Juliet E. McKenna

(March 2016 – this post has been updated with new links to press articles on the discovery of some original Jacobean bed hangings in a Scottish castle – scroll to the bottom if you’re checking back)

As regular readers know, I like to embroider. I do canvas work and cross-stitch and thanks to an inspired idea by my sister, I’ve been learning Jacobean crewel work, courtesy of family and friends clubbing together to buy me birthday-gift-certificates for Royal School of Needlework courses at Hampton Court Palace. I’d like to show you what I was working on last weekend, not by way of an ego-trip* but to show you what nine hours of such stitchery looks like.

Yes, nine hours and as you will see, even this smallish design isn’t complete as yet. Granted, I’m still relatively new to this style of work. On the other hand, the tutor did remark I was making good progress.

Now let’s look at this. It’s a printed fabric but in very much the sort of design that crewel work was used for – embroidering with wool on linen twill – making curtains, wall-hangings, fire-screens and other decorative furnishings to brighten up – and insulate – homes in days of yore.

For scale, those humming birds are about the same size as the flower in that first picture. If they’re too small to make out, click on the picture for a larger view. So just imagine how many woman-hours of stitching would be involved in say, making a set of bed curtains, canopy and valances decorated like that. Even assuming a practised needlewoman could work say, twice as fast as me. Even if that flower represented five hours’ effort, the labour involved is considerable.

This is what wealth meant, in the days before Ferraris and Rolexes. A significant measure of wealth was the ability to buy other people’s time and endeavour. You can see this in other day-to-day things historically. Dark fabrics with rich colours required multiple dye processes, so they were more expensive. High-status food like jelly/jello took a lot of time-consuming preparation and skill, starting with boiling up calves’ feet for hours at a time. This premium on personal labour has some consequences we might not expect today. When clockwork roasting spits came in, they were convenient but they weren’t a must-have item for the wealthy. It was more of a mark of status that you could employ a servant to manually turn your spit and roast your meat with personal care and attention.

And let’s not forget that you need good light for doing work like this embroidery; either natural daylight, which means whoever’s doing it needs decent glass windows which are costly, or expensive beeswax candles.

I know I’ll be looking at embroidered textiles in National Trust stately homes and castles with a whole new level of insight now. I’ll also be thinking carefully before blithely decorating any fantasy homes with those richly embroidered wall hangings.

*As a general rule, I am averse posting ‘look at me, aren’t I cool?’ stuff. ‘Read my books, they are cool,’ is an entirely different matter.

March 2016 – I’m updating this post with links to articles on the fantastic discovery of a set of Jacobean bed hangings found tucked away in a linen store in Dunollie House, Oban, during the restoration of a derelict Scottish castle. Yes, really!

The story from The Scotsman and some fantastic pictures

From the Oban Times, with close up photos and information on restoration and display plans

You may – or may not – be aware of the damn silly title given to the ‘Women in Fantasy’ panel at the World Fantasy Convention, held at the start of this month in Brighton. The full brief read as follows

Once upon a time the heroic fantasy genre was—with a few notable exceptions such as C.L. Moore and Leigh Brackett—the sole domain of male writers like Robert E. Howard, John Jakes and Michael Moorcock. Those days are long gone, and it seems that more and more women writers are having their heroines suit up in chain-mail and wield a broadsword. Who are these new writers embracing a once male-dominated field, and how are their books any different from those of their literary predecessors?

Now, advance reactions to that varied. Most were variations on ‘Good grief, whoever wrote this really doesn’t read epic fantasy AT ALL, do they?’ Some, looking at other similarly potentially provocative descriptions in the programme, decided to give the benefit of the doubt and read these as tongue-in-cheeky, looking to provoke lively discussion. Others were to a greater or lesser extent offended by apparent lack of professional courtesy, and not just with regard to this particular panel. Some were sufficiently offended to boycott ‘Broads with Swords’, and indeed I’ve seen some express an opinion that authors should have refused to take part in this panel.

Well, I cannot speak for my fellow panellists but for myself, I agreed to do this panel expressly to give the lie to any notion that strong female characters in fantasy are anything new, or that the only way for a woman to be a strong character is to take up armour and blade and essentially pretend to be a man. I’ve written 15 epic fantasy novels exploring those particular ideas (among a good few others), and was reading books with a far more intelligent and nuanced view of women in high heroic settings for decades before that. I’m also not about to give an inch of ground to the tedious misconception which still persists in rearing its hydra-heads that epic fantasy is only written by blokes for blokes.

As it turned out, my fellow panellists, Robin Hobb, Trudi Canavan, Gaie Sebold, and our indefatigable moderator Laura Anne Gilman thought much the same. All of them excellent writers in their own right, I should add, and well worth checking out if you haven’t come across their work thus far.

Happily, a packed room full of people had decided they could trust us to tackle this subject, irrespective of the panel title. I’m not going to recap the discussion here, because The Writers’ Greenhouse, has done an excellent job of noting the key points and most especially the many, many fine authors whose work was recommended. Do click through to read the whole post.

Indeed, I think the only thing that could have possibly improved that panel was having at least one male perspective on these questions – but WFC sees no need to avail itself of the benefits which panel parity brings to programming, alas.

Oh, and Robin Hobb signed my advance proof of Royal Assassin which I have treasured since my bookselling days in 1995… (my convention fangirl moment)

As to the rest of WFC2013, newcomers went away very, very happy, full of joy about talking to real authors! So many free books! So many interesting and famous people to hear talk, including but by no means limited to Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Joanne Harris, Susan Cooper etc etc. So that’s excellent, and hopefully bringing new folk into UK fandom. There were also considerable numbers of European fans there, and it was lovely to meet them too.

I had enjoyable dinners with various friends, and also a lovely lunch with a generous fan. I got to see many of my lovely American pals, and to make some new ones – it is great to be able to put a face to an email/twitter/fbook friend. I made time to schedule meetings with a couple of key folk I wanted to talk to, and had an impromptu and potentially very useful encounter with someone else, so that’s my professional writer boxes ticked.

The David Gemmell Legend Awards went with a swing, hopefully making even more people aware of the Awards, and the ‘Legends’ anthology was launched afterwards amid much good cheer and celebration. Through the weekend, publishers did a stellar job with parties and launches, so those were great fun, er, apart from the ones crammed into the low-ceilinged and painfully loud night-club-bar space. I couldn’t hear myself think in there, let alone speak, which was a shame because I’m pretty sure that’s where I missed some folk I wanted to talk to. There were soooo many people…

Like most established con-goers and/or authors I spoke to, I do have a few ‘however’s…

I came home with not only tired feet – to be expected – but tired thighs and knees. I can’t recall when I was last in a convention hotel with so many flights of stairs between where you were and where you wanted to be – and that’s over and above the ‘official’ accessibility problems with the venue which were considerable, and frankly in this day and age, inexcusable. And yes, having chaired an Eastercon, I know exactly how difficult it is to find a UK venue to host such a large event. Still no excuse. Also, signposting and information about facilities needed to be a lot more prominent. The two other seating and drinking spaces other than the eye-wateringly expensive and noisily crowded hotel bar were largely empty any time I went into them and that’s not good.

The mass signing was fairly shambolic, with lots of empty author seats. I learned later that hotel security around the official start time were insisting that authors trying get in to take a seat, must join the line of con-goers waiting to come in, and since there was no way for said authors to prove that they were actually, y’know, authors, a good few just gave up and went away. Authors who’d turned up a little bit early, or a little bit later, had no such problems though. So a bit more forethought and planning on the organisation there could have made a significant, positive difference.

I have no clue how well attended, or otherwise, the whole stream of programming devoted to Arthur Machen was. Though I did find myself chatting to a chap who turned out to be a major Machen fan, involved in the official society, and he was asking me, genuinely puzzled, why there were so many panels dedicated to Machen, were fantasy fans really that interested…? I couldn’t possibly comment – genuinely. Personally I know very little about Machen and have less interest.

So that, in brief, was my World Fantasy Convention. Just one last note. If you’re ever heading for Brighton yourself, and want to stay in a delightful, comfortable and quiet little hotel, check out Brighton Wave. That’s where I stayed, and it was brilliant.

Lady Aileana Kameron, youthful and pretty, tries to combine her life in polite society with her determination to rid her world of murderous fae. The setting’s an agreeably atmospheric steam-punkish alternate Edinburgh in the 1840s. The author nevertheless remains clear-eyed on historical inequalities perpetuated by class and gender, not heavy-handedly moralising but simply weaving such elements into the pacy and entertaining story. Some will see echoes of a certain Slayer here but don’t let that put you off – and let’s remember the tradition of Scots lasses taking on faery foes goes back to the tale of Tam Lin. I’ve seen this labelled as a YA book and it’s a ‘safe’ read as far as graphic sex or violence goes while still offering plenty of action, tense and humorous by turns, and thoroughly convincing villainy. The exploration of love, loss and duty makes it a thoughtful read for all ages. Minor caveats; it’s the first of a series and has a markedly ‘to be continued…’ ending. Also it’s written in first person, continuous present tense which I’m really not a fan of – but here, I was able to get past that within the first few pages as the story engaged me.

click here for Elizabeth May’s website

About a year ago, SF author Tony Ballantyne sounded me out, explaining his plans for an ebook serial magazine for SF&Fantasy. He’d be committing to a year-long run of 12 monthly instalments, though individual stories could and should vary in length, so the mix for each issue would vary. Was I interested in being involved?

Yes, I was. ‘Always take the chance to try something new’ is a piece of advice from a famous author which I took to heart early on in my writing career. That said, I know very well that serial fiction is nothing new. Many of our greatest novelists’ works were originally published in magazines and newspapers; Dickens, Dumas, Conan Doyle, Scott. That’s how publishing popular fiction worked in their day. SF&F magazines continued that tradition through their heyday. Anne McCaffrey’s “The Ship Who Sang” is merely one genre novel arising from linked, collected short stories. Even now, Alexander McCall Smith first publishes his ‘Scotland Street’ novels as daily serials in The Scotsman newspaper. Since the best way of learning about something is always to give it a go, I was interested to learn first-hand what the idiosyncrasies of this particular writing style might be.

Once I’d agreed to be involved, I had a few decisions to make. I considered some of the story ideas I have jotted down in notebooks and found one that seemed well suited to episodic telling. Looking in more detail at that particular tale’s structure and arc, I found it fell nicely into eight instalments. Looking at the other commitments in my diary for 2013, I was confident I could deliver the equivalent of a short story a month, which is to say, five to six thousand words. So I drew up a more detailed outline and began work. Though only on the first few episodes. One thing I recalled from A level Eng.Lit. days is that Dickens in particular took a flexible approach to his writing, taking note of reader feedback as his stories developed. Would I get such feedback, especially in this Internet age? I had absolutely no clue but I wanted to be open to that possibility. I also had a vague sense that if I was writing a story to be read in instalments, that’s how I should work. Continue reading “Serial Thriller – How Writing “The Ties That Bind” Has Been A Whole New Experience” →

As I dash around getting the final things done before leaving for WFC, here’s a blog post from Adrian Tchaikovsky that’s well worth reading

Does SFF have a problem with women? Do women have a problem with it? A remarkable number of incidents over the last year or so have certainly put the issue in the foreground. It’s hard to avoid the feel of a storm getting ready to break. Here are some of the flashpoints. For the record, my personal opinion in each case is “yes, there is a problem”, but rather than tub-thumping, I’ve gone mad on links for those that want to read further

As well as all the points made here, I’m taking something else away from this post which Adrian probably never intended. You see, in recent conversations with other women within SF&F – writers and fans – about sexism in the genre, I’ve found myself saying ‘y’know, it seems to be one damn thing after another lately’.

But then of course, we ask ourselves, are we being over-sensitive? Because wider culture still encourages women to demur and defer and to put our own wants and needs second… So it’s good to see this post rounding up so many incidents, proving that no, we’re not just imagining this crap.

Though, of course, in those conversations, we remind ourselves that we have a duty to each other and the women who come after us to assert the value of women’s writing, just as the women who inspired us have done for decades.

But y’know what? It gets exhausting. If you’ve been wondering why some women writers’ tempers are on a hair trigger these days, the sheer relentlessness of this stuff is why. And I know I’m not the only one who’s found herself on the brink of saying ‘Y’know what? To hell with it…’ and just walking away…

Here’s how my schedule looks for the next few days.

I’ll be arriving in Brighton around 2pm on Thursday so hope to be at the con by 3pm.

I’ll be at the Gemmell Awards from 8pm, and at the Legends Anthology launch thereafter, not least since I have a story in the collection and given the rest of the line up, I’m eagerly anticipating reading the rest.

On Friday, I’m on the ‘Broads with Swords’ panel at 4pm with Laura Anne Gilman, Robin Hobb, Trudi Canavan and Gaie Sebold. And yes, I know, that title… but our full brief invites us to talk about new female writers in this particular area and I’m very keen to share some of my recent reading.

I’ll also be at the mass-signing on Friday evening from 8pm, and if that doesn’t suit your own plans, I’ll be signing at the Solaris stand at 4pm on Saturday.

On 10am on Sunday morning, I’ll be joining my fellow authors for the launch of Tales of Eve, from Fox Spirit Books. There’ll be juice and fizzy drinks to revive you after your Saturday night and lots of fun as we celebrate this venture.

In between times, I’ve got a few meet-ups planned, and have some panels ticked to attend. If you see me around, feel free to say hello.

Assuming I get everything packed and sorted in time to get my train(s) tomorrow morning…

Right… ironing…

This is a secondary world fantasy with the distinctive and imaginative twist of a post-feudal world where magic exists alongside early experiments in electricity and gunpowder – and that’s a very uneasy mix for a whole lot of reasons. And no, this isn’t a quasi-seventeenth century world but something entirely of itself, the action all set within a multi-level city, both in terms of geography and society.

The central character Rojan Dizon is doing the best he can down in the depths, trying not to fall any lower. He’s doing pretty well until he gets caught up in a crisis involving the family he’s grown apart from. Now he must find his way through a maze of manipulation and misdirection. Will doing his best be good enough?

I really enjoyed this – the story’s well paced and nicely structured, I engaged with the characters and the author doesn’t take easy options or duck hard questions.

And why am I reading this? Well, I’m on a panel next week at the World Fantasy Convention, looking at new female voices in fantasy and SF. Since my reading over the past two years has been dominated by the Arthur C Clarke Award, I soon realised I had some catching up to do. I’m very pleased to find there’s some extremely good reading out there from new women writers.

And since I’ve been flagging up the issues of visibility for women writers at the moment, I decided it’s time to put this blog where my mouth is, and start posting some short, non-spoilery reviews, to flag up books you might like to look out for. So watch this space.

– and adding a link to the author’s website would be a good idea, wouldn’t it? Find out more about Francis Knight and her writing here

Just found an interesting article about writing and selling books in this new online reality – from a marketing guru so I read it with salt cellar to hand. Firstly, the guy seems blind to the fact that a talent for writing and a talent for selling yourself are not the same thing and a lot of folk do not have both skills sets. Also he seems to assume that every potential book-buyer is fully accessible online, and the more I talk to people, the more I think that’s a myth.

That said, among the most useful advice I had when setting out, was how important it was to understand the business of writing, as well as the craft of writing. Working for Ottakar’s for a couple of years brought that home to me like nothing else could have done – and made a crucial difference to me taking that step from hopeful writer with a file of ‘thanks but no thanks/good but not quite good enough’ letters from agents and editors, to getting that amazing phone call from the man who wanted to publish my book – in fact, let’s talk a two book deal…

In particular, there are some undeniable cold hard truths in this article which the sharks and charlatans of the ‘creative writing biz’ work so hard to hide. Namely misconceptions about writing.

* The publisher will do the selling for me (Those days are long gone).
* I’m a literary purist and selling is below me (Good luck making money off of snobbery).
* I’ll post a free e-book on Amazon and wait for everything to take care of itself (Enjoy the long wait).
* I don’t have time to write and sell my work (The problem isn’t time; it’s prioritizing your time)

Full article here.

These two extremely talented authors are currently working on Kaleidoscope – an anthology of diverse contemporary YA fantasy. This is a crowd-funded project, or hopefully it soon will be. Click that link to get involved.

Meantime, Sherwood and Rachel have written a thought-provoking post considering the nature of protagonists in fantasy fiction, taking a quotation from Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories” as a starting point.(Longer than my excerpt here)

I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories . . . Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison walls?

The key word here is ‘he’…

As the post goes on to say –

While it is not difficult to find excellent novels about homophobia and coming out, it is much harder to find books in which, for example, a teenage, Hispanic lesbian discovers that she has inherited magical powers—a plot trope for which hundreds, if not thousands, of books exist for straight, white heroines. You can substitute any social minority in American society, and similar issues apply. If you’re not part of the ruling class, you don’t get to escape.

Furthermore –

…the male heroes of fantasy novels are not average people, and do not have average lives. They are not merely the heroes of the genre of fantasy, but heroes of fantasies—heroes of escapist imagination.

…

These male heroes were not written to be average examples of their demographic, and we’ve never seen anyone make the argument that they should be. But that argument is applied to female characters constantly, to make the case that they should be average and demographically representative. It is a case for denying women escapism while lavishing it on men.

I urge you to read the whole piece, and you’ll see why this has particularly struck me, especially at the moment when the focus on epic fantasy seems to be defaulting to male writers and male stories for no good reason at all. This has been particularly notable in some conversations I have had about The Hadrumal Crisis, a trilogy where two of the three main point of view characters are women and yet interviewers ask me about ‘the hero’ Corrain. While they recognise how flawed he is as a hero, that’s apparently still his default designation.

At the same time, reader and reviewer reactions to Lady Zurenne, a woman whose story is driven by the fact that she cannot escape, are varied to say the least. Patrick Mahon’s joint review of Dangerous Waters and Darkening Skies in the latest BSFA’s ‘Vector’ magazine describes her as ‘manipulative and calculating’. Just to be clear, I’m not arguing with this review – it’s a thorough and thoughtful analysis of those books which I’m delighted to see – and he’s not wrong. He also sees why she acts as she does, going on to say ‘- although this is to some extent understandable, given her need to secure the future of her two daughters…’

The thing is though, I’ve spoken to readers and seen comments from men and women alike who have even less sympathy for Zurenne, while they’re able to give Corrain much more leeway when his attempts at manly heroics don’t succeed. And again, just to be clear, I’m not arguing with those readers’ reactions. I don’t get to dictate those, writer or not and none of those folk I’ve spoken to are making unfounded assumptions based on anything other than the story in hand. From the books as written, that is an entirely valid response.

Yes, I’ve been a little surprised, since that’s not what I expected – but it doesn’t bother me, since there are plenty of other readers with immense sympathy for Zurenne. I am certainly intrigued though, wondering why this might be so. And I think this question ‘Who Gets To Escape?’ may well hold some element of the answer.

Definitely something to think on.

So, this week, Waterstones announced they’re expanding their range of kids and teens toys for 2014.

Er, were they not watching Borders’ demise? What part of ‘bookseller’ are they struggling to understand?

It seems other business minds are none too impressed by their current strategies.

“…so many copies of the latest Jamie Oliver and Sharon Osbourne there will be no room for the newest upcoming authors; Waterstones seems to have decided it is in competition with WH Smith and Tesco.

Recently one of my top authors went to his local branch to see how sales of his novel were doing: there were no copies left, they had sold out, and he asked if they’d be getting any more in. No, he was told, they wouldn’t. In what other business do you sell out of a product then not bother to re-stock what’s obviously popular?

Not to mention those of us who might like to point out the flaw in their reasoning that male SFF writers (sold at discount in the front of the store) outperform female authors (sold at full price, at the back/upstairs/behind signs saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’) More on that from Cheryl Morgan.

Not that things are any better in the US, now that Barnes & Noble are the sole book chain. As this sorry tale from Mindy Klasky makes clear.

Yes, I have a dog in this fight. I’m an author who’s seeing her income eroded year on year by changes in the industry I can do nothing about.

But if – or as looks increasingly likely, when – the day comes when I simply have to quit because it makes no financial sense for me to carry on – I will still be a reader.

And I don’t want to be a reader offered a narrow, impoverished, pre-selected by electronic sales figures morass of pap!