Many, many happy returns to the lovely ms_cataclysm

I don't remember exactly how old I was when I first encountered the writing of Nancy Springer, but I must have been in my mid-teens. Back then, I was on the mailing list of the wonderful, lamented sf bookshop, Andromeda, and they sent out a regular catalogue. From the description in the catalogue, I picked out a book called The White Hart because it sounded interesting -- a bit like Tolkien. At that age, I wanted as much as possible like Tolkien. It arrived a day or two later, a slim US import with the most beautiful cover ( here). I started reading, and didn't stop until I'd finished it (in about a delicious, excited hour), and then I found the catalogue, begged a loan from my mother (who was always supportive of me buying books) and ordered the next two.
I'd never read anything quite like it. There were things that I sort-of recognised -- the sense of mythic resonance, the sense of destiny, the recognition that there are things in life, sometimes, that are more important than the wants and desires of the individual, and which requite sacrifice and resolution to achieve. I met these in other books - in re-tellings of myths and legends, in The Silmarillion, in Louisa Alcott and the Brontes, in Mary Renault (sorry, marina_bonomi), Keith Roberts and Geoff Ryman. It's a theme and a skill that I honour and admire, because it is almost the power to *create* myth and archetype. It's certainly the power to tap into them. And it's something Springer possesses in vast quantities.
I've been reading her ever since, and I am awed by her range: she's written YA, sf and mystery as well as fantasy -- and her fantasies spread across several genre sub-categories. The Tiptree Award winning Larque on the Wing might be classified as urban fantasy -- but it's also an exploration of gender, a feminist critique and a careful, detailed study of a marriage. Apocalypse looks like horror, but once again it's deeply feminist, it's a bildungsroman, and it's a thriller. The novella Damnbanna is about teenage exclusion, about social breakdown, about prejudice and cruelty and love and magic. All of them are wonderful reads.
My very favourite of her books is the Seaking series (Madbond, Mindbond, Godbond) which is... Well, a big part of me thinks they're true. That they are a myth that somehow got lost or elided from the record. They're about sacred kinship and friendship, about fate and fear, responsibility and sacrifice and need and betrayal and so many important things. All written in Springer's graceful prose and with those wonderful, breathing characters. They still break my heart, those books.
With Tanith Lee and Judith Tarr and Sheila Gilluly and Rumer Godden, Springer has been a huge influence on me as a writer. I aspire to her clarity and deep and above all to her gift to create and write and give texture to myth. She's extraordinary.
When The Grass King's Concubine came out, someone paid me an enormous compliment, by saying that it read as if I'd got in touch with something very old and deep.
Mythic resonance.
Like Nancy Springer.
If I ever get to be a quarter the writer she is, I'll be grateful. She's a true creator of Story. Thank you so much, Ms Springer. You've taught me so much and shown me worlds I could never have imagined.

Skirt of the day: blue batik

So, yesterday I decided to indulge in another round of that intermittent habit, poking the internet with a stick, by starting a hashtag -- #womentoread -- over on Twitter. I asked people to recommend sff by women. The response was astonishing: I'd hoped that some of my friends would pick it up, but... One of the very first to do so was seanan_mcguire (Thank you, Seanan!) and it just took off. All afternoon (my timezone) and well into the evening, people were naming their favourites, exchanging names and recommendations and ideas. It was huge fun and the enthusiasm and engagement and excitement was just wonderful. I am profoundly grateful to everyone who joined in and help this happen. Towards the end of the day (my time) writer Harry Connolly (burger_eater) gave me the idea of capitalising on all this momentum by linking it to a series of blogposts about specific women writers and post links to these pieces on twitter using the hashtag. (You can read Harry's article here.) I've written about women writers whose work I love before, of course, but the problem has been that relatively few people saw them -- mainly my existing social circle and readers. And that is a key issue for many women writers: underexposure. But the hashtag, as I said, has some momentum, so this seems like an opportunity to try and raise the profile of writing by women and to address that underexposure to some degree.
But why now, exactly. I've done something like this before (last year with the fantasy by women thing). That's part of it. I am an activist to my bones: it's coded into me to try and *do* something when I see an injustice. And I know far too many really great women writers who are underrated, under-reviewed, under-recognised. I see male writers praised for doing things in books which women did before them, which women are doing as well as them -- but the women are ignored and sidelined. It is a fact that books by women are reviewed less frequently than books by men, and that prestigious review locales pay less attention to women than men.
This year's review survey came out two days ago. During the day, my twitter feed was full of men -- many of them high-profile and influential -- decrying the under-representation of women writers in reviews (and I am very glad to see them recognising this and commenting on it) but immediately going back to talking about, promoting and praising works by other men. Last week, jemck found ourselves in a major branch of a major UK book-chain in Oxford and noticed a promo table for fantasy. We're both fantasy authors, we took a look. The theme was clearly 'If you like George R R Martin, try this". It was a table about 4 foot x 4 foot square, piled high with fantasy. Great.
Except... all but three of the writers represented were men. And of the remaining 3 -- the women -- two were not epic fantasy writers but established Big Name Bestsellers -- Stephenie Meyer and Suzanne Collins and the books by them on that table were both sf. That's fine. I love sf by women. But those two books -- The Host and The Hunger Games weren't there because they were 'like' A Game of Thrones; they were there because they're already bestsellers in a related field. The other women present was an epic fantasy author and a good one -- Robin Hobb. Who has a gender-neutral name.
I'm not saying the men on that table aren't good: there were some excellent books there, by excellent writers. There were also books by men I've never heard of, which are quite probably also excellent books. But the overall impression was 'This is A Man's World'. Jules and I started making a list of who was *not* on that table, of women who are epic fantasy writers and published in the UK.

Kate Elliott
Judith Tarr
Freda Warrington
Gail Z Martin
Trudy Canavan
Karen Miller/K E Mills
Glenda Larke
Cecilia Dart-Thornton
Gaie Sebold
Juliet E McKenna
Tanith Lee
Amanda Downum

That was in about a minute. Now, you can argue, very reasonably, that some of those women are out-of-print here (but you might like to think about how they came to fall out of print in this context, given that contracts depend on sales, sales depend on exposure -- and women do not get the exposure).
A table that censored women from a genre.
A twitter feed that decried a wrong -- and then went back to the male default
I saw red. At some point on the 22nd April, I asked, rather wistfully, if we could declare the next day -- yesterday -- promote women writers day. I got two responses, both from women, saying, yes, lets, and so...
I did.
You can see some of the responses and recommendations here. You can find more by going to twitter and hunting for the hashtag #womentoread.
You can share the idea. You can write a review of a book by a woman. You can blog about a woman writer you admire. You can post a list of links to the websites of women writers you love. It doesn't have to be ep;ic fantasy or even sff. It can be any genre. And then, please, go to twitter and tweet that link with the #womentoread hashtag. If you're not on twitter, post the link here in the comments and I will tweet it for you.
This isn't about me. I know how it can look, I'm a fantasy writer. But really, it isn't. This is about all those fantastic women writers whose books I've treasured for years, about Tanith Lee and Evangeline Walton, Judith Tarr and Kate Elliott, Anne Gay, Storm Constantine, Sherwood Smith, Rumer Godden, Juliet McKenna, Barabar Michaels, Elizabeth Goudge, Liz WIlliams, Dion Fortune, Sheila Gilluly, R A McAvoy, Barbara Hambly, Leah Bobet, Sarah Monette, Justina Robson, Amanda Downum, Claudia J Edwards, Sharan Newman, Freda Warrington, Stephanie Saulter, Lisanne Norman, Jaine Fenn... I could go on and one and on. Some of those writers are long-established, some are out of print and out of contract, some are new, some are dead. But they are all great.
And me? Later today I'll be blogging here and on my website about a woman whose books were a lightning bolt to my writing world, Nancy Springer.


PS: another interesting piece on the gender imbalance in reviews here

Many, many, many happy returns to the amazing gillpolack!
Have a great day and a great time at Conflux.

This is long, but please read this. And, if you like it, please pass it on.

I have said this before: I have said this for years, if Baroness Thatcher is given a state funeral, I will leave the country for the day, because what her policies did, what her belief did, what her legacy did, is doing to this day are things that are anathema to me.
But we must not speak ill of the dead. (Not unless they are poor or powerless or long gone or far away. Not unless they are of no use to our masters, the oligarchs of wealth whose trans-national networks run our world.) And I did not, in her declining years, wish Baroness Thatcher harm -- dementia is harsh enough. I wished her only obscurity. It was her legacy I wanted -- I still want -- to see dead.
And that legacy lives on, on blunderbuss, cudgel limbs, on heavy crushing feet marching one and on over the poor, the disabled, the disenfranchised, the outsiders, the misfits, those with mental health issues, the disadvantaged, the underprivileged, those without important friends or influence, women, QUILTBAG people, people without UK citizenship, the powerless. The hunger of holy free market capitalism for new flesh is limitless, and it has no feelings. It has no empathy. It has only the drive to acquire, to grow, to possess -- and the devil take all but the winners.
Alive or dead, Baroness Thatcher doesn't matter any more, because this great devouring ideology outlives her, infests the policies and actions of our masters on all sides of the political spectrum. It gave birth to the over-heated banking bubble and its consequences. It trailed our double dip recession on its wings. It lies heady on every word uttered by Cameron and Osborn and Gove and Duncan Smith, just as it pervaded those of Blair and Blunkett. It handed over utilities and hospitals, newspapers and infrastructure to the moneyed few and left them free to treat those things as simply sources of profit. It left them free to plunder, to cheat, to evade taxes and responsibilities -- and to publish as truths self-serving (power-serving) lies about benefit claimants and immigrants, trans-people and asylum seekers, lone-parent families and people with serious mental health issues.
It tells us that there is no money for schools, to help the poor and those who are socially, physically or psychologically disadvantaged, though there is money to help banks. There is no money for compassion, for help, for support, but there is money for tax cuts for the rich. There is no money for low earners or the unemployed -- and these groups must be pursued and measured and harassed to ensure they get even less, whatever the cost --- but the cost of pursuing those individuals and companies who evade and avoid tax is far too high.
And there is £10 million available to pay for a ceremonial funeral for a multi-millionaire.
And we must not complain or protest, because we must not speak ill of the dead. We must accept censorship, because we must not upset or offend.
Though it's fine to upset and offend the relatives of the dead poor, the dead weak, the dead powerless. It's fine to upset and offend those who still live in the communities that Thatcher's policies, Thatcher's legacy have destroyed. It's fine to upset and offend those who have suffered through care in the community, lost relatives to superbugs created by the outsourcing of hospital cleaning, lost people to poverty, seen sisters, daughters, mothers abused and killed because the refuges were closed. It's fine to insult and offend victims of domestic abuse, asylum seekers, the homeless, the unemployed, those driven to illness through year-on-year 'efficiency gains' and institutional bullying in the public sector, those burdened with debt due to student loans and fees, to wages that are below the living minimum.
Those people don't matter. They aren't influential. They need to remember their place -- which is in silent acceptance, without protest.
I am not downloading songs. I am not dancing in the streets. There is nothing to celebrate in this death. But I am protesting, loud and clear. But not about the memory of Baroness Thatcher. I'm protesting about the insult this ceremonial funeral represents to all those her legacy has harmed and still harms.

This is how.
I don't have £10 million. I don't have anything approaching it. But I can find some spare money, and, on Wednesday, when Cameron is trying to ensure he stays in power by pandering to the right, I'm going to make a donation to a charity that works to help those groups that Thatcherite economics and Thatcherite lack of compassion is harming, day on day. And I'd like you to join me. You get to choose your charity -- there are many to choose from -- Shelter, MIND, Help The Aged, women's refuges, charities that work with underprivileged children, MENCAP, charities that help those with physical challenges, charities working with asylum seekers, any group anywhere that is fighting to undo or at least mitigate the effects of Thatcherite 'I'm All Right Jack, Greed is Good, cut help for the weak and give more to the strong' policies. I'm going to be donating to MIND, because Care in the Community was wrapped up as inclusive but turned out to mean little more than abandonment and abuse, because mental health services have faced 30 years+ of cuts and these cuts kill.

Please join me.

We seem to be in Madrid. The marquis, who has a cold, decided mid-week that he needed a break -- fie on all this conrunning -- and, being unable to finds late season skiing with a Sunday departure (because the laundry must be thought of), settled for swords instead -- and the largest collection of swords and armour he knows of that he hasn't yet seen is in Madrid, so...
So here we are, in the Chamberi district of Madrid (pretty) at the Hotel Orfila (very posh -- a bit alarming -- and very friendly) with a plan to see a large amount of fine Gothic armour tomorrow. This is our third attempt to do so, earlier ones having been thwarted by such things as snow and very unfriendly check-in times. I am half expecting the collection to be shut for polishing, but mainly hoping it isn't, as a marquis with a cold deserves some armour to cheer him up.
Also, we forgot the camera.
How is everyone today?

Skirt of the day: jeans. Skirts and small planes are not a good match.

So, Oh LJ, if I were to go to one convention in the US this year, which one should it be and why? (Caveat, I am on the committee of this year's Eastercon, so any con before early May isn't really possible.)

I'm not dead, but Eastercon is currently eating my life. If you need me, I'll be on email...
(Heads back to the con-mines.)

Many happy returns to the lovely lil_shepherd

I saw this series of images of bookcases, and thought of Chaz....(especially, I have to admit, numbers 12 and 19). I seriously yearn for the loft one. Just glorious.