Books

Liburnicon: The Urban Fantasy Panel

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

This is a brief write-up of the Urban Fantasy panel at Liburnicon, which featured Jacqueline Carey and myself. I’m doing this mainly for the benefit of the Croatian fans who attended, because we mentioned an awful lot of authors and no one was taking notes. Hopefully others will find it interesting.

I note that we did not attempt to define Urban Fantasy. Farah Mendlesohn attended an Urban Fantasy panel at Dragon*Con today and she tweeted that when the panel was asked for a definition they fell about laughing. I can see why. Rather than attempt to state definitively what Urban Fantasy is, Jacqueline and I attempted to look at the range of things that could be described as Urban Fantasy.

On an historical note, I mentioned that Dracula could be seen as an Urban Fantasy novel. It is set in 1893 and was published in 1897, so Stoker was clearly writing contemporary fiction for his time. However, it might be disqualified on the grounds that it is Horror. See below for discussion of the difference between Urban Fantasy and Horror.

We then looked at the origins of the term Urban Fantasy in the 1980s with the work of Charles de Lint (the Newford stories) and Emma Bull (particularly War for the Oaks). These books use fairy mythology, don’t have a crime novel plot, and have a strong musical element to them. For further information about The Flash Girls, the folk duo that Emma formed with Lorraine Garland, see here.

After the panel someone asked me if I could recommend some other writers who are like Charles de Lint. I could not think of anyone at the time, and still can’t. The various suggestions I got from the hive mind on Twitter didn’t seem very close to me. I’ll try again here. Any suggestions?

Next up came the 1990s and the rise of the vampire slayer: both Buffy and Anita Blake, who appear to have been invented in parallel. Incidentally, Laurell K. Hamilton books are all over the newsagents in Croatia, but it is the Merry Gentry series, not the Anita Blake books. I have no idea why.

The phenomenal success of the vampire slayers brought us a whole slew of similar material. The books featured “kiss ass” heroines, paranormal creatures usually found in horror novels, and crime novel plots. Other writers whose works have some similarity to Laurell K. Hamilton include: Jacqueline Carey’s Santa Olivia, Patricia Briggs, Kelley Armstrong, Kim Harrison, C.E. Murphy, T.A. Pratt.

Mention of Tim Pratt and his cunning disguise led us to discussion as to whether Urban Fantasy was only “for women”. We noted that writers such as Jim Butcher (Dresden Files) and Mike Carey (Felix Castor) produce books very similar in style to the women writers, but often don’t get recognized as Urban Fantasy because the writers are not men and the lead characters not female. We also established that although Jacqueline has a brother called Mike he is not the same Mike Carey who wrote the X-Men and produced the fabulous The Unwritten and the Felix Castor novels.

I also addressed the issue of the supposed characteristics of Urban Fantasy heroines. Tim is reported to have said of Marla that she is, “an ass-kicking sorcerer who doesn’t wear a leather catsuit, doesn’t suffer from low self-esteem, doesn’t wallow in angst, and is almost always absolutely certain she’s right… even when she’s dead wrong.” However, I noted that Felix Castor also suffers from low self-esteem and wallows in angst. I suggested that what is going on here is not necessarily belittling of a female heroine, but giving urban fantasy characters weaknesses in the same way that Stan Lee gave his superheroes weaknesses to make them more interesting than Superman. Jacqueline added that there is a lot of similarity between and Urban Fantasy and Superhero stories: both involve lead characters with super powers in an urban setting.

Jacqueline asked whether stories set in small towns, such as Santa Olivia, count as Urban Fantasy, or if the books have to be set in big cities. I suspect that the distinction is lost on non-US readers.

Finally we went on to discuss other fantasy stories in an urban setting that might appeal to Urban Fantasy readers. These are the ones I can remember.

Nalo Hopkinson’s Toronto stories: Brown Girl in the Ring and Sister Mine (which are unrelated except by the setting).

Gwenda Bond’s YA novels: Blackwood and The Woken Gods (two very different novels).

Emma Newman’s Split Worlds books: Between Two Thorns, By Any Other Name and All Is Fair (the latter not yet published).

Liz William’s Inspector Chen series (though the later books tend to be set almost entirely in the fantasy worlds, not in Singapore 3).

Nene Ormes’ books, which are set in Malmö and feature creatures from Swedish folklore (and are written in Swedish).

Tate Hallaway’s Precinct 13. (And for that matter, as Tate is also Lyda Morehouse, the AngeLINK books would probably be marketed as Urban Fantasy today as they contain angels.)

The Engelsfors Trilogy by Sara B. Elfgren and Mats Strandberg: Chosen, Fire and a third book currently in copy edit. They are YA, set in Sweden but available in English translation.

Lou Morgan’s Blood & Feathers books.

I’m sure that there are lots more, and people are welcome to add their own suggestions in comments.

There was time for questions from the audience, and the best one was the person who asked me to distinguish between Urban Fantasy and Horror. This led me to giving a quick precis of the basic ideas of Farah’s Rhetorics of Fantasy. I suggested that Urban Fantasy is usually set in a Secondary World, albeit one very similar to our own, in which magic works and paranormal creatures exist. In contrast Horror is a form of Intrusion Fantasy in which the fantastical element is not normal in the world of the book, and is expelled from that world at the end of the book.

Gambler in the Wild

~ Cheryl

Copies of the new Juliet McKenna book, The Gambler’s Fortune, have now been submitted to all of the usual outlets. They will appear for sale over the next few days. As usual, Juliet makes more money if you buy direct.

World Fantasy Ballot

~ Cheryl

The short lists for this year’s World Fantasy Awards were released last night. Locus has the lists. There’s nothing from Clarkesworld on the ballot, but I’m still very pleased with the choices.

In Best Novel I am, of course, keeping my fingers crossed for Caitlín R. Kiernan and The Drowning Girl, but it is a great ballot. I’m particularly keen to read Anna Tambour’s book, as I have very much enjoyed her previous work.

I’m not hugely familiar with the Novella list, but I note that Kaaron Warren’s “Sky” has been winning awards hand over fist this year. Also it makes up the bulk of the collection, Through Splintered Walls, which is available in the bookstore.

The Short Story list is all new to me, but huge congratulations to Beneath Ceaseless Skies, who are clearly becoming a force to be reckoned with.

My friend Jonathan Strahan has two books in Anthology, but I confess that I’m hoping the prize goes to Three Messages and a Warning, which contains stories by Mexican fantasy writers, translated from Spanish.

Collection is perhaps the toughest category. I’m delighted to see Karin Tidbeck’s Jagannath in there, but she’s up against superb work by Rob Shearman, Kij Johnson and Ursula K. Le Guin. My sympathy to Joel Lane for getting on the ballot and then finding himself in that company.

Both Jagannath and Remember Why You Fear Me are available in the bookstore.

Lots of unfamiliar names in the Artist category, so I need to educate myself there.

I’m delighted to see Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s translator getting a nod in Special Award: Professional, but I’m hoping that one goes to Brett and Sandra because ChiZine is awesome company.

And finally Special Award: Non-Professional, which sees another nod for the fabulous Charles A. Tan, but which I think I’d most like to see go to Timmi Duchamp for Aqueduct Press.

I am so looking forward to Brighton.

Today on Ujima

~ Cheryl

Well that was a busy day. Huge thanks to Stephanie Saulter for being a fabulous guest on the show. I seem to have monopolized most of the two hours this week. Here’s what went down.

The first half hour was all about Stephanie. We talked about her trip home to Jamaica to launch Gemsigns. We talked about her experiences at the Nine Worlds convention over the weekend. And we talked about the current state of affairs in Jamaica, which ranged from the economy to Usain Bolt and Chris Gayle to the horrific transphobic murder of Dwayne Jones.

The Nine Worlds coverage include shout outs for Hal Duncan, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Tade Thompson and quite likely a few other people. I also got in a mention of the fabulous new @WritersofColour Twitter account, and my friend Nikesh Shukla, who has a great article on their blog today about how brown people get used in movies.

In the second half hour I talked to Hannah Lawton, a young Bristol lady who, with her friend Jessie Van Beck, will be rowing across the Atlantic for charity this December. This is part of the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge. You can read more about Hannah and Jessie, and why they are undertaking this grueling challenge, here.

The first hour of the show is now available as a podcast here.

Hour two begins with the Lighter Look at Life segment, which this week was all about proverbs and grammar and, well, it rambled a bit. And I think we might have got a bit confused between Axioms and Maxims. Stephanie and I both feature.

Then after 15 minutes we have the Woman of the Week slot, in which I talk to Stephanie about her life, her amazing family, and how a girl from Jamaica with what might have been the best job in the world ended up in the UK and becoming a science fiction writer.

Finally we have 15 minutes on summer reading, including Jackie’s kids being charming about their love for Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. Between us Stephanie and I managed to recommend Nalo Hopkinson, Ian McDonald, Karen Lord, Juliet McKenna, Jon Grimwood and the whole of the World Fantasy Awards Best Novel ballot.

The second half hour is available as a podcast here.

New Book Day: The Gambler’s Fortune

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

I am delighted to report that the latest volume in our re-issue of Juliet E. McKenna’s Tales of Einarinn, The Gambler’s Fortune, is now available for purchase in the bookstore.

It will be available through all of the usual outlets over the next few days, but if you buy direct from Wizard’s Tower then Juliet will make more money from the sale.

More information about the book, including a sample chapter, is available from Juliet’s website, and she has written some more about the book today on her blog.

My thanks as usual to Elizabeth Campbell of Antimatter ePress for the conversion work.

New From Masque

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

We have three new novels from Masque Books available today.

Silver and Steam is the second in the Rings of Anubis steampunk series by E. Catherine Tobler.

Salvage by Chris Howard is a book I have labeled science fiction because it involves an experimental submarine, but it is probably genre-bending as the blurb says it features sea monsters and immortals as well.

Possibly the most interesting book is Ascension by Jacqueline Koyanagi. It is science fiction by a woman (presumably of Asian ancestry) featuring a black lesbian heroine. You want diversity? We got diversity!

Swing Down, Sweet Mothership

~ Cheryl

Here’s a funding campaign that you might find interesting. The anthology is called Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism & Beyond, and it features a spectacular array of authors including Lauren Beukes, Tobias Buckell, Junot Díaz, Minister Faust, N.K. Jemisin, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Kiini Ibura Salaam, Sofia Samatar, Nisi Shawl and Vandana Singh. As this is IndieGoGo rather than Kickstarter, the campaign doesn’t have to reach a target in order for the project to happen. So any money you give will go through, regardless of whether the target is met. But given the high profile of the people involved I don’t think there is any danger of this not happening. Of course they could still do with your help. And hey, an ebook anthology with all of those awesome folks and more, for just $10.

And just in case you need any more incentive, here’s George and the boys laying down the P-Funk.

Got funk, y’all? Clicken ye here, and get with the beat.

Book Review – The Art of Forgetting: Rider

~ Cheryl

That other Kristell Ink book that I mentioned is, of course, The Art of Forgetting: Rider by Joanne Hall. Jo is someone I have come to know and admire over the years of working on BristolCon, and that makes reviewing the book hard. Then again, I know an awful lot of authors these days, and like lots of them, so I have had a lot of practice. Hopefully I can manage to maintain some semblance of objectivity.

You can find my review here, and if you’d like to hear Jo talking about the book in her own words I have extracted the radio interview I did with her as a podcast, which you can listen to below. Please note that the interview was originally broadcast on June 26th.



And finally, the ebook is available in store at a very reasonable price. I hope it does well for Jo.

Welcome, Kristell Ink

~ Cheryl

We have a brand new publisher debuting in the bookstore this week. Kristell Ink is a UK-based small press specializing in science fiction and fantasy. They have a fairly small catalog at the moment, but obviously that will grow with time. I note also that their ebooks are very reasonably priced and, of course, are free of DRM and region restrictions.

Here are some of the books that we have on sale. There is one other, which you’ll notice if you click through to the store. I’ll be talking about that one more later today.

Book Review – The Age Of Ice

~ Cheryl

Continuing my quest to see out interesting new books, I’m delighted to present a debut fantasy novel from a Russian writer. Julia Sidorova is a biomedical researcher at Washington University in Seattle, and a Clarion West graduate. The Age of Ice is a fascinating tour of Russian history, told through the eyes of a man who is very at home in the cold. This is definitely something different, and well worth checking out. To find out more, read my review.

Got Glenda

~ Cheryl

As many of you will know, I am a big fan of Glenda Larke. I’m delighted to say that I now have a book of hers available in the bookstore. The Aware is her second novel, and the first book in the Glory Isles trilogy. It is the first book of Glenda’s that I read. Fablecroft has made the novel available as an ebook, and will presumably do the other two as well. I’m pleased to see that it no longer has the notorious “my little sea pony” cover, though possibly the new cover goes a little too far the other way. Anyway, I enjoyed this series a lot, and I’m delighted to see it coming back into print.

Coode Street, Adventure Rocketship, Translations and Gatekeepers

~ Cheryl

The latest episode of the Coode Street Podcast includes some discussion of political science fiction. Along the way Jonathan makes mention of Adventure Rocketship #1, which he says has some “really strong stories” in it. He singles out Tim Maughan’s story, “Flight Path Estate”, for particular praise. I am a very proud publisher.

Of course, being praised by the Mullahs of Coode Street will ruin Tim’s street cred for all eternity. But I am cruel and heartless, and also I have this new trick of embedding an audio player, so if you want to listen to what Jonathan has to say you can do so here:



Also in the podcast, the boys discuss the short lists for the SF&F Translation Awards. This makes me very happy, and also gives me another opportunity to plug Karin Tidbeck’s wonderful Jagannath. I hope to be recording an episode of Small Blue Planet featuring Karin sometime soon.

Finally the boys discuss how one gets to be an “insider” in the SF&F community. Karen Burnham and I were mentioned specifically by name, and I always try to respond to the Summon Cheryl spell, so I guess I should say something about how it was for me.

I must start by noting that there are all sorts of levels of privilege that facilitated my becoming known by people who might be regarded as gatekeepers (including Gary and Jonathan). I’m white; I come from an English-speaking country; I had a good education, including parents who indulged my reading habit; and I have had sufficient disposable income and work-related travel to allow me to attend many conventions.

On the other hand, I’m also female and trans, which ought to count against me (unless you are one of those people who believe that trans women are “really” men and benefit from male privilege at all times). So how did I get in? Well, I thought to myself, I knew people. Dave Langford and Martin Hoare were friends before I ever went to a Worldcon. I met Kevin at the first Worldcon I attended, and that must have helped.

Then I stopped, because I realized I was telling myself that I only got an in because of who I was sleeping with. And maybe that is true of me, some people certainly think it is, but I refuse to believe that it is true for every woman who makes a name for herself in the community.

(Update: for the benefit of people with over-active imaginations, I should point out that Dave and Martin are just friends. I’m very happy with Kevin and see no need to build up a harem.)

I think it is complicated. And to illustrate that I invite you to consider some of this year’s WSFS business. As many of you will know, someone has decided to propose that we scrap all of the fan Hugos. I’m not going to have a rant about that. Other people have been doing the job for me. What I want to do is note that there are many reasons why people advocate killing the fan categories. They include:

  • That they keep getting won by professionals
  • That they bring the Hugos into disrepute because they result in non-professionals winning awards
  • That they are won by people who are too old
  • That they are won by people who are too young
  • That they are won by the “wrong sort of fan” (i.e., fans of the wrong thing)
  • That they are won by people who are “not part of our community” (i.e., people who might be fans of the right thing, but whom we’ve not heard of before)

What all of these things have in common is that there are people who think that the fan Hugos are being won by people who are, to use the favorite SMOF term, “not worthy”. It is a very common meme, and it doesn’t just get applied to people who win awards. In fandom it tends to get applied by members of one subgroup against any member of another subgroup who achieves success beyond that subgroup.

So yeah, there is plenty of privilege involved. I accept that, and do what I can to make it easier for people who don’t have the advantages I had. But privilege is generally not enough. You do have to be prepared to work at it too.

New Writer & Critic

~ Cheryl

A new episode of the superb podcast, The Writer and The Critic, has gone live. This time Kirstyn and Mondy look at Hair Side, Flesh Side by Helen Marshall. They are very enthusiastic about it, which pleases me because the book happens to be in my bookstore.

The other book that they picked is Light by M. John Harrison. Surprisingly, they didn’t think much of it, which just goes to show how different people can react very differently to the same book. Personally, when I heard Kirstyn say that she felt “trapped” reading the book, I could see Mike smiling happily to himself at a job well done. It is true that Mike doesn’t present much analysis of the various gender issues highlighted in the book. Perhaps that’s a difference between a literary approach to a novel and a more traditional science fiction approach. What Mike does is more like painting a picture. People interacting with it may come away deeply disturbed, but the picture doesn’t tell you why, or what to do about it, it just sends you away to think about your life. One of the beauties of Light is that it presents this amazing science-fictional concept, and yet none of the characters in it are happy. They can’t get what they want and, try as they might, they don’t know what they need.

Of course, your mileage may vary. If you want to hear what Kirstyn and Mondy have to say, check out the podcast.

Polari Prize Long List – Congratulations Jack

~ Cheryl

The Polari Prize is a British literary award for a “first book which explores the LGBT experience”. It is open to fiction, poetry and non-fiction, which must make it very hard to judge. I’m delighted to see that my friend Jack Wolf has made it onto the Long List with his very fine novel, The Tale of Raw Head & Bloody Bones, which I reviewed here. Good luck, Jack!

I know very little about the rest of the long list. However, Realisations by Andie Davidson is a book of trans-themed poetry. I believe that Andie will be at the literature tent of the main Brighton Pride this weekend.

Bath Shopping – Way Too Tempting

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

On the way home from Bristol I stopped off in Bath to meeting up with a couple of friends (hello Daniel and Zoe) and introduce them to Mr. B’s. I also had a book to pick up; Mermaid in Chelsea Creek by Michelle Tea, which I am very much looking forward to. I always end up buying books when I’m in Bath.

I tend to buy food as well. I popped into the sausage shop to grab something for dinner, and was wandering back to the station when I noticed a new shop: Independent Spirit. Oh dear Goddess am I doomed. A specialist shop selling top quality boutique alcohol is somewhere I can end up spending lots of money. I very nearly bought a bottle of the famous Kraken rum, but I came away with a couple of beers instead, including this one, which is going straight into a chili.

New From Flipside

~ Cheryl

Charles Tan has sent me another book full of wonderful speculative fiction stories from the Philippines. Mouths to Speak, Voices to Sing is a collection of work by Kenneth Yu. Here’s some idea of what to expect:

A rich man’s obsession with ancient Chinese jars leads him to a secret afterlife. A young girl discovers internal wonders lost in the perilous depths of the sea. A country teeters at the edge of doomsday under a cloud of sparrows, while in the award-winning “Cherry Clubbing”, men indulge their lusts with impossible creatures.

From domestic A.I. to classic superheroes, explosive spirits and giant spiders, this collection offers a diverse range of stories that deal with human nature filtered through the lens of the strange.

And the cover is gorgeous.

New From Prime

~ Cheryl

It is bookstore update time again. I have a new anthology from Paula Guran at Prime books. After the End: Recent Apocalypses continues their collection of themed anthologies with a look at what happens after everything goes pear-shaped. It includes stories by Paolo Bacigalupi, Lauren Beukes, Cory Doctorow, Margo Lanagan, Bruce Sterling, Nnedi Okorafor and many others. Just the thing when you need reminding that things could be worse.