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Quoted in the Guardian, condemning homophobic publishing laws in Russia

A few years ago the Russian government introduced a set of ridiculous regulations on how art can be produced in the country. It prohibited swearing in films and TV shows, and mandated that books containing LGBTQ content be sold in plastic wrappers.
Insisting that such books are packaged like this introduces a stigma. It places LGBTQ literature into the same conceptual category as pornography which makes it less likely that readers will buy the books, or that readers will have the books bought for them.
Naturally, this affects book sales for Russian publishers, and some have taken extreme steps to avoid having their books placed in the stigmatised category. Last week, fantasy author Victoria Schwab revealed that her Russian publisher had bowdlerised the translation of her Shades of Magic series. Continue reading “Quoted in the Guardian, condemning homophobic publishing laws in Russia”

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Cory Doctorow and China Mieville in Conversation in 2010

I am rather shocked by the realisation that the discussion I chaired with authors Cory Doctorow and China Mieville was exactly five years ago today.
I recall that a couple of short excerpts from the event were included in a podcast at the time, but the entire discussion was never posted anywhere for people who could not attend.  Happily, yrstrly took a recording of the discussion on my phone and I post it here (and on Soundcloud) for posterity. Continue reading “Cory Doctorow and China Mieville in Conversation in 2010”

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Four reasons why I probably won't win the Shirley Jackson Award

I gatecrashed the Hugo-nominated Pornokitsch blog to post this review of my competitor novellas.  I also put this on Medium, just because.

I’m delighted and honoured to have been nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award, for my novella The Good Shabti, published by Jurassic London. However, there are four good reasons why I probably won’t win.
The first reason is the Ceremony of Flies by Kate Jonez (DarkFuse). Our protagonist, who calls herself Emily, is an unreliable cocktail waitress, an unreliable road-trip buddy and definitely an unreliable narrator. We meet her serving drinks in a Las Vegas casino, but before long she is on the run in a 1971 Pontiac Convertible, driven by an equally dubious gambler named Rex. Their journey takes them from the bright lights of Sin City, via suburban Barstow, to ever more remote and decaying locales, until she arrives at what might just be the end of the world.
Jonez’s parched descriptions of this doomed trajectory are fantastic. There are Joshua Trees and Stucco churches, and flies everywhere.  The soaring temperature is evoked so well I thought my Kindle might overheat.  And there is no let up—Every apparent relief, every opportunity for a cool breeze or a quenching of thirst, is just a further heightening of the characters desperate plight. Is this Emily’s personal hell for the many crimes she has committed? Or some wider vengeance? Continue reading “Four reasons why I probably won't win the Shirley Jackson Award”