Process: Dean Alfar and Joey Nacino talk about process and challenges in Filipino SFF

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Dean Alfar, Joseph Nacino, The Farthest Shore

Aside from the book reviews and interviews with authors, we’ve decided to include occasional posts wherein we ask those who bring us fantastic works from various disciplines to share their process, challenges and struggles with us.

We hope that we’ll be able to share more of these kinds of posts as time passes.

Today on the book blog, we’re very pleased to have Dean Alfar and Joey Nacino. Dean Francis Alfar’s work has been anthologized in various anthologies, among them The Year’s Best Horror and Fantasy edited by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link and Gavin Grant and in the first Apex Book of World SF edited by Lavie Tidhar. He is the founder and publisher of the annual Philippine Speculative Fiction series, and is a multiple winner of the Carlos Palanca Literary competition. His short novel, Salamanca, won first place for the Carlos Palanca Novel division in 2005. He is also the author of two short story collections, The Kite of Stars and Other Stories, and the recently released How to Traverse Terra Incognita. He is one of the most prolific and innovative writers of the Filipino Speculative Fiction and a mainstay of the Philippine SFF scene.

Joseph “Joey” Nacino is a writer of speculative fiction. He is a consistent contributor to the Philippine Speculative Fiction annual anthologies and to Philippine Genre Stories.  He has edited a number of anthologies among them the e-anthology, Diaspora Ad Astra. The recently released second-world anthology The Farthest Shore was edited by Joseph Nacino and Dean Alfar.

Could you share a little bit about the experience of editing an anthology together. How does it work? Who picks what and who gets the final say? 

Dean: This edition of The Farthest Shore prints the digital anthology we put together in 2008 or 2009.  Looking back, I must confess my memory is hazy.  I recall sitting with Joey as we hammered out details – from the secondary world concept to the list of authors we hoped to solicit stories from.  We shared the work, with Joey doing the lion’s share of getting the antho’s online version up, as well as coordinating with UP Press for the print edition.  This is one of three books under Estranghero Press, so really, it’s Joey’s show and I’m along for the ride.

Joey: This was the first time Dean and I worked on an anthology though we’ve known each other for some time. The Farthest Shore was the first in the series of online anthologies I wanted to set up. My idea at that time was that I would seek the help of a co-editor for each book of the series: the co-editor would be the vision who would guide the particular anthology while my job would be the series editor (from the online Estranghero Press to the eventually-named Stranger Fiction print series with UP Press).

I was working with Dean at that time and we were shooting the breeze. Naturally I broached the idea to him and he was the first person I thought to ask to help me in setting up the fantasy anthology.

Dean was the one who picked the stories, as well as approved the stories I picked for consideration. (I think. Dean, did I remember this right?) Likewise my own contribution to the antho.

What were things that you considered important in the selection of the stories? 

Dean: For me, the story needed to have a strong sense of a secondary world, which is not an easy feat in short fiction – the novelistic space is far kinder, permitting more setting description and development. Second, character was important, it always is for me.  And finally, the story had to be well-written.

Choosing to focus on secondary worlds was something that Joey and I felt very strongly about.  As Filipino fantasy writers writing in English, we all need to negotiate and come to terms with many internal conflicts, one of the biggest of which is what makes our fantasy stories Filipino? As readers, we all enjoyed and explored the fantasy worlds of Lewis, Tolkien, Silverberg and many other Western authors.  So our influences are western in origin.  But we are also members of the Filipino and Asian cultural traditions.  So why even write western-style fantasy?  Why not just write and develop Filipino-informed stories?

As a writer, I do both.  My Hinirang-based stories are fantasies but not western-derived.  But I also write secondary world fantasies – because I believe I am also a member and part of the greater fantasy traditions, the fantasy worlds of the imagination that know no national boundaries. This is something each Filipino fantasy writer needs to negotiate – the responsibility of writing within our own cultures and embracing the universal aspects of fantasy stories that belong to us all regardless of skin color or background.

Joey: The most important is: it should be a good story. What connotes a good story? I’m sure Dean has his own standards, parameters, etc. But for myself, it should be something that draws me in, swirls me around and spews me out with a smile. That’s the closest description I have for a good story.

For this anthology, the main consideration was that it should have the element of the secondary fantasy world. The concept of the secondary world should be believable AND real, i.e. it’s not just the imagining of the protagonist.  

Having edited projects like this one in previous years, I think this gives you a better idea of what the sf/f field looks like in the Philippines. Would you share some of your insights. (comparing perhaps what it was like in the beginning as compared to today). 

Dean: When I edited the first Philippine Speculative Fiction annual, things were quite different.  Today, more Filipino spec fic is being published both locally and abroad.  Academe is open to genre fiction where before only Realism was considered valid literature – there are college courses on speculative fiction now and papers being written.  In the literary workshops, fantasy and scifi are being accepted and discussed, and the discourse is exciting.  Speculative fiction has won prestigious awards such as the Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature and the Philippines Free Press Award.  More people are writing, and with ebooks, more material is being published.

Joey: From what I remember (though the timeline in my head may be incorrect), one of the reasons I wanted to set up an online anthology series then was the fact that I wanted to open up another market for local spec fic. Dean’s PSF series had been consistent throughout the years but the other outlets had started to drop. Kenneth Yu had stopped publishing the print edition of the Digest of Philippine Genre Stories (before he decided to bring it online), the giant-sized Story Magazine seemed to have evaporated, and the Fully-Booked graphic/fiction contests had finally run out of gas.

Alas, like those efforts, I found out that it’s hard to keep something like that running for so long. (Which is why props to Dean for PSF.) Nowadays, I still feel that there’s a dearth of markets for writers to submit their works. Philippine Graphic is still alive but unfortunately Free Press is also gone. Dean and Sarge have the upcoming Volume, yes, but I presume this will be a yearly thing.

On the writing side, I feel there are a lot of untapped writers out there as evidenced by some relatively new names in these anthos. Personally, I’m glad that I was able to give these writers the publishing space that they need. (Of course, more new writers mean more new stories and more ways to tell stories.)  

What do you feel are the biggest obstacles for sf/f writers in the Philippines? 

Dean: We need to create more venues of publication and better ways of marketing the books.  We need to publish on two fronts – in print as well as digitally, to reach more people.  We need to promote Filipino works of sf/f and get more people more excited to read their own.  We need more anthologies in non-English languages of the Philippines, and we need to go broader with genres.

Joey: Right now, I think the biggest block to aspiring writers is the need to actually write their stories and submit them to publications. Or if they can’t find outlets, maybe they should create them in the same way I did. Yes, there’s not much respect or money in publishing your story in your blog. But it’s not the venue but the decision to act, the decision to write it down where someone else can read it. That’s what matters.

As writers, what are the biggest challenges that you face? 

Dean: For the average young writer, the challenges are same as the ones more experienced writers face:  crafting a well-written story and finding a market for it.

 Joey: I love creating these anthologies. Unfortunately, I can see why there’s a certain dichotomy between editors and writers: editing books take time, and this takes me away from writing my own stories. So I have to choose: be an editor or be a writer. I know there are some editors who are also writers (or writers who are also editors). Kelly Link and Jeff Vandermeer come to mind. But I can’t do both; I’m not as good as they are, either as a writer or editor.

We hope that you’ve enjoyed reading this feature on process. The Farthest Shore and Diaspora Ad Astra are soon available from UP Press. The Speculative Fiction Anthologies and Dean Alfar’s books are available from Amazon.com. You can also look for them at Flipreads. Joseph Nacino’s Logovore, which won the Philippine Graphic competition is available online at Fantasy Magazine.

On twitter, Dean is @DeanAlfar and Joseph Nacino is @banzai_cat

**Let us know what you think of this feature. Please leave a comment or write us at chieandweng at gmail dot com. Thank you for reading. 

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Author Interview: Sabrina Vourvoulias

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Ink, novel, Sabrina Vourvoulias

Ink is a complex novel with many layers among other things, it deals with many issues relevant to us today. We interviewed the author, Sabrina Vourvoulias for more backstory.

Where were you when you received word that Ink was going to be published? And what was your first reaction? 

I was at home, and I think I might have been speechless for a few minutes (which for me is a very long time). But I didn’t actually submit my manuscript for publication consideration ….

My great good fortune was that my first short story sale was to Kay Holt and Bart Leib at Crossed Genres. I got to know Kay via Twitter and she was always very enthusiastic about my stories. At the time I didn’t have a regular writing group, but I had joined the huge online writer’s workshop and so took the uncharacteristic step of posting what was then the first chapter of the novel I had been working on and which nobody had even alpha read. Hubris? Need? Temporary derangement? Within seconds of posting it I was regretting it.

Then Elizabeth Bear selected my chapter as one of her editorial critiques, and though she said some lovely things about it, all I could focus on were the negatives.

I told Kay (via tweet, our primary method of conversation those days) how disheartened I was, and she kindly asked to read it. Then she asked for the rest of the novel, which was only 3/4 done. Then she asked for the last 1/4 which, really, ended up being my prompt to write it. I’m not at all sure I would have finished it otherwise.

After I sent that along, she told me very casually that she had given it to Bart to read. That made me very nervous — I knew Kay liked my work from the get-go, but Bart? I wasn’t so sure — he was the acerbic dude with the great Twitter avatar who rarely interacted with me on Twitter — no way was he going to like what I had written. It wasn’t smart enough, not funny enough, not hip enough. Well, you know, all the stuff my brain could throw up to castigate me for my audacity in letting anyone read this novel that had taken me f-o-r-e-v-e-r to write.

At some point, after Bart had finished reading it, they told me they wanted to publish it.  I’ve since been told that Bart was the one who pushed for INK’s publication, but I’ll always believe in my heart of hearts that it was at Kay’s insistence. But, who cares how it got there as long as it ended up there. Crossed Genres has been a happy home for my firstborn.

They say that every story starts with a seed, would you tell us what was the seed that brought about Ink? 

I’ve been advocating for immigrant rights and engaged in pro-immigration actions for a long time now. I’ve watched the public conversation morph into its current virulent anti-immigrant, anti-Latino, incarnation. I had written a few short stories with undocumented and documented Latin@s as protagonists (my Crossed Genres story “Flying with the Dead,” for example), but when I started writing a novel it wasn’t about immigration at all. It was more of an urban fantasy with a monster as its main protagonist — closer in spirit to the collection of stories I’m writing now than to INK.

But then a catalyst.

I read a tiny article in the back pages of a Spanish-language U.S. newspaper, about an undocumented immigrant working for a landscaper in the New York suburbs. One day, walking home from work, he was offered a ride, which he accepted. The driver (and a friend) drove the immigrant over the Connecticut border and dumped him there without cell phone, money, or any sense of where he was, and warned him not to come back to their state. The article went on to say that this wasn’t the first “border dump” undocumented immigrants in the area had experienced. After reading the article, I kept waiting for the mainstream news to pick it up, or to report on similar incidents, or something. But there was just silence.

So I started working on a fictional border dump story.

But it wasn’t a novel and still not INK.

It turned into INK after two incidents in Philadelphia which shifted my thinking about anti-immigrant sentiment — from individual acts of prejudice and persecution to the institutionalization of it. I wrote about both incidents, at length, on my blog, Following the Lede, but in short: one was about an undocumented immigrant who was deported because he was waiting for a subway when an ICE agent whisked him away to run an immigration check on him — on the basis of his Latino look and Spanish accent alone. He disappeared into the detention system and his family didn’t know where he was for a week, until he was able to make a call after he had already been deported to Mexico.

The other incident was during a police crackdown on a supposed “prostitution ring” in South Philadelphia, which happens to be where many Mexican immigrants live. An acquaintance of mine, who is undocumented, had her door busted down in middle of the night and she and her young kids awoke to eight officials already inside the apartment. They questioned her about her husband and his brother who lived with them (both already on their way to work at a restaurant) and rifled through their things. They took both men’s passports with them when they left, and refused to tell her what it meant — would her husband be detained? Deported? Did she have to present herself somewhere? What about her kids? No answers. In the end it was impossible to not see this incident for what it was: a way of instilling fear in a vulnerable community.

Anyway, both these incidents were strongly reminiscent of the routine violations of civil rights and intimidation tactics that took place in Guatemala during the years of martial law and internal armed conflict when I lived there. It was really only two or three steps removed…. Thus a dystopia was born.

Mari, Meche and Abbie are very strong and memorable characters and they go through a lot. What were the most difficult scenes for you to write for these characters? 

The hardest scene for me to write for Mari was when she was left alone in the woods just this side of the Canadian border. The border dump scene is replete with  nasty moments, but through it all, Mari is still fighting in what way she can for Nely and the children and herself — so there’s the sense that there’s still this fire of resistance and hope burning brightly inside her. When she’s left in the woods, she’s safer than she was before but she’s failed the other members of her community of circumstance and she’s filled with a survivor’s mix of relief and guilt (her relative safety is predicated on a privilege) and an acute loneliness which effectively paralyzes her. The fire that burns inside comes mighty close to winking out then and that’s always a bleak thing to write.

The most difficult scenes to write with Meche were the ones at the inkatorium. The thing about Meche is that she is such a self-possessed character, and one with such agency that the process of eroding her sense of identity, and forcing her into a situation in which she couldn’t take action, couldn’t employ her intellect or her will to get herself free, was a painful one to write. You take something whole and subject it to what you know is the only thing that’ll break it … ugh.

Abbie — ¡ay, Dios mio! — I put her through such harsh things for a young character. The worst for me was how it ends with Toño. I was so deeply in her head at that point that I was just as devastated as she was. I tried to rewrite it, honestly, I did. But nothing else rang true. This does. My daughter says she’s never forgiving me, though.

You’re also a journalist, as a well as a blogger, an activist and a writer. Of the stories you’ve covered is there one that stands out for you and what is it about this particular story that makes it memorable? 

Two come to mind. The story I referenced before — the one about the undocumented immigrant “disappeared” from one of the busiest public transit hubs in Philadelphia — was why I started blogging in the first place. I wanted desperately to write that story for the newspaper I was working for then, but by the time I found out about it six months had passed since the incident and I couldn’t dig up enough verification from official sources to run it. That’s why history is so filled with holes: because the real stories are lost by time, official sources always get their say and the credibility of witnesses — particularly those deemed part of an underclass — is either impugned or “not enough.”

The other story came early in my career, at my first newspaper. It involved an African-American migrant farmworker in the 1960s, who had gone missing after the Central New York part of the picking circuit that started and ended back in Florida. His mother and sister contacted the newspaper, 20+ years after his last letter home, hoping we could find out if he had died there, since he had literally disappeared. (Clearly disappearance is one of the recurring motifs in my work as a journalist and fiction writer.)

This was long before the internet became what it is today, and I painstakingly went through local newspaper records at the local university and mined the memories of longtime residents of the town.

It was fascinating. I realized that back in the ‘60s, in small towns like Hamilton, townspeople interacted a lot more with the migrant workers who came through to pick their crops. There were church socials held on the town green to which the migrant workers were invited, for example. And the migrants would play baseball a few times against the town team while they were there. In contrast, when I was writing the story in the ‘80s, the owners of the largest local commercial farm wouldn’t even admit they hired migrant workers — despite the undeniable influx of people of color to coincide with cabbage picking season.

But I also heard a lot of stories of unabashed racism since most of the migrant workers on that particular circuit in the 1960s were African American. In INK, when Chato tells Del that the bartenders in Smithville don’t refuse service to the inks but throw the glasses on the floor when they’re done so no one else has to drink from the same one, the story is straight from the recollections of one of the persons I interviewed for the article.

I never could say with certainty what had happened to the migrant worker I was researching, but I did uncover two unidentified migrant deaths in the area that worked with the time frame of his disappearance. One migrant drowned in a pond where the workers were allowed to swim and cool off after work; this death was recorded in a newspaper. The other unidentified migrant worker — according to the recollections of a resident — had decided to overwinter in the migrant quarters instead of returning home after the last picking season. He had frozen to death inside the ramshackle, unheated building.

It was heartbreaking to hear of a person used to winters in the far South being caught unawares by the long, harsh winter of Central New York, but the details are what really make my heart clench: there wasn’t much in left in that building since it wasn’t meant to be inhabited during those months, but the migrant had cobbled together a shelter within the shelter, using a table and whatever other meager furnishings were left there. There were houses and farms not even a half-mile away from migrant quarters, but he was an African American, and an “outsider” who was supposed to only be in the area a short while. Had he asked for shelter at any of nearby homes and been rebuffed? Had he been too scared or proud to ask? Or had some violent act of racism been passed off as tragedy?

The passing mention in the local newspaper only mentioned that the body was found in the spring, without so much as a blanket wrapped around it, as the shelter was being aired out for the upcoming picking season.

I won an award from New York Press Association for the series of articles I wrote about this, but it was also my greatest failure as a journalist. It is an unfinished story, and every human life deserves a real ending.

What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced as a journalist? 

Hmmm. External or internal? The recurring external challenge is that when people — particularly public figures — see their words staring back at them in print (or onscreen or in video) they often want to recontextualize, to explain them away and rephrase in retrospect. Since they can’t accuse of inaccuracy, they accuse of agenda and pushing a point of view. My internal challenge is not unrelated: I believe the ideal of “objective” reportage is a fallacy and the only code journalists can really adhere to is one of accuracy and fairness — which I have tried damned hard not to violate. But I do have a point of view. We all do. We come to a story packing baggage — our experiences, our identities, our moral codes — and though we try to present the facts in as uninflected a fashion as possible just our decision to pursue that particular story, at that particular time and in that particular way, already makes it subjective.

Latin@ journalists have an additional challenge, shared by other journalists of color. If we work at mainstream newspapers — most of the newspapers I’ve worked at — stories from our communities rank pretty low on the priority list. When we work in the ethnic media — as I do now — no matter how extraordinary the work we do, we’re always considered second-rank.

Worse, our stories get mined by mainstream media without an iota of hesitation or credit. Recently one of Al Día’s videotaped interviews — with PA Governor Tom Corbett saying he couldn’t find Latinos to hire for his staff — was pulled off our web site by Think Progress. They didn’t credit us at all (we were just nameless Latin@s at a Spanish-language newspaper) until we pushed them to. But by then all the major online news outlets — from Huff Po to Salon — were running articles with our video appended that perpetuated the omission. This would never have happened if we were a mainstream news media company. But a small Latino media company? Boy howdy. One of the mainstream media people I spoke to about getting the provenance of the video noted somewhere in the copy, had the temerity to tell me that we should be grateful that our video had gotten any attention at all from big media players. My response was that it had gotten the attention it got because, as a Latino media organization, we had asked the governor a question mainstream media never, ever thinks to ask.

I follow a lot of African American women bloggers and writers on Twitter who note this uncredited “borrowing” by mainstream sites, or white bloggers with big followings, happens to them all the time. It’s really shameless and needs to be called out every time it happens.

Who are your major influences? .

As a fiction writer I have been influenced by a slew of writers. I don’t accept the wall between genre and non-genre so you’re going to get them all mixed together: Gabriel García Márquez, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Jorge Luis Borges, Elena Poniatowska, Uwem Akpan, Margaret Atwood, Barbara Kingsolver, Amy Tan, Charles de Lint, Sandra Cisneros, Ursula le Guin, Ana Castillo, Julia Alvarez, Denise Chávez, Demetria Martínez, and innumerable poets from Yehuda Amichai to Joy Harjo.

Ooof, I could go on and on. My work is influenced by visual arts too, and movies, and music — but I think I’ll spare you that list.

 Are there books you’ve read that you’d like to recommend? 

Again, genre and non-genre: Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor. Salsa Nocturna by Daniel José Older. Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros. The Long Night of the White Chickens by Francisco Goldman. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. And I don’t think he has a book yet, but I’ll also read any and all short stories by Ken Liu — who I think may be the voice of this generation of U.S. SFF writers.

 And where on the internet can we find you? 

INK’s web site is www.inknovel.com, though it doesn’t get updated terribly frequently—but you can read a number of the reviews it’s gotten. My blog is www.followingthelede.blogspot.com My newspaper editorials and columns are at www.pontealdia.com. I’m on Goodreads, I have pages on Facebook and Google+, and you can follow me on Twitter @followthelede.

Book Review: Ink by Sabrina Vourvoulias

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Crossed Genres Publication, First novel, Ink, Sabrina Vourvoulias

Reviewed by Rochita C. Ruiz

“Ledes are opening words, leading is the space between lines, and leads are the embryonic matter of stories.”

This is how Ink begins. It tells the story of a dystopic near-future from the point of view of four major characters, Finn, Mari, Del and Abbie.

The Ink in Vourvoulias’s title refers to the identity tattoos which are given to temporary residents and to citizens with a recent migrant history.

Finn, a reporter, is following the lead to a story which brings him back to his old parish church. There he meets his parish priest, Father Tom, and it is there where he meets Mari for the first time.

It is through Finn’s eyes that we are first drawn into the world of the inked. It is through his eyes that we are first made to see the privilege owned by those who are not inked as opposed to those who are inked like Mari.

Vourvoulias’s Ink is a complex novel. It is social and political and it is clearly informed not only by history but also by present political events. Vourvoulias tackles the subjects of genocide and xenophobia and while Vourvoulias’s characters all own magic to some degree, it isn’t a magic that magically saves them or the world, but it is a magic that helps them to heal and become stronger in the face of the suffering and the opposition they must endure.

Much of what takes place in Ink feels like it could really happen. The treatment accorded to the inks, for instance, is reminiscent of the growing xenophobic atmosphere in the US as well as in other western countries today. And the harsh and inhumane treatment accorded to those found or suspected as not being registered inks reminds me of stories told about the treatment accorded to those who dare to cross the American border from Mexico.

Vourvoulias has strong authorial voice. Her writing style is clean and crisp, engaging the reader on an emotional level without being over the top.  Ink is not an easy read, but I do feel that it is a necessary read.

We give this novel 5 charms.

*This novel was purchased from Amazon. Clicking on the image will get you there.

**Ink is published by Crossed Genres Publication. You can find them here.

Interview with J.M. Sidorova

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J. M. Sidorova, The Age of Ice

The Age of Ice, is J.M. Sidorova’s first published novel. I attended Clarion West with Julia and her work has always been fascinating and dense. Her first novel offers the reader the promise of more good things to come.

 

The Age of Ice is a very dense novel. The language is beautiful, the world is rich and you have a very intriguing character with an intriguing condition. What was the source of inspiration for your main character and what made you decide to give him this particular condition? 

It so happens that The Age of Ice has a very specific point of origin. One day in 2006 I was reading the New Yorker article called Ice Renaissance written by Elif Batuman. The article described two actual events:  the building, in 1740, of an Ice Palace in St. Petersburg, and then the palace’s recreation in 2006. The first time, the palace was built as a figment of imagination of the ruling empress, an ultimate of courtly entertainment, as exotic as it was savage: two jesters were forced to wed and spend their wedding night in the ice palace. The second time around — the palace was built as a tourist attraction, with kids climbing all over ice balustrades and ice cannons.  Like the author of the article, I am fascinated by these kinds of ironies and haunts of history. When I next read that there was an actual child, a boy, born to the ice-wed parents, I knew I had to write a novel about it. All I did was add another boy to the narrative, a non-identical twin. It was self-evident to me that because of the circumstances of their conception, the boys would be extraordinary. One, Alexander, would be different in a very profound way. Another, Andrei —in a way that was more subtle but nonetheless important to the story.

It’s a great debut novel, Julia. What was the most challenging part of writing it? How did you overcome that challenge? 

Thank you. There was more than one challenge along the way. One of the bigger, if not the biggest one was probably my self-imposed challenge to adhere to historical facts, big and small, on the one hand, and on the other, to “own” the historical characters whom I invited into the narrative, to be able to take over their voices, make their decisions for them, and ultimately, to make a story and a plot out of their lives. How did I overcome this challenge? By writing and rewriting some parts of the book three-four times.

How much research did you have to put into this novel? What was the resource that was most helpful to you in the writing of it? 

A lot. There were many different kinds of resources, each helpful in its own way. Books in Russian, in English. Any old (a hundred, two hundred year-old) British books or periodicals, relevant and seemingly irrelevant, digitized by Project Guttenberg or Google, or reprinted by small publishers who are dedicated to old, odd, obscure books. YouTube videos in which some retired guy lovingly put together a manual on how to shoot a circa 18^th century black powder pistol. Folks who do reenactments of Napoleonic battles. The library of my university, where you can go and ask for some quality time with a two-hundred year-old book of beautiful drawings, a tome so frail you have to rest it on foam blocks to open it.

Say someone decided to turn your novel into a film and wanted you to play one of the characters, who would you choose to be and why? 

Now that’s a hard question. Unfortunately, most of the parts are not for me – people are either too old or too young, or of another ethnicity or the wrong gender. I was in a school play once, in a leading role, and in retrospect I do not think I did a very good job. So I guess I’ll take some minor supporting role or a cameo, like that of a Princess Dashkova — look all important in a corset and a crinoline and speak only three lines or so.

What has been the most interesting experience about being a published novelist? 

Hmm. I haven’t been a published novelist for long enough to collect observations that might be particularly interesting. In general, it is curious how nothing really changed and yet it has. I think I now expect —demand — more of myself, too, though I still do not know what I am doing, half the time. It will be an interesting journey out.

Where can we find you on the internet? 

My website is www.jmsidorova.com and my blog is www.jmsidorova.blogspot.com  

Thanks for your time, Julia. Big Sis Weng’s review of The Age of Ice is here as are links to where you can obtain a copy of the book. Julia is also offering a free copy of a companion story to The Age Ice through Amazon. Get your free copy of The Colors of Cold.  

Book Review: The Age of Ice by J. M. Sidorova

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J. M. Sidorova, The Age of Ice

 Reviewed by Rowena C. Ruiz

Sidorova’s book the Age of Ice is an epic story spanning two centuries.  It explores the life of on Prince Alexander  Velitsyn who was born with a special power – the ability to make ice.  Unfortunately, this ability has a drawback:  the more he feels emotions, the more ice he makes.   This becomes a barrier to having normal relationships with others.  He learns to become controlled and reserved in the expression of his emotions, so as not to injure others.  His twin Andrei, however, has no such problems and goes on to marry and have a son.  Despairing of ever having a normal life, Alexander embarks on a quest to find out what he truly is and how he can control or get rid of his ability.

The book chronicles Alexander’s attempts come to terms with his extraordinary ability.  While some of us would regard such power as a blessing, Alexander looks upon it as a curse because it prevents him from living a normal life.  In truth, his struggle and journey is more with himself.  The only time that Alexander seems to have accepted that his ability can be a blessing is during his married years with Anna, who has accepted him for what he is.  However, after Anna’s death, Alexander is burdened by guilt and embarks on a journey in search of self once more.

Alexander’s struggle is a reflection of the struggle that we have within ourselves.  Like Alexander, we struggle with facets in our personality and make-up that frighten us.  Just like Alexander, we long for love and acceptance.  Just like Alexander, there lurks the fear that if those around us knew the full extent of who and what we can be, rejection and loneliness.  Thus we sometimes go to extremes to conceal the “dark side” of who we are.  We wear masks and seek to mold ourselves into something that others perceive us to be.  We deny the less desirable parts of ourselves and live a life of pretense.

In time Alexander learns to accept that his talent is an integral part of who he is and achieves a measure of peace.   He finds that the thing he feared the most is not necessarily a curse but can be used and harnessed to the benefit of mankind.  So too with us, when we learn to accept who we are both the bad and good parts, then our outlook changes.  Instead of looking inward and watching out for ourselves, our worldview expands to include those around us.  Like Alexander, we too find that those facets of our personality that we fear the most are not so fearful after all and can be harnessed for the common good.

This is the first work of Sidorova that I’ve read and I found myself empathizing with Alexander.  His fear of rejection held him back from sharing his condition with others, but that did not stop him from looking for those who would unconditionally accept him.  Thus the book is also a call for us to be sensitive to others’ needs and situations.  While we may not always understand or approve the actions of others, we must learn to look beyond actions to the real person beneath and accept for who they truly are.  It may be that our acceptance of them will be the motivation that they need to step out from the shadows and reveal who they really are.

We give this book a rating of 4 charms.

The Age of Ice is published by Simon and Schuster and is available through various book vendors.  For this review, we were granted a review copy via netgalley.

Interview with Aliette de Bodard

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Aliette de Bodard, Interview, On a Red Station Drifting

Aliette de Bodard’s Novella, On a Red Station Drifting (Immersion Press, 2012) has been the recipient of much critical acclaim. It has appeared on the Locus Recommended Reading List for 2012, and is a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards for Best Novella. You can read Weng’s review, right here.

Q:  One of the themes that runs through On A Red Station Drifting is that of family. It’s also a theme that recurs in your short fiction. How important was it to you include family in your work and what was your source of inspiration for the conflict between your Linh and Quyen?

Family has always been important to me, and that’s why it’s a recurring theme in my fiction. With On a Red Station Drifting, I was trying to write a space-based novella that would have family as its primary focus, instead of war exploits or military doings. The source of inspiration for the conflict between the two main characters came naturally from the universe they were moving in : it’s a place where two different sources of power are contrasted – the one wielded by scholars, and the more domestic one of the lesser spouses. The scholarly power was held to be the dominant one, so it makes sense to have a character who was a scholar but had lost that power, and to contrast her with one of the lesser spouses, who had gained in power because of the war. That put them on a sort of equal footing, and also created tensions on both ends without my having to do much of anything at all!

Q:  You continue to produce a prodigious amount of work. You’re a prolific writer of short fiction, you’re working on your novels, and you also write criticism and commentary. At the same time, you also have a dayjob. How do you balance all of these? When do you write?

Mostly I write when I can! It’s not easy to balance all of that but I’ve had a lot of practice. I’m mostly unable to balance anything else with the writing of a novel, so I have to plan for this in advance. I write mostly in the evenings, on weekends and pretty much during any chunk of spare time I can grab.

Q:  On your blog, you write and post regularly about food. Out of the dishes you’ve posted about, which one is your favorite?

This is a bit like choosing your favourite child, isn’t it? I like you different dishes at different times and in different moods (and my absolute favourite dishes are actually quite simple and not worthy of posting, like shrimp with white rice or pan-fried fish with just a drizzle of nuoc mam). If I really had to pick a favourite, it would be the bi cuon (pork and rind rolls). I’m a latecomer to it, but there’s something about the mixture of the meat, the fish-mint (diếp cá) and red perilla, all plunged into a simple dipping sauce, that’s simply heavenly.

(of course there’s phở, but phở is darn hard and darn long to make at home, and it’s simpler to go to a restaurant for that…)

Q: It’s been said that food and emotions are connected. What dishes have an emotional connection for you? And if it’s not too personal, is there a story behind it?

A lot of dishes have emotional connections for me, because they bring back memories from my childhood. For instance, noodle soup with xá xíu (barbecued pork) always reminds me of the small Chinese restaurant where we’d go to eat with my mother, and the steps of Maubert Mutualité, where my sister and I would play in the sun while Mum did her shopping in the nearby Vietnamese grocery.

Similarly, chả lụa (Vietnamese ham/paté/mortadelle) sliced in sticks and put in a baguette brings back tons of memories, because it was the sandwiches we’d have before leaving on holidays for Brittany or my grandparents’ house.

Q: Since we’re talking about food, if Linh were to visit your home, what dish would you serve her? What about Quyen?

I will cheat here, and just pick a single dish instead of the 3-4 I should be picking for a proper Vietnamese meal! (I’ll just pick a “savoury” dish, and leave my cook to handle the headache of picking other savoury dishes, the vegetables and the matching soup).

If Linh visited my home, I would go for something very refined, possibly an allusion either to her name or her achievement, to make clear that she was a welcome guest under my roof. It would be a time consuming and upmarket dish made with the best ingredients. However, it would also have to be something that I can cook, which excludes stuff like Jade under the Mountain (wonderful dish involving a mound of rice that used to be a mainstay at weddings, I’m not sure if it’s still the case in modern Vietnam). A compromise would probably be homemade xá xíu, which has the advantage of being a Chinese dish, therefore likely to appeal to Linh in a universe where China is the cultural reference (especially for magistrates). Cut in small slices and served with cooked shrimps and bánh hỏi (thin rectagular slices of rice vermicelli), and topped with scallion rings: the final dish would brought to the table as a circle with the meat in the centre, the shrimps around it, and the bánh hỏi in a third ring. It would look stylish and impressive.

Quyen, I think, would be more impressed by simple dishes done well, rather than ostentatious things: I would serve her a simple steamed seabass (with shallots and maybe a few tomatoes) topped with a classic dipping sauce, to better bring out the flavour of the fish.

Q: If you were given a choice to have one of your stories realized as a film,  which one would you choose and why?

My pick would probably be “Scattered along the River of Heaven” : it’s one of my favourite stories, dealing with a number of themes that are very important to me, and I think the entwined story lines would make for a very interesting and arresting visual treatment – the bots in particular, but also the poetry which I wrote with reading aloud in mind. It would probably go way over budget, though!

Q:  Tell us a bit about what you’re working on now?

I am currently working on a post-apocalyptic urban fantasy set in Paris; but in a very different version of Paris, where fallen angels hold power and where the colonial empire still exists. The novel follows the fortunes of three very different characters : one of the most powerful Fallen, a grieving alchemist with a drug addiction, and a former Vietnamese Immortal, in exile after a events roughly similar to World War One. And of course there’s additional magic, murder and mayhem!

Q:  Where can we find you on the internet?

My website is at aliettedebodard.com, and my twitter handle is aliettedb

We hope you enjoyed reading this interview. Please do take the time to check out more of Aliette’s work.

Book Review: On a Red Station Drifting by Aliette de Bodard

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Aliette de Bodard, On a Red Station Drifting

Reviewed by Rowena C. Ruiz

Have you ever lived with a relative you’ve met for the first time?  What was that experience like?  Aliette’s On a Red Station Drifting records what happens when the Le Thi family meets one of their relatives for the first time.  

The encounter takes place when Linh comes to Prosper Station seeking refuge.  The Ancestress, the Mind that manages the planet, accepts Linh, but Quyen, the System Administrator is wary of her. Linh does not fit the mold of a refugee and so Quyen seeks to put her in her place – to mold her into something she is not.

What follows is a clash of wills as Linh and Quyen struggle to assert themselves.  Added to this is the tension that is generated by the realization that the Ancestress is malfunctioning.  There is also the problem of missing mem-implants, a visit from a Grand Mastery of Design Harmony and the imminent arrival of the Emperor’s Embroidered Guard.  The last event is alarming because it could spell the annihilation of the Le Thi family.

Throughout the book, we see the similarities between Linh and Quyen. Both of them occupy positions of authority and are used to being in control . Linh as a Magistrate and Quyen as System Administrator of Prosper Station. Both women hide insecurities and uncertainties about their lives.   Linh has guilty feelings of leaving Planet Twenty-Three because it was threatened by the imminent invasion of rebel forces.  Added to this are the feelings of loneliness and awkwardness that come from being a newcomer to a family that she is just getting to know.   She struggles to fit in but her former position as Magistrate makes this difficult.

Quyen, on the other hand,  has attained her position because she is the lesser partner in a great marriage. Her feelings of insecurity and uncertainty are brought to the fore when she meets Linh.  This is what motivates her to make life on the Station uncomfortable for Linh.   Knowing that the Ancestress is failing, she battles fear and loneliness at the thought of losing her.

Both Linh and Quyen use the façade of pride and arrogance as a defense mechanism to hide their feelings.  These attitudes lead to misunderstanding and resentment of each other.  Both however, realize that if something drastic is not done, their family could be destroyed.  Both of them decide that something must change if they are to save the family and the station.  As Linh puts it:  “…. a family might quarrel but should never tear itself apart.”

This is the second de Bodard book that I’ve read.  I definitely recommend that others read it too.  What stands out is the emphasis on family relationships and how we interact with each other. We are presented with the challenge to look beyond the obvious, to see the real person that lies behind the masks we wear.  We are also forced to examine ourselves and question our motives on how we treat those whom we meet for the first time.  Are the judgment calls that we make always true?  And as an extension of our families, we too must ask ourselves, how to we treat the rest of humanity as a whole?  For the reality is, that the whole of the human race is one big family.

Rating: 5 charms

There are two different editions of On A Red Station Drifting. The e-book edition has a different cover from the print edition. We purchased an ebook copy for the sake of this review.

You can purchase a print copy of On a Red Station Drifting from Amazon or from Immersion Press.

Talking about Books and authors

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Helen Merrick, Kelley Eskridg, Nalo Hopkinson, Nisi Shawl, Octavia Butler

Here are some books I’ve read that I’d like to recommend to readers.

1. Kelley Eskridge’s Dangerous Space collection. Eskridge is a fabulous writer and what she does with gender in Dangerous Space just blew my mind. I remember reading Dangerous Space back when I was still learning how to ask questions and my thought was that if I was going to interview Kelley Eskridge, I would have to read her work. I’ve never regretted purchasing Dangerous Space. It’s filled with so much mind-blowing goodness and it’s one of those books where I found myself ecstatic, despairing, and over all completely taken out of myself.

2. Women of Other Worlds: Excursions through Science Fiction and Feminism edited by Helen Merrick, co-edited by Tess Williams. This book is basically a collection of essays, criticisms, and stories. There’s a compilation of a discussion around Kelley Eskridge’s short story, And Salome Danced. I found the discussion to be very interesting and the insight that Eskridge provides into the writing of it are thought-provoking and which would probably be helpful to writers interested in continued explorations of gender in their work.

3. I just love Nalo Hopkinson’s work. It’s very hard to pick a favorite, but Midnight Robber and Salt Roads compete for a place as all time favorite on my shelf. The way Nalo deals with sexuality and gender in these novels are so very thought-provoking. I also love how she treats and acknowledges the sexuality of her characters. Perhaps, I’ve just been looking for stories like this all my life.

4. Nisi Shawl has two books out. Filter House which won the Tiptree and Something More and More. I loved reading both of these books as they showed me what a writer can do with voice and character and story. The range in Nisi’s stories just astounds me. Her stories provoke while they entertain the reader.

5. Bloodchild and other stories by Octavia Butler is a collection of her short work and her essays. I like the way the stories in this collection examine not only the issues of race, but also the issues of power and privilege. Octavia Butler also wrote the deeply intense Kindred which also deals with these issues of power, privilege and race.  Everything I’ve read by Octavia Butler is simply brilliant. If you haven’t read her yet, I recommend that you do. You wont’regret it.

I’ll post more books that I’ve read next time. I hope you enjoyed reading these little book list. Happy hunting for the books.

Interview with Ekaterina Sedia

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Ekaterina Sedia, Interview

We love the books, we love the authors. It’s with great delight that we share with you this interview with author and editor, Ekaterina Sedia.

I really like the titles you’ve chosen for your books. The Secret History of Moscow, Alchemy of Stone, House of Discarded Dreams, Heart of Iron. How do you come up with your titles?

Oh, it’s a simple formula – Noun of Noun! I am terrible at titling things, so I usually throw noun-noun combos at my publisher until there’s something he doesn’t hate. If I could just call everything UNTITLED or SOME STUFF I WROTE, I’d be very happy, but the publishing industry frowns at that sort of thing.

If someone gave you a choice to turn one of your books into an animation (ala Howl’s Moving Castle) or a movie with real people, what would be your choice and why?

Probably animation, I hope by Brothers Quay! Animation is less hamstrung by reality, and you can get really whimsical sets and creatures. With live action, it is often too obvious when the actors emote at the green screen. Plus, I have very little visual idea of what my characters look like to actually imagine live people doing them, you know?

How long does it usually take you to finish a novel?

It varies. Anywhere between six months and five years – I started something back in 2009, and it’s been at 20,000 words for the last three years.

What part of writing your novels do you enjoy the most?

I like starting new things, when there are so many possibilities, and the paths are clear, and I’m just so excited to make that book happen! You know, before the slow slog sets in and I regret this decision.

 Who are the writers who have influenced you the most? 

Strugatsky brothers, for sure (lots of brothers in this interview!) As well as many other Russian writers – Viktor Pelevin, Dina Rubina, Liudmila Ulitskaya. Among the Westetrn authors, probably Sheckley and Clifford Simak, Kuttner/Moore, and Tiptree Jr of course.

 In Alchemy of Stone, the issues of racism and prejudice come across very clearly. Was this a conscious choice? What prompted you to engage these issues?

Well, those are the issues I engage with every day, and don’t really have much of a choice about, really – being a woman and an immigrant, prejudice is something I encounter frequently. I am very interested in dynamics between the dominant and fringe groups – the main conflict of the book, for example, has been based largely on the first Russian revolution, where scapegoating of the Jewish population very directly led to the Jewish involvement with radical politics and consequent October Revolution. So that was a good complex model to think about – for example, the roles of the upper classes flirting with radicalism, the oppressed minorities and disposed working classes, and of course the overall dynamics of how oppression plays out on the large and small scales. Small scale in the book is Mattie’s abusive domestic situation – and people with privilege often see abuse as something to be escaped and the abuser to be persecuted. But for many groups and individuals, the daily reality of abuse is learning to live with it as the abuser has the power and there is nowhere else to run. We conceptualize strength as vanquishing our enemies – but what about enduring when there is no escape? It was something I thought about a lot.

Aside from the fiction, you also blog and write a lot about fashion. Can you tell us a bit more about your interest in fashion?

Fashion for me is a fulcrum point of many of my interests – fair labor, feminism, globalization. The fashion industry is a fascinating knot of issues: on one hand, we have the industry that has been coded as excessively female and is therefore of little interest to straight men – it’s a bubble women and gay men were allowed to have as their own, and until very recently just about the only industry where women could make careers and fortunes. On the other hand, weakening of the unions and downright union busting by the Reagan administration, the export of jobs overseas, and the overall deregulation of market resulted in even more losses in domestic jobs and rise in exploitative sweatshops overseas. It is shocking to see that in 1965 95% of clothing sold in the US was made in the US, and soon after 1993 ratification of NAFTA agreement by Clinton that number dropped to 50%. Now it’s only 5%. We see the tragedies of factory fires in Bangladesh repeating 1911 Triangle Waist Company fire, the tragedy that led to organizing of the workers in the Garment District of NYC for fair labor laws, and a catalyst of unionization and socialist movement in the US. Of course, the role of the garment industry in both socialist movement and women’s rights (which were tied to socialism) is also tremendously important historically.

Then we have the issues of class, the sustainability and economic justice, the festering problems of the modeling industry – all of these underlying the very notion that clothing is important, that we use clothing as means of nonverbal communication. Clothing allows us to pick which self we are projecting into the world, create alternate personas, etc etc. This is only the tip of the iceberg, of course – but as you can see, it is tremendously interesting and complex

If you were to dress the main characters from your novels, who would they be wearing and why?

If they existed in the current reality? For THE ALCHEMY OF STONE, I can see Mattie in something architectural and low-key avant garde — Jil Sander and Dries van Noten. Iolanda would wear something body-conscious, like Versace and Dolce&Gabbana, and pattern-loving Niobe would love Marni. I mean, it is fantasy, so price is no object, right? Oh, and Loharri would probably be all over Maison Margiela – sharp and classic, with a twist.

For HEART OF IRON, I imagine Sasha in something simple and minimalist, like Celine, and Aunt Eugenia in old-maidenly Prada. Oh, and of course Helmut Lang for Florence Nightingale! Sharp tailoring for the villain, always.

Do you have any upcoming novels/projects that readers should keep an eye out for?

I have a short story collection out now, called MOSCOW BUT DREAMING. I also have an anthology coming out next year, THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF GASLIT ROMANCE, the details should be announced soon. No novels – at least not in the foreseeable future, but then who knows. I might even finish that book I started in 2009 (it is a ghost novel about Chinese actors in 1930s Hollywood).

Where on the internet can we find you?

www.ekaterinasedia.com is my website. If you are interested in the fashion blog, it’s fishmonkey.blogspot.com I am also on facebook, twitter, and Pinterest. Oh god, I am obsessed with Pinterest. So follow me there to see what I am eating/wearing/wishing I was wearing!

Thanks so much for taking the time to answer our questions, Ekaterina. We hope that you, the reader, have enjoyed reading this interview.

Ekaterina’s latest novel is Heart of Iron. It’s been getting some pretty good reviews and we here at Chie and Weng Read Books look forward to reading and sharing our thoughts on it sometime in the near future.

Book Review: The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia

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Book Review, Ekaterina Sedia, The Alchemy of Stone

I’d already heard about Ekaterina Sedia before I read her fantastic novel, The Secret History of Moscow. When we talked about the book blog, I wanted to share The Alchemy of Stone with Weng as I wanted to hear what she had to say about Ekaterina’s work.

Since publishing The Alchemy of Stone, Ekaterina has gone on to publish House of Discarded Dreams and Heart of Iron.  Here is Weng’s review of Ekaterina Sedia’s Alchemy of Stone.

Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia

Published by Prime Books,  978-1607012153

Reviewed by Rowena C. Ruiz

“We scale the rough bricks of the building’s facade. Their crumbling edges soften under our claw-like fingers; they jut out of the flat, adenoid face of the wall

to provide easy footholds. We could’ve used fire escapes, we could’ve climbed up, up, past the indifferent faces of the walls, their windows cataracted with shutters; we could’ve bounded up in the joyful cacophony of corrugated metal and barely audible whispers of the falling rust shaken loose by our ascent. We could’ve

flown.”  – Excerpt from Alchemy of Stone

With these words, Ekaterina Sedia introduces us to Mattie’s world: a world where Alchemists, Mechanics and Gargoyles exist side by side. A dying race, the gargoyles seek out Mattie, an alchemist, to find a solution to their problem.

Mattie is not your ordinary alchemist.  She is an automaton, the first of her kind to become an alchemist. Automatons were made do menial tasks, but Mattie was given the ability to think and feel.  Her creator has emancipated her, but Mattie desires to be truly free.  Loharri, her creator, holds the key to her heart.  Mattie desires to gain ownership of the key so she will no longer be dependent on Loharri for her existence.

Thus  begins Mattie’s quest for freedom.   Along the way she encounters people who help her, hinder her and use her.  Throughout it all she does not lose sight of her twofold goal:  the transformation that will save the gargoyles and freedom for herself.

Reading the book, I was struck at the tone of sadness that emerged.  Ekaterina mourns the fact that people make judgments based on the superficial.  Mattie is tolerated, even befriended, but not because she is herself.  Iolande befriends Mattie because she wishes to control Loharri.  To get Mattie’s support she promises Mattie the key to her heart.  Niobe, a blood alchemist, teaches Mattie her secrets, but appears to have an ulterior motive in asking Mattie information about the city.  Sebastian, whom Mattie loves, rejects her because she is not a human.  Loharri, despite his acceptance of Mattie’s emancipation, decides in the end that she is only a machine to be used. The only person who accepts Mattie without any reservation is the Soul Smoker – an outcast himself because he houses the wandering souls of the dead.

Even the gargoyles reflect this sentiment.  They are born of stone and are being transformed into stone, yet they call the people living in the city, “children of stone.”  What is it they see in people that they are called thus?  Perhaps it is the way they treat each other and their surroundings.  In the name of progress, the Mechanics are adding machines and construction to the city.  Yet they have neglected to find work for those displaced.  The Stone Monks who run the orphanage for the poor and orphaned, sell the children for a price.  The lucky ones  are taken to be apprentices by the alchemists and mechanics.  The others become child laborers in the mines, imprisoned in small cages so that their bodies become deformed.  The young elite, in their hubris, assassinate the Duke of the ruling family to show their solidarity with the common man.  The gargoyles, who are the city’s founders and original builders, are neglected and regarded as mere figureheads and legendary.  Is it any wonder then that people are called “children of stone?”

Yet in the midst of all these, hope still shines through.  As Mattie’s world transforms and changes, the playing field becomes even.  Others take up the cause that she espouses and embrace Mattie’s dream of freedom.

This is the first time I’ve read Ekaterina Sedia and I look forward to reading more of her work. I would definitely recommend her work to others. The Alchemy of Stone is a thought-provoking work that forces us to examine how we treat others, not just those who are different in appearance or belief, but even the ordinary person on the street.

(Weng gave The Alchemy of Stone 4.5 charms)

*Note: The reviewed book was a purchased copy.