What can we expect from you in the future?
I’m currently working on a novel, so hopefully you can expect a novel from me! And hopefully another one after that …
Earnie Sotirokos grew up in a household where Star Trek: The Next Generation marathons were only interrupted for baseball and football games. When he’s not writing copy for radio or reading slush, he enjoys penning fiction based on those influences. Follow him on Twitter @sotirokos.
Author Spotlight: Megan Arkenberg
Amber Barkley
“The Huntsman” includes a quote from Tam Lin. How did that tale affect your writing? Did any other fairytales influence the story? Where else did you find inspiration?
The Tam Lin epigraph was actually a late addition to the story! I reread the ballad after finishing the final draft, and those particular lines leapt out at me.
As the title suggests, “The Huntsman” began as a retelling of Snow White; I was playing with the idea that the huntsman had a more permanent role in the Queen’s life than the original tale suggests. I kept returning to the image that now forms the opening of the story, the huntsman tracking a woman in a rather gritty, unromanticized urban setting. What was this man’s job—and why was he so good at it?
At one point, I described this story as “Snow White meets Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”—a reference of course, to the beheading game (de-hearting game?) that the faery woman proposes to the huntsman. Then came the idea of the tithe, which is lifted from Tam Lin. For me, one of the most fascinating features of that ballad is the hierarchy of supernatural powers that Janet must confront; behind the powerful and awful fairy queen is the even more fearsome power of Hell. My version of the tithe is a more ambiguous, shadowy power, but I tried to maintain a sense of the multiplicity of forces that keep the huntsman—this story’s Tam Lin—from returning home.
The faery woman mixes tomatoes and peppers in the story, and chrysanthemums also make repeated appearances. Can you tell us about the significance of those three elements?
When it comes to retellings of Snow White, I, personally, am so over poisoned apples. Twilight’s iconic cover was the final straw. The faery woman’s pico de gallo is my more contemporary and domestic riff on the red fruit theme.
Inside the story, the chrysanthemum represents the huntsman’s faery nature, the enchanted, spontaneously magical part of him that did not quite get left behind when he was taken from Faery. Chrysanthemums are also associated with death and autumn, making them an appropriate counterpart to the faery woman’s train of autumn leaves.
“The Huntsman” takes place in a world that seems to be a mix of the magical and the modern. Why did you choose this setting?
This is one of the exceedingly rare cases where I’d argue that the setting choose me. The tithe-projects were part of the mental image that jump-started this story. I decided that I wanted to write an urban fairy tale that addressed the less glamorous aspects of its setting—the low-income housing, shady hotel rooms, and public transportation, rather than the nightclubs and museums and high-class apartments that seem more prevalent in the genre. Hawthorne Street is based on a specific neighborhood that I used to drive through on my way to work. It was a run-down but strangely enchanting place; I particularly remember one apartment complex that had a massive, antique dollhouse sitting on the doorstep.
The huntsman knows that “his have never been just dreams.” Can you tell us more about the reality behind those dreams?
Faery in this story is not only a location, but also a subconscious space that Faery’s denizens can access in shared dreams. Being sent out with the tithe means being cut off from these dreams. However, the huntsman’s willingness to sacrifice himself for Queenie—who uses the blood and hearts of other faeries to maintain her connection to the dreams—has in fact allowed him to maintain his own connection to Faery. Thus, the dreams both teach the huntsman how to return to Faery and confirm that in some essential way, he had never been banished to begin with.
How did this story come into being? Was anything about writing “The Huntsman” different from your other stories?
Like many of my recent stories, this one suffered a number of false starts—different combinations of premises and characters, though the setting remained consistent. Part of what made this story so challenging was my attempt to juggle so many folkloric references at once; I think I became overly concerned with incorporating fairytale narratives intact. Once I recognized the value in taking only what I needed, the story became much easier to write.
What makes “The Huntsman” so unique is that, despite these false starts, I was actually able to complete it! Indecisiveness tends to be the kiss of death for my short fiction. Sometimes I think that the likelihood of a story ever being completed is inversely proportional to the amount of time I spend thinking about it!
Amber Barkley is a recent graduate of Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. She was born in Idaho and grew up in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Her favorite animals are cats and horses, and she considers it a great injustice that she is allergic to both—though that doesn’t stop her from being around them whenever she has the chance. Amber writes high fantasy with a dark twist, and is currently working on her first novel.
Author Spotlight: Christopher Barzak
Earnie Sotirokos
“Paranormal Romance” takes a refreshing look at what a supernatural dating landscape might look like. Was this written in response to the current state of the subgenre?
I wrote it for a couple of reasons, but yes, it’s my own tongue-in-cheek response to the current state of the paranormal romance subgenre. I want to love paranormal romances, but I feel like that subgenre takes itself overly seriously, and by doing so has limited the types of paranormal romances that it could explore. So many paranormal romance stories are utterly serious, very Twilight-esque, and the romance at the heart of them needs to be saved and preserved as if it were the heartbeat of life itself. I, on the other, am reading those books and thinking, I want my Sex in the City paranormal romances. I want a nice romantic comedy, preferably one where the protagonist does not have to engage in saving the world while attempting to negotiate the waters of a turbulent love at the same time. Despite some of the humorous moments in my “Paranormal Romance,” I wanted to read a story where people can be badly mismatched, and love (or something like it) comes in off of the side of the stage, so to speak, unexpectedly.
Sheila changed her stance on how she feels about witchcraft and ultimately only uses it as a source of income. If magic was real, do you think those with the gift would treat it the same way?
I think even if magic isn’t real the way it is in this story, people are already using it for income. This is if you include those who give psychic readings, lay out spreads of tarot and interpret, conduct gemstone healings, concoct herbal remedies, create prayer or spell candles, etc. There’s already a market for witches and paranormals out there. So if magic became as real as the sort I depict in the story, I think all of that would become even more marketable than the type of hedge wizardry we already see in yellow pages and in certain corners of the internet.
You literally left the door open at the end of the story. Do you have any plans to revisit this world?
I would very much like to revisit this world. I already know, for instance, the story about the gay neighbors downstairs from Sheila. One of them has a dead ex-boyfriend whose ghost shows up once a year for dinner with them. This causes frustration between the boys, mainly because the one can’t get over his ex completely, and feels somewhat guilty for his ex’s death. I haven’t written this story, but it would be similar in tone to “Paranormal Romance”—somewhat ironic humor with some sad, authentic moments amid the winking. I’d like to do a whole book of stories linked by character and place like this. But right now I’m waist-deep in two other projects I have to bring to completion first. Then, I really do want to go back to writing more stories about Sheila and the people she interacts with and encount
ers in “Paranormal Romance.”
What can we expect from you in the future?
I’m working to complete my next novel, Wonders of the Invisible World, about a young man who is piecing together the mystery of his family’s secret history. And I’m also engaged right now with writing retellings of what I think of as classic genre literature. Some of these retellings have already appeared in magazines or anthologies. The first one was “Invisible Men” (after Wells) which came out in 2012 from Eclipse Online and was reprinted in Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best Science Fiction. A new one will appear this summer in the Lethe Press anthology called Where Thy Dark Eye Glances: Queering Poe, which is a retelling of the Poe story “William Wilson.” I’ve got another one releasing this October in the Paula Guran edited anthology, Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales, called “Eat me, Drink Me, Love Me,” which is a retelling of the Christina Rossetti poem “Goblin Market.” I’ve written about six of these types of stories so far and have another four or five planned, and would like to create a collection entirely of retellings as well. Then maybe I can return to the world of “Paranormal Romance” (if I haven’t been sidetracked by some other shiny new idea).
And lastly, in 2014, a movie based on my first novel, One for Sorrow, will be released. The title is different, though. It’s being called “Jamie Marks is Dead” and stars Liv Tyler, Judy Greer, Cameron Monaghan, Noah Silver, and Morgan Saylor. Needless to say, I’m terribly excited to see it!
Earnie Sotirokos grew up in a household where Star Trek: The Next Generation marathons were only interrupted for baseball and football games. When he’s not writing copy for radio or reading slush, he enjoys penning fiction based on those influences. Follow him on Twitter @sotirokos.
Author Spotlight: Carrie Vaughn
Robyn Lupo
What was the spark for “Game of Chance”? How did you build this world?
This is one of those stories that went through a couple of permutations, several drafts, and evolved slowly rather than coming from a single spark. I’ve always had a fondness for writing about people on the fringes of a system, and for “secret histories,” the idea of an unseen hand guiding events. Fate, maybe, and how that might look from the ground. And time travel. So yes, it’s one of those stories where I kept putting things into the bucket and seeing how it turned out. The story grew out of having these quirky characters in a kind of pulp-era adventuring group—and then having them be not particularly good at accomplishing anything. They really think they’re saving the world, but they’re just kind of muddling along with all the people who don’t know what’s going on.
It seems like a lot of Clare’s life is about flying under the radar, about hiding who she is. Why did you decide to tell her story?
I love the most unlikely characters in any giving adventuring group. The one who isn’t the strongest or most powerful, who doesn’t have any particular talents and skills. (In college, I once drove my gaming group bonkers by insisting on playing a pregnant teenager.) In a fantastical adventure-oriented setting, those characters often have the best perspective on what’s going on, and they’re able to make things happen by being good people, by being focused on what they’re doing rather than on the “meta” story. She’s really the whole point of the story—the apparently weaker member of the team, easiest to dismiss, is the one who has the best idea of how to make a difference, how to do the most good. I really like writing about the kind of characters who tend to get overlooked, but who have a lot of depth behind them.
There’s a theme of free will versus destiny in this work. What’s your position in the debate? Do we choose, or are we destined?
Oh, I’m for free will, definitely. However, our choices are constantly defined and constrained in ways we’re not even aware of most of the time. Neurobiology, culture, societal pressure—it might seem like destiny sometimes, but I don’t think those structures are anything that grand. More like, this is the mess we’re born into and we spend our whole lives picking it apart. Another idea feeding into the story is of the self-correcting time stream—the idea that the sweep of history really is too big to change, even though tiny, individual quirks and choices are changing it all the time.
The main difference between Gerald and Clare seems to be the scale of the changes they make. What accounts for the difference they have in worldview?
A couple of threads feed into their differing worldviews. One is ambition—Gerald wants to change the world, and that’s the scale he’s thinking on—history, politics, the upper echelons of influence and power. Clare isn’t all that interested in changing the world—she’s focused on herself, her relationship with Major, the day-to-day details that make up a good life. Second, there’s a gendered aspect to their worldviews that I definitely wanted to get across. Clare is a woman who comes from a time and place where women are considered domestic, sheltered, passive, and that has impacted her. She’s never considered whether she has the ability to change anything beyond her own private domestic sphere. However, and this is another big point I wanted to make in the story, her so-called “limited” view, the little changes she’s able to make, have just as much potential to change the world. Gerald’s big mistake is ignoring the tiny details that Clare is focused on.
What’s next for you?
I always seem to be working on about a million things, so I hardly know where to start! I have a bunch of short stories coming out this year, in place like Asimov’s Science Fiction, Tor.com, and Nightmare, as well as several anthologies. The next Kitty book, Kitty in the Underworld, will be out in July. Dreams of the Golden Age, the sequel to my superhero novel, will be out in January. I’m working on the next Kitty novel and lining up the projects that I’ll work on after that. Keeping busy! Find more info at www.carrievaughn.com.
Robyn Lupo has been known to frequent southwestern Ontario with her graduate student husband and elderly dog. She writes, reads, and plays video games. She is personal assistant to three cats.
Coming Attractions
Coming up in July, in Lightspeed …
We’ll have original science fiction by Benjamin R. Lambert (“Division of Labor”) and Carlie St. George (“This Villain You Must Create”) and SF reprints by Margo Lanagan (“Mulberry Boys”) and Ryan North (“Cancer”).
Plus, we’ll have original fantasy by Adam-Troy Castro (“The Boy and the Box”) and Laura Friis (“Ushakiran”), along with fantasy reprints by Sophia McDougall (“Golden Apple”) and Ursula K. Le Guin (“The Stars Below”).
All that, and of course we’ll also have our usual assortment of author and artist spotlights, along with feature interviews with bestselling authors Hugh Howey and Austin Grossman.
For our ebook readers, we’ll also have the novella “The Wide, Carnivorous Sky” by John Langan and an excerpt of the new Shannara novel Witch Wraith by Terry Brooks.
It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out. And while you’re at it, tell a friend about Lightspeed.Thanks for reading!
Lightspeed Magazine Issue 37 Page 26
