I’ve been seeing news going around today about the Outer Alliance, a new group advocating queer and queer-friendly speculative fiction. As a bisexual in a lesbian relationship, I find this to be pretty much the epitome of Awesome. There’s an official announcement post over here. And I’m officially joining the group. Here’s its mission statement:
As a member of the Outer Alliance, I advocate for queer speculative fiction and those who create, publish and support it, whatever their sexual orientation and gender identity. I make sure this is reflected in my actions and my work.
And furthermore, I’m finding it a pretty strong call to do something with arguably the queerest thing I’ve written to date: “The Disenchanting of Princess Cerridwen”.
Those of you who’ve been following my writing for a while may remember that I originally wrote this as a submission for , to go into an anthology that unfortunately never saw the light of day. It’s been sitting around on my back burner ever since. The thing is, it’s a short story, and I prefer to focus on writing novels.
But I’ve still got this short story. And because of the call of the Outer Alliance, I have therefore decided I’m going to release that story for public consumption, under a Creative Commons license, here on this site.
“The Disenchanting of Princess Cerridwen” is set in the same universe as Lament of the Dove, and is extremely early backstory for the Big Bad of that novel. But it’s less her story than it is the story of Cerridwen and her beloved Damhnait, two young women whose city is caught in the eruption of her magic. Transformed into a male, Cerridwen must choose what seems like a peaceful existence on the surface–but which will risk her the love of Damhnait if she accepts things the way they are.
Y’all can read the story over here. I hope you’ll enjoy it.
