Drag Noir: Tracy Fahey

Richard Dadd’s The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke

Fairy Drag: Or, How I Wrote The Changeling by Tracy Fahey

You don’t mess with the fairies in Ireland. They are malignant force, older than humanity, who live by their own laws. Unlike their elegant Victorian English counterparts, the Irish fairies are Other, different in every way; both in looks and in character. They’re tall and pale, with a warlike approach to life and an immense propensity for revenge. Country life, until well into the 20th century was ruled by a series of invisible boundaries –folk who lived there didn’t cut down the whitethorn, didn’t build a house on a fairy path, didn’t meddle with the forts. These sites, demarcated by fairy behaviour became forbidden zones

Alan Lee’s Changlings

As with all stories, the writing of this started as a result of several unaligned thoughts coming together – the persistence of supernatural rituals in rural Ireland, a gruesome murder in Northern Ireland, and the old belief that you needed to disguise the sex of a baby to save it from been ‘swept’ or ‘fetched’ by the fairies. The fairies, it was said, would steal away an unprotected baby and replace it with a sickly fairy child who would dwindle and wither away, despite all human efforts. I became fascinated with the idea of ‘infant drag’, where clothing, hair and adornment function as a protective, gender-masking disguise. The idea of drag in this story is a double-edged sword. It is a catalyst for concealment, transformation, but also for revenge. I began wondering how this experience might translate into later life…and so this story came to life.

The story has an unhappy ending, but then, all fairy stories do. They end in tears, in partings, in kidnappings, desolation and death. Our poor changeling fares no differently.

DRAG NOIR is out now.

Drag Noir: Jack Bates

Cover by S. L. Johnson
Cover by S. L. Johnson

Jack Bates: How I Came to Write LUCKY AT CARDS

Two things happened at once. I saw the call for submissions for Drag Noir in a Short Mystery Fiction Society newsletter and a young lady announced to me that she was transgender. Pretty soon her long, curly blonde locks were gone. She swore off wearing dresses. All she wore was men’s clothing. Sports jerseys, mostly. She asked to be called Paul. It gave her a sense of control. She openly pursued a couple of young women at work. She showed up at a wedding with a very cute young woman. Paul wore a vintage three piece, pin stripe suit. Paul had a black eye. I didn’t ask her about it but I knew I had the start of a story. I have no idea if Paul ever played blackjack in her life or if she even went to any of the Detroit or Windsor casinos.

ThuglitWhat Drag Means to Me

I have a very good friend who operates a very successful stage theater here in Detroit. When we were kids, we did a Saturday Night Live type of variety show at our high school. I wrote sketches that put Joe in drag quite often. He seemed very comfortable in a dress. Now, thirty years later, he’s graced his stage several times in shows like Die, Mommie, Die and Fatal Attraction: A Greek Tragedy where he out Close-s Glenn Close. When I think of drag I think of my good friend Joe and his campy, hilarious performances. He’s so comfortable in that skin you forget he’s Joe and not actually Joan- as in Crawford. I put on a dress and just look ridiculous. Joe comes alive.

DRAG NOIR out now in ebook or paperback!

Drag Noir: Chloë Yates

The lovely Paulina Succotash

Kiki and Me
Chloë Yates
One night in the dim and distant long ago, I was working the graveyard shift at that notorious punk drag dive, Axolotl Snot, on the grimy lower east bank of The City. The night outside was cold and inside the clientele wasn’t much warmer. One moment I was wiping down the ever-sticky bar for the hundredth time, the next I was slack jawed with awe as the infamous drag queen Kiki Le Shade sashayed into my world. She was a dame and she had balls. One look into those hypnotically glacial peepers and I was spellbound. She bent me to her will and I thanked her for every displaced vertebrae… At least that’s how I wish it had gone, but I’ve never worked in a bar and I’ve only ever admired drag queens from afar. I have, however, been in love with them since I was a kid.

 

Ideas of gender have always fascinated and appalled me. The way we step into the construct of gender identity at birth and then stick to it as though it’s all perfectly natural and right when it’s clearly absolute bollocks has plagued me my entire life. Arbitrary rules of behaviour and “deportment” (ugh) that depend upon whether or not you have a tallywackle or a witch’s cackle have never made the least bit of sense to me. I never understood why I was supposed to do this or that because I was a “girl” or why my friend couldn’t wear this or act like that because he was a “boy”. I just wanted to do the things I wanted to do because I wanted to do them. I believe that’s how everybody feels, deep down at least, but all too often life teaches us that stepping out from the baaing masses is fraught with castigation and derision – those wicked sharp whip licks of social control. Well, fuck, as they say, that shit.

 

The long and the short of it is I’m a fan of chutzpah, if you’ll allow me the indulgence. Bold, in-your-face, no apologies types are my number one poison, my idols and my role models, and who’s better at in-your-face than drag queens? Undoubtedly I have a romanticised view of them, but it certainly seems to me that drag queens make no apologies. More often than not it is their opportunity to act out, play up and throw their besequinned shit in the face of folks with wild abandon – and they seize it. Drag has never seemed like a mask to me. It is, rather, a medium for liberation. An excuse to be fearlessly bold, a ticket to kick the world in the tits while sticking your tongue out and wiggling your glitter-encrusted arse at it. That beautiful bright light of subversion being thrown so boldly in the face of a generally conservative world that pouts and frowns at “otherness” like we don’t all have secrets, fears, desires and frustrations that torment and thrill us, tickles me in all the best places.

 

Needless to say, I really wanted to write a story for Drag Noir but, after whacking my brain into inanimate object after inanimate object, I was stumped. Not because I couldn’t think of a million and one scenarios, but because I couldn’t think of the right one (some might argue I didn’t do that anyway but they can kiss my big fat bellend). Then I came across the song ‘Let’s Have a Kiki’ by Scissor Sisters. I can’t remember if it was on the telly or if someone posted it on Facebook, but it stuck in my head like only the most vicious of earworms are wont to do. It did the job though, one of those mental switch thingummies. I listened to that fucking song about eight million times while sitting in front of my screen and not once did my fingers stop typing. Kiki was pretty much born in one go, but she felt like she’d always been with me. First came the image of the faded drag queen, a shadow of her former self that long ago night at the Axolotl, sitting in a parking lot on one of those awful white plastic chairs, inches long ash clinging to a still blazing cigarette, lipstick smudged, wig askew. And I wondered what she was waiting for, because she was definitely waiting for something. Turns out, it wasn’t what I expected… which is just how I like it.


Click to buy!

Drag Noir: Paul D. Brazill

Paul DeLiberace Brazill relaxing at home (thanks to S. L. Johnson for the photo)
Paul DeLiberace Brazill relaxing at home (thanks to S. L. Johnson for the photo)

How I Wrote A Bit Of A Pickle for Drag Noir

Paul D. Brazill
It goes like this: A rainy  night in Soho, thrown out of The French House and off to Ronnie Scott’s til dawn. Then a gypsy cab driven by an Islamic fundamentalist over to the East End and a dodgy pub near a meat market.  Go for a slash on in an alleyway near Crucifix Lane and get lost just off Druid Street. Follow a group of old women into a pockmarked terraced house and realise that they’re having a séance. A tall Polish woman with a turban gives me a message from beyond. And that message becomes A Bit Of A Pickle.

Pick up Drag Noir today by clicking on the picture below and get your glad rags on.

Cover by S. L. Johnson
Cover by S. L. Johnson

Drag Noir: Redfern Jon Barrett

RedfernJonBarrettDisability as Drag
Redfern Jon Barrett

Regardless of the social progress made in recent years, our world is still not yet kind to the subversive: women who love women remain the target of stares and lewd comments; men who love men have blood which is considered unclean by the majority of the planet’s health authorities (because ‘AIDS was invented by homos’); whilst men who dress as women are still victim to physical and verbal abuse. Public acceptance may be on the increase, but as every queer person and drag queen knows, we have a long way to go.

Meanwhile, a different yet parallel rights movement is fighting for its own social and legal equality: rights for the disabled. Those with cerebral palsy are still the target of stares and verbal abuse; those with mobility needs are still denied access to the majority of the planet’s public transportation (back of the bus? You’re not even getting on!); whilst closed-circuit hearing loops are still absent from most public spaces. Progress has been made, but as every blind or autistic person knows, we have a long way to go.

Of course there are more similarities between disability and gender nonconformity than my structuring two similar paragraphs on each. Firstly, each has the ability to make the public uncomfortable, as each causes us to question our own identities: whether the shaky and often-transitional nature of our perceived gender, or our immortal able-bodiedness. Each presents us with  a deviation from the norm which a great number of people still feel uncomfortable with, and which presents this difficult truth: that the privilege one receives for cis-heterosexuality or able-bodiedness is a result of random chaotic chance.

The second similarity is that both gender nonconformity and disability have been heavily medicalised by both public discourse and institutions. The very term ‘homosexuality’ was coined in an attempt to diagnose a mental condition; trans people are subject to intense physical and mental scrutiny by medical professionals who pass ultimate judgement on their personal identities; the disabled are also still viewed through this same medical lens. Are deaf people merely a medical condition, or a culture with its own language and social groupings? The nonconformists share a history of dehumanising medical discourse. Both groupings have been the target of eugenics programs. It is this similarity which prompted me to write my sci-fi short story ‘Straight Baby’.

It is this shared discourse lies at the heart of the story. In a world in which parents have (or believe they have) genetically engineered every aspect of their children, the disabled and the queer face the same threat of marginalisation and persecution. This shared struggle is embodied in Thomas, a disabled homosexual who faces intense persecution because of the random chaotic chance of his birth – a deviance which can never be truly eradicated, regardless of technological advancement.

Yet the story also examines the interplay between his identities as a gay, disabled man. Whilst other gay men are beaten and arrested when caught with other men, Thomas’ physical disability has, thus far, allowed him to escape the clutches of the heterosexist legal system. In this future, as in our own time, the disabled are frequently viewed as asexual. Thomas’ physical state covers his deviance as a homosexual: his disability is his drag.

Yet Thomas’ drag is not merely external. He manages his position in society via an internal drag, mentally conceiving of himself as a female femme-fatale – a perspective which allows him to navigate his affairs with married men. In short, Thomas is a sexual being in the ‘asexual’ drag of disability, perceiving himself in female terms. Each ‘deviance’ contradicts and reinforces the other. He is a threat masquerading as harmless.

At its root, the story is based in the fact that every struggle is a shared struggle. Gay men and wheelchair users, lesbians and the blind, drag queens and the autistic have all been marginalised by social and medical discourse. Without solidarity and recognition of our shared fight, we risk a future in which society once again uses technology in an attempt to eradicate the nonconformists – a future in which no drag can save us.

DRAG NOIR is out tomorrow!

 

Drag Noir: Becky Thacker

Becky Thacker
Portrait of the author in her younger days

How I Came to Write ‘Geezer Dyke’

Becky Thacker

A port stop during a cruise disembarked us in Mexico, facing a row of tour vans and buses.  Most of these were staffed by sign-wielding native folks with weary, worldly-wise faces; obviously they did this job for the living it provided and not because they found it fun. One of the tour guides was a lesbian, white-skinned, aging none too gracefully, and it was evident from her accent that she’d begun life as a North American Midwesterner. She looked and clearly felt, however, more akin to her brown-skinned career associates than to the flocks of North American tourists who surrounded her. We wondered what, or who, had led her to this path.   And of course, romantics that we are, we wondered whom she went home to when her day of tourist-wrangling was over.

DRAG NOIR: Out this Halloween!

Cover by S. L. Johnson
Cover by S. L. Johnson

 

Drag Noir Cover Artist: S. L. Johnson

Cover by S. L. Johnson
Cover by S. L. Johnson

Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets — faboo artist S. L. Johnson tells us how she came up with her latest eye-catching design for the cover of Drag Noir:

When I was asked to create a cover for the “Drag Noir” antho, it was quite a challenge. “Drag” is a full-on gender-bending costumed performance role, meant to be seen and heard, while “noir” is dark and nefarious, and hidden. Resolving these two ideas in visual form led to a lot of dead-end ideas, and my desire to represent both male & female gender conventions in drag further muddied the creative waters. After several false starts, I decided I would take one face and split it down the middle, with the idea of that the face could be seen as the woman or the man in drag. I felt this was the obvious solution, but in such a graphic, flat form, it would work well. It’s shadowy, a la noir, but with bright red half-lips, and a green face that represents the very made-up faces of drag queens, yet could also be corpse-like in the pulpiest way.

It works, for sure!

Be sure to check out Johnson’s other work which runs the gamut from book and CD covers to posters and more! Including her other noir covers for us.

 

A diverse issue

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!

cake

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.

Islam in SF

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

 

Writing is not a Zero Sum Game

AMZfinalWeird NoirI saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the virtual streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of publishing, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating ebooks, who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated by flickering gifs…

All because they could not get a grip on a simple concept:

Writing is not a zero sum game.

JK Rowling’s popularity is not dooming you to obscurity. Nora Roberts does not bathe in the tears of would-be writers. Stephen King does not laugh at you from atop huge piles of money (probably).

But writing for exposure exposes your willingness to write for exposure. Every time you share a HuffPo link, you say, ‘I’m okay with not paying writers for their work’. The choices you make build the world around you. A world that is willing to settle for ‘good enough’ if it’s free. There are a lot of people who write ‘good enough’ and are desperate enough to see their name in print that they will accept not being paid to do so.

There is a revolution happening via ebooks, but ‘the revolution will put you in the driver’s seat’ and you have to take the wheel. It won’t just happen of its own accord. People have to be lured into change. Seduce them.

Writing is not a zero sum game.

It’s a community–that’s why we have the skulk here at Fox Spirit. Do you read as well as write? Do you write reviews? Do you rate the books you read? Do you leave the kind of reviews for books that you long to see for your own? Do you comment or share other people’s books? Do you promote other writers the way you wish people would promote you? Do you share the writers you love?

They’re not your competition.

Apathy is.

The ease of letting hours slip away on Facebook or Twitter is. The quick clicks that take you to Netflix or on-demand television or movies is. All the mindless media that allows you to be barely conscious, to idle the days away without effort — that’s your competition. Reading is more work — yet a joy for those who hunger for it. A great book makes you hungry for another, and another, and another.

Make them hungry.

Write the books you want to read, the books that aren’t out there. Don’t get caught up in how your stories get to readers, just try to get them in front of them and lure them into reading them. Don’t spend your time sneering at the kind of books someone reads. The people you might score points with probably aren’t the ones who’ll be reading your books. Share the stories that hooked you, inspired you and made you want to write. Try to convey that excitement. A hook might get you to buy a book, but it’s the story that keeps you reading even if the writing isn’t all that good.

We’re still sitting around the campfire, waiting for the magic to happen — for characters to come to life, for imaginary adventures to seem more real than the fire (or monitor or phone screen) in front of us, to fall through the hole in the page and into wonderland.

Make some magic. Write.

[with apologies to Allen Ginsberg and Gil Scott Heron]

Author Post : Chloe Yates

I’m a bit of a navel gazer. Always trying to work myself out like I’m a mystery when what I often turn out to be is a bit of a Gumby (‘my brain hurts’). In that spirit, I’m going to talk a bit about me. Me. Me. Me.

         I remember the moment very well. In the grand scheme of things it wasn’t much, but in the grand scheme of Me it was everything. I was sitting on a bench in St Ives with the mister, looking at the sea and sharing a bag of chips, when I decided to check my email. A sudden sharp inhale had a chip lodging in my windpipe like that ubiquitous bit of paper that buggers my hoover every Saturday. Mr Y patted me on the back – rather harder than he should have, I’d say – the chip popped out and I let out a little wail. One of those mewling sounds that confuses anyone who hears it – is she still choking? Is she laughing? Crying? Is she a nutjob? What is that man doing?

            I’d won. I’d won a competition.

It was a small competition – no, literally, I had to write a story on the back of a postcard – but it was huge in my mind. Someone liked what I’d written. What’s more, it was someone whose opinion I respected (I still do, despite her faith in me). I’ve been scribbling since I was about six years old. I’ve sent off several things over the years and every time have received positive encouragement but never been accepted or been persistent (you’ll see why). Suddenly, there I was, late 30s, having someone really tipping their hat at my work. All ten sentences or whatever it was.  You can read it here: http://katewombat.blogspot.ch/2012/05/writer-wednesday-post-card-fiction.html  (all hail the Prof)

I’ll never forget that feeling. It might seem daft, dafter to writers who’ve been in the trenches for years, but I’d spent so long entirely (ENTIRELY) doubting myself, scribbling my stories and poems then stifling them before they ever got to see the light of day, that this was like touch paper to my barely-there self-belief. Not only had I taken myself seriously, I had been taken seriously. That shit is better than gold (particularly as I’m not at all fond of jewellery). It carried me along on a little wave of positivity and paid off again later in the year (affirmation is like crack, but less harsh on the teeth). Boosted by my mighty victory, I rubbed my brass monkeys again and submitted a story for Fox Spirit’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day competition. I was one of the winner’s. I was knocked out (not literally) and the same wail thing happened again (I’ve got a feeling that’s sticking around, alas).

Now, with a couple more accepted stories under my belt, I’m teetering on the edge of taking this business and myself seriously. I’m not talking about being all ‘yes, well I am a Writer, and I shall henceforth wear only lederhosen while I work and eat only brandy snaps on a Monday, and under no circumstances am I to be interrupted when the Muse doth descend’. What I’m talking about is battling that little voice in your head that whispers, ‘they don’t really like you, you’re a fraud. You should know better than to put yourself out there, who are you anyway? I’ve never heard of you, I wouldn’t want to …’ and so on ad infinitum. (At this point, you either know what I’m talking about or you think I’m a few rubberbands short of a flicking contest. I understand.)

I’m certainly told to take myself seriously – you can’t get away with being a ballbag while the Captain (our feral leader) is on your tail – but whenever I read a story back I hate it. Who wants to read that rubbish? It doesn’t make any sense! It’s yours! What is wrong with these people? I feel like a giant nob when anyone asks me what I do. I hear myself say, ‘I’m a writer’, and then I hear a million voices in my head cackling at my audacity … but then it is audacious. And why the fuck not, because you know what? I can write. Whole sentences can turn into whole paragraphs can turn into short stories on good days. I don’t expect everyone to like what I produce, of course I don’t, but people have told me they’ve enjoyed my work and I need to put better store in that. Have I just taken a step towards taking myself seriously? Knowing deep down that I can do it and accepting that other people genuinely believe in me? Maybe admitting it to the world means I have to take myself seriously. To do otherwise might make me into a bigger gump than you already think I am.

Well, why not then? There are always going to be people who say ‘you’re not a writer until XYZ’ (and I understand anyone who says, “a couple of short stories, love, calm down”), but who cares about the naysayers while there are others who say ‘Yay! Write another one’ and while I think ‘I have another one to write’? More of that affirmation crack –internal and external please, Matron. That little voice will always be there, I suspect; it’s part of the fuel I need to keep pushing myself on (I spite thee!), but it’s time to dial that motherlicker down.

Cut the horseshit.

Let’s roll.

Seriously, I’ve got stories to tell.