January 9 2015

JY Yang

Can we talk about anthologies Lets talk about anthologies

In the unlikely event that youve been following this blog you may remember that I once mentioned having a story in Athenas Daughters vol 2 as a stretch goal author Well GREAT NEWS The project funded and hit all the fiction stretch goals so this book is coming out and Im going to be in it Give me a moment to octopus flail about this

Right octopus flailing done

Now the Kickstarter for this project is still running and Id like to get more backers for it Because at this point the KS is basically a book preorder and I want more people to buy the book because I want more people to read my story darn it

The story I have in the anthology is titled RED IS THE COLOR OF MOTHER DIRT I originally wrote it for the open call for Body Boundaries a Singaporean anthology of feminist fiction I wrote two stories The second one was a fictionalised account of my short and ultimately doomed history of dating men The editors told me they liked both stories but they could only publish one I thought eh at least the SFF story I can sell to other markets So they took the confessional piece and its in there a neat little tale about how pickling spiders in formaldehyde is a more worthwhile pursuit than having sex with men Go check it out if you like Theres plenty of amazing and subversive Singaporean feminist writing in it

RED IS THE COLOR OF MOTHER DIRT now is set on a Martian colony where women are barred from socalled sterile areas when theyre on their period It centres around the story of Mian a menial worker arrested when she breaks the rules to visit her dying sister in hospital It was partly inspired by a dream I had and partly inspired by the ridiculous aesthetic requirements Chinese female astronauts apparently have to meet Also the patriarchy I tried to write Chinese poetry in it I shouldnt try to write Chinese poetry I shouldnt try to write anything in Chinese at all given how bad I am at anything outside of ordering food or telling taxi uncles where I want to go

The story has been kicking around for a while I wrote it while on monthlong leave from work in 2012 because thats a thing that happens when youre a journalist you rack up so much overtime and unused annual leave that you can vanish for months at a pop In later drafts I injected unhealthy doses of my work as a journo at a national paper into it that happens The story has been rejected from markets for being too much of a polemic which was exactly what it was meant to be Because it was so political I thought a feminist anthology might be a good place to submit it to Back to its roots And Im very very glad the story found a home here

I have a lot of love for this story It formed the bulk of my successful application to Clarion West in 2013 Yes folks this was the story that got me into Clarion West And CW was not just a singular experience that changed me as a writer and a person but it also altered the entire path of my future I wouldnt have written all those stories last year and I wouldnt be headed to Norwich for my Creative Writing MA this fall if not for Clarion West I owe this story a lot I want yall to read it

So yes If anything Ive written has tickled your fancy in the past please do consider putting in a preorder for the anthology They have ebook editions and also lots of different perks further down the reward levels

TLDR Please support the Kickstarter for this anthology because this story means a lot to me and I want as many people as possible to read it Kickstarter runs till 15th Jan

Can we talk about more anthologies And not selfrejecting

The Table of Contents for An Alphabet Of Embers is out and its one of the anthologies Im most excited about in 2015 Not just because Im in it but because look at all those people I share the TOC with Nisi Shawl Zen Cho YoonHa Lee Vajra Chandrasekera Oh my god Im about to just sit here and yell names of about 70 percent of the TOC in excitement Theres a bunch of reprints from writers that I admire hugely and first prose sales from people whose writing Im very excited about Also the fantastic M Sereno who is an amazing artist on top of being a wonderful writer and a sweetheart is making illustrations for the anthology Its not just a cup of squee its an entire smorgasbord I could eat for days

It almost never came to be where I was concerned Although I shared and supported the Kickstarter for the anthology very enthusiastically I thought its asking for lyrical almostpoetry prose I cant poetry I dont think I can write something good enough for it Ill read the pretty when it comes out I wrote off the submissions call in my head

But then out of the blue editor Rose Lemberg approached me and encouraged me to try sending in something saying that she had enjoyed my story in Strange Horizons and thought that sort of thing would be a good fit for the anthology

So I thought well maybe its worth a shot

I wrote the story during and after my travels in August to London cons and Scandinavia The hotel at NineWorlds was next to Heathrow next to one of the runways and as you walked back at midnight you would be pushed along by planesong that sank into your heart and bones And I thought you know what I love the sound of planes taking off its the best sound in the world I want to write about the sound of planes taking off

So it went from there

The result Transfers From Connecting Flights is really not about airplanes at all But I like it and Im glad I wrote it and Im glad Rose told me that writing it or anything for that matter would not be an futile exercise

A lot has been said about not selfrejecting on Twitter recently particularly for people with marginalised identities who have to struggle with the aftereffects of poor media representation while growing up and tend to get hit by Impostor Syndrome hard I honestly thought I was immune to this but Ive come to realise that I do this I do this a lot Id have selfrejected for this anthology if Rose hadnt prodded me

Now that Im more aware of it I try harder not to do so Its one of my goals for 2015 Try for markets that scare me Try for markets that are too big Try for markets that make me think I have a snowballs chance in hell I probably do but try anyway

Im also very grateful to Rose for her editorial commitment to showcasing a wide variety of voices She clearly reached out to a number of different folk and encouraged them to submit something Im sure I was not the only one She has some wonderful essays on encouraging diversity from an editors POV And thats why the Alphabet of Embers TOC is GLORIOUS With open subs final products can only be as diverse as the slush it gets and Rose clearly did an amazing job in encouraging that diversity Im glad such spaces exist

Another anthology Im really excited about is Michael Mathesons reprint anthology The Humanity Of Monsters Look at that lineup