

As I finished the work, one particular passage stuck out and seems especially relevant in the pursuit of saving my soul via fiction.

“What you seek you shall never find. 
For when the Gods made man, 
They kept immortality to themselves.
Fill your belly.
Day and night make merry.
Let Days be full of joy.
Love the child who holds your hand.
Let your wife delight in your embrace.
For these alone are the concerns of man.” 

Those lines echoed through my mind as I reflected on two pieces of fiction by people being actively persecuted by the short-fingered vulgarian in the Oval Office. One of them is The Moor’s Account, a novel by Moroccan-American author Laila Lalami, which I first read a few years ago. The moor in question is Estevanico, a once-successful slave trader in Morocco who sells himself into slavery in Spain and eventually becomes the first recorded African to immigrate to the Americas. \

Seeing the arrogance and violence inherent to European colonization of the Americas from the eyes of a Muslim from Morocco fundamentally alters the whole American idea. It lets the reader re-imagine this country means by finding the stories in the gaps and ellipses of history. I’d like to imagine that reflection like that might be enough to save the soul of my country if enough people read it and took it to heart.

The other work of fiction, which I started the week that Trump signed his odious Muslim Ban, was Interpreter of Maladies by Jumpa Lahiri. The Pultizer-winning short story collection mostly focuses on Indian immigrants to the United States.  What struck me, again and again, throughout the nine stories in the collection, is how Lahiri uses her understated prose to sketch out characters with thoughts, hopes, fears, and dreams that are at once universal and highly specific. As with Gilgamesh, a quote (or two) may best illustrate her effusive powers.

“While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have travelled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.”

“In those moments Mr. Kapasi used to believe that all was right with the world, that all struggles were rewarded, that all of life’s mistakes made sense in the end.”

We may be doomed to live in interesting times and I still find myself full of worry and outrage. But reading those lines made the whole sad, fearful displays which dominate the news shrink from my mind. Fiction, perhaps more than any other format, has the power to cut through the noise and make you look at yourself and the world in a new light. We’re all seekers like Gilgamesh and strangers in a strange land like Estevanico and ordinary people whose achievements are beyond imagination. No one man, no matter how foolish can steal that from us. That’s what will save our souls and that why I’m reading fiction right now.

Editing Round Table

I reached out to a whole bunch of my favourite editors with a few basic questions around short story collections and the editors perspective.  For today’s session I am delighted to welcome Jonathan Oliver of Solaris/Abaddon, Mhairi Simpson and Margret Helgadottir who have edited for Fox Spirit and Farhana Shaikh who runs Dahlia publishing. 

When you put a call out do you already know exactly what you are looking for?

Jonathan Oliver : I start with a theme, so generally I know what I’m looking for, but when I put together submissions guidelines, I always say to authors ‘here’s the brief, but play with it, stretch it to its limits.’ So, I want to give my writers as much room as possible to explore within the theme I’ve given them. After all, I don’t want to end up with an anthology of similar stories.

Mhairi Simpson : No. When I did my first call I had a very specific idea in mind. By the end of it I realised I knew nothing and was just happy to be astonished at the wide variety of tales even a relatively narrow prompt can produce.

Farhana Shaikh: I try not to be too clear about what I’m looking for because I don’t want a piece of writing to fail before I’ve had the chance to consider it properly. This is especially true for an anthology because the breadth of style tends to be so broad and different writers respond to themes in such different ways.

What I’ve realised though is that a short story is successful as long as it does what the writer set out to do. In the simplest of terms, I could try and break down what that success often looks like. For example it might mean strong characterisation and a refreshing voice, but I find those terms can be reductive because it might also just be a beautiful story told in the simplest of ways. 

Margrét Helgadottir : I have only put out an open call one time, for the Winter Tales anthology. I knew then what kind of stories I wanted – a strong voice, an interesting plot, atmosphere, and also a more unspoken chill of the dark and cold winter season – but other than this I tried to be very open both in the call and when I read the submissions. As for the monster books (working on volume four now), they are invitations only. I am hunting for monster stories. They can be written in all genres but they have to have something monstrous about them and they have to be dark. I am very clear in the invitation what I am not looking for (satire, erotica etc).

 

What things will make you discount a story quickly?

Jon : Badly presented and with obvious errors. The other thing is if the story has completely ignored the brief. So, if I say this anthology has to be about a haunted house, and I get a submission that’s about a mutant spider or something, with no haunted house in sight, then that will be pretty quickly rejected. Fortunately it’s not something I have to worry about a lot as all of my anthologies are invite only.

Mhairi  : Condescension on the part of the author. A pushy author asking if I’ve made a decision yet when the submission period is still open. Any mention of sexual assault which doesn’t feel right in the story.

Farhana : My pet hate is writing that is cluttered with adjectives or flowery language. I tend to steer away from writing that is trying too hard or clever, or where the writer clearly hasn’t worked out what the heart of the story really is. Having said that, I do like to re-read writing (this is especially true for short stories) because I don’t like to make too rash a decision about whether something works or not. Editing is after all, hugely subjective and sometimes I have to challenge myself to work with writing that is not necessarily to my taste.

Margrét: Except for not following the guidelines and the idea of the book, I will quickly put a “no” on any story that uses racism, rape, violence, discrimination of gender or sexual orientation, when it is clear that it doesn’t do anything for the plot. I don’t discount a story because of bad grammar or language if I see a potential—a core in the story that will shine if the story is polished in the edits. I have had 2-3 stories in all the volumes I have edited that required more work from me and the author than the other stories but I am very satisfied that they are part of the books today.

 

Would you consider taking a story that doesn’t quite fit the idea behind the call and whatever your answer, why?

Jon: I like to be pleasantly surprised by submissions. So, for example, we all have an idea about what constitutes a haunted house and a haunting, but I also like to see new takes on such traditional subject matter, new twists on the formula. Sure, I’m a sucker for a traditional ghost story, but more so I love the possibilities that new fiction explores.

Mhairi: Yes. I’ve initially said no to a story which didn’t seem to quite fit the call. I had something else in mind. Then as more stories came in I realised I had an opportunity to show ideas which weren’t in line with my own thinking, because none of the stories quite fit the call, certainly not what I’d been expecting to get. It was a learning experience – I learned not to make assumptions about what did and did not fit. It broadened my mind and was a tad humbling, too.

Farhana: I’d be reluctant to accept anything that was too far from the initial concept, purely because I think collections have an odd way of working in that the stories once ordered have their own life and rhythm. I’d be reluctant to upset the balance of that. But as I’ve said, the scope for an anthology tends to be quite wide, so it’s rare that such a thing happens. Where this has been the case, I’ve simply asked the original contributor to submit something else.

Margret: No and yes. If it’s far out from the book idea, no. If the book is about Europe I will not include a story that takes place on the Moon. However I can include a story if it plays with the boundaries of the sub call but still has one foot inside the frame. I have done this a few times but only when the stories were so excellent in both language and plot that I just couldn’t say no. Often they can be shaped a little bit in the edits so they fit the book better.

How do you approach running order?

Jon: You want to start with a belter right out of the gate. You want something substantial in the middle and you want to end on a story that packs some sort of punch. In between you can get the reader settled and explore all the wonderful variations on the ideas your authors have sent you.

Mhairi: I try to find a thread or arc which links all the stories together and then decide where each story falls along that arc. For Tales of Eve it was a genre thread, varying from hard sci-fi to high fantasy so I started with the hardest sci-fi and ended with the highest fantasy. It was actually really difficult!

Farahna: By the time I get to a running order, I’ve probably read the work separately a good few times and something will be emerging about how I’d like to start and where I’d like to begin. Of course, a reader may choose to go in whatever order they wish, but sometimes as an editor I think such things are important.

Margrét: I try to put the strongest stories up front and in the back. You need to catch the readers right away. A short excellent story as number one is a very good tactic. It sets the tone of the rest of the book quickly. The last two stories should be the after thought of the book, something to make the book live a little bit longer in the readers’ minds, make them reflect a little bit about the book theme. Other than this I am concerned about putting the stories in anthologies in a natural flow, vary it a little for the reader. This goes for both the length of the stories, style and theme. I don’t put two vampire stories next to each other of the other ten stories are about were wolves for instance.

Cover by S.L. Johnson

What are some of the things you think people underestimate in regards to the time/effort involved in the anthology editors role?

Jon: Coming up with the theme always takes the most time. You want something iconic enough that people will pick the book of the shelf, and bring some sort of expectation, but you also want something different enough that you stand out. In an invite only situation you know to some extent the strengths of your authors, so editing the stories is the easiest and most pleasurable part of the whole affair.

Mhairi: It’s not the typos – if a story’s got that many mistakes I’d send it back and tell them to run it through spellcheck or a beta reader. When it comes to figuring out what a story is trying to say and if it can be said better, however, that can take a while. It’s usually a clarity issue – I’m not sure what’s going on and the author makes some changes and through the various changes we get closer to the diamond at the heart of the tale.

Farhana: I don’t know if anyone does underestimate what an editor brings to a collection but of course, they bring a whole deal of experience and expertise. It’s the editor’s role to not only select the stories and collate these in some order, but often it can mean a lengthy battle with contributors to undertake revisions, and ensure these come back on time, as well as project manage the entire thing. It’s fine, if you have around ten contributors or so, but once you start veering in to the twenties and beyond it can become challenging. An editor may also be involved in promoting the book, and keeping all the contributors in the know, so it’s a huge effort with lots of emailing back and forth. If the editor is also the publisher, as in my case, then there’s lots more going on behind the scenes away from the anthology with regards to choosing the title, managing the jacket cover designs, and working with suppliers to ensure the project can be delivered on time and on a shoe-string budget.

Margrét: I think many don´t realize what the editor job is. If you are editor for books from small presses you must involve yourself in the book production and getting the book out there. In addition to the editing of the language and grammar, editing of the story flow and angles, proofreading and all that, I would say that at least 30 percent of my tasks in a book production is preparing the book production (researching the book, invitations to contributors etc) and all the work when the book is published with marketing, trying to get reviews and spreading the word amongst the thousands of other titles. I spend a lot of time researching what magazines and venues which might be interested in looking at the book. The monster books are a challenge since I try to reach book bloggers and media also in the continents we cover: Africa, Asia etc. It is hard work but it is so satisfying when you see results.

 

Waxing Lyrical : The Trump Effect by @ferdinandpage

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The expression of – bemusement – on these women’s faces is understandable, given they’re listening to a US Presidential candidate explain how grabbing any woman’s crotch is a perk of the powerful, celebrity male. Somehow, they assumed that a contender for presidency, despite being an “oleaginous pre-ejaculate that somehow gained sentience” in the carefully-crafted assessment of @ChuckWendig, wouldn’t come out with this load of Cro-Magnon bollocks.

On the other hand, bemusement was my first response to my last experience of overt sexual entitlement. Bizarrely, it happened ten years’ ago; I wasn’t young then or in any way naive, although I was new to the high end of commercial media. I sat in the first meeting with a top creative and his partner to discuss a multi-media project at which I was passed as physically attractive enough – for writing and brainstorming concepts. What?. Then the top creative escorted me back into Piccadilly Circus underground where, in the spirit of getting to know me, he snogged me chastely. This was in public and he was/is not Donald Trump. I decided to ask him if he snogged his male business partner and if not, why me; apart from that, it was the end of getting to know each other. However, he continued to offer advice on my appearance and public persona.

Age doesn’t get rid of issues about our self-worth or our bodies; I’d got rid of most of mine but if I had been younger, it’s worth putting the warning out there that you don’t have to do anything you’d rather not do in order to get recognition or publication. And your body is OK. I know I haven’t seen it but trust me, it is. The first time someone makes a comment on your hair, eyes, placement of nostrils, can you pull your hair over more … a bit more, for the promotional piccies, just say:

This is the body the words live in. Sorry.

You won’t find billionaire narcissist bigots who grab at your crotch in publishing because because there’s not enough money in our industry. But there will be people with the power to make things happen for you who are less emotionally intelligent, more thin-skinned, less resilient to criticism, who have trouble with their gender balance. Elena Ferrante knows what happens when you are dependent on someone for whom a woman is a threat just by virtue of being a woman.

Most of the bullying is mental and emotional. Take a leaf from Hillary Clinton in the 2nd Debate, when Trump circled her, a looming, sniffing, newly-sentient pigbucket, apologies to pigs everywhere, stand your ground, ignore them, keep cool, remember your tactics, say what you need to say, share what you wanted to say with trusted confidants afterwards.

Waxing Lyrical : Accept no Substitutes

Accept no Substitutes.

by Adele Wearing

Please see the Waxing Lyrical category for more information on being part of this series. 

***

A little while ago there was a lot of excitement over an openly gay character appearing in an established science fiction universe. The author was a straight white man. There is a lot of this going on, with writers recognising (at last) that people like to have the option of reading about characters more like them. The rise of the #weneeddiversebooks campaign, targeting mainly the young adult arena, certainly drives this point home.

diverse books

In itself, this greater representation seems like a good thing. We do need diverse books, we need to see the real variety the world provides represented in our reading, so on the one hand, yes we should all be pleased people are writing more diverse characters. For one thing, it makes books a bit more interesting. For another it’s important that everyone recognises the need for diversity and engages with it the best they can. I just want to take a moment here to stress; no one is saying that anyone else shouldn’t write more diverse characters. Not here anyway.

Of course this apparent progress has given rise to its own issues. How valuable is diversity that is only page deep? What is it people really want? Do we want straight white cis men to be representing everyone? Is that actually diversity or is it just the old guard hanging on to their dominance of genre fiction by telling other people’s stories for them instead of letting them tell their own.

In awards terms this year; The Hugo’s have shown that women and writers of colour are more than capable of writing their own stories and representing themselves, so perhaps the industry needs to open up more space for that and let them. As a side note, the Clarke award demonstrated that it is still ok to be white and male in science fiction, it turns out you just have to write really great books (therein may lie the actual problem for many of the writers crying SJW).

speak for myself

It’s an insidious issue, because it’s easy to claim the mantle of ‘ally’ by writing diverse characters and it’s very difficult to challenge reasonably. After all it’s not generally that LGBT writers don’t want straight writers having LGBT characters, it’s just, they want a chance to write their own books, their own characters and tell their own stories their way. It’s a near perfect soap box, it’s hard to tell a man who is trying to be an ally to women that he’s not helping, especially as the intentions may be entirely genuine, but if women can’t be heard, can’t be seen due to the sheer number of men selling feminism, then isn’t that at risk of silencing women just as effectively as the people who openly tell them to sit down and be quiet? Effectively you are talking over them, drowning their voices out and you might as well order off the menu for them while you are at it.

It amounts to this for me. If you really want to be an ally draw gay writers into your discussions about gay characters, help them to share some of your platform and be heard.  Readers, if you really want to support diversity you need to read diverse books and that means you need to seek out diverse authors: Nnedi Okorafor, James Bennett, Tade Thompson, and Zen Cho are a few good starting points. You may have to look a little further but when it comes to diverse reading accept no substitutes.

Waxing Lyrical : Life after Law by Emma Heath

Life after Law: screenwriting festivals, writing competitions, and kaleidoscope tunnels

You know those Where I Write columns in writing magazines, in which authors are photographed in pastel-coloured sheds, or high-ceilinged rooms adorned with rows and rows of (inevitably highbrow) books? That was SO NOT ME back when I discovered Fox Spirit in 2012.

At the time, I was a bushy-tailed trainee at a corporate law firm, and I used to scribble away at my short story submissions on the train, hemmed in by zombified commuters. While the human equivalent of Droopy snored in my ear, I’d whisk myself off to the enchanted realms of space pirates, magicked kings, and shapeshifting baddies.

The problem was that Fox Spirit fantasy quickly became so much more enchanting than Corporate Law reality, and I’d find myself sneaking off to the firm’s canteen, or to a toilet cubicle, to continue writing. Then the partners would get grumpy (those millions don’t make themselves, after all) and I’d get told off.

For a while, I coped with a snatched twenty minutes here and stolen ten minutes there, but it soon became obvious – 30,000 words into a novel, and moving at 150 words a day – that I was grinding to a literary halt under the pressures of law. I was no longer bright eyed and bushy tailed; I was a cynical, grizzled old fox.

In 2014, I met up with an old university friend who’d started screenwriting. I was a prolific playwright at primary school, but for some irrational reason had always been daunted by it as an adult. But over drinks one night, Kath convinced me to give it a shot, and I quickly found that (a) with fewer words, I could more easily squeeze a screenplay into my spare moments, and (b) I FRICKING LOVED IT!

I got shortlisted for a couple of screenwriting competitions, and in 2015 I decided to figuratively dive in, and booked a ticket to the London Screenwriters’ Festival, a three-day festival full of talks, script surgeries, actors’ table reads, and – most excitingly – Pitchfest (where delegates get to pitch to agents and producers).

emma

In the meantime, I had HAD ENOUGH of corporate law. I handed in my notice in July, and waved goodbye on 4th September (taking a dip in the office fountain on my way out). Part of me was thinking “What the bleeding heck am I doing?” but the flood of relief I experienced as I walked away from that stark beige building told me it was the right thing to do.

I started managing a tuition centre – I wasn’t yet ready to go it alone – and then in October headed to Regent’s Park for the LSF. Well, wow, did that blow away some cobwebs and drag out my own personal Wonder Woman (the unofficial LSF mascot)! I learnt things – including writing wisdom from Chris McQuarrie (of The Usual Suspects fame); I had a script MOT; I made new friends; I pitched, and managed to interest two producers in my work. I came away with goosebumps, and definitely ready to push things up a gear.

LSF runs Create50, which is a series of initiatives designed to get writers and filmmakers’ work published and produced. They run script projects (resulting in feature films) and short story projects (resulting in anthologies), and I entered both. The awesome thing about Create50 is that rather than just sending your work off and waiting for a “yay” or “nay”, you upload it to the website and then other writers get to feedback on your work, while you get the chance to submit two redrafts.

I got sucked into the Create50 matrix at the end of November, and was spat out in the New Year, having reviewed 130 other scripts, and made massive developments to my own. It was exhilarating, and educating, and I made a lot of new writer friends. I also got longlisted, which to be honest felt like simply an added bonus by the end.

I wanted to get MORE INVOLVED in this magical world of writing and writers. So I started doing volunteer work for Create50, helping draft some contracts (thank you, corporate law!) and then helping develop and launch the latest initiative, Singularity50, a short story project exploring the years leading up to, and the moment of, the Singularity.

POster vers 1 copy

And… last month I was taken on as a paid employee at London Screenwriters’ Festival! Now I get goosebumps most days, just going to work. I feel like I’m living in those enchanted realms I dreamt of on the train.

Why have I told you all this? Well, for one thing, to highlight how awesome Fox Spirit is at touching, and bringing to 252the surface, a part of you which has been neglected and buried by the System – or whatever you want to call that Very-Serious-and-Important-Adult-Society that shakes its head at pretend lightsaber fights and dancing in a wooded glade.

And also – and I’m focusing in particular on any of you scribbling away in a corner of a commuter train – to whisper into your ear and tell you to find the rabbit hole and bloody well throw yourself down it! There are kaleidoscope lights at the end of the tunnel, and it’s WONDERFUL.

Waxing Lyrical : Orange is the New Black by Ferdinand Page

(If you are interested in writing for Waxing Lyrical please contact adele@foxspirit.co.uk)

Orange_is_the_new_Black

For every fiction writer, the book shares roughly the same gestation period of a newborn infant. On arrival, both share the same fate; however special, individual and unique, it gets a label stuck on it.

At the submission stage the infant book must be allocated an age range, readership and genre(s), rather like, to quote the magnificent Della in Raised By Wolves, “pushing an enraged otter into a jumpsuit.” When I drew up the first submission letter, I admit I’d pushed the idea of writing for the market around the plate, until my writer’s stomach rebelled, but the book was what it wanted to be by then, characters and plot repeatedly hijacked by a story which wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Unpacking the phrase I admit I’d pushed the idea of writing for the market in the interests of explanatory splainy, my first experience of writing commercially was on the fringes of a big concept. I got sucked in, like that time the Millenium Falcon got sucked into the pull of the Death Star, then spent a lot of time in start-up production companies in Soho or whatever space the leading commercial creative could cadge for meetings. Mostly it was in cafés where I found I was paying the bill. My bit of the project was to adjust the story to accommodate various amazeballs marketing opportunities. So Billy wasn’t dyslexic, he was a skateboarder; it was partly manga so the production company could play around with a very cool technique they were developing, but the sound therapy and dynamic yoga had to get in there somewhere. We were up to seven interlocking universes by the time I said I was losing my way a little amongst the high-concept stuff and I’d like to write my own book.

I still had Billy and he was dyslexic but everything else was completely different. Until the obvious market demands were removed, I didn’t realize the biggest force on writing in any genre, even bigger than the Death Star, is the story, an unstoppable, sucky, manipulative force breaking and re-making the outline and carefully constructed arcs of the first few drafts.

At some point the story has to be shoved, kicking and snarling, into the constraints of commercial publishing and marketing. Readers are as wide and diverse as people, but books go on shelves. Which shelf? You have to get slotty, or shelvish which is the same thing but looks like Lionel Bloom and has pointed ears. First you are brave and upfront in describing the book as written for, well anyone really, then you use the word crossover, then you realise you’ve gone over to the dark side and in a couple of sentences you’re going to stab Han Solo your own father between the second and third ribs. Didn’t you hate that bit? I hated that bit.

It gets worse. Having removed a few genre crossovers because anything that difficult to shelve isn’t going to get past the first submission (good plan) you find that the label your story goes under, the shelf allocation for your genre, isn’t fashionable.

Orange is the new black in your genre.

There is only one label left, the one they tie on the body in the morgue? No. Genre is always a matter of labelling, and the market in publishing is subject to fashions. As labels go, my speculative fiction is mainly urban fantasy. Some months ago an agent told me they were “not taking urban fantasy”, which another source informed me was, well – dead. But whatever the label, and still under that label, urban fantasy exists.

You can choose another label, my submission letter now refers to ‘contemporary fiction’, or invent your own, or push it as retro-pastiche.

But don’t try and hack the unfashionable genre out of the story. The story knows what it is and fashions in genre apart, it is what it is. Stick whatever label on it you need to, what gets the book published is the story.

Trust the story.