Apple-Obsessed Author Fella
Here’s today’s question:
In storytelling, you get certain tropes — earmarks of genre, of format, of style, of author — that either happen naturally or are evoked forcibly to be a part of the story.
(You can find a major warehouse of these tropes at TVtropes.org.)
So, let me ask you:
What tropes are you tired of seeing?
What tropes in storytelling are too toxic? Too predictable? Or too damn boring?
Last week’s challenge: “Bad Dads.”
Once again, get out your d20s and d10s (or just click on over to the random number generator) because it’s time to randomly choose the aspects of your flash fiction. The instructions are as follows:
On the subgenre table below, pick two subgenres. Mash them sonsa-bitches up into one story. Then, roll once from the subsequent two lists (Must Feature and Must Also Feature). Then, write 1000 words or so of your flash fiction story. Post at your space. Link back here.
Due by next Friday, June 28th, noon EST.
Huzzah, yay, and hooray — Mike Martinez was one of the authors caught in the recent Night Shade to Skyhorse transition, and it’s nice to see his eagerly-awaited book start to reach those eagerly awaiting hands. Here’s Mike to talk about The Daedalus Incident:
Nobody of consequence, really. But since that won’t really bring the readers to the yard, I’ll give it a shot. I’m a husband, father, homebrewer and, most germane to this question, a professional writer for the past two decades. The first 15 years were spent in journalism, and the last five or so have been in the corporate world. The nice thing about the latter is that it finally gave me the time to see whether writing a novel was something I could actually do, or if the notion was pure hubris. The Daedalus Incident is the result.
Future Mars mining colony is invaded by another dimension in which the historic Age of Sail takes place in space. Evil looms. Adventure ensues.
Ten years ago, in the depths of the dot-com messiness, I was involuntarily between jobs. I would trek to the local Starbucks each day to have a cup of coffee, get online, look for work and stay out of my wife’s hair. The Starbucks was next to a Blockbuster video store, and one day I walked past to see a poster for Treasure Planet. I was immediately enraptured by the notion of ships sailing between stars and planets. I rented the movie – and was wholly disappointed. Then I thought: I can do this better. I can make a fully realized universe that can include the romance and action of the Age of Sail, combined with the zing-pow of space opera. It was downhill from there.
In a lot of ways, The Daedalus Incident is the distillation of pretty much everything I love about genre fiction and pop culture. There’s hard science-fiction and a great deal of swashbuckling adventure, with a little bit of magic in the form of alchemy. It’s cerebral and emotional at the same time. Also, I simply like stories that hearken back to a time when heroes weren’t horribly flawed criminals bent on vengeance, or lost souls haunted by death and demons. I wanted a story where everyday people could rise to the occasion when the chips are down, and do so out of a simple sense of right and wrong and duty. In the quest to create ever-more complex scenarios and wild settings, I think genre fiction can occasionally forget about those ordinary people. I wanted to bring that back. And having told other people’s real-life stories for 20 years, I figured I was somewhat qualified to tell this one. Again with the hubris.
A lot of my writing was informed by my journalism work. Throughout my career, I’ve spent a long time trying to understand people and their motivations, and seeing how folks react to problems and crises. That’s great for journalism, but frankly, doesn’t work as well for fiction. Getting the right amount of action and derring-do into the book was most certainly a hurdle. Real people sit down and hash it out, whereas heroes – ordinary or not – have the gumption to get up and do something. It was definitely a mindset adjustment. “More mayhem” became a mantra. I may work that into a coat of arms some day.
The biggest thing for me was getting over the wall of self-doubt. Journalism is one thing, but a novel is a completely different beast. I don’t get all precious about writing as some sort of spiritual journey of artistic discovery, but I take a lot of pride in my work. In fact, I hate not being good at something. So it was a very personal challenge to even attempt to write a novel, let alone go through the process of getting a literary agent and getting a publisher, all without knowing if I was good enough. In the end, I learned I could indeed do it. Honestly, everything else is gravy after that.
I love that it’s unapologetically old-school space opera-slash-fantasy adventure. Yes, there are themes in there you can talk about, from corporatism to colonialism to personal responsibility and duty. But I’d like to think that nobody’s being beaten over the head with it. Maybe you think about those things later, or they simply stay in your subconscious. But really, I love that I wrote the kind of big adventure I grew up reading as a kid. Plus, I crashed a freakin’ frigate into the planet Mars. Who’s done that?
While I was writing it, I sometimes wondered what kind of work I would produce if I had any kind of training or coursework in fiction writing. I don’t know if the end result would be better or worse, but it would be different. I imagine I may have left a few things on the table, but I also would like to think my unconventional approach may have allowed for some other benefits. Either way, I figure if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I do wish I wrote a better first draft and didn’t need so many revisions, but for a rookie, I think I did all right. No regrets here.
I was pretty much going to punt on this question until I remembered this florid, over-the-top paragraph, where the protagonist, young Lt. Thomas Weatherby, steps up into the role he’s destined for. It’s also a little homage to all those great, rousing speeches in naval literature. It’s not quite indicative of the entire book, but I like it. Cue the rousing music:
James looked down at the deck, nodding but unwilling to meet Weatherby’s eyes. The other men looked on, seemingly wanting more. Weatherby took a deep breath, turning to address them. “I know you have fought hard, and fought well. But there is a fight left to us still,” he said. “What’s more, there’s likely little glory, and no rich prize.” Weatherby raised his voice as he continued. “But it is still a fight, nonetheless, perhaps the most important of our lives. There is a madman loose, one who would see an ancient terror awakened upon us all. And so it falls to us, to we simple men, to step forward as one, to stand tall against whatever darkness this sorcerer may conjure. So we must try, and if Daedalus must fall from the skies at last…we shall try to land her squarely upon whatever evil we find!”
What, you think I’ve planned this? I’m tickled I got this far. Thankfully, my agent Sara Megibow (fantastic advocate and a good human besides) has been on this from day one, and as I’ve had hare-brained ideas, she’s been channeling them appropriately. Currently, I’m serializing a novella, The Gravity of the Affair, on my site at www.michaeljmartinez.net. It’s the same setting as Daedalus, and gives a nice little intro to that world while telling the story of a young man who would ultimately become Britain’s greatest naval hero. And I’m hopeful that my new publishing overlords at Skyhorse think I’m worth a few more books in the Daedalus setting. I’m nowhere near done playing in this particular sandbox.
—
Michael J. Martinez: Website / @mikemartinez72
The Daedalus Incident (digital now, print July): Amazon / Kobo / Complete List
I am disappointed to learn that Guy Haley did not work on an actual death ray. That being said, I am happy to learn that his new book is out, and that he’d like to tell you about it. Drum roll please — Guy Haley!
I’m Guy Haley, part-boggart, part man, all English. I grew up in a burrow under the Yorkshire moors, not far from where Heathcliff used to tramp; although I’d have been under his feet. He’d have never seen me coming. They never do. I used to steal the teeth of travellers and sell them for charms at the fairy market before I got a job writing. Silly humans. I smell of peat and damp earth.
Some of that is a lie, here’s some truth: I’m a journalist/magazine editor-turned-author. I worked on SFX magazine, Games Workshop’s White Dwarf and then Death Ray (it was a magazine, not an actual death ray). When Death Ray went bust, I took up writing full-time. I’ve written seven books for Angry Robot, Solaris, and the Black Library, plus a bunch of short stories, with more on the way. I also write articles, a blog http://guyhaley.wordpress.com review, copyedit books and other stuff. Y’know… Things. Articulate, no?
I come from the north of England and live in its south, not that will make much sense to those over the pond, but it’s important to me. I have a massive dog. I love SF and fantasy, always have, always will. I have far too many toy soldiers, a four-year-old son, four brothers, and a half-Swedish wife. Did I mention I have a massive dog? I have a massive dog. He is called Dr Magnus the Malamute and he is my friend. I wander the hills with him and pretend to be Aragorn. That’s about it.
An interstellar colony effort goes spectacularly wrong. The few survivors are forced to battle against a hostile alien world and each other. (Whoop! 140 on the nose!)
My novel Champion of Mars was very well received by Solaris, so I asked if they’d like to see some more pitches. They said yes. I sent them four or five that I had pre-brewed in my brain; they chose what became Crash. That made me panic, as it was the least developed.
The inspiration’s a combination of lots of different things, but key among them are: the current rise and entrenchment of the new plutocracy of the super-rich, the (hopeful) inevitability of mankind’s spread into space, my musings on hierarchies in society, and my deep and abiding love of stories involving crashing and/or messed-up colony ships that create all kinds of problems for the poor souls who survive. Oh, and this quote from Kenneth Boulding, “Anyone who believes in indefinite growth on a physically finite planet is either mad, or an economist.”
I had an idea a while ago for a series of books that explored a whole bunch of diverse human colonies that had been separated for centuries, after disaster struck a large colony fleet some time in the very distant past. My daydreamy concept followed how the colonies had survived, how they had developed, how they got back in touch with each other, the tensions this contact engendered and the threat they find themselves facing in the stars. Crash – sort of – explores how this universe (currently lodged only in my noggin) came about. Although I must say it’s very much become a hard SF standalone. You don’t have to live in my head to enjoy it, and that would be impossible anyway. Crash is its own thing totally, a book about power, and parenthood, and the persistence of the species. It would be nice, however, to spool up the stardrives on my space opera, so go and buy Crash.
For my early books, I was asked to submit very detailed chapter-by-chapter breakdowns. I did so grudgingly. Planning in detail is not my natural bent, I much prefer to wing it. Although, thinking about it, this may not be the truth any more. It’s probably a yearning for my carefree youth when I was very workshy, and a hope writing was more Bohemian than it actually is. Everything professional I’ve been involved in has needed planning, and I tend to be quite meticulous about it. I never was as a teen, and it still takes me ages to sit down to start planning, but planning is a big part of me now. So, I’m lying to myself. But “Free!” I thought, “Free to spread my creative wings.”
Or, you know, just be lazy. Anyhoo, turns out Guy Haley writing a not-planned novel takes twice as long, twice as much panic and twice as much beer as Guy Haley writing a planned novel. This book was hard; the hardest I’ve done yet, I think. Mostly down to the not-planning thing.
Plan my next novel.
I liked the organic nature of it, the way that the ideas grew and twined around each other and layered up like some melancholy Russian symphony. I liked that the characters didn’t do what I wanted to and did their own thing all the time. One got pregnant, another turned out to be far nicer than I thought he would. Maybe they would have been less free had I nailed their feet to iron wheels and sent them spinning along the tram-lines of a plan, maybe not. What I like most about writing full stop (or period, you Amerikaners, you) is that it’s not entirely dissimilar to reading. You get to discover a story, much as you do when you read someone else’s book. At its very best, writing is like channelling a real world only you can see, and you become more of a chronicler than a creator. Or does that sound crazy? Do I sound crazy? I sound crazy, don’t I?
Most of all, I love that it has a really big spaceship falling out of the sky. I love spaceship crashes, and I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time lavishing detail on the fiery plummet of the ESS Adam Mickiewicz, to pleasing effect. Plus all the alien ecology stuff. That was loads of fun!
Man, this is the toughest question. Which is your favourite child? Do you have a preferred eyeball? Hard – really, really hard. It’s like something an evil drug baron or a Nazi would ask you before cruelly deleting said paragraph.
But, let’s go for the opening paragraph (okay, technically two, but the first is one sentence):
At first Dariusz Szczecinski was dead, then he was not.
Machines hurried him to life more quickly than they should. Preservative fluids were sucked from his circulatory system with undue haste, warmed blood pumped into its place. Mechanisms whose own time was shortly to come ran slapdash checks; the provenance of emergency. High percentiles were lowered, risks were taken that would not ordinarily have been taken. For long seconds the essence of Dariusz hung upon the fences that separate the living from the dead.
Also out this month I have my second novel for The Black Library, Skarsnik, about the the eponymous Goblin King, the Warhammer world’s most devious greenskin. I love goblins. Really, I do. I’ve been playing Warhammer since I was ten, and this was a cool project for me.
The Black Library has way long lead-in times, so I’ve written another novel for BL – The Death of Integrity – since I finished Skarsnik, and am currently writing my fourth, which I can literally tell you nothing about or they’ll cut my favourite paragraphs off. Besides that, I’m mucking around with short stories and waiting on the go-ahead for a couple more original novels.
Crash: Amazon / B&N / Indiebound
Out of all the points I made during last week’s No-No-Misogyny-Fest (it’s like Lilith Fair!), I think the one that maybe generated the most conversation — pointed at me, anyway — was the notion that you might want to read more books by women.
A lot of the response was interesting. Some reasonable, some maybe not so much. Some folks felt they were gender-blind and didn’t want to read books with the gender of the author in mind. Some resented the idea that I was oppressing their bookshelves, as if I were personally coming to their houses and forcing some kind of literary affirmative action upon them (NEEDS MORE JANE AUSTEN). Some folks felt I was suggesting you should grab books by women regardless of quality or content or genre — just, y’know, run to Barnes & Noble and say, “I NEED CHICK BOOKS, STAT” and start grabbing books by them pesky lady-authors off the shelves and into your motorized book cart.
(What, you don’t take a motorized book cart with you to the store? Amateur.)
I’d like to unpack this a little, which means you may have to sit through a little redundancy. (It only stings for a moment.) It’s like this:
First, I’m talking more to writers than readers. Not to say this isn’t a valuable thought exercise for readers, too — but my feeling is that writers should be well-read.
Second, this isn’t about making your bookshelves a perfect Pie Chart reflecting the population diversity found in this country or any other. Further, you don’t need to make your shelves the United Fucking Nations, either. This isn’t about rigorous, enforced heterogenization.
Third, and this bears repeating: nobody is actually making you do this. Cool your nipples, twitchypants. Nobody’s burning your White Dude books. I have lots of White Dude books and, you know, hey, I like them just fine. You want a bookshelf full of nothing but Robert Jordan’s WHEEL OF TIME series in various formats and incarnations, more power to you.
Fourth, nobody’s saying you shouldn’t care about story or genre or content or the things you usually care about. This is about the very safe assumption that the type of books you like to read are probably written by both men and women.
Fifth, reading a book by a woman won’t turn your sperm into a slushy, sterile granita.
Sixth, and finally, this isn’t about feeling shame over your bookshelves.
I’ll retell the story here because, hey, whatever, IT’S MY BLOG I’LL DO WHAT I WANT TO, but it’s like this: about three or so years ago, before I actually had my own novel on the shelves, someone asked me who my favorite women authors were. And I was like, “Robin Hobb, Poppy Z. Brite,” and then I probably mumbled a third name because I couldn’t really think of that many. And when I went back to look at my shelves, it was pretty obvious why. My favorite authors were mostly dudes. And my not-favorite authors were mostly dudes, too.
And I thought, gee, that’s kinda sad. And maybe a little troubling. I always thought of myself as gender-blind, which seemed like such a good thing. Except, gender-blindness goes both ways — it means I might be blind to the other gender. I had an unconscious bias toward reading White Dude books. Which is maybe not the worst thing in the world…
…but it made me a little uncomfortable.
So, I set out on a purposeful mission to read more women authors.
Not some specific percentage — just, y’know, READ MORE OF THEM.
And it wasn’t just some crazy hair-on-fire grab-all-the-books-by-women — it was trying to find out what people liked or what I might like in the genres I preferred to read. And again, it led me to a wealth of wonderful writers — Lauren Beukes, Erin Morgenstern, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Bear, Seanan McGuire, Kim Curran, N.K. Jemisin, Delilah Dawson, Cherie Priest, Gail Simone, etc.etc. — I’m forgetting some and had a long day at the zoo where I rode emus and stole lemurs and so you’ll forgive me if my brain is tired.
Point is, I’m much happier having discovered a wealth of great writers that I had possibly been unconsciously relegating to my White Dude blind spot. Maybe you won’t be, I dunno. But this isn’t about some neat little ratio, some nicely diverse percentage so that your bookshelves look good to your liberal hipster friends. It’s just about reading more widely, more completely. There is genuine value in reading beyond your comfort zone and outside your echo chamber — we sometimes should make an effort to read books by people with different experiences than us. That’s true whether it’s genre or gender or sexual orientation or race or whatever. (Non-fiction is particularly good for this.) No harm in trying, right?
Then again, maybe you already do this. And if so: high-five, what’s the problem?
All of this is, of course, IMHO, YMMV, you do what you like. I’m not your Dad.
The end.
*rides off on an emu with a lemur as a hat*
(See also: today’s guest post by Karina Cooper which covers similar ground.)
Like I said last week, I think part of the role of men in the discussions against sexism and misogyny is to be a signal booster — to help get the word of others out. Karina Cooper — author of the Dark Mission and St. Croix Chronicles books — said she wanted to continue the conversation about women in writing and publishing and the SFF genre, so here she is to talk more about what it means to stay silent in fights like this one:
Can I assume y’all know the history of the USA? Can I go into this comfortable with the understanding that you’re familiar with Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s? Is that, I don’t know, a safe thing to assume?
I have to tell you, I’m just not sure. But because I’m not your mom and I’m not whatever teacher you probably ignored in school, I’ll spare you the summary. You don’t want to hear it from me, anyway. If you’re legitimately clueless, go do some reading. Yes, it’s Wikipedia—I’m not willing to strain anyone’s higher thought processes just yet.
Fast forward forty-five years. We’re still struggling with racial prejudice, but it is widely understood that a man who says, “I strongly believe darker-skinned people will lower the quality of this product” is tantamount to labeling himself the white supremacist fuckless wonder that he is. We have seen evidence of this just recently, yes?
So, that in mind: Would one of these rabid, woman-hating trollskins explain to me how “girls are making sci-fi worse” is any different? I mean, aside from the obvious, which is that one involves people with different color skin than yours and the other is naturally more inclusive, since it involves people of all color… who just happen to have vaginas.
Maybe you, dear reader, missed the memo. If you’ve been absent from the internet for the past forever, here’s a quick refresher: some people think women shouldn’t be writing “real” books, playing or designing “real games,” or speaking about anything at all. Some people, a great many outspoken people, are convinced sexism doesn’t exist.
Guess what? We have always been fighting this fight.
For decades, women and people of color have been barred from the SF/F community due to, I don’t know, some perceived fear of cooties—or a petrifying fear of change. The people refusing them entry—primarily white men—routinely forced authors who weren’t white men to hide behind pseudonyms, behind false biographies, and refused to publish stories that attempted to feature anyone other than white men as heroes.
In the year 2013, this has not changed all that much. It’s not “PC” to bar people of color anymore, but they certainly continue to have a litany of problems going on—usually couched in more subversive terms involving “quality” and “experience.”
The issues women are having, however, seems to come straight out of the lexicon the civil rights movement deemed incorrect for public use—it’s like watching a particularly surreal episode of Mad Men, only everyone’s in jeans and on the internet. For example, in order to get any “credit” (from men, the dominating force in the literary world), women are forced to hide behind initials, or crowbarred into the romance or chicklit genres “where they belong.” They are groped by famous male colleagues, and they are ignored or jeered at on panels.
“But wait, there are all kinds of women published!” you might point out, and you’d be right. There are all kinds of women published. There are all kinds of women in the gaming field. Those who work hard are extremely well-respected, too, for—oh, wait. No, they aren’t. Really, anywhere.
You know what we ladies who are authors and gamers get? Unending amounts of shit from dickstroking mouthbreathers, an avalanche of vile abuse spewed from internet communities filled with spermslugs convinced that they are God’s gift to all who earn their attention. That they, in their tiny little worlds with their tragic lack of a loving orifice that doesn’t come shrink-wrapped in plastic, are the rightful inheritors of multi-million dollar industries—the keyholders to future generations’ creativity and imagination.
And you know what? They are right.
Despite the fact that female gamers make up 47% of the gaming community, despite the fact that women are award-winning authors, we are threatened with rape and violence if we dare to speak up about how we’re treated, by troglodytes so afraid of change that they’ll shout as loud as they possibly can just to get the rest of the world to shut up. They are so awful, so offensive, that the rest of the world looks away with a knowing, “Don’t feed the trolls.” They see the reprehensible behaviors of these soggy foreskins, say with feeling, “Aren’t you glad that’s not me?” and go about their merry days as if that takes care of that—and that, babies, is why it’s working.
Because the only way to avoid feeding the trolls is to be silent—and these trolls are growing up to run your world.
If you’d be so kind, take a look at this reasonable and extremely logical post by Chris F. Holm—a fine author in his own right—and you’ll see he promotes two sound concepts. The second is the most important: be kind to one another, punctuated by a Vonnegut quote that has me calling everyone “babies” when I’m feeling philosophical. But a glance down to the comments mirrors what’s being said in Der Wendighosten’s G+ page: it’s so much better to read a book because of genre, quality, and style than it is to read a book because of gender, and so choosing a book because of gender is just another form of sexism.
Naturally, no one reading a book for quality is a bigot—you certainly can’t be blamed for any prejudice when you’re not paying any attention to the gender, color, or lifestyle of the author. And certainly, being told what and what not to read, for any reason, is anathema to cultivators of book libraries around the world.
The dialogue then becomes something like this: “Of course sexism is bad, that’s why I’m not interested in reading or acquiring books by women just because they’re women—I don’t want to be sexist!” And so the person justifying this pats themselves on the back for being an evolved being, shares some companionable nods with others like them, and lives a happy life knowing they aren’t misogynistic or prejudiced or bigoted. Which is a lovely ideal, but have you finished reading about the civil rights movement yet?
As I recall from my education in the subject, I don’t believe any of the civil rights supporters were saying things like, “Well, naturally, racial prejudice is bad, that’s why I’m not interested in showing people of color any favoritism by shopping at black-owned stores just because they’re black-owned.” In fact, I’ll wager this sort of thing was often said by white people unwilling to make the effort—or to accept the nature of equality at all.
Can you imagine how the civil rights movement would have stalled without open and deliberate support by everyone who claimed to be so open-minded?
I admire Chris a great deal, and hope to one day live the philosophy he shares, but I obviously disagree with him on various executions—primarily, that grace and dignity will see us through the unending amounts of abuse we receive. As far as I’m concerned, centuries of grace and dignity has landed women in this mess. Like my feminist forbears, it’s time to burn a few “foundation garments:” starting with the concept that the silence of good people is any support at all.
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech was not one of waiting—though it was of dignity (okay, point for Chris). Where other revolutionaries and civil rights leaders pushed for violence, King pushed for the power and passion of speech—of “soul” force to meet overwhelming force. And he called on everyone to do it. He spoke of freedoms of color, of class, of religion.
King and the movement supporters pushed for active inclusion—standing side by side with the very same people who wanted them pushed down. He did not stop at penning dignified notes, he did not wait for the power of words to make it through the communities threatening him and those like him with violence. He gathered like-minded folks, that included the powerful voices of white supporters—political and otherwise—to help make it happen, to add their voices to his. To bloody well say something.
Active inclusion, babies. It’s about one person—maybe you?—making the choice to pick up a book by a woman author and giving it a chance, and then treating that book like you would any other book. If you like it, pass it on with glowing recommendations—not because of how the author looks in a bathing suit, or what her genitals might be, but because it’s a good book. If you don’t like it, reasoning why, and have that discussion with your fellow readers.
It means that though you might make it a point to pick up a book because it’s written by a woman, a person of color, a man, an LGBTQ author, you’re passing it on and talking about it because it’s good. Because the author moved you. Because regardless of why you originally grabbed it, the book made you feel.
It’s about adding your voice to support women in gaming, women in writing, women anywhere—just like we would for anyone else. Because if you think this isn’t about you—if you think that I’m only talking to the sad little boys lodged in their circle jerking internet communities, convinced that “cocksucker” is an insult while desperately hoping to meet a real life woman they don’t have to threaten to rape to get some—you are sadly mistaken.
There are literally thousands of men ready and waiting to be unleashed on women like me. Men and boys who make a game of rape threats and violence, who will be spooged out of whatever black hole they dribble from, screaming that I am a threat—that I don’t deserve to live, that I should be raped into silence, that I’m just a bitch and should shut up. These are the same assholes raising boys who think it’s okay to call an eight year old girl a “cunt.”
But I know—I know—that there are thousands more of men and women who are remaining silent, because they know they aren’t among the trolls, that they’re not sexist, that they don’t want to be sexist. And because they know that, they’re content to simply be.
“Simply being” is not enough.
We like to look back at history and say things like, “Gandhi had it right.” We like to suggest that the best way to evoke change is to live quietly, live by example. To quote an erroneous and useless bit of drivel: “be the change you want to see in the world.” They fling this around like it’s gold and fail to remember that part of being that change is taking the opportunity to make a difference, not sit back and “not engage.” We like to think that passive protests, protests without deeds or words, are a thing of peaceful power.
We are wrong. Even Gandhi believed in refusing to bow one’s head—even at the cost of one’s life. And he wasn’t alone; or did you forget the thousands who supported him?
As long as good people are willing to remain silent—to look the other way, shrug and laugh and say, “It’s just trolls,” then people like me are forced to write things like this. As long as people are content to passively protest sexism just by not engaging in it, people like me will continue to feel unsafe at cons, on the street, at parties and in bars, in the movie theater, and—thanks to the pervasive abuse, in our own homes. (Side note: the first person to suggest that there’s no reason to be “that hysterical” gets a goddamn boot in the back of a Volkswagen.)
In the industry I work in, I found that when authors—primarily men, but not always—thought I was a reader, they were all too happy to talk with me about various sci-fi and fantasy subjects, geek hobbies, and the like. As soon as the dreaded, “What do you do?” question cropped up, I’d answer, “Oh, I write romance!” That shut the conversation down. At the nicest, I received a very sweet(ly condescending), “That’s great, honey, good luck with that.” At the worst, a laugh and, “Oh, Christ.”
So I learned how to talk about what I write in ways that don’t use the word “romance”. I spoke of action and adventure, crazy conspiracies, love and loss, blood and murder. At least three different times, men have asked me with great interest where they could acquire my books. When they realized Avon was the publisher, I was given eerily similar versions of: “Oh, I thought it was a real book.”
I have been forced to endure painfully personal questions about my sex life, my fantasies, any regrets that I’m married to a single man and can’t really experience all that’s out there to write about it—“write what you know,” to this day, remains one of my most violent rage triggers.
You know what I don’t hear? Anyone asking George R. R. Martin if the rape sequences in Game of Thrones is based on personal experience. I don’t hear anyone credible asking John Scalzi if the RT Reviewer’s Choice Award is a real award, anyway. I don’t hear anyone critiquing Jim C. Hines for his outfit, Neil Gaiman for his lack of makeup of hair products. No one is asking Chuck if the sex in Blackbird is a fantasy of his—or if his spouse is laying him regularly.
You know what I’m asked? If I write “aggressive men” in my books, and if that’s because I have a secret fantasy of being raped. I have been asked if I write myself into all my heroines, because I just want a man to save me—or dominate me. I’m asked if my husband supports me by helping me “block out my sex scenes”. I’m asked if he’s “okay” with me being a writer—as if it’s a personal hobby or darling quirk. One fellow laughed when he heard how crazy my deadlines can be, expressing concern that I’m not “putting out” enough for my husband to make his tolerance of my writing worth it.
You know what I’m not asked? If men can put their hands on me—which they then proceed to do. Why? Because the pervasive mentality is that men write and women “engage in a hobby.” That we’re there to “spruce up the place,” to be “token girls,” to give an appearance of inclusion without having to actually commit. I am a piece of decorative furniture, there to give the audience—comprised of men and women, because money is money, no matter the wallet it comes from—something nice to look at. “Look, ladies, here’s one of you sitting among us real authors! Guys, don’t worry about her, we won’t ask her anything too tough.”
That’s the atmosphere that needs to change. Just as Chuck is not your toy—not your “token beard” to be admired, not your manmeat waiting with bated breath to be told how nice he looks in a swim suit—neither am I. Neither are any of the women writing and reading and gaming in this industry.
Change does not happen in a vacuum. For every person refusing to go out of your way to give a book written by a woman a chance, that’s a voice held in check, silent against the hatred and oppression barring our way.
We don’t need gender-blindness, we need awareness. We need help. Not talking about it, not acknowledging the problem, only feeds the same trolls hammering us down. As long as good men and women remain silent, convinced they’re not part of the problem, we don’t have the support we need to stand up to the misogynists shouting us down.
One day, we all will be on a level playing field, and then we can afford to be blind. One day, women will be recognized for the qualities of their work and not the qualities of their bodies, one day people of color will be referenced first by their accomplishments and not by their heritage, one day LGBTQ people will be lauded for their achievements and not what they do in the bedroom—but this is not that day.
My plea: Give books written by women and games by and featuring women a chance. Give them the same chance you’d give a new genre, a new type of story, a game in general. Maybe you’re picking it up because it’s in your favorite genre and it’s written by a woman, maybe you’re reading it because some old guy said it was trash and because it’s written by a woman. Whatever the reason, let the motive for passing it on be this: it’s a damn good book or game, and you’d like to see more women who create like this get the same opportunities men already have to share it.
This isn’t about wars on the internet. It’s about acceptance—going a little further to give people struggling against obvious and sometimes violent oppression a helping hand. Where will it start, if not with you?
