Or, How to win friends and influence people.
The second part of my Christmas list is up over on the booktopia blog – you can see it here.
The ever lovely Kate Forsyth decided my post was worthy of a comment. She said:
Mmm, I wonder if this list was compiled by a man – given that there’s not a single woman fantasy writer included? Nor, may I add, any Australian authors. Odd, particularly given the wealth of talent in this country. I have to say that my own personal list would be very very different …a sign, I guess, that the realm of fantasy is wide and deep and filled with many things ….
Well, now though I am sure you could guess I am a man given my name at the top of the post, the post she chose to comment on was only Part One… Part two did include female authors – not many if we have to count such things – but they are there.
Geez. What a strange thing to feel like I need to justify my choices.
Given my years working at a genre specialist bookshop I am on first name basis with almost all the spec fic writers in Australia, the majority of whom are female, and have been beta read for a number of them. I have no prejudice against female writers. In fact my closest published author friends are women – and know I feel like I am saying ‘some of my best friends are gay’. Go figure.
My list was compiled merely by going through pages of ‘coming soon’ titles on the Booktopia website and noting the ones that I was excited about. I did not think ‘I want most of these to be men’ I did not think ‘I am going to exclude Australian authors’. I just made a list that was from necessity restricted to 20 titles. I could have gone on and on and on. But…
I guess you can’t please everyone.
