My Favorite Things with Kate Heartfield

They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, the weekly column where we grab someone in speculative circles to gab about the greatest in geek. This week, we sit down with Kate Heartfield, whose novel, Armed in Her Fashion, just won the Prix Aurora Award for Best Novel. And if that’s not enough, her novella, Alice Payne Arrives, was shortlisted for a Nebula AND an Aurora (in the novella and short fiction categories, respectively). And let’s not forget the sequel, Alice Payne Rides, which is available now!

What does Kate love when she’s not writing award-winning and genre bending tales of historical horror? Spoiler alert: a dark love story, a gangster/martial arts fantasy, science-fictional concept albums, a comedy that challenges your relationship to reality and perception, and a hometown convention that’s been growing rapidly. Interested? Read on to learn more!

My favorite recent movie is, in fact, The Favourite. The early 18th century in England strikes me as a slightly desperate, darkly ridiculous time, when the kingdom was always in danger of coming apart at the seams and pretending very hard that that was not the case. Olivia Colman plays Queen Anne in the spirit of that age, torn between her dependence on old favorite Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz) and her affection for new favorite Abigail Masham (Emma Stone). It’s a dark love story about three queer women, horribly funny and with a soundtrack that adds just the right note of menace. I’ve spent a lot of time in the early 18th century, as my next novel, The Humours of Grub Street, is set in 1703 in London. It includes the politician Robert Harley as a secondary character; Harley was played wonderfully in The Favourite by Nicholas Hoult.

Fonda Lee is one of the writers at the very top of our field right now in science fiction and fantasy, and her Green Bone Saga is my favorite current book series. It begins with Jade City, and Jade War followed this year. They’re secondary world fantasy, in a roughly 20th century setting, on the island of Kekon where jade confers dangerous power on its wearers. It’s part gangster epic, part martial arts fantasy, and so incredibly well written that it frequently makes me just stop, stare into space and think for a while.

A decade ago, I probably wouldn’t have predicted that “science fictional concept album” would be my favorite musical trend of the 20-teens, yet here we are. Janelle Monae plays with narrative and character in her music, beginning with the android character woven into her early albums, and continuing with the themes on Dirty Computer. The band Murder by Death has played around with concept albums for years; their most recent, The Other Shore, tells the story of a relationship under strain as humanity leaves its broken planet behind, with cello, guitar and vocals at the fore. The hip hop group clipping. also explores SF themes; their 2017 album Splendor & Misery tells the story of an enslaved person on a spaceship, and it’s amazing.

Fleabag is my favorite recent speculative TV series — and in a time that includes Good Omens and Russian Doll, that takes some doing. Wait a second, I hear you say: Fleabag is a comedy starring Phoebe Waller-Bridge about a woman’s family, relationships and career in contemporary London. That isn’t speculative! Well, I argue that it is: The way it plays with the fourth wall, especially in the transcendent second season, forces the audience to question not only the narrative form but also the relationship between reality and perception and how that relationship may be changing in this century. Plus, it’s just brilliant and hilarious and the cast is stellar (is it an accident that two of my favorite things include Olivia Colman? No, it is not.)

Finally, my favorite science fiction and fantasy convention is, luckily for me, my hometown con. Can*Con started small but has been growing rapidly over the last few years (we were at 450 people this year), largely because of word of mouth about how great it is. It happens every October in Ottawa, Canada. Full disclosure: I’m biased, as the con’s volunteer accessibility coordinator. But my job has been made easier by the fact that the convention culture, set at the top of the organizing committee, is thoughtful, professional and supportive. The programming is top notch and the conversations are inspiring. You should come.

Kate Heartfield is the author of the historical fantasy novel Armed in Her Fashion, which won the Aurora Award for Best Novel and was shortlisted for the Locus First Novel, Crawford and Sunburst awards. Her two Alice Payne time travel novellas (Tor.com Publishing 2018/2019) were shortlisted for the Nebula and Aurora awards. She also writes interactive fiction, including the Nebula-nominated The Road to Canterbury, published by Choice of Games in 2018. Her novella “The Course of True Love” was published by Abaddon Books in 2016. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Lackington’s, Escape Pod and elsewhere. A former newspaper journalist, Kate lives in Ottawa, Canada. Her website is https://heartfieldfiction.com/ and she is on Twitter as @kateheartfield.

Author Photo by John W. MacDonald

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