Read the full comic here, and find out how to vote here.
Congrats to Ryan Cole for our nomination, and to the whole Toronto Comics team for putting out a great book! This was my first comic and a lot of fun. Everyone was very patient with me as I learned the ropes of comic scripting on the fly!
Yes, you may now call me Aurora-award-nominated-author J.M. Frey!
Good morning, my nerdlings! The Aurora Awards are now open for nominations. The Aurora’s are the Canadian Prize for excellence in SF/F, and the nominations must come from Canadian fans and readers. Historically, a work must be nominated over five times for it to be considered by the jury for the shortlist.
If you are Canadian, and have $10 to join the CSFFA, you are eligible to nominate and, once the short list is posted, to receive FREE BOOKS and stories and VOTE. (Yes, that’s right. They give you FREE BOOKS and STORIES to read)
24th Annual Lambda Literary Award Winners Announced in New York
Armistead Maupin and Kate Millet Pioneer Award Recipients
New York, NY – The winners of the 24th Annual Lambda Literary Awards were announced last night in a sold-out gala ceremony hosted by comedienne Kate Clinton at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. Author of the groundbreaking Tales of the City books, Armistead Maupin, and seminal influence on second-wave feminism Kate Millett, were the Pioneer Award honorees. Taking place the same week of Book Expo America – the book publishing industry’s largest annual gathering of booksellers, publishers, and others in the industry – the Lambda ceremony brought together over 400 attendees, sponsors, and celebrities to celebrate excellence in LGBT literature. Legendary entertainer Lypsinka gave a special performance at the ceremony, and the VIP After-Party at hotspot Slate was a night to remember with Lady Bunny as DJ.
As “mastress” of ceremonies, Clinton treated the audience to her brand of topical, political comedy that The New York Times has called, “Quick-witted, clear-spoken… a bizarrely logical, seemingly free-associating style of delivery…” Welcoming the members of the audience from out of town, she joked, “If you’re here to buy a Big Gulp or smoke a cigarette in a park…you’ll have to go to New Jersey.” Later, describing Michele Bachmann as “the SkyMall of useless ideas,” Clinton set her target on the conservative right and their attack on women’s reproductive rights, to hearty laughs and whoops of support from the audience. Also in attendance were presenters such as Olympia Dukakis, Charles Busch, Frank Bruni, Ally Sheedy, and Ross Bleckner.
Awards were presented in twenty-four categories. Among the winners were Farzana Doctor for her novel, Six Metres of Pavment, Justin Vivian Bond for his memoir, Tango: My Childhood Backwards and in High Heels, and Rahul Mehta for his debut collection of short fiction, Quarantine. In his acceptance speech, Mehta reflected on his first experience encountering Tales of the City, as a scared and closeted college freshman in North Carolina, citing Maupin’s books as part of a pivotal moment of self-acceptance in his life.
Academy Award-winning actress Olympia Dukakis presented the Foundation’s Pioneer Award to Maupin, calling Anna Madigral, the Tales of the City character she portrayed in the television adaptation, the most meaningful role of her career. “What happened for me when I did Anna Madrigal was that I understood the most important thing was to survive myself-and that’s what Anna Madrigal did.” Accepting his honor, Maupin remarked how moved he’d been by Mehta’s earlier anecdote, and pointed to the similar experience he’d had when he first discovered the work of Christopher Isherwood as young man. “I thought: Who wrote this? Where did this come from?”
The other Pioneer Award was given to iconic feminist Millett and was presented by Dr. Eleanor Pam, a pioneer in the women’s movement and a founding member of NOW, the National Organization of Women, as well as an expert on women and violence. “I am so moved to have been chosen to present the Lambda Pioneer award to Kate Millett,” Dr. Pam began her introduction, “someone I have known for more than 55 years, and a true pioneer in life as well as in literature.” In her speech, Millett charmed the audience with her insistence that she was “a farmer, really,” and shared her hope that the Millett Center for the Arts, the arts colony for women she’s established in LaGrange, NY, will be her legacy.
Stacey D’Erasmo, author of the novels Tea, A Seahorse Year, and The Sky Below and Brian Leung, author of the short story collection, World Famous Love Acts and the novels Lost Men and Take Me Home received the Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prizes.
Once again The Lammys raised the bar for glamour with its dazzling roster of presenters from the worlds of film, television, theatre, politics, religion, sex, and of course literature. Gracing the stage were: award-winning actor, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, director, and drag legend Charles Busch; movie star and author Ally Sheedy; Ross Bleckner, globally acclaimed artist and United Nations Goodwill Ambassador; Frank Bruni, the first openly gay Op-Ed columnist of The New York Times, the former chief restaurant critic of The New York Times, and New York Times best-selling author; Ted Allen, Emmy Award winning host of Chopped on Food Network and star of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy; Wally Lamb critically acclaimed, best-selling author; Judith Regan, legendary publisher, journalist, TV and radio talk show host; Susie Bright, legendary sex-positive feminist author and speaker; Anthony Rapp, singer, stage and film actor, and star of the original Broadway production of Rent; Lucy Sexton, performance artist and magazine editor; Michael Nava, award-winning novelist, and judicial attorney for California Supreme Court Justice, Carlos R. Moreno; Jacqueline Woodson, award-winning author of children’s books; bklyn boihood’s Ryann Holmes, Genesis Tramaine and Morgan M. Willis; Paul Schindler, editor-in-chief at Gay City News; Jee Leong Koh, poet and publisher; Brent Taylor, youth blogger and activist; J. Bob Alotta, executive director of Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice; Janet Mock, writer, trans advocate and People.com editor; Rodney Evans, film director and writer;Sinclair Sexsmith, lesbian erotica author and editor; Liz Scheier, veteran book editor; Teresa DeCrescenzo, LLF Board Treasurer and founder of Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services; Amy King, poet and activist; and Emanuel Xavier, poet, novelist and activist.
Ceremony Sponsors:
Benefactor Level: Harper Perennial, CLAGS (The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies) and Ketel One Vodka; Mentor Level: American Institute of Bisexuality; Friends Level: Bywater Books, Arsenal Pulp Press, Seal Press, Beacon Press, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, The Feminist Press, Torquere Press, Northwest Press, Cleis Press; Gift Bag Level: Scholastic, Sarabande, Northwest Press
24th Annual Lambda Literary Award Winners
Lesbian Fiction
Six Metres of Pavement, by Farzana Doctor, Dundrun Press
Gay Fiction
The Empty Family, by Colm Tóibín, Scribner
Lesbian Debut Fiction
Zipper Mouth, by Laurie Weeks, The Feminist Press
Gay Debut Fiction
Quarantine: Stories, by Rahul Mehta, Harper Perennial
Lesbian Memoir/Biography
When We Were Outlaws: A Memoir of Love & Revolution, Jeanne Córdova, Spinsters Ink
Gay Memoir/Biography
The Jack Bank: A Memoir of a South African Childhood, by Glen Retief, St. Martin’s Press
Lesbian Mystery
Dying to Live, by Kim Baldwin & Xenia Alexiou, Bold Strokes Books
Gay Mystery
Red White Black and Blue, by Richard Stevenson, MLR Press
LGBT Anthology
Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader, ed. by Michael Hames-García and Ernesto Javier Martínez, Duke University Press
LGBT Children’s/Young Adult
Putting Makeup on the Fat Boy, by Bil Wright, Simon & Schuster
LGBT Drama
A Menopausal Gentleman: The Solo Performances of Peggy Shaw, by Peggy Shaw, University of Michigan Press
LGBT Nonfiction
A Queer History of the United States, by Michael Bronski, Beacon Press
LGBT SF/Fantasy/Horror
The German, by Lee Thomas, Lethe Press
LGBT Studies
Sister Arts: The Erotics of Lesbian Landscapes, by Lisa L. Moore, University of Minnesota Press
Bisexual Fiction
The Correspondence Artist, by Barbara Browning, Two Dollar Radio
Bisexual Nonfiction
The Horizontal Poet, by Jan Steckel, Zeitgest Press
Transgender Fiction
Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica, ed. by Tristan Taormino, Cleis Press
Transgender Nonfiction
Tango: My Childhood Backwards and in High Heels, by Justin Vivian Bond, The Feminist Press
Lesbian Erotica
Story of L, by Debra Hyde, Ravenous Romance
Gay Erotica
All Together, by Dirk Vanden, iloveyoudivine Alerotica
Lesbian Poetry
Love Cake, by Leah Lakshmi Piepza-Samarasinha, TSAR Publications
Gay Poetry
A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos, ed. by David Trinidad, Nightboat Books
Lesbian Romance
Taken by Surprise, by Kenna White, Bella Books
Gay Romance
Every Time I Think of You, by Jim Provenzano, CreateSpace/Myrmidude Press
PHOTOS OF THE 24TH ANNUAL LAMBDA LITERARY AWARDS
24th Annual Lambda Literary Awards Host Committee
| David McConnell – Co-Chair | Don Weise – Co-Chair | S. Chris Shirley – Co-Chair |
| Charles Rice-Gonzalez -Director | Jamie Brickhouse – Publicity Chair | |
| Brad Boles | James Brooks | Mario Lopez-Cordero |
| David Gale | James Hannaham | Wayne Hoffman |
| Michele Karlsberg | Dean Klinger | Jay Moore |
| Dan Manjovi | Bill Miller | Heather O’Neill |
| Pauline Park | Lori Perkins | Jay Plum |
| Melanie La Rosa | Patrick Ryan | Liz Scheier |
| Bob Smith | Jerl Surratt | Linda Villarosa |
| Warren Wilson |
# # #
The Lambda Literary Foundation nurtures, celebrates, and preserves LGBT literature through programs that honor excellence, promote visibility and encourage development of emerging writers. LLF’s programs include: the Lambda Literary Awards, the Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices, LGBT Writers in Schools, and our web magazine, The Lambda Literary Review, at www.LambdaLiterary.org. For more information call (323) 366-2104 or e-mail admin@lambdaliterary.org.
Where: Slack’s on Church
When: Tuesday, 15 May 2012; 19:00 until 22:00
RSVP: http://www.facebook.com/events/344141408977391/
What: Let’s get loud & proud about the Toronto-based Lambda Literary Award nominees: Farzana Doctor, Kristyn Dunnion, JM Frey & Karleen Pendleton Jiménez! Come out to hear these amazing writers read (see bios below) and celebrate their nominations. Hosted By Heather J Wood & Jim Nason.
The Awards: For more about the awards check out this link.
The Authors:
Farzana Doctor’s first novel, Stealing Nasreen, received critical acclaim and earned a devoted readership upon its release in 2007. Her second book, Six Metres of Pavement (Dundurn 2011), was praised by Publishers Weekly praised as “..a paean to second chances” and was named one of Now Magazine’s Top Ten Books of 2011. It also won the Rainbow Award for Best Contemporary Lesbian General Fiction, and had been short-listed for a Lambda Award general Lesbian Fiction category. Farzana was named as one of CBC Books’ “Ten Canadian Women Writers You Need to Read Now” and was the recipient of the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Dayne Ogilvie Grant (2011). She is a co-curator of the Brockton Writers Series.
Kristyn Dunnion is a Lady punk. Her collection of linked stories, The Dirt Chronicles, was published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2011 and is shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Awards, general Lesbian Fiction category. Kristyn’s noteworthy novels include MISSING MATTHEW, a quirky mystery for young rebels, MOSH PIT, a queer punk love tragedy, and BIG BIG SKY, an anarcho-queer speculative fiction – all published by Red Deer Press. Her stories are widely anthologized, including in SubTerrain Magazine, Fist of the SpiderWoman: Tales of Fear and Queer Desire, With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn, and Peripheries: Erotic Lesbian Futures. Kristyn is a performance artist and bassist. She likes big boots, shaved heads, and loud music.
J. M. Frey is the author of TRIPTYCH (Dragon Moon Press), and “The Once and Now-ish King” in WHEN THE HERO COMES HOME (Dragon Moon Press, August 2011), THE DARK SIDE OF THE GLASS (Double Dragon Publishing, June 2012), and “Whose Doctor?” in DOCTOR WHO IN TIME AND SPACE (McFarland Press, Fall 2012). She holds a BA in Dramatic Literature, where she studied playwriting and traditional Japanese theatre forms, and a Masters of Communications and Culture, where she focused on fanthropology. She is active in the Toronto geek community, presenting at awards ceremonies, appearing on TV, radio, podcasts, live panels and documentaries to discuss all things fandom through the lens of Academia, and has lectured at the Pop Culture Association of America’s Annual Conference (San Francisco), at the University of Cardiff’s ‘Whoniversal Appeal’ Conference, and the Technology and Pedagogy Conference at York University. Frey’s pie-in-the-sky dream is to one day sing a duet with John Barrowman. Triptych is nominated in two Lambda Literary Award categories.
Karleen Pendleton Jiménez is the author of How to Get a Girl Pregnant, a finalist for a 2012 Lambda Literary Award in the category Lesbian Memoir. Her children’s book Are You a Boy or a Girl? was also a Lambda Literary finalist in 2001, and her award-winning film Tomboy has been screened around the world.
Not actually my villain. Or any villain from the book, really. This is Doctor Holocaust, Toronto's local Supervillian. Yes, that's right. We have our own supervillain. Jealous? www.doctorholocaust.com
Dragon Moon Press is very pleased to announce a follow up to its award nominated SF/F fantasy anthology WHEN THE HERO COMES HOME: When the Villain Comes Home.
Heroes can save the world. But Villains can change it.
We’ve assembled a great mix of science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction. Come with us while we explore villains of all stripes — sons and daughters, lovers and fighters, minions and masterminds, in this giant volume of thirty great stories by award winners, rising stars, and bold new voices.
Camille Alexa – Pinktastic and the End of the World
Erik Scott de Bie – Hunger of the Blood Reaver
Chaz Brenchley – Villainelle
Eugie Foster – Oranges, Lemons, and Thou Beside Me
David Sakmyster – Prometheus Found
Marie Bilodeau – Happily Ever After
Richard Lee Byers – Little Things
K.D. McEntire – Heels
Peadar Ó Guilín – The Sunshine Baron
Jim C. Hines – Daddy’s Little Girl
Ari Marmell – Than to Serve in Heaven
Karin Lowachee – The Bleach
Jay Lake – The Woman Who Shattered the Moon
Julie Czerneda – Charity
J.M. Frey – Maddening Science
Clint Talbert – Birthright
Rachel Swirsky – Broken Clouds
Tony Pi – The Miscible Imp
Leah Petersen – Manmade
J.P. Moore – Lord of the Southern Sky
Ryan McFadden – Back in the Day
Todd McCaffrey – Robin Redbreast
Erik Buchanan – Cycle of Revenge
Gregory A. Wilson – The Presuil’s Call
Rosemary Jones – The Man With Looking-Glass Eyes
Gabrielle Harbowy – Starkeep
Ed Greenwood – A Lot of Sly Work Ahead
Mercedes Lackey / Larry Dixon – Heir Apparent
Chris A. Jackson – Home Again, Home Again
Steve Bornstein – The Best Laid Plans
…and another fantastic cover by Scott Purdy.
Preorder information will be available soon on the Dragon Moon Press website.
*
What’s that? You want a sneak preview of my story, Maddening Science? Oh, very well. (Warning – naughty language ahead)
*
Bullets firing into a crowd. Children screaming. Women crying. Men crying too, not that any of them would admit it. The scent of gun powder, rotting garbage, stale motor oil, vomit, and misery. Police sirens in the distance, coming closer, making me cringe against old memories. Making me skulk into the shadows, hunch down in my hoodie, a beaten puppy.
This guy isn’t a supervillain. He isn’t even a villain, really. Just an idiot. A child with a gun. And a grudge. Or maybe a god complex. Or a revenge scheme. Who the hell cares?
In the end, it amounts to the same.
The last place I want to be is in the centre of the police’s attention, again, so I sink back into the fabric, shying from the broad helicopter searchlights that sweep in through the narrow windows of the parking garage.
If this had been before, I might have leapt into action with one of my trusty gizmos. Or, failing that, at least with a witty verbal assault that would have left the moron boy too brain-befuddled to resist when I punched him in the oesophagus.
But this isn’t before.
I keep my eyes on the sky, instead of on the gun. If the Brilliant Bitch arrives, I want to see.
No one else is looking up. It has been a long, long time since one of…us…has donned sparkling spandex and crusaded out into the night to roust the criminal element from their lairs, or to enact a plot against the establishment, to bite a glove-covered thumb at “the man.” A long time since one of us has done much more than pretend to not be one of us.
The age of the superhero petered out surprisingly quickly. The villains learnt our lessons; the heroes became obsolete.
A whizzing pop beside my left ear. I duck behind the back wheel of a sleek penis-replacement-on-wheels. The owner will be very upset when he sees the bullet gouges littering the bright red altar to his own virility.
I’ve never been shot before. I’ve been electrocuted, eye-lasered, punched by someone with the proportional strength of a spotted gecko and, memorably, tossed into the air by a breath-tornado created by a hero whose Italian lunch my schemes had clearly just interrupted.
Being shot seems fearfully mundane after all that.
Only the extraordinary die in extraordinary ways. And I am extraordinary no longer.
A normal, boring death scares me more than any other kind—especially if it’s due to a random, pointless, unpredictable accident of time and place intersecting with a stupid poser with the combination to daddy’s gun drawer and the key to mommy’s liquor cabinet. I had been on the way to the bargain grocery store for soymilk. It doesn’t look like I’m going to get any now.
I look skyward. Still no Crimson Cunt.
Someone screams. Someone else cries. I sit back against the wheel and refrain from whistling to pass the time. If I was on the other side of the parking garage, I could access the secret tunnel I built into the lower levels back when the concrete was poured thirty years ago. But the boy and his bullets are between us. I’ve nothing to do but wait.
The boy is using a 9mm Barretta, military issue, so probably from daddy’s day job in security at the air force base. He has used up seven bullets. The standard Barretta caries a magazine of fifteen. Eight remain, unless one had already been prepared in the chamber, which I highly doubt as no military man would be unintelligent or undisciplined enough to carry about a loaded gun aimed at his own foot. The boy is firing them at an average rate of one every ninety-three seconds—punctuated by unintelligible screaming—and so by my estimation I will be pinned by his unfriendly fire for another seven hundred and forty-four seconds, or twelve point four minutes.
However, the constabulary generally arrive on the scene between six and twenty-three minutes after an emergency call. As this garage is five and a half blocks from the 2nd Precinct, I estimate the stupid boy has another eight point seven minutes left to live before a SWAT team puts cold lead between his ribs.
Better him than me.
Except, probability states that he will kill another three bystanders before that time. I scrunch down further, determined not to be a statistic today. This brings me directly into eye-line with a corpse.
There is blood all around her left shoulder. If she didn’t die of shock upon impact, then surely she died of blood loss. Her green eyes are wide and wet.
I wonder who she used to be.
I wonder if she is leaving behind anyone who will weep and rail and attend the police inquest and accuse the system of being too slow, too corrupt, too over-burdened. I wonder if they will blame the boy’s parents or his teachers. Will they only blame themselves? Or her?
And then, miraculously, she blinks.
Well, that certainly is a surprise. Perhaps the trauma is not as extensive as I estimated. To be fair, I cannot see most of her. She has fallen awkwardly, the momentum of her tumble half-concealing her under the chassis of the ludicrously large Hummer beside my penis-car.
I am so fascinated by the staggering of her torso as she tries to suck in a breath, the staccato rhythm of her blinks, the bloody slick of teeth behind her lips, that it’s all over before I am aware of it.
This must be what people mean by time flying.
I’m not certain I’ve ever felt that strange loss of seconds ever before. I am so very used to being able to track everything. It’s disconcerting. I don’t like it.
And yet the boy is downed, the police are here, paramedics crawling over the dead and dying like swarming ants. I wait for them to find my prize, to pull her free of the SUV’s shadow and whisk her away to die under ghastly fluorescent lights, too pumped full of morphine to know she is slipping away.
I wait in the shadow of the wheel and hope that they miss me.
They do.
Only, in missing me, they miss her, as well. She is blinking, gritty and desperate, and now the police are leaving, and the paramedics are shunting their human meat into the sterile white cubes, and they have not found my fascinating, panting young lady.
Oh dear. This is a dilemma.
I am reformed. I am no longer a villain. But I am also no hero and I like my freedom far too much to risk it by bringing her to the attention of the officials. What to do? Save her and risk my freedom, or let her die, and walk free but burdened with the knowledge of yet another life that I might have been able to save, and didn’t?
I dither too long. They are gone. Only the media are left, and I certainly don’t want them to catch me in their unblinking grey lenses. The woman blinks, sad and slow. She knows that she is dead. It’s coming. Her fingers twitch towards me—reaching.
A responsible, honest citizen would not let her die. So I slink out of my shadow and gather her up, the butterfly struggle of her pulse in her throat against my arm, and slip away through my secret tunnel.
I steal her away to save her life.
It occurs to me, when I lean back from the operating table hours later, my hands splashed with her gore, that I’ve kidnapped this woman.
*
Pick up your copy of When The Hero Comes Home here, or come to Ad Astra 2012 and meet many of both of anthology’s contributors, as well as the editors, in person!
