Ad Astra 2011 Schedule

...for those who are interested:

Fri., 8pm, Salon 241, Horror in Unexpected Places -- Ellan Datlow, Craig Davidson, Gemma Files, Rob Shearman, Rio Youers
Fri., 10pm, Salon 343, Tricks of the Screenwriting Trade -- Glenn Norman (m), Michelle Goodeve, Gemma Files, Herb Kauderer, Ryan McFadden

Sat., 11am, Ballroom Centre, Chilling Tales: A New Chapter in Canadian Horror and Dark Fantasy -- Michael Kelly (m), et al.
Sat., 1pm-3pm, Anton's, Chilling Tales Launch -- Michael Kelly, et al.
Sat., 4pm, Crowne Room, Reading -- Gemma Files, Dena Bain Taylor
Sat. 8 PM Ste. 100 -- CZP Spring launch.

Sun., 1pm, Salon 443, I'm Very Flattered, But ... -- Stephen B. Pearl (m), Gemma Files, Sèphera Girón, Michael Rowe

Monday, meanwhile, I'll be doing a This Is Not A Reading Series event with Claude Lalumiere and David Nickle, during which we'll all be interviewing each other and dealing blackjack. Details to follow.

New Story Post at Dark Is Better

"Crossing the River", first published in Dark Arts Books' Mighty Unclean anthology. Cut, paste, enjoy (https://sites.google.com/site/crossingtheriveracat/). Consider it my birthday gift to y'all.;)

A Rope of Thorns Interstitial 2: Hey, Ladies!

I must admit: I always expected to take far more crap than I’ve thus far wound up doing about there being so few women in A Book of Tongues, not to mention the equally fun fact that those few females who do make an appearance are best categorized as whores, victims, bitches, monsters or some amazingly non-PC combination of all four. (In my own defense, I still consider Dine sorceress “Grandma” fairly awesome in her own right, but she does skirt uncomfortably close to being a [literally] Magical Native Person, and she does end up dead.) Grantedly, few seemed to notice, which isn’t really a comforting thought in itself, and those who did were surprisingly pleasant about it; one kind reviewer even said that she liked Chess’s Ma English Oona enough that she trusted I’d be able to write three-dimensional female characters...eventually.

No pressure, right?

Because this is always the dichotomy, for anyone who’s a writer with a vagina (lit, fig, whatever): How do you represent the female side of the narrative equation to the best of your ability, without feeling you’re doing it just to “respresent”? We grow up with a mainstream media pattern very clearly established, and that pattern slots all women as literally supporting characters: The GF, the partner, the wife, the Mom, the bitch. Sometimes competent, but always with these funny little undercutting neuroses attached, to remind you how Mens Are Mens and Womens Are Womens. The things guys get to stand next to and compete for/with. The things they allow to stand next to them, especially if they’re wearing a variety of low-cut outfits. The focal point for all the emotional relationships, but almost always only the ones which support heteronormativity, since straight is usually the first intersecting default--along with often white, often cis, often able-bodied, plus always thin and mainstream-standards pretty if we’re verging into visual media, because this is TV and/or movies we’re talking about.

So we train ourselves not to hope too hard, and then we train ourselves to proactively screen the characters we’re “supposed” to identify with out entirely--because we don’t see ourselves in them, because we don’t want to see ourselves in them, because we’re sick of having them “crammed down our throats”. And then, especially if we happen to have a particular fetish--which I obviously do--our eyes start roving around looking for people whose characters and relationships and motivations we can/want to identify with, and those eyes tend to fall on male characters instead; not so much because we hate our genitals and want to die or worship the peen, but because more fucking time and effort has usually been put into creating these characters, which means they have far more interest and potential, innately.

I come at it from both angles, for understandable reasons. As a fan, I want to be surprised, delighted, seduced, but I expect not to be; I’ve grown up at the “mercy” of narratives I have no control over, narratives that shut me out and erase me. I try to enjoy what I get, but sometimes even that seems too hard. As a creator, however, I understand how the mechanics work--what it takes to extend a narrative, how fans like me can be your best friends and your worst enemies. Do too much, you get shit on; do too little, you get shit on. Try to anticipate what they want/need/don’t want/don’t need, you might hit a bullseye or get a nose-wrecking bounce-back. Don’t try, and just do what the hell you consider correct for a story you created and maintain? The devil itself!

Yet the plain fact is, I did feel bad right from the get-go about that particular component of A Book of Tongues--it made, and still makes, me feel like the very model of a misogynist-by-exclusion slash fangirl, dumping the vag quotient in order to get more face-time with her M/M/M OT3. Which is why, for Hexslinger-‘verse installment two, I knew from planning on that it was imperative for Chess Pargeter’s further development that he realize how badly he was screwing himself over by cutting all women out of his life. Not in a sexual way, obviously, but more in a strategic one--as someone in A Rope of Thorns later points out, female hexes are the majority, not the minority: Women come into their powers earlier, comparatively more easily, and thus have far more time to perfect their processes and form their magico-philosophical theses. They also make better allies than enemies, especially now that A) we’re learning there’s a sub-set of people with powers who aren’t hexes, or ridden/driven by hex-hunger, and B) there’s now a place--Hex City--where hexes can actually work together. Why throw that out with bathwater, even over a half-lifetime’s worth of negative impressions?

The first step, therefore, was to come up with a female character who’d share narrative driving power with our usual POV voices: Chess, the Rev, Morrow. And given all the above, I worried she’d be “too” awesome, and people would reject her, just like I worried she wouldn’t be awesome enough. But most of all, I worried she’d be reduced to being a stand-in for all women, as opposed to being allowed to be a genuine human being--good, bad, difficult, contradictory-who just happened to be female.

But nothing changes unless you make it, right? Right.

Enter (brain left) Experiance “Yancey” Colder Kloves, secretly Jewish hotelier’s daughter and equally-stealth Spiritualist, who gets her “dead-speaking” powers from her late mother. When we first meet Yancey, she’s just about to get married--which she feels ambivalent about, for a bunch of reasons--and is also the one person in Hoffstedt’s Hoard, New Mexico equipped to figure out who Chess and Morrow, there undercover, really are. She’s therefore also the person who comes up with a plan to get them out of town without anybody noticing or getting hurt, thus--through no fault of her own--setting the next series of unfortunate events in motion.

In describing Yancey to people, I used to say: “She starts out a bride, and ends up The Bride”, which is not completely inaccurate. But I like to think there’s more to Yancey than the deceptively simple motor of revenge-seeking. First off, by accidentally inserting herself into the Chess/Morrow menage, she’s able to consistently provide a viewpoint which is just a tad more intellectual, logical and intuitive than either man’s, while also bringing in a point of much-needed emotional stability. For Morrow, she’s proof that while he’ll make an exception for Chess, his rule remains pretty much heterosexual; for Chess, she’s less competition than a nuisance-turned-comrade. She also remains the person who plans ahead, though her plans are sometimes fairly fast and loose. Like Ellen Page, who I always saw as her physical template, she has an innate dignity, a hopefully visible intelligence, a fierceness under pressure, and a sly streak of observational humour which helps even Chess, Mister Blood-Soaked Gay Porno Horse Opera himself, take himself a tiny bit less seriously.

What I liked most about developing Yancey, however, is that other female characters soon seemed to start dropping out of the woodwork around her, as if called into life by her presence. Even already-established characters began to deepen as a result: Not Ixchel so much, because she’s already so far away from being human, or Grandma, because she’s still dead--though “dead” doesn’t mean exactly the same thing as we might usually think it does, when hexes are involved. But definitely Songbird, a character who I’d originally cobbled together because I thought having a 13-year-old albino Chinese mage would be cool, and was now forced to reconsider/reframe as a genuine human being in difficult circumstances. To some degree, this is a natural bi-product of simply keeping characters around while the plot develops further, but...I like it. And it does just keep on happening.;)

So. Did I succeed in my difficult self-set task? I’m not sure, but I certainly had a lot of fun trying. And look--more ladies, in a previously (all but) lady-free story. More, and more coming.

That’s something.

Black Static Interview

The excellent Ms. Maura McHugh interviewed me at Black Static magazine's main web-page. It was a lot of fun to do, and you'll find the result here (http://ttapress.com/1027/gemma-files-interviewed-by-maura-mchugh/0/5/).

First A ROPE OF THORNS Interstitial: Play On, Play Often

So...as we’ve established, music is a big part of my creative process. And one of the more fun things that happened this time ‘round was that I ended up channeling my period-appropriate tunes obsession into a very weird little sidebar: In order to come up with a suitably enraging plot-point for Chapter Six of A Rope of Thorns, much of which takes place during someone’s post-wedding after-party, I wrote filk for my own narrative. And thus the scurrilously not-exactly-libelous ballad of Chess Pargeter, aka “The Red-Head Pistoleer”, was born. At Francesca Forrest’s suggestion, it should be sung to the tune of “Two Dimes and a Nickle” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIIaSYvUKlw) by Dave Davis and the Warrior River Boys, and goes a little something like this:

Chess Pargeter was a pretty little man, his hair was red as flame,

His Ma she knew no better, and she raised him up the same.

The ladies he liked little, the men he liked too well.

Mere repetition of his sins might send a man to Hell!

He danced with men for money, but he'd kill ’em just for fun,

And the only thing he truly loved was the barrel of his gun.

In the army he met Reverend Rook, who tried to pray him ’round,

But Chess sunk in his wicked hooks, and pulled that good man down.

Now, one sin leads to every sin, or so you may have heard—

And sodomy and sorcery are almost the self-same word.

He’d been a saint by all accounts, right faithful to God’s ways,

But once stuck fast in Chess’s toils, the Rev begun to change. . . .

The Good Lord wrote the Bible, Lincoln freed the slaves,

But the Devil made Chess Pargeter to drag fools to their graves.

He made him small and pretty, as bright as any pin,

And set that red-head pistoleer to tempt weak men to sin!

Now if he’d never met him, the Rev might still be right,

But Pargeter, that red-head tramp, a-turned him from the Light.

The Devil gave Rook magic, those mocking him were slayed—

And thus the Rev was proved a hex, and stays one to this day.

They scoured the state from east to west, a-robbing as they went.

Good men they killed, their widows left, ignoring their laments.

They took both trains and coaches, good folk were all appalled,

And the whole town of Bewelcome, the Rev, he preached to salt. . . .

Oh, the Good Lord wrote the Bible, Lincoln freed the slaves,

But the Devil made Chess Pargeter to drag fools to their graves.

He made him small and pretty, as bright as any pin,

And set that red-head pistoleer to tempt weak men to sin!

And what will cool you down after folks have been snapping their fingers and toe-tapping along to a tune that casts you as some sort of male prostitute in the Devil’s service? Why...probably something like “Blackest Crow”, by Angi West. And while I couldn’t find any video of that particular version, this one--by Bruce Molsky with Julie Fowlis--is still very nice. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6jh1vqNvMs) The (Angi West) lyrics:

As time grows near, my dearest dear, when you and I must part,

How little you know of the grief and woe in my poor aching heart.

’Tis blood I’d suffer for your sake—believe me, dear, it’s true;

I wish that you were staying here, or I was going with you.

I wish my breast were made of glass, wherein you might behold

Upon my heart, your name lies wrote in letters made of gold;

In letters made of gold, my love—believe me, when I say

You are the one I will adore until my dying day.

The blackest crow that ever flew would surely turn to white

If ever I prove false to you, bright day will turn to night.

Bright day will turn to night, my love—the elements will mourn.

If ever I prove false to you, the seas will rage and burn.

The rest of the approved final playlist for A Rope of Thorns can be divided into four separate categories: Songs that remind me of Chess’s progress, songs for Sheriff Love, songs for Hex City and songs for Bewelcome, where the bulk of the climax takes place. These last songs also evoke the Enemy, Smoking Mirror, the black-red-white-blue God K himself--Tezcatlipoca, that is, primary trickster chaos-god of the already-chaotic Aztec pantheon--and presage the throw-down which is eventually fated to occur between he and Lady Rainbow herself, Ixchel, Mother of Hanged Men.

Like the man they reflect, the Chess songs all share some very specific characteristics: Momentum, heat, anger, betrayal, sexuality. We start off with Larkin Grimm’s propulsive “Ride That Cyclone”, which has Chess chasing the Rev and his own tail equal-aimless through the wasteland (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr_wW9UT1Tw), before moving almost immediately onto the noirish double-shot of Tom McRae’s “Told My Troubles to the River” (I feed on fire and confusion/Of this crime I’ll rid my soul/Gonna slide on down to the river/Gonna tell her all/So I told my troubles to the river/And I tossed them in the deep/And I washed my hands in the river/But the river brings more trouble to me...) and the Dead Weather’s “So Far From Your Weapon” (There's a bullet in my pocket burning a hole/You're so far from your weapon and the place you were born/...I knew it from the get-go the bullet was cursed/Ever since I had you, every little things hurts...)

On the up-side--or the upbeat side, if nothing else--we have Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s infinitely catchy “Beat the Devil’s Tattoo” (Your soul is able, death is all you cradle/Sleeping on the nails, there's nowhere left to fall/You have admired, every man desires/Everyone is king when there's no one left to pawn) and the King Crack selection of this entire mix: “Li’l Devil,” by the Cult. Yes, that “Li’l Devil”--the Robert Downey Jnr. dancing sweatily while hopped up on crack version. What can I say: Female pronoun aside, this song has “Chess” written all over it, for me.;)

Sheriff Love’s songs, OTOH, all have a very different sort of tenor: Loss, dread, a near-Biblical hunger for retribution. The nicest comes from Crooked Still, whose “Undone in Sorrow” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAMp-EHeCKQ&feature=related) gives a pretty good indication of his yearning for his similarly-saltified wife Sophy and their son, Gabe. Second-nicest would probably be the Wallflowers’ “God Says Nothing Back” (But I Told You So), which is still fairly freakin’ bleak: Still waters rising in my mind/Black and deep/Smoke behind my eyes/Last night I could not sleep at all/I hallucinated that you were in my arms...

But the rest are all far more Apocalyptic, like Alexisonfire’s “The Northern (Acoustic Version)” (He comes, he comes/Judge so severe/Seven trumpets speak/Speak the sound of fear) or Benjamin Blower & the Army of the Broken Hearted’s “Ringing the Bell for the Last Time” (I saw a hundred thousand towns on fire/...Skies were black with burning hair/Cows and pigs and sheep up there/And he’s headed this way next!). Or that ultimate He Saw What You Did And Now You’re Gonna Pay dirge, Johnny Cash’s “God’s Gonna Cut You Down”, made even more frightening in its inescapable Mondkopff Plus de Sommeil Remix version (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTn78xHpLZY).

Over in New Aztectlan, meanwhile, Reverend Asher Rook has has plenrty of time to think over his own sins of commission, omission and cowardice--trapped in “marriage” with a goddess-possessed dead body and watching something unprecedented grow up all ‘round him, he’s definitely coming to suspect he’s been used as something karmic’s willfully ignorant whip-hand. These musings express themselves best through stuff like the Veils’ “Jesus for the Jugular” (How'd you preach The Word if you don't know how to read/Where will your soul once you've signed the deed/...There's a bulls-blood fountain in the pit of a moan/I will summon an eclipse on my way to the Lord), or the emo stylings of Augustana’s “Dust” and Black Lab’s “This Night”, though I’m also very pleased by Two Gallants‘ “Fly Low Carrion Crow” (...and seize my body for the dead I owe/and drop me high into the depths below/for the things I’ve seen, no one else should know...)

But then, as we always must, we have yet another version of “Two Sisters”--Clannad’s this time, all happy and tripping and Irish, to celebrate some of the younger, fresher hexes. I chose it because it was (to some degree) the antithesis of the version Oona taught Chess, yet shares most of its key characteristics, including that fatal refrain: I’ll be true...unto...my love/If he’ll be true to me!

Finally, as things careen towards their end, we have a song which became somehow identified with the Enemy in my mind--”Cross Bones Style” by Cat Power (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU291yKCbBE), which sets just the correct tone of slightly wistful yet utterly inhuman detachment: ‘Cause you have seen some unbelievable things... Then, for the god-on-godly smackdown, Murder by Death’s “White Noise” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTSq1M1atvs)--one of those few videos which, like 16 Horsepower’s “Black Soul Choir”, actually lives up to its inspiration. (Those sea-serpent grins, peeping up through turbulent waters.) And finally, as a palate-cleanser, Elvis Perkins in Dearland’s version of “Weeping Pilgrim 417” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n98NDTD8RQw&feature=related). Terrifying shape-note goodness, for the win.

So...that’s about that. I’m now deep into assembling the playlist for A Tree of Bones, and things are opening up further. Music! It’s so ingrained as part of my process, even I find it a bit scary.

Next up: The growing role of ladies in a previously lady-free narrative. Stay tuned.

New Year, New Book, New Posts

Yes, I fell off mightily near the end of 2010, for which I'm very sorry. There have been reviews to link to a-plenty since then, along with upcoming supplementals for the newest Hexslinger book. But today's big news is this:

Available right now for pre-order, through Horror Mall: A Rope of Thorns, the hardback

(http://www.horror-mall.com/A-ROPE-OF-THORNS-Book-Two-of-the-Hexslinger-Series-by-Gemma-Files-Signed-Limited-Edition-p-21637.html). Marvel at the gorgeous cover! Order early! Order often! Read along over here (http://handful_ofdust.livejournal.com) as I quickly do my final edit and write the first chapter of A Tree of Bones, aka Book Three, like you're watching the book itself being assembled right in front of you! Which...you are!

Man, I love my life.;)

Unsurprising Surprising News

As we move towards the already-extended deadline (end of November), A Rope of Thorns has officially become the middle book of a trilogy. As my friend Jason Taniguchi says: "Of course! The only person surprised by this is Gemma."

Book Three will be called A Tree of Bones, and is due in April of 2012, just in time for the Mayan Apocalypse. Damn my luck!