Women in SF&F Month: A. Y. Chao
Apr
24
2023

Women in SF&F Month Banner

This week of Women in SF&F Month starts with a guest post by A. Y. Chao! Her upcoming fantasy book set in 1930s China, Shanghai Immortal, is described as “a stunningly rich novel with a snarky, irreverent main character struggling to reconcile her mixed heritage—it’s not easy being half vampire and half hulijing fox spirit—whilst solving a mystery concerning the King’s Dragon Pearl and accidentally falling in love.” The UK edition of her novel will be released on June 1, and it will also be published in the US and Canada on October 31. I’m thrilled she’s here today to discuss erasure and identity in “Mirrors and Doorways.”

Cover of Shanghai Immortal by A. Y. Chao

Mirrors and Doorways

“[W]hen I didn’t see myself in a mirror, I smashed it and saw myself in the pieces.” Diana Pho, “Breaking Mirrors”, jimchines.com

Erasure is an insidious thing. Identity—from the individual to an entire culture—is treated as if it doesn’t exist. It says: You don’t matter. You’re not wanted. You don’t belong.

But enough of that. We’re here to talk about me.[1]

I was born in the foothills of Alberta, Canada—a transition zone, or as I like to think of it, a melding space between the prairies and the Rocky Mountains. Neither completely one nor the other, but something which embraced both. My Chinese Canadian diaspora identity is much the same—created in a melding space where the traditions and cultural values my immigrant parents brought with them were woven together with local traditions and social mores.

We celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving with Butterball turkeys from Safeway roasted with 臘肉糯米飯[2] stuffing. Christmas came with stars atop decorated trees and 紅包[3] galore. We celebrated Lunar New Year with dancing lions, and to the delight of children and singletons, even more 紅包[4].

My identity however was entirely absent in popular culture and literature. I was a teen who laughed raucously at Saturday Night Live’s “Church Lady.” I listened to New Order, a-ha, and Jacky Cheung. I was respectful to my elders. I didn’t roll my eyes at my grandmother (even though I wanted to) when she insisted I go to church because otherwise, not only would I burn in Hell but also how would I ever meet a husband?

My parents, like many Chinese parents, showed their love through acts of service and sacrifice. They also skied, played golf and mahjong, watched ballet, and liked to dance. But in Western media, I never saw parents like mine, or kids like me. The collective mirror of popular culture erased us. When they did give us space in the mirror, what peered back was ugly and distorted: a sidekick, an object of mockery stripped of dignity; Mickey Rooney in yellowface, Long Duck Dong.

How was it that I swooned over Sixteen Candles, sighed wistfully at Audrey Hepburn’s gamine fragility in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, despite the dreadful rep and enjoyed the countless books, films and TV shows set in worlds where I simply didn’t exist? I lacked the vocabulary to pin-point the dissonance and discomfort I felt. I lacked the understanding that I was not alone in those feelings. (That epiphany would come much, much later.) I did not lack, however, the ability—learned by necessity—to smash the mirror, turning a carefully blind eye to the edges that would draw blood, and pick out only those shards where I might see myself.

“That was how I learned to survive; by seeing myself in the pieces I could, even if I didn’t exactly, see me.” Diana Pho, ibid.

In 1989, I read Amy Tan’s blockbuster hit The Joy Luck Club. It was the first book where I didn’t have to shatter the story into tiny bits to find myself. The 1993 movie that followed with a full-on Chinese cast of gorgeous, glamourous women blew. my. mind. It was the first time I’d seen my community portrayed by Hollywood in a way that didn’t denigrate. Sure, it wasn’t exactly the community I grew up with, because Amy Tan’s writing is informed by her lived experience, not mine. There are a billion Chinese people and its diaspora is huge[5] and varied, hence why not a monolith deserves to be a truth universally acknowledged.

It wasn’t until the recent windfall of books with Chinese casts (naming only a handful of many: Fonda Lee’s Jade City, Cindy Pon’s Want, R F Kuang’s The Poppy War, Sue Lynn Tan’s Daughter of the Moon Goddess, Andrea Stewart’s Bone Shard Daughter, Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became the Sun, and Xiran Jay Zhao’s Iron Widow) that I felt seen and understood how bereft I had been. In these stories, I no longer have to scrabble in the dirt for shards of mirror.

“We are all products of our context. We are all descendants of something and someone.” Daniel Kwan, 2023 Oscars “Everything Everywhere All at Once” Best Director acceptance speech

My own writing is fuelled by my lived experience—the sour hot mixture of defiance and guilt when faced with parental disappointment (yes, even as an adult!), the visceral rejection of the ‘only boys do that’ scoldings, the joy and comfort in that quiet love language typical of older generation Chinese, my somewhat dark, somewhat arch, often in the toilet, Canadian sense of humour. I wanted to see myself in my writing and offer my mirror to others, in the hopes they can find themselves in the story without needing to sift through broken shards.

While this article is ostensibly about me, in truth, it is about all the women who came before me: my mother’s indefatigable spirit and support, who taught me to love my dual heritage; the authors who paved the way by writing their truths; the readers who opened their hearts and embraced our stories; the editors who fought to open publishing’s doors, who bought and published our stories, especially the ones who never said, oh we already have one of those; and the entrepreneurs who created a space and demand for diverse voices[6] and their stories. I see you. I am here because of you.

Together, we’re creating a kaleidoscope of representation and wedging the door wide open. Come on in.

You matter. You’re wanted. You belong.

[1] Because self-representation and context matter.

[2] Pork belly and sticky rice (larou nuomifan).

[3] Red envelopes (hong bao) also known as laisee, are festive gifts filled with cold hard cash. When you greet your elders with 恭喜發財 (gong xi fa cai) Happy New Year! during Lunar New Year, children and singletons receive a hong bao. A somewhat cheeky rhyme I never dared use with my elders but would exchange with my cousins went 恭喜發財 紅包拿來 (gong xi fa cai, hong bao na lai) which means Happy New Year! Bring me hong bao! which has definite Show me the money! vibes.

[4] As Ronny Chieng would say, “Hope you get rich.”

[5] 60 million if you count descendants.

[6] I’ve written mostly about Chinese diaspora representation, but the growth of nuanced representation goes hand in hand with overall diversity in publishing. Shout out to Illumicrate and FairyLoot, UK SFF subscription book boxes founded by, respectively, Daphne Tong and Anissa de Gomery, two incredible women who have created space for diverse voices and a healthy demand for diverse stories.

Photo of A. Y. Chao A. Y. Chao is the author of Shanghai Immortal (Hodderscape, 2023). This fantasy novel stars the gloriously snarky Lady Jing, an outcast noble in the court of the king of Shanghai’s nether realm, who sets out to uncover a conspiracy to steal the Dragon Pearl, and finds her own identity—and a little love—in the process.

Born in Canada, A. Y. Chao lives in the UK with her husband and daughter. She is a recovering lawyer with a xiaolongbao habit and a predilection for knitting.
Women in SF&F Month 2023: April 24–27 Schedule & Week in Review
Apr
23
2023

Women in SF&F Month Banner

It’s the last week of the twelfth annual Women in SF&F Month. Thank you so much to all of last week’s guests for the wonderful essays!

There will be more guest posts this week, but before announcing the schedule, here are last week’s pieces in case you missed any of them.

All of the guest posts from April 2023 can be found here, and last week’s guest posts were:

And there are most guest posts coming up, starting tomorrow! This week’s essays are by:

Women in SF&F Month 2023 Schedule Graphic

April 24: A. Y. Chao (Shanghai Immortal)
April 25: Nia / N. E. Davenport (The Blood Trials, The Blood Gift)
April 26: Kemi Ashing-Giwa (The Splinter in the Sky)
April 27: Moniquill Blackgoose (To Shape a Dragon’s Breath)

Women in SF&F Month: Martha Wells
Apr
20
2023

Women in SF&F Month Banner

Today’s guest is Martha Wells, who is joining us for Women in SF&F Month once again! (She discussed her Books of the Raksura during the very first event in 2012.) Her work includes the fantasy novels The Element of Fire and The Death of the Necromancer, collected in the upcoming edition The Book of Ile-Rien (2024), and City of Bones, which is being rereleased on September 5, 2023. She has also written books set in the Star Wars and Stargate Atlantis universes, and she is the author of the New York Times and USA Today bestselling science fiction books in The Murderbot Diaries, winner of the Hugo Award for Best Series. Her next novel, the fantasy book Witch King, is described as “a remarkable story of power and friendship, of trust and betrayal, and of the families we choose.” It’s coming out on May 30, but in the meantime, you can learn more about it (as well as a few other books) in her guest post, “Deconstructing Epics.”

Cover of Witch King by Martha Wells

Deconstructing Epics
by Martha Wells

The typical image of an epic is a set of thick multi-volume novels. But the secret is, you can write epic fantasy and science fiction at any length, using any structure you want.

When I started writing Witch King, I thought I was writing a story set in the aftermath of a multi-volume epic fantasy. What happens after the evil empire is defeated. I’ve always liked stories that start after the classic happily-ever-after. Like The Cloud Roads, where Moon finds his people and the home he’s always been searching for, but that’s just the start of his problems.

In the past of Witch King, a conquering genocidal empire has invaded a group of civilizations who had been living together in peace. The main characters are immortals with a deeply personal stake in their world, and even though the war is over, they find themselves in a deadly political battle to keep the alliance that defeated that empire from turning into an empire of its own. But to tell that story effectively, I realized I needed to show at least part of that past. Then I realized the past and the present storylines were intertwined and equally important, to tell a story about found family and betrayal and fighting to preserve the world you fought so hard for.

I know I couldn’t have written this book ten years ago and I know it certainly wouldn’t have found a publisher. One of the things I love about the last decade or so in science fiction and fantasy is the way it has broken out of restrictive categories and storytelling conventions. The influx of new writers and new voices and established writers employing a greater range of storytelling styles and subjects has generated a lot of brilliant and original work. And I’ve been heavily influenced in the last several years by writers writing epics, but at shorter lengths or using structures that aren’t typical for epic fantasy in western fiction.

For me, probably one of the best examples of epic storytelling at a shorter length is The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo. It’s a brilliant short novella that tells an epic story of revenge and the fall of empire, as a historian and cleric interviews the one remaining witness who was in the room where it happened. This is an intensely personal story of a woman who masterminds the fall of the emperor who imprisoned her and the people who gave up everything to help her cause. This is an epic compressed down to bite-size length, but for me it makes for an even greater impact.

For a science fiction example, Karen Lord’s upcoming novel The Blue, Beautiful World is set in the same universe as her novel The Best of All Possible Worlds. Though the new novel follows some of the same characters and continues their storylines, it also tells most of the story — the culmination of  a tense long-ranging effort to stop the exploitation and takeover of Earth by aliens — from outsider perspectives, that of the people who are being taught to help save themselves.

The Tiger’s Daughter by K. Arsenault Rivera is not a short novel, and it’s the first part of a trilogy, but it’s also a gripping epic fantasy in one volume, telling a generational story of Imperial and cultural and personal conflict and a war against encroaching demons. All through the focused lens of an intense first person account of a lifelong friendship and romance between the two women main characters.

Fantasy and science fiction has been called a genre of tropes, but the secret is that you can do anything you want with it, and tell your story in the way that works for you. The element that makes each story special is the person writing it, and the more of yourself you put into it, the better.

Photo of Martha Wells Martha Wells has been an SF/F writer since her first fantasy novel was published in 1993, and her work includes The Books of the Raksura series, The Death of the Necromancer, the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy, The Murderbot Diaries series, media tie-in fiction for Star Wars, Stargate: Atlantis, and Magic: the Gathering, as well as short fiction, YA novels, and non-fiction. She has won Nebula Awards, Hugo Awards, and Locus Awards, and her work has appeared on the Philip K. Dick Award ballot, the BSFA Award ballot, the USA Today Bestseller List, and the New York Times Bestseller List. She is a member of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, and her books have been published in twenty-five languages.
Women in SF&F Month: Lauren J. A. Bear
Apr
19
2023

Women in SF&F Month Banner

Today’s guest is author Lauren J. A. Bear! Her debut novel coming out August 8, Medusa’s Sisters, is a reimagining of the story of the titular characters described as follows: “Monsters, but not monstrous, Stheno and Euryale will step into the light for the first time to tell the story of how all three sisters lived and were changed by each other, as they struggle against the inherent conflict between sisterhood and individuality, myth and truth, vengeance and peace.” I’m excited she’s here today to share how female fantasy authors and characters helped her in “Finding Fantasy, My Postpartum Power.”

Cover of Medusa's Sisters by Lauren J. A. Bear

FINDING FANTASY, MY POSTPARTUM POWER
Lauren J. A. Bear

I begin with a radical admission: I have never read The Lord of the Rings. For though I am a voracious reader, my speculative fiction journey was stunted. As a kid, I had the potential to be a proper SFF fan. I loved Patricia C. Wrede’s Dealing with Dragons series, trading Marvel Series 4 cards on the playground, pretending to be Xena or Princess Leia in my backyard. But as I got older, the books in class changed. This was “literature,” my teachers said, and these were the novels that mattered. Goodbye, warrior princess. So long, mutant powers. I was nothing if not a good student, and I tucked away my battered copy of Redwall, never to look back. At UCLA, I took my English major very seriously, restricting myself to serious works only. Give me the esoteric, the painful, the plotless. The less digestible the better. Because I reveled in my seriousness.

In 2016, I became pregnant with my second child, my first daughter. It was an exhausting, uncomfortable pregnancy, further exacerbated by a one-year-old at home and my teaching load. My middle school Humanities class focused on American history and literature, and I struggled to process these lessons while becoming increasingly obsessed with the news cycle. I absorbed the polls and cruel sound bites, holding my belly tight, consumed with apprehension. My little girl was born in 2017, into the chaos of #metoo and hurricanes, mass shootings and the Syrian refugee crisis. A time where the violence against women and children seemed to be at an all-time high, haunting me from all angles, every screen.

It seemed like my daughter was entering a society at its worst, and these dark thoughts sunk me into a deep pit of postpartum anxiety. I felt I was treading in a quicksand of sadness—monotonous and insurmountable, humiliating, and lonely. What can I do? Is she going to be ok? Simple, devastating questions. My sweet husband, desperate to help, urged me to read more. But the types of novels I preferred no longer offered solace. Literary fiction and its gritty stories of broken women, abused children, and failed families were a mirror of the reality I sought to escape, only intensifying my despair.

I was stressed, sinking, and so very alone.

But then, thanks to a book review online, I learned about a different kind of story: An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir. “A YA fantasy?!” my inner Honors student scoffed, “how old are you?”

Still young enough to learn a new trick, apparently—and thankfully.

For in Ember, I found strong women—with swords—who fought for their families in righteous battles as I longed to do. Magic, I realized, fed my soul and I devoured it all: Masks and Dregs, Red Queens then Sun Summoners, wyverns to rukhs. In each new landscape, the female characters showed remarkable agency, and despite their dire circumstances, never lost a sense of optimism—a hope I desperately needed. Move over Harry, these were The Girls Who Lived.

Saying YA fantasy is just for teenage girls implies that there’s something wrong with teenage girls. But what of Greta Thunberg or Malala Yousafzai? Anne Frank? Joan of Arc? The extraordinarily interesting and fierce young women I’ve taught over the years? I understood—with much shame—that I disparaged all of them with this line of thought. At what point in my formative years did I internalize this misogyny, this genre prejudice? I mean, we would all be lucky to have daughters like Katniss Everdeen.

As I’ve told my students time and time again, reading begets reading. I discovered adult SFF writers R.F. Kuang and N.K. Jemisin, women writing deeply cool stories with astute social commentary. And I saw so clearly how SFF writers offer their readers a unique catharsis, an invitation to enter a world (that may look different, but feels familiar), and then kick ass. I dove deep into the works of Ursula K. Le Guin, who even remarks on the limits of realism, arguing in her defense of genre fiction that “realism is quite incapable of describing the complexity of contemporary experience.” It is fantasy, she argues, that best reflects reality.

Fantasy, folklore, and the mythological canon offered me connection. I felt a part of a rich history of protagonists navigating the big bad. I felt seen. Better. Stronger. When the intrusive thoughts came—of my daughter hurt or lost—I had something else to think about. A balm and a distraction, yes, but also a maybe, a what if? Sometimes all you need is just that sense of possibility. These stories alone did not cure my postpartum depression, but they did empower me when I struggled to understand the current world and my place in it. They allowed me to access the inner heroism I needed to save myself.

C.S. Lewis says, “Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” And maybe I’m finally mature enough to pick up the works of his old buddy Mr. Tolkien.

Better yet, maybe I’ll read them with my daughter.

Photo of Lauren J. A. Bear by Heidi Leonard
Photo by Heidi Leonard		 LAUREN J. A. BEAR was born in Boston and raised in Long Beach. After studying English at UCLA and education at LMU, she taught middle-school humanities for over a decade—and survived! She is a teaching fellow for the Holocaust Center for Humanity and lives in Seattle with her husband and three young children. She likes crossword puzzles and being on or near the water without getting wet. Learn more at www.laurenjabear.com or follow Bear on social media:

Twitter: @laurenjabear
Instagram: @laurenjabear
Women in SF&F Month: Gemma Weekes
Apr
18
2023

Women in SF&F Month Banner

Today’s guest is author, poet, and scriptwriter Gemma Weekes! Her work includes the coming-of-age novel Love Me and writing for the children’s animated series JoJo & Gran Gran, and her speculative fiction includes the short story “(Dying of) Thirst.” The latter is published in “Glimpse: An Anthology of Black British Speculative Fiction,” described as including “Afrofuturistic, magic realism and transformational stories” that “create a dichotomy between the comfortable and the mysterious, tantalizing in their mystique and refreshing in their insight.” I’m delighted that she is here today to discuss her love of fantasy in “Coming Home to Magic.”

Cover of Glimpse: An Anthology of Black British Speculative Fiction, featuring Gemma Weekes

Coming Home to Magic
By Gemma Weekes

I was always coming home to magic.

As a child I was obsessed with fantasy. Every book was a door. Each story was a passage into wonder; an initiation into the promise of an expanded, heroic self. Books were the beginning of magic: fairies that lived at the bottom of the garden; portals to enchanted forests through a wardrobe; entire kingdoms floating in the clouds. I would wrench the cover open and feel the climate of distant vistas. I would fall beyond the loneliness of childhood afternoons that rattled empty as the biscuit tin. Hours that lasted centuries, sagging between lunch and dinner while the adults went about their daily panic. When reached for, books reached back. Books weren’t frazzled or overworked. They weren’t too tired to answer all the questions. They spoke slowly and with great care, building new worlds one sentence at a time. They softened with re-reading. They smelled like sawdust. They poured gold into time.

Fantasy taught me that I could identify with anyone. I could empathize with elves and weep for talking animals. I learned the habits of a broad mind and curious heart. By reading, I developed the sense that there existed only the thinnest of veils between everyday life and a dimension of limitless, delicious mystery. By writing, I discovered that I too was a door.

As I left behind those interminable childhood afternoons, stories changed with me. I was full of longings I couldn’t name and feelings that made me a mystery to myself. I went out into the world and found it strange, chaotic and unjust. I discovered the literary writers who built doors inward, into the tangle of human motivation and subtler forms of magic such as compassion and love. My writing then consisted of maps that would keep me from being lost in a dangerous and complex world. I was less concerned with flying than digging. I was more concerned with the ocean bottom than the sky.

Nowadays I have my own daily panic. I find myself in the nexus between the past and the future, in the space between inner and outer realms. My elders have lapsed into the loneliness of long afternoons. When they reach for me, I try to reach back. I have a teenage son in the grips of his own love affair with magic. He has discovered that he, too, is a door. The world he inherits is even more dangerous than the one I grew up in: blind to its own illusions, polarized by algorithm. In a culture that fetishizes weakness; the promise of an expanded, heroic self is more important than ever. In a climate that ennobles limited perspectives; a broad mind and curious heart are our only hope.

Through him, my writing has remembered me as a child. I dig through everyday life into wild and diverse magics. I escape through myself into wonder. I am obsessed with play, with the potential of speculative forms to remind us of all the delicious mystery beneath all human doing, how that can make us humble and curious once again; courageous enough to ask all the questions. To speak slowly and carefully in a world that values fast opinion over slow fact. To build bridges one sentence at a time. To fall beyond ourselves into the unseen. To pour gold into wounds. To recognise that above all, we are miraculous dust. And that each of us is a door.

Gemma Weekes is the critically-acclaimed author of Love Me (Chatto & Windus), screenwriter (JoJo and Gran Gran), lecturer, mama, widely-published poet and playwright. Her story (Dying of) Thirst is featured in Glimpse (Peepal Tree, 2022), the first anthology of speculative fiction by Black British writers.

Women in SF&F Month: Sienna Frost
Apr
17
2023

Women in SF&F Month Banner

This week’s first Women in SF&F Month guest is fantasy writer Sienna Frost! She is the author of the dark fantasy short story “Sirens” and the first book in the Obsidian series, Obsidian: Awakening, which is described as being “for lovers of brutal epic fantasy with intense political intrigues, strung together by heartbreaking love stories that will forever stay in your heart.” Her novel is a 2022 Indie Ink Awards finalist in several categories, including but not limited to Best Debut, Best Morally Gray Character, Best Setting, and Best Villain. I’m thrilled she’s here today to discuss why she writes and publishes in “A World You Don’t Belong.”

Cover of Obsidian: Awakening by Sienna Frost

A World You Don’t Belong
By Sienna Frost / Kajornwan Chueng

“Why do you write?” is one of the questions every writer finds themselves answering at some point, and the replies often range from “I have to or I’ll go crazy” to “I want to be a New York Times bestselling author,” with most ending up somewhere closer to “I didn’t know it pays less than being a janitor!” My own reasons include many of these things, but at the very heart of it, there’s something else quite disturbing that keeps making me write.

I was born sensitive yet stubborn—a problematic combination that draws in bullies because I’m easily hurt, and when you refuse to bend to the world, what begins as an easy target becomes the target. Going against trends to stand your ground makes you a heretic, and people anywhere will burn heretics when they see one, whatever that word means to them at that point in time.

Stubbornness made my life difficult (it still does), and had I been more willing to bend I would have fit in more easily like everyone else. But I was born with an ability to tap into another world that bends to me and that made me even less willing to adapt. By six I was rushing back from school to fight imaginary creatures with an army behind my back and a kingdom that cheered for me. By ten I hadn’t abandoned my imaginary friends, I had an entire imaginary world running with a cast list bigger than Game of Thrones’ at my beck and call. All I had to do was endure a world I don’t belong when I must, and slip into one where I’m wanted every time I had the opportunity. I didn’t like the real world, so I created another one for me. I hated real humans in my life, so I created fictional ones. Blurring the line between reality and imagination was my superpower. It was how I survived.

By twelve I was gifted my first novel to read. It was a Thai novel, I enjoyed it, but it still didn’t beat the stories in my head. What it gave me was a glimpse of another superpower that could be mine. I found a way to build a physical gate to my imaginary world. All I had to do was record these stories in words, then pick up the book whenever I need to meet my imaginary friends. By fourteen I was writing a novel of my own. By sixteen I finished my first trilogy. I spent the next two decades hopping from one continent to another to find a reality I might fit in, and since I couldn’t find one, I kept on writing. I wrote for my eyes only. I wrote because reality disappointed me. I wrote because it was the only thing that kept me living when I couldn’t find another reason why I should.

I have a family now, a loving husband and two children who gave me a world I want to live in, even though it’s roughly the size of my condo unit. Since then writing has become the equivalent of creating my own TV series to watch. After two decades of writing in the closet, I tried writing fan fiction for the first time to share on the internet. I had fun, it blew up, readers told me to write and publish originals, and so I did. I made myself a published author by popular demand, and with it, I opened a gate to hell.

My world, my private, protected space, my sanctuary is now a tourist attraction, a place anyone can come into anytime to attack and hurt me.

But I’ve also discovered something else: every time a reader enters my world and wants to stay in it, that world now exists in another person’s mind. It’s not just me now. I have a family of people who know my imaginary friends and love them too, and the bigger that family grows, the more real my fictional world becomes, the more comfortable I feel with reality because, look, there are people like me here, and I’m not as alone as I thought I was. Readers are the bridge between reality and a writer’s imagination. I will never need readers to write, but the more readers I have, the less I hate my reality, the bigger my place in the world becomes.

It’s a life-changing journey and why I encourage writers to publish as an indie if they can’t get in the door for traditional publishing. Whether the book takes off or not, you will have experienced this at least once before you die, which is not something everyone can say. But there’s just one problem we all have to face: when you share or publish, your ability to play God gets put to the test, and here’s where you face the horror of getting answers to your worst fear: Are there people like you in the world and how many?

Publishing comes at a heavy cost, especially when you’re an indie, and I’m not talking money. Everyone who’s ever done it are locked in this marketing purgatory with no exit. No matter how well you do, the battle continues as expectations are raised and anxiety increases. You’re never happy, it’s never enough, and the higher you climb, the harder you fall, the deeper and more numerous your scars.

Of all the different categories of indies, I’m among the most unfortunate. I’m Thai, and when you’re trying to write in a foreign language people assume immediately that your standard must be low. I live in Bangkok, and the time difference means my social media interactions and interviews are either done while I’m sleeping or my potential readers are sleeping. My book was published without me being able to touch my paperback for months. I can’t sell in many places, organize a book tour, make an audio book with profit share, sign my paperbacks, or sell direct to readers because I don’t live in the right country. I’m a woman running a full-time business with two children to take care of, which means the only time I have to write is between 5am–9am before I go to work. I published my first book at 44—an age most people say is too old to start. I tick all the wrong marks by birth and factors I have no control over. And to top it off, I chose to write fantasy—a genre dominated by men. I have entered yet another world I don’t belong.

People have asked me how I deal with it, especially being a woman in this industry and a mainland POC to boot. Do I think things are hard? Yes. Have I been discriminated against, underestimated, generalized, and labelled before my book is even sampled? Yes. Am I angry or discouraged about these things? Not at all. Life has never been easy, fair, or kind to me, and I wouldn’t be alive today if I needed it to meet my expectations to survive.

But are they right? Do women write horrible fantasy? I don’t know. I haven’t read every fantasy written by women and men and made a comparison of averages, but I’ve read enough to know being a woman doesn’t imply you write bad fantasy. Do many people think that way despite the popularity of so many female fantasy authors? I don’t know. I haven’t seen a proper survey. I’ve seen fights on Twitter that supported either side between maybe ten followers out of the 12,000 I have while the rest stayed silent. These questions are not easily answered, and if I try I’d be more or less generalizing based on who’s being the loudest or from my personal experience, which, let’s face it, doesn’t represent humanity as a whole. I don’t even represent members of my own house.

My point is, maybe they’re statistically right, or maybe they’re wrong about women being inferior in writing fantasy, the fifty other things they say we can’t do, or where each of us do or don’t belong. If you ask me what I think, I’d say, frankly, I don’t give a damn.

I’ve survived a world I don’t belong by writing for decades. I’ve survived worse things than being a woman writing fantasy in a foreign language. I will probably never fit in anywhere and the world will never accommodate people like me. It doesn’t matter. I didn’t start writing to be validated by the majority. I never have.

If I know a thing or two about humanity, it is that most people, anywhere, in any era, will discriminate against outcasts and minorities until they succeed. I’ve learned, that if we want to change something for the outcasts we identify with, then first we must succeed without changing who we are, by doing what we do, and then they’ll listen.

The world alienates us all from the moment we’re born, and it’s always up to us find our own place in it. Writers and creative artists have the power to connect people and give them that place, however small it may be. That’s a superpower writers often forget in the pursuit of fame and monetary success. That’s another reason to write and keep writing even if you can’t make a cent from it. We are fiction writers, born with the ability to bend reality by creating an imaginary universe and making people believe it exists. We can use that superpower for money and fame, then be disappointed when we find out it pays less per hour than cleaning toilets, or we can use it to bring people like us together. I believe that’s why many indies will still write and publish, never mind what the world says about us, or how many copies we sell: to survive a world we don’t belong.

Photo of Sienna Frost and Cat

 Sienna Frost is a pen name of a Thai fantasy author who left home at fourteen, lived on her own in four continents, and has spent more than two decades writing fantasy, tragic love stories, and fan fiction to keep herself company in a world she finds herself unwilling to fit in. While most of her stories have been kept for her eyes only, the few she has shared on the internet have been widely read by fans around the world, some with fan-translations available in French, Spanish, Vietnamese, German, Russian, Polish and Chinese. She lives in Bangkok with her husband, two children, and her growing population of rescued cats. An avid traveler and scuba diver, her travel experience and exposure to cultures around the world has inspired many of her stories. Her debut, Obsidian:Awakening, is a literary fantasy inspired by her time spent with bedouins of Jordan and Mongolian nomads.