Sassy

Here is some microfiction, explaining my feelings about the word "sassy".

“Sassy,” Kenneth said.

“Sassy?” Elaine asked. “Sassy?”

“Yes,” he said. “Sassy.” Elaine sighed.

“Kenneth, we’ve talked about this,” she said. She picked up the bronze paperweight from her desk.

“I know, but…” he protested. He raised his hands in front of his face, as her eyes filled with rage. 

“No buts,” she said. She lifted the heavy moulded metal high above her head and prepared to throw it.

Why speculative fiction? A guest post by Shona Kinsella

The lovely and talented Shona Kinsella, author of Ashael Rising, has written this fabulous piece on the world (or worlds) of speculative fiction. You can read my interview with her here. Her buy links and social media details are below. Enjoy!  

While I do occasionally step outside of speculative fiction, it’s fair to say that the vast majority of my work falls there, from my debut novel to my flash fiction. So, what’s the draw of the genre? Or, more accurately, collection of genres: fantasy, sci-fi, horror, utopia, dystopia, alternate history, apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic and superhero (according to Wikipedia).

I often joke and say that I like to write fantasy because I don’t have to do any research – I can just make it up as I go along. That actually isn’t true, though. I do quite a lot of research because I think the accuracy of the mundane details makes the magical more acceptable – it helps the reader to suspend disbelief.

The real reason I love speculative fiction so much is the sheer breadth of possibility. If you set up the world right, you can make anything at all happen; it just has to make sense in the context of the world you have built. For example, in Stormlight Archive, by Brandon Sanderson, it’s established early on that on the storm-ridden world of Roshar, the energy of the storm can be caught in gems called spheres, which are then used for light. It’s then plausible that the energy could be captured and utilised in other ways, too – and so we have characters who can use the "stormlight" to perform inhuman feats.

Of course, the flip side of this is that your world must be built well and be internally consistent. In KalaDene (the planet on which Ashael Rising is set), the Folk are a tribal people, hunter-gatherers who live in harmony with their planet. This harmony allows them to manipulate the life energy that suffuses everything. However, since the source of their magic is life force, I can’t have them running around casting spells everywhere with no limit – they can only use the energy that is available and if they take too much from one place, they are taking life itself. To have their power be unlimited would not be internally consistent.

Another thing I love about speculative fiction is the ability to take issues of importance in the real world and look at them in a different context. Issues such as racism, religious persecution, environmentalism and gender equality have all featured in speculative fiction in forms that allow them to be examined in a way that may not trigger the same level of emotion that a more "realistic" novel is likely to engender.

This can be a really useful tool and can be very eye-opening for the writer. For example, in Ashael Rising, the cams are gender-equal, with men and women both taking leadership roles and nurturing roles. No one is assigned tasks or limited in their choices because of their gender. Writing that sort of culture made me realise how gendered our use of language can be. In an early draft, I had a character dismissing something as "female intuition" without thinking about how these people would not frame intuition that way.

For me, the only downside to writing speculative fiction is that when you create another world, you have to keep track of so much information. I have files on the flora, fauna and climate of KalaDene, on the races and their cultures, on the history that brought them all to where they are now. If I had written a book set in Glasgow, a lot of the information I needed would already be known to me or would be just a Google search away. Instead I had to make everything up and then keep track of the implications of that. I’m sure my world-building files will only get bigger as I continue with the series.


Find out more about Shona, and buy Ashael Rising (The Vessel of KalaDene: Book One):

Blog: www.shonakinsella.com
Twitter: @shona_kinsella
Instagram: shona.kinsella
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ashaelrising/
Ashael Rising is available for purchase at: http://bit.ly/ashaelrising

You can also buy the book at Unbound: https://unbound.com/books/ashael-rising 

Take my privilege: a personal essay

I’m white (obviously) so right out of the gate, I’m privileged. Believe me, I’m fully aware of that. I’m also educated to degree level. More privilege. On top of that, I’m middle class. Yet more privilege. I’m also (more or less) heterosexual. Still more privilege. I’m able-bodied. Even more privilege. I might lose a couple of points in the area of gender: I’m female, although my gender presentation falls a little more towards the centre of the spectrum. I might lose a couple more in the area of mental health: I suffer from depression and anxiety. But that’s it. Otherwise, I’m right up there. I’ve been afforded pretty much all the blessings modern Western civilisation has to offer. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not super rich or anything, but I’ll probably never have to worry about my economic status. I’m almost as privileged as I can be. I know that.

Meanwhile, my husband, also educated and middle class, has been afforded a measure of the same privilege, even though he’s not actually white, because he’s half white. Therefore, by some people’s reckoning, he’s only half as threatening as if both his parents had been from India. He also claws back a little more privilege by being male. But he’ll never have the same level of privilege as I do because he’s not fully white, and that immediately places him lower down the ladder. It places him in another category, that strange limbo of otherness that allows him to go about his life under the radar, as long as he continues to fit into the space society has allotted him. I don’t say that because I think it’s right, or that’s the way it should be. I say that because it’s true. What I want to do is use my own privilege for something meaningful. What’s the point of having it if I can’t try, in some way, to share its power with those who don’t have it?

I was brought up in a predominantly white area, with few families of colour, or even families who weren’t from the North East of England, so that has shaped my experience and my understanding. My sphere of existence, for a little shy of the first two-thirds of my life, was very small. Since then, of course, I’ve travelled and met plenty of people with different experiences and different backgrounds. But I’ve never really had the hard conversations, the ones about race, about what it feels like to have people hate you just because of the colour of your skin. That, I think, is at least part of the problem. People like me rarely want to step too far outside our safe, comfortable, protected bubbles. But I want to have those conversations. I want to hear those words and try to comprehend them. I know I’ll never properly get it. I can’t. But I want to do my best. Make me uncomfortable. Shake me. Wake me up.

I’m not asking anyone to think for me, to do the work for me. I’m not trying to make it all about me, because that, I know, is what people like me do, all too often. I’m asking what I can do to redress the balance, on an individual level. Anyone who knows me, knows I believe in equality. I believe skin colour, religion, upbringing, sexuality, economic status and any other aspect of one’s being over which one has no control should make no difference. Belief is all well and good, though. “Should” is all well and good. Wanting a world in which no one is treated as superior or inferior just by dint of their skin colour is not the same as doing something to bring it about. Deploring police brutality and the killing of people in the street is not the same as doing something to make that stop. I know that.

Now more than ever, with extreme right wing views becoming increasingly mainstream, those of us who want that better world and who have the kind of privilege I’ve described need to get off our arses and do our utmost to fight back. We need to use our bodies and our voices to bolster those who’ll suffer most as a result of this flood of nasty, insidious politics and to stem that tide. I want to start doing that. I want to stop being fuzzy and wishy washy.

So I’m asking to be taught. I want to hear and learn and then use that learning. Let me put it to the best possible use. I want to stop wasting this. Imagine if you had the world’s most beautiful voice but you never sang. This is like that. I’m in a position to do something and I want to do it. I just don’t know where to start. To be clear, I’m not seeking plaudits or a pat on the back. I’m trying to be as genuine as I can be, given this is the internet. I’m trying prise open those narrow spaces. I’m trying to take those first steps towards on the road to bringing that world of equality into being. I want to do what I can, and what I must. I’m opening my door. Take my privilege.

Mr Wilmot

This is my #whimword entry for this week. As always, I'll be reposting it on Scriggler and Medium, so keep an eye out there, too! Also, as always, don't forget to check out my Unbound page, where you can find out about and pledge on Abernathy, my debut novel: http://unbound.co.uk/books/abernathy

Carol scrunched up her face against the freezing rain, and it occurred to her then, as always, that doing so made absolutely no difference. If anything, it probably just hurried along the onset of lines on her forehead, which bothered her more than she cared to admit. It had been a bad day.

She’d overslept, skipped breakfast, missed her train, and then Darren had called. Fucking Darren. She’d been planning to dump him for weeks, but she’d never managed it. Darren was boring. Darren was stupid. Darren was crap in bed. Darren was also hard to shift. He was always just sort of there, with his big, pathetic brown eyes and some ridiculous tale of woe. Then she’d feel guilty and chicken out.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve met someone else.” Carol was stunned.

“You what?” she whispered.

“Her name’s Donna. We’re moving in.”

“Well, you can just piss off, then, can’t you,” she said, hating herself for how hurt she sounded. Donna was a slapper’s name anyway, she thought, but checked herself for thinking something so unfeminist, and then felt cheated out of her rage.

After that, the day was a catalogue of failures. She’d forgotten her umbrella, and arrived at work, drenched and freezing, to find her appraisal had been moved to 10 o’clock, giving her twenty-seven minutes to dry out and calm down.

“This isn’t good enough,” Mr Wilmot shouted. Her pompous, priggish boss narrowed his eyes over his glasses. “You’re sloppy. You miss deadlines. And today, when you should be looking to impress more than ever, you’re half an hour late and you look like you’ve spent the night a ditch. This is your final warning. Either you shape up or you’re out.” Carol swallowed, blinking back tears.

“Yes, sir,” she muttered, and dashed out, praying to make the ladies’ before she started crying. It took her fifteen minutes to collect herself, and when she emerged from the bathroom, she saw Wilmot ambling past, carrying his briefcase and an umbrella that probably cost more than her car.

“Early lunch, is it?” she muttered to Sheila, who sat opposite.

“His mum’s in hospital. Stroke,” Sheila said, and Carol felt like crying all over again.

Wilmot wasn’t married. He didn’t have kids. He lived alone. His only family was his mother, and without her, he’d have nobody left. It niggled at her the rest of the day, sapping the last of her concentration so that she spilled her coffee and burned her tongue on her soup. She wanted to seethe, wanted to hate him, wanted to think up creative and revolting ways for him to meet his maker, but she couldn’t. She felt sorry for him.

When the wretched day was over, she wanted to drown her sorrows. She wanted to hide in the pub with a bottle of red, but in the end, he’d denied her that, too. There, sitting at the bar by himself, was Wilmot. She sighed.

“Hello, sir,” she said, and sat down beside him.

The End

Here's my #whimword entry for this week. You might have guessed I'm feeling a little apocalyptic what with one thing and another. While you're here, mosey on over to my Unbound page, where you can pledge and make yourself feel a bit better about life by doing something positive. 

James looked over at the rows and rows of burning buildings on the horizon. It was almost pretty, glowing red and amber against the starless sky. Small consolation. He drew nearer to their little campfire and turned to look at Samira.

“You ready for this?” he asked. She smiled, sadly, but didn’t meet his eye.

“No,” she whispered. “I don’t think anybody’s ever ready to die.” Samira pushed her hands through her tangled dark hair, leaving a streak of grime on her forehead. She stared into the fire and James could see tears glinting in her eyes. He sighed.

“D’you… d’you think we did enough?” he murmured, more to himself than to her. She shook her head.

“What would’ve been enough? We fought as hard as we could. We… we killed people, Jimmy. I don’t see what else we could’ve done. It’s over now. We might as well dull the pain a little.” She took a swig from the whiskey bottle, which was almost empty. “Hey. We got any pills left?”

They’d swiped the liquor from one of the stores back in the city before the burning started and they’d been toting it around for days, hoping they wouldn’t need it. Its sole purpose was to allow them to be unconscious when it finally happened, and now it was coming. Unstoppable. Inescapable. They were maybe a dozen miles outside the city centre, but it wasn’t far enough. They hadn’t cleared the blast radius and they both knew it. Come daybreak, they’d be dead – and they were the lucky ones. The blast would destroy the last of them. Everyone else had already burned to death, or they were still burning.

“Yeah, a couple, I think. But Sami… we gotta be close to OD’in’ by now. They’ll kill us.” Samira laughed and handed him the bottle.

“With any luck,” she said, grimly. “You don’t wanna feel it, do you?” James didn’t say anything for a long moment, and turned to look back at the city again.

“Man,” he said at last. “I didn’t think it’d be this fast. I mean, I thought… I don’t know, I guess I thought I’d at least live to see twenty-one. Didn’t you?” Samira shook her head again.

“I never thought I’d get as far as I did, even before… well, you know,” she replied. “People like me, we don’t get to get old. We get as far as we can and we thank God for every day we make it through. But… I guess I didn’t think it’d end up like...” She broke off. Her shoulders were shaking and James realised she was crying. He scooted closer, and put an arm around her.

“Hey,” he whispered. “At least we’ve got each other, right? We don’t have to be alone.” He dug into his pocket, handed her one of the last of the little white pills, and swallowed one himself. She lay down in the dirt.

“Here’s to the end,” she whispered, and closed her eyes.

Eric

I haven't taken part in the #whimword prompt for a while, so thought I'd jump in again with this one. It takes place in the same world as Seed and Producers, but not at the same time. As always, while you're here, take a look at my Unbound page and pledge to pre-order my debut novel. 

“What is it this time?” Doris asked, without looking up. She didn’t much care what the answer was. She kept her eyes firmly on her desk, and waited.

“Labyrinthitis,” Bill said. “Inflammation of the inner ear. He claims he can’t stand up without feeling dizzy.” Doris sighed, and got up.

“All right,” she said, wearily. “Let me have a look at him.”

Eric was waiting for her in his quarters, eyes closed. He was supine on the top bunk, a pile of his laundry on the lower one. This was the third ailment he’d claimed to be suffering from in as many weeks, but he knew she’d come. He knew they were stuck with each other. It was just as he’d planned it.

Doris weaved her way through the maze of interlinking corridors towards the staff quarters. Eric was a world-class shirker, but she couldn’t get rid of him. Company rules prohibited letting anyone go who was actively unwell, regardless of the symptoms. They weren’t concerned about unfair dismissal: no one would come after them for that. They simply couldn’t be seen to be the source of any kind of outbreak. They were already in a precarious position, and a burnout would ruin them.

“If you can’t get up without feeling dizzy,” Doris said, “how did you get up there?”

“Slept here. Woke up feeling like this,” Eric said. He kept his eyes shut, hands folded neatly on his stomach. Doris clenched and unclenched her fists.

“Why do you do this?” she asked.

“Do what?” Eric opened his eyes at last and swivelled his head ever so slightly in her direction.

“This!” She gestured around the room, which, bar the unfolded laundry, was neat as a pin. “Pretend to be sick, lock yourself up in here! What do you get out of it?” Eric closed his eyes again. He’d barely been in the lab since he’d started a month earlier, and had instead focused solely on making Doris’s life miserable, as far as she could tell.

“I’m not pretending,” he said.

“No, of course not. This isn’t a ploy to get paid for doing nothing because you know I can’t stop you. That would be ridiculous,” Doris growled, jaw tightening.

“If you don’t think I’m sick,” Eric said, “fire me. Nobody would blame you.”

“Yes, they would! Knowing my luck, there’d be an outbreak the minute you set foot outside, and if they found out I’d let you go, you know who they’d blame, whether it was you that started it or not!” Doris shouted. Eric sat up slightly, and looked her in the eye for the first time.

“So what?” he said. Doris stared at him.

“So what? So what? This company is the last one left with the resources to fund this compound. We’re the only ones studying this damn disease. If they burn us out, there’s no cure, no treatment. That’s it. We’re done. We’re all done.”

“Well, then,” Eric said, “looks like you’re stuck with me.”

Thanksgiving

This one was rejected by Flash Fiction Online. Once again, I still like it, so here it is:


“What are we going to do?” I asked. Annie fixed me with that familiar look of indignation mixed with frustration, reserved just for me. It made me feel sort of special. Nobody could piss her off like I could.

“That,” she said, “is possibly the stupidest question you’ve ever asked. And you’ve asked some doozies, believe me.”

“It’s not a stupid question,” I muttered. I was sulking. I knew I was sulking and she knew I was sulking. Annie sighed and rolled her eyes.

“For Christ’s sake, David, put your big boy pants on and help me, would you? We don’t have time for this.” She jumped down from the front seat of the jeep and slammed the door shut. “Well? What are you waiting for? Christmas?” It was something Mom used to say and it threw me for a second. I’d never noticed it before, but Annie was becoming more and more like her.

Reluctantly, I got out of the driver’s seat and stood beside her, staring at the body. It was still warm: I could feel the heat radiating out of it through my clothes. It wasn’t a big animal – an adolescent, maybe. I pictured it fully-grown – majestic, lord of all it surveyed – and felt a rush of sickness. It looked so small after what I’d done to it, just lying there, the imprint of a jeep tyre on its lower flank. Felled by my crappy driving.

“Help you do what, exactly?” I asked. The engine was still sputtering away behind us, sending plumes of greyish exhaust into the late fall air. Annie turned away from me.

“We,” she said, getting down on her knees behind the animal, “are going to throw this stupid deer into that ditch, and then we’re going to carry on like nothing happened.”

“Moose,” I said, quietly.

“What?” she asked, pushing her shoulder against it.

“It’s a moose,” I repeated. “Not a deer.”

“Thanks for the biology lesson. Now would you get down here? We need to… roll… this thing… over… so we can… drag it… out… of the road.” Her voice came out stilted and breathless with the exertion.

“Fine,” I said. “But shouldn’t we… call somebody?” I pressed my full weight into the animal’s flesh, feeling its moisture seeping through my jacket.

“Like… who?” Annie asked. The moose flopped into the mud with a sad squelch, and she hopped to her feet, panting.

“I don’t know. Animal control?” I wiped my hands on my pants and immediately regretted it, watching two big, brownish smears appear. Annie closed her eyes.

“It’s dead, David. It’s not rabid,” she said. Then she started to laugh. Big, full-throated laughs rolled through her body, and she bent over, covering her face with her hands. I stared at her.

“What’s so goddamn funny?” I asked. She shook her head, trying to catch her breath.

“N-nothing,” she stuttered. “I just… I suddenly had a-a mental image of a big, c-crazy Bullwinkle running around in the woods.” She made a goofy face and a weird mooing sound, imitating a deranged cartoon moose. I tried not to smile. I didn’t want to laugh. But I could feel myself losing control, the muscles in my face stretching, and then I couldn’t stop it. It felt good – like a release.

“Come on,” she said, taking a deep breath. “You take his front legs, I’ll take his back legs.” I nodded, and grabbed the slippery limbs as tightly as I could.

“I-I’m sorry,” I said. Annie looked up at me from her end of the moose.

“What for?” she asked. She looked startled.

“You know. For doing stuff like this. For being a pain in your ass. For… being me.” I thought about the time I fell out of a second floor window when I tried pot for the first time, and the time I smashed Grandma’s urn when I was practising my golf swing in the living room, and the time I got fired from Walgreens for stealing cough syrup, and the time I got a DWI. I thought about all the times Annie had saved my ass, and I thought about all the resentment in her voice, every time she spoke to me.

“Oh come on, David, quit feeling sorry for yourself,” she said.

“I’m not. I mean it. I know I’m a screw-up. I know… I know you hate me.” Abruptly, Annie dropped the moose’s legs and stood up straight.

“What the hell are you talking about? I don’t hate you! You’re my baby brother!” she exclaimed.

“But you… I mean, you’re always so… ” I faltered.

“Jesus, David! You think I hate you? This is just what we do! You screw up, I bail you out, then I get to bust on you for it. It’s our thing!” Shaking her head, she stooped and picked up the lifeless limbs again. “Now help me toss this moose carcass in the ditch, and then you can explain to Mom why we’re so late for Thanksgiving dinner.” I smiled.

“Well… thanks, I guess,” I said, and she smiled back.

In the end, we only got as far as sliding the body out of the car’s path. I remembered reading somewhere that an adult male moose weighed an average of eight hundred pounds, and suddenly counted my blessings I’d only hit a baby. When we let go, it sank down among the leaves, its nose tucked into its chest, almost like it was sleeping. I shook my head and let a silent prayer go. Poor little guy. He never saw it coming.

“You sure there’s nothing wrong with the car?” I asked, starting the engine.

“It’s a jeep, David. It’s fine,” Annie said, but her voice was softer, more reassuring than annoyed. She glanced in the rear view mirror as we set off. “I’ll be damned…” she breathed.

“What?” I followed her line of sight. There it was, standing right in the middle of the road, just like nothing had happened – the moose.