2021: The Plan So Far

So, I’m starting to claw my way toward the new year, and I just want to sort of update people on what’s going on with the blog starting next year. For those who haven’t heard, I will be stepping back from doing reviews of whole issues, but I will definitely still be doing short SFF coverage. Check out The Plan below...

5000 Strong

I always struggle to come up with things to say for milestones. Something Profound and Important that can somehow encapsulate what exactly I’m feeling at a time when I have done something that I want to take a moment to recognize. Quick Sip Reviews hit 5000 reviews. Yay.

Quick Thoughts - Burning

So I think a lot about burnout, in part because it means so many different things. There’s a general idea out there that burnout is what happens when you do too much for too long. You’re a rocketship on your way to Mars, and something...goes wrong. A part of you flares and goes dark, and there’s just. No. Easy. Fix. The aftermath can be intense and prolonged. Typically, in the spheres that I follow, people talk about creative burnout, where after pushing and pushing and pushing something just kinda stops. And there’s no forcing it back.

4000 Reviews: An Introspective

A Look Back

Every now and then I get to check in with my reviewing, for a number of reasons.

1. I am tired, and if I don’t recognize my own milestones and achievements, it seems unending and impassable.

2. I think some introspection is healthy in order to avoid getting stuck in patterns that might not be working.

3. I genuinely like thinking critically about reviewing, about my methods, and about SFF as a field.

So that said, I’ll begin as I normally do with some background. I got into reviewing a while ago, probably in 2011 or so, with a personal blog that is luckily not on the internet any longer. I did all sorts of book reviews, D&D commentary, and whatever else struck me. I really wasn’t on social media and I’d be surprised if anyone ever visited or remembers it. But it captures a bit of my approach to blogging and being an internet person, meaning mostly that I've always liked the work for its own sake, and thrown it at the internet with some abandon even when I don't get much feedback.

A Huge Thank You!

Hi all!

I’m super excited to say that I’m a Hugo finalist! Twice, actually! For the second year in a row I have been nominated in the Best Fan Writer category, and, rather surprising me this year, Quick Sip Reviews has also been nominated in the Best Fanzine category. My eternal gratitude goes out to everyone who nominated me and QSR for this honor!

I am, as with most things, pulled between feelings at all of this. Mostly, I am so grateful for all the people who have helped to make Quick Sip Reviews what it is, and who have helped me find a place in fandom that is personally rewarding as well as appreciated. It’s easy to feel alone as a fan in SFF. For me, at least, being geographically rather removed from a vibrant SFF community, most of my footprint has been online, most of the people who have helped me and people I have in turn reached been those I have never met in person. Part of what pushed me to start QSR was that feeling of isolation and loneliness, and so to be recognized for my work online, as an advocate for and critic of short fiction, is just amazing.

Because even as I started the project and my work online, I have hardly been alone. I have been helped by so many, encouraged by so many, that it would be impossible to list them all. But I do want to take the time to say my thanks to a number of people who have helped to make these nominations possible. And I know, this is normally saved for an acceptance speech at the awards themselves, but as there is no way that I can attend this year, and because last year I didn’t publicly thank those who helped me get to be a Hugo Award finalist, I do want to take the time now to say a few words, if for no other reason than it’s always good to say, and to recognize those who have helped me.

So I want to thank The G and Vance and all the Nerds of a Feather crew for giving me my first real home in fandom I could be proud of. Thanks to A.C. Wise, who might be the kindest person in SFF, the most supportive of new voices and just an amazing advocate for short SFF as a writer, editor, and fan. Thanks to K. Tempest Bradford for giving me a boost just when I needed it. Thanks to Ana and Thea at The Book Smugglers for being awesome in general and for making me a part of the Smuggler Army. To Nicasio Reed for spending so much time talking Garak with me, and for introducing me to so many amazing things. To R.B. Lemberg for always giving me advice I need to hear. To Sam J. Miller for being amazing and encouraging and for writing stories that make me cry on the regular. To the entirety of PQ because you are all wonderful. To Sigrid Ellis for all the support and wisdom. To all my patrons, without whom I would not be able to keep doing this, and who put up with me drunkenly reviewing kids’ books when it has nothing to do with short SFF.

Thanks to the SPACECATs for being a little pocket of awesome in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. And last and most, thanks to my amazing partner Matt, who has been with me through everything and who I am nothing without. I am so much better because of nem, and would not be a fraction of the reader or reviewer I am without nem to break down my expectations and my defenses and show me a universe so much darker and larger and more beautiful than anything I might have found on my own.

There are many others who I am probably forgetting to mention, too, who have been instrumental to me being in short SFF. Who have helped me to grow and learn the ropes. I feel often like I have unpopular opinions about reviewing and about talking about short SFF, but I suppose I have to revise that sentiment in the face of the support I receive. Definitely there are a lot of people who find what I do valuable, and I’ll not lie and say that doesn’t feel good. In turn, I appreciate all the writers, editors, readers, and fans who make short SFF a space that I want to be in. Not that it’s always easy, but having been a short SFF reviewer now for over five years, I’m still inspired and challenged by the work being created. I’m still in awe of the creativity and humbled by the bravery of so many excellent people.

So to you all, again, thank you! Whatever happens at the awards ceremony this year, it’s always rad as fuck to be recognized with a nomination, and I’ll try to earn the trust that’s been put in me by this honor. Cheers!

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2018 Year-in-Review

I made it! Dear readers, I was not sure if I was going to be able to write those words, given what 2018 has been. Personally and globally, this has been a hard year, and there have been many times I thought I would have to pause or quit entirely with my reviewing. But 2018 is officially over, and as I release my recommended reading list for 2018 I also want to pause and look back at my own year, offering a few words and a bunch of stats.

First, a huge thank you to all of my patrons and to everyone who has contributed to my ko-fi or my partner’s GoFundMe. Without you, none of this would be possible. Running Quick Sip Reviews and doing so much in terms of reading and reviewing is not without cost, especially time and opportunities, and without the support I’ve received this year from so many people I just wouldn’t be able to continue. As it is, I think I’ve turned in a pretty solid year of regular and (hopefully) thoughtful reviews and genre commentary. The numbers by month and then overall are below, and I’ll touch briefly on the numbers and then move into a little bit of the state of the field, and then close on my plans for 2019.

A Few Notes, On Reaching 3000 Reviews

So at first I wasn’t going to do anything real special for my 3000th review on Quick Sip Reviews. I just passed 1000 posts not long ago, which was also cool, but I’ve been a little busy with personal things for most of the last year and finding extra time to set aside to check in has been difficult. But I find myself with a small amount of time, and rather than push forward into more reviews, I think I’ll take a breath.

When I started QSR in January of 2015, it was for a number of reasons, most of which I’ve written about at some point. Love. Spite. Guilt. Hope. Whenever someone starts a fan project like this, there’s this question that tends to come up about who you’re doing it for. Especially with reviewing, there’s something of a debate about who you should be writing to. Are you writing reviews in order to steer people toward stories? To help people complicate their readings? To celebrate what’s being published? To try and influence awards?

I started reviewing at first purely selfishly. I was a writer just starting out and I was doing Critters (from which I still value the respectability policy because though it is designed for critique, I believe reviewers would be well suited to try and follow some of the guidelines, especially about grounding opinions in the language of opinions). And there was an email that Tangent Online was looking for reviewers, and a general plug that Tangent was good for reviews. I applied to that, I got accepted. I don’t want to spend too much time dragging Tangent. I don’t believe that it’s a good place for new reviewers, especially those who (like me) weren’t really aware of the legacy of the site and who (like me) weren’t on social media to the point that they could easily find out. People who know what it’s about and still do it, okay. But I personally found myself involved in something that I grew more and more uncomfortable with. Eventually I started QSR, trying to take advice that I saw from writers, from reviewers, from everyone.

And hey, it’s kinda worked out. I'm nominated for a Hugo Award this year largely on the back of my reviewing. I have a Patreon that is mostly supported because of my reviewing (which, by the way, if you've ever appreciated what I do, my Patreon is 100% what allows me to continue and I would love any level of support to continue). I have a column at The Book Smugglers because of my reviewing.

And here, at 3000 reviews, I just want to re-affirm some things about my reviewing, which isn’t really intended as advice, but I want to say. Keeping in mind that this is all just my opinion, my approach to what I do, what I have been doing for over four years now.

I don’t really review as a service to anyone but myself. Meaning, I read and review to try and expand my own understanding and enjoyment of short SFF, and life in general. My goal is not exactly to just find things that I like. My goal is to understand myself better. Why?

When I started reviewing, I was just coming to terms with my sexuality after a lifetime of repression, confusion, and harm both to myself and to others. I’m an introvert. I don’t have a large network of people IRL to talk to or interact with or anything. It was through reading and engaging with short SFF (and short SFF fandom) that helped me to figure myself out. That continues to help me figure myself out. It has not brought me great material wealth. It has not fixed all the ways that I am broken or the world around me is broken. But I continue to get a lot out of it. I continue to learn about me. For myself, that is certainly valuable. For readers of my reviews, I can only hope it is valuable, in the same way that people write fiction primarily to explore themselves and yet that exploration can resonate with readers. I try to remain honest, and hope that my exploration of short SFF through reviews resonates with others in a way that they find valuable.

To completely contradict my “this is not advice” statement above, if I had one piece of advice to give reviewers, it would be to try to not approach reviewing as if you know what’s good and what’s bad. Often, I find that reviews that seek to judge stories on some objective or outside measure don’t really help the reviewer grow or change or improve. As a reviewer or as a person. And if our goal is not to improve as people, to challenge ourselves and better understand and interact with our world and ourselves, then what is the goal? What better goal is there?

But back to me. Because this is a post about me doing something. Having done something. Having reached a milestone. Maybe. Certainly, I feel like I’ve grown in doing it. I don’t feel done. And I still make a lot of mistakes. But. A breath. A recognition.

And hey, some thanks, primarily to the Nerds of a Feather crew for helping me out of a bad situation and giving me a much healthier place to be in fandom. To A.C. Wise for always being so awesome and encouraging to me from Day 1. And to K. Tempest Bradford who gave me the time of day when I was still very very new at this and gave me a boost when I needed it. And for every reader and writer who has either appreciated what I've done or told me what I was doing wrong. And really, especially to those who have pointed out ways that I could improve and ways I could learn better how to cause less harm.

I try to read enthusiastically. Compassionately. Respectfully. And as thoroughly as I can. I don’t often think of myself as overly positive. Doing so would insult the people who have been hurt by things I’ve written (and I do not doubt there have been those hurt by things I’ve written). It also, in my opinion, fails to value engaging with stories and trying to judge them not by some objective rubric but by how well they accomplish what I feel they set out to do. Yes, it’s a subjective way of reading and valuing stories. But it’s honest. And I find reviewers who are honest about their opinions to be more valuable than those who hide behind assertions disguised as truth.

I hope I never get to the point where reading and reviewing feel like an obligation or chore. I have commitments now to read and review a lot, but though these are things I depend on for money and, by extension, to live, I still feel I come to reviewing because I need it. Because I’m hungry for it. Because I’m not done figuring myself out, and I never want to be.

So for now, a breath. A little bow.

And the work continues.

Cheers!

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Checking in with Short SFF Reviewing - early 2018 edition

I wrote a version of this post late in 2017, when I was not in a great headspace to do it. My own journey into and through short SFF reviewing is...complicated and full of some rather intense feelings, so please excuse me (and also you’re welcome) for not posting that and instead probably having a drink and venting to my partner instead (maybe petting a cat?). I have weird feelings writing something like this, because I dislike reducing things, and I know that no matter how complete I try to be, I’ll miss a lot of people doing amazing work and if those people see this post, it might hurt. I know from experience (a certain post still haunts me because of how it struck me and continues to strike me) that it’s an awful feeling. But I do want to take a moment to check in with short SFF reviewing, because I love it and because I think it’s important, and because I want to cheer a bit at some of the things I’ve been noticing.

Mainly, I want to take a moment to collect here a taste of what’s out there, to list some of the amazing projects where people are reviewing short SFF. Some of these things are very new, but for me it paints a much fuller and more vibrant picture of what’s going on in the reviewing field. So first, a list (fyi, all of these people qualify as Fan Writers if you’re looking for people to maybe nominate for Hugos. I've also included links where I could find them on where you can support these people and their work):

A.C. Wise does amazing work with Words for Thought at Apex Magazine (as well as Women to Read at The Book Smugglers and even more work at her blog). Her reviews are deep, considered, and substantial, and she is a champion of short SFF and short SFF reviewing. (ko-fi)

Brandon O’Brien has begun The Jewelry Box at Strange Horizons, which looks at short fiction and poetry (something I am so excited to see). It’s very new but already has me hooked, and I can’t wait for more. (Patreon, ko-fi)

Bogi Takács is a phenomenal reviewer of long and short SFF, and works prolifically both on eir blog, Bogi Read the World, and on Twitter with #diversestories and #diversepoems (again, I love to see poetry reviews). (Patreon, ko-fi)

Maria Haskins has a monthly recommendation/review column called Salute Your Shorts at Barnes & Nobles SFF site, spinning out of her tireless work on her blog, and it casts a wide net, capturing the essence of a lot of excellent short SFF. (ko-fi)

Vanessa Fogg’s It’s a Jumble blog has been running for a while now, and I always love to see her insights into stories.

Ada Hoffmann runs Autistic Book Party, which looks at SFF works of all lengths, including a lot of short SFF. The reviews look at representation of autism as well as larger themes within works and are in depth and are just all around invaluable. (Patreon)

SFF Reviews is a relatively recent venture from Dr. Sara L. Uckelman and Sarah Grace Liu, among others, and brings a whole team of reviewers together to look at an impressive number of short SFF venues and stories. They’re releasing daily content now, and are very much worth checking out.

Natalie Luhrs’ In Short brings a sharp and critical eye to look at a number of short SFF stories. It’s also always worth it to check out the larger blog, Pretty Terrible, and the links roundups and other coverage of SFF as a field. (ko-fi)

Short & Sweet is a excellent column from forestofglory (who also does recommendations on her blog) at Lady Business, and covers a great range of stories, often focusing on positive SFF stories. (ko-fi)

There’s also Short Business at Lady Business as well, which is run by bookgazing and which provides a great range of reviews.

Jason Sanford has started #JasonReadsShortStories on Twitter and it is a great source for a lot of reviews/recommendations, set around the goal of reading/reviewing a short a day. These are also being collected at his blog in monthly posts. (Patreon)

Inspired in part by the above, Merc Fenn Wolfmoor is collecting A Few Favorite Fictions at their blog, Robots With Keyboards. Lots of awesome thoughts. (Patreon, ko-fi)

My own work both here at Quick Sip Reviews and at The Book Smugglers with X Marks the Story is a lot of my own contribution to the field. (Patreon, ko-fi)

And there are many, many more talented reviewers and recommenders out there that I am missing but this might be a good place to start. I am aware that many amazing reviewers aren’t as active or have lost their venues, too (K. Tempest Bradford at io9, Gillian Daniels at Fantastic Stories, and Haralambi Markov’s Innumerable Voices at Tor are a few that spring to mind). Which is partly why I am so happy to see more paying venues for short SFF reviews, and more short SFF reviewers able to try and fund themselves through Patreon, ko-fi, and more. Because reviewing/recommending does take a lot of time and energy and skill and it’s sort of important to eat and have a place to live.

And, of course, there are still venues around like Tangent and Rocket Stack Rank that I don’t often mention or like to highlight because of my own deep ideological differences and grievances with both places.

I could go on and on about short SFF reviewing and my particular approach to it. I’m not going to right now. It’s messy, and it leads me to the occasional Twitter rant, but for now I want to just leave this list here and say that I’m humbled to be able to read so many excellent thoughts by such a diverse and wonderful group of reviewers. I think the field can be even larger, and I’m so excited to see the ways that it might grow further in the coming months and years. If you ever want to start your own reviews, I welcome you and hey, I even have a post about that. If you just want to check out what’s being written about current short SFF around the internet, that’s fine too. Thanks for checking in.

Cheers!

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So You Want To Be A Short SFF Reviewer?

Hi. My name is Charles Payseur and I began reviewing short SFF in early 2014 for Tangent Online, with Dave Truesdale as my guide and mentor. If you shuddered just a bit there, I’m sorry. But imagine, little baby queer me, just getting into the field in my mid 20s, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed. And running into that. I’ve had an Education. One that’s been somewhat dearly bought, but here I am, closing in on four years later.

Short SFF is a field dominated by broken stairs and strange pitfalls. What's more, it seems to attract some (fairly loud) people who really like to make objective statements of merit with regards to stories and are absolute shit at admitting when they’re in the wrong while simultaneously being wrong fairly frequently and jerks generally. It's a field that chews and spits out a great many excellent reviewers while seeming to find time to praise and promote the most toxic and insensitive. It's often tiring, draining, and infuriating. But it's also kind of amazing. Welcome!

My general goal in this is just to give something of a guide for people wanting to get started in short SFF reviewing. Because the field needs more and more diverse voices if it's to self-govern away from the most toxic examples of short SFF reviewer. It's not a comprehensive guide, but I've left my contact info toward the bottom if you have any more questions. So yeah, let's get started!

Mapping Smutty SFF - Part 2: Market Forces

or
Goldilocks: Not Just a Character in My Gender-swapped Slashfic

 So starting out as a new writer and wanting to write SFF and basically finding that my brand of SFF isn’t considered Real SFF(TM)...wasn’t really an easy thing. Fuck, it still isn’t an easy thing, and it’s still something I struggle with all the time. As I talked about last time, the distance between what I call “Pro” SFF and what I call Smutty SFF is...rather large. This is maybe changing, fairly slowly, but market realities are something that crop up a lot when thinking about what to write and how to focus as a writer hoping to make money. Because thus enters the impossible task of balancing not self-rejecting and aiming your stories for venues you think you can sell to. It’s a task complicated by the lingering dread that, as a writer, you’ll always be wrong.

It’s a Goldilocks situation, but one in reverse and one that’s constantly shifting. If your story is too queer and happy or focuses too heavily on romance, it’s unlikely to fit in at SFWA-qualifying markets. If it doesn’t feature a Happily Ever After or Happily For Now ending, or if the brand of queer isn’t popular enough, it’s a harder sell to the larger romance presses. Instead of shooting for a happy medium between the two as being the perfect fit, market forces push writers to choose and embrace a binary system where SFF with queer romantic plots and SFF w/o queer romantic plots must be kept separate.

Obviously, there are some exceptions to the rule. Beneath Ceaseless Skies and The Book Smugglers have both put out a number of stories that feature strong and joyous queer relationships that split the distance between “just” SFF and SFF romance. Lethe Press puts out a lot that’s queer and SFF without necessarily focusing on romance, and even Dreamspinner has an imprint that is about explicitly queer characters but not romance. It’s out there, but it’s not all that talked about and when it is, it’s often from a lens of either a romance reader or a “just” SFF reader.

Market Spotlight: Beneath Ceaseless Skies

There’s aren’t too many SFWA-qualifying short fiction markets that seem especially keen to publish Smutty SFF, but BCS might be a great place to start if your style runs into fantasy. It’s not someplace that you’re going to be able to tune into every issue and find works that celebrate queer characters and relationships, but there are quite a few stories in its extensive backlist that fit the bill, and many that are presented in audio format as well. I am very impressed with the work that BCS does issue after issue to put out nicely paired stories, and quite often there is queer content, and occasionally there is queer romance as well, though as with many more “pro” venues, tragedy has a tendency to win out over HEA/HFN (but hey, I’m guilty of it, too…). It is fantasy-specific, but it’s also published some of my absolute favorite Smutty SFF stories full stop, including an amazing novella from R.B. Lemberg recently, “A Portrait of the Desert in Personages of Power.” People, go read it! BCS is also a non-profit, so give some support if you can!

And it’s a self-feeding problem. Because readers looking for or wanting SFF that falls into the area between SFF romance and SFF w/o romance can’t exactly trust either side to provide for them what they want. I know from experience that if you can’t find what you really want, you either make do or leave. Those who make due are essentially used to justify not diversifying content and those who leave are given up on. It’s what capitalism does, and it’s helped by a number of factors. The result is that it can often feel, as a writer, that there is no right decision. Even trying to write what I hope will sell instead of what I most want to write doesn’t mean that I will succeed, but it does mean that the writing itself is less rewarding.

Anecdote Time!

Here’s a real-life example. I decided not too long ego to start writing a novel, a SFF mystery with psychics that is not a romance but that has some queer sex and a lot of weird. And writing it terrifies me. Why? A few reasons, really. First, I have no idea what I’ll do with it when/if I finish it. Do I try to get an agent? Do I send it to a smaller queer press that does open submissions? What do I do? To be clear, I know many writers who have written novels that I would want desperately to read that either haven’t found representation or who did find representation but didn’t sell their works to publishers, or who are finding it very difficult to. Obviously, I want to tell these people “Keep writing!” “I believe in your work!” “I really fucking want to read your novel!” But I’m not a book buyer. I’m not an editor. In the face of a vast and, if not outright hostile, sharply apathetic market, what can you say to someone writing stories that might not fit.

This is all complicated, of course, by the fact that writing often works in reverse of most traditional professions. We do the work first and then try to get paid. How do I justify spending hour and hours, days and weeks and months, on a project that might earn me nothing? Or slightly north of nothing. I’ll let you in on a secret—I don’t make a lot of money. I spend my 40+ hours a week at a union print shop and I make enough to live, but not much more. There’s medical debt and the need for a newer car and trying to not let my home fall apart. I make a little extra doing writing and reviewing, but it’s only “extra” in that it’s not regular. At this point I basically need to be earning something on the side to help ease the financial strain/have any hope of surviving something going wrong. I doubt I’m the only Smutty SFF writer in such a situation, or for whom being able to earn actual substantive money off of writing would be transforming. Perhaps I should just shut up and get a part time job and give up on writing, on reviewing, or anything but making sure I’m financially secure. But writing and reading are some of the few things that I really like in life, and being told to give them up because my passion is not popular or marketable enough is...well, difficult.

Further, and as I said before, even if a book does see the light of day, it has to contend with the gatekeepers of the field, with award committees that don’t think it fits, with reviewers who want a book to conform to what they can recognize as either romance or “just” SFF. Having been reviewed widely for both SFF romance and “pro” SFF, I can tell you that the landscape is pretty fucking bleak. Those who review the most are often the most conservative when it comes to works that straddle genre lines, and often those who are the best suited to reviewing are more likely to be overwhelmed with the need out there for quality reviewing. I’ve seen reviews of my works that take issue with the fact that it’s either not romantic enough or too romantic, depending on where the story appeared at. And while negative reviews might not prevent me from selling future stories, they do impact readers, and by extension sales. It’s simply hard to build buzz for a project that most people have trouble placing, because the distance between SFF romance and “pro” SFF is so large. There are very few places that review both romance and non-romance SFF. There are fewer still that do so with an eye and appreciation for queer content. There are a few, but again, neither SFF romance nor “pro” SFF are super welcoming for a newer writer who doesn’t quite fit in anywhere.

But okay, so what? I really don’t want to just make this series about me and my woes. So what do I suggest? For writers...do what you can. I hope you can write the stories you truly want to write, and I hope that they sell. If they don’t, and you need money, then I’m so sorry. You will ultimately have to decide how much to try and make your writing fit better so that you can tell as close to the stories you want most to tell as possible while still selling. It still might not work. There are no guarantees. Fuck. I’d say don’t discount the small presses, especially those who seem to be trying to put out what you’re writing. Often it means less money than you’d like, but often it does mean some money, and you’re splitting it with people who believe in your book and want to publish your stories.

If you’re a reader...consider becoming a reviewer as well. And, wherever possible, search out small-press books that sound good. Buy them if you have the money. Or get your library to order them. Advocate for the books you want, signal boost the projects you’re excited about. Be loud. Try not to be an asshole.

Market Spotlight: The Book Smugglers

So this is both a venue for stories and reviews. Starting life as a review blog, The Book Smugglers have since branched out into publishing as well and they are amazing. Their stories often defy genre expectations and get into delightfully smutty territory. “Superior” by Jessica Lack was one of my favorite stories last year, and Hurricane Heels by Isabel Yap is OMGlob the best thing ever! If you are not reading the amazing stories they put out, you should be. And The Book Smugglers is also one of the best SFF review sites around, reading widely and not shying away from books that are marketed more as romance. They are a vital and affirming link connecting the more “pro” SFF venues and the SFF romance venues. From short stories to novellas to novels, they put out a lot of amazing stuff and a vast majority of it is joyously queer. Definitely go out and buy the hell out of their books and just pay attention. They are doing amazing work, and I hope they continue for a long, long time.

The market is a strange and often opaque thing. It serves financial interests first, which is to say it’s not often very concerned with justice. Its favorite phrase is “vote with your wallet,” perhaps the single least democratic phrase I have ever heard. But it is the reality of the situation, and it doesn’t mean that everyone making decisions based off of market realities is a terrible person. It does make it very difficult for those writing outside the more traditional lanes of SFF or romance, though. And it makes the question of whether to attempt to conform or to attempt to blaze a new trail all the more difficult and dangerous. For those having to make those decisions, fucking good luck. I hope you find joy and success.

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Mapping Smutty SFF - Part 1: Getting Started

A while ago I tweeted a thread that got a bit of attention that was about the distance between “pro” SFF and what I call smutty SFF and how frustrating and disappointing it can be writing in the chasm between those two perceived genres, especially as a queer writer wanting to write queer characters. It was about feeling like I have to make choices when I sit down to write what mask I’m going to wear—what market I’m going to write toward. If I want to write a fun and pulpy queer romp, do I try to make it fit into the mold of “pro” SFF or do I try to get it to fit into the smuttier mold of romance/erotica. These are creative decisions as well as financial ones, and apparently I’m not the only one who struggles with the same worries, insecurities, and rages—the same compromises and capitulations.

So what do I do? Well, I write about it! So welcome to a new blog series of indefinite length and scope that will be looking to examine more the weird intersection of SFF and queerness. A lot of what I’m going to talk about is anecdotal—there will be a lot of me talking about what I’ve done, noticed, observed, experienced, etc. There will be some advice and there will be some warnings and there will be information both general and very, very specific. I’m going to try with most installments to look at markets that accept queer content of various flavors and pay. I’m also going to go through some of my though processes for approaching these markets and stories and what I’ve learned from reading many of them for a number of years now. It’s weird because I feel like a new writer still, inexperienced and madly paddling to try and stay above water and mostly failing. Even so, I want to offer what I can because I know how alone it can feel for someone in this place between forms and genres and expectations.

For now, I guess we’ll see how response to this goes, but I hope you’ll come with me as I talk a bit about smutty SFF. As a reader and a writer, there’s a lot to learn, and a lot of great stories to create and discover. 

Quick Thoughts - Notes from Why Speculate?

Hi all! So there's a local writing organization where I live and part of what they do is host talks on writing/writerly-related topics. I was fortunate enough to speak to some of the people involved in the organization and set up a craft talk about speculative fiction and that went down this last week. It was...nervous for me, because it's hard to feel legit as someone who drunkenly reviews Goosebumps online but at the same time I know that part of the point of the talk is to reach new writers who might not know much about the field. Having had to figure out a lot of it on my own/with similarly new people, I know how suck that can be. So I talked about rejections and payments and contracts and all that good meat-and-potatoes things that college didn't talk about but for a ten minute hand wave at the end of one class once (that was optional to attend). That part of the talk was largely me just talking, but I started off the talk with an examination of what I feel makes Speculative Fiction distinct and meaningful. I want to share that part of the talk.

The whole thing was recorded and at some point I will try to find where it's been posted so that people can see the whole awkward mess, but for now I hope that maybe you'll find some of this interesting. Okay, full text after the bump:

Quick Thoughts - Some Notes from WriteFest!

I wrote this up ahead of time for my talk at WriteFest! which turned out to be more of a Q&A thing so I didn't actually use it. So here you go! Some thoughts on reviewing! (I mean, I did get to a lot of the material, but still...)

Hi everyone and thanks for showing up for this. Reviewing is one of those things that is rather near and dear to my heart, so having the chance to talk about it is something of a treat. I want to start by returning a bit to the description that I wrote up for this, because I feel that's probably what's going to give you the best idea of how I approach reviewing.

"Sometimes being a reader can feel like participating in a scavenger hunt held at a minefield—maybe you'll find something awesome, and maybe you'll be blown to bits. Within this landscape, reviewers can act as minesweepers, going ahead to give readers some guidance about what's out there. Charles Payseur, who publishes daily fiction and poetry reviews at Quick Sip Reviews, tackles not just the Hows, but also the Whys of reviewing, particularly in speculative fiction."

So that's…rather dramatic. But I think that it's the case for a lot of people out there. I find it difficult to watch television. Not because I don't like shows but because the popular media is so dominant-driven that it becomes an exercise in how much abuse I can stand. How much erasure? How much insensitive and awful language and storylines and "character development" can I handle? Part of why I like reading a bit more is because it's a bit less profitable and the barriers to entry are fairly low, so there are works being created that are just what I want to experience. That don't hurt. That I love. The problem is finding them. Knowing where to look. And that's where I find reviews are incredibly useful.

Let me say that there's a great many reasons why people review. Some want to become authorities on a particular form or genre. They want to be engaged in creating a canon or they want to help determine the boundaries of genres or any number of other things that essentially boil down to gatekeeping. They want to be able to say what is and what is not, what should and what should not be considered when talking about science fiction or literary fiction or horror. When they review they might refuse to look at certain works because they don't cleave close enough to what they expect and enjoy. This is not the kind of reviewer I hope to be.

And there are reviewers out there who just want to express their opinions as honestly as they can. They want to go onto Goodreads and Amazon and rank what they liked good and what they didn't bad and concentrate mostly on their immediate reaction to a story or work. This is actually much closer to what I do but it's not quite what I aim for.

For me, reviewing is about a few things. First and perhaps more importantly, it's about reacting. I'm very big on owning your opinions so my goal as a reviewer is to read a story and engage with it and react to it. I don't think there's anything wrong necessarily with people who stop there, because I do think that these reviews have value. But I do believe that there's a bit more to be mined when it comes to crafting effective reviews and an effective reviewing ethos. Because aside from just reacting to a piece (I liked it! I hated it!), I also want to examine my reaction and reflect on what about the story made me react the way I did. How was the story structured or executed that made me love it? What did I love about it and what maybe didn't work so well for me? I do this for a number of reasons and the first is purely selfish—because it's an act of self reflection that helps me to better understand myself.

The second reason is that as a reader this is the kind of review that I find the most helpful. And helpful, what's that? Well, for me this kind of review is the most helpful by…just about every metric. For looking for what I might want to read or enjoy, or for helping me to firm up my thoughts about a piece afterward, I think I personally want more than just a number grade and a sentence of commentary that might only be a genre description. A great science fiction story about a sentient cat jewel thief and the hard-drinking human detective tasked with tracking them down. 4/5 stars. Well, okay, that does tell me a few things. Like…genre. Like…maybe the mood of the piece? That reviewer seems to have liked it, so maybe I will? But it's quite possible that I'd pick up the story and hate it. Maybe the reviewer really likes misogynist garbage? Maybe three quarters of the way through there's a graphic torture scene that I'd find triggering.

When I approach reviewing, I try to live by the simple advice of "be the change you want to see in the world." So I try to be the reviewer that I want to see. I want to provide people enough information, enough of a map, to be able to avoid the mines that are buried throughout what is written and published. For me that map covers only a fairly small portion of what is produced at the short SFF level. It's about all I'm capable of physically keeping up with, though, and I try to approach and engage with every original story and poem that the publications I cover put out.

Which sort of brings me away from the Why of what I do to the How of it. There are many strategies and ways of reviewing. My how was to approach the field as widely as I could because I felt there was a lack of reviewing being done that covered complete issues. Or, a lack of reviewing that I found valuable. But it's by no means the only way of doing things. I also do a monthly review of my favorite stories, which is a lovely way to get into reviewing anything. Now, unless you're reading a lot of novels a month, this is perhaps a model that works better for short stories and poetry, but this is a way to engage with a number of stories and be thorough but also to be positive. To talk up the stories you like instead of talking down the stories you did not. It still provides a map, but more for people flying around looking for safe places to land. And there are a number of people doing rec lists and review roundups and they tend to go over well and are fun and are useful. I made mine into a tasting guide where I would pair stories with thematically appropriate booze. It's great. I love it. But there's a lot that you can do with that.

Aside from that, though, which does sort of require a venue to post your reviews (a blog or facebook or something), there's other ways of reviewing. You can stick to amazon and goodreads. I like reading reviews on both that are done well. And this kind of reviewing also has the benefit of really helping promote works that you like. I've heard from publishers and people writing longer works that getting reviews on amazon and goodreads is important. It really helps to sell things. Similarly, reviewing can be as brief as posting on twitter or facebook (twitter might require a thread to really get into a review) but it's also a great way to make reviewing communal and give you a chance to maybe engage with other readers. You can also become a reviewer for an existing publication, either for free or for money. I reviewed for Book Reporter for a few years and it was a great experience, not least of all because you do tend to get free ARCs and things like that of very recent books coming out. And there are review sites that will actually offer money in exchange for reviews, though that can be rather competitive and difficult to break into.

Or, if you're like me, you can take the show to Patreon and try to earn some for doing it all on your own. It has its own problems, and it's not like most people can just jump onto Patreon and be successful, but it is a route that you can go to try and ease the financial and temporal burdens associated with reviewing. Whether you're paid or not, though, reviewing can be a powerful tool, and a great avenue of expression.

Reviewing is, after all, its own creative endeavor. Reviews have value as pieces of writing that can be moving and beautiful and inspiring in their own write, completely apart from the works that inspired them. Which, maybe I'm weird, but I approach short SFF as a fan so I feel that in many ways what reviewers do is like what fanfiction writers do. We take this source material and we craft something inspired by it, something that both reflects back on the source and perhaps reveals something new as well. At least, in theory that's how I think of it, as fan-nonfiction.

So to close things up before I move to questions, I guess I just want to say that if you want to review, it's can be a wonderful and rewarding and artistic and expressive experience. If you keep at it and keep an awareness about what you are doing, you will learn so much about yourself and about the works that you review, and about how stories are effective. It has certainly made me a better fiction writer, I believe, and a better poetry writer, because you essentially are teaching yourself about how writing works for you. It's incredibly personal, but it's also something that can be shared and can be valuable to a huge number of people. It can also suck, and I don't want to ignore that, because it can feel like no one cares and no one is listening, because it feels like it's an impossible task and not worth the time or effort. But to really be successful at reviewing, just like anything, the work has to be worth it. You have to love it in some way. And as long as you do, it's pretty much impossible to fail at it. Thank you!

YEAR OF GARAK, part 2: DS9 episodes "The Wire," "In the Pale Moonlight," & "Afterimage"

Welcome back to The Year of Garak!

Lat time I looked at a tie-in novel that explored the relationship between Garak and Sisko and also followed up on "In the Pale Moonlight," and so I thought it would be worth pursuing to look at some of the DS9 episodes that informed that novel and also will inform a lot of the works coming after this. Namely, the trio of "The Wire," "In the Pale Moonlight," and "Afterimage." These are some of the strongest Garak episodes, and I'm very luck to be joined by fellow Garak enthusiast and writer Nicasio Andres Reed to discuss all things Garak. Warning, this is a fairly long post. And only one part of a much longer conversation that we'll be having throughout the Year of Garak. So get comfortable and settle in for what I hope is an interesting examination of these episodes and the character of Garak.

Oh, and in case you don't know my guest today:

Nicasio Andres Reed is a Filipino-American writer and poet whose work has appeared in Queers Destroy Science Fiction, Uncanny Magazine, Strange Horizons, Shimmer, Liminality, Inkscrawl, and Beyond: The Queer Sci-Fi and Fantasy Comics Anthology. Nico currently lives in Madison, WI. Find him on Twitter @NicasioSilang.

so without further delay, let's delve into the episodes!

Quick Thoughts - Some Small Changes Coming

Hi all! I've been thinking recently that my level of output for Quick Sip Reviews has been getting…well, slightly more than I can handle. Which is why I'm planning on making a few rather minor changes to the way I do things. But before you think that I'm going to be cutting reviews or anything like that, please remain calm. The changes are slight and designed mainly to streamline what I do and give myself permission not to stress out about certain things.

First and mainly, I will probably be stepping back from having a Quick Thoughts post every week. Now, I love writing things directly and I think that many of my Thoughts posts have been some of my best work here at QSR, but I also know that I struggle some weeks to find topics and things to write about. I'm not getting rid of Quick Thoughts, but I do think that I'm not going to push so hard to have something every single week. For instance, I'm going to be running some of my extra projects like Year of Garak and probably Quick Questions on Saturdays, which will mean that I won't be having so many weeks of having a post up every single day.

Now, if you still want to hear me talk about things every week, I have been doing a weekly post on my patreon where I give little updates and I will continue to do those. Speaking of my patreon, I think I'm going to restructure it a little bit and streamline some of the reward tiers to de-clutter things. I want things to make sense and make sure that anyone awesome enough to support the work I do here at QSR is completely satisfied with being a patron. Which, if you're looking for ways to make sure that QSR can continue for a long time to come, please consider becoming a patron. It means a lot to me and it does help me stay on top of life and get my reviews done.

In the grand scheme of things, not much will be changing. My Patreon has added a bit to my workload and I just want to make sure that I can maintain what I'm doing. I do struggle some with feeling that I have to do a certain amount every week and every month or I'm somehow failing. At being the reviewer that I want to be. At being a resource that people can use to find and think about great stories. Even into my third year now I feel weird about everything and like I'm not exactly "legit." So it's difficult to find that I'm struggling to keep up with everything even when I recognize that I'm writing more than I ever have for QSR. Because the last two months I've done more than fifty thousand words in nonfiction (reviews, thoughts, patreon stuff, etc.) for QSR and that's not a pace I can keep up indefinitely. So I'm going to try and practice just a bit of self care and hope it doesn't negatively effect your experience. Thank you for being awesome and for reading!

All the best,

Charles Payseur

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Quick Thoughts - Some Things I Do

I feel weird saying that I'm busy, but in some ways it's difficult to avoid. I mean, I feel like this is an excuse I have to give fairly regularly when faced with someone asking if I'd like to do something. Or…maybe it just feels like an excuse because whenever I say it (or write it) I inevitably feel guilty about it. After all, I argue with myself, look at all the time I have. Look at how much I do that I do because I want to and not really because it makes me money or furthers my…career? Ah, sometimes I feel that I'm just so desperate to keep my head above water, to try to find some meaning to my life, that I lose sight of things. That I get lost in the pressure to perform and to justify my existence. And it's hard not to.

But for the sake of argument I will say that I try to stay busy. I am passionate about what I do and believe that it has value. Most of the time, at least. Sometimes I'm convinced that I'm just fooling myself and there's no point and at those times I try to remind myself that hey, I also love what I do here. I love reading. I love reviewing. I love SFF. Things at the moment are…a little stressful. For a number of reasons. But that doesn't mean that I'm slowing down. Today I just want to go over some of the projects that I do and will be doing this year. In part this is just to get it all straight in my head. In part this is to let people know what I'm doing, because maybe it will help people better direct their queries to me and also because it might clear a few things up without my having to say no to anyone. So, a list:

QUICK SIPS – First, here is a list of what I review. It's fairly current and I have no real intention of changing it for 2017 now that I've made some adjustments. This is the bulk of what I do here at QSR and that's not about to change, but to editors/people wondering if I'd be interested in adding magazines/publications to my reviewing roster, I'm sorry, but probably not. If you really, really think it's something I'll want to read, then of course you can send out a query, but as far as regular publications go, I'm pretty full and adding more would mean I'd have more publications than days in the month, which is not a situation I really want.

REGULAR SIPS – Though I'm not really looking for more in the way of regular short fiction publications, if you have some single work that runs on the longer side, it's possible (though still not incredibly likely) that I'll be interested. My Regular Sips are often for things like novellas that are published on their own. I haven't done very many but I am interested in reading more novellas and this is something that's less time-sensitive so I'm a bit more willing to give things a chance when it's just one work and I can fit it into my schedule. I'm still rather picky and still can't fit in a whole lot, but if you have a project that you think would be a good fit, then feel free to query me and we'll go from there.

QUICK SPOTLIGHTS – Similarly, I've just done my first spotlight, and it was rather fun, so it might be nice to do more occasionally. These would be for authors who maybe feel their work flies under the radar but who still publishes enough that I could look at three or four stories. Like with Regular Sips, I can't guarantee that I'll be able to say yes, because these are things that have to work around my Quick Sips, but it's something I want to try out and am interested to see where it leads. I'll probably give some preference to writers whose stories I've read and enjoyed otherwise, but even if I've never read one of your pieces, for now at least feel free to ask.

SMUTTY SUNDAYS – This is actually something I really want to do more but am hampered because there's money concerns. I've put this as the $75 goal on my Patreon and if I can hit that I'll be able to start reviewing erotic speculative fiction from all over. If this is something you want, I encourage you to spread the word and hopefully we can raise support of Quick Sip Reviews to the level that I'll be able to consistently branch out into smutty good times. When/If I do get to this I will probably opt to pick what I want to review and buy it, though, so perhaps hold back on querying. I mean, suggestions are always welcome, but as this isn't a thing quite yet I'm just saying now that I'm not accepting anything to review quite yet.

QUICK QUESTIONS – These are interviews and are also on my Patreon as my $100 goal. Now, I'm doubting I'm going to suddenly shoot up that high any time soon, so this is a bit more of a humble project at the moment, and one that I'm probably not going to be able to do very often yet. So please keep in mind that queries about interviews will probably be met with reluctant refusals. I'm trying to balance out everything that I do but reviews are still my primary focus. Given more time and resources I'd love to do more interviews, but for now it's not something I can say yes to often.

THE YEAR OF GARAK – I'm doing this and I don't care if no one wants it. I've technically rolled it into my $50 goal on my Patreon but that's really just to increase the scope of it so that I can do something every month. It's limited in that it's only 2017, but it's something I very much want to do and I'm trying not to feel guilty about it.

LIVER BEWARE! – These are my drunken Goosebumps reviews and I do these, at the moment, exclusively for my patrons. But as part of my $50 goal I'm going to be migrating some from Patreon to QSR for everyone to enjoy. Not all of them, but enough so that maybe more people will be interested in checking out my Patreon to get access to the rest. These have been very fun and I'm quite glad I get to continue them.

#PATREMONDAY – I've fallen a bit behind on this but this is where I gush about Patreon projects that look awesome. If you're on Patreon and think I might love what you're doing, feel free to let me know about it!

ANTHOLOGIES – Ah, this is probably where I fail the most but it is rather difficult to find the time to review entire anthologies around everything else that I do. For now, I'm rather full up on anthologies and am not looking for more, but there is a part of me that wishes I could. I will start to get some up, but this project is still something I aspire to do more than am capable of doing. So while, again, I won't say people can't ask, I probably won't be able to say yes to any queries concerning anthologies. My apologies.

And that's about everything that I do. Which, yeah, is kind of a bit. Probably more than I can healthily do, considering that I also try and want to write fiction. But there are the projects that I'm currently engaged in. For more, please check out my Patreon or follow me on social media. Most of what I do is provided free to everyone thanks to the amazing support I receive from my Patrons. If you find any of this exciting or valuable, please consider becoming a Patron yourself—Quick Sip Reviews would love to have your support!

All the best,

Charles Payseur

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Quick Thoughts - "Snow Devils"

Okay, when I said I had some other, non-lumberjack stories coming out I was kind of thinking this wouldn't be my next one to appear. But despite it being my most recent sale, "Snow Devils" is out in the wild and does fit in thematically rather nicely with some of my other pieces recently. It appears in Persistent Vision, fyi, and the art is amazing.

Art by S. Bell

Quick Thoughts - Some Gay Lumberjacks, I Guess

So apparently January has been a little busy. Rants and Sippy Awards and with everything happening I've been a little neglectful to come on here and talk about some of my recent publications. So today I'll be talking about my last two pro SFF stories, "The Death of Paul Bunyan" and "A Lumberjack's Guide to Dryad Spotting."

Art by Dario Bijelac

Quick Thoughts - (Posi/Nega)tivity in SFF Short Fiction Reviewing

Hello, Dear Readers. Do you have your torches and pitchforks ready? Good, because there's something we need to kill with fire. It is the idea that SFF reviewing (and especially SFF short fiction reviewing) is overwhelmingly positive. Or even, really, mostly positive.

Quick Thoughts - 2016

Welcome to the last day of the year. The last day of 2016, which has, probably for every person reading this, been a year of highs and lows, hopes and despairs. For me, at least, it has been a very difficult year peppered by moments of beauty, joy, and love.

Now, 2016 isn't quite done here at Quick Sip Reviews. If I had really pushed myself I could have closed out the original fiction, but I'm completely okay with one 2016 review tipping over into 2017. Just as I am sure I'll be back to talk about my favorite 2016 SFF numerous times over the next few months. It happens. But I'm already reading into 2017, so I think it's time to look back.

QSR is almost two years old. I kicked the blog off in very early 2015, and at the close of 2016 I have reviewed close to 1500 short stories and probably more like 1800 individual works of SFF, including fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. And really not all that much has changed since I started, though I will admit my reviews have become longer and more in depth. I have probably developed a pretty obvious style and formula for reviewing, which hopefully people don't mind. My reasons for doing this work, at least, haven't really changed, though I admit that 2016 was challenging on many fronts when it came to maintaining my momentum and not faltering or stopping.

I will give myself this credit: I read and review a lot of works. Not as many as I want to. If I could make a living just reading and reviewing, I would do it in an instant and would expand what I covered. Alas, there are stories I miss. There are venues I don't get to. But, I do get to a lot. In 2016 I have written over 400,000 words of reviews and nonfiction for Quick Sip Reviews. That is a lot. I don't want to seem arrogant saying it. But I do want to say it, because sometimes it doesn't feel that I do much here. There are certainly days where I feel like I'm just pretending. That real reviewers do things differently. They review for publications that pay them, they strive for objectivity, they participate in building a canon of what people should and shouldn't read. And I…don't do any of that. I get paid now, thanks to the wonderful and amazing people backing my Patreon. But I don't pretend at objectivity and I certainly don't want to build a canon. I want people to read as widely as they can. To surprise themselves with what is out there and what they might enjoy. Canon is a bit like cannons to me—useful to some and devastating to others, with the difference being what side of the power divide you're on.

But 2016 has been a rather big year for QSR, still. I actually see people reading my reviews and passing them along. Which is bizarre. I mean, it's also sort of the point of reviewing, that people read the reviews and find them helpful. But it's a bit weird to see people and publications that I admire seem to actually…like…my reviews. o.O And I have been able to participate in some great projects because of my reviewing and I've met (via the internet) some amazing people, too. Also in real life, I guess, because this was the first year that I was actually recognized while at WisCon (another cool but weird/frightening experience). Already it looks like 2017 will have its share of interesting things to do and to see and to participate in.

And 2016 has seen me start my Patreon, which has been a great experience for me, personally as well as in terms of getting paid for doing reviews. I absolutely appreciate everyone who has chipped in and I hope that everyone is satisfied with the content I provide. And if anyone out there hasn't yet found my Patreon and is interesting in helping to support the work I do here at QSR, please do check it out and see if it's something you'd be interested in. Every little bit helps!

As a writer, 2016 has been another improvement. I've sold more and managed to reach SFWA qualifying status. So that's certainly something to be happy about. My story "The Death of Paul Bunyan" was the last original story that Lightspeed released this year, and 2017 will be FULL OF MY FICTION, so it's something to look forward to. Now, admittedly, there have been some setbacks. Many of my queer SFF erotic stories have been coming out through Torquere Press and that has been a bit of a mess, tbh. I really don't want to say much about it, because I don't know how this will pan out, but as of now at the very least I'll have 5 stories without homes and I don't have a great idea what to do with that. We shall see. Still, 2017 won't be without my queer speculative smut, as I have at least a few steamy stories coming out that I'll hopefully be able to give more details on soon.

But yeah, 2016 is almost over. Which is conflicting, because especially at the end it's been heavy with pain and exhaustion. At the same time, the future is in many ways uncertain. It looms like a mountain to be climbed, and after 2016 my metaphoric arms are rather tired. But the work is worth it. The goal is worthy. The hope is…still burning. So yes, goodbye to 2016 and hello to 2017. I'm kicking things off with the first category of the Second Annual Sippy Awards tomorrow, so look forward to that. Cheers, my friends!

All the best,

Charles Payseur

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