Today is release day for Do Not Go Quietly: An Anthology of Victory in Defiance from Apex Book Company! Go grab your copy, right after you read this interview with E. Catherine Tobler, who is responsible for one of the stories in the anthology.

Elise, thanks for joining us!

Thank you for having me!

This anthology contains a lot of heavy genre hitters — John Hornor Jacobs, Brooke Bolander, Fran Wilde, Dee Warrick, Sarah Pinsker, Meg Elison, and more. How the heck did you get involved?

I heard about the anthology when Apex was running the Kickstarter, and decided to back it like a normal human-shaped being. And then when they had their submission window, I decided to get off my ass and write a story and submit it. Of course, I wrote something really weird and didn’t think the story stood a chance.

Your story, “Kill the Darlings (Silicone Sister Remix)” is…quite a thing. What can you tell us about it?

The story started with the idea of borders and people trying to cross them — notably, the southern border of the US, and the conflicts we’ve had there of late. I thought “a body could lie down right there and make a great wall.” Once I’d turned bodies into two-thousand mile walls, it felt like all bets were off, that I could do anything in that kind of a universe.

The main character, Nany Mars, is, well, a vagina?

Yes. Another aspect of this world is that a lot of the women have been turned into what men think of them. If men think you are only good for sex, perhaps you become a vagina. If men think you are fragile, perhaps you are made of glass. Women are only good for cooking — so perhaps a woman becomes an oven.

This character literally has an oven in her belly, to feed people on demand.

Make me a sandwich, right?

Whew. And the body at the border?

In this story, it is the body of a woman (of course), grown huge and cavernous, to “secure” the border, which, spoiler alert, doesn’t work.

What other kinds of women do we meet in this story? It’s a little bit The Handmaid’s Tale meets Alien because damn, that body horror.

We meet a crew of women who are invested in saving other women — from being used as men and the world at large would use them. Women who are determined to reclaim their bodies. Trans women. What becomes of trans women in this kind of world?

The Handmaid’s Tale was absolutely an influence, but so was The Haunting of Hill House, which maybe sounds weird, but the bodies here are like haunted houses, because they look like one thing, while being something vastly different inside for the person living there. Everyone is a House of Leaves, maybe.

And Alien is also a great comparison, having your body become something you never wanted or intended, based on another’s wishes… Yeah.

Given recent bills banning abortion…

Yeah. I’ve always written about body autonomy, but perhaps now it feels more relevant, though it always has been. Your body is yours, and no one should have the ability to take that away, or govern what you do with it.

Elise, thanks for joining us today.

Thanks for having me, me!

Readers, go buy this book, because these are the stories our world needs right now. Hardcover, paperback, ebook, whatever format is your jam, Apex has you covered!

From the Apex site:

From small acts of defiance to protests that shut down cities, Do Not Go Quietly is an anthology of science fiction and fantasy short stories about those who resist. Within this anthology, we will chronicle the fight for what is just and right, and what that means: from leading revolutions to the simple act of saying “No.”

Resistance can be a small act of everyday defiance. And other times, resistance means massive movements that topple governments and become iconic historical moments. Either way, there is power in these acts, and the contributors in Do Not Go Quietly will harness that power to shake our readers to the core. We are subordinates to a power base that is actively working to solidify its grip on the world. Now is the time to stand up and raise your voice and tell the world that enough is enough!

I didn’t have a sister to share the horror with, but I did have a Riverland, made of books, and dolls, and music, where nothing could hurt me, because even in stories, when something went wrong, there was the hope and opportunity of fixing the thing.

(That may explain why I became a writer.)

Fran Wilde’s Riverland was a hard book to read, but at the same time, I could not put it down, read it in a week. I needed to know that Eleanor and Mike would be okay. And of course, they are. That’s not a spoiler, because you don’t yet know the hows of Riverland, how the sisters come to the river, who they find there, and what they discover in themselves.

I was six and seven, a little older than Mike in this book. I had step-brothers who did not live in the same house. I had a stepfather who was angry all the time. I had a mother who knew how to magic things into wholeness once more until they were broken again. I had a clumsy mutt of a dog who I loved more than anything, because perhaps they were more clumsy and broken than even me, and beside them I could be invisible.

We packed the car when we left. We left because he’d finally hit her one too many times. Because I’d finally seen it happen. If I close my eyes, I can still see it. I have a distinct memory of that drive — I wasn’t scared, because at last things would be better, and I imagined I saw great bison roaming slowly across the dark plains as we drove west. As we came home.

You know home when you get there. Eleanor and Mike know, too. Sometimes home isn’t a building, but a place, a place where you have the time and space to figure yourself out. How you work, and how you live, and how you breathe. Home can be a story, in a book or in a song, or home can be in the places you make for yourself.

We don’t normally tell these stories about girls. We don’t show girls rescuing themselves nearly enough. If I’d had this book as a kid, would it have changed something? Would I have found the strength to say something? Maybe not — at that age, it’s so hard — but seeing someone extract themselves from a similar position would have been like the beam of a lighthouse at night.

In this book, Wilde gives us two strong girls, who become the heroines of their own story, a story they never quite dared to tell, until they were living it. This book may be a hard read, but it is an important one, too.

Recently, I found a letter my mother wrote to her mother, telling her we were coming home, that the marriage hadn’t worked out. She talked about how she married him because she believed I needed a father figure — everyone told her I did. She spoke at length about her failures, that the divorce was her fault — but never said a word about what he had done to her. What she feared he had done to me. (I went to counseling when we came home — faced with gray, cloth dolls, so someone could watch me play and determine if I’d been abused. No, not sexually.)

We don’t tell these stories. But now, maybe with Riverland, we do.

When I saw the e-mail, I was annoyed. You see, the sender’s name was Nicholas, and the only Nicholas on my mind was the one at work — and it was just too early in the morning to think about work. But I groaned and looked a little more closely.

It was not Nicholas from work.

It was Nicholas Whyte, writing from Ireland. Nicholas Whyte, the 2019 Hugo Administrator.

Nicholas wrote with the news that Shimmer had been nominated in the Semiprozine category. I was still in bed, so stayed there and sobbed for a good while, certain I had read wrong. When I thumbed out of the e-mail, I saw that there was another one. Also from Nicholas. Nicholas, it’s not even 7am here, what could you possibly…

Nicholas was also telling me that I’d been nominated as Best Editor (Short Form). WELL.

Only my pillowcase knows how much I cried. (Here’s the whole list of Hugo awesome!)

Even as I work on this post, I can’t quite believe it. Surely they miscounted. How could it be? But it is. As writers, we’re supposed to always have the words, but sometimes you stare at that blank page for a long time, wondering if they will ever come. Blinking cursor, blinking cursor…

First, the thank yous, to Matt Dovey, Wren Wallis, Maria Haskins, Alex Acks, Suzan Palumbo, Lindsay Thomas, and Alexis A. Hunter who instigated the #AHugoForElise hashtag and made this a thing people were talking about. If not for that, I’m not sure either I or Shimmer end up on the ballot — but they did, and we did, and I can’t breathe right when I think of all the kind things they said, and the love they all showed me for the work we and I did at Shimmer.

Shimmer was the magazine of my heart, but I never expected it to be that. I came to read slush and learn stuff, and then go on my merry way. Only, my merry way turned out to be with Shimmer, and Beth and Mary Robinette, and Sean, and I’m so glad it did. I met so many fabulous people, who taught me about fiction, about this genre we all love, and about myself. I learned what I was capable of, but also what our genre was capable of — and both are pretty damn great.

That hashtag was hard to follow in the beginning. In the early days, I muted it, but then a wise voice said “hey, they love the work you did, enjoy that.” So then that imposter part of my brain said “yeah, this could be it — enjoy what’s there.” I couldn’t allow myself to believe that anything more might happen. And then it did.

For everyone who thought of Shimmer, thank you. For everyone who thought of me, thank you. So much of the work editors do goes unseen and is lost in the rush to get a new issue done and out before we have to do it all over again. Much creative work is done alone, be it editing or writing or drawing, and it is a good and necessary thing that we lift our heads up every now and then and hear everyone who has said “your work matters.”

We heard you. Thank you for honoring everything that Shimmer was.

Five years ago (!) Rings of Anubis was published by Masque Books. When Masque passed on the sequels, Apokrupha picked the books up, which meant we needed covers and a new design aesthetic, which was terrifying and exciting. When I sent editor Jacob a link to my dream cover artist, I never imagined it would work out as perfectly as it did.

This summer, the final Folley & Mallory book — The Ebon Jackal — shall arrive and with it, another smashing cover from Ravven. Ravven was kind enough to endure an interview from yours truly, because I was curious about her and her work — because she’s made some astonishing covers through the years. While I absolutely want to show you the work she did for The Ebon Jackal, I wanted you to know her better, too! Soon: the reveal of the final Folley & Mallory cover and a preorder link! Now: interview!

You have done the art for best selling authors such as Annie Bellet, Shay Roberts, and Daniel Arenson. How long have you been creating book covers and how did you get started?

I started doing covers back in early 2012, if memory serves. It was a panic decision due to quitting my job as a web developer and designer, mainly building ecommerce sites (which I liked) for a terrible company (which I didn’t). After a week of total panic, I dove into building a portfolio of book cover art and haven’t regretted it at all since!

Did my Folley & Mallory book covers pose any specific challenges for you?

I hardly ever get to do steampunk covers, so it was enormously fun to work on these! Steampunk does require a bit of “frankensteining” (creating a model or a costume from many different images and painting in the rest), and you have to be careful that the overall image doesn’t get too stiff as a result of having many bits of different images composited together. I love the main character’s model, and she was fun to work with.

Are there any artists you take inspiration from?

SO many! I envy and adore Chris McGrath. John Jude Palencar. The old Thomas Canty covers.

Ah! I love John Jude Palencar. Do you have a favorite book cover (that someone else has made, not your own)?

Again, so many – either because of the artist, or because they do something that I’m terrible at, such as stunning typography or symbology/high concept covers. I love the Toby Daye covers for Seanan McGuire, as well as the Dresden series covers – both done by the same artist, Chris McGrath.

Some artists work with ink and paper, others with tablets and pixels. Has technology changed the way you work? Has it made it easier to get what’s in your head onto the cover?

It’s made it easier, certainly. My line drawing skills are poor, so my traditional art pieces were always very stiff. Having access to digital media allowed me to come closer to the image in my mind without being held back by my stupid fingers. Also, graphics tablets have made an enormous difference in the quality of the artwork and I couldn’t work without my Wacom tablet.

You do a lot of different covers—urban fantasy, steampunk, romance; do you have a favorite genre to work in? To read?

I read mainly fantasy, science fiction, and urban fantasy. (I don’t read a lot of the really steamy PNR stuff though.) Science fiction has always been my first love. I enjoy all of the different genres that I work in, although I don’t consider myself to be a very good romance artist because I don’t read in that genre, so it’s more difficult to understand what that audience needs. I love steampunk (that’s also the main type of cosplay that I do).

In addition to being an artist, you’ve also written poetry and fairy tales. Does one form inspire the other for you, or are they wholly separate pursuits?

It’s all escapism, to be honest. I’m someone who has always wished heart and soul for that magic door, the wardrobe in an empty room, the portal to fall through into someplace magical. So both my personal art and the things I write are made of a wish for magic coupled with despair. 🙂

What are your favorite video games? Do games inspire your art?

Same as above – I love gaming and it’s all portal fantasy for me. I mainly play MMOs (you name it, I’ve tried it, but currently mostly FFXIV) due to a sense of permanence. I like feeling as though I can always escape to that world and be someone different whenever I need to.

Do you have a dream cover that you would love to design—either in terms of who the author is, or the kind of story being told?

I’ve said recently that I would love to do a cover with a badass, sexy, older woman on the cover. There are rivers and oceans of books out there (that I do honestly love) with teenage main characters, but as I get older I see fewer and fewer books with people like myself. Although being just a bit younger than Madonna, I certainly don’t feel old or boring or weak…I dream of being that tough, kickass woman in leather.

If you could redesign one book from the last two hundred years, what book would it be and why?

My ultimate dream would be to do covers for Charles de Lint’s Newford books. So, not a single book but a number of them. Many of them have gorgeous covers already, especially the John Jude Palencar covers, so it’s an entirely selfish wish!

Has the world at large over the last year changed the way you approach your work, or has it changed the work that emerges from you?

The world currently is…not great for most people. For a lot of us it’s been pretty bleak and hopeless, and to be honest that is why I love being able to do this. My work is either fantasy/escapism, or tough UF heroines who are fighters. Both are acceptable responses to an increasingly dark world.

What’s next for you? Any upcoming covers you can tease us about?

No covers that I can hint about, but I am working on (slooooowly working on!) ideas for a graphic novel and a tarot set. You’ll hopefully see one or the other in the next decade or so, haha.

Tarot! That would be amazing. Ravven, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me, and for all the work you’ve put into the Folley & Mallory covers. You really captured the spirit of the books.

To see more of Ravven’s artwork, please visit her site, www.ravven.com, and if you’re considering self-publishing your books, be sure to find the premade covers she also offers. They’re beautiful and inspiring!

And now, because you’ve been so good, here’s the cover for The Ebon Jackal! In this final book, Folley stares into that abyss and becomes the very thing that stares back at her… Three generations of women come together for one explosive conclusion!

The Ebon Jackal ebook is yours for pre-order, and don’t fret — if you want a paperback for your shelves, that will be along this summer (June 11!). I won’t stop hollering about it, either, so there’s no chance of you forgetting.

None whatsoever. <3

SOON.

This weekend at the grocery store, there was great excitement concerning the penny horse. This is, of course, the mechanical horse at the front of the store that kids can ride for a penny.

Lately, the penny horse hadn’t been looking or running so great. The penny horse had surely lost the use of one leg and the saddle had been lost years before. Its broad nose was worn smooth where once there had been black paint. For a couple weeks, the horse was mostly out of order.

This weekend, there was a new horse at the front of the store. The chestnut coat gleamed, black mane streaming back in the wind as the kids rode and discovered what a smooth and quiet ride was now offered. The saddle was padded and there were reins to flick, and what more does one want for a penny.

I sat near the penny horse while I waited for a friend, and had the chance to talk to the five year old unicorn queen. She wore a silver tulle skirt, with a unicorn sweatshirt, and a plastic pink headband that was shaped into a tiny crown. She was five, she proudly told me, her brother only one, but very capable even so.

“Is this a new horse??” she asked me, because clearly I was the horse authority.

“Oh, I think so,” I said.

Her eyes lit up. “I like this horse,” she said, then showed me the unicorn on her sweatshirt. It was made out of those sequins that you can roll up or down, and they change colors. One way, the unicorn was silver. The other way, the unicorn was pink.

We decided the pink was amazing — pink was her favorite color, and green was her brother’s, and purple is mine, though pink is super close these days because it’s so bright and lovely.

“[Brother] can ride with me, mom,” she kept saying over and over, and when her mom was finally done in line, the brother joined the unicorn queen on the new penny horse. She held him tight, his little legs not yet reaching the metal stirrups. He laughed and flicked the reins and she cuddled him the entire time, insisting it was the best horse ever.

I don’t know why I’m putting this here, other than to keep the memory for myself and share it with whoever may wander by. It made me think of what joy could still be had for a penny; a smooth ride on a new, shiny horse, with someone you love clutched to your chest; a plastic crown balanced on your head, a sequined unicorn waiting to be swept into a new color whenever you wished it.

Resolutions? Nah. Goals? Yes.

Begin as you mean to go on, and go on as you began. It’s solid advice, right, but starting can be tricky as heck. 2019 is very much a blank slate for me. I’m starting over in so many ways, and it’s exciting, but also terrifying, because who knows what’s over that mountain I’m about to climb? (It’s either a chasm or another mountain, right? Maybe it’s a river…maybe there’s a BAKERY. I digress.)

Dearest Lindsay sent me an amazing thing as 2018 wound down; I don’t usually take much stock in astrology, but HOLY HECK, this Leo post from AstroPoets:

If you’ve felt trapped in 2018, you won’t in 2019. Trapped in the sense that you know there’s more you can do, but various personal and professional obligations have held you back from your true ambitions. This new year is a return to those ambitions and to your very healthy Leo resolve. When you decide to do something, you do it. There haven’t been as many yes people as you’ve needed around. This has been difficult for you, as you thrive on encouragement more than any other sign. Learning to say yes to yourself, without applause, is important. It’s small and it’s daily. It’s a very big lesson you’ll learn at the start of this year. Don’t forget that there are people who would risk anything for you, and that to achieve your biggest ambitions, you have to risk everything for yourself, too. There’s a green door. Walk through it.

[stares in Leo]

This really speaks to me — on fronts that I can talk about (Shimmer) and those I don’t really have permission to (oh ho cryptic). Especially the applause part ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Also — the green door? We’ll come back around to that in a minute because yeah. We will.

So, goals! (Goaaaaaaaallllll!) One goal is surely starting to eat like a human person again, and not a mindless beast who is inhaling everything that crosses their path. A related goal is to get back into the gym, because my body and brain are both happier when I move. Gymbrain is a great thing (endorphins??); everything wakes back up.

I want to return to short stories this year: writing them, and (oh my gosh) reading them for pleasure. Don’t get me wrong, I loved reading for Shimmer, but reading for pleasure is an entirely different thing (which is maybe why I’m enjoying the hell out of Moby Dick). Reading when you’re assembling a specific magazine is not exactly reading for pleasure; you may love the stories, but they may not fit the puzzle you’re building. Reading for pleasure is just allowing the story to take you where it will. I’m reading How Long Til Black Future Month? by NK Jemisin to help me with this goal. I want to see how stories work from a craft POV again — not an editorial POV.

I’m also…writing a book? What? It’s the first book I’ve written since I finished writing Folley & Mallory, and well. It sure is a thing. I am filled with doubt and wondering why anyone will care about this book when nothing I’ve written has garnered much attention. Why do I keep on? Why do I do this thing? That’s also a goal: to remember the WHY. I just love writing, right? I’d do it if no one read it and it never sold, so that’s a big answer, and one I need to sit with. (Learning to say yes to yourself, without applause, hello.)

But this new book. I’m kind of pantsing it, y’all. I have some basic ideas, and know my characters, and my setting, and there’s kind of a plot, but there’s certainly nothing as formal as an outline yet. I’m trusting myself (!) to know how this all works; I’m kind of leaping off the top of that mountain and seeing where the descent takes me. Just to remember what it is to fly?? We’ll see.

But that green door.

This is one of the first images I kept when I was poking around with the new book’s aesthetic. It’s an image I painted in ink during Inktober. It’s a green door. I’m walking through it.

Ahhh, it’s that time of year when the book or story you poured your heart into isn’t on anyone’s favorites list, wheeee! It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

I’ve read less this year so far, but that was intentional, given I had a book of my own to write (and did, thank you very much). The most notable change in my reading was reintroducing myself to poetry, perhaps no surprise, given a good local friend writes it. Hanging with them definitely was an influence (peer poet pressure perhaps). Here’s some of what I loved, even if it wasn’t published this year, even if it isn’t on any other list.

Poetry:
Finding Baba Yaga, Jane Yolen
Take Me With You, Andrea Gibson
Prelude to Bruise, Saeed Jones
The Dream of Reason, Jenny George
Eating in the Underworld, Rachel Zucker

Stories:
“Mothers Lock Up Your Daughters, Because They Are Terrifying,” Alice Sola Kim, Tin House
“A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies,” Alix E. Harrow, Apex Magazine
“Siren,” Alex Acks, Sword & Sonnet
“This Lexicon of Bone and Feathers,” Carlie St. George, Sword & Sonnet
“With Lips Sewn Shut,” Kristi DeMeester, Apex Magazine
“A Dead Djinn in Cairo,” P. Djeli Clark, tor.com (2016)
“Down Where Sound Comes Blunt,” G.V. Anderson, F&SF
“Frozen Meadow, Shining Sun,” Emily McCosh, Beneath Ceaseless Skies
“The Bodice, The Hem, The Woman, Death,” Karen Osborne, Beneath Ceaseless Skies
“It’s Easy to Shoot a Dog,” Maria Haskins, Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Novels:
Circe, Madeline Miller
Blackfish City, Sam J. Miller
The Mere Wife, Maria Dahvana Headley
Blood Binds the Pack, Alex Wells
Creatures of Want and Ruin, Molly Tanzer
The Terror, Dan Simmons

Non-fiction:
A Journal of Solitude, May Sarton
The Cooking Gene, Michael W. Twitty
The Faraway Nearby, Rebecca Solnit

The year that was at least three years long.

Apparently it’s the season when we recount all we’ve done in a year, and 2018 was a strange one for me. I don’t feel accomplished at all. I don’t do the work that garners awards, but nevertheless, here is the work I did.

This spring, Black Static published my novelette “Sanguinary Scar,” set in a flooded New York City. It is a story of women, their bodies, and taking back consent.

In May, The Dark reprinted “The Sea Half-Held By Night,” set in a bleak Canada where a whaling community is haunted by the horrors it has wrought.

In July, Beneath Ceaseless Skies published “Speak Easy, Suicide Selkies,” which is the selkie story I never intended to write. It is about women, their bodies, and taking back consent. I sense a theme here?

This July also saw the publication of The Quartered Heart, the fifth book in my Folley & Mallory series. It has three reviews on Amazon — “unrelentingly grim,” says one reader. I spent most of the year writing the final book in the series (also grim!), which should be out next year from Apokrupha.

This fall, Black Static #65 included “Marrow,” which is the little lost drone story you’ve always been hoping for. I’ve been told I don’t write horror, so I’m not sure how you’d classify this one at all. After the apocalypse, there’s a long way left to fall. (Yeah, I forgot to include this in my original post, so this is an edit to add it, holy shit where’s my brain. I love this story and if you follow that link above, you can see the smashing artwork it got. TTA Press has sincerely amazing art direction.)

This year, Sword and Sonnet was published; it is a beautiful collection of battle poet stories, all speculative in their natures. I edited this book alongside Aidan Doyle and Rachael K. Jones. I learned a lot in this process, too — I learned how to trust what I already knew, from all my years at Shimmer.

This year also sees the end of Shimmer, which I can’t even type without still tearing up. I have edited Shimmer for twelve years, and it is a hard goodbye, even though it’s time. We never did as much as I hoped we would. I have worked with so many wonderful authors, and fellow editors, and have learned much, about myself and others. I learned who liked me for me, and who liked me because I was an editor.

It has been the longest year.

“Write your story,” the WordPress prompt says. Okay, here’s my story.

This year, my writing pals and I started a group, at the behest of one person who’d been saying since last year that we were all writers and needed a group, by gum. We’ve met four times now, and I think it’s keeping most of us on track with completing new work and meeting goals.

I have spent the summer thinking about a novella I want to write, and in many ways it’s a personal story, although it takes place in a distant year, in a world far different from our present one. It’s science fiction, and also not. It depicts the slow illness my mother struggles with and how it will eat her from the inside out no matter what we do.

I put together a rough outline to present at our recent group meeting, and while I knew there were some gaps in my ideas (it needed bridges and brainstorming, to get from one riverbank to the next), I wasn’t prepared for the “there’s nothing new here” comment.

I am pretty sure no one wants to hear those words leveled at their work, and I was certainly taken aback. A week and change later, I am feeling less enthused about the work than I once was. Despite another group member suggesting some excellent bridges across my weird river of plot, I look at the piece now and think “there’s nothing new here.”

Of course, we tell the same stories over and over; this is not a failing, I don’t feel. Harry Potter was not “new,” by any definition — this is the story that G.K. Chesterton told us we needed because it proves that dragons may be slain. Narnia and Middle Earth showed us the same. Beowulf showed us the same. Does that invalidate all stories that come later and tell us the same?

Maybe I should have asked for clarification — but I was really too surprised to say much, ha. What the comment has done, in addition to taking the wind out of my sails, is make me consider how I have approached crits in the past, and how I should do so in the future. Crits should attempt to help the writer put the best version of their story forward. How can I help this writer refine this idea, without telling them it is lacking, because who makes that kind of judgment? We write what we write for reasons that are not always apparent; perhaps I felt the comment so sharply given my personal intentions for the story, of which this person knew nothing.

Perhaps the comment will be helpful in the end; how can I add to what I have already, how can I make it into something new, though the ideas at the heart of it may never be that. How can I show this idea in a new light, from a new angle? How can I strip whatever cobwebs there are off and show how the silver still shines?

Which is, perhaps, the thing we do with writing every day.