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hear me roar (sort of)

A few updates for the start of 2020. I took part in a fantastic podcast experience with Alex Blott of Papertrail podcasts, in which I talk about writing stories, the unusual formation of my story Kuebiko, the editing process, and why you should never take advice. A really enjoyable experience for me – I hope you will like it too, and give Alex some feedback. Listen here.

One of my writing heroes, fountain pen aficionado, and all-round lovely person, Priya Sharma, talked to me about her fantastic debut novel, ORMESHADOW, in the current Black Static magazine, which also contains a review of her book, plus all sorts of other brilliant stuff.

Priya and I, along with fellow Undertow author, Laura Mauro, had a frank and fascinating chat about writing earlier this year and our conversation can be found here. We go into early influences, the role of politics in our writing, and why Women in Horror Month is not every woman’s favourite time of the year.

If you read that discussion, you’ll know my thoughts on Women in Horror – but I’m all in favour of buying more books by women any time of the year, and Undertow has a great, generous offer on their books by women writers right now. Check it out.

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Three things

The talented, charming, and persistent(!) Priya Sharma has tagged me in a game of blog hop called “Three things I don’t write, and three things I do.” Priya’s stories are regularly published in prestigious markets and are then invariably snapped up and published in the year’s best collections. I’m lucky enough to be sharing a table of contents with her in Salt’s forthcoming Best British Fantasy 2014.

Three things I don’t write about…

I am not remotely interested in good-looking people having romances with each other, even if they are vampires or zombies. Especially if they are vampires or zombies. As a reader, that kind of thing makes me fall asleep, and as a writer, I just haven’t got anything to say on the subject.

High fantasy, and secondary world fantasy in general, is not my thing. I might write alternate histories or futures, portal fantasies or liminal fantasies – but they always have one foot in reality, because I think a writer’s job is to comment on the world – our world. Inventing other worlds as a form of escapism is of no interest to me.

I also hardly ever write about fruit.

Three things I do…

My characters tend to be people, usually women, who have some kind of problem with reality.  This theme runs deep through all my work, and it is from this well that all my stories come bubbling up. Reality in my writing is nearly always ‘the real world’ (as opposed to a secondary or fantasy world) and the tension between consensus reality and the character’s reality is where all the interesting ideas come from.

A problem with reality might be triggered when a character experiences a head injury. I’m interested in injuries and illnesses and how they affect our experience of the world. We are our bodies, in very real and important ways. We live in our bodies. So I’m interested in how living in a compromised and hurt and injured body affects our relationship to reality.

Birds, dogs, and other animals are the messengers of the fractured realities experienced by my characters. We have such strange relationships with other creatures. They are the recipients of our great kindness along with our incredible brutality. (They can tell us a lot about what it is to be human.)

Tagging the wonderfully cool and super amazing Katrina Leno. Her YA novel, The Half Life of Molly Pierce is out now. And I really want to know her do’s and don’t’s so I can copy her and be as fabulous as she is.

 

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stop me and buy one

 

Interzone 246 is out now and contains my grim little story ‘Cat World.’ But even better than that, it also contains stories by Aliette de Bodard, Lavie Tidhar and the brilliant Priya Sharma. So for heaven’s sake RUSH OUT AND BUY A COPY! Even better, subscribe.

While you’re at it, grab yourself a copy of Black Static, which this month has Ilan Lerman‘s very creepy story ‘The King of Love my Shepherd Is,’ along with stories by Nina Allen and Joel Lane. You can thank me later.