Today’s Women in SF&F Month guest is Pat Murphy! Her work includes the short stories in Women Up to No Good, the Philip K. Dick Award–winning collection Points of Departure, and the Nebula Award–winning novel The Falling Woman. Pat’s latest SF&F novel—her first in more than 20 years—is The Adventures of Mary Darling. This subversive retelling of Peter Pan and Sherlock Holmes focuses on Mary Darling—the mother of the children who flew away with Peter Pan and the niece of Dr. John Watson, best friend of Sherlock Holmes. To rescue her children, Mary travels halfway around the world, with Watson and Holmes in pursuit. Described by the Library Journal as “a dangerous and delightful adventure that turns the bigotry and misogyny of Victorian England on its head,” The Adventures of Mary Darling will be released by Tachyon Publications on May 6, 2025. I am thrilled that Pat is here today to reveal how she managed to keep working on this novel for more than twenty years in “The Power of Community”—and to be giving away two copies of her book!

About The Adventures of Mary Darling:

Who is Mary Darling? In this subversive take on both Peter Pan and Sherlock Holmes, a daring mother is the populist hero the Victorian era never knew it needed.

Mary Darling is the pretty wife whose boring husband is befuddled by her independent ways. But one fateful night, Mary becomes the distraught mother whose three children have gone missing from their beds.

After her well-meaning uncle John Watson contacts the greatest detective of his era (but perhaps not that great), Mary is Sherlock Holmes’s prime suspect in her children’s disappearance. To save her family, Mary must escape London—and an attempt to have her locked away as mad—to travel halfway around the world.

Despite the interference of Holmes, Mary gathers allies in her quest: Sam, a Solomon Islander whose village was destroyed by contact with Western civilization; Ruby, a Malagasy woman on an island that everyone thinks is run by pirates (though it’s actually run by women); Captain Hook and the crew of the Jolly Roger; and, of course, Nana, the faithful dog and nursemaid.

In a witty and adventurous romp, The Adventures of Mary Darling draws on the histories of people indigenous to lands that Britain claimed, telling the stories of those who were ignored or misrepresented along the way.

The Power of Community
by Pat Murphy

My novel, The Adventures of Mary Darling, will be published on May 6, 2025. This will be my first new novel in a very long time. To be exact, it has been 23 years and six months since my last SF&F novel!

As you might expect, I’m excited that this book is finally coming out. In this essay, I could tell you at length about why I wrote this novel — a historical feminist fantasy mashup of Peter Pan and Sherlock Holmes. I could talk about my research on women fencers in late 19th century London, on dime novels (aka penny dreadfuls), on Wild West shows created by people of the Mohawk (Kanien’kehá:ka) nation, and much, much more. But for that sort of thing, you’ll have to check out my website.

Right now, I want to talk about how I managed to keep working on this novel for more than twenty years. What kept me going?

You did. All of you helped keep me going.

I want to talk about the power of community — and give thanks to the SF&F community that encouraged me during my early years as a writer — the twenty plus years when I was getting started and publishing regularly. But even more than that, I want to thank the SF&F community for encouraging me during the twenty plus years when I wasn’t publishing much at all. And finally, I want to reassure any authors who might be reading this that it is possible to return from a twenty-year dry spell.

First, a bit of history

I started writing science fiction and fantasy when I was in college. I took a writing course in the English department and the professor’s reaction to my efforts at science fiction was…not good. Not because of the writing (though that definitely needed work), but because of the genre in which I chose to write. It was very clear that science fiction and fantasy were not this professor’s preferred reading.

I had better luck in two other writing classes — playwriting and “daily fiction” (where the only requirement was submitting 350 words of original prose each day). In those classes, my urge to write SF&F was tolerated, though certainly not celebrated.

In 1978, two years after college graduation, I attended the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. And that’s where I found my people.

For six weeks, I joined seventeen other want-to-be SF&F writers in a college dorm at Michigan State University. Six professional SF&F writers taught us — one each week of the first four weeks, then Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm, working in tandem, for the last two weeks.

Every morning, we workshopped stories that had been turned in on the previous day. During the workshop, the students took turns talking about a story. After all the students had commented, the pro weighed in, critiquing the story and telling us about plotting and viewpoint and where ideas come from and how stories work.

Each afternoon and evening (and often far into the night), we students read stories and wrote stories. The university administration forbade typing in the dorm — the late night pounding of our typewriter keys kept everyone else awake. So a large room that I think was a banquet hall under normal circumstances served as a sort of communal office.

By week four, that banquet hall was littered with papers that had been ripped from typewriters, crumpled, and hurled to the floor. Late one night, the crazed energy of multiple frantic writers morphed into a paper fight. We tossed crumpled pages like snowballs, bashed each other with paper swords that broke in our hands, then collapsed amid the drifts of paper, still thinking of whatever story we were working on, that damned story that could be wonderful but wasn’t — at least not yet.

We were a roving pack of young would-be writers, talking, always talking about things we’d read, things we wanted to write, about alien worlds and alienation, about ideas and dreams. We were desperate to figure out how to write it all down, how to capture our thoughts in words, how to describe the characters who spoke to us in dreams or nightmares.

The professional writers watched from the sidelines, offering sound advice, patient counselling, and more. I remember repeatedly asking Damon Knight to explain how plot worked. I had a tattered copy of an anthology he had edited and I challenged him to tell me what made each story work. None of them seemed to have the elements of plot the pros kept talking about. So where’s the plot? And what about this story — show me the plot points!

Clarion was a masterclass in writing — and that was important. Clarion was also my introduction to the SF&F community. In the long run, I think that may have been even more important.

The best advice I have for any writer is this: Find your community. Find the people who understand what you are trying to do, who speak the same language, who understand the particular brand of madness that makes you want to write.

The Madness Continues

I thought I had found my community at Clarion, but that was just the start. In the fall after I attended Clarion, I went to the 1978 World Science Fiction Convention. IguanaCon II was a gathering of almost five thousand science-fiction fans, pros, and editors, held at a Hyatt Regency in downtown Phoenix.

Harlan Ellison, the pro guest of honor, had apparently claimed that he could write anywhere, any time. So the con organizers put up a clear plastic tent in the central atrium of the hotel and provided Harlan with a table, a chair, a manual typewriter, and a ream of paper. For most of the con, Harlan was in his tent, banging out a short story. From the balconies surrounding the atrium, you could look down at the once-elegant lobby — which quickly began to resemble that banquet/writing room at Clarion.

At IguanaCon, I hung out with my Clarion classmates and met graduates from past Clarion classes. I went to parties filled with people who were interested in the things I was interested in. I met established authors and to my amazement they were willing to talk to me. It was crazy, it was amazing, and I loved it.

At Iguanacon, I began to understand what I had stumbled into. Clarion wasn’t an isolated phenomenon. There were conventions — held all over the country — where science fiction fans and writers congregated. And the line between science fiction fans and professionals was a blurry one. I learned that Damon Knight — who had patiently explained plot to me — had started as an SF fan, writing for fanzines.

I was fortunate to join the SF&F community at a time when feminist SF was on the rise. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, one of the first novels recognized as feminist science fiction, came out in 1969. It was followed by Joanna Russ’s The Female Man in 1970 and Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time in 1976. Just two years before Iguanacon, SF fan Susan Wood had organized a panel on “women and science fiction” at MidAmericon, the 1976 Worldcon. That panel led to the founding of A Women’s APA, the first women’s amateur press association.

After Clarion, after IguanaCon, I kept on writing, no longer alone in my aspiration to publish SF&F. I got together each month with a group of Clarion graduates to workshop stories, becoming part of a long-running SF&F tradition. (Back in the early 1930s, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis were members of the Inklings, an informal literary discussion group at the University of Oxford that provided these authors with feedback on their early work.) I attended science fiction conventions.

With the support of my workshop, I wrote stories and I sold stories. Eventually, I published eight novels. I won Nebula awards for my novel The Falling Woman, and my novelette Rachel in Love. I won the World Fantasy Award for my novella Bones.

I taught at Clarion, giving back to the community that had nurtured me. I attended other science fiction conventions and joined the never-ending conversation about what science fiction is and what it isn’t. With Karen Joy Fowler, I co-founded the Tiptree Award to reward and celebrate science fiction, fantasy, and other forms of speculative narrative that expand and explore our understanding of gender. We named the award after James Tiptree Jr., the pseudonym of Alice Sheldon.

During that time, I was publishing a book every few years. My biggest project was a series of three novels connected by the pseudonyms who wrote them, a grand metafictional project.

Then…stuff happened

The first book in that grand metafictional project was There and Back Again, by Max Merriwell, which came out in 1999. The second book came out in 2000, and the third book in 2001. Then, when all the books were finally done, the first book was taken out of print because of a lawsuit. (Long story that. Better told elsewhere.) The removal of that book ripped the heart out of a project that had taken me years to complete.

I was working on a novel, but I had to stop. That story included characters from the book that had been taken out of print — publishing it would have resulted in another lawsuit.

I was discouraged, to say the least. Around then, my day job started taking up more time. My elderly parents needed assistance — and I had to step up and help. The bottom line: I didn’t have much time to write SF&F.

During the 24-year period between my last SF&F novel and The Adventures of Mary Darling, my science fiction and fantasy output was just nine short stories. That’s less than a story every two years. I did manage to complete a children’s book that was published and well-received, but that wasn’t the genre where my heart lived.

As a writer with little time to write in a life packed with eldercare and a full-time job, I came to appreciate the SF&F community even more than I had as a beginning writer. I stayed connected to the writing life through my monthly writing workshop with friends and colleagues. I could read and comment, even when I had no new work to contribute.

I made an annual trek to Wiscon, a feminist science fiction convention in Madison, Wisconsin. There I had interesting and challenging conversations that reminded me of why I write. With the help of Debbie Notkin, I started a discussion group where mid-career writers could talk about the challenges we all faced and share sympathy, strategies, and assistance.

Somewhere in there, I started working on the novel that became The Adventures of Mary Darling. I worked slowly, in scraps of time between other tasks, in the late hours of the night or the early hours of the morning. There were great gaps when I had no time (or no energy) to write at all.

During those gaps, it would have been so easy to forget about writing. Why bother? After all, it’s not as though publishers were clamoring for another book.

But I had something that mattered more to me than publishers. And that was a community — a place I belonged, a group of people who understood what I was trying to do.

Oh, I had many friends and family outside the science fiction and fantasy community. My writing mattered to them because it mattered to me. But the SF&F community was different. To my friends in SF&F, the writing mattered, the ideas mattered. Whenever I managed to attend a convention, I returned home re-energized and inspired.

In 2014, at the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention, I did a reading — a scene from The Adventures of Mary Darling in which fourteen-year-old Mary Darling (the future mother of the children who fly away with Peter Pan) meets her uncle’s friend Sherlock Holmes for the first time — and questions her uncle’s respect for the man.

After hearing me read that scene, Jeanne Gomoll, a good friend from Wiscon, told me she wanted to read that novel. Over the next five years, she nagged me (in a polite sort of way), reminding me that she wanted to read that novel. She was patient (sort of), but persistent. She made it clear that there was an audience for this book. (And yes, I sent her a complete first draft as soon as I had one.)

In many ways through the long years, the SF&F community reminded me that there was an audience waiting for me. Fans reviewed and wrote about my published work. Anthologists sought out my older stories. Editors invited me to write for anthologies.

The Ensemble Cast

Fast forward to 2022. I quit my day job at the end of that year. My eldercare duties were over. I finally had time to write.

In November of that year, I attended the World Fantasy Convention in New Orleans — my first big convention in decades. Walking into the hotel, I was worried. I hadn’t been to a large convention or published a novel in many years. Would anyone remember me?

The people who read and write and publish science fiction — my people — have long memories. Of course they remembered me! Without hesitation, they welcomed me back. So what if I’d been away for a couple of decades? That didn’t matter. I was back at last.

Many SF&F stories celebrate the lone hero — the extraordinary individual who saves the day. My own work tends to take a different approach. I favor the ensemble cast — a community working together to save the day; people inspiring each other, supporting each other, and helping each other in unexpected ways.

To finish The Adventures of Mary Darling, I needed the help of an ensemble cast of SF&F readers and writers and bloggers and editors and reviewers and publishers. I couldn’t have done it without you — and I thank you all.

Pat Murphy writes science fiction and fantasy about women who defy and subvert their societies’ expectations. Her most recent novel, The Adventures of Mary Darling, will be released in May 2025. Her past works include The Falling Woman (winner of the Nebula Award for Novel), “Rachel in Love” (winner of the Nebula Award for Novella), Points of Departure (short story collection and winner of the Philip K. Dick Award), and “Bones” (winner of the World Fantasy Award for Novella). For more information and a complete list of Pat’s published fiction, visit www.patmurphy.net.

Book Giveaway

Courtesy of Tachyon Publications, I have two copies of The Adventures of Mary Darling to give away!

Giveaway Rules: To be entered in the giveaway, fill out Fantasy Cafe’s Mary Darling Giveaway Google form, linked below. One entry per household and the winners will be randomly selected. Those from the US are eligible to win. The giveaway will be open until the end of the day on Monday, May 5. Each winner has 24 hours to respond once contacted via email, and if I don’t hear from them after 24 hours has passed, a new winner will be chosen (who will also have 24 hours to respond until someone gets back to me with a place to send the book).

Please note email addresses will only be used for the purpose of contacting the winners. Once the giveaway is over all the emails will be deleted.