(The fabulous Historic Fantasy StoryBundle is still running -- but don't leave it to the last minute to take advantage. Here's a column from Martha Wells about the struggle to keep diverse representation in stories.)
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This is an old post I did back in 2011, and I wanted to repost it for the Storybundle (https://storybundle.com/fantasy) curated by Melissa Scott, which has The Death of the Necromancer and Between Worlds: the Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories.
(Melissa Scott talks about the air race that features in Steel Blues, one of the books featured in the Historic Fantasy Storybundle. Such a great deal on so many great books!)
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A lot of good blog topics start out, “So somebody asked me about....” Well, nobody asked me about this, but it would be a very excellent question and I’m kind of surprised nobody has. Let’s pretend it happened. So nobody asked me, “Heather, given that you write stories with lesbian protagonists, why the heck do you put them in oppressive historic settings? Why not put them in contemporary settings? After all, it’s rather an exciting time to be non-heterosexual in the USA. Or why not put them in futuristic settings where we can imagine that prejudice will be entirely eliminated?
Back last year when Melissa Scott contacted me about being part of this StoryBundle offer, I was totally blown away. Here Melissa is, explaining why she did this project and how it works.
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The Historical Fantasy Bundle - Curated by Melissa Scott
Before I dig into the chapter in which Sara meets Ram Dass, I'd like to talk a bit about one curious inconsistency regarding him.
(Not meaning to slight my other fellow authors: Jo Graham, Geonn Cannon, David Niall Wilson, and Lisa A. Barnett!)
What's this about? I'm delighted to have been invited to participate in a Historic Fantasy Storybundle, organized by the fabulous Melissa Scott. If you aren't familiar with StoryBundle, it's a promotional project that rests on a few basic principles:
One of the questions raised by today's LHMP post is, "What does it meant to identify a poem or a poet as 'lesbian'?" especially in an era with different categories and expectations than our own. I raised a similar question in yesterday's blog about queer characters in historical fiction. When we write a character in a historic setting, we're telling two stories: the story of how that character relates to the past, and the story of how that character relates to present-day readers.
