Thanks to Paul Weimer, I was invited to do a guest slot on a popular podcast. Wonders of the World looks at history via the lens of famous buildings. For annoying reasons, the episode on Hadrian needed to be re-recorded and I saw a request for people with interesting things to say. As a result, the new version of the episode has me wittering on about my favourite Roman, the philosopher, Favorinus. I also get to talk about Hadrian’s trip to Egypt, and why rich Roman women had a thing for Sapphic poetry. My thanks to Paul for the tip-off, and to Drew for inviting me on. You can listen to the episode here.
Author: Cheryl
A Worldcon in December
Vaccines for COVID-19 are finally starting to be rolled out in some countries, but it will be a very long time before everyone can be inocculated, and before we know how long it is efffective. Events trying to plan for 2021 are still in a very difficult position.
In view of this, the 2021 Worldcon, DisCon III, is giving people a choice. They can run a primarily virtual event on their expected dates; or they can move to mid-December when they believe that an in-person event will be safe to hold. You can register your opinion here.
Obviously I voted for a virtual event, because I cannot travel to the USA, so I can only attend Worldcon if it is virtual. I’m sure that is the case for many other people too.
On the other hand, I know that most Worldcon regulars view the event as an opportunity to meet up with friends, and thus for them an in-person event is the only option that fits the bill.
The obvious solution is to run some sort of hybrid event, and DisCon III has held out the possibility of some online programming even if they move to December. However, they haven’t specified what form that will take. And at SMOFcon over the weekend there was a substantial core of people who were dead set against running hybrid conventions.
I don’t want to go into the hows and whys of hybrid cons now. I’ll save that for this month’s Salon Futura. I will note that we are committed to running a hybrid event for Westercon 74. Also, if you are someone who cannot attend Worldcon regularly in person, but would like the opportunity to do so virtually, please fill out the DisCon III survey and let them know.
The way in which big conventions this year have become genuinely international has been a delight. It would be a shame if major events such as Worldcon and World Fantasy forgot that and went back to being conventions only for those who can afford to attend in person. Of course if they do then the future of fandom will shift to events such as FIYAHCON and FutureCon, because the future will happen, regardless of whether people want it to or not.
I believe that the deadline for responding to the DisCon III poll is 5:00pm EST today. Sorry about the short notice.
The Big Give
You have probably been bombarded with emails today headed Giving Tuesday. Quite why the day to give money to charity is just after a weekend of solid fanatical consumerism is a mystery to me, but there it is.
Generally I steer clear of this stuff, but here in the UK we also have a project called The Big Give. What is does, for this week, and this week only, is double any donations made to selected charities. This year two charities close to my heart are beneficiaries.
One25 is raising money for their Peony Project which helps women recover from addition and trauma. This being One25, trauma for these women often means having had to sell their bodies to get food.
SARSAS (Somerset and Avon Rape and Sexual Abuse Support) are raising money for general operating funds. I was horrified to learn from their email that referrals to their services are rising by 20% per month at the moment.
Of course if you are a UK taxpayer you can also add to your donation with GiftAid. So now is a really good time to donate.
I note that I have done training for both of these organisations, so they are both trans-inclusive.
Green Men Going Cheap
Amazon really loves Juliet McKenna. Once again they have chosen the Green Man books to feature in a promotion. I can see why. The books do seem to sell remarkably well.
This time it is The Green Man’s Heir and The Green Man’s Silence that are on sale at 99p each. The deals are UK only. I dearly wish that they would put them on sale in the USA as well. I could do it myself, but the books won’t get anywhere near the same visibility on the site as they do as part of an official promotion.
The Green Man’s Foe is still £4.99, but maybe the sale for the other two will be good for sales of that too.
In theory the sale is in place for the whole of December, so I will get quite boring reminding you about it. Sorry.
That Cyber Monday Thing
This is the time of year in which half of the internet is yelling at you to buy stuff, and the other half is yelling at you to boycott all of that awful consumerism. Well, you do you. But if you are in a buying mood, please remember that Wizard’s Tower authors get more money if you buy ebooks direct from us then if you buy from that big river in the aether. Also this is pretty much your last chance to do so, because I’ll have to close the store in January thanks to Brexit.
If paper books are your thing, I’m pleased to report that, after a short distribtion hiccup, Wizard’s Tower books are available again from Bookshop.org UK. If you buy from them, we get a cut, and they give money to independent bookshops in the UK as well.
Thank You, Good Law Project
Here’s something else to be thankful for. The Good Law Project is a legal initiative that seeks to provide legal redress for the disadvantaged and voiceless in the UK. It is a non-profit organisation funded largely by donations. It is currently suing the government over various apparent breaches of public procurement law in which contracts for things like PPE have apparently been handed to companies run by friends of Cabinet ministers without competitive tender, or even proper scrutiny. But that’s not what I want to talk to you about today.
For a year or so now, well-funded anti-trans organisations have been bringing malicious law suits against anyone who dares to stand up for trans rights. The objective appears to be to scare the likes of local councils, the NHS and so on into withdrawing trans inclusion policies. Faced with a threatened law suit, management of such organisations will often cave in to demands rather than face the expense and guaranteed negative press coverage that would result from fighting a case they should win.
The trans community, of course, cannot fight back. Despite the constant allegations on social media that we are somehow funded by George Soros and an International Jewish Conspiracy, we have no money. Nor do we have the expertise.
However, the lovely people at the Good Law Project have decided to lend a hand. They have set up a fighting fund for taking cases on behalf of the trans community. There’s a public appeal here, which aims to raise £20,000. That’s a small amount compared to what anti-trans groups regularly raise in their campaigns, but it is a start. If you have a few quid to spare, please consider sending it in their direction.
Thank You, USA
Despite having spent quite a lot of time in the USA, I’ve never really got into Thanksgiving. It seems a somewhat dubious holiday that really ought to be more focused on saying thank you to the people whose country got stolen, and improving their lot in the world.
However, in this particular year I want to say a huge Thank You to the people of the USA for voting out the Orange Idiot. The world will be a much safer place with Joe Biden in charge. Also the fact that the US President is no longer selfish and authoritarian has had repercussions here. Bozo’s styling himself as a mini-Trump no longer seems a wise strategy, no matter how much it does for his ego. It will be a long and hard road before we manage to relieve ourselves of this particular yoke, but the change in leadership across the Atlantic has made an immediate noticeable difference here. I am very thankful.
I’m not a big fan of turkey, but I am planning on celebrating with y’all over there. There’s nothing quite as American as pepperoni pizza, is there? (Actually I almost bought a packet of Hostess Twinkies today, because there are places you can buy them in the UK, but I came to my senses quite quickly.)
TDoR 2020
It is that time of year again. As usual I have been helping read the list of names at the Bristol Trans Day of Remembrance ceremony. As by no means usual, this year it was virtual. I think that made it easier somehow.
Also I wrote a thing for the lovely folks at A New Normal. You can read it here.
Social media has been the usual mix. I was pleased to see Joe Biden and Kamala Harris issue a very supportive statement. I was less keen to see politicians who have spent the year bending over backwards to appease the transphobes in their parties suddenly want to be seen as trans allies. It is not a good look. This year has taught me a lot about who I can count on as allies. The number of people in that group is a lot smaller than the number of people who wave trans flags today and spit on us for the rest of the year.
PowerPoint on Zoom
Those of you who, like me, have been spending a lot of time on Zoom this year will be familiar with this problem. Someone needs to give a presentation on Zoom. They share their screen, but when they try to advance the slides it works for them, but not for the audience. As far as the audience is concerned, the presentation stays fixed on the first slide.
The easy fix for this is to drop back into edit mode in PowerPoint. It isn’t elegant, but at least your audience can see the slides. Alternatively you can give someone else the slides and ask them to screen share PowerPoint, but that means you have to keep asking them to advance the slides. I was sure that there had to be a better way if only you could find out which of the gazillion settings in Windows or PowerPoint or Zoom would fix it. I think I now have the solution.
In PowerPoint, select the Side Show menu, and click on Set Up Slide Show. That will bring up the dialog box above. Make sure that the first set of radio buttons (Show Type) is set to “Browsed by an individual” rather than to “Presented by a speaker”.
Kevin and I tested that this evening and it seems to work. I’m giving a talk on LGBT+ History on Wednesday evening. Fingers crossed it will work for them too.
Geek and Trans
As anyone who is on social media will know, this week is #TransAwarenessWeek, which basically means that us trans folk have to be aware that everyone will be looking at us more for a whole seven days. Eeek!
But this week is also the week of Trans Pride South West. There will be a (virtual) parade and community day on Saturday. I will, as usual, be helping host the Trans Day of Remembrance event on Friday. And during the week the TPSW team have been putting on a number of virtual events. One of them is called Geek and Trans: Talks about Geek Culture, Conventions and Gender Identity. It is hosted by my friend Nathan, and I am one of the people that he chose to interview about being trans in the geek community.
I’ve just finished watching it, and Nathan has done a great job getting some really interesting people on the show. He’s also edited my contribution beautifully (which I can say as I know what it was like raw). It is also not too embarrassing, so I’m OK sharing it with you. Here you go:
Michael Dillon at M-Shed
For the benefit of those of you who missed the LGBT History Month 2021 launch event last week, I have written a blog post for the M-Shed Museum about Michael Dillon. That contains most of what I said in the launch event, and a bit more besides.
Come February we (meaning M-Shed and OutStories Bristol) will be doing a series of online talks about LGBT History. That will include on by me about Dillon.
Žiljak Hardcover Available
With profuse apologies for the delay, I am pleased to announce that the hardcover edition of Aleksandar Žiljak’s As the Distant Bells Toll is now available to purchase. The ISBN, should you need to talk sternly to a bookstore, is 978-1-913892-07-4.
Bookshop.org doesn’t have it listed yet, but that should happen soon. I remind you that if you buy from them you a) get a discount, b) make money for Wizard’s Tower, and c) make money for UK independent bookstores. You can find the paperback here.
London Met Archives gets Unorthodox
On December 5th the London Met Archives will be holding their 18th Annual LGBTQ+ Conference. There will be a lot of great content, including a panel discussion on queering museums led by the inimitable Dan Vo. And there will be me.
One of the themes of the conference is, “In what way faith, religion, and belief intersect with sexuality, transition(ing), identity and dissent?” In view of this I have offered a talk titled, “What Gender is God?” This will look at a range of religions, mainly around the ancient world, and how they have queered gender. Will there be Loki? Of course there will. And lots more besides. It should be fun.
To see the whole programme, and reserve a ticket for the entire event (£10), click here.
The image, by the way, is from volume #2 of Vei, the wonderful graphic novel in which Sara B Elfgren and Karl Johnsson give a new take on their traditional mythology.
Coronavirus – Day #218
On Monday 397 people in the UK died due to COVID-19. Yesterday the number was 492. We could easily be in a thousand a day territory by next week. I understand the Bozo spent Prime Minister’s Question Time vehemently denying that he ever said any of the things he said at the same time the week before.
New Salon Futura
The October issue of Salon Futura went live over the weekend. It includes reviews of books by Hao Jinfang, Elizabeth Bear, P Djèlà Clark, Linden A Lewis, and Elizabeth May & Laura Lam. There’s also a review of the Lovecraft Country TV series, and no less than three separate convention reports. You can read the whole thing here.
New as of last night, I have puchase links to Bookshop.org in the UK. Unlike the Amazon links, these are affiliate links, and of course any sales made means money going to independent bookstores, as well as to Wizards’ Tower. So if you are in the UK, I’d appreciate you using them.
Coronavirus – Day #217
As most of you will probably have heard, there are new Lockdown rules coming into force in the UK this week. At this point the government can’t really be accused of a u-turn, because it is more accurately spinning like a top. At the current rate of policy changes, it is predicted to reach tornado velocity shortly before Christmas and land us all in Oz some time in early 2021. This is not a bad thing. Being anywhere other than in post-Brexit Britain will be an improvement.
Meanwhile the virus stats keep rising fast. We had 397 deaths recorded yesterday. For comparison, that’s more people than have died in Finland in the entire pandemic.
I made my weekly visit to Tesco today. A friend in Bristol had reported stores running out of toilet roll again there yesterday, so I was relieved to see that the shelves were not completely bare. The only thing I expected to be able to find but could not was chocolate organges — the standard variety, that is, I’m trying the new white chocolate ones.
I can, if necessary, survive a couple of weeks without another trip, but hopefully that won’t be necessary. I continue to have plenty of work, some of which is even paid.
World Fantasy Awards
The winners of this year’s World Fantasy Awards were announced last night. As the convention was virtual this year, I was able to “be there”. The full list of winners is available on the Locus website, but I want to focus on just two.
Firstly, the ridiculously titled Special Award – Non-Professional category was won by Fafnir – The Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research. This is apparently the first time that the award has been won by an academic journal, and it is one founded by Finns.
I have to confess a certain amount of bias here. I am on the Advisory Board for the journal, but they haven’t actually needed any advising, so I can’t claim any credit there. I also have an article in the current issue, but that was published this year and therefore should not have been considered by the World Fantasy Jury.
There are lots of people who deserve congratulations. The current editors, Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Laura E. Goodin & Esko Suoranta, will get the trophies. But there are two other people I’d like to draw attention to. Firstly there is Merja Polvinen of University of Helsinki. She’s the Chair of the Advisory Board, and was very much a driving force in getting the journal started. The other is Irma Hirsjärvi, because the Journal is very much an outgrowth of the academic tracks that we run every year at Finncon, and Irma is one of the main instigators of those. (I just turn up to comment on the papers.)
Finally, we should note that while Fafnir is an academic journal, it is open source. That is exactly the sort of academic publication that the World Fantasy Awards should be honouring.
The other winner I want to mention is in the Novel category: Queen of the Conquered by Kacen Callender. Kacen is non-binary person of colour, using they/them pronouns. I’ve had the book on my Kindle for several months but haven’t got round to reading it yet. Given that it beat both The Ten Thousand Doors of January and Gideon the Ninth, it must be very impressive. And the fact that someone like Kacen can be voted the author of the best fantasy novel in this year, of all years, fills me with joy. I think you can work out why.
A New Bookstore
If you are part of the UK book community then your social media will have been filled over the past few days with posts about a new online bookstore, cunningly called “Bookstore”, and touted as a rival to Amazon. They launched today, complete with a big article in the Guardian explaining how they support UK bookstores. Lots of people are encouraging you to buy from them, and some have even suggested that you might be a scab if you still have links to Amazon. Well, here’s a publisher view.
The first thing to note is that they are not a replacement for Amazon because they only sell paper books. Wizard’s Tower was founded as an ebook company, and the majority of our sales are still ebooks. The majority of those are through Amazon. I do try to encourage Kindle owners to buy direct from us, but most won’t do so because we can’t offer direct download, and in any case I’ll probably have to close the bookstore in January because of Brexit. So I am not going to stop linking to Amazon from Wizard’s Tower.
Secondly these folks are UK only. Apparently they have a US website as well, but I think I need to spoof a US location before I can look at that. This is the internet. I have readers and customers all over the world. So while I am keen to support UK boosktores, I will have readers and customers who will need to buy elsewhere.
The final issue is making sure that the books are listed. I started by doing a search for Juliet and it only came up with some of her books, but if you search for books by title I think they are all there. I will get on with putting up links to the books on the Wizard’s Tower website. I will also check out the US site. Because we are a Print-on-Demand company, they will put up warning messages about titles being out of stock, but that just means it will take them a few days to get the book to you. I’ll look into signing up as an affiliate, as they have a very good commission rate (10%), and they also donate 10% of the cover price to a fund to support UK bookstores. That’s a good thing.
Coronavirus – Day #210
I haven’t said much about this of late, partly because I have been busy, and partly because it is terrifying. We are now closing in on 400 deaths per day, and given how sharply new cases and hospitalisations are rising, that is only going to get higher. If things are this bad at the start of winter, it is going to get pretty brutal by December and January.
I wish I could say that there was a chance of the government coming to its senses and trying to do something useless, but sadly I don’t see any chance of that. They are convinced that only poor and useless people are going to die, and they are happy with that.
My congratulations to Melbourne, which has endured a fairly severe lockdown and is now at 0 cases.
LGBHTM 2021
Yes, I know it isn’t February yet, but there is a tradition of doing a launch event for LGBT History Month in November, and that month is almost upon us.
The being the Year of the Plague, there will be no flashy in-person show at some posh venue, but we will be (virtually) at the British Library. The online show is being produced by the inimitable Dan Vo, and I am delighted to report that I have a small speaking part. For more information, and to book a place at the event, click here.