Back in 2019 I was lucky enough to be involved in the publishing of Distaff, which went where no woman had gone before by being not only among the first SF anthology featuring all new stories by women and women alone – indeed, perhaps the very first of this elite band – but which was moreover wholly devised, organised, written, edited and produced by women. From concept and cover, through editing and formatting, to the launch eats and promotional designs, it was women all the way.
Which was where the title came in, since a distaff is the rod on which raw fibres were traditionally wound prior to spinning, a task invariably carried out by women, and as a result “distaff” came to signify women’s work and their sphere of influence. And in our view, SF – both the reading and writing of it – was also women’s work as much as it was men’s, and despite decades of female-written SF, it still needed to be further influenced by women and their ideas, concepts and concerns.
But Distaff wasn’t simply trailblazing, it was also award-nominated, with five of its stories, as well as its cover, being longlisted in the British Science Fiction Association Awards, and one story went on to win a coveted place in the 2019 Best of British SF anthology.
Crowned with that success, in early 2020 we decided to spin a few yarns again.
At any time, putting together an anthology with several participants is frustrating and rewarding in equal measure, but with the myriad complications arising from the Covid Years, the many-skeined frustrations multiplied. Yet the power of women lies in our endurance, and we’ve threaded our way past all the hitches with our material finished at last.
As our punning title suggests, the main characters of our stories are also women, but it is we who are the femmes fatales, spinning stories alive with allure and danger. The warp and weft knitting together the full cloth of the anthology are strands of peril and enchantment – of magic, of power and of the fascinating, bewitching fae themselves.
Entwined among the tales of glamour, charm, temptation and seduction are stories of loss – lost children, lost minds, lost hope, lost integrity, lost pasts – and also of discovery, not least of ancient magicians and ensorcelled amphibians!
But above all we’ve been weaving stories of love and atonement and redemption – of regaining what was lost, of learning from past mistakes, of redemptive sacrifice, of finding one’s true self, of returning to truth and rejecting false promises. The very fabric of women’s lives throughout the ages.
The Distaff women are spinning tales once again with Femmes Fae-Tales. But as before, although they’re written by women, they’re not only for women – they’re for anyone who loves a good yarn!
Femmes Fae-Tales – by women, about women, for everyone
