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The Pride StoryBundle is always packed full of wonderful authors and stories. And who knows better about that than the authors themselves? To entice you to check it out, we contributors are interviewing each other. You can find the full list of contents and purchasing information here: https://storybundle.com/blog/2020pridemonthbundle/

Today’s featured author is Melissa Scott, whose historical fantasy The Armor of Lightis included in the bonus bundle. Melissa Scott is a queer Southern writer who abandoned academia for SF/F back in the mid-1980s and never looked back. She has published more than 40 novels, and is noted both for her worldbuilding, and for her emphasis on queer themes and characters. She has won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT SF/F four times as well as four Gaylactic Spectrum Awards. She currently lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, among a tangle of family, friends, and cats. Her most recent novel is Finders, space opera about a team of salvage operators.

HRJ:I read The Armor of Light, your contribution to this year’s StoryBundle, back when it first came out in the ‘80s. Why don’t you tell the readers what it’s about and why authors love to play with the figure of Christopher Marlowe.

Melissa Scott: The Armor of Light is essentially an alternate history novel set in Elizabethan England — in 1595, specifically — in which Sir Philip Sidney, poet, courtier, and soldier, survived the Battle of Zutphen and saved Christopher Marlowe, poet, playwright, and quondam government agent, from being murdered by other government agents. Both are accomplished magicians, though of very different schools, and when James VI of Scotland is threatened by magical attack, Elizabeth sends the unlikely pair north to save the man she has reluctantly accepted as her heir.

As for why Marlowe… Well, he’s one of those historical figures that readers would disbelieve if if he didn't exist. He reinvented English drama with the first part of Tamburlaine, was considered Shakespeare’s superior through the 1590s, wrote six plays that are still performed today (and probably contributed to several more), and was involved with Sir Walter Raleigh’s circle of mathematicians, scholars, and magicians known as the School of Night. (It is that last, plus the evidence of both Dr. Faustus and testimony offered against him at the time of his death, that suggests considerably knowledge of hermetic science and Neo-Platonic philosophy: Marlowe the magician.) He was also almost certainly employed by Elizabeth’s secret service as an agent in France and the Netherlands, and was murdered at the age of 29 while under investigation for atheism and treason, while in the company of men who were also known government agents. He was also about as out and proud as a man could be in Elizabethan England: his play Edward II is the first sympathetic portrait of gay relationships on the English stage, and his poetry is full of homoerotic descriptions even in the middle of ostensibly heteroerotic subjects—his Hero and Leander features an interlude in which Neptune attempts to seduce Leander as he swims. Among the accusations pending against him at his death was that he had said “all those who love not tobacco and boys are fools” and that he had claimed that “St John the Evangelist was Christ’s bedfellow and leaned always in his bosom, that he used him as the sinners of Sodom.” There’s just so much to play with, and all of it can be justified by the historical sources.

HRJ: Why do you think LGBTQ/queer fiction speaks to all readers -- other than the obvious answer that we’re all human and nothing human should be uninteresting to us?

Melissa Scott: One of the things that I think queer fiction offers to all readers is a vision of identity as mutable, conditional, and as often playful as serious; it’s capable of being chosen and created rather than simply being, and one may wear more than one at a time. And, yes, some of this ability to shift identities is grounded in oppression and the need for secrecy, but the community and culture have embraced that mutability and made a virtue of it. There are thousands of roles and archetypes within the community and we treat them with great seriousness and tremendous irreverence simultaneously, but always with the awareness that they are constructs and are therefore at least somewhat under our control. I think that’s one reason that queer SF/F works so well: the imagined futures and other worlds foreground this part of the queer experience.

HRJ: You’ve written in a lot of different corners of the SFF landscape, but I suspect that people who enjoy The Armor of Light might also enjoy your Astreiant series. It has an Early Modern feel to it, although it’s set in a completely invented world. Can you give the readers a sense of the flavor of that series?

Melissa Scott: The Points novels (Point of Hopes, Point of Knives, Point of Dreams, Fairs’ Point, and Point of Sighs) do indeed have a strong Early Modern sensibility to them, though they are set in a secondary world in which astrology not only works but is the underpinning of the society. The magic is similar to that in Armor in that it’s part of the background of daily life. Nearly everyone knows their horoscope, and knows how it fits them for their profession; there’s a thriving business of legal (and illegal) broadsheet prophecy, astrologers serve as counsellors, and alchemists also investigate the transformations in dead bodies. The novels are set in the city of Astreiant, capital of Chenedolle, and are in essence fantasy police procedurals exploring the relationship between Nicolas Rathe, Adjunct Point (a sort of senior policeman; the policing system is in the process of being created in these novels) and Philip Eslingen, a mercenary lieutenant turned bodyguard turned… several other professions.

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For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you're feeling generous), you'll get the basic bundle of four books in any ebook format—WORLDWIDE.

• Best Game Ever by R. R. Angell
• The Counterfeit Viscount by Ginn Hale
• A Spectral Hue by Craig Laurance Gidney
• Capricious: The Gender Diverse Pronouns Issue by Andi C. Buchanan

If you pay at least the bonus price of just $15, you get all four of the regular books, plus seven more more books, for a total of eleven!

• Grilled Cheese and Goblins by Nicole Kimberling
• The Armor of Light by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
• Floodtide by Heather Rose Jones
• The Hollow History of Professor Profectus by Ginn Hale
• Will Do Magic For Small Change by Andrea Hairston
• The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper by A.J. Fitzwater
• Catfish Lullaby by A.C. Wise

This bundle is available only for a limited time via http://www.storybundle.com. It allows easy reading on computers, smartphones, and tablets as well as Kindle and other ereaders via file transfer, email, and other methods. You get multiple DRM-free formats (.epub, .mobi) for all books!

Today’s featured author is Ginn Hale, who has two books in this year’s bundle: The Counterfeit Viscount in the basic bundle, and The Hollow History of Professor Perfectus in the bonus bundle. Ginn Hale lives with her lovely wife and two indolent cats in the Pacific Northwest.  Her fantasy and science fiction writing hasgarnered her a Rainbow Award, recognition as a Lambda Literary finalist and a Spectrum Award for best novel.

HRJ:You have two contributions to this year’s Pride StoryBundle: The Counterfeit Viscount in the basic bundle, and The Hollow History of Professor Perfectus in the bonus bundle, which of course is the level everyone will want to buy. While both books are set in a fantastic version of the historic past, they have rather different flavors. Why don’t you tell the readers a little bit about each book?

Ginn Hale: Oh sure, I’d be happy to.

Counterfeit Viscount is a mystery adventure set in the world of Wicked Gentlemen. After selling his soul to thehandsome Prodigal devil—and flashy dresser—Nimble Hobbs, Archiefinds himself in the unenviable position of joining Nimble to investigate the disappearances of several Prodigals. Archie soon realizes that they are up against much worse than absent actresses, debauched drunks, and dreadful poetry recitals. Bullets fly and top hats fall, as secrets are unearthed and a murderer decides to put an end to their inquiries.

The Hollow History of Professor Perfectus on the other hand takes place in the steampunk world of The Long Past. Warring mages have opened up a vast inland sea and released monstrous creatures from the distant past. (And by that I mean dinosaurs from the Cretaceous era!) In Chicago, at the New United Americas Exhibition, a brilliant magician and her beautiful assistant light up stages with the latest automaton. But the secrets both women are hiding test their trust in each other and pit them against one of the most powerful men in the world. 

I had a great time doing research for both stories. I came across fascinating slang that I incorporated for Counterfeit Viscount and the women involved in the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 inspired a great deal of The Hollow History of Professor Perfectus. 

HRJ: Why is it so important to you to write and support queer fiction?

Ginn Hale: This is an interesting question, isn’t it? It’s so common to require marginalized creators to justify our stories and our identities that I think we often fail to recognize the query itself as an indicator of how much our erasure is normalized. That said, I know that in this case the question comes from a truly good place—one queer person asking another to share what’s powerful, moving, and important about the work we both do. 

For me, writing stories about queer characters—especially positive, empowering stories—is my way of sharing hope, strength and validation with other LGBTQ+ people. As a young person I keenly felt the absence of positive queer representation. I had no heroic tropes or flights of fantasy that I could look to and feel strong, safe, or validated. I had no assurances of happy endings or even survival. The few literary figures that reflected people like me were monsters and suicides.

So, I began making up my own stories. And, amateurish as they were, those stories really saved me on days when the rest of the world seemed degrading and desolate. 

In the decades since then, I’ve improved my craft but I still write stories about queer characters finding courage and love, having adventures, and experiencing triumph. I try to write the kind of stories I needed, so that they will be there for other people.  And I’ve learned that I’m not alone, not as a queer person and not as a queer author.

My books—and all the titles in the Pride StoryBundle—are a small part of a growing body of work that celebrates queer identities across genres and literary traditions.  As a reader and an author I love to support my fellow LGBTQ+ writers because the more we honor, applaud, and rejoice in our diversity the richer and better our lives and our literature grows.  

HRJ: You are a very prolific author! I think your Goodreads page lists over two dozen books. Maybe you can help guide readers who enjoy your StoryBundle contributions and point them to a starting place to try your other stories.

Ginn Hale: Oh my. That does make me seem like I’m whipping through the manuscripts, doesn’t it? In truth, I’m a very slow writer and quite prone to wandering off and poking around in the woods when I should be completing a chapter. J

The Goodreads page may be a little misleading because the Rifter series was released as a ten-volume serial. Really it’s one very big story about a young ecologist who is transported to another world along with his two best friends and how they change that world and are themselves transformed. It features marsupial weasels, magic keys, witches, talking bones, and no shortage of battles.

My other large fantasy series is the Cadeleonians books: Lord of the White Hell (book 1&2), Champion of the Scarlet Wolf (book 1&2) and Master of Restless Shadows (book 1&2.) This one is an epic fantasy that follows a group of schoolmates as they defeat a curse, are exiled, flee into the heart of a magical war, and take on ancient creatures and spells. Most of all, it’s about growing older and the struggle to remain true to youthful friendships while alliances and people change. 

Those two series aside, the majority of my works are novellas, featuring queer characters, mixed levels of technology and geeky bits of environmental fantasy. (I like to think that the two stories in this year’s Pride StoryBundle are among my best. I certainly hope that they bring smiles to the folks who read them.)

Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me!

* * *

For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you're feeling generous), you'll get the basic bundle of four books in any ebook format—WORLDWIDE.

• Best Game Ever by R. R. Angell
• The Counterfeit Viscount by Ginn Hale
• A Spectral Hue by Craig Laurance Gidney
• Capricious: The Gender Diverse Pronouns Issue by Andi C. Buchanan

If you pay at least the bonus price of just $15, you get all four of the regular books, plus seven more more books, for a total of eleven!

• Grilled Cheese and Goblins by Nicole Kimberling
• The Armor of Light by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett
• Floodtide by Heather Rose Jones
• The Hollow History of Professor Perfectus by Ginn Hale
• Will Do Magic For Small Change by Andrea Hairston
• The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper by A.J. Fitzwater
• Catfish Lullaby by A.C. Wise

This bundle is available only for a limited time via http://www.storybundle.com. It allows easy reading on computers, smartphones, and tablets as well as Kindle and other ereaders via file transfer, email, and other methods. You get multiple DRM-free formats (.epub, .mobi) for all books!

Deborah J. Ross, the editor of Lace and Blade 4, is posting a series of interviews with the contributors as a lead up to the book's release on February 14, 2018. (Have you pre-ordered yet?) This week, my interview went up. Check it out for some background on how I came to write "Gifts Tell Truth" and general chat about my writing.

I'm excited to have an Alpennia story published in a mainstream SFF context. Although I have a number of pieces of Alpennia short fiction planned, what I don't have is a clear plan for how to get them to readers. "Three Nights at the Opera" was always a free giveaway from the start, in part because I wanted to have an appetizer to offer people who'd never read anything of mine. And I have plans to make advance access to Alpennia shorts one of the benefits of subscribing to my mailing list, especially for the pieces that are more in the way of character sketches rather than free-standing stories. But the weird neither-this-nor-that nature of the series makes it hard to identify potential publication venues. In essence, "Gifts Tell Truth" was written specifically for the theme of Lace and Blade. The specific story wasn't one I'd been planning to write all along.

The eventual end-game, once the series as a whole is complete, will be to put out all the short fiction in a convenient collection, but that's quite a ways down the road.

What "fill-in" stories would you love to read about Alpennia? Especially if I'm not constrained to telling stories centering on the lesbian characters?

But Heather (you say), you don't write horror! You don't write supernatural fiction! What do you mean you want to feature Halloween content today?

Halloween marks the end of the ancient Celtic year--the time when doors open between this world and the next--and what better day to have set the beginning of the action of "Hyddwen", my Mabinogi-inspired story about a woman who repays her debt to an otherworldly queen by being her champion in a very strange battle. Morvyth follows the footsteps of many an ancient Welsh hero in crossing that boundary on the day that falls between the years. No one who does so comes back unchanged. And one of these days I'll start writing "Gwylan" which deals with some unexpected fallout from that visit.

For my other Halloween-themed link, I invite you to re-visit the podcast I did last year for the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast, where I discuss Christina Rosetti's poem "The Goblin Market", including a full reading of the poem at the conclusion of the podcast. It's a spooky and frightening poem, but what I loved most was the shifting musical rhythms of the verses, with their repetitions and change in tempo. I've really started enjoying reading poetry as part of these podcasts just for the delicious taste of the language. (Hmm, maybe "delicious taste" isn't the best metaphor when talking about Goblin Markets!)

How delightful to wake up this morning to find the release announcement for "Hyddwen" in my Twitter mentions! This is the second story in a series inspired by my love for medieval Welsh literature (and the gnawing feeling that what medieval Welsh literature needed was more lesbians). I love love love what Pip Hoskins, the narrator, has done with this one! If you enjoy "Hyddwen", you might want to go back and listen to "Hoywverch", the first story in the series, though you get the essential recap within the story itself.

If you enjoy fantasy fiction and listening to audiobooks, I strongly encourage you to subscribe to the Podcastle podcast. You may have read my occasional short reviews of some of their output. In addition to doing audio reprints of stories published elsewhere, they publish a lot of great original work and recently won the Best Fictional Podcast at the Academy of Podcasters Awards. All their podcasts are free to download, but if you like what you hear, you can support them through venues like Patreon.