Okay, I’m cheating. I admit it. I’m in England when this goes live—in fact, all the rest of my Pride Month posts will go live while I’m in England thanks to the magic of scheduled posts—but listen, I’m in another country, I have no idea what will happen re: wi-fi, and at this point in time I’ll have lost most of an evening flying overnight between Ottawa and London. And there are still multiple train-rides ahead of me before I get to Nottingham.
It occurred to me I could write about journeys today, or I could write about the people I’ll be seeing in Nottingham—I’m heading there for a queer literary event, after all—but then I thought why not do both?
So, let’s talk furry little capybara pirates on journeys made of squeaky queer joy—but also I shall mention the darkest noir take of the Wind in the Willows ever written.
Look, at this point I’m surely jet-lagged, okay? Roll with it.
Sorry, did you say Capybara Pirate and dark noir Wind in the Willows?
I did! But they’re not the same book, don’t worry. The Lesbian Capybara Pirate is Cinrak the Dapper, and her adventure with her stalwart crew of various adorable critters is one of my favourite collections of linked short fiction, ever. Truly, The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper is freaking adorable.
A.J. Fitzwater puts together a series of linked tales that tell a grand adventure on the high seas (or, as high as they can be when you’re talking capybaras and ferrets and the like) and it’s just full of wonderful queerness. Wee transboy chincilla characters seeking magical plants that will help them grow their beards, a kraken named Agnes, and so much love and magic and adventure I cannot even begin to tell you. This is what I wish all the kids tales I’d had to read were like when I was a wee queerling, but that doesn’t mean these tales are kid-like, just joyful.
Dapper. Lesbian. Capybara. Pirate.
Cinrak the Dapper is a keeper of secrets, a righter of wrongs, the saltiest capybara on the sea and a rider of both falling stars and a great glass whale. Join her, her beloveds, the rat Queen Orvilia and the marmot diva Loquolchi, lead soprano of the Theatre Rat-oyal, her loyal cabin kit, Benj the chinchilla, and Agnes, last of the great krakens, as they hunt for treasures of all kinds and find adventures beyond their wildest dreams. Let Sir Julius Vogel Award-winning storyteller A.J. Fitzwater take you on a glorious journey about finding yourself, discovering true love and exploring the greatest secrets of the deep. Also, dapperness.
The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper includes seven stories about Cinrak and her crew.
So, when I say the last collection is joyful and bright and magical and queer, this collection is… well, it’s queer, and the author’s name is Bright, but the rest of it tends to fall on the darker, moodier, grimmer side of things—and did I mention there’s a grimy noir thriller retelling of the freaking Wind in the Willows?
Stories to Sing in the Dark is Matthew Bright’s brilliant collection, and I can’t wait to sit with him again in Nottingham later today (soon? then? now? scheduling and jet-lag are weird) in part because it’s always such a delight to learn about what new weird tale he’s working on. And Stories to Sing in the Dark is weird—I mean that in the most complimentary way possible.
Just trust me. (Oh, and also? He designed the cover, because Matthew Bright is also Inkspiral, who does such brilliant covers and has done so many of mine.)
The speculative shines bright in the dark with these stories by Matthew Bright: a boy with a secret begins work at a strange library housing all the books never written; Dorian Gray’s love of beauty struggles in the face of AIDs-era San Francisco and the Castro; the tomb of the Empress is adrift in space and hungry for the concubines aboard her; two men in an old film finally realize that they are trapped but still they seek the means for finally declaring their love for each other.
These and other tales of the queer fantastic should be the perfect bedtime read.
Have you got any great stories about meeting authors? Tell me your tales… (Weird or otherwise…)
'Nathan Burgoine 