Dwelling in Probabilities

This interview is part of a series of interviews with authors who have books in this year's StoryBundle! The Bundle will run until 7/1 and includes books by Heather Rose Jones, Melissa Scott, Matthew Bright, Anya DeNiro, R.B. Lemberg, dave ring, Ebony Dunbar, J. Scott Coatsworth, Leigh Harlan, A.J. Fitzwater, Langley Hyde, Andi and me. Get all 16 books at the $20 level and help support Rainbow Railroad's life-saving work with LGBTQ refugees!

There was really only one solution: it was time to write about witches. We got together, pooled our skills, shared ideas, and began writing light novellas, set in New Zealand, about contemporary witches.

Succulents and Spells is my contribution (my first contribution, I should say - it inevitably turned into a series). It’s about Laurel Windflower, a young witch who lives in a slightly grotty flat in Wellington with a monster under the floor and is feeling at a bit of a dead end. That is until one winter’s day when Marigold Nightfield, a scientist with magical interests, shows up at her door.

If you want a taste, I wrote a short prequel, First-years and Familiars, which is free for subscribers to my newsletter. There’s also a sequel called Microscopes and Magic, told from Marigold’s point of view, and more on the way.

What do you find engaging or important about writing LGBTQ+/queer fiction?

I couldn’t have said this even five years ago, but there’s a normality about it: of course I’m going to write about people like me and about people like those I love; it’s just my community. But even then I do it in the knowledge that I just didn’t have these same stories to read growing up - that (even in a book filled, fairly accepting household) any sort of queer representation is hard to find.

Then there’s another type of queer story, which is where it interrogates or has something more to say about queerness, or about existing in this world - or another - as some stripe of queer. Our experience, how life paths, our communities, are entangled in so many different ways - and sometimes non-realist elements are the ways to explore those that come naturally.

What other books or stories do you have out that readers of this StoryBundle might enjoy?

Aside from the other works in the Windflower series mentioned, From a Shadow Grave (Paper Road Press, 2019) is an exploration of the murder of a teenager in pre-war Wellington, and the possible lives she could have had. It’s genre crossing and definitely queer.

My recent short fiction includes “Ōmarino”, the pandemic story I wrote in 2019 (because of course I did) in Rebuilding Tomorrow, an anthology about disabled people rebuilding society after the apocalypse, and “Even the Clearest Water” (Fireside, 2020) about water fae and autistic families.

Aside from your own work, what are some of your favorite queer reads you would recommend to folks?

This bundle includes some of them, especially The Four Profound Weaves and No Man’s Land. I really like that we’re at a place where we have enough good queer reads to choose from, so here are just a few that comes to mind.

I love Darcie Little Badger’s Elatsoe which is part murder myster, part exploration of history and culture and magic, part coming of age, from the point of view of an asexual protagonist. Euphoria Kids by Alison Evans is a magical, hopeful story about queer/trans teens. Nino Cipri’s Finna is an all too real exploration of millennial precarious employment and the graphic novel Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker and Wendy Xu is a delightful story of witchcraft and love.

If you enjoyed Succulents you might want to check out some of the other Witchy Fiction novellas - and if you’re looking for queer fiction in particular I’d recommend Riverwitch, Overdues and Occultism, and Holloway Witches.