[Archives] Deborah Responds to Ads Aimed at Men

Still relevant, although this blog post dates from 2015.

For various reasons, mostly having to do with the fact that my husband never flies anywhere, he now has a free subscription to a magazine aimed primarily at a male readership. Out of curiosity, I flipped through it. And was suitably amused and horrified. Come with me on an adventure in befuddlement…

Cover: Hmmm, interesting. Think I’ll check it out.

Inside cover. This cloud turns gamers into Titans. I’m anti-interested in “massive universe” games.

This ad for an airline offers drinks on the house (image of man’s hand holding airline-plastic cup of beer). Drinking at altitude is such a colossally bad thing for your hydration, this airline is evil.

Table of contents: Ooh, a person I want to read about.

Ad for men’s eyeglass frames. What were you smoking to think these might make a man look even remotely attractive?

A cancer hospital’s goal is…wait for it…curing cancer.

This ultra-modern watch is ahead of its time. And its face is also unreadable, especially at a quick glance. It’s analog but has no second hand. Why bother?

I think this ad is for a tablet, but I’m not sure. It could be the thing that holds a tablet. The company is marketing to folks who already want their product.

Guest Blog: Barb Caffrey on Writing After Widowhood

"Writing After Widowhood"

By Barb Caffrey

A while back, Deborah J. Ross asked me to talk about the differences between writing while my beloved husband Michael was still alive, and writing now. As I've had many years since my husband's unexpected death in 2004 to contemplate this, I agreed to talk about it. Just know in advance that it's not easy, but it is possible. (Spoiler alert!)

Anyway, when Michael was alive, we wrote some short stories together despite having very different writing styles. We could do this because we'd heard Eric Flint, in 2002, discuss how he collaborated with other authors. It was all about communication, Flint said, “Also, if you could check your ego at the door, that would help immensely.”

That wasn't all Michael did, mind you. He edited for me, as I edited for him. He and I talked about our stories for many hours a day, every day of the week, a great gift…and he made sure to do all the things a good husband does for his wife without prompting—and without fanfare.

It was because of all of this that I was able to write 230,000 good words in thirteen months back in 2002 and 2003. And into mid-September of 2004, I believe I wrote around 100,000 words, which isn't bad at all when you consider we had a big move across-country and had to find work and lodgings in the process.

Then, disaster struck. Michael died in September of 2004 of four massive heart attacks. He was awake after the first, but before the rescue squad could get to him, he had his second heart attack. He was clinically dead for eighteen minutes, and then was revived at the hospital. He later had heart attacks three and four…within eleven hours of the first heart attack, my beloved husband was gone.

There was absolutely no warning of this.

Not long after my husband died, I moved back to Wisconsin to be closer to my family. I wasn't much good for anyone for several years; I admit this freely. I was in deep shock, and in some ways I never completely came out of mourning. But I was able to write again within a few years, partly because my husband had left behind stories of his own that were unfinished.

To my mind, it was bad enough that my husband was dead. It would be even worse if the stories he'd worked so hard on died with him.

So even though I wrote in a completely different way, and had never written any space opera or military science fiction before (Michael's work mostly straddled those two lines), I decided I was going to finish at least some of his work and put it up for sale on my own. It would allow me to keep at least part of my husband alive, and doing that—even though most of the people around me, including several professional authors, did not believe I should be wasting my effort this way—was my salvation.

Short Book Reviews: A Transgender Heroine in a Dystopic World

The Book of Flora (The Road to Nowhere, Book 3), by Meg Elison (47North)

I loved the first book in this trilogy (The Book of the Unnamed Midwife), the “origin” story of the collapse of civilization when most women die in a plague, and the heroism of the unnamed protagonist, who records her survival – and transmits her midwifery skills to ensure the next generation. Although I was uneasy about the portrayal of men as either bullies/gangleaders/rapists or gay, I went along with it for the sake of the story, which was as gripping (it won the Philip K. Dick Award) as it was grim. The second installment, The Book of Etta, was also grim, for many of the same reasons, but intrigued me with its treatment of LGBTQ folks in a world where controlling women’s bodies and maximizing their fertility are the keys to humanity’s survival.

Flora, a transwoman and silk weaver from Etta, is the central character in the third book. The story is just as dramatic, with a cast of intriguing characters, strong narrative prose, and a nice balance of pacing. Yet I found myself with increasing resistance to the portrayal of men and of relations between the sexes (however many sexes there are). Some of this may have been due to recently reading several of Alexander McCall Smith’s The Number One Ladies Detective Agency novels, set in Uganda, which include some of the most genuinely good, kind men in contemporary literature. Maybe America goes the way of savagery, but it was hard for me to imagine someone like Obed Ramotswe or Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni behaving that way. Afrofuturism may point the way to a compassionate path through dystopia. At any rate, The Book of Flora kept me turning the pages, but it isn’t a world I’d ever want to live in, which is not the purpose of literature, anyway. I’m glad to have ventured into Elison’s dark, terrifying future, and see this trilogy as an important contribution to the examination of power, sex, gender, and culture.

Today's Moment of Art

Jean-Léon Gérôme, "Carpet Merchant in Cairo" (1887)

New story up on Curious Fictions, one of my favorites. Read the whole thing here.

Dragon's Beak and Wings of Bronze, or Something Unusual Happens to Allis

One summer afternoon, Lady Caroline hitched up her skirts, rolled two vinegar barrels into the corner of the cool, stone-floored herbarium and sat down for a private chat with her daughter, Allis. “You’re almost a woman, my dear, and it’s time you learned the family secret. The truth is, we’re were.”

Allis’s soft hazel eyes wandered to the hanging bundles of rosemary and feverfew. “Where?”

“Not ‘where.’ ‘Were’.” Lady Caroline sighed. Her sons were small and lean, as black-eyed and quick-tongued as she, while her only daughter . . .

“Were,” she repeated, speaking slowly so Allis could understand, “as in were-wolves. But not until your woman’s cycles come, and almost certainly not a wolf. I’m not, and neither is your aunt Jessie. Our family tradition has always been far more imaginative.”

Allis heard the sigh and the patience in her mother’s voice. Drifting on the patter of words, she guessed that something was going to happen to her, something that involved turning into an animal. Not a wolf, for she wasn’t nearly clever enough to be a wolf. Something slow and sleepy, like she felt right now. A lizard dozing in the sun? A turtle on a log?

Oh, dear. Suppose she became a were-turtle and nibbled on ants’ eggs? When she turned back into a girl, would the eggs still be inside her stomach?