Calling all foxy folk with a penchant for fairy tales. Our lovely friends at Tenebris are looking for new faces for their follow up to the gorgeous and brilliant ‘Willow Weep no More’ and have sent us details of the submission call.
You can find everything you need to know about the tentatively titled ‘Shadows of the Oak’ HERE on their site.
They are an excellent press so if the lesser characters of fairy stories have always attracted your interest get your submission over to them!
Writer and skulk member Kim Bannerman and her husband Shawn Pigott, run Fox&Bee Studios, a small film company on Vancouver Island.
They have kindly allowed us to embed their spooky shorts here on Fox Spirit for your enjoyment in the run up to Halloween.
Tweet the link to an amazon review of a Fox Spirit title posted by you anytime in Oct or Nov 2014 using the #eumonsters along with retweeting the link to this giveaway to be added to a draw for the chance to win your choice of YA novel ‘Billy’s Monsters’ and amazing horror anthology ‘European Monsters’ both in paperback.
Breaking that down
To be included you need to retweet this post on twitter, post an amazon review (any country) of a Fox Spirit title and tweet the link using the hashtag #eumonsters
We will check the hashtag at the end of November and add you all to a prize draw where five names will be selected at random. Please make sure you are following us so we can reach you. @foxspiritbooks
There are five paperback copies up for grabs and winners get to choose between Billy’s Monsters and European Monsters
If you also have a blog we will be happy to provide review copies of available titles as ebooks including Drag Noir and Wicked Women as soon as they are available. Please contact adele@foxpsirit.co.uk if you would like a review copy of any of our titles, include a link to your blog and title your email ‘Review Copy’ so I can find it easily.
In order to aid skulk related discussion and general bookish chatterings we have set up a Foxy Forum. It’s in its early days but it won’t work without you, our skulktastic readers, writers, artists and friends making use of them.
So far we have a welcome post, a ‘book flu’ topic for sharing recommendations and an ‘events’ topic for sharing details of events you are attending or want to let us know about. I have also added an ‘quick questions’ topic so you can ask questions of us or our authors. We will answer what we can.
Moderately often I find myself drawn into discussions about equality, diversity and representation in genre fiction. The thing trotted out generally in defence of the status quo is ‘the focus should be on quality not equality’. To which my question is continually ‘Why are they seen as mutually exclusive?’
The thing that angers me is the idea that quality and diversity/equality/ representation are mutually exclusive. They are not. No one is robbing an editor of the right to select the best stories by asking them to consider approaching a broader range of writers in the first place. In fact it’s entirely possible that is a good way to get the best stories. It saddens me that I still find myself drawn into these discussions, because it means they are still occurring with alarming regularity. People are still trying to argue that in publishing and on convention panels you can have quality OR equality. Not true, it’s totally possible to have both. This, my friends is a cake we can all have and eat too!
I believe diversity, equality and representation make for a richer experience in fiction (as in life). All those different perspectives, the breadth of experience, the cultural richness of it can only be a good thing for SFF and Horror. I want more Asian mythology, history and religion in my fantasy and urban fantasy reads. These things are less familiar to me and therefore endlessly fascinating to read, but I’d like more (not all) of those books to be by Asian writers because, well they have a different perspective on it than a white British writer for example.
Also as a friend of mine pointed out (you know who you are), it’s all well and good having more gay and bisexual characters in books but if they are all written by straight people nothing has really changed, that isn’t real representation or diversity and it does nothing for gay or bisexual writers. It’s not a bad thing in itself for straight writers to write gay characters, everyone should write the stories, cultures and characters they want. Writing African protagonists should not be restricted to African writers, nor should gay female writers have to write gay female leads, but those characters AND those writers should be part of big picture.
I want diversity in the books I read. I want characters, settings and cultures of all kinds and I want them written by all kinds of people. I want to see an end to whitewashed covers, I want panel parity to not be needed as a ‘thing’ because it’s so normal for women, writers of colour, people who do not identify to a single binary gender or sexual identity and the rest to be on panels. I want the ‘broads with swords’ and ‘women in horror’ panels to vanish because the women who write horror or epic fantasy are talking about it on the other panels.
So this is my stance folks. Diversity in fiction isn’t a good thing, it’s a great thing! An essential thing! A needful thing! Please Embrace it.
*As an important aside, I entirely accept that it is possible to send out invitations for an anth to a good mix of people and still largely get back stories from white men, it happens and it is entirely unfair to hold the editor accountable for then publishing an all or almost all male, white T.O.C. The simple principle on this is the more diverse your invitation list the better the chance is you will get a diverse T.O.C.*
Some interesting sites and articles although this barely scratches the surface of quality discussion on the matter.
List – Mindblowing SF by Women and Writers of Colour
Article on Feminist Science Fiction
A couple of posts on whitewashing by InsideaDog and Booksmugglers
LONTAR a journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction
Lizzie Barrett on Panel Parity
You may have noticed on FB or twitter I have been asking for members of Fox Spirit skulk to tell us their nearest City or Town. These will be added as anonymous markers to our Skulk Map. I am not generally adding people without their giving me the information (with the exception of a few good friends) even though it’s anonymous on the site.
I would really like to see the spread worldwide of writers, artists and reviewers involved in Fox Spirit in someway, even if it’s a single story or a one off amazon review. So tweet us or message us @foxspiritbooks with your nearest town or city and we will add a marker.
In the run up to the release of Drag Noir, we’re featuring a few spots to drum up the excitement because, well — we’re so excited! Here’s a story from skulk member Graham Wynd to give you a sense of the flavour of the collection. Consider it a “bonus track” for the anthology.
I desperately turned every door handle along the corridor while swearing a blue streak, trying to figure out where it had all gone wrong. The image of Bomber’s face covered with blood still haunted my vision though I tried to push it aside long enough to think straight.
“We have to seize the means of production,” Bomber had said. I laughed at the memory of his words and gripped the handle of the French horn case even tighter. There had to be a way out of here.
At last a handle moved under my sweaty grip. I pushed through the door. A supply closet: stacks of cocktail napkins, swizzle sticks and whatnot filled the shelves. Dead end, I knew. But maybe I could hide out here while things calmed down.
I threw the case in the corner and shoved a few bigger boxes together to make a leaning tower of booze boxes, then ducked down behind it. I willed my breath to slow down, but the ragged rasp of it continued. The bellows of my lung threatened to give me away if anybody tried the door behind me.
Maybe no one had followed me down the corridor.
Bomber’s gory face swam into view again and I cursed his name. ‘Means of production,’ my aunt Fanny.
Both of them.
“What do you mean, ‘means of production’?” Moaning Murdoch had asked him. He’d had that unfortunate moniker since back in the kiddie days when we were wet enough to let girls drag us to Harry Potter films. No matter that he outgrew the round face, that the big specs were replaced by contacts and Murdoch himself landed a scholarship playing for the Danes as a fullback. He was still Moaning Murdoch.
Bomber smiled in that way he had that suggested he knew the inside track. His smugness had only grown since he switched his major to business. The original plan to be a rapper had been scuppered due to his inherent lack of talent (which we all could have told him before but never mind that, he wasn’t listening).
Continue reading “Drag Noir #FreeRead: Smallbany by Graham Wynd”
October at Fox Spirit is celebrating the Femme Fatale..after a fashion. Our anthologies ‘Wicked Women’ edited by Jenny Barber and Jan Edwards and ‘Drag Noir’ edited by K.A.Laity are coming up. These ladies are armed and dangerous.
From thieves and tyrants to witches and warriors, here are twelve tales of women who gleefully write their own rules, women who’ll bend or break the social norms, who’ll skate along the edge of the law and generally aim to misbehave.
Contents:
Juliet E. McKenna – Win Some, Lose Some
Christine Morgan – The Shabti-Maker
Tom Johnstone – Kravolitz
A. R. Aston – No Place of Honour
Adrian Tchaikovsky – This Blessed Union
Sam Stone – The Book of the Gods
Chloë Yates – How to be the Perfect Housewife
Stephanie Burgis – Red Ribbons
Jonathan Ward – A Change in Leadership
Jaine Fenn – Down at the Lake
Zen Cho – The First Witch of Damansara
Gaie Sebold – A Change of Heart
DRAG NOIR: this is where glamour meets grit, where everyone’s wearing a disguise (whether they know it or not) and knowing the players takes a lot more than simply reading the score cards. Maybe everyone’s got something to hide, but they’ve got something to reveal, too. Scratch the surface and explore what secrets lie beneath — it’s bound to cost someone…a lot.
Contents:
Introduction by Dana Gravesen and Bryan Asbury
The Meaning of Skin – Richard Godwin
Wheel Man – Tess Makovesky
No. 21: Gabriella Merlo – Ben Solomon
Geezer Dyke – Becky Thacker
Lucky in Cards – Jack Bates
Trespassing – Michael S. Chong
Chianti – Selene MacLeod
The Changeling – Tracy Fahey
Straight Baby – Redfern Jon Barrett
Kiki Le Shade – Chloe Yates
Protect Her – Walter Conley
King Bitch – James Bennett
A Bit of a Pickle – Paul D. Brazill
Stainless Steel – Amelia Mangan
The Itch of the Iron, The Pull of the Moon – Carol Borden
