The Life of A Trans Sci-Fi Writer

Hi all! Below is a reposting of some book reviews I wrote for my Goodreads page. I hope they're useful! Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (5/5 stars) I've got to be honest from the get-go: Gideon the Ninth is amazing! This is the best book I've read in YEARS! The main characters are all so perfectly crafted, and you love them all, even if the titular Gideon is, in the words of author Tamsyn Muir 'a dickhead'. The writing just leaps off the page and never gets in the way of the story it's trying to tell. It's written with such sharp humour, too, that I was often caught laughing out loud on the bus. I would kill to be able to write like that! The universe that the story takes place within is incredibly original; I've only ever read stories where necromancy is featured as 'that thing you NEVER do', until, of course, somebody goes and does it, with catastrophic consequences. In the world of Gideon, however, necromancy is the only magic game in town, an

Throughout 2017 and 2018, I worked on a translation of the French sci-fi book ‘Un Roman dans la planète Mars’ by André Laurie (A Story of the Planet Mars, available to buy on Amazon at this link here ). It is an old novella, first published in 1895, that had long ceased to be within copyright. My hope was that if I could translate a book which was out of copyright, I could then look for a specialist publisher who might be interested in putting it out. Then, I would have a genuine bona-fide published book out in the world, and I thought that this might be enough of a proven portfolio of work to allow me to convince publishers to let me translate their contemporary French works.  However, the response I got from every publisher was exactly the same: ‘The book is too short, so it’s not worth us putting it out by itself. Novellas just don’t sell very well, particularly ones as niche as this.’ I did convince one publisher to let me translate another one of Laurie’s works which could then be

Being trans is a funny old thing. In some ways it’s so joyous; I can recognise myself in the mirror now in a way that I never could before I came out, I can embrace sides of my personality that I’d kept hidden previously, and I feel more comfortable in my body than I ever have. The problem is, as trans writer Shon Faye once pointed out, that coming out as trans solves a lot of problems, but it creates a whole lot of new ones too. The problem that’s most relevant to my writing career (ha ha, what career?!) is that of burnout; I was 38 by the time I came out, and at that point, I’d been denying to myself and hiding from others that I was trans for many many years. If you’ve never had to do this yourself, you’ll never know how tiring it is. So, I came out, and while I felt more whole, I was deeply and existentially tired. I didn’t feel so bad when I’d finished putting myself together in the mornings, i.e. I’d shaved my face and legs, and put my hair, clothes, and makeup on, but getting to

So, I know that in a previous blog post I whined about how inconsistent and nonsensical writers’ plots can be in modern fiction, but if writing my first novel has taught me anything, it’s that keeping consistency within your plot is hard! (#hypocrite) Because I’m writing in a science fiction/fantasy world, I’ve got a lot to set up such as a magical system that feels logical and rules of time travel that don’t just feel silly. If I was sensible, I would’ve made notes on all that stuff before I put pen to paper (well, fingers to keys…), but I’m not that sensible!  I also set my story across several decades of the main character’s life, which means I should’ve made notes about which chapter is set in what year. Did I do that either? No I didn’t! The result was that while writing the second half of the book, I started to doubt the things which I thought were true about my story. My brain would get confused about different types of portal conjuring magic, or whether a particular character h

I saw a relatively prominent sci-fi writer tweet that ‘your character is your plot’ a little while ago. And, over the last few years, I’ve read a load of books/watched a load of films that describe themselves as sci-fi, I’ve either sat there thinking ‘I do like these characters, but nothing seems to be actually happening’ or ‘I like these characters, but the plot’s a fucking mess. Does even the writer understand what’s happening here?’ So, I’m not saying that characters aren’t important. Do I want sci-fi to go back to the days when the only person who can see themselves in a story is an able-bodied cis-het white man? No, of course not! Do I want sci-fi to go back to the days when sci-fi books only had characters so that the reader could experience the sci-fi concepts in the story through their eyes? I do love some of those stories, but no, I don’t want go back to those days.  There has to be some balance, however. Can’t we have everything? Can’t we have the Moon on a stick? I want to s

‘I’ve read ninety blog posts on whether I should self-publish or not!’  I hear you cry. OK, I hear you. There are a million blogs that basically conclude with the same thing - that it depends on what your publishing goals are and what kind of thing you’re writing as to whether you should choose traditional publishing or self-publishing. Ah! But I’m not going to tell you that because I think self-publishing is awesome and traditional publishing can get in the bin! I think I’ve mentioned in a previous post that as a trans woman, I’m used to gatekeeping, i.e. every time I go to see a healthcare professional about trans-related healthcare, I have to prove to them that I’m ‘really trans’ as if, you know, I can’t be trusted to decide who I am without an old-white-cis-man holding my hand as I do it. But when I started writing, I still effectively subjected myself to the same process by sending stories off to magazines who would then reject them. What I wanted from these magazines was for them