I’m very excited to interview Claudie Arseneault about her Kickstarter for the second Common Bonds anthology. Anthologies are a great way to discover new authors and read more stories around a certain theme. Common Bonds is all about aromantic relationships, because love is so much more than romance. The authors explore the large spectrum of aromance through their stories, to show the different aspects of it, and highlight identities that are still largly dismissed.
The Kickstarter campaign is already funded but you can still pledge to get a copy of the Common Bonds 2 anthology. The first Common Bonds anthology and books by the authors are available as an add-ons.
Hi Claudie! Thank you so much for doing this interview. I’m super excited about your new project, Common Bonds 2, an anthology filled with aromantic stories. Could you introduce yourself for those who are not familiar with your usual writing and efforts to promote aro/ace books?
Hi Tessa! I can absolutely introduce myself. I’m an aromantic spectrum and asexual writer who lives in Quebec City, and I’ve been self-publishing my queer little stories since about 2015. With time I’ve become known for having tons of aromantic and/or asexual characters, giving the centre stage to platonic relationships, and mixing in the more classic high-action, high-stakes fantasy with quieter scenes and a focus on kindness that makes my work very cozy-adjacent. I’m also one of the founding members of a queer self-publishing coop, the Kraken Collective, and I built the Aromantic and Asexual Character Database to help people find these characters!
You also have two collaborators, Emery Lee and RoAnne Silver. Could you introduce them and share how you divide up the work?
Emery Lee is the award-winning of Meet Cute Diary and Café Con Lychee, and the founder of #Transbooks265. While e’s most known work is in contemporary YA, e writes a lot of very cool SFF too, as well as interactive fiction and webcomics. RoAnna Sylver is the genius behind Chameleon Moon, among others, and a Lambda-Award winning author. You can find their full bios directly on the Kickstarter page.
As for work division, I do a lot of the administrative and organizing work, which means I have the pleasure of herding cats throughout the entire process. The rest is divided equally between all three of us according to our capacity. We’re a small team that has worked together before, and it’s grown easy to ask for someone else to pick up the slack on weeks when we’re overloaded. But all of us participate in story choices and editing, for sure.
Could you share a bit about how the Common Bonds anthologies grew from idea to book?
So… before it was even an idea, it was an irritation. Back around 2017-2018, when you asked for aromantic stories, you always got recommendations for asexual ones, typically either books where nothing implied aromanticism, it was just assumed to be there as part of the asexuality, or straight up alloromantic asexual books! The only anthologies that existed with openly aromantic characters were always a mix of asexual and aromantic, and aromantic was always the side dish, so to speak. There was nothing built for us, by us, centering us.
I think I was complaining about it, and from there four of us (B.R. Sanders also participated in the first anthology) decided to do something about it. With the first one we contacted a series of authors we knew fit our theme (aro SFF centering platonic relationships) so that we’d have a handful of pre-selected stories to showcase what we sought. Then we want to Kickstarter, to get the funds we needed for an anthology that would feel official, pay authors well, get visibility, reach indie bookstores, and spread throughout the community.
The table of contents for Common Bonds 2 hasn’t been finalised yet, as submissions will be open later this year. What are some elements you’ll be looking for beyond those already listed? How can a writer stand out and wow you?
Honestly, the ones we listed on the Kickstarter pages are the most salient points all three of us very much wanted, so I really recommend starting there! For simplicity, these were the three:
- Stories bold with their aromanticism and unafraid to explore its many facets
- Allosexual aromantic characters, and/or the exploration of platonic fuck buddies and other forms of non-romantic sexual partners
- Worldbuilding that decentres romantic pairings as the highest form of attachment or a central structural unit of a society, especially inspired by existing cultures
Beyond that, character work is always really important to relationships. We want characters that feel true, and we would love for our aromantic anthology to exemplify the full diversity of the community. At our core, we want people to treat these stories with the same love and care they do romance ones. We want them to be sweeping, we want them to be funny, we want them to be poignant. Part of the reason we have this information out there so early is that we’re hoping people will have time to really think about their stories and their worlds before they submit.
Congratulations on being funded! You’re now working towards the stretch goals. What are some stretch goals you wished you could’ve offered but can’t?
Thank you!! I’d say the stretch goals are less about what’s possible than about what we decided to prioritize. There’s a real hype right now around fancy special editions, and we would love to have an incredibly cool book with sprayed edges and all that jazz, to make this beloved anthology a gorgeous work of art in and of itself (though honestly, with Laya’s cover for it, it already is imo!).
Putting money there first meant maintaining a 0.06 USD/words pay for writers. It meant foregoing audiobooks as a stretch goal. It meant, in short, paying the team less and making the anthology less accessible. If you look at our stretch goals, the first four are about paying writers and making audiobooks (for the first Common Bonds, too); the last is paying ourselves a little.
And after that? Well, maybe then we can think of making the book bigger or shinier.
Dream big. What’s one project you’d love to do this lifetime?
Have my own press publishing aromantic books. It’s what I do best, what I know the most. I’d love to have the reputation and money to support other aromantic writers trying to make their stories known and read.
Is there anything else you want people to know about you, your work, or the Common Bonds anthologies?
Just, I think, that I deeply believe that these stories are worth telling, that they are as fundamental to our humanity as romances, that Common Bonds is a testament to the myriad of ways we love, that aromanticism is queer as fuck, and we intend to keep thriving alongside the rest of our queer and trans siblings. You know, just that.
You can still back the Common Bonds 2 anthology!
