In the 5th episode of SH@25, editor Kat Kourbeti sits down with author E.M. Faulds to chat about her 2022 story Broken Blue, combining Eldritch horrors with mundane moments, writing female characters, and finding the strength to write during hard times.

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Episode show notes:

• Visit E.M. Faulds' website and follow her on social media (BlueSky / Instagram)
• Read E.M.'s microfiction over your coffee break on her Ko-fi page (and throw her some change while you're there)
• Read E.M.'s story Broken Blue in our archives
• Buy a copy of Gallus, the 2024 Glasgow SF Writers' Circle anthology
• Check out Nova Scotia Vol II from Luna Press
• Check out Ada King, E.M.'s novel, and Under the Moon, her short story collection featuring all-female protagonists
• Find more links to E.M.'s work, as well as recommendations and links to other media we talked about, as you read the transcript below.

Transcript

Kat Kourbeti: Hello, Strangers, and welcome to SH at 25, a 25th anniversary celebration of Strange Horizons. I'm your host, Kat Kourbeti, and it is my privilege today to welcome you to another episode that looks back at the history and impact of Strange Horizons on the speculative genres. Today's guest, E. M. Faulds, was first published with us a couple of years back, and has also published a couple of novels, and is part of the very well known, very well connected, very productive writers group out of Glasgow, Scotland.

I'm very happy to chat to you. Hello. Welcome.

E.M. Faulds: Hello, yes, the acronym is the GSFWC, which stands for Glasgow SF Writers Circle, yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Every one of you I've met is amazing. And because I also run a writers group in London, you guys are like goals in terms of how you do things, how you've got your events and your own anthology. And I'm just like, wow, I love this. I love this for writers' groups to lift each other up.

So I want to talk to you about that today. And just about your career in general, and your life, and how Strange Horizons has fit into it all. So, first of all, I want to ask, how long have you lived in Scotland?

E.M. Faulds: I moved up here in 2006 to move in with my partner, who rapidly became my husband, and before that I was living in England, and before that I was born and raised in Australia. So, moved around.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I've lived in the UK for like 16 years and I feel like you live someplace a long time, it just kind of like really embeds itself no matter where you're from. But there's also an aspect of that, that means you're a little removed from both where you are and where you've left. It's that kind of strange feeling. And Scotland has a lot of really rich literary history, which I'm sure that plays into your relationship with writing.

E.M. Faulds: Oh, 100%. Yeah. But it's also, like, very intimidating, because there's these kind of, working class heroes. There's, anything from Robert Burns' poetry to Alasdair Gray, who wrote Lanark, which is very prominent around here, especially in the, let's say, weirder fiction. Speculative, but also, you know, Earth based kind of fiction. But yeah, I mean, it is an incredibly inspiring place to be.

Kat Kourbeti: And the Glasgow SF Writers Circle that you're a part of, also has its own rich history of folks in the speculative genres who have popped off, not just recently, but for the whole history of the writers group, and you guys really support each other. I've seen this at cons in the UK and it warms my heart to see, like, writers groups really band together and elevate each other's, whatever it is, your novella, your short story, your novel.

E.M. Faulds: Yeah, so it's really great to have a crew. You know when you're going around somewhere and you've got someone, you've got a familiar face to meet up with. In fact, some of the members of the Circle I met for the first time at a convention elsewhere in the UK. So it's really fun and it's very supportive, and it doesn't matter how long ago you were a member of the Circle because, if you like the idea anyway, you will always be part of the family as it were. So that's wonderful. We've had a few names like, Hal Duncan is one that most people know. And more recently Eliza Chan, who was New York Times bestselling author recently with Fathomfolk, who now lives in Manchester, but used to come to the Circle when she was very much younger, and is still part of the family. So, that's wonderful.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, we're the same down south. I run a group called Spectrum and it's very much kind of a mix of people who were traditionally published before they even joined, we've had a few bestselling people in our group, but they come and go because it is kind of what it is. You can't predict life, but it's always really lovely to get support and critique and feedback from other people who, A, take writing seriously and they take the craft seriously, and B, people who are deeply familiar with the genre, because a lot of the time, general writers groups can be really challenging to work with when you write genre because you have to lead with an explanation of like, why you chose to write high fantasy or whatever it is.

It's great to start from a baseline of, we all know what we're writing. We know the various kind of ins and outs and the conventions and the tropes that we're working with. And how can we make this better? I certainly feel like I've learned much more by being part of a writer's group than my whole creative writing degree, which I did, and it left me really just questioning things.

E.M. Faulds: Oh, let's be fair to your degree. Every single degree in the entirety of humanities and academia has been not as useful as actually going out and doing a thing, generally speaking, to prepare you for the world as it is. Publishing is difficult. You can't just necessarily follow a set script, a set of steps that actually tells you exactly how to be successful, because 90 percent of it is luck. And the other 10 percent is just dogged determination. And if you don't have support during that it can be so much harder, and you can't even begin to tell where you're going right or wrong. So yeah, it's definitely worth having a community, even if it's just an online one, even if it's just some folks you've met at an event, you know, just someone to talk to. But if you can get a more in depth genre, specific to you, group, then yeah, you're gonna have a much easier time, I think, just dealing with it.

Kat Kourbeti: A hundred percent this. I do want to ask about your guys's anthology that you have a story in, Gallus, that was launched at Worldcon (Glasgow 2024). Unfortunately I had to miss your launch event, but tell me a little bit about putting that together.

And how all of that came to be, to actually have a physical book of your guys' work in your hands. That's awesome.

E.M. Faulds: Well, it's not the first one they've done. It was actually just as I was joining, they had put out a 35 year anniversary edition of Collected Works from past and present members. This one we wanted to be all just present members who are currently active in the Circle. Obviously people come and go, and they go on to bigger and better things in their careers, or they may move to the other side of the world. It's not always practical to have every single member in as well. So we decided to keep it, as a snapshot of current members.

And so, this time round, we wanted to put a little bit of a Scottish spin on it. Obviously, it's always going to have a Scottish spin, but especially for Worldcon, especially for Glasgow 2024. So we decided to just sort of say, well, if you want to write one that's got a Glasgow or a Scottish theme, yeah, go ahead. And if you don't, it doesn't matter because you are a Scottish writer. Now, whether you were born in Scotland, moved to Scotland, doesn't really matter. You are a Scottish writer if you're part of this group. And if you've ever lived in Glasgow, and you've written there, why not? Because Scotland's a very, very open place, and it's kind of more an attitude than anything. We decided, me, Neil Williamson and Brian M Milton, we kind of just decided we were going to do it for Worldcon.

We were going to create an anthology because Neil had the experience of the previous one as an editor, and the other two of us were just too stupid to say no. So we decided to give ourselves quite a good bit of time. So we had a year essentially of having the stories in and going through developmental edits, because obviously when we're taking a snapshot of our membership, some people have a lot less experience of going through this, and for some of them it was their very first publication. So obviously there is a differing level of work needed, and so we gave it a lot of time, a lot of back and forth, a lot of getting confused about which version of which manuscript. And then we threw it together into a lovely print and ebook version. And we got the very talented Jenny Coutts to do artwork, as well as a story inside. So the cover is, I don't know, if you ever get a chance to go and see it, it is beautiful. And then we went to Worldcon, we did a launch event, and there was um, a great big surprise of, we sold out, we sold every single copy, including most of the contributor copies, which we hadn't expected, and it was an absolutely smashing event.

Cover of Gallus by Jenni Coutts

Kat Kourbeti: I don't think it should be that surprising, because it was just such a local celebration, Worldcon in Glasgow, here's a group of writers from this city, let's show you what we've got. I think it was, first of all, a tremendous idea, and second of all, of course people from all over who came to Worldcon are like, let's check that out. Let's see what's going on. What's up, Glasgow?

I'm really happy you guys did it, because also, for those members with the less experience, it's such a boost to be part of something like this, that maybe gives them that foot in the door, where it's like, hey, I've got this thing in that anthology, really lovely way to just take a snapshot, and give everybody that little bit of something.

And what was your story in this anthology?

E.M. Faulds: My story was called Pearl and the World, and it is a space based one, so it's not really particularly Scottish, but that's okay, as I said, it was one I had. It found its place in there, I'd say, because it was a lot of very close detailed Scottish, Scots language as well employed in the stories to outer space. Mine's not even the only one which is an outer space based story.

So it's a horrible story, I have to say, and I don't mean like in quality terms, I mean in terms of, you will probably go through it with this character, going, oh my god. I have this tendency, I think, to write Marmite stories. You're gonna feel something, you know, it may be not, 'oh wow, that's so beautiful and lovely', but it will be something.

Kat Kourbeti: Legitimate, though.

E.M. Faulds: I have a habit of talking my stories down and I get told off by the other members of the editing team for like, "no, no, no, it is legitimate science fiction". It's about a lot of things that are not pleasant. I think in the end it kind of ends on a hopeful note, I hope.

Kat Kourbeti: I mean, I'm inclined to agree with them. It is legitimately science fiction. Honestly, not all stories have that vibe, and a lot of the stuff that I enjoy personally tends to be like, in some ways, like—

E.M. Faulds: —darker or on a slight tilt there. Yeah. Maybe I should rewind and say, 'no, it's the best story that was ever written'. But you know, we're British and we don't do that.

Kat Kourbeti: Yes. I see that a lot with my group members as well, cause we're down in London and there's that English way of like, "Oh no, no, I couldn't possibly," which can be endearing, that self deprecating, I'm not going to put myself up. But at the same time, you can internalize some things that are not necessarily healthy, to completely push yourself down so that you don't pull yourself up too much.

It's that whole thing of, like, responding to "how are you doing?" with "not too bad". Which—

E.M. Faulds: Mm hmm.

Kat Kourbeti: For the listeners who are not in the UK and have not experienced this, when you ask a British person, how are you, nine times out of ten, they'll say, not too bad, because, and this was explained to me at university, and it didn't click, I still thought that it was very strange.

In the decade plus since, I've been like, oh, I think I get it now, a little bit, maybe, I still don't agree. It's that whole thing of like, you don't want to say you're doing too well, in case the other person isn't doing too well. And so, "not too bad", actually means okay, or good, even. But to a non English person or non Brit visiting or moving here, my first response was like, eh? But why would you say this? So are you okay then? Can I do something? Are you having a bad day? And it's like, no, I'm not too bad.

E.M. Faulds: It's also, like, to be fair, if it was too bad, you'd never bloody say that either, would you? Because that would be too much like expecting the other person to bear the burden of knowing how you feel that isn't great, you know? So you're not actually allowed to say that, "do you know, actually, my back hurts. The cat woke me up this morning and it was vomiting. I tell you, these kids ran past me and I, yeah, whatever." You've got to soldier on.

Kat Kourbeti: Keep calm and carry on.

E.M. Faulds: All of that. I say, don't be a burden. But I hope that by saying 'my story is horrible', I'm actually being a bit sneaky by thinking that, you know, maybe people will go, "really, is it? I have to go and see now!" Maybe the reverse psychology isn't all that.

Kat Kourbeti: I think there's something about preparing your audience for the worst. Cause then, maybe it's not so bad. So let's kind of zoom in and hone in a little bit on your history with and your experience of Strange Horizons. First of all, as a reader, have you been reading Strange Horizons, say, for a while before you submitted, or kind of off and on, maybe?

E.M. Faulds: Yeah. I've always come across social media shares of people's stories and they're like, Oh my God, have you read this? Go and read it, put it in your eyeballs right now. And I go and do that and then I'm like, oh, I see why. Obviously, I had seen the magazine before I submitted because, you know, it's one of those rare venues that has got a very, very high standard of editing and selection. Obviously, because my story's in there (laughter). Also it allows you to read for free, which is, I don't even know how you guys can manage that. I know there's like a great amount of generosity from the community in terms of crowdfunding. Which, if you're a reader and you're listening to this, every time that the Strange Horizons puts a crowdfunding opportunity up, please go and give some money because they do so much with so little and it's amazing.

Kat Kourbeti: Thank you, yes. I mean, the secret is, it's not a secret. We're all volunteers, even though it takes quite a big team to wrangle everything. Especially, I think more than half of the entire staff is our first readers, just because there's so much to go through during each reading period.

But yeah, we don't get paid. Every little bit that comes in through crowdfunding goes to the writers, the artists, people who write reviews for us, things like that. It's all we can do, to elevate that which we believe in. And it's why we're there. We're there to do the lifting. But really the gems come from the contributors, such as yourself.

So your story was published in 2021, and it's called Broken Blue. Do you wanna tell me a little bit about the idea behind the story and kind of how that came together for you in the writing?

E.M. Faulds: I know exactly where I was when the story came to me in this massive inspiration download, if you want to call it that, or just like a flash that just came into my eyes when I saw someone was walking their dog in a park and the first line basically came to me, which was, "I'll go when the dog goes". And I was like, what, where did that come from? And what does it mean? And how can I use that? And then I was thinking later on—you know, you squirrel that piece away—that's quite a strong opening, for reasons which I don't yet understand. Then I was reading about, well, spoiler alert, Fair Folk and Eldritch beings that British countryside folklore has in spades, and the Irish folklore as well, of the Fair Folk who'd come and do mysterious things. And then they had quite, perhaps, a strong bond to animals. Especially your pets and such. My favorite one is everyone whose cat suddenly stares at a wall for no reason. I love that. Because everyone's like, what is it seeing? What is it seeing that I can't see? And that's kind of terrifying. But also it's incredibly fun to think that animals might have like a link to the spiritual or the unseen world.

I was kind of like, let's mash those two together. Those two things. There's a dog, this sentence, and some kind of eldritchness. And I was really lucky to be able to get accepted by anywhere with that, because it was quite a slight speculative element, compared to something like that's set in the medieval times with swords and magic and wands and wizards. This is a very small and domestic kind of magic. So I was really lucky to find somewhere that would take it. This is what I love about Strange Horizons, is that they're not afraid to be subtle, to have nuance in the work. And some of my previous encounters with Strange Horizons included, Lorraine Wilson's Bathymetry, which I'm sure you remember, because it went on to win a prize as well, in 2022. I looked that up earlier. I'm not that good at remembering.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I actually read the podcast version of Bathymetry. And I I love that story so, so much. Sorry to interrupt you. Please continue.

E.M. Faulds: Yeah. Somewhere that, that allows a smaller fiction as well as larger.

Kat Kourbeti: My ideal Strange Horizon story is something where the magic comes from a deep need to tell a story that like you say, the little things, the domestic things. Another story that I read on the podcast was Anna Martino's Haja Hoje, which is a Brazilian story, very rooted in Rio de Janeiro, (pronounced Hio, not Rio!) which is the proper pronunciation, as I learned. And again, the magic in that came out of grief, and the desire to see a loved one who's passed and to manifest them again, and that sort of thing. So the little ways in which magic can elevate and help you tell a story.

I'm really amazed by the opening line and how that fed into your story. Just like, let's make that a thing. And the Eldritch stuff is subtle as well.

E.M. Faulds: Where did that come from? I was walking through my local park. I wasn't trying to think of particular things. I was just sort of ambling along. That in itself is a kind of small magic, if you like. Just where inspiration comes from. I remember, my favorite thing is when Terry Pratchett's character, who is basically a version of William Shakespeare, but I think a dwarf. And he has to wear a special metal helmet to stop the inspiration particles streaming into his brain, so he can actually get some sleep. So yeah, I just love that. And I wish I could be the sort of person who just goes, oh, today I'm going to write a story, and it's gonna have this theme, and this message, and that motif. But unfortunately, that's not how my brain works. I'm very jealous of you if that is how your brain works, but it's like, suddenly, the void speaks into my head, and that's it. I have very little choice in the matter.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, you get a little magical phrase here and there that just kind of makes you go, what was that? Backtrack. Let's figure that out. Let's write a 5, 000 word story, try to figure that out. Why not? And so was this story an all in one go, 'I've cracked it, I've written it, it's done'? Or did it take more finagling?

E.M. Faulds: Oh heck no, yeah. The first version I wrote, I took it to the Writer's Circle, and they looked at it and they went, huh? What does this mean? And I was like, "um, I thought I was being really obvious", but apparently no. So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna have to pull this out here and push that in there and undo this and zip this right up. And then you put it on submission. And then when the editors have gone, 'yes, we love his story', you're like, cool, I've done it, but wait, there's more. And then that was a really, really cool part of the process actually, because obviously a lot of people have told their editing nightmares on social media, and had a very difficult time. But I did not. It was, I believe, Kat Weaver who was doing the editing, and, it was just so supportive, and so easy. It's like, "oh, this is cool, yeah, I get what you're saying there and why. Okay, yeah, let's just change that." So, I honestly couldn't have asked for a better process.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. My favorite part of these interviews is hearing about that from all sorts of different writers and everyone has that to say and to praise our editorial team for being supportive and for getting it. It can be a really subtle thing, like in your case where initially, maybe it wasn't so on the page, and you then have to hope that the next person who reads it, or the editor who reads it, gets it.

And it's great that the effort is being made to meet writers where they're at, instead of trying to shape them into something else. Because I don't think that our editors tend to ask you to change much, if at all, like it's more copy and phrasing and things like that, if the interviews hold true.

E.M. Faulds: Yeah, no, absolutely. It was very light touch, and I'm very much about supporting your own vision, your own voice. As you were saying, it's not really about putting words into your mouth or trying to conform to anything particular. It's about, as you say, meeting it where it is. And, do you know what? That's just proof that it can be that way. It doesn't have to be a terribly traumatic process. It can just be kind of—

Kat Kourbeti: Just kind of nice. Yeah. And it's these sorts of stories that tell that quiet kind of magic that, maybe it comes from like a deeper place of the Earth and the uncanny and the unknown, but really it's about people and where they're at emotionally. And that drives the story. I think that's where the best kind of sweet spot is for a Strange Horizons story.

It's funny, years back I wrote a short story that was for a contest within my writers group, and, you know, it did very well. I subbed it everywhere. It hasn't found a home yet. I am so convinced it's a Strange Horizons story, but the problem is I can't submit as a volunteer. So... someday!

E.M. Faulds: Oh no! That's, just very, very sad because, obviously you do so much work and then...

Kat Kourbeti: It's okay. I'll just sit on it until then.

E.M. Faulds: We just need more markets like this. There is not enough. And, you know, even with your own amount you can take, it's a drop in the ocean, obviously, compared to what you would love to take. So, it's heartbreaking that there's just not more. Let's just clone you guys, and set up a hundred Strange Horizons. And then we'd probably getting close.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, we just need more markets in general. There's more stories than there are magazines that can publish them feasibly. So, if anybody wants to start a new one, this is your call. Y'all can do it. I believe in you.

So yeah, I'm happy to hear that the writer's group feedback helped shape this. That's really cool.

Let's talk a little bit about your other writing. You have a book, or two books out, I think? Two novels?

E.M. Faulds: Well, I have a novel, Ada King, which I self-published many years ago, so it's not like I can say "Oh yes, amazing". But it seems to have actually been received pretty well for that. And I'm actually pretty proud of it still. So, would I do it the same these days? Possibly? But yeah, I mean that was a learning process in and of itself.

I have got hopefully a novella coming out next year, which I can't talk about just yet. We're still in the kind of embargo phase. But, after that, I need to just get writing more novels because I really want to finish novel length work again. The first one I wrote in three months, because it just came pouring out of me. I'd spent six months writing notes and structuring and plot points before I actually did the physical writing, because I was working in a job that didn't require an awful lot of brain capacity, so it was brilliant because I could just think about my story in the background. I have also got the short story collection Under the Moon, which has won the British Fantasy Award last year, so that was nice.

Kat Kourbeti: That's super, super cool. Tell me a little bit about the collection.

E.M. Faulds: I had all these short stories kicking about, so I was like, what do I do with them? I know—I shall create a collection! And, I needed a theme for it. So the theme was, essentially very simple and yet somehow quite remarkable as well: every protagonist in the SFF and a little bit of H story, was a female protagonist. It was kind of the unifying theory. But I thought to myself, there's got to be another person who's done this, somewhere in the science fiction/fantasy world. There must be a person who's done a single collection who is a female author who has written just female protagonists. And I couldn't find one.

And of course you're like, "eww, should I really use this as a theme?" Because obviously people look at any stories that feature women as 'women's interest', which is like saying, "I won't be interested in it because I am not a woman". Okay, it just happens to have a female protagonist. They could be doing a lot of different things.They could be doing something very small and domestic, or they could be doing something large and exciting, geopolitical, or anything. As soon as you go, well, we're just gonna make the chicks do the work in this, as the protagonist here. And then it's like, yeah, okay. So that was it.

I didn't think it was particularly remarkable at the time, until I sort of tried to look around to find anyone else who'd done the same. And I could only find collections where it was multi author, and some of those authors were not women, which, you know, is fine, but there wasn't a single author approach that went, just the chicks as the protagonists.

There's some dudes in it, but mostly the chicks. And then, you know, one of them's a spaceship, for goodness sake, so how could it be a chick? But it thinks of itself as like, analogous to a mother, so it counts. But yeah, I mean, it was kind of a feeble excuse to put all these stories together, cause I just happened to write a lot about female characters, being one myself.

Kat Kourbeti: I'm flabbergasted that no one else had done this before? Ladies!

E.M. Faulds: Well, not that I could find. I'm not gonna say I've read every single book out there, so of course I could have found it.

Kat Kourbeti: Well, we need more of it anyway. I just think, it's as good an excuse as any to theme things together. I think the only collections that I've read that were themed like that were like, the Joanna Russ ones that are specifically about women who love women. And so, of course the protagonists will be female, but those are all different authors. So yeah, we need more of that.

E.M. Faulds: Yeah. I particularly don't want it to be classed as a ' feminist collection', because they're not all just fighting for women's rights the entire time. They just happen to be women. But it is also feminist, because the notion of feminism is just women being equal to men.

Kat Kourbeti: Groundbreaking.

E.M. Faulds: Well, if you would read a collection of stories that had only male protagonists in it, then, if you don't mind the idea of feminism, then just read a book with all female protagonists. It's fine. And/or, maybe non binary these days, you know, because we should have all of these different perspectives in our lives.

Kat Kourbeti: Absolutely. Yeah. There is a gap, of course, still in publishing, in terms of, most authors who are being published still are predominantly male. And then we need to look at the intersection of all of that. In the genre as well, if we're looking at speculative stuff. Like, yeah, there's a lot of components and factors that at the end of the day, need more parity. So that's great; your anthology is just a step, your collection. Here's a building block for other people to be inspired by and do a little bit more of, themselves. I hope. Maybe someone hearing this will.

E.M. Faulds: The idea of science fiction and fantasy is kind of being quite male dominated still. I mean, especially on the science fiction side, to be fair, it's not as heavy in science fiction as I wanted, but maybe next time I'll just do straight space opera. All chicks. All the time. Kicking ass and taking names.

Kat Kourbeti: Absolutely. Thank you very much. I would read that in a heartbeat.

And then you've also got a little bit more short fiction elsewhere, and you do microfiction, which—I very much admire anybody who can keep things short. Because I can't do it to save my life. I start a little thing that I'm like, oh, it's going to be a short story. And then it's like, maybe a novella. And then it becomes like a two or three book series as I'm working out the kinks of the story. And I'm like, oh no, I've done it again.

So how do you write so prolifically, in short formats? Teach me your wisdom, please.

E.M. Faulds: Listen, listen, I've got ADHD. So, I mean, the instant gratification hit is something to not dismiss. I just started up making a coffee, that's K O F I, Koo-FI?

Kat Kourbeti: Kofi? Yeah.

E.M. Faulds: The sort of like Patreon lite of sharing platforms. Often people use it to buy me a coffee if you like my work, but I thought, if I put some stories on there as well, that will help. So I'm kind of singing for my supper. But in any case, sometimes a story idea hasn't got legs to go further. It just doesn't. These are the guys who didn't drop enough to leave the nest. Let's say these are the guys who are like, just a small image, or maybe they're just a concept that you could try and shoehorn it in somewhere, but it's just something that has a very much a shorter shelf life for me, and I'm not going to use it elsewhere and I'm not going to completely expand it into other things.

So that's where that comes from. But they are short flash fiction, so like, if you want to read it over your coffee break, then you can, without having to bookmark it and come back later.

Kat Kourbeti: I will say, I also have ADHD, but my little dopamine bits are in finding new building blocks for my already existing thing. And so every time I just add a little more, and I add a little more, and instead of it being a short story like I intended, it ends up becoming like at least one novel, if not three.

So it's an interesting way of exploring concepts and ideas, and maybe I need to do a little more of that.

E.M. Faulds: Well, as I say, I really need to get some more novel length work out there, because at the moment, uh... since the pandemic, actually, it's been very terrible for me being able to sit down and consistently do all the writing that I need to do. It's being able to keep yourself in a consistent headspace. So kind of jealous if you're just like constantly adding in the back of your head.

Kat Kourbeti: Well, I'm trying to get back into that habit, because as you say, the pandemic threw a lot of that completely in a tailspin. I used to think about my stories all the time, and always keeping that in the background, and then with the shutdown of the world, I was completely like, "what's happening? Fiction whomst?" and... it got me into podcasting and things, which I'm grateful for, because it was a way for me to channel other skill sets into the genre that I love so much, but the fiction side of it all does, as you say, require to keep a headspace that's stable, maybe? For lack of a better word, a baseline from which you can operate. It's taken me a long time to get back to that. I think I'm kind of there now, and I'm reading actually, Charlie Jane Anders' Never Say You Can't Survive.

E.M. Faulds: I got it right here. Yep. I love it. You just flip to any page and there's—every other emotion is connected to anger somehow.

Kat Kourbeti: Really feeling that right now. There was a moment post US election results that I was like, I can't let this situation get me back to that point where like, I can't even think about stories. That isn't productive for me. And I remembered those essays as they were coming out, you know, before they were an actual book they were just essays on Tor.com, now Reactor, and I will link them in the show notes for folks to have a read, because as you say, just every emotion links back to "how can I fuel this anger into something that's going to give me a result, like I can write a story, or I can write a book, or I can write whatever", channeling those emotions that are coming from a reaction to a bad situation into something that can let you release that.

So that's where I'm at as a writer right now.

E.M. Faulds: Uh huh. Like it's survival as an act of resistance at this point, right. Because it's difficult out there. And writing is an act of survival in this case, because, it's what they want. I say they, what the people who are against you want is for you to shut up and sit down. So they don't want to hear anything else. So you have to keep going.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. It's about getting those thoughts into a coherent form. That's like, well, why should I shut up and sit down? The things that I have to say are valid, and my existence is valid, and my feelings and my stories and my worlds are worth exploring.

E.M. Faulds: You're not harming people by writing these things. Now, if you were writing down horrible stuff that was actively making the world worse, sure, shut up then. What you're actually providing is a lifeline to other people to escape, to think, to feel, to breathe. Then yeah, of course.

Kat Kourbeti: No, I think that's kind of vital for us all right now. If anything, we now need to be louder than ever. And use that anger and that frustration and make something else out of it, not sit and wallow in that misery. I don't think it's going to be helpful for anyone.

So yeah, highly recommend that book to anyone who's feeling some type of way right now. And if you're finding it difficult to write, this is maybe going to give you a little way out of the cloud.

E.M. Faulds: Here's hoping.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. So before I let you go, I want to hear about what you're working on right now, like if there's something that you'd like to promote or plug, if there's anything recent that you want us to take a look at.

E.M. Faulds: Yeah, so obviously the Gallus Anthology, that's G A L L U S. It's a Scots word that means bold and, maybe a little bit crazy, a little bit reckless. So Gallus Anthology is available on Amazon, I'm afraid only on Amazon, because we couldn't afford to get this printed any other way. Eh, you do what you do. But, please take a look at it, especially if you weren't at Worldcon, and you haven't got any Scottish books. Go and get that. And if you want another one that's Scottish science fiction and fantasy, there's also Nova Scotia Vol II. "Nova Scotia" being New Scottish, you know, as opposed to the place in Canada. So it's using the Latin name there. So Nova Scotia Vol II is an anthology by Luna Press Publishing, who are amazing. You should check out every book that they've got out as well. But that features also a story of mine, called Love Scotland, which I think is probably the best thing I've ever written in my life.

Okay yes, it's not better than Gallus, of course, but I could tell that that one was different. It was special, something that came out of me because it's science fiction, but it's really near future. And it's political, but it's also human. Anyway, please go and take a look, and I just have to ask anybody who's not already doing this, if you've read a great book, and you thought, "wow, that was cool", please review it. Wherever you bought it, wherever you didn't buy it, on social media, on your blog, please leave something for the writers, because it's really hard at the moment to get anyone to review anything, for reasons which I can only imagine boil down to people's spirit being sapped out of their body daily by life. But if you can, that would be a real great big help because it's hard out there. So, I think that's it.

And if you want to find me, and check out stuff, please go to EMFaulds.com, and I'm pretty sure Kat will leave a link to that too. And thanks very much.

Kat Kourbeti: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat to us and for talking a little bit about your work. It's been great to find out about everything, and I hope that everyone will click the links in the show notes, and grab a copy of Gallus and Nova Scotia. Highly agree, by the way; Luna Press are doing fantastic work, so while you're there, check out everything else on that website. You will not regret it.

Thank you so much for joining us, and good luck on your future writing journey. I can't wait to see more of your stuff.

E.M. Faulds: Thanks a lot.