C: Do you have any particular goals you are trying to achieve through your fiction?

D: Yes, I want to speak to folks who aren’t often spoken to. I want my work to be something in which Indigenous people, people of color, women, queer folks, disabled folks and others, can find complex representations of themselves, their lives and experiences. My work is for anyone who wants to hear the other side of the story—a side that isn’t often heard.

C: How was the publishing process for you? Did you get an agent, or try a lot of publishers before settling on Kegedonce?

D: Well, I did look for an agent, but I was very disappointed with the outcome. It wasn’t that they were saying my work was crap—which I appreciated—the feedback was more along the lines of, “This isn’t the kind of fantasy we are looking for.” One agent said to me, “This is interesting and good, but I don’t have any idea how I would market it.”

So after a while, I figured that if these agents, all tied to the mainstream publishers of science fiction and fantasy, don’t know how to market Indigenous work, then maybe I should go with an Indigenous publisher who would. So, I went to my bookshelf and looked through some of the titles of the books I use for my classes, and decided to contact Kegedonce. I’ve always liked the look and contents of their books. And even though they’d never published fantasy before, I thought it was worth a try. I sent them a proposal. Kateri was very enthusiastic and it’s been a great relationship ever since.

C: Nalo Hopkinson talks about minority people often limiting and ghettoizing themselves by doing as you describe. Do you feel by having your books published by a small Indigenous press like Kegedonce, you are limiting your readership?

D: In some ways I know that’s true, but I also know that Kegedonce wants to expand their customer base, and publishing genre fiction is certainly one way of doing that. Yes, Kegedonce isn’t going to have the publishing clout of a publisher like DAW, but by adapting my work so that it would be accepted by a publisher like DAW, I might also run the risk of diluting the cultural content of my writing to the point that it wouldn’t speak to anybody. Or, I could go with a smaller press, where I could have more input, and whose vision matches my own. It is a trade off, absolutely, but there were certain things in my writing that I wasn’t willing to compromise about, and Kegedonce didn’t require me to. So, for this particular trilogy, publishing with Kegedonce was undeniably the right choice.

We are always trying new ways to get the word out about Kegedonce books, have people looking for our books and reading them. And for me personally, the feedback I’ve gotten back on my own trilogy has been really, really positive. And now that the entire trilogy is out, the feedback can grow and develop even more.

C: How was the publishing process for you? Did Kegedonce meet their deadlines, for example?

D: Oh, they were great—very professional. In fact, I met fewer of my deadlines than they did. The reality is, that they are a very small publishing house—really only two people running the place. So with them, authors have to take it upon themselves to do some of the legwork as well. I didn’t mind, because I knew I had their support.

C: What type of legwork do you mean?

D: Things like grassroots advertising and setting up some of the readings, things that even most of the big publishing houses are making authors do more of these days. With this last book in the trilogy, they hired a publicity person, and that’s been nice.

C: Just for the record, at this point you should give me the titles of your three books.

D: Okay. The entire trilogy is The Way of Thorn and Thunder. The first volume is called Kynship. The second is Wyrwood, and the third is Dreyd.

C: Can they be purchased at any bookstore, or do they have to be directly ordered from Kegedonce?

D: The books are pretty accessible in the big chains—though a smaller independent store might have to order them from their distributor. They are also available at Chapters-Indigo online and through Amazon.ca and Amazon.com.

C: Are there any advantages to be gleaned from being a minority author in the sf/f genre?

D: Hmm. In the past, I haven’t thought much about advantages or disadvantages. But I do believe there are a lot of people out there who are hungry for something to read that speaks to them. So when you write speculative fiction that relates minority experience, people become really excited about it. Minority people are tired of reading about seven-foot tall, white super-heroes that slice their way through hordes of swarthy tribesmen, capture women and make them suffer all kinds of indignities—that kind of stuff. They are tired of that.

On the other hand, the best advantage for an Indigenous author is, that a minority audience is a very challenging audience to write for—very engaged and engaging. They expect a lot, demand a lot, and as a writer, you hope you can meet those expectations.

C: Do you think that mainstream publishers will ever wake up to the potential audience they are missing?

D: I think so. Nalo Hopkinson is a fabulous writer and has found a good place for herself in the larger venue. I don’t know entirely what her experience has been, but I do know she is highly regarded both by the mainstream and by people of color. Samuel Delaney is another. And then, there are authors like Ursula LeGuin who deal with minority experiences when creating her characters. I think there is a place for minority writers in the mainstream of publishing. But I also believe that it’s a great challenge to find it. It’s always a struggle—and I personally haven’t found that place yet.

C: If in future, you were approaching a prospective mainstream editor or agent, would you tell them you were a minority writer or just try to let your work speak for itself?

D: I would never say that I wasn’t an Indigenous writer. I’m out and proud as a gay, Cherokee man, and I never hide it. I don’t hide who I am, so if that’s a problem for an editor or agent, then they’re not the people for me to be working with. And, if that in turn means that my audience is limited, then that’s just something I will have to accept. But hopefully by just being me, and doing the kind of work I do, it may help open the door for someone else.

C: Editors and agents that I’ve interviewed consistently say that writing a good story is all it takes to get published. Yet in an industry where probably at least ninety-five percent of the staff, judging by who goes to conventions at least, is White, no major publisher’s book lists supports that claim. Are they saying that people of color can’t write? So, what constitutes a, “good story,” in your opinion, and does it vary from culture to culture?

D: I don’t know exactly how it differs culturally in every case, but I do think that people in the big firms limit themselves as to what they consider a, “good story.” I believe every culture has stories that are easily transportable to another culture’s experience. But it also has others that are specific to the ethos, experience and cultural values of that particular community. When people in positions of representational power say they want a good story, they usually have in mind a particular dramatic angst—an individualizing angst, that pulls them away from community rather than the support of community that’s a common value among many Indigenous peoples.

I find most award-winning literature to be very … self-indulgent. Their work is more about the individual’s self-fulfillment, rather than about community continuity and development. The latter is more important for Indigenous peoples around the world. So, when these editors and agents read stories about minority people and communities, the “good story” they're looking for is usually a story about dysfunction. They’re interested only in the shadow-side, not how people survive and make good and happy lives for themselves in spite of their often very unhappy experiences.

These people are acting as if “story” is a neutral concept, but it isn’t. We see this with gay literature all the time, to give another example. It’s changing slowly, but for years if you wanted to have a gay character in a book or film, it had to be a doomed love. In the romance, one of the characters in the romance is going to die and the queer protagonist is left alone in the end. So, in that particular model, that was a “good story.” But what about the queer-folks who may be struggling but surviving?  There has to be some kind of conflict, as that’s almost inevitably a part of any compelling narrative, but the story doesn’t have to be about gloom and doom in their relationship to be a “good story.” The kinds of stories published about queer-folks only reinforce very deep-rooted prejudices about the dysfunctional nature of homosexuality. And in other ways, these preconceived ideas of story do the same for people of color in general as well.

To add to that, if the stories being published on the surface seem positive or neutral, but constantly bring forward the dysfunction in minority peoples and communities, then they’re also reinforcing the idea that all minority communities are basically dysfunctional. I find this both troubling and infuriating.

C: You gave an example of gay people, do you feel there is still prejudice in the sf/f genre there as well?

D: I don’t think there’s a huge degree of homophobia, but there’s definitely a heterocentric bias and heteronormativity at play. Most stories are about straight folks who are procreating a new generation down the line. Yes, it’s more open today than it’s ever been, but now it’s more the issue of sins of omission. You get the nice queer sidekick, but I’d like to see queer folks in general as the primary characters in stories.

One thing that I believe science fiction publishers tend to forget is, though we may have our reading preferences, minoritized readers are, on average, far more adventurous readers than the general public. The big firms aren’t very courageous—and it can be expensive to be courageous, but if they tried more, I think they’d be surprised. And this adventurous attitude to me is very exciting. But yeah, certain big sf genre publishers clearly have no interest in having a readership that looks any different than it was perceived to look in the 1950s. There are a lot more people out there in the world whose voices are strong—and getting stronger. It’s a pretty big audience I’m talking about. If they don’t find what they like from the big publishers they’ll either look elsewhere, or write it themselves.

C: Lets talk a bit about the high cost of books these days. Many small publishers go for Trade rather than Mass-Market, because for them it’s more cost efficient, but do you think the added cost has an effect on how many new books are sold?

D: I honestly don’t know. Certainly when I was younger I couldn’t afford to buy books, so I went to the library mostly. Now, I can afford to buy books, but I still tend to wait until they come out in paperback, so I guess I still have my cheap side.

C: Where is publishing going in the future? Will e-books take over?

D: No, I don’t think so. You always hear this gloom and doom philosophy, but they said the same thing about radio and TV and motion pictures. Every time a new technology comes along, they say that, but even though some publishers go out of business, there are still more books being published today than ever before.

C: Do you think that makes it easier for minority people to get published?

D: Not necessarily. Because along with so many small book publishers and e-book publishers appearing, you also have a great fragmentation in the readership. It’s often hard to find or access the really good stuff that is being published out there right now. So it isn’t necessarily that minority people aren’t being published, it’s that without the money and clout of the main publishers behind those books, they tend to get lost and overshadowed. It’s marketing more than publishing that’s the problem.

C: One last question. Where are you going from here in your career of fantasy author?

D: Well, I don’t know exactly. I have three other books in mind but they aren’t part of a trilogy—I don’t think I want to do a trilogy for a while. I want to do some single books instead. These new books won’t be set in the same fantasy world, but the idea of the audience that I want to speak to through my writing hasn’t changed. I know the kind of stories I want to tell. And the kind I want to hear and that hasn’t changed. There will be more books down the line, but I’m still in the after-glow since book three came out and I want to focus on that for a while longer, I think. Give myself a little more time, before going back into the fray.

C: Your books came out quite close together, didn’t they? About one a year, I believe. The big publishers hardly do any better.

D: Yes, that was great, because I used to get emails, saying, when is the next one coming out? I want to read the next one. And I could happily tell my fans when. And we kept to that schedule pretty much. And now that it’s out and people can read the entire series, I hope the readership will grow and we will go into a second and third printing.

C: I just thought of another question. (Laugh.) Did you have any problems with Indigenous people criticizing your work because it was, “make believe,” instead of telling the “real” story about Native peoples?

D: No, not really. Most of the response I’ve been given has been very positive. And if not positive, then certainly intrigued. I mean some people just don’t like fantasy, but I didn’t feel their comments had any other bases. Certainly among other Cherokees there wasn’t a problem. We already have writers who work with fantasy—Robert Conley and William Sanders, and even Thomas King—and I know a Cherokee woman who’s writing a fantasy that would be like our own version of Narnia. Certainly in my family there isn’t a bias that fantasy can’t tell our tribal story. Whatever way it gets told is fine. Also, my main job—my day job, you might say, is a professor, a literature scholar, and there I deal pretty exclusively with material and political realities, even in the fiction. I teach literary history, with my scholarship focusing primarily on Cherokee literary history.

C: I know you have another book out on this topic. What do you mean by literary history?

D: The book is called Our Fire Survives the Storm: A Cherokee Literary History. In the book I look at Cherokee literature through a Cherokee cultural and historical lens. The book covers oral traditions, documents and other writings from early contact to today. The book focuses mainly on the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, with some reference to the United Keetoowah Band in Oklahoma and the Eastern Band of Cherokees in North Carolina. The book explores what it means to be Cherokee and how have Cherokee people expressed their Cherokeeness through their literature and traditions. I’m always hopeful that stories that need to be told will find their way to those needing to hear them.

C: Thank you very much Daniel, I’m sure our readers will be very interested in what you’ve had to say.

D: It’s been a pleasure.