My first post is up at the Mslexia blog – w00t! It’s the first of six pieces about writing Fantasy (and the SF/F genre in general). Mslexia is a quarterly magazine aimed at women writers, and it’s my absolute favourite writing-type periodical, so I am very chuffed to be guest blogging for them. Come on over and read my piece, then check out the rest of the site if you haven’t heard of them before. Excerpt follows.
From the Mslexia Blog
I didn’t mean to write ‘genre’. I hadn’t even considered it – but when I joined my local writing class, every story I told had something supernatural in it. Magic and myth, alternative histories, witches and other worlds. What was happening to me? I hadn’t read anything like that since my teens, so was surprised to find myself writing it now.
I was reading serious novels those days; classics, Booker Prize winners, modern stories about India and child abuse. Somehow I’d changed from the girl who devoured every book in the library’s ‘Science Fiction’ section (where anything vaguely Asimov, McCaffrey or Herbert was shelved), stopped being the girl who stalked Terry Pratchett til he remembered my name*. I’d become a reading snob, and hadn’t even noticed.
‘New stage, new Theodora mask, same old strength required. Theodora was 19 years old, sick to death of carrying on, and she carried on…”
Fresh from Salt Publishing’s new genre imprint, Proxima, this is a tentacle-heavy Austen homage for fans of Blackadder-style innuendo and puns that would make the Pope groan. The truth is out there, though it is not yet universally acknowledged.
It’s always interesting when writers write about writers, and that memory of Misery you just had isn’t out of place here. We’re not talking Sarah-Jessica adverts for laptops, or Bukowski’s bourbon product-placement. No, Lee’s author protagonist is not an advert for the literary profession. A few chapters into Roy’s life, and the formulaic thriller hack is not an advert for anything at all.
