The first title for this post comes from Berke Breathed’s amazing comic Bloom County, and this particular strip, seen here at Robots From The Future’s comic feed. The second title for this post comes from this quote by author Samantha Geimer, via a Publishers Weekly interview in which she talks about the fallout of her 1977 rape by…
Read More Offensensitivity and the Pressure to Be Damaged (adult themes advisory)I had meant to add this information to my earlier ‘Banned in Russia?’ post, but there was just too much going on. It needs its own post. The Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church are working together to hold power in a stalled if not decaying country – and they’re blaming homosexuals, ‘atheist scientists’,…
Read More Banning Russia, or why we shouldn’t look the other waySci Fi Con PSA! Phoenix area! Affordable and fun! Got your attention? For those of you in the east to southeast Metro Phoenix area this upcoming weekend, I’d like to point you toward CopperCon Revolution, a local science fiction and media convention with a long history – both with me and the SSF community. My…
Read More CopperCon RevolutionI’m not, yet. Not that I know of. But it’s only a matter of time. In June, apparently driven by pressure from the resurgent Russian Orthodox Church, Russia passed sweeping anti-homosexual legislation essentially making it a crime to even talk publicly about LGBTQ topics. It’s another ‘think of the children’ outcry, spuriously ignoring the many…
Read More Banned in Russia?One of the busiest groups I’m on in Yahoo is the Love Romances Cafe group, which seems to have a million members. (I won’t link directly because it is an adults-only group. Check out their blog instead.) There is always a party going on. It’s probably one of the best free marketing tools this lazy…
Read More Love Romances Cafe swag! (adult content advisory)What if you killed someone, then fell in love with them? Vera Nazarian’s amazing fantasy Cobweb Bride has just been released in print and Kindle, and already has broken the Amazon 4-digit sales barrier. Not only that, it has garnered some sweet reviews. Here’s what Black Gate has to say: “…her just-released novel, Cobweb Bride,…
Read More Cobweb Bride release newsDepending on which online outlet got there first, today and tomorrow (July 23 & 24) mark the one-year anniversary of my debut novel Moro’s Price, from Loose Id LLC. I still can’t look at the cover without getting a small jolt of startled unfamiliarity: “Wait – that’s mine!” I can’t look at the buy links…
Read More A year of being Really PublishedI write about things that cannot possibly exist in this universe, as passionately as if they did. I make art that directly references myths, folktales, and alternative beliefs that I do not believe in. And then I sell that art to people who, presumably, do. They and I have one certain link: our appreciation for…
Read More Little rituals and mind-mapsI was going to name this one ‘Male Objectification’, but that’s wrong. For one thing, it follows the standard practice of somehow ignoring bi and trans* issues, in favor of a strict dichotomy of ‘straight’ vs. ‘homosexual’. The truth of human experience, and thus the grist for writers’ extrapolations thereof, is rarely that simple. I’ve…
Read More Objects of Desire, or Girl Cooties, Part 3 (adult content advisory)A little signal boost for some fellow AbsoluteWrite.com authors. Kate Lowell is interviewed today on Top2Bottom Reviews, where she dishes about life as a Canadian pony wrangler…and some great new books in her future. SA Meade has a free M/M sweet romance story up on Goodreads today: ‘That Good Earth’, a historical set around WWI.…
Read More An interview, a free story, and new releasesI’ve talked about this before, but not in so much detail. By now we’ve all seen the ‘girl cooties’ issue from the POV of the old guard of male Science Fiction and Fantasy authors. The old guard was about ‘business as usual’. Their opponents argued that female characters were marginalized for decades. That female authors…
Read More Love By Any Name, or Girl Cooties, Part 2 (adult content advisory)I don’t know how many readers are familiar with the art phenomenon that was Bob Ross. Love him or hate him, the guy made painting accessible for millions of hobbyists around the world, with formulas that relied on brushwork tricks, simple colorways, and solid composition. Cheesy as they were at best, Ross paintings of trees,…
Read More In praise of happy treesThe more new releases the better, from my friends at AbsoluteWrite.com. This installment is the M/M novella by Charley Descoteaux, now available from Dreamspinner Press. Blurb: Neil Sedwick expects to spend his vacation in a sleepy tourist trap mourning his late partner’s death. Instead, he puts his recently acquired CPR certificate to use and saves…
Read More Directing Traffic, by Charley Descoteaux (adult content advisory)Words fail, but I’ll try, anyway. Paramount and Annapurna Pictures (the latter brought us the Cheney Apology-Fest that was Zero Dark Thirty) want to update the Terminator trilogy. Here’s the link: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-207_162-57591478/terminator-to-get-a-trilogy-reboot/ Now, CG has advanced to breathtaking levels. There’s a new crop of action heroes and heroines waiting for a shot at career-defining roles. Or…
Read More Terminate ThisHey, have you heard the one about the Ancient Egyptian statue that moves by itself? This, courtesy of an alert from a friend of mine and an io9 article. Basically, the 10-inch-tall statue of Neb-Sanu is slowly spinning around on its glass shelf over many hours – but only in daylight, and in a perfect…
Read More Creepy Science Is Still ScienceVery soon, the United States Supreme Court will hand down at least two decisions on marriage equality and gay rights in this nation. I’m not even going to try to second-guess SCOTUS. Gay rights do not directly affect my life. I’m straight, and happily so. But since I have gay friends and I write gay fiction…
Read More Rainbow Nation…on Goodreads, of Moro’s Price, this time from LisaT of the Attention is Arbitrary blog. We’d first touched bases during a blog hop for our mutual friend Anna Zabo. Lisa had this to open with: “This is one wild and very deep ride. I love a good sci-fi and this delivered, but I have to…
Read More Another great review…Form Rejections: Back in the pre-internet days, when I was a callow newbie, I assigned monumental significance to every form rejection letter I received. At one level I was right: I’d had the courage to query in the first place. But then I mistook that action as requiring an equal gesture from the universe. At…
Read More Rejection letters, or Anything but ‘Yes’ is still ‘No’We knew this was coming, when he announced in April that his gall bladder cancer was terminal. We had chances to say farewell via his blog and other online outlets. But I am no less subdued for expecting this, and no less thankful that I discovered Banks’ writing many years ago while he was alive.…
Read More RIP, Iain BanksOkay, that’s not a truly fair title. Being an asshole is no more a function of being old or young, of any social or economic class, or of any gender you care to list. We all have regrettable moments. But in the case of Mike Resnick and Barry N. Malzberg, a recent editorial (and its…
Read More Girl Cooties, or Old Men Behaving Badly