Tag Archives: family

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Authors in Quarantine – Julie Czerneda

With this this series, I am hoping to capture how this cultural moment is affecting our speculative fiction authors and how our authors are surviving during the COVID-19 outbreak

Spec Can: What have you been up to during the COVID-19 outbreak?

Julie Czerneda: It’s been work as normal for us in many ways, especially coming out of winter. I turned in a book in February and the next is due early June. That’s a good pace. My publisher, DAW Books, has all their staff working from home and eager to see material flow. As I’d already been driving hard to turn in my current WIP, SPECTRUM, early, to give me more time ahead for a “secret project,” I haven’t lacked motivation. Now? Because spring is like a tonic, especially to see the green things and birds, the struggle to balance outside and office is pretty familiar. It’s not a bad thing.

Spec Can: How are you adapting to social distancing?

Julie Czerneda: I’m very fortunate to live with my best friend and partner (coming up to 44 years, btw) Roger. We have offices and room to roam in our house, and much to do. For breaks and exercise, we love walks and biking, so that’s all good. I won’t lie, it’s agony at times being apart from the rest of our family and friends. Videos of loved ones are bittersweet. Sometimes I’ll sniffle a while afterwards. Not being able to help is the worst, but we know we’re protecting one another and are in it together. The end of this will come.

Like many, I can say we’re getting a great deal done on several fronts simply because we’re not leaving town or dividing our time. Oh, and I must applaud Roger for being our designated Seeker of Needful Things. I haven’t shopped since March 14th. (When I bought my wonderful new keyboard, so there’s that.)

Spec Can: How is the outbreak affecting your writing?

Julie Czerneda: I am grateful to be writing Esen. She’s family and joy, along with the suspense, and there’s a great release in finding new weird aliens around every corner. I don’t know if I could have written MAGE during this. Maybe. Glad I don’t have to find out.

The first week I couldn’t focus as well. The significance of the news was overwhelming–trouble with a science background, we both had a sense of how huge the problem would become. By the second, I’d regained my rhythm, but my daily word count was down maybe 20% overall until lately. (I track it) I do allow myself to walk away, then try again later. We leave the news till after our workday, as best we can. That helps. Plus we’re wary of what we watch or read for pleasure. Some themes cut too close right now and that’s normal.

Fortunately, the new book has hit the climatic portion–so much happens!–and that’s always the smoothest/fastest for me to write. I’m already seeing my numbers head back to normal. As for tone…that’s interesting. When I need to decompress, I’ve gravitated to rereading favourite mysteries, Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe. Bonus? That tingly sense of oooh REVEAL CLUE!!!! has crept in to my story, which is fun.

Coffee and cheesecake from the local bakery

Interviewed by Derek Newman-Stille, MA, PhD ABD

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Authors in Quarantine – Kate Heartfield

With this this series, I am hoping to capture how this cultural moment is affecting our speculative fiction authors and how our authors are surviving during the COVID-19 outbreak

Spec Can: What have you been up to during the COVID-19 outbreak?

Kate Heartfield: The priority has been distance learning for my 10-year-old son, and I’ve also carried on with my regular freelance editing and online teaching jobs, in addition to trying to keep up with writing.

Even though I haven’t really had any extra time, I have been starting all kinds of new creative projects, because it helps my mental health. Projects help to remind me that today is different from yesterday and tomorrow will be different again, that change will happen. And I’ve always used work as a coping mechanism, rightly or wrongly! So in addition to everything else, I’ve been painting and assembling a hurdy-gurdy from a kit, baking a lot, and trying to get my garden in decent shape. I’ve signed up for an online course in Old Norse, because I figure, if not now, when? A lot of my projects (such as baking bread and making masks) also serve to help our household cope with the pandemic.

I’ve also been allowing myself the time to do a fair bit of relaxation activity, such as playing Civilization VI (my comfort game!) and watching TV with my partner and son. We just finished Tales from the Loop and are currently finishing up the last season of Clone Wars together.

Spec Can: How are you adapting to social distancing?

Kate Heartfield: Our household is pretty fortunate, all things considered. My partner, my son and I are all introvert homebodies at the best of times, so on a day to day basis it doesn’t feel that strange. But the uncertainty about the future, the stress of distance learning and the inability to see people I love is wearing, for sure. I feel like my heart is a rubber band that’s been stretched into the same position for two months and is weakening at the edges.

I’ve been using Zoom and other online platforms to keep in touch as much as I can with my writing community, although I miss all my writer pals terribly and nothing can make up for their physical presence. I’m taking part in two virtual conventions this month, including the Nebula awards weekend at the end of May, and that helps to keep me in touch too.

Spec Can: How is the outbreak affecting your writing?

Kate Heartfield: My creative brain is my coping mechanism, so I’m enjoying dreaming and plotting out my current novel. But when it comes time to sit down and write, I frequently struggle these days with a kind of brain freeze — I can’t execute and get the words down very well. An effect of long-term low-level stress, I think, and I’m sure a lot of us are feeling the same way. Also, I’ve lost a lot of the options I used to have to get into a fresh headspace by going to work at the library or my favourite coffee shop, which sounds trivial but was a bigger part of my working life than I realized.

So it’s slower than I’d like, but I’m getting work done. Soon, my editor will send some edits for my next novel, The Embroidered Book, which is coming out next year. When that happens, that will become my writing priority. In the meantime, I’m working on a novel that isn’t sold yet, so I don’t have a deadline, which is a blessing in some ways as it means there’s less stress, but it also makes it hard to keep at it, because writing a novel on spec is an implicit act of faith in the future and that’s hard right now. I really love the book, so that’s helping. I also wrote a story for The New Decameron Project, which was great, because it gave me a reason to take out an old half-finished concept and finish it up. The result was a story called “In a Hansom Cab at the Liberty Street Ferry Terminal” and it gave me great joy to write.

Interviewed by Derek Newman-Stille MA, PhD ABD

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Authors in Quarantine – Jay Odjick

With this this series, I am hoping to capture how this cultural moment is affecting our speculative fiction authors and how our authors are surviving during the COVID-19 outbreak

Spec Can: What have you been up to during the COVID-19 outbreak?

Jay Odjick: Lots of hand washing! Heh! I have mostly been working and working out. Especially now that the weather finally – knock on wood – seems to maybe be getting a bit nicer, my biggest stress relief is lifting outside. I have my weights set up outdoors and it’s nice to break up your day, get some sun and allows me to shut out the world for just a bit, which is important, I think now and then, especially now.

It’s important to stay educated and informed as to what’s going on with the outbreak but I think for us all it can get a bit overwhelming. It’s important to put media, both social and otherwise aside for awhile if and when we need to.

In terms of what I’m working on, I’m writing a graphic novel for Scholastic Canada, a kind of coming of age story about a young First Nations boy, let’s say, much like myself as a child who moves from the U.S to his father’s community and comes to writing and drawing comics. It’s based on my experiences and has been challenging, both reliving stuff from my youth but also a ton of fun. I’m excited to share stories of rez life with people who may have never been to a reserve!

I’ve been doing a video podcast as well at http://twitch.tv/jayodjick – lining up guests for that and trying to acclimate myself to the tech and software involved! Been fun and to date, I’ve had on a biologist with a specialization in ecosystems and a medieval historian to discuss what we can learn from plagues in the past in our current reality as well as how society comes out of these types of things and I thought that was fascinating, especially to learn that might be more uplifting an answer than we’d think. I’ve been learning a lot thru this!

I’ve also been trying to help out as much as I can; I am blessed, in that because I work at home for the majority of my work this affects me less than most people, and I’m still working. If you’d like to learn more about what I’ve been up to in that regard, check me out on Facebook or Twitter! Would love to see you there.

Spec Can: How are you adapting to social distancing?

Jay Odjick: Like I said, I think it really doesn’t affect me as bad as it could and I get that I’m fortunate in that way. Apart from cancelled appearances and speaking engagements, I work from home insofar as writing and illustration. Last year I was working both at the University of Ottawa as a teacher and with the Ottawa Citizen as a freelancer; this year I’m focusing more on creative endeavours, mainly the above mentioned graphic novel as it’s a lengthy project.

Having said that, there are things I miss, just like any and everyone else. Friends and especially family. It’s crazy to think that this is something that, for the first time in my life that I can think of is something that is truly affecting the entire world! Just crazy to think about.

I think one of the things that’s been important for me in this time is perspective. As weird and negative as this time is, it’s helped to focus on the temporary nature of this for me and to look at certain situations from around the world as well as our own past. This hasn’t impacted me financially as much as some and my heart goes out to those who are struggling.

But I try to think about conversations I’ve had with older people who have lived thru wars or a friend of mine who lived thru the Bosnian War and told me what that was like.

Or even looking at things closer to home – I have a digital copy of the paperwork filed for the arrest of my grandfather here in Canada when he was arrested for leaving the reservation without papers. It may get hard, but I can go for a walk without being arrested.

When it feels tough for me, how I feel is valid but it helps to remind me of how resilient people can be and how much we can get thru.

Spec Can: How is the outbreak affecting your writing?

Jay Odjick: I have to admit..my writing has been impacted by the outbreak and maybe moreso what’s come from it. Media and politicians are being so divisive and we are kind of inundated with negativity and attempts to anger us or again, divide.

At times it is hard to get myself into the right headspace for writing.

It comes and goes but as one example, sometimes at the moment, humor can be tough to write because we know so many ARE suffering or in need.

If I sat down to just CREATE something in this time, I’m fairly certain it might come out a bit dark. Maybe ultimately uplifting but you know, things don’t always work that way – we have deadlines and I have a book to deliver that has priority over writing or even drawing as a form of expression, but I strongly believe in creative expression as catharsis. I should try drawing more, from the heart and not from the head, when I have time.

If you are having a hard time, know that you aren’t alone. We may be isolated but we are all dealing with similar things. Maybe that’s of little comfort but we will come out of this better, I truly believe. Better and stronger and we can use this to come together.

We just have to get thru the NOW.

Interviewed by Derek Newman-Stille, MA, PhD, ABD

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Authors in Quarantine – Karen Dudley

With this this series, I am hoping to capture how this cultural moment is affecting our speculative fiction authors and how our authors are surviving during the COVID-19 outbreak

Spec Can: What have you been up to during the COVID-19 outbreak?

Karen Dudley: The pandemic really hit at terrible time for me. My dad is quite unwell and I am currently recovering from major surgery (though naturally I tell everyone the 8-inch scar on my abdomen is from a bat’leth fight). Keeping everybody (including me) together has been tough. Combined with anxiety/fear about Covid has meant that I’ve basically been doing my best interpretation of a fruit fly: buzzing around, lighting on something for a picosecond before taking off again. I haven’t cleaned closets or made bread or learned a new language or calculated the distance to Mars in Mars bars. BUT my family is (relatively) sane, the cats are happy, everyone is getting fed, and the house isn’t too gross, so I call it a win.

At first, I spent too much time reading upsetting articles, scrolling through social media, and having an occasional cry. But I am trying to enjoy the beauty of a quieter, less smoggy world. I write messages of love in chalk on the sidewalk and put hearts and stuffies in the windows so kids out for their daily stroll can count them. We’ve also been taking advantage of the various productions that are streaming for free: operas, Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals, Shakespeare plays.

The other cool thing that we’re doing—the thing that is helping most to keep my daughter happy and occupied—is having theme dinners. The first (pictured above) was, not surprisingly, an ancient Greek dinner. We researched the foods, the clothing, the makeup, and the dining rooms to recreate an ancient Greek symposion. We brought out the camp cots to make dining couches and piled them with pillows. We dressed in our finest chitons and ate sesame pancakes and shrimps in honey while we listened to lyre music (thanks, Youtube!) and gossiped about how Socrates always looks like an unmade sleeping couch. It was so much fun!!! We went Medieval after that. We were nobles in our dining hall and all my grandmother’s old silver serving dishes looked amazing (though the kitten tried to make off with one of the trenchers). This weekend we’ll be dining in an Elizabethan tavern. My husband and daughter look fantastic as lace-collared dandies about town. I, however, will be a lowly serving wench.

Spec Can: How are you adapting to social distancing?

Karen Dudley: I DESPISE IT!!! I am an unabashed hugger; I HATE not being able to hug people. My husband and daughter are both introverts and it’s getting to the point where they beat a hasty retreat as soon as they see me coming. “No, Mom! Nooooo! Not another hug!!”
Needless to say, the cats are getting a lot more cuddles.
But I go for a walk every morning, and I smile at strangers as I pass by (always from at least 2 metres away). Most people smile back and I love that brief acknowledgement. The unspoken ‘I am only avoiding you because of the virus, not because of the way you look or who you are’. It lifts my heart. But I tell you, when this pandemic is over, I’m going to hug every single person I see. Every. Single. Person.

Spec Can: How is the outbreak affecting your writing?

Karen Dudley: I have to echo Kate Story here and laugh uproariously at the question. Seriously, how could something like this NOT affect one’s writing? Most days I can’t concentrate for more than five minutes at a time. It’s driving me crazy! And then there’s the problem of what to write. Before my surgery, I was working on the second book of a fantasy trilogy, but it’s set in a society on the verge of collapse. Quite frankly, I don’t want to write that right now, I’m LIVING it! And yet, I feel as though I do need to write—if only to lose myself in work for a spell. Fortunately, my daughter, who is a budding animator, had asked me a while ago to write down a story I made up for her when she was young (she wants to animate it for her grade twelve summative project). It’s a goofy tale of how our cat, Monsieur Goobère, got his stripes. When I realized that my fantasy novel wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, I started working on the Goobère story. Not only have I been able to concentrate on it, the project has actually made me quite happy. It’s gentle and sweet and exactly what I need right now. Obviously, I hope to get back to my novel one of these days, but for now, this is enough.

Interviewed by Derek Newman-Stille, MA, PhD ABD

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Authors in Quarantine – Kate Story

With this this series, I am hoping to capture how this cultural moment is affecting our speculative fiction authors and how our authors are surviving during the COVID-19 outbreak

Spec Can: What have you been up to during the COVID-19 outbreak?

Kate Story: Freaking out. Cleaning the house. Drowning in certainty that I am not cleaning the house enough. (Somebody said to think of the virus as glitter – and when you go out, you and all the things you bring home are covered in glitter. As anybody who works in theatre knows, GLITTER IS EVERYWHERE AND YOU CAN NEVER GET RID OF IT.) Working on funding applications for future projects that I don’t even know will happen. Discovering what other people see during meetings with me (unspeakably horrid – my god, I need a filter! How to do you activate a Zoom filter, please somebody?? Is there a filter for life? Wait, that’s plastic surgery, scratch that). Laughing a lot. Poking around in the garden. Pissing off the cats by being home too much (yes, it is possible). Cooking. Eating. Drinking bad beer. Going for walks. Finding every corner of this town that looks like an Edward Gorey drawing. Reading from the Tsundoku. (I find I want to read things that really grip me. Not so much into post-apocalyptic fiction. I like to write it, and I used to like to read it, but living in it? not so much) Finally watching Citizen Kane. Rinse and repeat.

Spec Can: How are you adapting to social distancing?

Kate Story: Other than cringing every time I hear the term (it has this kind of smug, packaged feeling. And it should be “physical distancing,” no?) it has not affected me as much as some people, I think. I already worked from home, in my split life – the writing and arts administration was almost all from home. It’s the theatre work that is suffering the most. Theatre artists literally can’t practice our art right now. Not only do I miss everyone dreadfully, I miss the work – and fear for the future of live performance. But in terms of my daily work and routine, the main daytime structure hasn’t changed much.

I live with my partner, and a dear friend too, and they are both good company (I won’t speak for myself). We do our best to be careful with each other and give as much space as we can. Most days, it works. I live in a house with a yard, in a smallish town where lots of totally uncrowded walking options are available. My Newfoundland family is pretty much okay thus far, and although I worry, they are fairly safe. I am insanely lucky.

I am now drinking bad beer (see above) and eating meat. That’s the weirdest thing. What the hell is happening to me?

Spec Can: How is the outbreak affecting your writing?

Kate Story: HAHAHAHAHAHA you have to be joking. It’s a mess. If I had five dollars for every person who has greeted me with a jocular, “Bet you’re getting a lot of writing done, eh?” I’d be a friggen millionaire. I am just as messed up by all this as anyone! I had forcefully carved out time to write before all this – a global lock-down pandemic is not a dream come true for me (or for anyone, I sincerely hope). Also I had a serious blow in terms of my writing career just before all this happened, one that some people will know about and I will say no more here. The world has more than moved on, but many of us affected by it are still reeling from the loss and trying to deal with the aftermath, and my attempts to do so have of course come to a grinding halt. Because Covid 19.

Like many people, I overdid news and social media at first, and have learned that one needs to limit that for mental health reasons. I try to keep up with news once a day or so, mostly through the Guardian, CBC, and Stephen Colbert (yup. Hard to encounter the Orange Caligula unfiltered by humour). I am disturbed by some vicious social media shaming I have seen, although grateful to be able to stay in touch. However, I can only look at so many photos of home-baked bread. And the accompanying apologies for posting said pictures. If I can’t eat your bread, I don’ts wants to sees it.

At the same time I am terribly fortunate. I have 2 books in the pipes. One (a collection of my short fiction) will be postponed. Printers are non-essential, so are shut down, and the publisher is rightly questioning whether it makes sense to release an e-book and then a print book a year or 2 later… plus there will be a cascade of books by heavy hitters coming out once all this lifts! – and books by more obscure writers would get lost in the shuffle. So that is up in the air, for good reasons, although still likely to happen at some point. Another book, a YA fantasy, is slated for 2021. So far the publisher is still keen to do it. And very fortunately, I had ground out a first draft before the pandemic hit us in Ontario. I’m almost certain I’d fail at doing that right now – my brain is mush. So I am working in a desultory fashion at Draft 2, which is due in a little over a month. Pray for me.

I don’t feel like there’s any way for me to have a writerly view of the pandemic while living in the middle of it. Maybe ultimately it will change how and what I write – I am interested to see what occurs in that regard.

Interviewed by Derek Newman-Stille, MA, PhD ABD

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Authors in Quarantine – David Demchuk

With this this series, I am hoping to capture how this cultural moment is affecting our speculative fiction authors and how our authors are surviving during the COVID-19 outbreak

Spec Can: What have you been up to during the COVID-19 outbreak?


David Demchuk: I am lucky to be able to do my job from home, and to have a home which is already set up and equipped for remote operations. The team I work with is small; we communicate well, and spell each other off with the day-to-day work, special projects and the many video meetings that this situation has spawned. Apart from that I’ve been reading, catching up on movies and trashy TV, cooking and baking (and eating), spending too much time on social media, and playing Animal Crossing.

Spec Can: How are you adapting to social distancing?

David Demchuk: I was already a fairly solitary person, so I have not been as heavily affected by the need to isolate as many of my friends and colleagues. However, I suffer from agoraphobic anxiety, so going outside to go shopping or run errands is now one long panic attack from start to finish–and standing in store lines on narrow sidewalks is the worst. One thing that’s been a huge challenge: My partner and I have been together for 11 years but we live separately, albeit in the same building. He comes to visit for about an hour every day but, because he goes out more and has a greater potential for exposure, we remain at opposite ends of the couch six feet apart. We haven’t had physical contact for more than five weeks.

Spec Can: How is the outbreak affecting your writing?

David Demchuk: Well…the short answer is “I haven’t done any, so–great?” I am holding off on writng much, at least formally, until I receive my editor’s notes on my newest book. My hope is that I will be able to focus my energies (and my emotions, including my fears) on the pages once they’re in front of me. One thing I have been doing–both for the new book and the one I plan to start in the fall–is jotting down short snippets on index cards–images, dialogue, turns of phrase–and tossing them into a small plastic storage box beside my coffee table. No expectations of structure or order or ‘finished’ writing, just capturing material as it comes to me in unfiltered unprocessed snapshots. It’s oddly cathartic and makes me feel productive with probably the least amount of effort I can expend. Apart from that, there’s Animal Crossing!

Interviewed by Derek Newman-Stille, MA, PhD ABD

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These Beans Lost Jack

These Beans Lost Jack

A review of Ace Jordyn’s “The Story of the Three Magic Beans” in Over the Rainbow: Folk and Fairy Tales from the Margins (Exile Editions, 2018)

By Derek Newman-Stille

Do magic beans ever get tired of granting wishes? Do they ever get frustrated with having to fulfill everyone else’s dreams instead of their own? Do they ever crave a normal life without all of that magic where they can just soak up some water, nest in the soil, and get warm in the sun? Ace Jordyn’s “The Story of the Three Magic Beans” answers those questions with a resounding “YES!”. Where Rati Mehrotra’s story took readers into the animal world, Ace Jordyn’s tale brings us into the vegetative world.

Plants and plant products play an important role in fairy tales. They are often catalysts for change and transformation, but they don’t often get the credit they deserve. After all, who would Cinderella be without her pumpkin carriage? Who would Snow White be without the poisoned apple? Who would Jack be without his Beanstalk? Plants are figures of change, which may be why they appear as objects of transformation in fairy tales. They change from seeds, dropping roots into the ground and sending shoots of green up into the air where they feed on sunlight. They change with the seasons, sprouting leaves, bringing them to flower and bloom and sometimes to produce fruit and then letting those leaves change colour, dropping them to decay and becoming bare branches or retreating into the ground in a bulb. The vegetative world winds tendrils through our fairy tales, but often gets ignored. Ace Jordyn centralizes beans – transforming them from passive objects and foods into characters with agency, desires, and figures who go through their own transformations.

The beans of Ace Jordyn’s story not only question ideas about the passivity of plants in fairy tales, they also challenge limited ideas of family by exploring different family structures and ideas for raising young (seedlings). The beans go through their own adventures seeking a place to call home and a sense of belonging while also battling to keep themselves from being eaten, meeting other vegetables, and finding their way through a complicated world.

To find out more about Ace Jordyn, visit http://acejordyn.com

To discover more about Over the Rainbow: Folk and Fairy Tales from the Margins, visit https://overtherainbowfairytale.wordpress.com and visit Exile Editions at https://www.exileeditions.com

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Abuse and Ideas of Home

Abuse and Ideas of Home

A review of Tonya Liburd’s “Superfreak” in Shades Within Us: Tales of Migrations and Fractured Borders Edited by Susan Forest and Lucas K. Law (Laksa Media Group, 2018).

By Derek Newman-Stille

Tonya Liburd’s “Superfreak” is an intensely powerful and intensely painful tale that examines ideas of safety, security, and home. I should start my review by adding a trigger warning that “Superfreak” contains discussions of sexual assault and abuse as does this review.

In a world where people develop Gifts as they age, Danielle is a character who hasn’t developed a gift. She is told that this makes her part of a vulnerable population and she is also teased by other youth about her lack of Gifts. Despite this, when Danielle is called “Superfreak” by other young people, she decides to take on the name, to use the language that was meant to disempower her to instead give her strength. The name allows her to fight back against some of the horrors that she has seen in her life.

Danielle moved from the Caribbean to Canada to escape an uncle who was sexually assaulting her, only to be sexually assaulted by the uncle she was living with in Canada as well. She is able to escape and get to a youth shelter where she is able to start developing a sense of community.

Shades Within Us is a collection of tales about migration and border crossing, and while Liburd does deal with a literal crossing of a border into Canada, her story is more about the philosophical and emotional ideas of “Home”. Liburd explores the unsettled feeling of people in situations of abuse, the total inability to find a sense of safety and security in the notion of “Home” that non-abused people feel. Danielle is a character who is seeking some sort of sense of being free of threat, and Liburd uses the character to explore the idea that a notion of “Home” always takes time for abused people. It is not something that can be secured by a certain place – by four walls. It is something that is constantly being negotiated, something that is constantly sought after and constantly disrupted by past trauma. Liburd examines the complexities of home that non-abused people ignore and highlights the conflicted nature of homes.

“Superfreak” is a story that cuts to the quick, but it also reveals a great deal about the sort of lasting pain that comes from abuse and trauma.

To discover more about Shades Within Us, visit http://laksamedia.com/shades-within-us-an-anthology-for-a-cause/

To find out more about Tonya Liburd, visit https://thespiderlilly.wordpress.com

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Border Walls and Barriers

Border Walls and Barriers

A review of Rich Larson’s “Porque El Girasol se Llama El Girasol” in Shades Within Us: Tales of Migration and Fractured Borders Edited by Lucas Law and Susan Forest (Laksa Media Group, 2018)

By Derek Newman-Stille

With “Porque El Girasol se Llama El Girasol”, Rich Larson tells a significant tale for a post-Trump world. Larson’s story is about Latinx people in a post-wall America who need to find a method of passing through a militarized border with a massive wall. Those who are caught in American territory are put to work building the wall further, often dying from unsanitary conditions, and those who are caught in the no man’s land around the wall are allowed to be butchered without remorse.

Larson tells his tale through the perspective of Girasol, a little girl who is trying to escape America with her mother. Although a small child, she is aware of the realities of being captured and killed in the process of escaping, illustrating the loss of childhood that many children have to experience when they are subject to political violence by oppressive regimes.

They are escorted through the wall by a man who functions as a coyote (a person who brings people across borders), but this coyote is quite different from others because he needs to take his passengers through a quantum level of reality in order to get them safely through the highly protected wall. He is called the Cheshire Man, evoking the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland for his ability to disappear and go where others cannot go.

“Porque El Girasol se Llama El Girasol” is a tale of loss, family sacrifice, and political violence, reminding readers of the violence that can occur in a political regime that casts certain people as unwanted and that justifies violence against them.

To discover more about Shades Within Us, visit http://laksamedia.com/shades-within-us-an-anthology-for-a-cause/

To find out more about Rich Larson, visit https://www.patreon.com/richlarson

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Rejected Bodies

Rejected Bodies
A review of Kelly Robson’s “Two Year Man” in Asimov’s Science Fiction, August 2015

By Derek Newman-Stille

Kelly Robson’s “Two Year Man” is a tale that explores the idea of rejection, and, particularly, rejected bodies. Focused on a man named Mikkel, who carries out janitorial duties and partially survives by bringing home the discarded waste of wealthier people, “Two Year Man” examines economic hegemonies, monetary power structures that de-value the lives and existence of other people. Robson points out our own socio-economic issues by abstracting them onto a science fictional world, but the issues she represents are highly relevant for examining and critiquing our own society. This is a world of economic systems of control where survival requires the selling of one’s selfhood and self respect. 

Robson particularly highlights the complexity of issues shaping the experiences of women in poverty, exploring Mikkel’s wife Anna’s sacrifices for survival and the way that these sacrifices tie into notions of family. Anna, like many women, has to negotiate the systems of control projected at her body. In order to help her mother survive medical issues, she has to sell her ovaries. This sacrifice for her family is still critiqued by others however, because, in sacrificing her ovaries, she is then open to critiques from others based on the assumption that her primary role as a woman should be motherhood. No matter which actions she takes, she is viewed as unnatural and unnurturing.

Things are further complicated when Mikkel brings home a baby who was about to be thrown into an incinerator by the scientists in the lab that he cleans. This baby was born with talons, a beak, and challenges breathing due to her different body. She is viewed by the corporation that created her and by Mikkel’s neighbours as a tainted body and the child evokes horror by others, but adoration and love by Mikkel. When he presents the baby to Anna, expecting her to relish in the possibility of motherhood, she reacts with horror, both because of the danger of arrest for having a tainted child and because she does not want to be a mother. Robson uses this interaction to highlight the complexity of issues around motherhood, particularly for those from low income groups. She points out that there is a social assumption of a universal desire for motherhood that is projected to women and that not wanting to be a mother means being subject to assumptions that one is cold and unfeminine.

This is a tale about control – economic control and oppression of the lower classes, the conteol of women’s bodies, the way that social pressures dictate what can and cannot happen for cetain types of people. Robson brings attention to notions of the family, disability and accommodating disabled youth, the culture of rejection and eugenics, a culture of waste and highlights the complex strings that bind these ideas together and reinforce systems of control by depicting certain people as rejected.

To find out more about Kelly Robson, visit her website at http://kellyrobson.com