Heather Tracy is joining us today to talk about the anthology she edited (and wrote in), Fiery Deeps. Here’s the publisher’s description:
“Fire is Power!
Quest to the heart of the earth, cross flaming rivers, and brave the fire with our heroes to discover unlimited strength! From fantastic underground cities, to superheroes, to magic of the forge, titanic forces of nature collide in this lesbian-centric anthology focusing on the power of women.
Contains stories by: William C. Tracy, J.S. Fields, Robin C.M. Duncan, Sara Codair, N.L. Bates, Rosiee Thor, Maya Gittelman, Heather Tracy, N. Romaine White, and Dee Lyle!”
What’s Heather’s favorite bit?
I could beat around the bush here and talk about several parts of my story, “Flame Retardant,” that I love, but let’s be serious. My favorite bit about my story is getting to set fire to a certain fabric store.
You know the one. You’ve shopped there. You’ve gotten caught behind the people who can’t figure out how to find their coupons in the app or stood in line at the cutting counter for way too long just to get one yard of fabric while someone else was getting one yard of every fabric in the store. In my story, I renamed it Judy’s Fabrics—both to protect myself and to pay homage to my Aunt Judy. But, having several friends who have worked at said fabric store over the years, and having had my own trials and tribulations shopping there—Spoiler Alert—I was all too happy to have it meet a fiery end.
The main idea for my story came from a Twitter thread from May of 2020 that made the rounds on various social media channels, as all the great ones do. It was from @katiehahnbooks and proposed a “romcom about a lesbian seamstress and the [fabric store] employee who falls a little bit more in love every time she asks the corporate-mandated ‘so what are you making with this?’ question and the seamstress goes on a passionate rant about her project it’s called girlfriend material.” I loved the idea and knew I wanted to write a story for this prompt one day. And, the fact that my husband runs a queer science fiction/fantasy publishing company doesn’t hurt either.
Fast forward to 2023 when we went on a trip to Greece, and I was inspired by all the ancient architecture depicting gods and goddesses with various powers. I knew the last of our Worlds Apart anthologies was going to be focused on fire and female power, so I thought about what it would be like if superheroes were all around us and were descended from Greek gods/goddesses? And, what if my heroine inherited her fire powers from Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth, but she was still getting used to said powers? Further still, what if she needed to make a superhero suit and had to go into a certain fabric store to buy her material, and oops, just happened to meet the cutest girl in the world?
So, this story is partially inspired by a viral Twitter thread, partially by my love for travel and history, and partially to get metaphorical retribution for my friends who suffered while working in a fabric store. Plus, who doesn’t love a good lesbian superhero story? And, if all that wasn’t enough, our fabulous illustrator, Katie Cordy, has designed a brilliant piece of art for my story so you can see the fires burn in Jo…err…Judy’s Fabrics.
LINKS:
BIO:
Heather Tracy (she/her) is a travel agent by day, and a masked copy editor and writer by night. As a travel agent, she plans Nerdventures—travel for the nerd in all of us. These can be anything from visiting New Zealand to see as many Lord of the Rings filming locations as you can to visiting castles in Europe to following in the footsteps of your favorite author.
As a copy editor, she’s found hundreds of typos, comma splices, and other grammatical nitpicks for Space Wizard Science Fantasy since before 2016. With over 30 titles copyedited, this year she turns her hand to her first published short story in Fiery Deeps, and her first novel, Only a Chapter, which features some of her personal journey surviving breast cancer.
Heather lives in Raleigh with her husband of over twenty years, William C. Tracy, where they have two rambunctious cats and several beehives. They enjoy taking their own Nerdventures—as much as they can be away from their small businesses—and cosplaying at various markets and cons throughout the year.
