Women in SF&F Month: Swati Teerdhala
Apr
22
2019

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Today’s guest is Swati Teerdhala! The Tiger at Midnight, her debut novel, is the first book in a young adult fantasy trilogy inspired by Indian history and Hindu mythology. You can read a sample from The Tiger at Midnight on the publisher’s website, and you can read the full book after its release on April 23—tomorrow!

The Tiger at Midnight Cover

The Unlikeable Heroine
Swati Teerdhala

The first time I heard someone call a heroine unlikeable, I was confused. To me, this heroine, Sansa Stark from Game of Thrones, was a character I had been waiting a long time for. I saw her as someone flawed, someone who was simply trying her best.

She starts off as a young girl caught up in her own life and unaware of her surroundings. She was a little selfish, a little naive, a little too trusting. But she was also kind, clever, and tough. Sansa learns and changes over seven seasons, as she grows into a woman. A woman who is complex and so painfully human, I often wanted to cringe and look away in fear that she might expose my own shortcomings. But also a woman so strong in the face of tragedy and terror that she encouraged. Inspired me.

In short, a woman who was real.

That reality spoke to me in a way that was direct and tangible. I felt seen and heard. But this friend of mine complained about all her flaws, saw them as ugly markers of her imperfection and failure as a woman rather than old battle scars from the realities of life.

When I tried to dig into why my friend thought she was unlikeable, I heard something that I’d hear many times again. “She’s too….”

Too loud, too quiet, too emotional, too logical, too cold, too warm, too assertive, too obedient…too much.

As a woman who has constantly been told her entire life that she’s too ‘much’, that hit me deep. It seemed to me that these women, even characters in books, like Katniss Everdeen or Hermione Granger, could never win unless they were able to balance along some imaginary line of likeability solely to keep people’s archaic ideas of how a woman should act intact.

What I learned that day was that an ‘unlikeable heroine’ can be any heroine. And she often is. Women in fantasy get penalized for just about everything you can think of. It’s even worse for diverse women in SFF. Women who challenge stereotypes about their marginalization are also accused of being unlikeable simply for being different.

A hero can murder hundreds, but the tiniest hint that there’s more to him than meets the eye and cults of adoration pop up like magical weeds. Just look at The Darkling from Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse or Kylo Ren from Star Wars. However, a heroine can get knocked for simply having the gall to be selfish or to not sacrifice herself for another character or the group.

The expectations for a woman are to always put others first, to overcome hardship, to be the emotional glue—and to do it all with a smile. Women in SFF have always been kept to the wings and the moment they step onto the stage as multi-dimensional characters, people are unhappy, shocked that a woman would dare to care about something more than her appeal to others or their perception of her.

Why is being unlikeable the worst thing a woman can be?

Women are raised to care about being liked (or loved) over anything else. And according to society, this can only be achieved through perfection. But in fiction, we have the ability to write women to truth. Proud, shy, serene, angry, fierce, emotional, quiet, loud.

When I wrote Esha, the main character of my novel THE TIGER AT MIDNIGHT, I kept this idea of likeability in my mind at first. Esha is consumed by her desire for revenge after the murder of her parents and she’s dedicated her entire life to avenging them. On a hero, this might be an endearing backstory. But for a heroine, I was aware that this could make her unlikeable.

She could be tossed into the annals of fantasy books, another rage-filled woman who would be reduced to simply being a shrew or a caricature. In my first drafts I wrote her to be softer, kinder, less sharp-edged and sharp-tongued. I changed her character arc over the second and third books as I outlined, trying to ease her over that tightrope of likeability she’d have to walk.

But then I realized that would be untrue to the depths I knew she had and the places she could go if she was only allowed to be herself, as we all should be. And if we, as fiction writers, don’t take the steps to challenge the stories we tell about women, who will?

So I made her angry. Cunning. Loyal. Kind. Ruthless.

A complex and possibly unlikeable heroine. But a real one.

Swati Teerdhala Photo Swati Teerdhala is a storyteller and writer. After graduating from the University of Virginia with a B.S. in Finance and History, she tumbled into the marketing side of the technology industry. She’s passionate about many things, including how to make a proper cup of chai, the right ratio of curd-to-crust in a lemon tart, and diverse representation in the stories we tell. She currently lives in New York City.
Women in SF&F Month 2019: April 22–26 Schedule & Week in Review
Apr
21
2019

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Thank you so much to all of last week’s guests! This month is flying by, and I can hardly believe the fourth week of guest posts begins tomorrow. Before announcing next week’s schedule, here’s some information on previous guest posts in case you missed any of them.

All of the guest posts from April 2019 can be found here, and in last week’s guest posts:

On the first day of the month, Renay discussed history and SFF fandom—and revealed the recommendations list of science fiction and fantasy books written by women with 2018’s submissions included. She also invited you to add more books by women writers that you loved this month so they can be added to the list. (If this isn’t your first time adding some favorites to the list, you can also add up to 10 SFF books by women that you discovered in the last year or since the last time you added them—and thank you so much for recommending books for the list!)

Next week, Women in SF&F Month 2019 continues with guest posts by:

Women in SF&F Month 2019 Schedule Graphic

April 22: Swati Teerdhala (The Tiger at Midnight)
April 23: Nalini Singh (Psy/Changeling, Psy/Changeling Trinity, Guild Hunters)
April 24: Hafsah Faizal (We Hunt the Flame)
April 25: Nafiza Azad (The Candle and the Flame)
April 26: Fran Wilde (The Fire Opal Mechanism, Bone Universe, Riverland)

Women in SF&F Month: Sara from The Fantasy Inn
Apr
19
2019

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Today’s guest is Sara from The Fantasy Inn! She reviews fantasy and science fiction books and also writes some book-related discussions as Sharade. I enjoy reading her blog posts (and Twitter) immensely due to her enthusiasm for the books she loves, her conversational style, and the fact that she makes them just plain fun to read—plus she has fantastic taste in books!

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The Many Strengths of Female Characters in Fantasy

How can you not love a badass heroine in fantasy? Spine of steel, weapon in hand, destroying her enemies and the glass ceiling in one swift, effortless move.

But I must admit that I have a weakness for a different kind of female strength depiction in SFF stories.

Reading T. Kingfisher’s The Seventh Bride reminded me how much I love compassionate heroines. In this Bluebeard-like story, our main character, Rhea, is forced to marry a strange nobleman. Along with the nobleman’s other wives, she has to face challenges that are bigger than her. Rhea is not a warrior, but she certainly is a badass. Her resilience and loyalty are inspiring and uplifting.

Heroines who rely on inner strength to shine and save the day are my catnip. Another example would be Kalina from Sam Hawke’s City of Lies. Her city is under siege, the Chancellor her family has sworn to protect is threatened. In the middle of all this, Kalina’s heroism is a subtle sort—no fanfare, no fireworks; rather, a single-minded purpose, a keen mind, and a big heart.

Quiet courage echoes loudly; and who better to embody it than Patience, in Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy. As the wife of the King-in-Waiting Chivalry, having her husband’s illegitimate son around must not have been the easiest thing to handle. But she went above and beyond, by being Fitz’ eccentric yet fiercely loving mother figure.

The Seventh Bride Cover City of Lies Cover Assassins Apprentice, Farseer Trilogy Book One Cover

It is not, of course, a strict dichotomy: physically powerful heroines on one side and compassionate ones on the other. One of the highlights of the Netflix hit animated show The Dragon Prince is how nuanced and multi-facetted its characters are. General Amaya, the maternal aunt of the young protagonists, is the epitome of a badass warrior in full armour, slaying enemies left and right. But she’s also caring and warm, protective of her family and friends. And, with the return of Game of Thrones, I would be remiss not to mention Brienne of Tarth, another warrior with a heart of gold. She can fight, yes, but she can also pledge herself completely to a cause, however ill-advised it might be…She’s loyal to a fault, a perfect embodiment of the knighthood fantasy.

There are so many ways a woman can be strong, and so many ways it can be represented in fantasy. This diversity is compelling: different heroines have different stories, different ways to achieve their goals, be it defeating a Big Evil or keeping their families safe, or both.

There’s a joy in reading about powerful female characters, because they provide catharsis and escapism, or even inspiration. In their faraway worlds, full of strangeness and magic, those who rely on a softer, quieter kind of power are, to me, the most relatable. And the most compelling to read about.

Sara's Profile Picture Sara reviews SFF books at the Fantasy Inn, along with 6 lovely, only occasionally crazy co-bloggers. She’s Moroccan but now lives in France, where a love of pastries will be her doom. When she’s not trying to shove fantasy books into people’s faces, she’s…well, doing the same but with historical romance books.

You can follow her rambling on Twitter, @SharadeeReads
Women in SF&F Month: Alix E. Harrow
Apr
18
2019

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Today’s guest is fantasy author Alix E. Harrow! Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Apex Magazine, Tor.com, Strange Horizons, Shimmer Magazine, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and it includes “Do Not Look Back, My Lion” and the Hugo and Nebula Award–nominated story “A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies.” The Ten Thousand Doors of January, her debut novel, will be released this fall—on September 10 in the US and September 12 in the UK!

The Ten Thousand Doors of January Cover

My Mother’s Sword
Alix E. Harrow

In Catherynne Valente’s The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, September is sent on a quest to find a magical casket and take up her mother’s sword. But when she opens the casket she doesn’t find a sword—she finds a wrench, because her mother is a mechanic. If it were me opening that casket in the Worsted Woods of Fairyland, I would find a library.

I would spiral down wooden steps into a vault containing all the books and stories that my mother gave me—the Gargoyles episodes and fairytale anthologies, the battered paperbacks and dusty Nintendo cartridges, the UK edition of The Prisoner of Azkaban she ordered me online because it came out two months earlier over there—perfectly preserved. If you stepped into that vault with me and ran your fingers along the book spines, you might notice: most of them were written by women.

You would find Pern and Earthsea, Tortall and Hogwarts; multiple editions of everything Robin McKinley or Lois McMaster Bujold ever wrote; Jane Yolen and Diane Duane and Diana Wynne Jones; Patricia-s Wrede, McKillip, and Briggs; Butler and Atwood; Ella Enchanted and Ammonite. The world my mom made me was one where women were knights and princesses were heroes, where witches were rarely burned and fairytales had teeth. It wasn’t a perfect world (it was very white and fairly straight and extremely western) but it was a place where women stood tall and told their own stories.

I remember being faintly surprised to learn that Link—who I knew as the pixelated, pink-haired hero of Mom’s favorite video game—was apparently a dude. In my experience, it was generally women who wielded the swords.

My mother’s library-world didn’t much resemble the actual world I lived in: rural Kentucky in the mid-1990s, right next door to nowhere. It was the kind of place where every woman was a hon or a doll from birth to burial; where my mom’s crew cut got triple-takes and frowns; where feminism wasn’t disparaged so much as ignored, the way you’d ignore someone shouting a foreign, faintly lewd word several miles away.

It was the kind of place where fantasy itself was suspect. Several of my friends were forbidden to watch Disney’s Hercules on the grounds that there was only one God and He disapproved of animated posers (whereas I was annoyed by its departure from Edith Hamilton, and spent a lot of time telling people Zeus and Hera were actually siblings, because that’s the kind of Hermione-Granger-ish little shit I was (and am)). I once helped a friend disguise her copy of The Chamber of Secrets with the cover from one of the Left Behind books.

My mother’s magic library didn’t erase the real world or remove me from it, but it gave me a persistent sense of my own worth. The suspicion that, locked behind the doughy confusion of my eighth-grade self, was a lady knight or a dragon rider, someone whose story was worth telling. I remember reading Kameron Hurley’s Hugo-winning essay “We Have Always Fought,” about the erasure of women from our collective storytelling, and thinking, with the casual shrug of the very lucky: of course we’ve always fought. And realizing in that moment the gift my mother had given me, the weight and heft of the sword she’d put in my hand.

But there are—as the last few years of pop culture and politics have reminded me regularly—many people who object to the very suggestion that women have fought or will fight or could fight. They wrote breathless screeds about Rey’s Jedi powers and mechanical know-how after The Force Awakens, and bombed Captain Marvel’s Rotten Tomatoes ratings before it even came out; they made snide comments about N.K. Jemisin’s historic third-Hugo-in-a-row and still DM me regularly to explain that, actually, The Last Jedi was garbage (it was not garbage). They remain invested in a fantasy world in which women—particularly women of color or queer women or trans women or fat women or poor women or disabled women—don’t fight, and certainly don’t tell their stories.

But women persist in doing both, so my mother’s library has grown over the years. There are shelves now for Leckie and Schwab and Jemisin, well-worn copies of Sorcerer to the Crown and All the Birds in the Sky. (My mom and I share an Amazon account and read books simultaneously on our Kindles. “a keeper,” she texted after Uprooted; “guess what i’m getting a moth tattoo,” I wrote after Strange the Dreamer).

Now—at twenty-nine, with two kids of my own—I get to add my own book to our library. I haven’t held the finished copy in my hand but I’ve held the galley and I have to say: it felt, just a little, like a sword.

Alix E. Harrow Photo
A former academic and adjunct, Alix E. Harrow is now a full-time writer living in Kentucky with her husband and their semi-feral children. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Nebula and Hugo awards, and her first novel—The Ten Thousand Doors of January—is out this September from Orbit. Find her at @AlixEHarrow on Twitter.
Women in SF&F Month: SL Huang
Apr
17
2019

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Today’s guest is speculative fiction author SL Huang! Her short fiction includes the novelette “The Little Homo Sapiens Scientist,” a science fiction retelling of “The Little Mermaid”; the science fiction story “The Woman Who Destroyed Us,” which was selected for the recently-released anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 13; and the dark fairy tales in the Hunting Monsters series, “Hunting Monsters” and “Fighting Demons.” She’s also a writer for The Vela, a collaborative space opera serial that just began releasing season one episodes last month, and the author of the Cas Russell series, which has a protagonist with a math-based superpower. Zero Sum Game, the first of these science fiction thrillers and her debut novel, was published last year and will be followed by book two, Null Set, on July 9!

Null Set Cover Zero Sum Game Cover

Being a Woman

When I was a child I hated the color pink.

Pink, society told me, was a girl color. And it wasn’t that I didn’t like being a girl—I did—but I didn’t want to be a girl the way I was told. Anything I was told was “girly” I automatically rebelled against.

This might have been a defense mechanism, considering how out of step I felt with my own gender in so many other ways. It’s not been an uncommon experience in my life to be insulted or mocked for “not thinking like a girl” or “not understanding women.” I’ve been flat-out told—usually by women, and usually not as a compliment—that I shouldn’t “count” as one of my own gender because I didn’t interact the way I was supposed to. On the flip side, I’ve long felt comfortable and welcomed in male-heavy spaces, so I tried to find some pride in that.

Of course, much has been written about how problematic the “not like other girls” narrative is. And I completely agree with the objection to denigrating anything feminine as somehow lesser. But in my case, even after I struggled past such cultural influences, feminine things and women-centric environments often still felt . . . uncomfortable. Like an ill-fitting shoe. Not for me.

Worse, when it came to the representation of women in books and movies, sometimes the pendulum would swing from “more strong female characters!” to “stop writing women as if they’re men with boobs.” Though the latter is a good thing to consider to a point, too often I saw people’s arguments devolving into telling people to stop writing exactly the women who were most like me, framing them as “not real women.”

I found myself in the rudderless place of feeling alienated from my own gender, but feeling like it was sexist to identify that way. Of wanting to see more women like myself in books, but hearing this was somehow bad representation.

(Once I read a list mocking the traits “strong female characters” have as shallow and unrealistic, and I fit every characteristic on that list. Not the most fun moment.)

To people well-versed in feminist criticism, the answer here might seem obvious: all manner of binary declaration, essentialism, and extremism is a false solution. We need to respect and value all women, of all stripes—women who are more stereotypically feminine, more stereotypically masculine, or not even along those axes at all. But it took me quite a while to work through all this in my own emotions and in my relationship to both my gender and to the culture surrounding me. And though gender presentation doesn’t have any sort of pure causal relationship with gender identity—plenty of women feel all sorts of ways about traditionally feminine activities or women-centric initiatives—in my case, a big step to figuring all this out was coming to question whether I was a cis woman at all.

It took coming out as genderqueer for me to feel comfortable with also being a woman.

I currently identify as both. And I’ve never been prouder of the latter half of that identity. Genderqueerness somehow not only fit me in a way that felt well-tailored and correct, but understanding that part of me ironically made the “woman” part fit a thousand times better. As if acknowledging that I’m not entirely female made me able to claim the female pieces without so much guilt and conflict.

This is far from a universal experience of people who identify off the gender binary, many of whom reject binary identities entirely. Where I do feel similar to many nonbinary people is that my gender is still something I’m figuring out—but so far, in my case, my journey with gender has oddly helped me stop being so uncomfortable when people identify me as female. I no longer feel my previous ill-fitting cringe when people recommend me as a female author or a woman to watch. I no longer feel out of place in female-centric spaces the way I used to, and when included or recognized this way it feels much more whole and correct, like it’s okay for me to be a part of them because being a woman is part of me.

And I’ve become very, very comfortable saying we do need more women like me in media, whether or not those characters share my complicated and evolving gender identity. Because if I’ve learned one thing from my personal relationship with gender: it’s all individual. And it’s all fine.

I now wear shocking, eye-searing shades of pink whenever I feel the urge. And I try to write more and more women in more and more infinite varieties: women who kick ass or don’t, women who are kind and generous or women who are jerks, women who are fashion mavens or family matriarchs or whip-smart nerds or all of the above. Queer women, trans women, older women; women who think differently from their peers or question their own identities; women from a broad richness of cultures and backgrounds. Women who intersect with all variations of the human condition.

There’s no limit to the number of deep and true ways we can represent women. And there’s no limit to the ways in which we can be one, either.

SL Huang Photo
Photo Credit: Chris Massa		 SL Huang is an Amazon-bestselling author who justifies her MIT degree by using it to write eccentric mathematical superhero fiction. Her debut novel, Zero Sum Game, came out from Tor Books in October 2018, and her short fiction has sold to Strange Horizons, Analog, and The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016, among others.

She is also a Hollywood stuntwoman and firearms expert, where she’s appeared on shows such as “Battlestar Galactica” and “Raising Hope.” Her proudest geek moment was getting to be killed by Nathan Fillion. The first professional female armorer in the industry, she’s worked with actors such as Sean Patrick Flanery, Jason Momoa, and Danny Glover, and been hired as a weapons expert for reality shows such as “Top Shot” and “Auction Hunters.”

She’s currently on a film hiatus in Tokyo, but you can find her online at www.slhuang.com or on Twitter as @sl_huang.
Women in SF&F Month: Elizabeth Fitzgerald
Apr
16
2019

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Today’s guest is Elizabeth Fitzgerald! Her wonderful fan work has been recognized by the Ditmar Award multiple times: her Earl Grey Editing blog has been nominated for Best Fan Publication in Any Medium three times (including this year, whose finalists were just announced), and she was also a finalist for Best Fan Writer last year. She’s also a reviewer and podcaster at the Skiffy and Fanty Show, one of this year’s Hugo Award nominees for Best Fancast, and a short fiction writer—her story “New Berth” also earned her a 2019 Ditmar Award nomination for Best New Talent!

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Faerie YA and Valentine

Holly Black’s Tithe was one of those books I’d been waiting my whole life to read. I was in my mid-twenties before I came across it, so possibly a little old for its target audience, but that didn’t stop me from devouring it and its sequels in short order. Since then, I’ve read a large number of the faerie YA books inspired by the series, but none of them quite lived up to that first one.

Until Valentine by Jodi McAlister was published in 2017. This is a book set in an Australian town and is about four teenagers who are born on Valentine’s Day. One by one, they begin to go missing as the Unseelie fae try to hunt down which of them is Seelie royalty swapped at birth.

As I’ll be discussing the series in some detail, I highly recommend reading it first if you care about spoilers.

While Tithe and Valentine share some similarities, under the surface they are doing very different things. Where Tithe set the tone for the subgenre, Valentine attempts to subvert what are by now some very well-established conventions.

One thing they share in common is the way they show how dangerous the world can be for women. The familiar can’t always be trusted—not only do faeries deceive with their glamours and charms, but mortals also have their own unpleasant secrets. Violence can come from a face you trust. You don’t always have to be wandering through the forest alone to risk abduction when a crowded dance party works just as well. Food and drink can’t be trusted not to leave you in thrall.

But there remains a seductive appeal. This is the same appeal that Twilight and many other paranormal romances tap into, where the line between threat, protector and love interest is a little bit ambiguous. This is also where Valentine diverges somewhat. While the book is an enemies-to-lovers story, as is usually the case with faerie YA, it sets aside the deadly opponents angle in favour of a pettier you-drive-me-up-the-wall vibe. This allows it to side-step some of the more toxic relationship tropes and puts the romantic relationship on more even footing. It’s not a book where Stockholm syndrome is a concern (although the series touches on that later, using side characters to explore and undermine this trope). Finn still does his best to protect Pearl, but has some difficulty as he struggles to adjust to a new view of the faerie-inhabited world and his place in it. Pearl’s headstrong and stubborn nature doesn’t make it any easier; she’s not interested in being protected, instead doing her best to protect Finn in return, along with the other people she cares about.

Valentine Cover Ironheart Cover Misrule Cover

Which brings me to one of the things I loved most about Valentine. As with many YA books, those in the paranormal subgenre tend to privilege romantic relationships above all others. While Pearl’s relationship with Finn remains central to the story, it’s far from the only important thing to her. Instead, it’s her best friend Phil that she will move heaven and earth for. What makes this especially interesting is that Phil doesn’t act as a sidekick to Pearl, who does her best to make sure Phil doesn’t find out what’s going on and is thus protected. This leads to its own problems as Phil grows steadily more angry about being deceived and ignored. Thus, the relationship has its own arc instead of being flattened out by the romance. And Pearl is very conscious that narrowing down her life to just her relationship with Finn is not something that could ever satisfy her—a view I found refreshingly feminist.

Another thing that the series share in common is the inclusion of queer relationships. Tithe was one of the few books I’d read at the time that included a gay character—a trend that doesn’t seem to have been picked up by many of the books that followed. Nor did it end well for the character in question, who ends up in an extremely toxic relationship with an Unseelie fae before he is rescued (though I suppose I should be heartened by the fact that he wasn’t killed off). Valentine shows how things have progressed in the time since Tithe was published, allowing Pearl’s sister to develop a healthy lesbian relationship in the background of the series.

It also takes diversity a step further by including several non-white characters. Most notably, the golden boy of the town is an Aboriginal guy called Cardie. He’s a genuinely lovely guy who is quick to help out Pearl whenever she needs it. When the series begins, he’s Pearl’s nominal crush, though she comes to realise he’s not where her heart truly lies. As the series progresses, he comes to act as the moral compass, advocating for compassionate but sensible action and by calling Pearl out on some questionable choices. As McAlister has noted at some of her author events, this idea of an Aboriginal boy as the golden boy of a rural Australian town is perhaps the biggest piece of fantasy in the book, given Australia’s history of racism. McAlister also treats him respectfully by not positioning him as a Mystic Native Guide to Pearl or by tragically killing him off (a real risk, given the body count of the series).

So, while I continue to adore faerie YA, I hope that Valentine will pave the way for more stories in this sub-genre that include consent, diversity and healthy relationships.

Elizabeth Fitzgerald Photo Elizabeth Fitzgerald is a freelance editor and owner of Earl Grey Editing. She also writes reviews and podcasts for the Skiffy and Fanty Show. Her fiction has appeared in Next and Mother of Invention, among other publications.  She lives in Canberra, Australia. An unabashed roleplayer and reader of romance, her weaknesses are books, loose-leaf tea and silly dogs. She tweets @elizabeth_fitz