The desire to have much more, all the glitter and the roar

[sovay]

The mail this evening brought my contributor's copy of Transcendent 2: The Year's Best Transgender Speculative Fiction, edited by Bogi Takács. It looks like a splendid collection and I am honored to be part of its table of contents. Plus it got a starred review from Publishers Weekly. My contribution is "Skerry-Bride," on the theory of more Norse queerness. The nine daughters of Ægir and Rán are called the nine skerry-brides by the eleventh-century skald Snæbjorn: níu brúðir skerja.

The same package contained a small sealed envelope bearing the logo of the Monster Rangers, which looks like Scouting for people who miss Gravity Falls. I now have a Lanterna Badge. I am seriously thinking of ironing it onto my coat. We can use more light.

(I was asked this afternoon for pointers to weird, creepy Christmas traditions in North America. I couldn't think of any that weren't facetious, but I could say that the first thing that comes to mind when looking at Christmas darkness is the way the holiday functions as a weighing of the soul in two of the most famous British and American stories, A Christmas Carol (1843) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Religiously, wouldn't you expect that sort of thing at Easter, harrowing and redemption? But it's the dark time of the year, the turning away of the sun: it makes sense. You want to believe the light is going to come back. You want to believe people are, too.)

Comments

[sovay]

Glad to hear that you are writing transgender fiction because there is so much awful transgender fiction out there and yours won't be!

Thank you!

[selkie]

Yes, this is a salient point. I mean, I say this as a cisgender person so probably my point is much less valid, but wow, there's a lot to schlock through for the sake of representation. Better never hurts.

[cmcmck]

I'm trans as it happens and get very tired of people who think they know how I think and feel when they haven't the first clue especially about those of us who made it through things like the seventies!

[selkie]

I'm very sorry if my comment was offensive. My spouse is NB, so it's on me to do better (also, I've been reliably fucking up interpersonal interaction since the Eighties). I was typing from a place of frustration that so much of the writing about trans* and NB people that's out there isn't written by the people living it, but from a gaze that, however well-intentioned, often falls false for me and my spouse when we read: hence, schlock. If you'd prefer me to delete my comments, just let me know.

[cmcmck]

Not at all! :o)

Schlock is a damn good word for it (especially as I have Jewish ancestry!) :o)