In my earliest childhood, as far as I can recall, female heroes were not entirely unknown in action-adventure television. There was Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman and Lindsay Wagner’s Jaime Sommers, the Bionic Woman. I ate up those shows in all their cheesy glory, though then I couldn’t have told why. I also adored Charlie’s Angels, though I can see now the show was pretty terrible. That they were presented in a jiggly fanservice light meant nothing to me at the time. They kicked butt. That was all I cared about.

Then I moved into adolescence, and my badass action heroines went away. It was the 1980s, and unless I wanted the realism of Cagney and Lacey, I was out of luck. Thankfully, the ’90s saw a resurgence, with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena Warrior Princess paving the way for what we have now: heroines everywhere, from Supergirl to the tattooed Jane Doe, from the inhuman Daisy Johnson and unstoppable Bobbi Morse to the insightful undead Liv Moore. I love them all, but one stands proudly as my favorite: the capable and classy Agent Peggy Carter, as played by the capable and classy Hayley Atwell. As 2016’s all too brief season of Agent Carter draws to a close, the time is ripe for me to highlight five things I love about Peggy, the character.

In Captain America: the First Avenger, she’s never a distressed damsel.

This fact alone sets her apart from the legions of superheroes’ love interests whose basic purpose is three-fold: put the superpowered man “in touch with his humanity,” get kidnapped by the bad guy, and get rescued. I’m hard pressed to think of another superhero movie, aside from the first Avengers film and Pixar’s The Incredibles, that doesn’t adhere to this love-interest formula. The Spider-Man movies are notorious for it, and of course, with Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, we’ve seen the return of Lois Lane, who, no matter how talented and independent different writers try to make her, will always exist chiefly to be saved by Superman. Even when the heroes’ love interests have skills or even powers of their own, somehow they always manage to end up in need of rescue.

Not Peggy Carter. After seeing the first Captain America film, I felt a thrill at the realization that I’d just sat through two hours of superhero action, and in all that time, Peggy never once fell into Red Skull’s clutches. Rather, she maintained her strength in the thick of the action, taking out her share of Nazis with high-powered weaponry that she knows how to use. It should come as no surprise that fans saw this character’s potential to be the hero of her own story and pushed the creators to “do more” with her. After all, try to imagine Lois Lane or Mary Jane Watson (as depicted in the movies, not in the comics) getting a TV show in which she’s the one to take down villains. Tough, isn’t it?

She’s smart as well as tough.

Peggy can use a gun and can hold her own in hand-to-hand combat. I always watch with an ear-to-ear grin when she uses her speed and strength to take down fearsome opponents. But I love her most when she’s chasing down the answers to crucial questions and using her role-playing abilities (it’s always a treat to hear her talk with an American accent) to sneak into forbidden spaces. When she’s in a tight spot, she’s as likely to think her way as to punch her way out of it. I’m rather surprised that Peggy hasn’t been criticized for being a “Mary Sue,” like Rey in Star Wars VII. But as with Rey and with Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaa, I love her for it.

She gets along with other women.

True, she faces off with evil women, but she’s also quick to befriend smart, decent women like Angie the aspiring actress in Season 1 and Jarvis’ wife Ana in Season 2. The friendship chemistry with Angie was such that quite a few fans haven’t gotten over their disappointment at Angie’s failure to return for Season 2. Interaction with Peggy gives Angie the chance to be a hero as well as an actress. Similarly, in Season 2’s two-part opening, Ana makes her contribution, and in the most recent episode, Peggy is instrumental in giving short, plump, bespectacled secretary Rose a chance to be part of the action; she turns out to be as adept at role-playing and butt-kicking as Peggy herself. It’s telling that when Peggy learns that her colleague Sousa, who pined for her throughout Season 1, has a serious relationship with a new girlfriend, she approaches this young woman not with catty jealousy, but with honest overtures of friendship. More female-buddyships, less catfighting — just what I like to see.

Her most important relationship with a man is a friendship, not a romance.

In the second season, we’ve seen a little romance come into Peggy’s life, but the love interest is not her central focus. The man she can count on, the man who has her back on those few occasions when she does need rescuing, and the man with whom she shares the most screen time is the happily married Jarvis. He’s a fun character, taking on a variety of challenges to his sophisticated dignity, and he gets his own opportunities to be awesome, proving that male characters need not be weak or dull in stories that center around female heroes.

With Peggy around, I can enjoy the villainesses.

In an earlier blog post I mentioned that the pleasure I take in watching or reading about the wicked antics of a villainess depends entirely on what the heroine is doing. If a story juxtaposes an evil woman who kicks butt with a good woman who gets kidnapped (leaving the responsibility of defeating the evil woman to the male hero), I know that story is not for me. The stories I love best show powerful and resourceful women on both sides of the moral spectrum, and that’s just what we see on Agent Carter. Peggy’s heroic presence helps me appreciate the dark complexity of characters like Dottie Underwood, a Russian spy hardened by a brutal upbringing (a Black Widow who, unlike Natasha Romanoff, has never had her conscience awakened), and Whitney Frost, a scientific genius who is sick of being valued only for her beauty. They’re the kind of interesting villains who are heroes in their own minds, and I can enjoy watching them, knowing they won’t eventually be “put in their places” by some righteous male hero. Peggy and Rose (what a delightful surprise Rose turns out to be!) are there to show us that women need not crush their moral compasses underfoot in order to be powerful.

This Valentine’s Day weekend, the major big-screen movie releases are Deadpool, Zoolander 2, and How to Be Single. Here we find proof positive that in Hollywood, romance is dead, or at least on life support. These movies may have admirable qualities — a number of my friends have seen Deadpool and enjoyed it immensely — but I doubt most sensible moviegoers would go to these films expecting a well-told love story. Mainstream Hollywood films that give us such are very few and very far between.

But it wasn’t always so. Most of my romantic-cinema daydreams are in black and white. I thought it fitting on this Valentine’s Day 2016 to pay tribute to a few of my favorite movie love stories from classic cinema.

That Hamilton Woman (1941). This movie tells the story of Admiral Lord Nelson’s illicit affair with Lady Emma Hamilton — not so much historical accuracy, but a whole lot of romance, thanks to Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in their gorgeous prime, a smart, sweet screenplay by R.C. Sheriff, and a sweeping, heartbreaking score by Miklos Rosza. In real life Emma Hamilton may have been an unrepentant social climber, but Leigh plays her as an engaging heroine, a shallow airhead who becomes smarter, wiser, and better as a result of her love for Nelson and who rescues him from distress on several occasions.

Now, Voyager (1942). Paul Henried may not be the most charismatic of actors, but he’s charming as the witty, sophisticated, unhappily married man who brings some much needed romance into the life of abused ex-mental patient Bette Davis, whose relentless emotional abuse by her mother has left her with a crippling lack of self-esteem. Davis blossoms, becoming a confident woman who can face her mother (a hissable Gladys Cooper) without fear (I love the expression that comes across her face as she says, “I’m not afraid,” and realizes she means it) and who can envision and plan a future for herself even if Henried can never be hers. Favorite line: “No one has ever called me ‘darling’ before.”

Random Harvest (1942). 1942 was a great year for the romantic drama. Here we have a soap-opera plot of an amnesiac World War I veteran (Ronald Colman) who finds love with a big-hearted showgirl (Greer Garson), only to forget her when he recovers his original identity. Corny, right? Wrong! Colman and Garson bring this drama to life with sympathy and style, and as we watch it unfold, we totally buy it. Colman gives a solid performance in essentially two roles, as his personality changes when he gets his original memories back and fails to recognize Garson when she re-enters his life. And Garson radiates warmth, compassion, good sense, and good humor. I like her performance here much better than her Oscar-winning turn as the titular Mrs. Miniver the same year.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947). My Fair Lady notwithstanding, this film features my favorite Rex Harrison performance as the ghost of the title, a salty sea captain with a sentimental streak that comes out in surprising ways. The female lead, Gene Tierney, may seen a little ordinary by comparison, but this story does not fall into the Twilight school of depressingly colorless human girls who fall for dashing, charismatic nonhuman guys. Tierney’s Mrs. Muir reveals a solid base of courage, sense, and even humor as we get to know her. Like Davis in Now, Voyager, she grows in confidence and wisdom as a result of her relationship, but in the end she must find a way to live without him. Both heroines come out strong.  Helping the movie work so well is a lush score by Bernard Herrmann. (Never underestimate the power of a beautiful music score.)

All This, and Heaven Too (1940). In case it’s not already apparent, I like my movie love stories poignant and sad. Of course I get a kick out of a good romantic comedy (It Happened One Night, The African Queen, Singin’ in the Rain), but the tragic romances have my heart, and this one, in which nobleman Charles Boyer and governess Bette Davis fall in love as his possessive, paranoid wife makes life increasingly intolerable for him and his children, is the saddest of the films on this list. If you’re not in the mood to cry, don’t watch it. But if you are, sit back and enjoy a love story that develops slowly, steadily, and movingly, as Davis for once gets to play opposite a leading man who can match her in charisma. Barbara O’Neill is downright horrifying as Boyer’s wife. We can see all too clearly why Boyer is so inexorably drawn to the smart, gentle, empathetic Davis. We root for them even though we know their story cannot end well.

I find it hard at times to hear the stories I love (books, movies, television, or music) disparaged. I try to avoid taking too active a part in debates over matters of taste — at least when they concern what I love; when I hate something, I may not hold back as much as I should. I can explain in detail why a particular book or movie or show is emphatically not for me, but when it comes to explaining my love in the face of skepticism or outright disapproval, I find myself tongue-tied. Okay, I know that Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens may be little more than A New Hope in new skin and the writers may skimp on character development. Just let me love it, okay?

Sometimes a clear-eyed look at the flaws of a beloved thing can actually strengthen the love. At other times we may find ourselves considering whether we ought to let go of that love. Two people can read the same book or watch the same movie/show and come away from it with starkly different impressions. When is one clearly right, and the other wrong? Are there times when there is indeed a point to disputing matters of taste?

More than once in my blog I’ve expressed my admiration for Naomi Novik’s stand-alone fairytale novel Uprooted. It was my favorite read of 2015, although Wexler’s The Shadow Throne gave it close competition. (Here’s my Goodreads review of the book.) Novik’s beautiful prose, especially her descriptions of the workings of magic, seduced me. I took ungainly heroine Agnieszka to my heart and rooted for her to succeed. Yet in my delight, did I miss things that ought to have bothered me more? Feminist author and blogger Foz Meadows, whose posts I’ve enjoyed more than once, posted a scathing review that classed Novik’s work with Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey as sending dangerous, toxic messages about “romance” to impressionable female readers. In Novik’s book, she argues, the abusive behavior of an “alpha male” is glorified and, in the end, rewarded. Were Meadows to confront me face to face, I doubt I could justify my enchantment with the book. Most likely I would keep silent, head hanging.

Because I’m honestly not certain who’s right, or whether there is a “right” in this matter. The book I read, or the book Meadows read — will the real Uprooted please stand up?

A less troubling, because less vehement, criticism of something I love came to me in an article sent to me by a good friend from high school with whom I now keep in touch via Facebook. When she posted it to my wall, she wrote that she was “dying to know my opinion.” It examines the amount of dialogue spoken by male and female characters in Disney films since the late-80s “Renaissance” (including my favorite, Beauty and the Beast) vs. the films Disney made back when feminist consciousness was very far from the studio’s mind. The article shows that female characters actually speak more in those early pre-feminist Disney films than they do in the more recent movies touted as having “strong heroines.” The conclusion drawn is that those recent movies aren’t quite as female-positive as they might at first have seemed.

About this one I’m not quite as shy about speaking up, possibly because as a long-time Disney fan, I’m used to anti-Disney sentiment. Beauty and the Beast has come under harsher fire than this article, having been cited often as a prettified but still toxic example of “Stockholm Syndrome” (a female captive falling for her male captor), a worse offense than an imbalance of dialogue. I’m still not sure what to say in response to that charge, but the dialogue imbalance I can address:

The article is mistaken in its suggestion that the imbalance automatically undoes the films’ feminist credit, just as it’s a mistake to conclude that only a movie that passes the Bechdel Test can be a satisfyingly feminist movie. The main impression I come away with isn’t so much that the studio has done badly, as that it can do better, and it can start by addressing one of the biggest problems the article highlights: the lack of female supporting characters in these “strong heroine” Disney movies.

I may love Beauty and the Beast (after all, the original tale was one of the inspirations for my novel Atterwald) but I still think Mrs. Potts should have been given more to do than just sing a sweet song. More crucially, why couldn’t Chip have been a little girl teacup? Why couldn’t the friendly tiger in Aladdin have been female? (Granted, the character is mute, but she might still have been a majestic female presence.) Might Mushu from Mulan, burdened with a jarring, lackluster vocal performance from Eddie Murphy (who was soooo much better as Donkey in Shrek) have worked just as well, or even better, as a female character? Did the plots demand any of these characters — or Merida’s mount in Brave, or the chameleon and the horse from Tangled — be male? No, but they’re all male anyway, because male is what most characters end up being when their gender is not specifically important to the plot.

The movies may still be good, but the use of male as the default setting for gender-irrelevant characters is an issue that demands a closer look. I’m not saying that all such characters need to be female. Just a few of them would be nice, just to show that we can indeed have female characters whose stories don’t turn on the fulcrum of gender, supporting though they may be.

We don’t have to abandon our affection for certain books, movies, or TV shows just because we become aware of their flaws or recognize that widely divergent, even opposite, readings are possible. We don’t all experience stories the same way. We bring our own hopes, expectations, and histories with us as we co-create the meanings of the stories we consume.

Perhaps, then, there is a point in disputing matters of taste. At any rate, such debates aren’t likely to go away anytime soon, and I need to be ready for them.

My guest today is William Brown, the founder of the Atlanta Radio Theatre Company, an organization (as you know) dear to my heart.

First, tell a little about yourself.

WB: William L. Brown, some 32 years ago, got together a group of friends in both radio and community theater to form The Atlanta Radio Theatre Company. Was the group’s Executive Producer and Announcer until 1996. Remain active with the group today and will be back on the Board of Directors for 2016. Have been in broadcast radio since 1977, having worked for WKRW in Cartersville, Ga., WGKA and Georgia Public Broadcasting as well as Supermarket Radio Network in Atlanta, Ga., and did a stint as Fine Arts Radio Director for Valdosta State University. For over 10 years I traveled the State of Georgia recording concerts and recitals for Georgia Public Radio and hosted the program “Peach State Performance Showcase on the 11 station network. I was a founding member and officer for the Pumphouse Players of Cartersville, was a founding member of The Neighborhood Playhouse in Decatur, Ga., and was on the board of the Cartersville Creative Arts Alliance for the year 2008. Today I record and do various independent audio projects.

How did the Atlanta Radio Theatre Company come about?

WB: I had wanted for some time to experiment with radio drama as an acting experience, for I had studied Himan Brown’s CBS Mystery Theater, being quite fond of the acting quality of production (which was limited to what was needed to flesh out the scene). Despite my trying with several theater groups, none were interested, and when I tried to get broadcasters interested in the idea, they all had said, “Oh, that OLD format doesn’t work anymore,” and left it at that.  That made me all the more determined to do it.  By 1983 I had convinced my friend and theater director Patrick Stansbury to try doing a demo tape and using it to find a sponsor and a radio station that was willing to broadcast a series.   He, at the time, was producing The Joe Torre show on WGST.  When we did the demo, after listening to it, Patrick told me we could do it much better.  So we redid the demo, with Patrick paying much more attention to acting and timing.  He took it to WGST and they said they would be willing to broadcast it, and he took it to C&S Bank, who said they would broadcast it.  Meanwhile, I was trying to put together an organization to do it. I would handle production (in my spare bedroom) but felt that we needed a writer to be in charge of the scripts.  My roommate at the time suggested Tom Fuller, who I was aware of because of his reputation in the theater community, so I called him up and briefly told him what I wanted to do.  He was extremely enthusiastic and told me he would come over and bring some samples of his writing.  He brought me over two radio play scripts (which he had done for Joyce Leigh’s company Ariel Productions) and 3 of his stage plays (one of which was All Hallows Moon).   I was astounded at the quality of his writing, and said to him, “I want you to be in charge of producing new scripts for the company.”  We then talked about the structure of the organization and what all we would try to do.  I wanted as much original material as possible, knowing we would not be able to get the rights to classic old time radio shows.  The mistake most people make is trying to do this from old scripts; they would get a show or two in and then find themselves being sued by the owners of copyrights on those shows.  I figured we would use recorded music, although you have to be careful here too or you’ll get sued by the music licensing companies or the musicians union.  Everything got put in place, and in January of 1984 we started on the air.  Within a week of our first broadcast, Henry Howard called me up and said to me, “I’ve got a recording studio, do you guys want to come play?”  Henry was the engineer Patrick had do the Joe Torre show for him, and had done the production for Joyce Leigh (using Tom’s scripts-I said the theater community was small).  So quality wise, my home studio couldn’t compete with Henry’s professional studio, so I handed all the production work over to Henry, so we were off on what would turn out to be a 19 week run.  Then Joe Torre got fired from the Braves because he won the Pennant but lost the World Series, so no more Joe Torre show and WGST abruptly canceled us.  We moved to WABE and reformatted for public radio.  I said I would try not to ramble, but I wanted you to get the full picture of our gestation.

What I wanted when I formed ARTC was to perform radio drama; that was my only goal.  I told I think both Patrick and Tom that I thought we might get a couple of years out of it and it might be fun.  That was 33 years ago. Who would have thought it would be in its 33rd year, with people all over the world as fans?  I didn’t.  But due to the hard work of so many, many people it has become one of the most prolific groups of radio dramatists in the world.  I’ve enjoyed it, and I will be a part of it until my death, when I will meet with Tom Fuller and God to decide how radio drama will be in heaven.  Tom’s death actually brought us closer together, and I think it is fitting that Tony Fuller, who grew up with us, is one of the movers and shakers behind us.  For the period from the accident till Tom’s death some two weeks later, the waiting room of the hospital in Duluth was invaded by the same group of people who invade Bill’s basement every Wednesday.  Some of them never actually left.  That is family.

What helps hold ARTC together in its present age?

WB: It really isn’t one thing that holds it together, but a blend of loyalty from fans, and the extremely hard work of Bill Ritch, David Benedict and Tony Fuller.  Also the fact that we do not rely on broadcasts, but developed a fan base in the sci-fi and horror communities with our live performances and recordings.  It is only quite recently that we have gotten back on the air.  Plus we have gotten into online work, having a website and doing podcasts (which we plan to expand).  And the members of ARTC itself: never have I had to explain to its members the appeal of performing in this medium.  Over the past 32 years we have had an uncounted number of actors, writers and musicians involved, probably about 500.

What, for you, are some particularly memorable moments in ARTC’s history?

WB: More memorable things have happened for me than any one person has a right to. Getting to work early on with some old folks from the golden age of radio (who started coming out of the woodwork when we got on air).  Dennis King Jr. who had been a director on the Lux Radio Theater (hosted by Cecil B. DeMille) and was Sam the bartender on the radio version of Gunsmoke.  I remember sharing my peach cobbler with him while he brought me his peach chutney, and hearing him talk of those he had worked with. Also Zeke Segal, retired southeast chief for CBS news (he had been in charge of the coverage of the Cape Canaveral flights through Apollo 13) indulged his early background for CBS as a writer and director of radio plays with us.  Tom, Henry Howard and I attended several sessions of the Midwest Radio Drama workshop in Columbia Mo., where we met and got to work with David Ossman (of the Firesign Theater), and producers and directors from the BBC.  At one of the sessions we had a telephone conference with the great Norman Corwin, already over 100 and a judge for the Mark Time awards, who told the group that “you must listen to the fine work that Henry Howard and Tom Fuller are doing down in Atlanta.”  I was sitting next to Tom who was both blushing and beaming over this compliment from perhaps the greatest man in radio drama.  A few years earlier both Tom and myself went to a couple of sessions at The University of GA (Tom’s alma mater) with Himan Brown who had produced the CBS Mystery Theater and who was my idol.  With him at both of those sessions was Mercedes McCaimbridge (who I actually learned more from than Hi).  Orson Welles had called her the greatest radio actress, and in our second session, we were doing a recreation of one of his Mystery Theater shows.  During rehearsal we had a problem with the script and Hi said he didn’t know what to do as he couldn’t just call him up as he was dead.  I spoke up and said, “Well, I’ve got MY writer here and he can fix most anything.”  Tom glared at me with his “I could kill you” look, but went off with Hi to work on it.  At this point Mercy leaned over to me and whispered, “You know, he reminds me a lot of Orson.”  I told Tom that night what she had said, and he told me, “Well, my life’s complete now.” I must include some of the things that happened to us at DragonCon.  For the very first DragonCon in 1987 its founder had asked Tom if we might perform something live.  Gerry Page said that he would adapt Lovecraft’s “Call of C’thulu” if we would perform it.  We had never done a live performance before, so we rehearsed it at Tom’s house and performed it for an audience of about 1000 with some recorded music and a few foley effects.  The audience was totally silent, and I began to think we were boring them, but after we finished there was an ovation which lasted about 10 minutes.  Never had I experienced that kind of reception from such a large audience.  When I directed a production of Tom’s “the Passion of Frankenstein” we were introduced by Anthony Daniels (CP3O from Star Wars), and one of our shows there was introduced by Ray Bradbury, and featured Harlan Ellison, who had been one of his proteges.  We had Harlan also in one of our Lovecraft pieces, The Rats in the Walls (which was for many years our best seller).  Also Jonathan Harris of Lost in Space (in a Rory Rammer)* and John Rhys Davies (Guards! Guards!). These are just a few of the things I remember. If you have a spare couple of weeks, I can tell you much more.

What’s your favorite thing about working with ARTC?

WB: I have always liked the sense of family that the group as a whole has had.  When our first show was broadcast on the last Monday night of January, 1984, I had the cast of the show over to my house to listen to it.  I made some party food and most of the others brought a dish or two and we listened to the show, and everyone left feeling good.  The next Monday night, people from that cast as well as many from the first, just showed up with food unprompted.  It was like that through the rest of the WGST run.  Plus Tony Fuller was born a few months later, so he has grown up with us.  Many of the people in the first few shows I had done theater with around Atlanta, but all became my family in this.

What’s your favorite thing about radio theater in general?

WB: Radio drama is, for me, the ultimate expression of the theater arts.  I love the fact that the spoken word, combined with judicious use of music and sound effects can create in the mind of a listener a full picture, an experience  will be different from every other listener.  A child once told a radio actor that “the pictures are better on the radio.”  People used to gather around an old radio and stare at the speakers, which I found to be true when our first cast gathered to hear our first show.

*(Rory Rammer: Space Marshal is an ongoing original ARTC series, an homage to 1950s sci-fi action/adventure serials, written primarily by eminent ARTC writer Ron N. Butler.)

The month of January has one bright spot, when my husband and I, along with our family and friends, celebrate his birthday. Beyond that, it is without question the dreariest month in the calendar year. The color of Christmas comes tumbling down, leaving only brown grass and bare trees in its wake. The cold weather descends without pity even on north Georgia, where I live. (I stay rooted in Georgia, not out of any special “Southern pride” even though I do love that Atlanta is one of the country’s most geek-friendly cities, but out of my deep loathing for the cold.) It takes forever for the sun to come up and no time at all for it to set. All in all, I often catch myself wishing I could fast forward through all the bits of January that don’t involve my husband’s birthday.

It behooves me, therefore, to make a special effort to find the positive, and now’s the time to start a new blog series to follow up my end-of-2015 post. Here are a few things that are making me happy in this frigid January of 2016:

1. Audiobooks.

To get to Life University, where I teach Composition and Literature and sometimes Public Speaking, I have to travel from my home in Gainesville down to Marietta, GA, an often (no, usually) sticky commute. I always take my iPod, but I find I can’t enjoy music when I’m crawling in traffic at a pace that would embarrass a snail. Until recent days my habit had been to turn to the news when traffic got slow, but the Presidential campaign has made listening to the news an altogether too depressing experience. So sometime last year I theorized that I could make my commute more bearable by listening to audiobooks — particularly audio versions of print books I’ve already read and loved. As Christmas drew near, I made out my Amazon.com wish list accordingly.

My husband, who makes me smile in countless ways, gave me the Audio CD version of Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings, one of my favorite reads of 2014 but so huge (well over a thousand pages) that the prospect of re-reading it from cover to cover is a bit daunting. I’ve been listening to it, and it turns out I was absolutely right: listening to a well-told story does indeed make a traffic crush more bearable, and it even brightens my morning coffee and Internet-surfing on my days off. It would seem I’ve never outgrown my childhood pleasure at being read to, even when I could read the books for myself. Next up is the Audio CD of Mercedes Lackey’s The Wizard of London, a gift from my father-in-law.

Thanks to Amazon.com gift cards, I’ve been growing my audiobook collection. I’ve added Tad Williams’ Shadowmarch (a book I haven’t read yet) and Sanderson’s Words of Radiance, the even-better sequel to The Way of Kings. I learned a few days ago that a series I adore, Juliet Marillier’s Sevenwaters Trilogy — Daughter of the Forest, Son of the Shadows, and Child of the Prophecy — is due for a big Audio CD release this coming May. I can already guess one thing that will be making me happy in June 2016.

2. Django Wexler’s The Price of Valor.

Few things make a fantasy reader happier than a series that just keeps getting better. I liked the first book in Wexler’s Shadow Campaigns series, The Thousand Names. I liked the second book, The Shadow Throne, even more. I’m over halfway through Book Three, The Price of Valor, and I like it best of all. This is the very book a Goodreads reviewer criticized for having “too many female characters,” and I can see what he meant; thus far, every chapter has been marked by the significant presence of at least one female character. But a flaw in one reader’s eyes is a virtue in another’s, and I love the heck out of it. The first book revolved around military action, and the second around political machinations and competing philosophies. In this third book, we get both, as Winter, the heroine, takes the lead on the battlefield while Marcus, the hero, deals with the politics and investigates an attempt on the life of his Queen. The best part: the series has two more books to come!

3. C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner.

This is the most “literary” of the books I’m currently reading, as Cherryh is one of the most highly regarded science fiction writers living and working today. One of her great strengths is her facility with creating detailed and believable alien societies and complex and intriguing nonhuman characters. In this one we get to know Bren Cameron, an ambassador and representative of humanity surrounded by atevi, black-skinned aliens who dwarf him in size and bewilder him in spirit. The book makes an interesting contrast piece to Cherryh’s The Pride of Chanur, in which the point-of-view character is Pyanfar, a female commander of the lion-like Hani race who must learn to communicate with the “alien” — a human male — who has stowed away aboard her ship. Both stories deal with the problems encountered in any attempt to reach across barriers of language, culture, and appearance, yet there’s a heartening optimism at their core that I find very winning.

4. The return of iZombie.

Rob Thomas’s iZombie is my second favorite among the TV shows that premiered last year, with its appealing trio of good guys, clairvoyant zombie Liv (a female Other protagonist — nearly always a plus for me), medical examiner Ravi, and detective Clive. While Liv does have a romantic relationship, for me her solid friendships with Ravi and Clive, all-too-rare examples of male/female friendships with no sexual tension, are much more interesting. (One distinct flaw in the show is that Peyton, Liv’s only female friend, shows up far too rarely.) In the return episode, Liv helps Clive investigate the death of an actor on a show called “Zombie High.” One of the extras, in zombie make-up, says he’d like to see “a show about zombies where a zombie’s the star.” Clive’s response: “Sounds boring.” Bits like that — along with lines like Ravi’s brilliantly delivered, “Yes, Olivia, there is a Santa Claus brain” — are a big part of why I enjoy this show.

5. The return of Agent Carter.

This is my absolute favorite of the TV shows that premiered last year. I mean to devote an entire post to this one, once I’m further into the season, but for now I’ll say that Peggy Carter is the kind of heroine I wish with all my soul had been kicking butt and pursuing justice (and looking gorgeous while doing it) when I was a teenager in search of a TV role model. I’m still not too old to look up to Peggy. I’ll share this quote from a Tor.com recap:

Peggy is life, Peggy is world, Peggy is ALL. Peggy Peggy Peggy.

6. The return of Downton Abbey.

This show will also get its own post. For now I’ll give an example of what I feel is its greatest virtue. When I watched Season 1, Lady Edith Crawley, the wallflower “middle sister,” was my least favorite character, a sniveling whiner looking for every opportunity to stab her gorgeous elder sister in the back (not that Lady Mary didn’t deserve it, in her way). Now, as I watch Season 6, Lady Edith is my favorite character, the one with whom I most identify and for whom I am rooting the hardest. Her journey from character I loathe to character I love has been hard-won, complex, and believable.

I have recently finished what I expect will be the final round of edits for my second novel, The Nightmare Lullaby. Like Atterwald, this one features a musical instrument with arcane powers, a garden, and a heroine who is often mistrusted through no fault of her own. Yet my husband, an honest and trustworthy critic, has proclaimed that this new book is even better than Atterwald, as every new novel should surpass, at least a little, the one that came before it.

Here is the description I have composed for the back of the book:

“A dark spell is winding its way through the sleep of the people of Crainante. An evil spirit takes flight and screams of all the sorrows in the world, turning dreams into the most horrifying of nightmares. If it soars unchecked, it will drive everyone mad. Yet a magnificent carillon sits on a hillside overlooking the town and pours music like a healing balm upon the people.
At the center of this tug of war stands Meliroc, geas-bound servant of Crainante’s sorcerer Cedelair. A woman eight feet tall, with bone-white skin and hair, she is a question mark, even to herself. When she discovers that the carillon-player is a lonely specter imprisoned by his instrument, she resolves to find the songs that will set him free: one of joy, one of sorrow, and one of love. Yet his freedom comes at another, far higher price, which Meliroc is bound to pay. Meanwhile, Cedelair searches for the driving force behind the nightmares plaguing his town – and all signs point to Meliroc.
The darkness has cursed her. The light will deceive her. Can she save herself from both?”

Expect to hear more about this one in the weeks and months to come.

More “Gender Is No Object” books.

Back in 2015 I wrote a series on my “Unfavorite Tropes,” as detailed and cataloged by the dangerously time-devouring website TV Tropes.org. (Click that link at your own risk!) The flip side of that would, of course, be those tropes that gladden my heart as long as they’re employed with skill and good sense. One of these is “Gender Is No Object,” or, as it might also be termed, “Gender Is No Problem” — stories in which characters are not burdened by highly restrictive notions of “masculine” or “feminine.” The goal of such stories is not to eliminate conflict but to generate more original and unexpected obstacles, to give their characters, both men and women, different battles to fight.

We don’t see nearly enough of these kinds of stories.

When I consider where I’ve seen this trope employed over the last year or so, I can easily come up with examples from science fiction. In Sarah Zettel’s splendid Fool’s War, the commander of the ship where most of the action takes place is a Muslim woman named Katmer Al-Shei. While her religion occasionally poses a minor problem (which she overcomes), no one ever questions her authority or fitness to lead because of her gender. The female pilot, Yerusha, comes under suspicion, but due to her association with a group that has some radical notions about the nature of A.I.’s, not due to her gender. In Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald’s The Price of the Stars, the central heroine disguises herself as a man solely because she’s on the run and the gender-switch decreases her chance of being recognized; women are accepted in her society as pilots, fighters, politicians, you name it. Joel Shepherd’s Crossover, the first in his “Cassandra Kresnov” series, also presents us with men and women together occupying every role in society significant to the story; the fact that the President is a woman is not shown to be unusual in any way. In books like these we see women in primary, secondary, and tertiary roles, with equal numbers of men and women filling in the background.

I find books like this a pleasure to read, because they show male and female characters interacting as colleagues, allies, and friends as well as love interests. They show male and female characters free to follow their own individual inclinations, even if those inclinations don’t always work out. Yet the characters still face compelling problems. Katmer Al-Shei and her crew, both men and women, must deal with a sabotaged ship and hostile A.I.’s. Beka from The Price of the Stars is hunting down the assassin who murdered her mother, a major political leader. Cassandra, heroine of Crossover, is fighting for her free will against her programming as an android assassin. Stories like this offer abundant proof that a character’s gender need not be an obstacle in order for her (or his) story to be interesting.

You would think it did, if you had only the epic fantasy genre by which to judge. It shouldn’t be surprising that we find far more “Gender Is No Object” novels in science fiction than in fantasy. Science fiction looks ahead to the future, to show us where and what we might be, but fantasy draws on the mythic past for its material, and so many fantasy authors, male and female, give in to the temptation to inculcate medieval- or Renaissance-era gender ideas when building their fantasy societies from scratch.

Within the past couple of decades we’ve seen a satisfying upsurge in the number of important female characters in epic fantasy novels. Without question we could do better, but we’re still miles ahead of where we were in the ’70s and ’80s. Yet at times these heroines’ journeys can start to feel very same-ish, as the gender-as-obstacle trope repeats itself: she can’t join the army/navy/etc. because she’s a woman. She can’t or shouldn’t inherit the throne (or wield any form of authority) because she’s a woman. She can’t learn or practice magic because she’s a woman. She can’t become a doctor/lawyer/professor/banker/insert-desired-profession-here because she’s a woman. I know that such stories still need to be told, because even today we still have gender biases to overcome. But speaking as one who would rather read a good epic or historical fantasy novel than any other kind of book, I find the non-stop repetition of such conflicts overwhelming, if not depressing, after a time. I think how wonderful it is to read the occasional book in which no one bats an eye when a princess inherits the throne (e.g. Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina) and the sight of a woman in knightly armor is more typical than surprising.

Toward the end of 2014 I started to read Michelle West’s The Broken Crown, a sumptuous epic fantasy involving a struggle between two realms, the Empire and the Dominion. The huge book’s first half takes place in the Dominion, where gender restrictions are so oppressive, and women regarded as so inferior to men, that any genuine love between a man and a woman is an impossibility; even a man’s love for his daughter is regarded as a weakness because it makes her “too important.” I found myself feeling stifled, almost suffocated, as I read about this world. When the setting shifted to the Empire, I heaved a deep sigh of relief, for the Empire, while not completely a “Gender Is No Object” society, imposed far fewer gender-based rules on the characters and allowed both men and women to occupy a much wider range of social roles. I couldn’t get over how much lighter I felt, and how much easier it was for me to breeze through those chapters.

What would I like to see in fantasy fiction? More Empires, fewer Dominions.

Among the podcasts my husband and I enjoy listening to when we make trips to Atlanta and elsewhere is NPR’s “Pop Culture Happy Hour,” a roundtable discussion about what’s hot in books, film, TV, and music. Every episode ends with a segment called “What’s Making Us Happy This Week.” To end the year 2015 on a positive note, I’ve decided to steal a page from their proverbial book and highlight some things that have made me especially happy this year, in no particular order.

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens

I intend to devote an entire post to this film, once the tidal wave of media coverage surrounding it starts to subside. For now, I’ll just say I think it’s awesome and I love it.

Uprooted

Naomi Novik’s stand-alone fantasy novel, a portal to the landscape of fairytale Poland, took me to my happy place this year with some of the most vivid descriptions of magical workings I’ve read in the genre. The heroine, coltish and clumsy Agniezska, uses what she has, a unique brand of magic no one else understands and even she isn’t quite sure about, to rescue those closest to her and, in the end, save her world. This was a good year for heroines who get the job done.

The Muppets

As a long-time fan of The Muppet Show, I found this new show took some getting used to. A friend of mine complained that the pilot was too mean-spirited, and I could see all too clearly where he was coming from. But new shows often take time to find their footing, and by the time I saw the Christmas episode — which was anything but mean-spirited — the show had become one of my sources of happiness. Plus, Uncle Deadly, the miniature dragon with the Vincent Price swagger who made me chuckle every time he turned up on the classic series, features prominently in this one.

Fool’s War

Fantasy is always my genre of choice both as a reader and as a writer, but I do relish falling in love with a good science fiction novel. This summer I finally got around to reading Sarah Zettel’s book, and I wish I’d read it sooner, just so I could have had it in my life longer. I enjoy it for its diverse cast (in gender, race, and ethnicity), its intriguing theme (the nature of artificial intelligence), and its central heroine, Evelyn Dobbs, who confronts a painful moral dilemma with aplomb and integrity. Plus, its style is solidly accessible even to a science/technology dunderhead like me.

Inside Out

Since I’ve discussed this one in a previous blog, I’ll limit myself to a few words. “Congratulations, San Francisco, you’ve ruined pizza!” “I am positive you could get lost in there.” “Triple Dent Gum.” “Take her to the moon for me, okay?”

The Thousand Names and The Shadow Throne

Django Wexler’s The Shadow Campaigns series was also the subject of an earlier blog, so again I’ll keep it brief. Sometimes I hesitate to recommend books, even ones I adore; I always think, “Well, I loved it, but he/she might not,” and catch myself wishing to protect those beloved books from possible negative opinions. But the first two volumes of this series I would recommend without hesitation to any fan of fantasy, especially lovers of heroines like myself.

Crimson Peak

Critics gave Guillermo del Toro’s gothic horror costume drama a lukewarm reception, so my expectations were hardly in the stratosphere. Yet for all its flaws, this movie may have been designed with me in mind. An aspiring writer as its heroine. A haunted mansion beyond Charlotte Bronte’s most feverish dreams. An atmospheric score and gorgeous costumes. I let myself be seduced, and I can’t say I feel very guilty.

DragonCon 2015

This was my first DragonCon as a published novelist, my first time as a dealer. Gilded Dragonfly Books had a booth in the Exhibit Hall, and my husband and I both did our share of “manning the table.”  We took twenty copies of Atterwald to the Con, and by its end we had sold every one of them. Definitely a highlight of my year.

Honorable Mention Name Drop:

Supergirl. Marvel’s Agent Carter. Miles Cameron’s The Red Knight. Kate Forsyth’s The Witches of Eileanan. Kristen Britain’s First Rider’s Call. Jennifer Fallon’s Treason Keep. PBS’s remake of Poldark. Season 2 of Showtime’s Penny Dreadful. Octavia Butler’s Kindred and Wild Seed. Pratchett and Gaiman’s Good Omens. Elizabeth Bear’s Steles of the Sky. Far From the Madding Crowd (2015 movie). Mad Max: Fury Road. Orange is the New Black. The final season of Continuum.

That’s a lot of happiness.

Warning: in this particular holiday blog post, you won’t find much original or surprising. In fact, I almost decided not to write it, because when I thought about my favorite holiday television specials, the only ones that came to mind were the famous ones that have been written about before. Yet here is this post anyway, because the purpose of my blog isn’t to be original or surprising. It’s to pay tribute to the things I love, even when they’re the same things everyone else loves.

My favorite TV Christmas specials will always be the ones I grew up watching, the furniture of my childhood playroom. Since I spent my fourth through seventh grade years entranced by Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts gang, A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) will always have a special place in my heart. In fact, all I have to do is hear the first four chords of “Christmastime Is Here” from Vince Guairaldi’s piano to feel warm all over. The music may be the special’s foremost allure for me, but I’m drawn to Charlie Brown as I would be to any good-hearted underdog who chooses a scraggly green Christmas tree because “I think it needs me,” and Linus, my favorite of the gang, plays a central role in the story, stepping into the spotlight to explain what Christmas is all about. Other highlights for me include five-cent psychiatrist Lucy quizzing Charlie Brown about his fears, finally reaching pantophobia, “the fear of everything” (“That’s it!”), and Schroeder plunking out a toy-piano appropriate rendition of “Jingle Bells” for Lucy — on what looks like his middle finger! How’d they get away with that?

1966’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas is the work of Chuck Jones, one of my heroes, also responsible for a string of the best seven-minute animated theatrical shorts ever made (One Froggy Evening, Duck Amuck, Duck Dodgers in the 24th 1/2 Century, What’s Opera, Doc?, and the “hunter trilogy,” three shorts which feature Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck each trying to convince hapless Elmer Fudd to shoot the other). It features narration by Boris Karloff, another of my heroes, whose deep, soft, slightly sinister British baritone voice could make the Tax Code sound interesting. So there’s little chance of my not loving this classic with my whole heart. Thurl Ravenscroft’s delightful singing of “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” is the gravy on the roast beast. People keep telling me this already-perfect special was remade as a live-action feature film a few years back, but you know what? I refuse to believe them.

Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass are, as we all know, the kings of the holiday TV special, and indeed I could devote an entire blog post just to their work. (Something to keep in mind for next December.) I’m quite fond of their flagship special, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but my softest spot is for 1970’s Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town, for a number of reasons. First, in a number of the Rankin-Bass specials, Santa is more than a bit of a jerk (as in Rudolph, when he adds his voice to poor Rudolph’s mockers, and ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, when he decides to bypass an entire town because one kid published a letter calling him a “fraudulent myth”). But here he’s closest to the Edmund Gwenn Santa, even going by Kris Kringle for most of the show. I also like the portrayal of Jessica, the future Mrs. Santa Claus, as an active heroine. Plus, here we get fine voice-work from Fred Astaire, Mickey Rooney, and especially Keenan Wynn as the Winter Warlock (apologies, just “Winter”), whose “melting” when Kris gives him a toy choo-choo is my favorite scene, and the splendid Paul Frees, who gives voice to the hilariously over-the-top villain Burgermeister Meisterburger (“I hate toys, and toys hate me! Either they are going or I am going, and I am definitely not going!”).

These are my top three, but I have a few “second-tier favorites.” John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together wins my love thanks to the rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” in which Fozzie Bear keeps forgetting his part and Miss Piggy hams up hers, as if she could do otherwise (“ba-dum-bum-bum”), and the Piggy-led round of the English madrigal “Christmas Is Coming.” Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas is a sweet “Gift of the Magi”-type tale of a poor otter mother and son, and a die-hard Muppet fan like myself can spot the core performers in the cast; veteran Jerry Nelson, who also voiced Robin the Frog and Gobo Fraggle, is very likable as Emmet (though I’m a bit less thrilled with Marilyn Sokol as his mother), and the Paul Williams songs are catchy. The Little Drummer Boy, another Rankin-Bass special, has a couple of good songs and strong voice-work from Jose Ferrer, proving again that villains have more fun, but it stands out for having one of the most strikingly flawed youthful protagonists I’ve seen in any holiday special.

Christmas-themed episodes of TV series aren’t in quite the same category as holiday specials, but I can’t talk about my Christmas TV experience without mentioning “The Night of the Meek,” an episode of the classic series The Twilight Zone, in which Art Carney plays a destitute drunk who loses his job as a department-store Santa Claus when he says the wrong thing to a bratty child, and then is given a magical opportunity to become Santa Claus. In less than thirty minutes, the episode hits all the notes of a great Christmas tale. It’s a redemption story, not just of one man but of everyone around him. Like Miracle on 34th Street, it stresses the importance of faith, as the magic bag with which Carney becomes Santa can only work if people believe in it and in him. And of course we get the joy of giving, in spades. Carney is excellent as he transforms from languid, despairing lost soul into energetic Kris Kringle, and John Fiedler, best known as the voice of Piglet in Disney’s Winnie-the-Pooh cartoons (and “that guy” in a lot of things), is effectively villainous as Carney’s heartless department-store boss.

[Hi, this is Matt, Nan’s husband.  One more Christmas-themed episode that we enjoy every year is “Comfort and Joy” from Justice League.  Granted, in the scheme of the DCAU, it doesn’t advance any plots.  But it does have Hawkgirl and Green Lantern (John Stewart) having a snowball fight, Flash trying to find the hottest Christmas toy for a group of underprivileged children, and J’onn J’onzz (a.k.a. The Martian Manhunter) learning about the meaning of Christmas… and discovering his addiction to Oreos!  Every year, it melts our hearts…]

For those in search of some less orthodox holiday entertainment, check out this post from Tor.com’s blog site.