New York Times Bestselling and award-winning author, Claribel A. Ortega is a former reporter who writes middle-grade and young adult fantasy inspired by her Dominican heritage. When she’s not busy turning her obsession with eighties pop culture, magic, and video games into books, she’s co-hosting her podcast Bad Author Book Club. Claribel is a Marvel contributor and has been featured on Buzzfeed, Bustle, Good Morning America and Deadline.
Claribel’s NYT Bestselling debut middle-grade novel Ghost Squad is being made into a feature film. Her latest book Witchlings (Scholastic) was an Instant NYT and #1 Indie Bestseller. Her graphic novel Frizzy with Rose Bousamra was the winner of the 2023 Pura Belpré Award for Children’s Text and an Indie Bestseller. You can find her on Twitter, Instagram, and Tiktok @Claribel_Ortega, on Twitch as Radbunnie.
I had the opportunity to interview Claribel, which you can read below.
First of all, welcome back to Geeks OUT! How have you been?
Thanks! I’ve been great, busy working on more books, and had a good summer.
What can you tell us about your latest book, Witchings: The Golden Frog Games?
The Golden Frog Games takes place a few months after the events of the first Witchlings book, and centers a magical olympics called The Golden Frog Games. Thorn is the first ever Spare to be a competitor but someone is turning her competition into stone and it’s up to the Witchlings to figure out who it is before Thorn is next! The stakes are bigger than book one, there are first crushes and new characters and we get to see all the Coven Houses too.
As an author, what drew you to the art of storytelling, specifically middle grade andspeculative fiction (especially witches)?
I’ve always loved fantasy and the potential for exploring real world issues through the lens of magic. Witches are the perfect vehicle for the stories I want to tell too, because historically they’ve just been people who were responsible for healing and helping those in need but were villainized for being different or misunderstood or just for being women. All of my books center the perspectives of women, and marginalized people so in a fantasy world witches really embody that experience. Writing middle grade fantasy is so much fun, and for me feels really comforting. There’s something special about a cozy town with adorable animals that has an undercurrent of danger just beneath the surface. It’s those kinds of stories that spoke to me as a child, so I think that’s why I’m drawn to write them as an adult. Also, my readers are the best. They are funny, and kind and ready to believe whatever wacky scenario I throw at them. Middle grade readers are willing to go along on the adventure with my characters and root for them no matter how weird they are.
As a writer, you have spoken a bit about featuring Dominican and queer representation in your book, from your fantasy novels to your debut graphic novel, Frizzy. Could you speak a bit here about what representing those elements mean to you as a author?
I am just writing my honest experience which I think is important. Kids know when you’re talking down to them or keeping things from them, and while I always make sure that my books are appropriate for the ages I write for, I think writing about the world as it really is with all the diversity that entails is my job as an author. After all, being Dominican and queer are things that represent me, I shouldn’t have to keep my own existence from my books.
As a writer, who or what would you say are some of your greatest creative influences and/orsources of inspiration in general?
I have quite a few! I always say that I aspire to write something as powerful, funny and perfect as Little Shop of Horrors, haha, so that’s my North Star. In terms of writers, Diana Wynne Jones, Lin Manuel Miranda, Leigh Bardugo and Gregory Maguire are big ones. I’m always inspired by my own life too, the things I love to do (like play video games) the music I listen to, or just my experiences are all sources of inspiration for me.
What are some of your favorite elements of writing? What do you consider some of the mostfrustrating and/or difficult?
I adore character creation and world building. It’s been so much fun for me to make up systems and monsters and pop culture in the Witchlings series. Writing on deadline is super challenging for me! I love taking my time with stories, and a lot of my writing process is about daydreaming and thinking about the story to let things come to me but I don’t get to do that as much while on deadline and it’s a bummer.
What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet but that you wish you were asked (as well as theanswer to that question)?
I would love to be asked more questions about the content of the Witchling series versus just the representation or diversity angle. I think oftentimes marginalized authors get looped into talking about diversity over and over again so our books get seen as a lesson to be learned rather than a story to enjoy. The Witchlings series is about friendship, and political turmoil and the nature of monstrosity– who gets called a monster versus who is really doing those monstrous things. I would love for people to know that despite the very adorable cover of the books, the core story is a dark one with parallels to many of our real world social and political issues. The ultimate message of the Witchlings series is about the power of community and how self-efficacy doesn’t have to come at the cost of that community.
What advice might you have to give for other aspiring writers?
Focus on the words. Don’t get caught up in stats about querying, or what everyone else is doing on social media, focus on the words and your craft and being the best storyteller you can be.
Are there any other projects you are working on and at liberty to speak about?
The third Witchlings book will be out next year, so I’m busy working on that and there is another graphic novel in my future which I will hopefully be able totalk about soon.
Finally, what LGBTQ+ books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?
Andrew Joseph White is a queer, trans author from Virginia, where he grew up falling in love with monsters and wishing he could be one too. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University in 2022. Andrew writes about trans folks with claws and fangs, and what happens when they bite back.
I had the opportunity to interview Andrew, which you can read below.
First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?
Hi y’all! Thank you for having me! I’m Andrew Joseph White (he/him), and I’m a queer, trans, and autistic NYT-bestselling author from Virginia. I use horror—usually gore, body horror, and violence—to explore my experiences as a queer and disabled person. But beyond just being a writer, I’m an artist, gamer, and cat dad. I grew up on creepypastas, leading to a life-long love of analog horror, low-budget indie games, and whatever disgusting thing catches my attention.
Fun fact: I’m actually a huge wimp when it comes to live-action horror movies. If you wrangle me into a seat, I’ll bring a stuffed animal and watch through my fingers.
What can you tell us about your debut book, Hell Followed With Us? What inspired the story?
So Hell Followed with Us—which came out in paperback May 9th, you should grab a copy, there’s some cool extras in this edition—is a YA post-apocalyptic horror about a teenage trans boy who flees a fundamentalist cult and joins an LGBTQ+ rebel group while slowly turning into a monster. Thematically, it’s also about far-right fundamentalist Christianity in the US and the way that queer children have to fight for survival against those who hate them.
It doesn’t take a media analyst to figure out that Dead Space and Far Cry 5 were huge inspirations for this book. I fell in love with necromorphs as a child, and desperately wanted to write a book where I could be friends with them. Plus, the religious extremists in Far Cry 5 really helped me give a nice kick to the book’s terrifying Angelic Movement. But most of all, this book was inspired by the anger I felt after realizing I’m trans. I felt cornered by a country that has done nothing but make things harder for me. I wanted to write a story where trans kids could express the rage that had built up in their chests, where the monsters were the good guys, where we could be mean and bloody and terrifying.
I’m heartbroken that so many young readers connect to my work, but I’m honored that I can be here for them.
What drew you to writing, particularly young adult fiction? Were there any favorite writers or stories that sparked your own love and interest in storytelling?
I’ve always been a writer—I started writing stories before I even knew what words were, scribbling on sheets of paper and calling them books. In fact, writing is one of my special interests as an autistic person. If I don’t write, it feels like I’m neglecting a part of my humanity. I have to.
As for reading, I devoured every story I could get my hands on, frequently chewing through novels in a day. In elementary and middle school, I loved The Last Apprentice, Cirque Du Freak, Ranger’s Apprentice, and, funnily enough, The Phantom Stallion. (I hope these bring back memories for people my age!) Eventually, in high school, I found a list of the most disturbing books in the English language and started working through those instead: Hogg, Cows, The Wasp Factory, and Exquisite Corpse have stuck with me to this day. Truth is, I didn’t actually read a lot of YA growing up. When I realized that I wanted to move this from a hobby to a career, I just knew I wanted to write stories that spoke to my teenage self—and in the current market, those happen to fall under YA. Looks like I made a good choice!
Hell Followed With Us is said to feature queer and autistic representation. What does it mean to you as an author writing this into your work, especially as a trans and autistic author yourself?
For me, it means getting to create the stories I desperately needed as a teen but couldn’t find—if I even knew to look for it. It also means taking myself apart to inspect my identity and my feelings, then scooping up the bloody mess and throwing it on the page. It’s so, so freeing to create characters who share my identities and get to be the heroes instead of jokes or tragedies. I write about trans people who are angry and badass and deeply influenced by their identity yet not overshadowed by it, and autistic people who aren’t just obstacles for other characters to overcome or gawk at. It’s a breath of fresh air, and I get to give those stories to anyone who wants them.
I don’t think I’m ever going to get over all of the young trans and autistic people who have told me they’ve never felt so represented.
How would you describe your writing process? What inspires you as a writer?
These days, I start every book with a chunky chapter-by-chapter outline, often with additional character lists, definitions, and timelines. I did not do this with Hell, and I paid the price for it—editing was a year-long horror show. I also tried to plot my second book, but I didn’t go far enough, and editing that one also nearly lead to me throwing out the manuscript a few dozen times. These days, I’m very careful to cover all my bases.
Once it comes to actually putting words on paper, I’m a very revision-focused writer; I churn out the first draft as quickly as I can, then do a few different passes: usually one focusing on the plot, then themes, then wording. I find drafting and revision both wonderfully rewarding, just for different reasons.
When my creative well runs dry, I flock to indie games, ARGs, creepy video essays, and the homebrew TTRPG worlds I build for my friends. However, so many of the things my stories touch on come from real-life issues—US politics, transphobia and ableism, family history, etc. Those two sources combined help my work become truly unsettling, since horror becomes even more horrifying when it touches on real topics.
What are some of your favorite elements of writing? What are some of the most challenging for you?
Full honesty? I love getting edit letters. Sure, I sulk about them, and maybe I complain and whine, but even as someone who is violently protective of my solitude, the moment that my writing becomes a collaboration with an editor who loves my work as much as I do is unmatched. Ideas begin bursting from every corner and it’s a frantic, wonderful moment of togetherness and improvement.
The most challenging is probably plotting. I’m very open about how difficult it is for me and how much help I ask from my agent and editors. That’s why my outlines are so long—I have to nail everything down at the start or it’ll just unravel. I’ll run the outline by my agent once or twice, and then by the editor when it’s acquired, and then a few friends just to double-check. I’m prone to hand-waving things or including dull coincidences, and it’s a struggle to iron them out. I just want to write cool stuff and not think about it, but that does not a good book make. Boo.
One of the hardest parts of writing a book is finishing one. Were there any techniques/ strategies/ advice that helped you finish your first draft?
This question hits home. Growing up, I struggled to complete anything. My mom would always say, “You can’t get a book published if you don’t finish one!” And obviously, she’s right.
These days, the only thing that keeps me focused on a project is the fact that I’m getting paid to do it, and I have an agent and editor who will have to do more work if I don’t turn manuscripts around on time. However, when it came to the first draft of Hell, the one thing that helped me finish it was become completely, utterly obsessed with it, while at the same time challenging myself to write a thousand words a day in between college classes. I churned out 80,000 words in three months! From there, it was a mountain of edits and rewrites, but finishing novels is a skill, and you have to give it practice.
What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet, but wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)?
Okay, maybe this is a little bit of a spoiler, but: Why does Benji stay a monster at the end of the book?
I’ve been asked this once or twice, but I’m truly devastated that it doesn’t come up more often. It is so, so important to me that the main character, Benji, stays a monster at the end of Hell. There is no rewind, there’s no reversal; he becomes a giant beast with six wings and a hundred teeth and spikes and welts and claws, and he stays that way.
The short answer is, Benji stays a monster because I’ve always been upset that the Beast turns back into a prince. No, but seriously, Benji stays a monster because it would be so horrifically meaningless if he went through all this pain and did all this work to accept himself only for it to be undone. The theme of monstrosity as something that can be loved and good would be completely unraveled. In my opinion, turning Benji back into a normal boy would be the more traditional ending, but it’s also the coward’s way out. If you’re going to write a book about monsters, own it, you know?
Besides your work, what are some things you would want readers to know about you?
My first instinct is that I’m literally just some guy. I love that people are so excited to meet me and ask me for advice, but I always laugh and say, “I’m just a dude!” I’m a guy with an overactive imagination that the publishing industry has taken a shining to.
I will say, I would like my readers—especially my neurotypical readers—to understand that my success does not negate my disability. I’m here because my community accommodates me. Lots of things are hard for me! I struggle with cleaning, showering, and taking care of myself; maintaining communication with me can be unduly difficult, and I frequently self-isolate for months at a time; I often can’t understand or express my own feelings. Sometimes speaking feels like chewing barbed wire and my anxiety gets so bad I become physically sick. I love my autism so much, but I don’t want non-autistic readers to think that I’ve “overcome” it or anything, you know? And I definitely don’t want my young autistic readers to have to hide themselves to be accepted. We should be allowed to be open about our experiences, and I want to help make that happen.
What advice might you give to other aspiring writers?
My favorite go-to is be ugly! Write situations that are messy, imperfect, and have no good answers! Write characters that are cruel or feral or unlikeable! There is so much pressure for marginalized authors to write stories that are neat little packages that the majority can consume and accept without feeling bad about themselves. It’s pressure that I almost gave into—when I started writing Hell, I was terrified to write a book about a trans kid turning into a murderous monster. I thought it’d make us look bad. But we are allowed to be three-dimensional people. We’re allowed to be imperfect and rough around the edges, and I want nothing more than for that to be embraced for everyone.
If you’re as hungry for stories like this as I am, pre-order I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me by Jamison Shea. I was lucky enough to get an early copy and I promise, it’s just as good as it sounds.
Are there any other projects you are working on and at liberty to speak about?
Oh, publishing loves to make authors wait punishingly long times to announce projects and sales—but for what might be the first time, I don’t have anything to hide right now. Whew!
My sophomore novel, The Spirit Bares Its Teeth, released this September—if you’re looking for a historical horror/fantasy about ghosts and an autistic trans boy battling ableism, conversion therapy, and the insidious terror of upper-class white society, then this is the book for you. Coming in 2024 is Compound Fracture, my West Virginia-based thriller following an autistic trans boy with a special interest in leftist history who faces off against his homicidal classmates with the help of a pissed-off ancestor.
And then, in 2025, I get to release my adult debut. You Weren’t Meant to be Humanis a nasty book about the horrors of pregnancy, the failure to protect bodily autonomy in the US, and how queer and disabled children can slip through the cracks to become angry, shattered adults. (Plus there’s parasitic alien worms! Yay!) I’m so excited for this book, and I really hope it finds its readers.
Finally, what LGBTQ+ books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?
There’s so many to choose from! For those interested in trans horror, I’m recommending Alison Rumfitt to anyone who will listen—Tell Me I’m Worthlesspermanently rearranged my neurons, and I have a PDF of Brainwyrmssitting in my inbox right now. On the YA side, Blood Debtsby Terry J. Benton needs to be on every young reader’s TBR, and I’d be amiss if I didn’t also recommend everything by H.E. Edgmon and Courtney Summers. Check them all out!
Melissa See is a disabled author of young adult contemporary romances. When not writing, she can be found reading, baking, or curled up with her cat, most likely watching anime or 90 Day Fiancé. She currently lives in the New York countryside. You, Me, and Our Heartstrings is her debut novel.
I had the opportunity to interview Melissa, which you can read below.
First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?
Hi! Thank you so much for having me. I’m Melissa See, the author of You, Me, and Our Heartstrings and Love Letters for Joy. I write young adult contemporary stories the feature disabled teens falling in love, being messy, and being loved for exactly who they are.
What can you tell us about your latest book, Love Letters for Joy. What was the inspiration for this story?
Love Letters for Joy follows seventeen-year-old Joy Corvi—a fat, disabled, queer girl—who wants to become the first disabled valedictorian of her elite New York City prep school. She just has to beat Nathaniel Wright, her academic rival of the last four years. But when she realizes that she may have missed out on having a high school romance, she reaches out to her academy’s anonymous love-letter writer known as Caldwell Cupid. But as she begins falling for the mysterious student behind the letters, she might be risking her dreams at valedictorian—as Caldwell Cupid is the last person she ever would’ve expected.
The inspiration for Love Letters for Joy came from Cyrano de Bergerac—which is also why Love Letters for Joy is a retelling of the play. Me writing a Cyrano retelling was completely unintentional, but when my friend made me realize I had, I decided to really delve deeply into aspects of the play: love, withheld identity, and letters being the strongest aspects I drew from.
As a writer, what drew you to the art of storytelling, specifically young adult fiction and romance?
Well, I knew that I wanted to be a writer by the time I was just seven years old. (Spending summers going up and down the east coast while my sister was on a traveling softball team, I carried bags of books with me wherever we went.)
As for young adult fiction and romance, when I read Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins, an entire new world had opened up before me. I knew that writing young adult romance, specifically, was absolutely something I wanted to do. (The love confession scene at the end of Anna and the French Kiss remains one of my favorite scenes in all of fiction.)
As an aspec reader, I was really excited to read about another ace book coming out into the world. If you feel comfortable, could you tell us what having asexual and disabled representation in your writing means to you?
Thank you so much! Having asexual and disability representation in my books means a lot to me. Growing up, there really weren’t a lot of books that included disabled characters—or queer characters—so I am elated to see that representation increasing. In providing both disability and asexual representation through Love Letters for Joy, I’m hopeful that readers will get to see themselves reflected in the pages of a book in a way I didn’t get to growing up.
How would you describe your creative process?
I genuinely do not have a creative process. I write whenever I can and try not to put pressure on myself. (Such as not needing to write every day, especially if I don’t have the spoons to do so.)
As a creative, who or what would you say are some of your greatest creative influences and/or sources of inspiration?
Some of my greatest creative influences are authors whose books I love, such as Jonny Garza Villa; David Levithan; Emily Lloyd-Jones; Jen DeLuca; Brian D. Kennedy; Daniel Aleman; Andrew Joseph White; and Stephanie Perkins (who I mentioned previously). I also just recently finished Into the Light by Mark Oshiro, which I loved.
Growing up, were there any stories in which you felt touched by/ or reflected in? Are there any like that now?
As far as stories I’m touched by now, the first one that comes to mind is The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White. It’s an incredible gothic young adult horror that tackles ableism and transphobia in such a brilliant way. Getting to see Silas’ autism on the page and having it remind me of my own experience being autistic was something I’d never had up until I read this book. It comes out in September, and I cannot recommend it enough.
What are some of your favorite elements of writing? What do you consider some of the most frustrating and/or challenging?
My favorite element of writing is character creation. It’s one of my favorite aspects of anything creative I get to do. It’s this awesome place of endless possibility, and I love exploring it.
I think the most frustrating element of writing for me is when I can’t figure out how to work a plot. A large part of that is me being a character driven writer. But talking to my author friends about that helps immeasurably!
One of the hardest parts of writing a book is finishing one. Were there any techniques/ strategies/advice that helped you finish your first draft?
I didn’t use any techniques or strategies to finish my first draft of Love Letters for Joy, as writing it was a whirlwind. (I’d been moving to New York City during a good amount of it, so a lot of the process has become a blur to me.) Writing as much of it as I could, whenever I could, but also knowing how to balance myself, was what helped me the most, I think.
Aside from your work, what are some things you would like readers to know about you?
I’ve been involved in performance spaces—from music to theatre—for most of my life. And now, I’m a TTRPG performer. What that means is I appear on Twitch streams to perform in actual plays of different TTRPG systems. Having a creative outlet like this has been such a joy!
What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet but wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)?
Question: Without giving spoiler-filled context, what was one of your favorite scenes to write in Love Letters for Joy?
Answer: The Valentine’s Day scene. It’s one of the earliest moments of romantic tension, which are some of my favorite parts of any story I get to write.
What advice might you have to give for other aspiring writers?
One of my biggest pieces of advice is: You don’t need to write every day. Write when you have the spoons to do so.
Are there any other projects you are working on and at liberty to speak about?
I’m currently drafting a young adult contemporary that can best be described as Dungeons & Dragons meets Paper Towns. It follows a group of friends—bonded together by a fantasy TTRPG—who embark on a cross-country road trip to find their Game Master when he goes missing.
Finally, what LGBTQ+ and/or disabled books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?
In a world where corporate entities maintain a tight grip on the institutionalization of creativity and where representation mattering is still more of a conversation than a mainstream practice, a glimmer of hope emerges in a new queer press, Bona Books. The London-based press established by Trip Galey, Chris McCartney, and Robert Berg, Bona Books plans to be a place the queer community and allies can pick up science fiction and fantasy and see themselves fully reflected in it. As Chris says in one of the many gems from our recent chat, “To see that representation, to see the community that we love and the people that we love reflected in stories that we love” is what Bona Books is all about. I sat down with Trip and Chris (sadly, Robert was unable to join) prior to the launch of the Kickstarter campaign to fund Bona Book’s first anthology,I Want That Twink OBLITERATED!, which met its full fundraising goal in less than 32 hours after officially launching on September 13th, 2023, and was picked as a “Project We Love” by Kickstarter themselves. Our conversation was playful as much as insightful as we spoke about the innate queerness of science fiction and fantasy, obliterating twinks memes, and the space they hope Bona Books can hold in the world of publishing.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
First, I’d love to know a little bit about each of you and how books and reading were a part of your upbringing.
Chris: I was very much one of those kids who always had a book at all points. My earliest memories are all book-related. When I was very very young the way my dad would coax me to have a bath was he’d read to me. So, I have recollections of him reading The Hobbit and Sherlock Holmes stories. He read me the entirety of The Hobbit in installments and got to the end and I was like, ‘Yeah, this great! I love it!’ [Chris’s dad said] ‘There is a sequel, I’m not reading you that.’ [Laughs]. At age 8 or 9, I embarked on reading The Lord of The Rings and it took me about six months.
And by that time you were old enough to bathe yourself, I’m assuming?
Chris: Yes [laughs]. So, yeah, always been a bit of a bookworm and it’s kind of almost always been genre fiction. As I grew up I read lit-fic as well, but when I was going to the library as a child it was always straight to the science fiction and fantasy section. It was always the genre stuff. [Referring to the first part of the question] I’m probably a bit of a jack-of-all-trades as anyone who writes these days is. I don’t support myself writing. I’m a civil servant working for His Majesty’s government. I have had some short fiction published, I’ve got a novella that I’m working on with Trip here, which will be my first foray into editing, which is really exciting and, I suppose, in terms of how I slot into Bona Books and the Kickstarter is that one of my big skillsets in terms of my civilian life is project management. I’m the hyper-organized person who has a spreadsheet for everything so, I’m kind of the central admin making sure the Kickstarter gets off the ground.
Trip: My first book was Go, Dog. Go! I forced my parents to read it to me so many times that I eventually learned to read just recognizing the words on the page from what they were reading me and they had to repair it multiple times with duct tape because I read it to the point it fell apart. I basically grew up on the road. My parents were professional Rodeo athletes so, I was on the Rodeo circuit in the back of the pick-up truck all the time. I would have a stack of books and that’s how I would keep myself entertained. I would just read as they drove. And then when I got older I very much just went straight for that fantasy section, but I grew up in the middle of absolute nowhere in the pre-Amazon days, not to date myself. So, I had to build my own science fiction and fantasy library and I went through a period of wearing nothing but cargo pants because the pockets on either side of the pair of cargo pants: exact right size and shape for a mass-market paperback. I could have two, on the go, at the same time, which was necessary because I just read too much.
I do support myself just with writing. That’s a mix of ghostwriting, a small bit of copywriting, and my debut novel is coming out 12th September, it’s called The Market of Dreams and Destiny and it’s out from Titan. That’s been a crazy experience. And in terms of Bona Books, I have started, and ran, and head-editored a small science fiction and fantasy magazine, which I did as part of my doctoral studies while I was a doctoral candidate as an extra project because I certainly didn’t have enough to do. [Laughs] That’s not a habit I’ve gotten into at all. So, I have done a bit of this contracts and acquiring short fiction before. But this is very much my first foray into doing it a bit more seriously.
And just to jump in for Robert, I know a whole bunch of his stories. Robert’s grandfather was a lawyer and Robert lived with his grandfather growing up. [W]hen he was very little, [his grandfather would] take him out to see the moon and would tell him stories from Shakespeare and mythology. And then he obviously got into reading and one of his earliest memories with a book is he had this book, I don’t remember what book it is unfortunately, and he went to a petting zoo and the goat literally ate his book. Outrage ensued from there. He is [also] another big fantasy nerd. He works as a professional copyeditor and proofreader. He works with some actual publishers and he works freelance as well. In Bona Books, he is the eye-to-detail editorial and about ten years ago he had a reviews blog where he did a lot of pop culture reviews, including media. And so he has reviewed a lot of authors, some of whom may now be appearing as solicited authors in our anthology efforts.
That’s amazing! Storytelling has been a huge part of all of your upbringings and your lives thus far. What is the story of how the three of you came together?
Trip: So, it will be Robert and my anniversary in October and we will have been together for… math, math, math… 16 years. So we’ve been together for yonks and then we moved over here six years ago for me to pursue a doctorate and five of those years ago we met Chris? Four and a half of those years ago?
Chris: That sounds about right.
Trip: I was doing my studies and lecturing in Cambridge and Chris was working at Cambridge and we have a mutual friend who introduced us and we just started meeting every week after I got done lecturing and after he finished work. We’d go to the pub, we’d have a pint or two and we would talk about, oh, I don’t know, science fiction and fantasy, and books, and writing for a couple of hours at a go before I caught the train back and he went to make dinner.
At what point did those conversations turn into, ‘should we start a press??’
Trip: So, that sort of goes: group chat, meme, Chris comes into the kitchen (cuz we all live together now, three of us we share a flat called The Writer Flat in London) but I’ve talked for a lot so I’m going to let Chris talk.
Chris: You’re the one with the charismatic storytelling ability!
Trip: Says the man who just got a short story published? Woo woo!
Chris: We’re not going to have this fight right now! [Laughs] Yeah, as Trip said, the meme came first. If you look it up on Know Your Meme there’s a little bit of a history to it. Originally there was a Wattpad comment and it took off a bit on the internet and it got picked up by Anthony Olivera, the comics writer and is in a Lords of Empyre: Emperor Hulkling and it’s thrown at the Marvel character, Wiccan, by the villain and he [Olivera] talks about the fact that it was him kind of wanting to queer the text of the comic so, that not only is there a queer character in it but it’s this queer culture reference that gay readers will spot in the language that’s being used and will be talking to them in a way that comics, even when they normally have queer characters in them don’t talk in that way.
Anyway, that’s all by-the-by. We were making “I want that twink obliterated” jokes and I think Robert said, ‘That would be a great title for an anthology!” laugh, laugh, laugh, chat chat, chat. And that just stuck in my head for a second. I was like, “We have the skills. We have the technology. I’m ridiculously organized, Robert has a load of contacts and is an editor and proofreader, Trip has run a magazine before.” So I walked into the kitchen and was like, “Trip, we could actually do this.” And then we paused and went, yeah we could, couldn’t we? And I think it was about a minute before we got to, “We’re doing this aren’t we.” It was very much like that.
Trip: Yeah, I have that scene burned in my mind. Just Chris coming into the kitchen and being like, we could do this… do we have to do this, do we need to do this… beat… I think we need to do this. Yeah.
What else was underneath that need? There has to be something really grounding to take something that’s like, a fun meme, jokey thing [seriously]. I know so many people, including myself, who will joke with friends about, ‘Oh my god we should do this or we should do that” so, what exactly was it that really made that pivot to this is not just a joke anymore, we’re doing it?
Chris: For me, I’d say, it’s a real burning desire to see queer narratives out there in the world. Particularly, in science fiction and fantasy. Particularly, unapologetic queer narratives written by queer authors. Representation has gotten a bit better in science fiction and fantasy over the last few years. But… often queer characters written by non-queer people do better. My instinct would be that, we feel so starved for it and we so desperately want it to exist. To see that representation, to see the community that we love and the people that we love reflected in stories that we love. As soon as we realized, “Oh, that’s a good idea, that’s a good enough idea that people will like it,” not only do we have the skills to do it but, I think, if we put that out into the world and put it in front of people, people will back that. Because if it was an ok idea and you’re pushing a boulder up a hill, maybe you’d think twice. But it seemed like such an obviously good idea that it would be pushing through an open door. And if we have that opportunity and we can make those stories happen, then I think, like Trip said, it wasn’t really a choice.
Trip: Yeah, It sort of felt like a foregone conclusion. Like the decision made us, we did not make the decision. [Laughs]
On that note, can you please pitch the I Want That Twink OBLITERATED! anthology and tell the readers at Geeks OUT what it and the Kickstarter is all about? And who are you hoping to reach?
Trip: I Want That Twink OBLITERATED!, is a fun meme. It is irreverent and it speaks directly to the community and that is, first and foremost, who we are hoping to do this for and who we are hoping to reach. It’s those portions of the queer community that loves science fiction and fantasy and those portions of science fiction and fantasy who love queer content, be they queer themselves or allies. The concept of the anthology itself is classic pulp, science fiction, fantasy, and horror. The sort of things you would find on the shelf in like, the 40’s/50’s in those old magazines like, Weird Tales that were, for so long, a mainstay of not only the genre, but also the community. [T]hose magazines were such an ongoing conversation. Science fiction and fantasy is fantastic because of the feedback between fandom and the authors and between authors themselves. Science fiction and fantasy more than other genres are ongoing conversations about ideas. And you get those so much in those old pulp magazines where people would write in, and they would have ideas, and they would discuss this, that, and the other.
So, it was really about that core root nurturing amazing part of science fiction and fantasy that a lot of minorities were shut out of in those days. Not just sexual or gender minorities, but all kinds of people who were just not invited to the conversation or had to work very very hard to get their voices heard in the conversation. We want that sort of classic pulp fun, but we want non-traditionally masculine heroes and villains. We’re talking, twinks so, The Obliterators and The Obliterated, we want to take the fantastic rich heritage and inheritance that we have from that period of science fiction and fantasy, but we want our part of that. We want our portion of that inheritance. We want the queer heroes, the queer villains, the unabashedly homosexual dialogue. Queerness has a culture to it. And it’s a whole collection of different cultures. But the way it intersects with fantasy and science fiction and these literatures of the possible it’s super exciting! It is that sense of new possibilities and new horizons, but in it, unrepentantly queer.
Chris came up with several examples as part of our guidelines for publication and so we’re really hoping to see stories with like, trans berserkers fueled by queer rage, we want stories with gender-fluid starship captains, and a rainbow band of rogue’s crew stashing across the universe and having amazing pulpy adventures, we want stories with li-ter-al demon twinks. Unapologetically science fiction and fantasy and unapologetically queer.
As you’re talking I’m just thinking about how sci-fi and fantasy are the perfect vehicles for queer stories and it’s hard to not feel like… I don’t know, I think about watching Star Trek with my dad back in the day. I feel like all of it has to be queer-coded in some way because it’s all about the expansion of the human experience and beyond. Those stories are so important, I think as we’re navigating who are we and what is this world and what is our part in it. Especially, with these political environments that keep wanting to make everything smaller and more binary. There’s not really a question there, just kind of a word vomit. I don’t know if you have any response to that.
Chris: I think I completely agree with you. It speaks to queer experience. It probably, I cannot speak to this with any authority, but I suspect it also speaks to other forms of minority experiences as well. It’s all about moving towards the boundaries of what’s socially permissible. It’s about imagining other worlds. Or, at least, when it’s done well, it is. You have the sort of classic Star Trek format of every week they’re in another planet, every week it’s another problem planet and so, obviously, it’s never going to be, Oh yes! They turn up on a planet that’s exactly like ours, all of the cultural mores are exactly the same, and all the dominant assumptions are just reinforced. That’s never going to be what the story is. So, yeah, inherently you end up in that sort of marginalized space because that’s where the boundaries get pushed. That’s where the interesting things are.
How do you think about that tension now where, as you mentioned before, there does seem to be more representation? It is a bit better, but it’s also such a heteronormative sphere that keeps caving in on everyone and also in on itself? I don’t even know if there’s really a question in there either, but in some ways, and to use Star Trek again, in the 60’s or in the Next Generation there is this huge, expansive feel to it. It feels like things have gotten just a bit more compressed.
Trip: Yeah, that’s a really interesting question because you can approach from multiple angles. If we’re talking, for example, publishing. Since this is an anthology, we’re a small press, we’re putting out queer work by queer authors, hopefully (support the Kickstarter!). If you look at the publishing ecosystem right now, 20 years ago you had the big 6, the big 7. There was a healthy mid-list, there was a healthy variety of imprints. We’re down to a big 4 and a lot of those medium-sized publishers have been swallowed up. There’s been a concentration of editorial talent and complete evaporation of editorial attention because people don’t have enough time. They don’t have enough time to do all the work. So, you get these big publishing houses, 20-30 years ago 20% of the books supported the other 80% in terms of sales if we’re talking just cold, hard, cash numbers, which I absolutely hate talking about, but that’s what it is. But now, the way the publishing industry has consolidated, we’re looking much more at 5% of titles bringing in all the money and covering the other 95%. So, there’s a lot more focus on those 5% of titles and publishing, like we’ve seen in Hollywood, they don’t like to take risks. If their financial continuation depends on 5% of titles hitting it big, they’re not going to take creative risks because that is much harder to predict. They’re not going to pump all of their marketing dollars behind those edge titles. Even if sometimes they do well. Even if they are excellent in their own right and there is an audience there for them.
It’s so interesting because it seems very antithetical to financial advice where you want to diversify your portfolio. When you’re limiting yourself by putting all of your eggs in one basket [it’s] kind of asking for a big problem down the line, which I think we’re definitely seeing in Hollywood at the moment with the strikes and everything, or one aspect of it. So, where does Bona Books fit into all of that for you?
Trip: It’s a passion project, you know, we’re doing this because it is important to us. I can’t remember if this is Toni Morrison or not, I could be horribly misattributing this quote, but it’s something to the effect of, “If you can’t find the book you want to read, you have to go out and write it.” And that sort of sentiment has come up again, and again, and again on almost every single panel discussion I have been on with queer writers writing queer science fiction and fantasy. The queer stories that they want to read don’t exist. So they’re going out and creating them and they are writing them themselves. Chris, Robert, and I we do have the knowledge and the skills to take a run at producing anthologies of queer fiction for queer people and a wider audience and, between the three of us, we have the stability to take on a passion project like this. We’re not doing this to get rich or make money, like, publishing is not a great way to make money generally, with very few, small exceptions making it look the other way. We’re doing it because we love it and we can offer our skills and we can offer our time. We can offer as much of ourselves as we can spare to bring these things into the world so that they’re there for people to find.
Chris: That’s the proper answer and all the focus should be on that. I’ll add that… in the back of my head I do have a little 5-year plan that’s going along. I think particularly with the Kickstarter and with how crowdfunding works we have to take it one day at a time, trying to get as many people as possible to hear about the Kickstarter. If the Kickstarter doesn’t happen then this doesn’t go anywhere. But we put a book together and, if that goes well, we’ll put another book together, then we’ve got a lot of experience under our belt at that point talking to publishers and working on layout and doing the editorial work. And if it’s successful, if there’s a bit of extra money in the kitty we can look at getting some novellas published, we’ll have more contacts… there’s a plan, but I don’t want to get out in front of my skis. I would love in five years time for it to be this little, small press. We’re never going to be doing dozens of books a year. But if a couple of times a year we put out something that people go, “Oh yeah, I always check out what Bona Books puts out because it’s got a really queer voice and they support and lift up queer writers” I would be chuffed a bit.
As a debut author, Trip, with your book coming out around the same time as this Kickstarter, how is your mental health?
Trip: [MANIACAL LAUGHTER] Just insert maniacal laughter here.
I will, literally, put that in the text [laughs in less maniacal]
Trip: I think the most generous term I can use is overclocked. There’s the book coming out, I am working very hard on the sequel right now, and then the Kickstarter and some other things that are all happening in September. So, yeah I’m slightly overclocked. But, I can’t complain because what am I doing? I’m writing queer science fiction and fantasy and I am working with my best friends in the world to produce more of it!
Chris: The book is so good!
That’s excellent. It’s so exciting! Is there anything else that I didn’t ask about that you would like to touch on?
Trip: While we do have solicited offers for this anthology, it is very important to us to foster new voices from the community. We want to get the word out to as many queer creatives and other minority creatives as we possibly can. We want your science fiction, fantasy, pulp, adventure stories starring twinks. You can be pro-twink, you can be anti-twink, put a twink in there as a hero, put a twink in there as a villain, we want to hear from every color of the queer rainbow. Send us your stuff please, please send us your stuff! We especially want to hear from women, we want to hear from…
Chris: …We’d love to get more non-binary and trans authors on board, that would be wonderful, particularly given the non-trad masculine aspect of the anthology. That would be beautiful. As Trip said, every single stripe of the progress flag should be represented if possible.
Trip: Writers of color, everyone.
Where can people reach out to you if they have something to share?
Chris: We will have a submission guide linked to and funneled through the Kickstarter and we’ll basically open for submissions as soon as we know we’re funded.
To support the funding of Bona Books, the production of their first anthology I Want That Twink OBLITERATED!, future releases by them, and to submit your own work head to their Kickstarter page linked here. Also, be sure to also follow them on all the socials @bonabooksltd
Mari Costa is a Luso-Brazilian cartoonist with a bachelor’s degree in Character Animation. She’s in love with creating stories and populating them with people who have very messy interpersonal drama. Some of her work includes Life of Melody, The Demon of Beausoleil, and Belle of the Ball.
I had the opportunity to interview Mari, which you can read below.
First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?
Happy to be here! I’m Mari! I’m luso-brazilian, currently based in Porto! I love fashion, cute things, the colour pink, telling stories and making people happy! My Sun is in Cancer.
What can you tell us about your latest project, Belle of the Ball? What was the inspiration for this story?
There wasn’t so much a concrete inspiration as there was just the desire to play around with familiar tropes and character archetypes and make them my own! I got the idea in my head during a family holiday that I wanted to make characters that represented different high school stereotypes and from doodling them in my sketchbook and putting them in all kinds of situations I eventually developed them into something that could later be shaped into a fully-fledged story with an actual plot and stakes and all that stuff!
Can you give us any trivia (that hasn’t already been given) about the characters from Belle of the Ball?
Ooh! Now you’re asking the right questions, I love random character trivia! Let’s do one for each.
Gina is the oldest of the girls! At the beginning of the story, she’s the only one of them who is already 18 (Belle and Chloe turn 18 as the plot progresses, though I couldn’t tell you their exact birthdays without doing some very deep thinking ahaha). This is mostly reflected in how she assumes she’s the most mature person in the room at any given time.
Chloe speaks fluent Japanese (don’t ask her to read or write it, though), but because the only people she communicates with in it are her grandparents and she doesn’t consume a lot of untranslated media her dialect is super stiff and formal.
Belle actually has been in a lot of different clubs along her high school career. She’s been in creative writing, anime, yearbook (to get closer to Regina, which she failed at) and D&D. However, you will not find a single scrap of photographic proof of any of this having taken place.
Also, everyone is welcome at any time to shoot me an ask on tumblr or an email if they want specific character trivia. I love ruminating on my little paper dolls.
As a creative, what drew you to the art of storytelling, particularly to the realm of comics/graphic novels?
You’d be surprised at how much easier it is to draw a background or character than it is to describe it. I’ve managed to transition into prose over the past couple years, but for most my life I really struggled with description when writing while dialogue always came to me very naturally. From then, I could either get into scriptwriting for radio (prohibitively difficult for a Brazilian preteen) or I could copy my favourite mangakas and draw little comics in my roughed up sketchbook. I chose the latter and the rest is history!
How would you each describe your creative process?
Vaguely chaotic and mostly inside my head unless I truly need to commit it to paper ahaha.
In general, I’m a pretty visual and visceral person, so I keep my notes extremely brief and extremely undecipherable to most people but myself and some keen-eyed editorial until it’s time to actually start drawing. I know a lot of people write scripts before they lay out their pages for comics, but I just can’t do it without becoming verbose or forgetting about the visual minutiae that’s meant to make comics so engaging!
As a creative, who or what would you say are some of your greatest creative influences and/or sources of inspiration?
Everyone says this, but it’s for good reason! I’m greatly inspired by Ghibli movies and magical girl/fantasy anime. My favourite author is and will forever be Diana Wynne Jones. As for comics, manga did play a big role in my personal development as an artist and I’m forever grateful to names like CLAMP and Peach-PIT especially, but if it weren’t for Gigi DG’s Cucumber Quest webcomic, I don’t think I’d be giving this interview today.
This might be a bit of a call back, but an older work of yours I’ve really enjoyed in the past was your comic, Life of Melody. Could you talk to us about the inspiration for that story?
I swear to the high heavens this is true: I watched Kung Fu Panda 3 and got unreasonably mad it wasn’t more about the odd couple co-parenting between Po’s two dads.
That’s it. That was the inciting incident that made me want to write about an odd couple who’s forced to co-parent a child and eventually develop a blossoming romance.
Growing up, were there any stories in which you felt touched by/ or reflected in? Are there any like that now?
Hmm, this is a tough one. I don’t think so, off the top of my head? Not that there weren’t any stories out there about lesbians or growing up the awkward, nerdy kid, but I can’t remember deeply resonating with anything I had access to! I’ve always loved stories, but mostly it’s been as a third party observer into a window of different experiences (which is also good! You don’t have to relate to works all the time!).
Currently, though, there’s so much more on the market that seems catered specifically to the kind of person I am and would like to see in media, it’s really heartwarming! One recent example is I read the first couple volumes of She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat and it really tugged at my gay little heartstrings how much of a dream relationship the main couple has! I, too, like to cook (and frequently, I like to eat. We contain multitudes).
What are some of your favorite elements of writing/illustrating? What do you consider some of the most frustrating and/or challenging?
I just love drawing people! Character work is some of the most rewarding kind of work I can do! I love drawing bodies and faces acting and emoting. For that same reason, when writing, dialogue is my favourite part! Honestly, my dream project to work on would actually be a character illustrator for a visual novel (please get at me).
On the other hand, if I never have to draw a car again, it’ll be much too soon. I’m pretty awful at giving inorganic environments/objects a personality. I have heard practice makes perfect, though, so I might give that a shot sometime.
Aside from your work, what are some things you would like readers to know about you?
Oh, but isn’t an aura of mystery just so much more appealing?
What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet but that you wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)?
Yes, I would love a million dollars.
(Alternatively: I think lesbian media should be allowed to be way more messed up than it is, as a treat.)
What advice might you have to give for other creatives?
Everyone knows all the platitudes about doing what you love and sticking to your guns, so here’s something more practical: It’s better to have a finished work than a perfect WIP that lives inside your head. Especially if you’re like me and crave validation. It’s okay to cut corners and it’s okay if some parts of your work look messy or rushed, so long as you’ve managed to put out something that you’re overall proud of sharing at the end of the day!
Also, stay hydrated.
Are there any other projects you are working on and at liberty to speak about?
When am I not working on other projects! I’m very much a storytelling shark in the sense that I’m pretty sure if I ever stop allowing stories and concepts to run around the hamster wheel in my brain I’ll shut down entirely.
That being said, my current darlings are The Demon of Beausoleil, which you can find being crowdfunded by Hiveworks right now and is an M/M gothic story about a half-demon exorcist and his reluctant bodyguard exorcising baddies around their city.
Forgive-Me-Not is a bit more distant in the horizon, but it’s another graphic novel being published by First Second about a changeling and the princess she’s replaced at birth working together to prevent a political coup.
And next year I’ll be coming out with my first ever Big Words Prose Novel called Shoestring Theory, about a royal wizard who goes back in time to stop his husband, the king, from becoming a despot (by murdering him). A real eclectic mix!
Finally, what LGBTQ+ books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?
She Who Became the Sunand The Darkness Outside Us are two books I’ve read recently that changed my brain chemistry so completely I’ll be seeking compensation for emotional damages. If you’re looking for recent comic reads, The Moth Keeperand A Boy Named Rose also come highly recommended from yours truly!
Hello friends, enemies, fans, critics and everyone in between.
This blog is a slightly different format from my others and will be more vulnerable and probably missing some of my usual snark. (I am working to finish several other blog posts, but perfectionism can sometimes be rough. Some of you may be wondering what my blog posts look like before all the editing, but trust me).
So I know that Michele has already interviewed the amazing Blue Delliquanti here and again here – but rather than focusing on the author, I just wanted to discuss briefly how this comic impacted me on a personal level.
So there I was, a fairly new member of the Queer community, realizing only the year before that I was Bisexual, and only having dated anyone other than women for a few months, when I found myself deployed, out at sea, for significantly longer than the entirety of the run of Firefly – with little to do after standing watch and working. I couldn’t work out, because nobody knew how Covid spread at that point and the gym in the ship were shut down, and it was easily 115 degrees Fahrenheit outside.
During deployment I challenged myself to only consume media created by non cishet white men, for the entire year I was gone. While I initially thought it would be challenging in the sci-fi and fantasy realm, I soon had my eyes opened. I discovered so much more in the genres than what I had previously seen featured on the shelves of the big box book stores.
So, I had read a lot of great reviews of ‘O Human Star’ and decided to give it a try. Several weeks later (being out to sea reminding me a great deal of the very first Compact Disc (ask your parents kids) where I had to ride my bicycle to get a money order and mail it in then wait 6 weeks – the struggle was real) I got my copy.
Initially reading along, it resonated with me, but I wasn’t sure why. Much like the protagonist, Alastair Sterling, I had an amazing mustache which always got lots of commentary and was clearly the envy of everyone … or so I told myself each day in the mirror.
See, look how well I did masculinity! And I’m on a boat!
Anyway, things began to resonate as I read through the story, which I highly recommend. You can read it here for free, but also support the artist please.
And by the time we got to the final image, I thought (and very very spoilers ahead so stop reading this and go read literally the entire comic right now if that bothers you)
… Oh, of course. Anyone would become a beautiful woman if they could just swap out their robot body for one they designed. That makes total sense.
So, two years of reading, self work, and therapy later I came out as Trans Femme/ Non-Binary, and very recently began my transition. Look how happy I am now!
FlameCon 2023, and the costume was my wonderful partner’s idea, and she did all the work, I just showed up and looked pretty
Looking back, this is all less surprising that I initially thought. The book that originally made me question my sexuality to begin with was actually Sissy by Jacob Tobiah .
So young people, be gay and do comics. Parents, comics and fandoms won’t turn your kids gay or trans etc, but seeing positive representation will definitely make their lives better.
Until next time, gay space cowboys (redundant?) ….
Shelley Parker-Chan (they/them) is an Asian Australian former international development adviser who worked on human rights, gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights in Southeast Asia. Their debut historical fantasy novel She Who Became the Sunwas a #1 Sunday Times bestseller and has been translated into 15 languages. Parker-Chan is a previous winner of the Astounding Award for Best Debut, and the British Fantasy Awards for Best Fantasy Novel and Best Newcomer. They have been a finalist for the Lambda, Locus, Aurealis, Ditmar, and British Book Awards. They live in Melbourne, Australia.
I had the opportunity to interview Shelley, which you can read below.
First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?
Hello, thanks for having me! I’m Shelley Parker-Chan, and I write highly emotional, ostensibly historically based, epic fantasy novels. I’m Australian, but I’ve spent a lot of my working life in Asia.
What can you tell us about your upcoming book, He Who Drowned the World?
Drowned is a direct sequel to She Who Became the Sun, and picks up just a couple of months after the action of that first book. The two books of the duology are organised around the Buddhist principle that desire begets suffering. The first book was very much about desire, especially as experienced by people traditionally denied it: women, queer people. The characters’ desires ranged from basic survival, to the ambition to become the greatest person in the world: the emperor. In Drowned, we see the other side of the equation. We see the suffering and sacrifices that are the price of those desires. And it asks: is it worth it?
What was the inspiration for your original series The Radiant Emperor duology, which includes She Who Became the Sun and He Who Drowned the World?
The idea came out of my weird obsession with monks. I know the image we hold of them doesn’t reflect their lived reality, either now or historically, but I’m fascinated by the idea of people who set aside worldly interests in favour of the pursuit of self-perfection. Of being ‘good’, according to a set of rules. But even more than a monk, I love the idea of a bad monk: someone who can’t—or doesn’t want to—overcome their ambition, their desire, their attachment to the world. So I was playing around with the idea of monks in a wartime setting: a monk who deliberately violates their vows of nonviolence to defend their people.
And then, lo and behold: I came across the life of Zhu Yuanzhang, who started life as a peasant in Mongol-occupied China. He became a monk, then a rebel commander, then finally the founding emperor of the Ming dynasty. I was like: aha! He’s my bad monk. But I realised I also wanted to twist the story. What if I took this man, whose whose ambition and capacity for violence led him to become the ultimate patriarch, and made him not a man? How would that change the meaning of his ambition, and rise, and rule?
As a writer, what drew you to the art of storytelling, specifically speculative and historical fiction?
Like lots of people these days, I started off writing fanfiction. Fanfiction was a cradle of queerness in a time when there was so little of it in mainstream media. It was where we subverted the texts to add our queer selves back in. It was a sort of communal yearning, but also a source of communal joy. It taught me to write what I liked, and how to express my authentic self on the page, and that if you wrote truly you would always find people who would recognise those words as true for themselves, too. A lot of fanfiction stories are romances, structurally speaking, but the ones I read and wrote were based on SFF media. Fantasy and science fiction, like historical fiction, give a lot of room to play with big stakes: life and death, and the times when love isn’t enough because there’s something more important: duty, or the fate of the world. I love writing in that slightly melodramatic register. It makes the feelings more intense.
How would you describe your writing process?
I start by laying out a plot in Excel. I put a timeline down the side of a sheet, the POV characters across the top, and then I fill each cell with a scene. By the time I start drafting, that plot is pretty fixed. But plot is a far less important element to my stories than the characters and their emotions. I like to call my subgenre ‘emo fantasy’, because it’s all angst, all the time. So when I’m drafting, I spend inordinate amounts of time shaping and re-shaping character arcs, and making sure I understand what they feel and think at every moment. I’ll have to write a scene twenty times, with twenty slight variations on a character’s understanding of themself, before I find the one that works for their arc, the story themes, AND the plot. I guess it’s a form of discovery writing. But as a process, it’s definitely slow and frustrating.
What are some of your favorite elements of writing? What do you consider some of the most frustrating and/or challenging?
I love thinking about character. What makes characters tick, and how they relate to themselves and each other. I could do it forever. But there are so many aspects of the craft of fiction writing that I’m still learning. I really struggle with simple things, like starting and ending scenes. How to feed in details about the world, how to build those mini plot arcs that keep the reader engaged, how to keep dialogue moving. I’m inspired by the authors I know who sit down and really study these elements, and learn how to execute them—not just well, but quickly.
In previous interviews, you’ve spoken about an interesting part of literary background, of being heavily influenced by Asian historical dramas while emphasizing the distinction of writing from a diasporic lens. Would you spend expanding on that please?
I first started watching Asian TV dramas when I was a young adult, living in Asia for the first time. I was raised in Australia, and when I was growing up if you saw an Asian onscreen (which was super rare), they were usually some kind of joke or horrible stereotype. They were never fully-realised human beings the way the white characters were. So when I started watching Asian dramas, I was blown away. Not only did I see characters who shared the same values and cultural worldview as me, but the full-Asian casts meant that Asians could be any and every kind of character: the heroes, the villains, the love interests, warriors, scholars. I knew I wanted to write a story like that in English—the story I’d never had, growing up.
But at the same time, I’m from the diaspora. Even if I fill my story with Asians, and set it in China, I don’t have the same worldview as someone who grew up in that environment. My perspectives are shaped by being a minority in a white-majority country. Some of that is the simple feelings of rejection, exclusion, of being misunderstood. And you can see those themes in my work. But being diaspora goes deeper. It comes with ambivalence, as well as pride, because aspects of my traditional culture also reject who I am. Reimagining the history of imperial China is my attempt to grapple with the exclusionary elements of the history and culture that’s been bequeathed to me. What if what had been handed down had been different? What if I didn’t have to feel this painful ambivalence, because my culture actually embraced queerness?
As a writer, who or what would you say are some of your greatest creative influences and/or sources of inspiration in general?
I almost exclusively read nonfiction and romances, which gives me a lot of trouble as someone who gets asked to blurb epic fantasy books. On the nonfiction side, I read a lot of memoirs, biographies, psychology, philosophy of the self and the emotions, gender studies, religion, nature writing—it all feeds my understanding of how people work, the variety of ways we can be in the world, what consumes us. And as for romances: they’re usually purely character driven, which is the good stuff as far as I’m concerned. I’m constantly looking for stories that have a raw and uncomfortable edge, and that give me big feelings. That’s what I want to learn to write well.
Many authors would say one of the most challenging parts of writing a book is finishing one. What strategies would you say helped you accomplish this?
Especially for a first book, I think mutual accountability with friends was the most helpful thing in getting me to the finish line. If I hadn’t been on a journey with them, I’d probably have quit halfway through, thinking, “oh, this is shit, it will never be as good as I’d imagined it to be, I’d better start something else.” But when I saw them grinding away at their books, and bemoaning the process as much as I was, I understood that the bad feelings were normal—and if they could get through them, I could too. I think it also helps to believe that you’re writing the book that only you can write. Even if it didn’t turn out how you dreamed, it’s your unique contribution to the world.
Besides your work, what are some things you would want your readers to know about you?
If you know my work, then you basically know all of me that there is to know.
What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet but wish you were (and the answer to that question)?
I’m offended that nobody yet has asked me about how I organise my bookshelves. The answer is: by subject for nonfiction; by era and country for literary fiction; and by how much I like them, for genre fiction. I’m ruthless about fiction, though. If it’s not a re-read, then it’s instantly off to the nearest Little Library.
Are there any projects you are working on or thinking about that you are able to discuss?
I want to do something different after a historical fantasy, so I’m working on a secondary world fantasy. It’ll still feel like one of my books, though. It seems I can’t escape the lure of exploring gender and daddy issues.
Finally, what LGBTQ+ books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?
I’ve long loved Lee Mandelo’s horror-fantasy works starting from his debut Summer Sons, and his new one goes even harder. It’s called The Woods All Black, and it’s about anti-trans small-town religious bigotry—and monsterfucking. The cathartic queer rage it delivers is EPIC.
Hamish Steele (he/they) is a freelance animation director and illustrator who grew up surrounded by legends, myths, and folktales. Since graduating from Kingston University in 2013, Hamish has worked for the BBC, Cartoon Network, Disney, Nickelodeon, among others. He is the creator of and showrunner for the Netflix series Dead End: Paranormal Park, based on his graphic novel series, DeadEndia, and the Eisner Award-winning creator of the graphic novel, Pantheon. Hamish currently lives in London.
I had the opportunity to interview Hamish, which you can read below.
First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT. Could you tell us a little about yourself?
Hey! I’m Hamish Steele. I’m a creator of comics and animation. I recently showran Netflix’s Dead End: Paranormal Park which was an adaptation of my webcomic series DeadEndia which has just been published by Union Square & Co. I’m gay and actually yes that is my whole personality.
What can you tell us about your graphic novel series, DeadEndia? Where did the inspiration for this story come from?
It came from problem solving. I had these original characters, Barney and Norma, and I loved writing their dynamic but I didn’t really have a story. I also loved ghost stories and time travel plots and queer romantic comics… so I basically just threw it all together. I often tell people if they can’t decide which idea of theirs they should focus on, to throw them all together and see what happens. That’s essentially what I did.
Speaking as a fan of your work, a few of the reasons why so many people love your work is because of its excellent queer sensibility (including awesome trans rep) and neurodivergent representation. Could you possible speak a bit as to what this type of representation means to you?
I mean, I sometimes feel like a bit of grinch when it comes to representation. I always see these meagre crumbs being applauded in giant blockbusters. Oh! Everybody clap! Spider-man swung past a pride flag. We’re so much further along than that! We deserve better! I’ve been in rooms where I’ve asked to be included in the story I’m writing, and they’ve said it’s not appropriate this time around but maybe next time! NO! Take up space! Demand to be seen! It’s so important, now more than ever, that we’re seen and our stories are told! If people aren’t seeing what’s happening in the world right now, the battles that are about to be fought, I don’t know what to tell you. I used to be thankful for the tiniest drip of rep. Now, I will never work on another project where the lead isn’t queer again.
How did you find yourself getting into storytelling, particularly comics/graphic novels? What drew you to the medium?
I just loved stories and I wanted to tell stories – big, bold adventures! And comics are so marvellous, because you only need a paper and pencil and you’re already there! With a paper and pencil you have actors, locations, costume departments, cinematographers, all the visual effects you could want! I never have to scale down my stories in comics.
As a creative, who or what would you say are some of your greatest creative influences and/or sources of inspiration?
I have a special interest in Godzilla, Ultraman, Super Sentai… all those Japanese special effects shows and movies. I find their constant inventiveness so inspiring. They’re not scared of being laughed at – they just GO for it! I find that endlessly inspiring.
Besides your work as a creative, what are some things you would want readers to know about you?
As I said before – I’m gay and that really is my whole personality. My hobbies include kissing my husband! And kissing my boyfriend! And watching gay things and reading gay things and hanging out with my gay friends. I really, really feel sorry for straight people, they all seem so miserable.
What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet but wish you were (and the answer to that question)?
Are you free for dinner later? And yes, if you’re paying.
Are there any projects you are working on or thinking about that you are able to discuss?
I’ve just signed a deal for my next comic series! It’s my take on the aforementioned Godzilla type story, but really focussing on my experiences as a queer, autistic kid. I know it feels like that’s what DeadEndia is, but this is 10x more personal. It’s actually a project I’ve been wanting to do since before DeadEndia was a thing.
What advice would you give to any aspiring creatives out there?
The “aspiring” word is always so weird to me. What I do now is no different than what I was doing 10 years ago, I just obviously have people paying me to do it now. But if you’re telling stories, making stuff – you’re IN the industry. So don’t change who you are, just find the people who wanna hear what you gotta say.
Clarkisha Kent is a Nigerian-American writer, culture critic, former columnist, and up-and-coming author. Committed to telling inclusive stories via unique viewpoints from nigh-infancy, she is fascinated with using storytelling and cultural criticism not as a way to “overcome” or “transcend” her unique identities (as a FAT, bisexual, and disabled Black African woman), but as a way to explore them, celebrate them, affirm them, and most importantly, normalize them and make the world safe enough for people who share them to exist.
As a University of Chicago graduate with a B.A. in Cinema and Media Studies and English, she brings with her over seven years of pop culture analysis, four years of film theory training, and a healthy appetite for change.
Her writing has been featured in outlets like Entertainment Weekly, Essence, The Root, BET, PAPER, HuffPost, MTV News, Wear Your Voice Magazine, and more. She is also the creator of #TheKentTest, a media litmus test designed to evaluate the quality of representation that exists for women of color in film and other media.
I had the opportunity to interview Clarkisha, which you can read below.
CW: Discussion of fatphobia
First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?
I’d describe myself as an internet shit-talker (laughs)! But on a serious note, I’m a writer who’s been doing so online (and then professionally) for just under ten years. Before then, I attended the University of Chicago to study English and Film. When I’m not concerned with any of that, you can catch me watching BoJack Horseman (again) or playing some version of the Sims.
What can you tell us about your newest book, Fat Off, Fat On: A Big Bitch Manifesto? What was the inspiration for this project?
So Fat Off, Fat On is my first book and while it primarily deals with my life, I mainly use my life story to explain how insidious fatphobia is. And that, yes, it’s not about merely “name-calling”. It’s a systemic issue.
As a writer, what drew you to the art of storytelling?
My upbringing. It was rather oppressive and in order to escape (first mentally, and then physically, to Chicago), I used writing to tell the kind of stories I was into and wanted to see. Essentially, it was a way to imagine me being somewhere else.
How would you describe your writing process?
A little chaotic for the most part. I jot down ideas/random tidbits in my notes app and on my waterproof notepad in my shower. That’s usually the brainstorming part. But whenever a serious project is on the horizon, I’ll return to my desktop–in its special corner–and throw whatever I need to on the page. I usually also give myself a minimum time (1 – 2 hours) to write, depending on deadlines and etc.
Many authors would say one of the most challenging parts of writing a book is finishing one. What strategies would you say helped you accomplish this?
Some of y’all gonna roll your eyes, but…outlining. It sounds so cliché (it is kind of), but it’s true. If you have an idea of where your story is supposed to end, it’ll be much easier to finish it.
Growing up, were there any stories/books in which you felt touched by/ or reflected in? Are there any like that now?
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, A Girl Named Disaster by Nancy Farmer, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, (and so much more). Presently, I really fucked with Red Lip Theology by Candice Marie Benbow and Communion by bell hooks.
As a writer, who or what would you say are some of your greatest creative influences and/or sources of inspiration in general?
Definitely bell hooks. Toni Morrison.
What are some of your favorite elements of writing? What do you consider some of the most frustrating and/or challenging?
Getting paid for it (hahaha). But probably coming back to read the work. Sometimes I’ll wait years to read something I wrote in its entirety and then be like “damn. I really did that)!
Challenging elements would be the editing process. Either I do too little or too much. No in-between. That’s I consider a good editor a national treasure.
Aside from your work, what are some things you would want others to know about you?
Other than the obvious, I am a Pluto truther. #JusticeForPluto!!!
What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet but that you wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)?
I can’t think of anything off-head.
What advice might you have to give for other aspiring writers?
Consider another profession. I kid, I kid! On a serious note, you need patience. And if you don’t have it, well, you’re gonna have to spend time cultivating it. And I’m so serious.
Are there any other projects you are working on and at liberty to speak about?
I’m working on a Western about a Black female outlaw and, possibly, another nonfiction project.
Finally, what books/authors would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT?
If you’re serious about fatphobia, and learning about its anti-Black origins, then you need to read Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings.
Greetings, esteemed readers! As a 100% real human person and not a droid, I am thrilled to embark on this literary journey with you, delving into captivating books that traverse distant galaxies while shedding light on LGBTQIA+ and Queer-Coded experiences, all in the spirit of beloved geek culture. Strap on your seatbelts, and let us get a”byte” of adventure in the wonders of the following literary gems.
Busy Geek Breakdown (TL;DR): Check out these titles!
And, for those of you still with me, on to why I recommended you put these stories into your brain!
5. “Cinder” by Marissa Meyer:
Prepare to be enchanted by this imaginative retelling of the classic Cinderella tale with a sci-fi twist. In a futuristic world, cyborg mechanic Cinder, an LGBT+ character, is entangled in political intrigue while exploring her identity and desires. A narrative that challenges gender norms, “Cinder” blends futuristic tech and romance.
Within the pages of “Cinder,” Marissa Meyer gracefully introduces readers to the complexities of identity, love, and self-acceptance. Cinder’s journey of self-discovery unfolds seamlessly against a backdrop of futuristic technologies and social stratification. Through this futuristic retelling of the beloved fairy tale, Meyer empowers LGBT+ readers by presenting a cyborg protagonist who embraces her uniqueness and navigates her burgeoning feelings without restraint. By defying traditional norms and expectations, “Cinder” ignites a spark within us, urging us to embrace our authentic selves and champion those who dare to be different.
Meyer creates a cybernetic wonderland brimming with steampunk aesthetics and diverse characters, celebrating individuality and love in all its forms. “Cinder” stands as a beacon of hope, promoting acceptance and showcasing that our uniqueness is what makes us extraordinary.
4. “The Disasters” by M.K. England:
In this fast-paced sci-fi adventure, a motley crew of cadets must band together to thwart a sinister plot. Geek culture takes center stage, entwining fandoms and pop-culture references with identity exploration and burgeoning romance.
“The Disasters” propels readers on an exhilarating rollercoaster of action, friendship, and geek culture, all while celebrating diverse identities. England creates a thrilling narrative filled with witty dialogue and pop-culture references that resonate with readers.
As they navigate a treacherous mission and their own identities, their experiences serve as a testament to the beauty of authenticity and the strength of unity. “The Disasters” is a vibrant testament to the power of found family, geek pride, and the courage to be true to oneself.
England captures the essence of geekdom, enveloping readers in an exhilarating escapade. Through witty banter, queer empowerment, and found family dynamics, “The Disasters” strikes a chord with those who revel in embracing their true selves.
3. “The Darkness Outside Us” by Eliot Schrefer:
Amidst the interstellar void, two young astronauts find themselves in a gripping tale of mystery, betrayal, and unexpected alliances. Our main characters grapple with their identities as they embark on a high-stakes mission. The exploration of love and trust is central to the narrative, showing the intricacies of queer relationships.
In this gripping and psychologically charged narrative, Schrefer delves into the complexities of human relationships as our protagonists, set adrift in the vastness of space, must confront external threats and the internal struggles.
Schrefer’s deft storytelling prompts readers to question the barriers imposed by society and to embrace the fluidity of human connections. “The Darkness Outside Us” reminds us that love and acceptance can be beacons of light guiding us home in the darkest times.
Schrefer weaves a mesmerizing narrative, blending sci-fi and psychological drama elements. This absorbing read challenges the boundaries of human connection and explores the complexities of self-discovery.
2. “The Prey of Gods” by Nicky Drayden:
Enter a fantastical South African world where mythology and technology converge. This genre-defying novel takes readers on a thrilling ride with a rich cast each on their own journey of empowerment. Fluid identities, extraordinary powers, and battles for acceptance create a vibrant tapestry in this unforgettable tale.
In a stunning tapestry of mythology, technology, and queer empowerment, Nicky Drayden weaves a tale that leaves an indelible mark on readers’ hearts. The vibrant characters challenge conventions and embody the power of self-discovery. In a world where the boundaries of identity are fluid, and the definition of heroism is reshaped, “The Prey of Gods” celebrates individuality and reminds us that our diverse identities are a wellspring of strength. Drayden’s exquisite portrayal of queerness and the embrace of nonconformity make this novel a dazzling gem in the constellation of inclusive sci-fi literature.
Drayden crafts a breathtaking universe that combines the best of speculative fiction with cultural depth. “The Prey of Gods” is a kaleidoscope of wonder, challenging norms and embracing the extraordinary.
1. “The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet” by Becky Chambers:
A voyage awaits you in this enchanting space opera that unfolds on board the Wayfarer, a diverse crew of interstellar misfits. This heartwarming tale of camaraderie explores love, friendship, and gender identity among alien species. LGBT+ themes find a tender portrayal through the endearing romance between two characters as they navigate their emotions amidst the vastness of the cosmos.
In the heart of the Wayfarer’s crew, readers encounter an eclectic mix of personalities, each grappling with their pasts and embracing their true selves. Through this diverse ensemble, Chambers deftly explores the nuances of gender identity and sexual orientation, fostering an environment where acceptance and respect flourish. The interplay between cultures and species serves as a poignant mirror of our society, prompting us to cherish our differences and celebrate the beauty of inclusivity. A touching portrayal of LGBT+ love and camaraderie amidst the stars, “The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet” becomes a hopeful reminder that unity and empathy can conquer even the most daunting challenges.
Chambers skillfully crafts a universe where acceptance, inclusivity, and personal growth converge in a masterful symphony. This book transcends the boundaries of science fiction, resonating with readers on a deeply human level.
Another great thing about this entire series is something I’ll gladly go on a separate rant about later … pronouns and honorifics. In this series, in the Galactic Common Language, Kliptorigan frequently referred to as Klip, if a being’s gender is not known or stated, then ze/zir is understood to be appropriate, and the honorific M. is used for elders and formal settings, pronounced “Ehm”. Used like, “Good morning M. Johnson” or “I’d be happy to help you with that M.” It’s wonderful, it’s understated but it feels so right.
As we close this cosmic chapter, we celebrate these five exceptional works for their portrayal of LGBT+ and Queer Coded experiences alongside the captivating tapestry of geek culture. These books transport us to far-off realms and remind us that love, acceptance, and the exploration of identity are timeless quests that resonate across the galaxies. Until next time, may the force of understanding and inclusion be with you, dear readers!
