Getting ready to go to Nottingham for Fantasycon last Thursday, I told myself resolutely that this was going to be a weekend about the art, craft and business of writing. If only for a few days, I was going to be an author again, not an EU digital VAT campaigner. Not just for my own sake and sanity – though that was a large part of it – but because the convention deserved my full focus. I was going to be Mistress of Ceremonies and that’s not a gig I’ve ever done before so I was intent on not making a hash of it.

Making that conscious decision soon paid dividends. On the drive up, I found I didn’t want to listen to the radio or any music. Solitude and lack of distractions meant I could think through various ideas I’ve been mulling over for my forthcoming story in ZNB’s Alien Artefacts anthology. Being away from email, social media and those stacks of paper on my desk about EU digital VAT really helped. By the time I reached the hotel, any number of things were slotting into place. Excellent. Better yet, on the writing front, I woke up on Saturday morning and about two minutes later, suddenly realised what I need to do to rewrite the opening chapters of the As Yet Unsold Novel which I had out on submission to a few agents earlier this year but which only gathered ‘interesting, thanks, but just at the moment, no thanks’ responses. Which means it needs more work but I’ve been struggling to find the time to even think what that might be, uninterrupted, in recent months.

That said, it seemed an awful lot of people at the convention wanted to talk to me about VAT once I got there. That was fine, though. Actually, it was a lot more than merely fine. I got involved in this campaign because I could see just how many people I know personally and professionally, working in independent and small press publishing, were going to be hit really hard by such badly framed legislation. So having them take a moment to say how grateful they are for all the EU VAT Action Campaign is doing was welcome validation for all that time and effort.

My first MC duty was hosting the convention’s opening ceremony where I covered the practicalities briskly and focused on introducing the Guests of Honour. This was always going to be a pleasure. I’ve admired and liked Jo Fletcher since first going to conventions a decade and a half ago – and she publishes excellent books. I met John Connolly some years ago in Dublin and found him as rewarding to talk to as his books are to read. While I’ve never met Brandon Sanderson before, I find his work very enjoyable and mutual friends have always spoken very highly of him. The four of us talked a little about what brings us to conventions, and keeps us coming back. It was immediately apparent that the weekend was going to be about sharing our enthusiasms with established pals and with the new friends we’d be making.

The programme was packed with good things as well as new faces and voices. Alongside the full schedule of readings and book launches, the Fantasycon 2015 organisers’ efforts to broaden participation meant 170 of the 500 pre-registered con members were on panels. Bringing new perspectives and different experiences to even the most familiar topics does make such a positive contribution. My own panels were extremely rewarding; on the uses writers make of history in fantasy (and pitfalls to beware of); on writing fight scenes, and on the uses writers make of religion in genre writing, which has a different array of pitfalls. These were all wide-ranging and constructive discussions, with keenly engaged audiences. As seemed to be the case through the entire programme for the whole weekend, judging by the chats I had with other writers at various times in various bars.

As MC I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Brandon Sanderson, who really is a thoroughly nice guy as well as a consummate professional. It’s great to get a chance to ask the particular questions that have intrigued you about an author’s work and career. Like why has he written about Evil Librarians when most writers see them as heroes? What sequence of events led to him taking on the challenge of completing Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time? How does he manage to write so many different things?

There was one question I didn’t have to ask. We talked about Barbara Hambly’s Dragonsbane – the book which got him back into reading as a teenage boy after so many stories had disappointed him. I remember the impact it had on me but I’m ten years old than Brandon and have been reading fantasy for as long as I can remember. What was the book’s appeal to someone without that grounding in the genre to see how Hambly was challenging conventions? It turns out a large part of that was Jenny Waynest’s struggle to choose between family and wizardry, since young Brandon could see the choices and challenges women face over pursuing careers in action in his own family. Enthralled, he headed straight for the library’s card catalogue to see what titles came after Dragonsbane. Turns out those were Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey and Dragon Prince by Melanie Rawn. So that made the ‘what’s the origin of strong female characters in your work?’ question wholly redundant!

In between times, as MC, I got to play with the venue’s tannoy system, to announce the Guest of Honour programme items. Oh…. the temptation. I mean, it’s just cruel giving a writer that sort of job. Granted, I don’t have the baritone for ‘This is the voice of the Mysterons’ but how about ‘Warning. You have ten minutes to reach minimum safe distance.’ in calm and cultured tones? The possibilities are endless – but I resisted as that wouldn’t have been professional. In any case, there was more than enough hilarity to go round. Particular highlights on Saturday night included a live edition of Tea and Jeopardy with Brandon Sanderson as the guest. If this writing thing doesn’t work out for him, I’d say he’s got a good chance at a career in sitcoms. Then Gillian Redfearn chaired a game of Just a Minute with contestants John Connolly, Jo Fletcher, Juliet Mushens and Gareth Powell. Hilarity doesn’t begin to describe it. If you ever see a group at a convention hysterical with laughter over the word ‘boudoir’ you’ll know that they were there.

Sunday was back to serious stuff, for me at least. The MC’s role included presenting the British Fantasy Society Awards and this year, I was to do pretty much the whole thing, rather than having guest presenters for each award. So I had some thinking to do. It’s been a year of controversy over the Hugos which has spilled into conversation about genre awards in general. I didn’t feel I could ignore that – but at the same time, this ceremony wasn’t about that. So here are my opening remarks.

“There are a great many science fiction, horror and fantasy awards. Different countries, different conventions, different communities use them to celebrate their particular interests and enthusiasms and as a rule, those of us looking on take the opportunity to make note of books or writers or artists working in whatever media which we might not have come across before. This all contributes to the wealth of shared knowledge that makes speculative fiction such an endlessly inventive genre.

Which is why this year has felt so exceptional, and not in a good way, to so many of us. We’ve been unwilling onlookers as those who for whatever reason have felt excluded from one particular convention’s awards decided that the way forward isn’t dialogue but attempts to direct and to dominate the conversation across our genre.

What has that got to do with today? Well, as far as I’m concerned, it makes it all the more important and all the more pleasing, to celebrate the British Fantasy Society’s ongoing determination, with all the hard work that entails, to broaden participation at all stages in these awards in recent years, to welcome newcomers to nominating and to voting, to encourage everyone to have their say and to feel included. And let’s take a moment to honour the memory of Graham Joyce who was absolutely bloody determined that was going to happen.

Which is why it’s a genuine pleasure and an honour for me to present these awards today, on behalf of the British Fantasy Society and the ever growing Fantasycon community.”

I’m pleased to say nods and applause around the room endorsed this view. So on I went with the Awards. You can find the full list of winners here and it was lovely to see the recipients’ mingled astonishment and delight, as well as hearing the cheers and whoops from their families and friends. As well as the applause and heartfelt congratulations from everyone else with no personal stake in this year’s nominees but simply there to celebrate and reward their peers and colleagues.

Okay, I’m clearly a bit slow on the uptake. I genuinely had no thought of being honoured with an Award myself. Yes, alright, I knew Ramsey Campbell would be presenting the Karl Edward Wagner Award but I didn’t think anything of that. Ramsey’s the BFS past-president and it’s the Committee’s special award so I assumed it would be going to someone Ramsey’s worked with or has some other significant connection with. Then he started reading the citation and I realised he was talking about me. As well as editorialising and embellishing the words he’d been given as only Ramsey could, so if he writes something spine chilling about a monstrous creature rising from a vat of eldritch mess, you’ll know where he got the idea. And everyone cheered and clapped and well, if I don’t say so, Jo Fletcher will repeat her editorial note from Facebook saying I should mention the standing ovation…

I didn’t know what to say. I was utterly astonished. To the extent which my elder son describes as ‘I cannot brain!’ I suppose that’s because over this past year, my writing and my VAT campaigning have been so entirely separate in my own mind. Yes, I’m doing this because of the legislation’s disastrous impact on the book trade but I’m working alongside people striving just as hard because their own industries and interests are equally if not even more badly hit. And to get things done about it requires complete focus on the matter in hand. So as I say, the two things have been wholly separate for me. While the BFS Awards are for writing and allied trades in artwork and editing, surely? Well, evidently the Committee knows better and chose to honour me for both my writing career and for this past year’s work on the EU digital VAT issue, on behalf of all those affected.

You may rest assured that I am deeply and sincerely honoured. And if I’d been able to brain on the day, I would have said something rather more coherent along these lines.

So that was my Fantasycon 2015. Memorable in so many ways!

Rochita Loenen Ruiz is a brave, generous and talented author and all round lovely person. She has suddenly, tragically lost her beloved husband, the father of her two young children, to an ultimately fatal heart attack.

We cannot comprehend her bereavement. But we can understand the practical challenges she and her family will face in the next little while. That at least is something we can help with.

A fundraising campaign has been set up by her closest friends via GoFundMe

As you will see on clicking through, an array of writers and publishers are offering rewards by way of thanks to those offering their support. The number of us doing this (as well as putting our hands in our own pockets) is testament to the very high regard Rochita is held in, within our community.

For my part, if you can offer some donation, however modest, you’ll be in with a chance of winning an ebook bundle of all five Tales on Einarinn, or a hardcopy set of the Chronicle of the Lescari Revolution trade paperbacks. I’ll cover the cost of posting those, not the fundraising campaign, to wherever in the world.

I’m still catching up from last weekend’s UK Fantasycon – which was always going to be memorable as I was the Mistress of Ceremonies this year, which duties included hosting The British Fantasy Society’s Awards. What I hadn’t remotely anticipated was being honoured with an Award myself. So more on that later…

Meantime, to mark the ebook edition of Southern Fire, I’ve shared some thoughts on Mythmaking where there are no Myths for Laura Anne Gilman’s blog, exploring the reasons for and the consequences of my decision to make the Aldabreshi a people whose spiritual beliefs do not include any gods.

‘How do writers write?’ is as common a question as ‘why do they write what they do?’. Tony Ballantyne has been asking a range of writers to share insights into their process for a while now It’s a fascinating series of articles and you can find my contribution here. As well as glimpses of the new Aldabreshin Archipelago map in progress.

And do make sure to check out both Laura Anne’s and Tony’s own books while you’re there. These are two very fine writers in my opinion.

Southern Fire.
Artwork by Ben Baldwin

(You can find full info on Southern Fire’s availability here from Wizard’s Tower Press)

Hurrah! With huge, huge thanks to Cheryl Morgan, Wizard’s Tower Press and indefatigable fan Michele, the ebook edition of Southern Fire is now available.

As of today, it’s listed for sale on Google and Kobo and instructions are currently wending their way through whatever arcane processes are required before the book appears on Kindle and Nook – that should take a day or so. You can check current availability via Wizard’s Tower here.

With the fabulous new artwork by Ben Baldwin. (Click to see the full size version)

Southern Fire.
Artwork by Ben Baldwin

And yes, work is ongoing to get Northern Storm to you next month, followed by Western Shore and Eastern Tide. And trust me, you’re going to love the new covers for those too!

I’ll be at the UK Fantasycon in Nottingham from Friday afternoon and through to Sunday’s banquet and BFS Awards ceremony.

And I’ll be busy – it’s a packed programme. Those of you there will be spoiled for choice, given the range of panels, kaffeeklatsches and readings.

My personal timetable is:

Friday 23rd October

3.00pm Opening Ceremony
It’ll be my pleasure at Mistress of Ceremonies to welcome everyone to the convention, to introduce the Guests of Honour John Connolly, Jo Fletcher and Brandon Sanderson – and to see what indiscreet notable convention memories they might care to share.

5.00pm Stealing from the Past: Fantasy in History
I’m very much looking forward to discussing how fantasy writers use – and misuse – real world history, with Susan Bartholomew, Jacey Bedford, Susan Boulton, Anne Lyle and Toby Venables.

Saturday 24th October

10.00am Blades, Wands & Lasers: Fighting the Good Fight-Scene
We’ll be looking at the realities of fight scenes, from one-on-one to full-scale battles, and the writerly challenges of conveying all this to readers in a meaningful way. That’s me, James Barclay, Clifford Beal, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Jo Thomas and Danie Ware.

2.00pm Guest of Honour interview: Brandon Sanderson in Conversation.
I have the very welcome opportunity to chat to epic fantasy author Brandon Sanderson about his writing, career, inspirations & influences. Don’t worry, I will make sure there’s time for audience questions as well!

Sunday 25th October

10.00am By the Gods! Religion & Beliefs in Fantasy
I’ll be moderating this discussion on how and why to include plausible belief systems in genre writing – and the pitfalls for the unwary writer. I’m very much looking forward to hearing the opinions of John Connolly, Adam Dalton, Iain Grant, Jasper Kent and Susan Murray.

2.30pm The British Fantasy Awards Ceremony
After the banquet at Sunday lunchtime, I’ll be hosting this event, and we can all find out who’s won what, among this year’s nominees. Remember, you don’t have to attend the banquet; you can join the audience as the coffee cups are cleared away to be part of the ceremony.

Apart from these commitments, I’ll be around and about, so feel free to come and say hello and have a chat.

If you have any free time. It really is a programme with plenty for everyone, wherever your particular interests are within the fantastic scope of speculative fiction.

Here’s an important new route to making your voice heard on the VATMOSS system and related problems stemming from the new regulations.

Most crucially if you are a non-UK business, your answers will help prove that this isn’t just a UK issue. Which it really isn’t. There’s no wonderful solution available to Hungarian or Danish businesses, after all – or anyone anywhere else. We’re all facing the same difficulties.

Please find 15 minutes for this – and please spread the word through your personal and professional networks. The more responses they get, the more likely we are to see meaningful change on a worthwhile timescale.

“As part of the study on e-Commerce in Europe, Deloitte was invited by the European Commission to assess the effectiveness and impact of the 2015 place of supply changes and the MOSS system. The survey forms a part of this evaluation exercise and focuses on microbusinesses and on the impact of the implementation and application of the 2015 place of supply rules and MOSS system.

The information on administrative burden impact on microbusinesses provides a valuable angle to our overall analysis. Therefore we would appreciate your responses to the questions below. The results of the survey will be included in our overall analysis and presented in the report, which will be published early next year.

Participation in the survey should not take more than 15 minutes. Please provide us with your feedback by Monday 26 October.”

Click here to complete the survey

Sue Lloyd Roberts has died this week. For those of you who didn’t know her or her reporting, she was a pioneering journalist who secretly filmed and thus exposed human rights and other abuses in some of the world’s most brutal and dangerous regimes. There’s an excellent feature here on the BBC website, written by Lyse Doucet, one of the many women who’ve followed her into such vital work. Do check out the selected reports linked at the bottom of the piece.

Sue was also a Hildabeest; which is to say, she was a graduate of St Hilda’s College, Oxford. Through my work with the Alumnae Media Network, I had the pleasure and privilege of meeting her several times and hearing her astute and amusing insights as she contributed to Network events discussing careers in the media, including particular issues for women. While she was very clear on current gender challenges, she was able to point out that things have improved. As a new trainee for ITN, with all the analytical skills honed by her Oxford degree, ready to make her mark contributing to the nightly news – her first job was standing ready beside the camera with the glass of whisky demanded by newscaster Reginald Bosanquet as soon as the end credits rolled. Just that. Nothing more. A suitable job for a woman.

So how did she end up filming ground breaking reports from inside Burma, North Korea and Syria while her male colleagues ground their teeth in frustration at closed borders? By quietly and calmly keeping her nerve as she posed as an unremarkable, unthreatening woman in a variety of occupations. A quiet girl who could readily be dismissed by those in power. More fool them. By being one of the first journalists to see the potential of small, tourist-friendly video cameras – disdained by those of her colleagues enamoured with the latest in hi-tech toys. More fool them. As she got older, she calculatedly and gleefully took advantage of the social invisibility that descends on middle aged women.

We need such women in fiction as well as in fact – and in books for all ages – as evident in comments in various places on my contribution to Alyx Dellamonica’s exploration of heroines last week. In particular, I was reminded of the number of strong-minded, capable and effective women I know who identified first and foremost with the quiet girls in their early reading; Lucy and Susan in Narnia, Beth in Little Women, Anne in the Famous Five, Peggy Blackett and Susan Walker in the Swallows and Amazons. Quiet girls who nevertheless always make a contribution, even if it’s largely doing the cooking, and they are certainly essential to the group dynamic.

The tomboys in these stories who so enthralled me as a child held no such interest for my friends. Would they have stopped reading these books without having someone else to identify with? Would that have hampered the development of their love of reading that’s carried them through to academic and other careers where they’ve made significant contributions to other people’s lives and wider society? Only they can say – but time and again, when diversity in fiction is discussed, the importance of representation in fiction for everyone comes up time and again. So let’s not dismiss the value of these quiet girls.

Thinking about my own writing, a good few of these same pals – and other fans – have told me how the quiet girls in my own novels are some of their favourite characters. Allin, in the Tales of Einarinn; Risala in The Aldabreshin Compass, Branca and Failla in The Lescari Revolution and Zurenne in the Hadrumal Crisis. Do I pride myself on my cleverness in creating them? Hardly. I needed other people to point out such characters’ potential before I could start to consciously work with quiet girls, to explore different aspect of my own preconceptions as much as readers’ assumptions.

Allin started out as no more than a writerly convenience in The Thief’s Gamble, even if she is a magewoman. The pompous wizard Casuel needed someone to talk to, in order to inform the reader of various bits of background and plot development. As my editor at the time pointed out with a grin, an author can only get away with a man musing as he shaves, gazing into a mirror, once in a career. Given Casuel’s so warped by personal insecurity, Allin needed to be meek enough for him to feel superior enough to loftily explain key aspects of life and magic to her. Or as we’d put it nowadays, mansplain.

The thing is though, Allin turned out to be so much more useful to me as the author by the time I was writing The Assassin’s Edge. Because a quiet girl who isn’t out there taking action and provoking reaction is still listening, watching and thinking while she’s doing the darning. When people dismiss her, they don’t care what they say around her. Which means she can end up being the one who has all the pieces of a particular puzzle. Knowledge can be power that’s just as decisive as force of arms. Risala knows that full well, as she travels the Archipelago, doing her very best to stay unremarkable and unnoticed. No one could call Charoleia unremarkable but the foundation of her wealth and influence is everything she learns from the likes of ladies’ maids and scullery girls going about their work unnoticed.

Does this realisation come naturally to the quiet girls, even if I was slow on the uptake as a writer? No, it doesn’t. It takes Zurenne three volumes of The Hadrumal Crisis to throw off a lifetime’s expectation that she would be dutiful and biddable and yield to male authority. The current focus on everyday sexism in everything from pay gaps in Hollywood to media obsessing over a female politician’s shoes instead of discussing her policies shows us the challenge of entrenched attitudes facing today’s young women. Which brings us back to the need for role models in fiction who show the quiet girls there are other routes and strategies which will work for them, even though they lack the tomboy’s inclination for toe-to-toe confrontation. As well as role models in real life.

Let’s celebrate Sue Lloyd Roberts’ life and work as we mourn her loss, and let’s make very sure we honour her legacy. Let’s hear it for the quiet girls.

Regular readers will be well aware of my ongoing interest in female protagonists – as hero or villain (here and here, so when Alyx Dellamonica invited me to contribute to the ongoing discussion of heroines, over on her blog, I jumped at the chance to consider key female figures in my early reading.

I found myself searching out C.S.Lewis’s books on the old favourites’ shelf – which was not at all what I expected, since as and when the question of Lewis’s treatment of women comes up these days, I’ll generally shake my head with mingled regret and exasperation over The Susan Issue.

You’ll have to read the piece to learn which book I ended up re-reading

I also strongly recommend you read the other interviews in this series – not least because I’m by no means the only writer to look back at Narnia. scroll down after mine and you’ll find them all.

(And while you’re there, get to know Alyx and her work, if you’re not already acquainted!)

Since I’m going to be madly busy this next week with VATstuff, I’m extremely grateful to Laura Anne Gilman for offering to entertain and intrigue you all with these insights into her new book, Silver on the Road which is already attracting enthusiastic reviews.

So, without further ado, over to Laura Anne!

After the Writing, the Classification (and the Understanding)

A few years ago, I might have been the last person you expected to write a Western. The genre wasn’t one I particularly favored, despite having personal experience with horses, guns, and sleeping outdoors. Or perhaps because of all that, who knows? But Westerns as a genre didn’t draw me in. And Weird West? I’d read it, liked it, but most of the tropes left me cold.

But…. There’s a reason we never say “never.”

In 2011, I wrote a story called “Crossroads,” followed the next year by “The Devil’s Jack.” They were strange little stories, in a vaguely historical, vaguely high prairie setting. But I quickly realized that the next story – originally called “A Town Named Flood,” wanted to expand into a novel – a novel set in a mostly-recognizable west-of-the-Mississippi North America, circa 1801.

“I’m writing a Western?” I asked my agent, somewhat bemused.

“Nope. You’re writing an American fantasy,” he responded. “Like American Gods, only … not.”

I backed away quickly from the comparison to American Gods, because, well, who the hell needs that kind of pressure? But his comment made me think. SILVER ON THE ROAD is set in the American west, yes. And there are horses, and guns, and conflict between native residents and immigrants, and all the tropes that we recognize as “Western.”

And magic, so that by default tips it into the “Weird West” category.

So… I was writing a Western?

Yes … and no. For most of us, the “Old West” calls up images of cowboys and sixguns, of stagecoaches and saloon girls, gold prospectors and cattle ranchers. But those images come from 1820 and later. In 1801… well, I’ll spare you the historical neepery, but the territory west of the Mississippi didn’t look anything like that.

But the Western story isn’t only that. It’s the story of our histories, our cultures, and our myths… and I use the plural of those words intentionally. Because America’s history isn’t simply the United States – it’s Canada and Mexico as well, started long before the first European immigrants landed on the eastern (or southern) shores, and our shared identity is not simple one, the pot only half melted together, and half clumped together stubbornly, parts overbaked and the others still painfully raw.

SILVER ON THE ROAD is a fantasy of that North America. Not the quest of empires, or the clash of armies, but the movement of people, and the ever-shifting thing we call a frontier, where one person’s home becomes another person’s hope – and conflict. About dividers and demarcations – and the human urge, and need, to cross over them.

And a Western – and yes, Weird West, invoking and involving the tropes of the restless frontier, and twisting it – was, for me, the only way to tell this particular story.

So it looks like my agent and I were both right.

This week sees some important data on who wins SFF awards and by writing about what, from Lady Business. Their survey was prompted by Nicola Griffith’s earlier work looking at the gender balance in mainstream literary award winners.

The central finding in both cases in that books by men about men win awards far more often than anything else.

I wish I could say this came as a shock, but as regular readers of my Equality in SFF post will appreciate, I wasn’t in the least surprised.

Instead my first thought was to recall Viola Davis’ speech at this year’s Emmys, where she was the first African-American woman to win best actress in a drama. She nailed the central problem for women of colour (and other under-represented groups) in film and TV: “You can’t win Emmys for roles that don’t exist.”

You can’t win awards with books that just aren’t there. So where are the books by women and black, Asian and other ethnic/minority writers? Cheryl Morgan recently attended a discussion at the Bath Children’s Literature Festival on diversity in children’s books and her report has some highly relevant observations, which make it well worth reading in full.

The panel included Bali Rai; an award winning writer from multi-cultural, multi-racial Leicester who is eminently qualified to speak with authority and experience on such matters. Experience which includes being taken to task by white, London-based editors over his characters’ language. That’s the language being used by children of Asian heritage in the Midlands…

More than that, he said that most of the non-white writers he knows are self-publishing rather than going through the traditional route because they assume that an overwhelmingly white industry won’t be interested in their books.

Is this racism or just the numbers game, when the bookshops protest they have to sell what sells? And the publishers protest that they have to publish what the bookshops will buy from them. But if what they’re publishing and selling only ever targets the white, middle-class majority, what possible incentive is there for black, Asian and other ethnic/minority writers and readers to ever engage with them?

Does it actually matter whether it’s active racism or an unintended consequence of a numbers-driven system when the end result is the same exclusion of black, Asian and other minority/ethnic participation?

Which brings us back to the vicious circle prompted by systemic inequalities in visibility which I (and others) have been highlighting for oh, so long now. They sell what sells which means what they sell sells so they go looking for more of the same.

How do we break this cycle? How and where could some sort of affirmative action be useful?

Because after five years of writing about this, I really don’t think anything’s going to change on its own.

Is a ‘Women’s SFF Prize’ an answer? I’ve pondered this before.

If anyone has new thoughts or observations, do speak up.