I’m talking about Andre Norton and the fact that I might not be the writer I am without her influence.  Probably any number of writers would say the same thing, especially female ones, especially female ones of my generation.

Oddly enough, I read none of her YA fiction growing up.  The first book of hers I ever read was Witch World, the first of her Estcarp series, which was clearly not YA.   Reading it was one of those moments when the sky lights up and the angels sing and, much less dramatically, you think “THIS is what I want to do.”  The next book I had that with was Tanith Lee’s The Birthgrave, which I’ll write about in a later post.

The characters in Witch World were adults, with adult concerns of survival, politics, justice, freedom, morality and the places where you were forced to make the hard choices.  Though it was from a male point of view, there were two key female characters who were both strong and flawed in their own ways.  It presented a society run by women that was not utopia and whose rulers were not always wiser – if usually less venal – than the more traditional lands that surrounded them.  There was no explicit sex but there was the straightforward acceptance of both desire and sexual violence.

The basic structure of the story (reluctant allies, male and female, who had to battle their own preconceptions as well as an enemy and evil force) was one that Norton would use over and over, with varying degrees of success.  My personal favorites are Witch World, Year of the Unicorn,  The Crystal Gryphon, and the collection Spell of the Witch World,  each of which I have read more times than I can count.   Of her SF novels, Forerunner Foray and Dread Companion are on the “bathtub book” list, though the second is only nominally SF and much more a story about the perils of entering the faerie realm.

Witch World came out in 1963 at a time when female writers routinely hid their gender (Norton’s real name is Alice Mary) and it was rare to have women as main characters with equal agency, power and will as men.  Though a “romantic” ending is the usual conclusion, it rarely has anything in common with conventional romance novels.  The key to Norton’s romances is the meeting of equals who are tested by fire to emerge with a deep bond based on their acceptance of each other’s individuality.

When it came time to write what was my second go at a “real” novel (the first was heavily influenced by Alan Dean Foster’s Bloodhype), it was Norton’s model that I ended up emulating.  There are certainly worse ways to learn to write.

Like just about every SF fan of a certain age, I was a huge Star Trek fan as a child.  I didn’t watch it on the first run but probably in the first years of the reruns, when I was 10 or 11.   While I never wrote Star Trek   fan fiction (which is not to say I’ve never written fan fiction, but that’s another post…) my best friend and I did spend many long happy hours playing Star Trek in her basement.  Her father worked at IBM and so had all these lovely computer bits that could be put along the arms of chairs and on desks to provide control panels.

Looking back on it, what most interests me is that we were already feminist enough to know that the depiction of women in the show was unsatisfying.  We had no interest in playing nurses or yeomen or even communications officers.  And don’t even get me started on that horrible episode where the crazy woman stole Kirk’s body so she could be captain.  Bah.  No, if we were going to play Star Trek, we were going to get the good parts.  I was always the Captain (which is really quite surprising, if you know me, as I am not very leader-like at all) and the BF was always the Science Officer.  We invented a ship with a  mostly female crew and we had adventures.  Of course, we did cross paths with the Enterprise and have interesting … um .. interactions with Kirk and Spock but it was always a given that whatever fuzzily romantic scenarios our pre-teen brains could supply, our first loyalties were to our ship and to each other.   No doubt there was something Mary Sue-ish in our characters but there was something surprisingly mature as well.   It was a given that my character would never give her up her ship for a man, any more than Kirk would give up his for a woman.

As we moved through various interests (comics, the Six Million Dollar Man – more on that one later – and, god help us, Roller Derby) this basic pattern repeated itself.   We were the heroes and we were friends.  The romantic element of our adventures with the various imaginary love interests was a big part of it but in the end, our characters always rode off into the metaphorical sunset together.

Stocking up on horror and dark fantasy books, of course.

The good people at ChiZine are having a sale, so now’s your chance to get books by Michael Rowe, David Nickle and more at 40% off.

What are you waiting for?  Buy something!

Apparently, the gorgeous photos from the Gloomth shoot that I linked to the other day are accompanied by a selection of “spirit photographs” created by the House of Pomegranates team.  Even lovelier and spookier.

Go check out my friend David Keyes’ photo shoot for Taeden Hall’s clothing line Gloometh, inspired by their collaboration on an edition of Carmilla.  It is, as they say, to die for.

Some conversations last weekend reminded me of the impact certain comic books had on my imagination, so that’s the topic of this week’s post.

When I lived in small-town Ontario during grade 8 and 9 (living in small-town Ontario was not exactly a success for me, though I made a great friend  there), one of my monthly rituals was to ride my bike to Sam’s Variety store with my hoarded allowance and buy a couple of comic books.  These served the dual purpose of both reading and providing figures I could trace in order to design my own characters and costumes, because I couldn’t draw to save my life.

This period coincided with a sudden flurry of comics featuring female heroes, which suited my already feminist sensibilities.  Among the series I followed were The Cat and Shanna the She-Devil, which both came out in short-lived series in 1972, and the Avengers (which I admit was partly due to the Scarlet Witch/Vision storyline running at that time).  I also dabbled in the occasional Wonder Woman and other comics if it looked as if there would be interesting female characters.

I never really considered creating my own comics, partially because of aforementioned lack of drawing ability and partially because my imagination was already not quite that concrete.   While I’m writing, I can mentally see some things in great detail, some things in “long shot” and some things not at all.   I don’t see my characters’ faces, for example, but I know what it feels like when one of them looks at another.   The option always exists to do the script only, of course, and that’s something I’d love to pursue for some projects, but my real love is words and the personal, internal images and emotions those conjure for me.

I kept some of those comics for years until one move too many meant they disappeared.

And I learned the Shelley poem Ozymandias from an issue of the Avengers, so who says comics don’t teach you anything?  I couldn’t find a legible version to post, so go to the link to check it out.  It’s one of the most memorable pages of comic art I’ve ever seen.   The poem is below.

Ozymandias

Yes, I went on vacation to London, Paris and the Lot Valley and you will now be subjected to a couple of pictures.

Westminster Abbey Gargoyle

Pere Lachaise

The ruined abbey in Marcilhac sur Cele

Today’s job is to figure out what to read for the Lost at Sea event this Thursday.  (You are all coming, right?   Augusta House, Toronto, 7:30.  Readings, music, art, cake, cocktails, swag, merchandise – it’ll be fabulous.)

I’m always envious of people who can manage to read the first chapter of their novel and have it sound wonderful but that never works for me.  (Of course, maybe this means I should be concerned that I write very bad first chapters.)   Instead, I have to find a section that doesn’t require too  much explaining, contains some incident or theme relatively representative of the novel, has something interesting happen and ends with enough drama to make the listener want to buy the book.   Then it has to actually sound  good when I read it aloud.

The exception to the “no first chapters rule” was The Night Inside, because the opening chapter of Rozokov waking up in the warehouse actually worked quite well.  My second section for that book was the scene in the asylum in which Ardeth offers Rozokov her blood, because it was dramatic, sexy and fun to read.

For Blood and Chrysanthemums, I chose part of “The Tale of Tamakatsura” to give people a good idea what a sizeable chunk of that book was like.  I also, with a certain amount of trepidation, read the Hiroshima diary entry.   I was concerned that it was too dramatic and intense, but something about the writing lent itself to being read aloud and sometimes drama and intensity is what you want.  I’ve read it about 5 times and each time my voice cracks on the last two lines.

The readings for A Terrible Beauty usually involved one scene of Sidonie and Matthew talking (the chosen section varied) and the chapter with Matthew and Lawton sitting in the discussing the finer details of enslavement to a vampire.

I’ve read two sections from Cold Hillside, both of which have centered on Lilit’s experience at the fair, so it seems like it’s time to introduce the other narrative character.  So I’m off to sit in the backyard with a pile of paper, a watch, and a sincere hope that my neighbours don’t notice me muttering to myself.

Hope to see you Thursday night.

The team at the magical House of Pomegranates will be hosting “An Evening of Magical Things” on May 9th at the Augusta House in Toronto. The evening will feature readings by David Keyes, Liisa Ladouceur, Lynn Crosbie and me, a mystery string quartet, Carmilla-inspired fashion from Gloometh and appropriately magical cakes from CakesCove. There will also be signature cocktails created for the event by my talented husband. Fabulous swag bags are being assembled for all the guests and, of course, a merch table where you can get David’s gorgeous short story collection I Do So Worry for All Those Lost at Sea and copies of the special edition of Chrysanthemum Shadows.

Hope to see you there.

What people think of you, that is.

This has taken me a very, very long time. I’ve always been extremely self-conscious and aware of every idiotic thing I do or say. Someone once told me that I promptly forgot every good thing that I did yet could remember in excruciating detail an embarrasing moment at camp when I was twelve. My husband will attest to the fact that I still come home from parties or conventions wailing “I can’t believe I said/did that” even though I know perfectly well that no one is spending one nanosecond thinking about it (because they’re all so busy worrying about whatever foolishness they think that THEY committed).

But I have improved. I’ve gotten older and realized that most of the things I’ve worried endlessly about over the years didn’t happen and if they did, I lived through it with remarkably little damage. People like me, or they don’t, and at the end of the day there’s not much I can do about it either way.

Surprisingly, one of the things that has contributed to my (relative) devil-may-care attitude is my wardrobe. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a fashionista, don’t follow trends (except maybe well after they’re over), and hate shopping. My attempts at style have always fallen woefully flat (flood pants, a red leather jacket with big shoulders, and an unfortunate striped dress are part of my past). Then one day about thirteen years ago, I was walking through Yorkville and someone handed me a flyer for a sale at a store on Queen Street. The slogan on the card was “Be Strange, Don’t be a Stranger” and the clothes looked intriguing, so off I went for my first visit to Annie Thompson.

I fell in love immediately. The clothes were funky and original and the staff was fun and helpful, spoiling me for any other shopping experience. Even though everything was definitely more money than I was used to spending on clothes, I found a few pieces on sale. I went back and bought a few more pieces. Then a few more. Now my closet is probably 80% Annie. She’s closed the store and runs her business from a studio in the Junction, when she’s not in India learning to hand-dye fabric, working with local artisans, and making her own art. A couple of times a year, I go to the open studio days and sales, which are even more fun than the old store visits used to be. It’s a pleasure to be surrounded by beautiful clothes and fabrics, by the creative women who are her clients (where else would another customer drive you to the bank machine to get some extra cash?), to meet the women who work on her patterns and manage the sewing, and to absorb the energy, optimisim and spirit that Annie brings. The wine is always nice, too.

I still wear some of those first pieces I bought. That’s part of the joy of Annie’s clothes. They’re well-made and last forever. They’re never in style so they’re never out of style. Every season things change but the aesthetic that informs everything she does means that a jacket from 10 years ago will go beautifully with a skirt you just bought last week.

What does this have to do with not caring what other people think? Well, many of Annie’s clothes are not for the timid. Wearing them requires that you not care whether anyone else likes them or not. That’s not something that fearful, self-conscious me ever imagined I’d be able to do. Some of her designs daunt even me. I tried on an incredibly gorgeous jumpsuit twice before I summoned the nerve to buy it. It took me until this week to wear it. No one stared and pointed – or if they did, I didn’t see it. I like to think I wouldn’t have cared, which may or may not be true.

The jumpsuit is below. I’m not as lovely as this model, and I wore a jacket over it.

I also bought the black and gold vest above because it was just so damned beautiful.

You can find out more about Annie at the link above or on her Facebook page