Shadows Over the Land
| Zine | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Shadows Over the Land |
| Publisher: | Other Times and Places Press/OTP Press |
| Editor: | |
| Author(s): | Nina Boal |
| Cover Artist(s): | Pat Cash |
| Illustrator(s): | TACS and Sheila Willis |
| Date(s): | 1992 |
| Medium: | |
| Size: | |
| Genre: | |
| Fandom: | Professionals |
| Language: | English |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Shadows Over the Land is a 90-page Professionals novel by Nina Boal.
The cover is by Pat Cash. It has interior art by TACS and Sheila Willis.
The story is dedicated to the memory of several of the author's friends who died of AIDS.
The story was originally a short vignette called A Time to Grieve.
Descriptions
From the original publisher:
A tabloid not only brings Ray Doyle 'out of the closet' but loses him his CI5 position. Faced with economic hard times, Ray must struggle on his own. But what of Bodie, his lover? And what is Ray's role within the burgeoning anti-AIDS movement? (Note: this is not a death story!) Half-toned cover by Pat Cash.
From a distributor: Agent With Style:
The lives of CI5 agents are never their own; even when they're off duty they must adhere to a certain standard. When one of the Bisto Kids is outed to the public, Cowley has no choice but to remove him from the ranks. What will this do to the relationship between Bodie and Doyle?
From Kathy Resch:
Ray Doyle finds himself an outcast, separated from everything he ever knew. This novel is set in the 80s and deals with AIDS and gay activism.
From Media Monitor #34:
A tabloid not only brings economic hard times. Ray must struggle on his own. But what of Bodie, his lover? And what is Ray's role within the burgeoning anti-AIDS movement? (Note: This is not a death story!)
From a flyer:
A full-length novel which explores the pressing contemporary issues of prejudice, AIDS, and a love which will not be destroyed.
Author's Comments
From November 1994:
I've found that if I'm reading more slash and enjoying it less, the solution for me (other than leaving the fandom) is to begin writing what I want to read. I wrote SHADOWS OVER THE LAND because I got tired of reading "we're not gay, we're heterosexual men who love each other." I have no problem with others who like this scenario. But it wasn't what wanted. I wanted my characters to be Queer. I wasn't getting enough of it. After grumbling a bit, I wrote my own slash, the sort I wanted to read. While writing it, I also found other Queer slash (where be characters are clearly gay or bisexual) and I read it vociferously. But I also was looking for other things in slash that I wasn't quite finding about the particular nature o fa relationship I wanted to study. I wanted a certain sort of plotting of the sort I wasn't finding enough of. Many writers are not quite satisfied with what they are reading, which figures as a strong motivation to write. The same sort of process happened with F/F stories. I wasn't seeing nearly enough of them, especially the sort wbere the women become heroic, then break through the barrier to erotic intimacy and accept their own beauty as women. So I began writing these sorts of stories. So, in my humble (?) opinion, if the slash you are readipg is not to your liking, then start writing your own. [1]
From November 1994:
Re fans' reactions to NEVER LET ME DOWN: I remember when I first published SHADOWS OVER THE LAND. I wondered about fannish reactions to it. I was happy to get the LOCS where people told me how much they enjoyed it. But I did hear about some feedback which said that it was "too "political." I didn't worry about less than positive comments, I realized that it was a matter of tastes. I also got a few comments stating that SHADOWS was too sentimental. I l-o-o-ve sentimental slush, but I know that other people don't always like it; or perhaps believe that it didn't fit in SHADOWS. I had enough positive feedback on SHADOWS to see that it was successful for at least part of the fannish community. [2]
Sample Interior
Fan Comments
1994
Some 'serious' stories are so portentous as to be boring, and too many 'serious' stories contort the characters to make a point (Shadows Over the Land), or claim to be 'serious' but are, in actual fact, just leaden. [3]
Susan Douglass' story is a political statement [with] people with not characters but cardboard cutouts. Actually, next time someone maons at me for not using female characters and asks me why not, I should just hand them Douglass' collected works. Meow, definitely, but I really think she does a really awful job with female and/or gay characters, and she makes these female characters soooo annoying, and then there's the continuing stereotypes (Doyle comes out. Is fired. Goes from being a perceived heterosexual who is a tip-top CI5 agent to a perceived homosexual who suddenly can't even get money out of the government or feed himself. Is saved from his own inability to stand on his own two feet by two lesbians who read like something out of Rush Limbaugh. And is finally given back his self respect when they give him a job as a --wait for it-- florist.). [4]
1995
I don't think so. This was a tale set in the early 1980's, though possibly as late as 1987. Basically Doyle was caught, I think in a public toilet, and Cowley made him resign. He had to claim the dole, but was disallowed because of some impossible reason, and he wasn't offered a transfer into another government department. (In direct contradiction to Civil Service policy even then, not to mention that no-one even suggested going to his Trade Union [...] He ended up selling flowers in the Berwick Street market, called throughout the story the Berwick Street Fair or something like that. I know the story had the word 'Shadows' in the title - and the other thing I remember about it was that the writer had clearly read the handouts on Supplementary Benefit, but they were the (different) Scottish printing covering the Scottish rules. And in one of bits a car drove through a street which is a pedestrian-only right of way with bollards at both ends.
This must be SHADOWS OVER THE LAND, by Nina Boal, which does indeed deal with AIDS. (Hence the title: "shadow over the land" was originally a phrase referring to the threat posed by endemic syphilis in the early 20th century.) Or it might be the short story, probably of the same title but I'm not sure, out of which her novel grew. To be fair, she did a lot of research, although clearly she missed some bits (and you are quite right; as I understand it, she had Jane Carnall, a Scot, help her with rules for benefits.)
On the other hand, this novel has one of the worst oopses I've ever seen in fanfic: a newspaper headline at the very end of the book, revealing to the world the scandal of queers in high places, blazons:
Ouch, indeed. [5]
- "Your Tax Dollars Pay For Perversion in CI5!"
1997
The only other slash stories I can recall that's set in London and contains such detail is Nina Boal's "Shadows Over the Land" (Pros) which was so full of technical errors and misunderstandings that I found it almost unreadable. [6]
References
- ^ from Strange Bedfellows APA #7
- ^ from Strange Bedfellows APA #7
- ^ a fan on Virgule-L, quoted anonymously with permission (January 20, 1994)
- ^ a fan on Virgule-L, quoted anonymously with permission (December 26, 1994)
- ^ a fan on Virgule-L, quoted anonymously with permission (June 15, 1995)
- ^ a fan on Virgule-L, quoted anonymously (June 15, 1997)