How did you get into fanfic? Do you remember the first fandoms you read/wrote in?

We got a computer when I was 9 and the first thing I did was go online and look to see if there were any books by L. M. Montgomery that I could read for free on the Internet. I was not successful, either because the books hadn’t been added to Project Gutenberg yet or because I didn’t really know how to use a search engine. I ignored the Internet for the next few years, but as a kid I was perpetually starved for reading material so eventually I went back online and managed to find a couple of Star Trek fanfic sites. The rest was history!

The fandoms I started reading in were Star Trek (Next Generation and Voyager, lots of Mary Sues) and Disney’s Gargoyles. I had a Hanfic phase, Hanfic being RPF for the boyband Hanson, and a Sherlockian phase during which I got obsessed with Sherlock Holmes pastiches, especially Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell novels.

I read and lurked for several years before I posted my first fanfic. It was a Harry Potter vignette about Narcissa Malfoy. I wasn’t a big fan of the books or all that interested in the canon version of the Malfoys, but I had read a lot of HP fanfic! I only really started writing fanfic regularly from around age 16 and my first real fandom was Good Omens.

You’ve been a fanfic reader since you were eleven so you’ve seen some of fandom’s major changes! Have you seen changes in what fic looks like? What’s better about now, and what things about the fandom past do you miss?

I read fanfic irregularly these days, so I’m kind of out of date on modern fandom. There have been big new trends that were unthought of years ago – A/B/O is one, coffeeshop AUs another.

People talk a lot more about social justice issues now, which is mostly good. That said, I do think one of the nicest things about fanfic is how it’s all about desire – not just sexual desire, but the desire for narratives, fictional dynamics and character interactions you don’t get much of elsewhere. And I think people can get overfocused on being right or morally pure and miss what to me is a really fundamental part of fanfic, the centrality of that desire. It’s definitely a positive change that people are discussing racism, homophobia, ableism etc. more openly in fanfic fandom, though. I just don’t like that sort of thing being used as ammo in shipwars.

I suppose one of the biggest changes is how mainstream fanfic is now. I can’t count the number of writers and other industry pros I know in SFF, romance and YA who are open about writing and reading fanfic. There’s very little stigma attached to it anymore.

How has fanfic (reading or writing it, or just being in fandom!) influenced your professional work? You’ve spoken about being very aware of the way books of different eras and genres are in conversation with each other, as well as of the gaps that period fiction leaves unfilled. Do you think that awareness comes from a fanficcy ethos?

The consciousness of intertextuality is definitely a very fanfic thing, but I think my awareness of the gaps left unfilled comes more from the gap between what I read growing up in Malaysia – fiction in English, almost exclusively by Western writers – and the world I lived in IRL. That was a huge gap and it was present with the fanfic I read and wrote, too. This was actually the main reason I stopped reading and writing fanfic in my early twenties and moved to original fiction. I couldn’t find what I needed in either the published fiction I was reading or fanfic, so I had to make my own.

Fanfic was foundational to my development as a writer, though. The most important thing it taught me was to chase my joy – to uncover what makes a story live for me and cling to it. When you’re writing you’re always trying to get to the thing that’s so true, that you feel so strongly about, that you struggle to say it out loud. Because fanfic isn’t constrained by the demands of commerce or respectability, it’s a really good space for taking creative and emotional risks.

Are there particular fics or authors that influenced you or that you often go back to?

astolat is an unfailing comfort read for me, especially her Master & Commander fic. I find her inspiring in general, both in her approach to a professional writing career and how she participates in fandom. I’ve always loved Daegaer‘s Good Omens fic and I’m thrilled she’s written some more recent stories following the TV series. And I’ve never watched Highlander: The Series, but for some reason I read loads of HL fic as a teenager, and my favourite author in the fandom was Sylvia Volk, who wrote these amazing Dunnett-style historicals about Methos, with vivid settings, wonderful prose and wholly convincing OCs. I can’t work out why she isn’t a super famous fantasy author. Perhaps she is.

What do you love best about fanfic as a medium? And are there things about the fic world that you wish would change/improve?

I know the heart wants what it wants and I’m slightly contradicting some of the things I’ve said above – but I wish fanfic writers and readers would invest as much time and passion and excitement in female characters as they do in male characters.

Tell me some of your favorite tropes! And/or: Are there any tropes you really hate except for That One Fic that wore it best?

I like anything that imposes intimacy on characters – arranged marriage, oops we don’t know/like each other but now we have a soul bond, having to bring up a kid together. Also, pining – especially if two characters are pining after each other but don’t know it – and characters working together for a shared goal. I’m too old to understand soulmate marks and I hate how A/B/O has taken over fandom.

Could you share some fic recs for fandom newbies?

I always recommend The Good Student by Sylvia Volk. You probably don’t need to know anything about Highlander except the basic idea that they’re Immortals and go around cutting each other’s heads off. I suppose it’s gen, or maybe smarm. It’s supremely elegant and the ending is perfect.

Zen Cho is the author of a short story collection (Spirits Abroad, Fixi) and two historical fantasy novels (Sorcerer to the Crown and The True Queen, both published by Ace and Macmillan). She is a winner of the Crawford, British Fantasy and Hugo Awards, and a finalist for the Locus and Astounding Awards. She was born and raised in Malaysia, resides in the UK, and lives in a notional space between the two.

The post Authors in Fandom: An Interview with Zen Cho appeared first on Reading the End.

The wonderful Linda Holmes lists five shows that TV execs will never stop making. My favorite is “The Adventures Of Mr. Superabilities And Detective Ladyskeptic.”

Beyond “diversity in SF”: Some ideas for (awesome-sounding) panels on diverse topics, for SFF conventions to take under advisement.

The latest issue of Open Letters Monthly carried a report from the Romance Writers Association convention. The more I think about romance novels and their place in society, the more I want to think about those things cause it is INTRISTING.

Some specfic writers (including new fave Zen Cho!) discuss the place of culture and history in writing sci-fi and fantasy novels.

Ahahahahaha letters from medieval students asking for money from their parents.

Y’all, I’m sure it’s just that I’m seeking this stuff out, but it really seems like there are more awesome and exciting POC authors publishing speculative fiction these days. Let’s definitely keep this trend going, because I have read some exxxxxxxcellent books this year behind this. Anyway, here’s an interview with author Stephanie Saulter about her new trilogy that sounds great. It is about genetically engineered humans who have to fight for their rights YAYYYYY.

In case you missed this kerfuffle, a published white guy poet got it into his head to submit poetry under an Asian-sounding surname to ?increase his chances? of publication? One of the poems thus submitted made it into the 2015 Best American Poetry. People got upset.

The post The Adventures Of Mr. Superabilities And Detective Ladyskeptic: A links round-up appeared first on Reading the End.

Some brilliant person described this book on Twitter a while ago as a postcolonial Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and I have been all about it ever since. Zen Cho’s debut novel tells the story of Zacharias Wythe, the first ever black Sorcerer to the Crown.

Suspected of involvement in the death of his predecessor, Zacharias becomes enmeshed in a political conflict among magical parties in (what is not yet) Malaysia, fights for his position against an interloper magician recently returned from the realm of Faerie, and tries to sort out what to do about Prunella Gentleman, whose obvious magical abilities make it difficult for Zacharias to uphold the tradition that ladies mustn’t do magic. (Their frail constitutions!)

This book is a damn delight. There’s nothing not awesome about it. If the characters are a little underdeveloped, well, hell, it’s a first novel. And in any case, the sheer delightfulness of the prose and the story, which are as decorous and amusing as a Georgette Heyer novel’s, more than make up for it. The diversity of characters in a book set in Regency England is also incredibly refreshing. As Aarti noted in her excellent review,

THIS IS WHY DIVERSITY IN PUBLISHING IS SO IMPORTANT. How many people would think to combine Indian history with Malaysian folklore, add a healthy dollop of English Faerie, and then make light but awesome references to equal rights for women and people of color?

Just as wonderful is the book’s feminism. The main character is a guy, but Zen Cho has made him something of a Trojan horse. The deeper you go into this story, the more it becomes clear that it’s actually all about the women. This isn’t rare in the fantasy I read, but it’s marvelous to see, in a book set during Historical White Male Timez, how the story can be deeper and funnier and sadder and better by making it about characters other than the default white guys.

All this makes it sound like Sorcerer to the Crown is all ideology and no fun, and nothing could be further from the truth. It’s all fun, a total confection that I was enjoying from the first page and regretted having to leave behind at the last.

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Eliding the horrors of American slavery.

The development of American English and the new London dialect that’s replacing Cockney.

Literary blind spots from famous authors.

Writing letters to trees.

“I don’t see gender/color/difference” is bullshit, and let’s not ever forget it.

An appreciation of Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye, which recently (sob!) ended its run.

What women write about when we write about the apocalypse.

This article about Auroville is shocking because this lady apparently found a liquor store in Pondy. HOW DID YOU FIND A LIQUOR STORE IN SOUTHEAST INDIA MADAM. Whiskey Jenny and I yearned and yearned to find a liquor store while we were in India but we ALWAYS FAILED.

TERROR BIRDS.

The moral, for movie execs, of this Grantland story about the guy who breaks the superhero news stories is probably “Your coat check girl thinks you’re an asshole.”

Starlee Kine launches an investigation to discover Jake Gyllenhaal’s height, and the resulting podcast may actually be the teleological cause of the internet’s invention.

What cultural osmosis has taught non-Harry-Potter-readers about the Harry Potter books. Oh and since I’m in, the illustrated edition of Harry Potter is going to include this and you should get pumped.

The #HarryPotterDeluxe Illustrated edition will include a fold-out of this GLORIOUS Diagon Alley image by #JimKay pic.twitter.com/pplZPG8Jky

— Bloomsbury Kids UK (@KidsBloomsbury) July 15, 2015

I mentioned Sandra Bland in my last links round-up, and the whole story has been making me sad this whole past fortnight. Jamilah Lemieux and Roxane Gay both wrote about it. And since I drafted this post earlier in the week, Sandra Bland has become last week’s thing, and we’re doing Sam Dubose now, and it just never goddamn ends.

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