Spread the Love on Spirit Day

Be sure to wear purple on Thursday, October 20 

to show your support for GLBT youth 

and to decry bullying.

(Hey, every little bit helps.) 

Sins Against My Eyes

So, I've been entertaining myself this weekend by trying to find pix of Gay Rom Lit (you guys suck at posting, except Marie and Heidi) and checking out some online scavenger hunts, because I'm not beyond trying to win an e-reader which are sometimes good for finding new reads. I just can't face writing at the moment.

But . . . people, PEOPLE, when are you going to learn? Gaaaaaaah!

• Black backgrounds are B-A-D. End of discussion. Itty-bitty fonts plastered on top of them only make the situation worse. Have some consideration for your readers and get over the freakin' black already!
• Nobody wants to be greeted by crawling lines and spinning circles. We know they are indicative of something loading, but we don't want to wait! Not unless Ed McMahon will be jumping out of the monitor and handing each of us a good check for a million dollars (which would add wonder to wealth, because the dude's been dead for over two years).
• Clutter is unpleasant and confusing. Watch one of those hoarding shows on TV. You needn't put multiple columns or sections or book covers, or totems and sigils and a gazillion links on your freakin' home page. You know what this means? It means you're neurotic. It means you're so afraid of visitors missing something of (non) importance that you're willing to risk making them feel like they've fallen into the Matrix. I used to be unclear about what, exactly, the Matrix is, but I now have a much better idea after visiting a bunch of junked-up websites.

Cleanliness is next to godliness. It's true. Haven't you ever felt divine right after taking a shower? With Ashton Kutcher a delicately scented, hand-milled soap, a big ol' loofah, and salon shampoo? Well, there you go. Keep your blogs and websites clean. And I don't mean make them sparkle. No no no. Just tell your web designers they needn't expend their lifetime allotment of creativity and cleverness on your site. All they need do is make it fast-loading, readable, well organized, and easily navigated. Leave Teh Awesome to the kids on MySpace.

I and many other people would appreciate it.

Something I have to do.

I know everybody's either in New Orleans or reading Divide and Conquer (or both), but I still feel obligated to post this reminder:

I have
a book coming out

on Friday.

Thank you.

(Now on to our regularly scheduled blogging.)

National Coming Out Day

Perhaps one of the most important things writers of gay fiction and m/m romance can do (especially authors of YA books) is provide encouragement and hope -- at least a glimmer of hope, 'cause we sure ain't gods -- to people who must deal with the experience of coming out. This theme figures heavily in my upcoming release, The Zero Knot, as well as many of my other books. In fact, scores of authors have tackled the subject.

I don't know if fiction writers can make a difference (hence the "perhaps" in the previous paragraph) in terms of personal and social acceptance. I sure as hell hope so. The fact that non-heterosexuality is any kind of issue is absurd to begin with, but as long as ignorant people keep making others' lives miserable, all proponents of queer pride have to contribute whatever they can.

Let's all hope and pray that someday this issue becomes a non-issue, and all the fussing can stop.

Nice things I didn't have to pay for . . .

Mary Calmes gave me this. (Scroll down along the left sidebar. That lady is incredibly supportive and one of the nicest people you'd ever want to meet.)

And Chris gave me this. (She's generously given me, and others, many such things.)

And Kris gave me this. (I'm enjoying my pressie immensely!)

And Tam gave me this. (Whoa -- I felt like a star!)

My dog Luna gave me red-quilted poop (she actually ate part her bear to do that, the selfless little thing), my dog Cody gives me many loving looks and big albeit rank smiles, the neighbors across the street gave me ginormous red hibiscus to ogle throughout August and September, and Nature has given me an Indian Summer full of glorious color.

Who needs money?

Uh . . . forget I said that. I do have a book coming out on the 14th, after all. ;-)

I found a character lookalike!

This doesn't happen very often. I came upon a photo of actor Chace Crawford and stopped dead in my tracks. Oh-em-gee, I thought, that's Jess Bonner! Jesse Bonner is the main POV character in The Zero Knot. Although the actor is older than his fictional counterpart (and has slightly different coloration), his resemblance to my mental image of Jess is uncanny.

Rumors, and denials, abound when it comes to Chace Crawford's orientation. But whether he's gay, straight, in between, or undecided, it was damned ballsy of him to participate in the photo shoot below, so he's okay by me.

Statistics -- wheeee!

How come most writers' royalty checks don't even come close to paying the bills?  Here's why.

Out of curiosity, I got online and tried to hunt down a publishing industry statistic -- namely, how many works of fiction are issued each year. This proved a very difficult number to find. Many record-keepers don't bother to mention what types of books, exactly, they're counting: paper and/or electronic; reissued as well as original titles; the output of all publishers or only larger publishers; POD and independently-published pieces or not. As you can see, there are many variables.

This article states "...There are around 100,000 new English-language works of long-form prose fiction published globally each year." That averages out to 274 a day. However, for 2009, R.R. Bowker tallied 48,738 works of fiction (a figure determined, apparently, through the number and types of ISBNs issued), which breaks down to 134 works a day. Could this be for US publishers alone? I'm not sure.

Click on the post title to read yet another confusing overview.

A while back (less than two years, I think), I saw a list of GLBT titles published over a thirty-day period. The list had been compiled by the diligent and tireless Elisa Rolle. I believe I stopped counting at 150 entries. That's a hefty number for a fairly small fiction niche for one month, and I'm willing to bet it's even bigger now. EDITED TO ADD: I just counted the titles on Elisa's current list. There are close to 300 of them! O_O

Lordie, why can't I be a video game developer!

Cover Art at Its Finest

Since I don't pay attention to the multitude of book competitions out there (the results of which usually leave me scratching my head -- to put it mildly), I haven't been following this year's Rainbow Awards run by Elisa Rolle. But she did contact me to let me know that Anne Cain's cover for Visible Friend is a finalist in both the Jury Poll and Popular Poll. (Christine Griffin's cover for Fugly placed third in last year's competition -- remember? -- and I was pleased as punch . . . even though I don't have a clue what that phrase means.)

I know I've said this before, but I respect and admire talented cover artists to the point of awe. Dreamspinner has some of the best, and my gratitude to them is boundless.

Click on the post title to see the other finalists. What an array of stunning work!

What's up?

Not much. Around here, anyway. I'm just about to wrap up A Hole in God's Pocket . . . and, frankly, am wondering why I persisted in finishing this book. Only super-popular authors can get away with writing religion-themed stories, especially ones that are essentially character studies short on action and sex. But I told myself, Screw it; faith and faith-related struggles are a significant part of many gay men's lives, so why do we keep sweeping this issue under the carpet? And I forged ahead. Besides, I became too invested in my promiscuous Amish rent-boy and virginal Catholic ex-monk to leave them dangling, so to speak. I hate approach/avoidance conflicts and have always sought to resolve them. :)

The Jackson and Adin "Scourge" trilogy has really been hammering at me, though. I'm eager to get started on it. I think POV will be first-person present in the first novella, and the narrator will not be Jackson or Adin, who'll get their turns in the next two books.

Still waiting on the cover art and exact publication date for The Zero Knot, a novel I feel all mushy about, kind of in the way I felt all mushy about Electric Melty Tingles. (It occurred to me just recently that I love my books in different ways, for different reasons -- just as I'm frustrated by them in different ways.) Autographed copies will be available to readers who buy the print edition. It's not that my autograph will ever be worth anything, but Dreamspinner likes to offer this option.

Phoenix

Fed up with Yahoo!

In what must be an attempt to coerce its users into switching from "Classic" mail to "Updated" mail, Yahell has been making access to my email a royal pain in the ass. Words cannot describe how much I despise this company! I tried, a while back, to take the path of least resistance and change over. After all, I was sick to death of their ad-crammed Mail page, glitchy service, and incompetence at catching spam. But . . . their "new" mail proved an even bigger clusterfuck than their old mail, with an even more junked-up page, so I went back.

I guess they didn't like that.

It's going to be another PITA to inform all the people and groups I need to inform that I've changed my primary email address -- I've had the Yahoo one practically since I started publishing -- but I know I'll take a grim satisfaction in doing it.