#SpecFicByWomenOfColor

This year I focused the bulk of my reading on books of the speculative fiction genre written by women of color (WOC). Why? Here is what I posted at the beginning of the year.

I didn't get to read as many as I'd hoped, for various reasons: some books I started but couldn't continue because the writing was just not good; I had some reading promises to keep to others; and, then, once in a while I found something else I wanted to read that just so happened to be either not spec fic or not by a WOC.

After certain recent events, I researched online ways I could support small, Black-owned businesses. On one website with a list of Black-owned online retailers, an idiotic commenter asked, "What about a list of White-owned businesses?"

The answer to that is, I think, similar to the reason why I focused this year on spec fic by WOC: Because White is already considered the norm, especially White and male. I'm betting that anyone reading this can name, offhand and without a lot of thought, at least five White, male fantasy/sci-fi writers. I know I can.

Now, can you name five women?

Can you name five women of color?

When you come from a place of privilege it's easy to have a blind spot when it comes to the "other." As a White woman I felt it my duty to make the conscious effort to expand my literary world.

Between the hideous and utterly misogynistic "social movement" Gamergate and the Ferguson, MO court ruling, I think that right now is the perfect time to support female writers (and all lady geeks!) and geeks of color. Female writers don't have cooties; they don't all write romance (my short stories have 0% romance in them, and only one of my novels has a romantic relationship in it, which is more of a side plot than the feature); they don't all write about periods and babies and shoe shopping. Writers of color don't only write about how hard their lives are, or how exotic their native lands are, or how much they hate White people. Certain things are universal, and that's the main takeaway I found in this project: Alienation. Longing. Acceptance. Fear. Growth. Guilt. Redemption. Regret. And yes, love. Love is not a woman thing. It's not a girly thing. Even men need love in their lives, whether it's romantic or something else...something more.

Black writers do not write only for Black people. Women do not write only for women. To think so, and to go through life enjoying only books that match your demographic, is to miss out on some of the greatest, most interesting and entertaining works out there. And, that's also sort of missing the point of being into spec fic, isn't it?

I'll be keeping this list in the column to the right up on my blog for the foreseeable future, and as I go forward and read more spec fic by WOC I'll add them to the list. For now, here are some resources I have been using throughout 2014 to find books to read, as well as some other links I like.

The Carl Brandon Society works "to help build further awareness of race and ethnicity in speculative literature and related fields." http://carlbrandon.org/index.html

Worlds Without End's Award Winning Books by Women Authors. You might have to dig a little to find the WOC, but they're there. https://www.worldswithoutend.com/lists_women_winners.asp

The Nerds of Color. Just an all-around great geek site. http://thenerdsofcolor.org/

An article on Asian spec fic writers. http://carriecuinn.com/2013/06/18/list-94-asian-speculative-fiction-authors-with-links/

Another good all-purpose list. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_fiction_by_writers_of_color

This list is YA-heavy, but hey, there is some damn fine YA out there. https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/36880.Speculative_Fiction_by_Women_of_Color

For 2015 I will not be focusing on authors; rather, I'm going to attempt to put a dent in my rather large pile of unread books I already own. Some of them might be by writers of color; some are by women of color. I'll keep you posted. 

Spoiler-Free Book Review: "Who Fears Death?" by Nnedi Okorafor

See my sidebar to the right for the other spoiler-free reviews I've posted on the books I'm reading for my 2014 project: Speculative Fiction by Women of Color. Follow my reading project on Twitter with the hashtag #SpecFicByWomenOfColor


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Trigger warnings for discussions of the book's themes of rape and other brutalities of war.

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"Who Fears Death?" has won so many awards, and been reviewed so many times, I now find myself almost paralyzed with writer's block at trying to do justice to this amazing novel. There are so many different ways to talk about it, so many different themes that tie together, so many different ways of approaching such a complex, complicated work. Since I am a spec fic writer, I'm going to stick to that aspect of the book, and let other elements flit in and out as they need to do.

At some unspecified point in the future, after events only ever alluded to in general terms, an unnamed (until the very end) part of Africa has become a vast dystopian desert. Oceans are things of myth, rivers are unheard of. Water for consumption and bathing is collected with mechanized appliances that pull it out of the air.

And the Okeke people are in danger of being wiped off the face of the earth by the Nuru people.

The people of this place and time, Okeke and Nuru alike, worship a creator goddess called Ani. In The Great Book, it is written that Ani created the dark-skinned Okeke as slaves and turned her back on them; she created the golden-skinned Nurus, people of the sun, as the superior of the Okeke in every way. The Nurus no longer feel it is enough to oppress and humiliate the Okekes; they are now out to obliterate the entire race of Okekes. Part of the Nuru method involves the systematic use of rape of Okeke women in order to create mixed-race Ewu babies. Ewus are feared as strange and violent creatures, inheriting in their natures the very evil that conceived them. They are shunned by Nuru and Okeke alike.

After a particularly brutal rape that literally takes her voice from her, the young woman Najeeba stays out of towns and villages, birthing and raising her daughter alone. She names her daughter Onyesonwu, an Igbo Nigerian word meaning "Who Fears Death?" At six years old, Najeeba moves them to the eastern town of Jwahir and marries a blacksmith. For a while life seems almost normal for little Onye; the people of Jwahir slowly learn to tolerate Onyesonwu, even if they never fully accept the Ewu child.

As with all great heroes, as soon as Onye gets comfortable in her life, things start to get weird. She falls asleep and wakes up in a tree. She goes invisible during a rite of passage ritual. She touches her dead step-father and he moves.

Jwahir's resident sorcerer, Aro, will not take Onye under his wing because she is a woman. Only after Onye nearly kills Aro with her psychic powers does he relent. As she studies and learns to harness and control her vast power, Onye becomes aware -- as heroes do -- that the Nuru massacres and brutality against the Okeke in the west is tied to her own fate, and even to her very conception. Aro, Najeeba, the Jwahir high priestess, even Onye's love interest, are all linked together. Because of this, Onye must endure a terrible initiation into mystic teachings and embark on a quest of destiny.

I make no secret of the fact that I am a huge fan of the "Child of Destiny" trope -- my own first novel, BLOODSISTERS, is a variation on that -- and with "Who Fears Death?", Nnedi Okorafor delivers a story worthy of the great canon of other CoD stories like "Star Wars" and "Harry Potter." There is even a Jesus-istic element to "WFD?" with Onye knowing she must go forward to her fate in order to save both the Okeke and Nuru peoples, and in accepting her role in this thing that is much bigger than herself.

The entire novel is wonderful and well-written, but where Okorafor really shines is in character development and world building. She manages to paint a post-apocalyptic desert wasteland that is both terrifying in its vastness and harshness, yet also full of life and color and hope. Onyesonwu is a child of the desert, both literally and figuratively, and her love for that land comes through from beginning to end in the book, even when she's shown a vision of lush green landscapes.

"WFD?" contains some of the best relationships I've ever read in fiction. There are so many good connections in the book - between Onye and her mother, between Onye and Aro (who I think should be played by Laurence Fishburne, because The Matrix, and I Tweeted as much) - but the two relationships I enjoyed most were between Onye and Mwita, and between Onye and her initiation "sisters" Binta, Luyu, and Diti.

So rarely do we get to see, even by women writers, real female friendships with their ups and downs, and their changes and growth over many years. When Onye meets Luyu, Binta and Diti, they are eleven years old. It would have been so easy to lump the three of them together, but they are written far from interchangeable. Onye's relationship with each woman is distinct and follows a unique path through the next nine years of their lives. How refreshing to read about a group of female friends that actually reflects real life friendships!

Speaking of realism in fictional relationships, my favorite in the book by far is Onye's with Mwita. As the two Ewus of Jwahir, they are bound by their common status as outcasts and weirdos. Mwita is Aro's original apprentice, yet Onye has naturally superior powers, adding a jealous rivalry between the two. They are passionate with one another and love one another with a Romeo & Juliet kind of fatality. They would die for each other, and do irreparable and outrageous harm to any outsider unlucky enough to cause harm to each other; yet they squabble and bicker and act like sulky, petulant, petty children with each other. They are very real, and I love that about them.

"WFD?" is the kind of book that stays with you when you're not reading it; I hesitate to use the ubiquitous word "haunting," but that's exactly how it feels. Okorafor doesn't shy away from frank and graphic descriptions of the terrible things that happen to the Okeke at the hands of the Nuru, from dismemberment to rape -- and of things the Okeke do to fight back. The book brings up things most of us living comfy lives in the First World don't like to think about: how far removed we are from the awful things happening elsewhere in the world, whether or not our passive witness implicates us in perpetuating these problems, and how much we can reasonably be expected to do about what we know is going on. Should we make a sad face and feel bad? Give money? Send our children off to fight for us? Sacrifice our own lives? What's the "right" thing to do when other human beings are being tortured in the world and we know about it? Can we look the other way? What if there's *nothing* we can do?

These are tough questions, ones I have not stopped thinking about since picking up "WFD?" a few weeks ago. And that right there is the sign of a well-crafted, well-written, well-told novel: when days, weeks, months, years pass, and I'll *still* be thinking about Onyesonwu and her destiny.

There is so much more I could have said about this book, but this review is already quite long. Perhaps at some point I'll do a Part 2, and discuss the Red People (my favorite part of the book) and other themes the book tackles. For right now, I'll end here and ask: Has anyone else read "Who Fears Death?" What did you think? What's a book that has struck you so deeply that you carry it with you for life?

Spoiler-Free Book Review: "The Iron Hunt: Hunter Kiss, #1" by Marjorie M. Liu

My reading project for 2014 is Speculative Fiction by Women of Color. To read more about this project, click here.


I love urban fantasy. I remember when I picked up Laurell K. Hamilton's "Guilty Pleasures" one day and got hooked, so much so that I could not read the Anita Blake books fast enough. Since then I've tried other authors, to greater or lesser success. My favorites are the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews; while I love Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson books, they sadly always seem to fall to the bottom of my to-read pile. 

So when I heard about Marjorie M. Liu's "Hunter Kiss" addition to the world of urban fantasy, I picked it up with expectations both good and bad: I expected a new twist on a by-now-well-known subgenre, but I also knew going in that the heroine, Maxine Kiss, would probably be tough but with a heart of gold, reluctant, but always doing the right thing. 

I was right on both counts.

This is far from the worst book in urban fantasy I've ever read; at least Liu isn't a lazy writer. She has clearly worked hard to create the world of Hunter Kiss, and it shows. Details are well-thought out, magic has rules, new types of monsters are introduced, and old monsters are given new twists. There's even a unicorn, something more urban fantasy needs to start featuring. Liu's strengths lie in set-up, setting, and in sticking to the rules she creates for her world. 

To that end, I can't say enough about how much I love the five little "boys" and how they work. Zee, Raw, Mal, Aaz, and Dek. Adorable little demons that live in Maxine's skin as tattoos from head to toe during the day, acting as sort of live-in body armor that renders her nearly invulnerable to weather and brute force; and in the dark they slither off, stick close and act as sort of pets/bodyguards/companions/familiars. The "boys" have done this for every Hunter in Maxine's lineage. Liu is clever enough to give each of the boys enough personality to make them distinct, but not so much they bog down the story. I wish I had my own little tattoo demons.

If this isn't the worst urban fantasy I've ever read, it's also not the best. I love the set-up, I love the concept, I love the boys. I love the idea of a demon-hunter. But Liu's execution is flawed. 

Her writing style is choppy and breathless, better suited to stream of consciousness or action scenes. Those of you familiar with genre writing know how action scenes read: imagine a whole book like that. The result is a book with action scenes that don't pop and quiet scenes that feel white-knuckled. This style of writing also lends itself too easily to lots of sensory description of Maxine's emotions, resulting in a confusing blend of metaphor and what's really going on. A quick scan of other reviews on GoodReads shows I'm not the only one who felt this way while reading the book: it's just too damn hard to stick with it after a while. Urban fantasy should be a fun escape, not one long gasp inside the MC's psyche. It's an exhausting read at times.

And while the world Liu created is very well-thought out, it's not very well executed at times. Characters keep popping up with little or no explanation as to how they fit in the overall story (the Tracker); there are too many demons and too many things going on with them (some possess the living as zombies; others are stuck in an otherworld prison veil; others are Maxine's boys); and the plot, at times, is just all over the place (travels through time; visions of other planets). Finally, Maxine Kiss is little more than a trope of urban fantasy heroines: she's kick-ass, she's tough-as-nails, she's cynical, she's world-weary, she is afraid of getting emotionally hurt yet can't help but care so deeply. That's pretty much every urban fantasy heroine.

I'll probably revisit the Hunter Kiss series at some point. I'm curious to see whether or not the writing evolves, like LKH's Anita Blake series did up to and including Obsidian Butterfly. I really hope it does. Not that I need things to always be an easy read, but it shouldn't be this confusing, either. 


Read my spoiler-free GoodReads review of "The Iron Hunt: Hunter Kiss #1" here.

Tied to Word Count

The other day I complained about not getting enough words written for my second chapter. My husband, ever practical and always supportive, suggested I not tie myself to word count.

"Just write the story," he said.

Problem is, that's what I did with "Bloodsisters," and wound up spending two years rewriting the book almost from scratch, including six months of adding 10,000 words to beef up the word count to an acceptable length.

Now that I'm a veteran of writing one book, I think I might be more of a planner than a pantser. For "Wanderlust" I came up with the story first, including the minor characters and their backstories and subplots. I used a template to sketch out my beginning, middle, and ending so I don't get off track. And it's working! Now that I know exactly where I need to go - not just with the novel as a whole, but what path I need to take to get there - it's much easier to write with confidence.

But it also means I'm tied to the word count. The WC is how I know how much time to spend in each scene, each chapter, each of the three sections of the plot. Word count helps me pace myself, something I found nearly impossible with "Bloodsisters."

My goal is 5K words per week, and so far I'm doing that. It's not easy, especially with one less daycare day for the baby per week, and I get most of those 5K done on weekends, but a 5K/week word count goal means forcing myself to write through the blocks and keep going, even when I don't fully feel it. Five thousand words a week means my first draft will take six months instead of over a year.

So, word count. Writing by WC means forcing myself to stick to the plot and flesh out details now rather than filling them in later just to bump up my numbers. And that means a better story from the very first draft.

"What Is Your Book About?"

I think every writer must get that question. It's the natural follow-up when you tell someone you're a writer. Right? There is "What do you write?" and then "Oh, what is your book about?"

My short answer: Vampires.

My long answer: Not vampires.

I hate saying "vampires" because that makes people think of the "Twilight Saga" and HBO's highly addictive series "True Blood." But, with that one word I can generally gauge who's interested in hearing more, and who tunes out: "Oh. You're hopping on that bandwagon. Sorry I asked."

The truth is I came up with the idea for "Bloodsisters" twelve years ago. The inspiration was a real-life friendship. I asked myself: What if we really did live forever? How would immortality affect personal relationships?

From there I created the story of two women, one a vampire and one a witch, from two very different cultures, who become travel companions over the course of five hundred years. My original idea was to start the story when they meet and chronicle some of their adventures - which I still may do in the form of prequels.

While this story developed I also became frustrated with how female friendships are portrayed in popular culture. We have this myth that women stay besties forever and ever and ever, without regard for different life experiences, personal growth, and circumstantial changes.

When I thought about it, the concept of immortality present two opposite challenges to personal relationships. On the one hand, if you live forever there is very little incentive to go out there and "carpe diem." This is why one of the recurring themes in my novel is a resistance to change and progress. But on the other hand, if you do live forever, you're probably more likely to take in stride all of life's ebbs and flows, because you know you have all the time in the world to go back and fix things, including broken relationships.

And so that, at its core, is what my book is about.

Also: vampires.

And: Lady ninja werefoxes.

Coffee Shop Cliché

Today I decided to be a writing cliché and came to a neighborhood coffee shop to work on my novel. And now I am blogging at the coffee shop. Someone please call the stereotype police because I am clearly criminally cliché.

I have exactly one day a week to myself to work on my writing. One day a week when my older son, the 3 1/2-year old Juban Princeling, is at camp from 9-3 and my younger son, the 5-month old Duke of Juban, is at daycare from 9-5. One day a week of no appointments or errands. Just me and my laptop and my novel.

In my neighborhood there is a coffee shop called the Tea Lounge that is very famous, locally. Over the weekend I was inspired by who-knows-what and thought, "Hey! I should go there and write on Monday! There is absolutely nothing wrong with that idea!"

So today I packed up my MacBook Air and extension cord, a giant Ziploc full of snacks (because I'm cheap and cash poor), and after dropping off the Princeling at Camp and the Duke at daycare I hopped the B69 down to Union Street and here I am. I bought a $4 drink to justify the 4 hours I'm spending on the couch here, eating not their food but using up their (free) WiFi. A quick look around and I see at least half a dozen other glowing apples in font of squinting people, their glasses reflecting MacBook screens. Did I mention I also kicked off my sandals and have my legs crossed under me? The only way I could possibly be more cliché is if I had a pad of paper and pen, or a toddler gnawing a cookie next to me on the couch.

As nice as it is to get out of my writing routine and let my tired eyeballs look at things other than my living room while I write, I don't think I'll be doing this again. For one, the bus ride here and back could have been used for writing time. Second, they play not-quiet music that I find distracting, Billy Joel's greatest hits notwithstanding, and I don't mean that ironically. 

Third, I'm not sure what the bathroom protocol here is. Do I leave my laptop and bag and wallet here in this spot so no one takes it while I get up to relieve myself? Is that inviting thievery? I asked the woman next to me to watch my stuff, but how do I know I can trust her above everyone else at Tea Lounge? What if she's a laptop thief? But if I take my things with me I could lose my rather comfortable place on the couch, and the Tea Lounge is only getting more crowded by the minute. 

Oh, the woes of a would-be coffee shop writer!

Both Sides Now

Having spent time as an editor over at The Rose & Thorn e-Zine many years ago, I can appreciate the work editors put in to the stories they publish. And so now, on the other side of the writer/editor relationship I'm trying to be easy to work with. Spencer Hill Press sent back my "Esther" story with some edits, and I've already made them and sent the story back. Quick, easy, relatively painless. I agreed with about 99% of what they said and so am not putting up a fight. I want to be a writer editors enjoy working with, not a pain in the butt.

That said, this is really my first experience in making changes for an editor, and it was for a story of less than 7K words. Maybe things will be different if Bloodsisters gets picked up. I hope not...I am definitely open to critiques and suggestions, but will they be harder when I'm doing them for a much, much longer work than for a short story?

Once, while I was an editor, I got into a nasty, knock-down, drag-out fight with a writer over a single word in his story, a word I felt did not match the tone of the rest of the story. My managing editor finally had to step in. I hope I never become the kind of writer who drives an editor crazy over a single word.

I feel the same way in my parenting life right now. As a teenager I babysat a lot. And now I have kids and I'm the one interviewing and hiring babysitters. Being on the other side of any relationship is certainly eye-opening, and gives me an appreciation for what editors/babysitters go through.

And now, "The Esther" is back out to the nice folks at SHP. Time to return to early 20th century Japan and my novel.