Category Archives: Romance

February 22, 2011 · 8:11 pm

Editing frenzy

Well, for me it’s a frenzy.  I edited Zack and Larry before submitting it for publication (of course), and went directly from that to editing both Seidhman and Murderous Requiem, at the same time. 

Murderous Requiem is, frankly, still a bit of a mess.  Since it’s only half done, and I’d written that half during NaNoWriMo, the quality of this first draft was…rough.  Very rough.  Was it good?  Well…parts of it were.  The rewrite helped.  But it will still require a lot of rewriting, when it’s finished.  I got through the chapters I’d written, and now I’m plowing ahead with the rest of it.  So far, the requiem isn’t very murderous.  At about halfway through, we have yet to have anything happen, apart from ominous foreshadowing.  It’s still entertaining, but the interest comes from the relationships our hero has with the other characters, and his rediscovering of a life he thought he’d left behind.

Seidhman, on the other hand, is getting close to the point where I’ll start sending it out.  My friend, Roxanne, handed a copy of the manuscript back to me with copious notes scribbled in the margins — good notes, for the most part, since she knows her history and is a writer, herself.  I don’t agree with everything she says (of course), and sometimes decyphering exactly what she’s saying can be a challenge, since her handwriting is…interesting.  But a lot of it’s worth considering.  So I’m about halfway through the manuscript now, using her notes as a guide.

A friend of a friend, who lives in Norway, gave the manuscript a read and said she loved it, and found it to have a very Scandinavian feel to it, which was tremendously encouraging.  She gave me some notes, as well, but they were mostly minor details, except for some matters of “You can’t get there from here,” which I’ll have to take into account.  When you don’t live in an area, you often don’t realize that what looks like a simple route on a map has a towering cliff or a raging river that you can’t cross, forcing you to pick a different route.

I also have a reader in Iceland going over the story, and since she’s an Icelandic historian, that’s nerve-wracking.  Hopefully, she won’t come back with, “Foolish American!  Don’t ever write anything about my country again!” 

So, I’m about halfway through the current draft and it’s getting pretty polished.  Depending upon what the woman from Iceland tells me, I will hopefully be able to have a final draft done by spring.  Then I have to make decisions about whether to send it to a publisher or to an agent.  An agent is preferrable, but these days they appear to demand that you already be published, before they’ll look at your work.  I also know of some publishers who might be good fits for the story.  But those are small press.  And considering how much of myself I’ve invested in this particular novel, I might want to aim at the bigger houses, to begin with.

In the meantime, I’m still fretting about Zack and Larry.  I should probably do a final draft of my still-untitled cyberpunk story, so I can have something else ready to put out there.  In the event Zack and Larry gets rejected, I’ll at least have something else to pin my hopes on.

4 Comments

Filed under Mystery, NaNoWriMo, Romance, Viking, Writing, Young Adult

February 13, 2011 · 5:11 pm

Zack and Larry is out the door!

I’ve submitted my novella, Zack and Larry Make a Porno, to Dreamspinner Press today!  If it gets published, this will be my first non-holiday story out there.  (Of course, The Meaning of Vengeance , doesn’t really feel like a “Christmas story,” in the sense most people think of it, but it was included in a Christmas/Holiday anthology, so it probably won’t get a lot of attention for the rest of the year.)

Preparing a manuscript for submission is always nerve-wracking.  Not only does the story itself have to be polished, but it has to be correctly formatted according to what the publisher wants.  Dreamspinner isn’t too difficult about that, but the manuscript must be in Times Roman, 12-point, with one-inch margins.  The hardest part, for my first submissions, last Fall, was figuring out how to put a header on the document which would put “Jamie Fessenden / Zack and Larry Make a Porno” on the top left of every page, and the page number on the top right.  It doesn’t seem too hard, now, but the first time I did it, it kept breaking.  Microsoft Word is far from intuitive.

Once the submission itself is prepared, you have to come up with a “short but complete story summary and/or synopsis.”  This is where I probably need some more coaching, because my story summaries are long.  For this 15k-word novella, my summary was two and a half pages.  Once upon a time, I gather that was expected, but I think writers tend to do shorter summaries, these days. 

So, you attach your story and your story summary to an e-mail, and then you have to write the dreaded Query Letter itself.

I’ve written a few successful queries, by now — successful, in that I was asked to submit the story, after the editor read my query — so I’m fairly confident, in that regard.  I just keep it short and to the point, making sure all of the important info is included.  They want to know what genre the story is, assurance that it has never been published elsewhere, and how long it is.  They also want two paragraphs describing the story and a brief list of your credentials, as a writer.  Here is the query I just sent to Dreamspinner:

February 13, 2011 

 
Dreamspinner Press LLC
Genre: First Time for Everything

Dear ,

I have a 15,400-word previously unpublished novella called “Zack and Larry Make a Porno,” which I would like to submit for inclusion in the First Time for Everything anthology.   The title is obviously a riff on the title of the popular Kevin Smith film, but the story is otherwise a completely original work.   (If the title presents a legal issue, I would of course be willing to change it.)   The story is a dramatic comedy.

Zack and Larry have been best friends since Middle School and are now comfortably rooming together in college.   But when Larry hears that other guys they know are getting paid a lot of money to have gay sex in videos, he convinces Zack that they could pick up some quick, easy cash by being in one of these films…together.

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If Zack thinks making a gay porn film with his best friend is disturbing, he is absolutely horrified when Larry proposes that they “rehearse” for the film, so they won’t be nervous, in front of the director.   As the two young men fumble their way through a checklist of sexual positions and acts, Zack finds himself seeing Larry in an entirely new light — a very sexy new light.   And possibly a romantic one, as well.   But does Larry feel the same?   Or is this all just for fun?

I’ve attached the entire manuscript in .doc format, along with a summary of the novella.

Previously, I’ve had two stories published through Dreamspinner Press.   My short story, “The Meaning of Vengeance,” and my long novella, “The Christmas Wager,” were both released this past December. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Of course, my contact info is included on the bottom. 

Now, we have yet to see whether this query is successful.  But it has everything that should be required for the editor to make a decision.  (Out of habit, I’ve blocked out the name the letter was addressed to, but the name of the editor is right on Dreamspinner’s submission page, if you’d care to look her up.)  This is the first time I’ve ever listed credentials in a query, since I hadn’t been published before submitting The Meaning of Vengeance and The Christmas Wager.  (Both queries were sent off within days of one another.)  If you don’t have any credentials, it’s best to just say nothing.  The editor isn’t interested in the fact that your mother loved your story, or that you feel being gay has given you insight into your characters.  (Yes, I did once say this in a query.  That one was not successful.  My defense is that I was young and stupid.)

If you’re an Icelandic historian — or you happen to be a Viking — you might mention that, for a book about his Vikings.  But mostly the editor just wants to hear if you’ve been published before.  In this case, it might seem strange to list my previous Dreamspinner credentials.  After all, the editor I’m submitting to was involved in the publication of those two stories.  But Dreamspinner has expanded considerably over the past six months — the list of writers on their site seems to have doubled!  I’m not sure the editor will remember me.  Besides, it’s requested in their submission guidelines. 

Now, I get to wait.  In agony.  Although it would probably be more productive to work on something else, instead of just sitting around fretting.  This particular anthology will be out in June, so I can’t suffer for too long.  One of my biggest concerns, as I noted in the letter, is the title.  Parody law covers things like that, but I’m not sure if it will disturb the editor or not. 

In the meantime, I have that cyberpunk story that’s nearly ready to go out.  It just needs a little tweaking to make it feel a bit more futuristic and “tech-y.”  But for now, I’m going to get back to Murderous Requiem, the occult murder mystery I started for NaNoWriMo.  I only made it to 27k-words, and it’s a bit weird, in terms of pacing.  I’m not sure “murder mystery” is the proper categorization for it, since the first murder isn’t going to occur until about halfway through the novel.  But I still think it’s interesting, so I’m working on tightening up the rather slow and dull first chapter.  Then we’ll see how the rest of it goes.

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Filed under Mystery, NaNoWriMo, Romance, Writing

February 4, 2011 · 6:33 pm

Apparently, Epithets are Bad

I don’t mean calling someone insulting names.  I just mean coming up with things to call your characters, apart from their names and “he” or “she.”  Let’s take a passage from my new story, Zack and Larry Make a Porno, altered slightly:

“Will you stop acting like my goddamned mother?” he said with a groan.  “I can make my own decisions, you know.”
“Like that time you did a handstand on your skateboard, down Harriman Hill Road?”
“I was eleven.”
“Or that time you let me shoot a tin can off your head with a BB gun?”
He gave him a lopsided grin.  “That was your idea, you have  always been about the BBs“
“I know,” he admitted.  “But you were still dumb enough to let me do it.”  He had been a cocky little shit with that BB gun.  It never occurred to him that it was possible he could miss.  He had just stood there, trusting him completely, and fortunately his aim had been good. 
“I knew you’d never hurt me,” he said with a shrug, as though friendship alone had kept him from shooting his eye out. 

This is nearly incoherent.  We have no idea who’s saying or doing what.  Obviously, something more is needed to distinguish one character from another.  Since one character is named Zack and the other is named Larry, we could try using their names:

“Will you stop acting like my goddamned mother?” Larry said with a groan.  “I can make my own decisions, you know.”
“Like that time you did a handstand on your skateboard, down Harriman Hill Road?”
“I was eleven.”
“Or that time you let me shoot a tin can off your head with a BB gun?”
Larry gave Zack a lopsided grin.  “That was your idea.”
“I know,” Zack admitted.  “But you were still dumb enough to let me do it.”  Zack had been a cocky little shit with that BB gun.  It never occurred to Zack that it was possible Zack could miss.  Larry had just stood there, trusting Zack completely, and fortunately Zack’s aim had been good. 
“I knew you’d never hurt me,” Larry said with a shrug, as though friendship alone had kept Zack from shooting Larry’s eye out. 

This is certainly better.  But it gets a little weird in the middle.  Obviously, using “he” or other pronouns would be a good idea, in at least some of those places.

Now, here’s where I’ve been going wrong, according to a recent review I got on The Christmas Wager, as well as my editors and several people who have critiqued my stories.  Since I have a tendency towards making one character tall and blond or redheaded, and the other shorter and dark-haired (I’m not quite sure why, but I’ve been doing this since I was writing as a teenager), I’m prone to using hair color to distinguish between the characters:

“Will you stop acting like my goddamned mother?” Larry said with a groan.  “I can make my own decisions, you know.”
“Like that time you did a handstand on your skateboard, down Harriman Hill Road?”
“I was eleven.”
“Or that time you let me shoot a tin can off your head with a BB gun?”
Larry gave the dark-haired boy a lopsided grin.  “That was your idea.”
“I know,” Zack admitted.  “But you were still dumb enough to let me do it.”  Zack had been a cocky little shit with that BB gun.  It never occurred to him that it was possible he could miss.  Larry had just stood there, trusting him completely, and fortunately his aim had been good. 
“I knew you’d never hurt me,” the blond said with a shrug, as though friendship alone had kept Zack from shooting his eye out. 

Now, this seems perfectly readable to me, and since there are only two main characters, I don’t find it hard to remember which one is blond and which one has dark hair.  I know I’m not the only writer who does this, because one of my earliest writing memories is the girl in my High School class who was upset that the editor of our school writing magazine had accidentally changed “the tow-headed boy” to “the tw0-headed boy” in one of her stories. 

But alas, my readers seem to hate it.  Even when I’ve suggested alternate epithets, such as “the jock” or “the peasant boy” (in a fantasy novel), it’s met with a lukewarm response. 

So, after hearing the criticism a number of times, I’ve had to acknowledge that epithets irritate people, even though I myself don’t find them irritating.  And to that end, I’m now going through my stories with a fine-toothed comb to eliminate them, or at least drastically reduce them.

Here, in case you’re curious, is the final draft of that scene:

“Will you stop acting like my goddamned mother?” Larry said with a groan.  “I can make my own decisions, you know.”
“Like that time you did a handstand on your skateboard, down Harriman Hill Road?”
“I was eleven.”
“Or that time you let me shoot a tin can off your head with a BB gun?”
Larry gave him a lopsided grin.  “That was your idea.”
“I know,” Zack admitted.  “But you were still dumb enough to let me do it.”  Zack had been a cocky little shit with that BB gun.  It never occurred to him that it was possible he could miss.  Larry had just stood there, trusting him completely, and fortunately Zack’s aim had been good. 
“I knew you’d never hurt me,” Larry said with a shrug, as though friendship alone had kept Zack from shooting his eye out. 

NOTE:  That anecdote is based upon a real incident.  When I was a teenager, and not the super-genius I am now, I let my best friend, Phillip, shoot a soda can off my head with his BB gun.  Fortunately, his aim was good, and I still have both my eyes.

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Filed under Romance, Writing

January 31, 2011 · 5:04 pm

The Ax Has Fallen

And by “ax,” I mean Erastes, an author of gay historical romances, who also reviews said romances on her blog, Speak Its Name.  I’ve read her novel, Standish, and it was clear from it that Erastes has far more knowledge of the culture and time period than I ever could.  She does, in fact, live in the UK, whereas I haven’t yet had the chance to even visit it. 

So, it was with much trepidation that I learned The Christmas Wager was in the queue to be reviewed on Speak Its Name.  I’d written the novella as a fun little Christmas Romance, in imitation of the numerous Christmas Regencies I’ve read.  Many of these were not terribly well written, though the authors may have had the advantage of actually living in England.  I could, of course, have set my novella in America, where I’ve lived all my life, but I wanted to use the standard tropes of the genre — the English manor; the wealthy lord, whose excesses have left him a bit jaded; snow on Christmas (even though that’s a rarity in England, it always snows in the Christmas Regencies); etc.

I knew she wouldn’t pull her punches, and she didn’t.  She immediately saw through my ignorance of the culture, which simply can’t be remedied by a bunch of reference books.  She credited me for doing my research, which I appreciate, because I certainly did, but points out a number of anachronisms and inaccuracies that I missed:  balsam not growing in England (who knew? Well, I guess the English…); no scones for breakfast (i.e., I thought they would have them, but apparently they do not); apparently, it’s not called a fifth of scotch?  And many others I’m still puzzling over, because I don’t know the culture as well as I should.

But I’m not unhappy with the review.  Erastes was not at all mean-spirited and had some very nice things to say about the characters and the story itself.  She took a couple jabs at my editors, which might not have been completely fair.  One thing, in particular, that annoyed her was my use of epithets, such as “the blond” or “the handsome blond,” and my editor (as well as Erich and my friend Claire) did point out that I overused those.  Ultimately, I’m responsible for the lack of historical accuracy. 

Punctuation…well, I spent what seems like days going back and forth with my editors over comma usage, so I’m not sure where the fault lies, on that one.  But I have to say, I always thought I was good at that, until I started proofing my galleys.  Then suddenly, it became clear just how fuzzy my knowledge of correct usage really was.

What stung the most, was the line “So taken aside the things that knocked this from being a really good read to an annoying one –”

Ouch.  It went from “really good” all the way to “annoying.”  Do not pass Go; do not collect $500.  But at least she then goes on to finish the sentence with “I did like this book, and would probably recommend it to those who like big country house stories.” 

Overall, I expected to be raked over the coals for dipping my toes into a time period and culture I’m familiar with only through category romances and a few reference books.  And I was.  But I consider it a big win that she enjoyed the story, despite its flaws.

(NOTE:  I’ve been informed by other writers at Dreamspinner that a 3-star rating at Speak Its Name is far from being “raked over the coals,” so maybe I’m exaggerating just a wee bit.)

Now, ask me how panicked I’m going to be if Seidhman gets published and reviewed by somebody living in Iceland….

Read all of Erastes’ review here.

4 Comments

Filed under Christmas, Romance, Victorian, Writing

January 28, 2011 · 8:31 pm

My First Royalties Statement!

This afternoon, I received an e-mail from Dreamspinner Press with a pdf attached.  The pdf was my royalties statement for last quarter’s sales of “The Christmas Wager” and “The Meaning of Vengeance.”

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting it to amount to much.  After all, eBooks sell for just a few dollars a piece, so it would take substantial sales for any percentage of that to amount to much.  But I was pleasantly surprised. 

I’m not going to mention specific dollar amounts — that would be crass, even for me — but the number of copies that sold was much more than I’d expected, my first time out the gate.  Wager sold 103 copies, which seems pretty good for a Christmas novella by an author nobody’s heard of that came out just three days before Christmas.  And Vengeance sold 31 copies.  (I’m assuming that figure combines individual sales with the sales of the anthology it was included in.)

This makes me very hopeful for my future as a writer.  Not that I can plan my retirement any time soon, but if I can start to build a name for myself, and get enough stories out there, who knows?  Both of these stories were holiday stories, which means that a) the sales were probably considerably higher than I can expect for non-holiday stories, due to the holiday feeding frenzy; and b) they are unlikely to sell much over the next eleven months.  A few weirdos like me, who get into the Christmas spirit at odd times of the year, might grab a copy here and there, but pretty much the sales are probably over, until next Christmas.

I’m hoping that Dreamspinner accepts Zack and Larry and The Bodyguard (though they both need rewrites).  If not, I’ll try them at other publishers.  But at any rate, those stories may have a longer-lasting appeal, even if the audiences are smaller.

I’m currently working on my YA novel, The Guardians Awaken, doing most of my editing on my iPad now.  The rewriting is going well, as I work my way through from the beginning, tweaking the mythology and adding more detail to the world I’m creating.  But the actual writing of the ending has been slow.  I’m hoping I can force myself to get through another section this weekend.  The accursed thing is so close to being finished….

Then there’s the problem of where to send it — that, and my YA novel about Vikings, Seidhman.  I’m certain that the YA publishing world is considerably different from the world of m/m erotic romance publishing.  I haven’t heard of many eBook publishers for YA, and I think that makes a huge difference.  Book publishers, as opposed to eBook publishers, seem to have a vastly smaller output.  They simply can’t afford to publish more than a few books a year, whereas eBook publishers can put out as many as they have time to edit.  The expense model is completely different.  So the chances of getting a manuscript accepted by a traditional book publisher are much lower.

But in happier news, I learned today of a new review of The Christmas Wager, at Queer Magazine Online.  For some reason, whenever I open the link, the review is all squished into a narrow column in the center of the page, which I don’t think is how it was intended to look.  But it’s a good review, so who am I to complain?

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Filed under Christmas, Romance, Viking, Writing, Young Adult

January 24, 2011 · 7:32 pm

Attempting to write on the iPad

Erich got me an iPad for Christmas, and after an initial struggle getting the damned thing to boot up (neither one of us knew it would be completely non-functional until I registered for an iTunes account), I’ve grown fond of it.  Not fond of it in the I-want-to-have-Steve-Job’s-baby kind of way that seems to grip a lot of people , but…fond of it. 

But after playing a bunch of games and watching “The Two Towers” on it, I’ve begun to ask myself, “Is this all there is?” 

My first attempt at making my iPad useful was copying my stories to the iBooks library, so I could proofread them.  This had a nifty little feature, where I could tap on a word and a little yellow sticky note image would appear, which I could type revisions on.  This was helpful, but of course the revisions weren’t actually being incorporated into the documents.  I needed a way to make revisions directly in the documents, and preferably to do some writing, as well.

My friend, Claire, directed me to DropBox.  DropBox is a cloud-computing program which is supposed to store your documents online, basically through Google Apps.  You upload a document and it becomes available to the iPad, while you’re connected to the Internet.  When you’re not connected to the Internet — which is the situation, when I’m at work, since there’s no wi-fi I can connect to there — it appears to store a copy on the iPad.  Then it synchronizes later, when you’re connected again. 

All well and good, except that DropBox isn’t an editor.  To actually edit my files, I needed to get an editor.  And not just any editor.  It had to interface with DropBox.

Claire’s suggestion was PlainText.  It was, after all, free.  Unfortunately, it couldn’t understand .doc format, which is the document format I use for my writing.  I could change the format I use, but I refuse.  For one thing, I use italics extensively in my current novel, to denote dream sequences and words in the three languages spoken by humans and the gods.  (Which, incidentally, Erich wrote for me.  Did I mention that he’s frigging brilliant?)

So I turned to an Office app for iPad called QuickOffice.  QuickOffice worked okay, except that I couldn’t figure out how to get it to interface with DropBox, setting the cursor in the correct place was difficult and there was no “undo” key.  The latter doesn’t seem like a big deal until you accidentally delete something.  Then it would be nice to just click a button to undo it, rather than re-type it.  But no.  That would be too easy. 

QuickOffice also looked pretty grainy.

So I then bought an app called Office HD (neither Office app was free — they both cost about $10).  This one quickly proceded to wipe out all of my paragraph indents, for no explicable reason.  It did keep my italics, but then, so did QuickOffice.  The look of it was a bit better, and it had more controls, including an “undo” button and the ability to place the cursor precisely, rather than tap around until your finger starts bleeding.  (Tap, then hold your finger down, and a little magnifying glass pops up.  You can then slide your finger around and place the cursor exactly where you want it.)

Getting it to interface with DropBox has been a challenge.  I thought I had it set up correctly, but it kept failing to save.  Or, worse, it would save one time, then fail a few minutes later, even though I hadn’t done anything differently.  Erich fiddled with it yesterday and figured out that it works best if you open Office HD, then open the document from within the shared DropBox folder, and save it that way.  What I’d been doing was opening DropBox, opening the document, then selecting the “Open in Office HD” button.  This opened it, but when I tried to save, it kept insisting it had no idea where the document had come from, or that it was read-only.  Silly me — I expected competent programming.  Alas, it’s only 2011, and nobody can write a decent software program in these Dark Ages.

It’s still flaky.  Last night, I typed for a while in bed, then saved.  Then I typed for a few minutes longer, and attempted to save again.  Once more, I was told that the document was read-only, and somehow, attempting to tell it where it should save to, I managed to close the document.  Except that it didn’t “close” — it vanished.  All of my changes were gone. 

So, I cursed, which woke Erich.  Then, after he’d gone back to sleep, I opened the document from DropBox, made my changes and saved without a problem. 

Do I recommend using the iPad to write on?  Not on your life.   Maybe after I’ve hammered out these kinks — if they’re possible to hammer out.  But come on, people!  What were you thinking?

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Filed under Fantasy, Romance, Writing, Young Adult

January 17, 2011 · 1:41 am

Arisia

I dragged Erich to Arisia this Saturday.  Arisia is a sci-fi/fantasy convention in Boston, which split off from another science fiction convention called Boskone, before I even met Erich.  I gather that Boskone had been getting a bit too “literary” for some people, so they formed Arisia as an alternative.  Unfortunately, although I’ve never been to Boskone, I have to wonder if I might prefer it.  Arisia was very much about people showing off costumes — steampunk, predominantly, though there were certainly many others from film and other media.  But, to put it mildly, it really wasn’t my “scene.”  Which is too bad, because I’ve enjoyed it in the past, and even had my first film show there one year.

To be fair, we were doing a drive-by, blowing in and out quickly, mostly so I could stop by the Dreamspinner table and meet some of my fellow authors.  We didn’t have time for any of the panels, which was too bad.  Our friend, Marlin, was conducting a panel later that evening on gay images in science fiction, which I would have liked to participate in, and there were some panels on writing YA fiction that might have been interesting, as well. 

But we were short on time, and I wasn’t in top form, having had a migraine earlier in the day.  I wouldn’t have bothered to go, except that I wanted to say ‘Hi’ to the Dreamspinner crowd.  That, I did.  I met Ariel Tachna and Nicki Bennett, purchasing a copy of one of their books (Hot Cargo) and making a nuisance of myself by asking them to autograph it.  This wouldn’t have been a big deal, except that the only copy they had there was the display copy.  Since they don’t actually live near each other, getting me a copy that had been signed by both of them would mean mailing the book around a bit. 

This was finally solved by the two of them autographing the display copy and me giving them my address, so they can ship it to me, after the convention.  Ariel tells me that, thanks to leaving the book on display, they sold two more copies, before the end of the convention.

I also met Marguerite Labbe, Jonathan Treadway (who my keen powers of observation deduced was, in fact, a woman — since it’s already revealed in her Dreamspinner bio, I can say that Jonathan Treadway is the pseudonym of Jennifer Tilt), and Felicitas Ivey. 

They were all very friendly and it was wonderful to meet them and chat.  I tried to meet up with them after the table closed, but again I was thwarted by the pub I thought they would be at turning out to be closed for a private party, and a friend needing a ride home.  So my visit was short.  But perhaps we’ll meet up again someday.

I’ve made a small bit of progress on The Guardians Awaken, both in polishing the beginning chapters and in moving ahead with the final scenes.  It’s not going either smoothly or quickly yet, but hopefully it will pick up pace soon.  I tend to go through a period, when I’m doing rewrites, where I have to spend some time re-acquainting myself with the story first. 

In the real world, the anti-gay marriage crowd in the NH legislature have decided they don’t have time to deal with attempting a repeal of the gay marriage law this year.  So, we have a little time.  This also may decrease their chances of success, since the longer gay marriage continues in the state, the more comfortable people will be with it, and the less likely a move to repeal it will be to gain support.

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Filed under Fantasy, Gay Marriage, Romance, Writing, Young Adult

January 12, 2011 · 2:05 pm

Zack and Larry is finished

Zack and Larry Make a Porno was finished a couple days ago, and it came out better than I’d anticipated.  I was afraid it would just be, well…porn.  It certainly does have a lot more sex in it, than anything I’ve written previously.  Not terribly surprising, considering the premise.  But the characters found their own voices, with Zack being protective of Larry and concerned about what “normal” straight men were supposed to do and not do, and Larry being an outsider who manages to offend nearly everyone, but who would do anything for Zack. 

It needs polishing.  The pacing is a bit off, and the characterization can be improved, but there’s something there worth putting out, I think. 

My still-unforunately-named cyberpunk story, The Bodyguard, has been read by a couple friends and both liked it.  The main criticism, so far, has been unhappiness with the open ending.  It’s intended to imply that our heroes are now heading into an even bigger adventure.  But of course, my friends wanted to read that adventure now.  I’m beginning to think I might need to write the sequel, before submitting this one.  I’d rather not change the ending.  But it might be a good idea to have the sequel already written, so I can tell the editor that there is definitely a follow-up story — and here it is.

Of course, that means both stories may be considered together, and if the editor doesn’t like one, or doesn’t feel like publishing two stories, right now, neither will be published. 

I’ve gotten back to work on my YA fantasy novel, The Guardians Awaken, about two young men — one a street urchin; the other, nobility — caught in the middle of a human war and a simultaneous war between the gods.  I love the novel, but I’ve been stuck on the big battle scene at the end since last Fall.  Hopefully, I can get through that and finish it up.  Between that novel and my YA novel about a Viking sorceror, Seidhman, I really hope I can at least start making the rounds of YA publishers this coming year.

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Filed under Cyberpunk, Fantasy, Romance, Viking, Young Adult

December 28, 2010 · 4:18 pm

New story and more reviews coming in

So, I’ve been waffling back and forth between two story ideas, since finishing the first draft of my (still unnamed) cyberpunk story.  One is a Christmas story intended for submission to Dreamspinner for next year’s Advent Calendar anthology.  (Yes, it’s already open for submission.)  The other is just a light-hearted sex romp. 

The Christmas story began as a light comedy, but as I’ve developed the story further, it’s taken on a bittersweet romantic tone.  It has a happy ending, but as things got weirder in the story, I decided I wanted to mull it over a bit more, before writing it.  The sex romp — a story of two college roommates who agree to have sex in a porn video, tentatively called Zack and Larry Make a Porno — caught my interest, sheerly because it promised a bunch of raunchy fun.  So, that’s the one I’m currently working on.

Yes, I know — when Erich heard the title, he didn’t exactly groan, but he gave me an I-don’t-know-about-that-one look and said, “Something tells me, I’ve heard that title before.”  I assured him I’m covered under parody law.  I’m not sure I’ll use it, anyway.  But I probably will use the names Zack and Larry, so anyone familiar with the brilliant Kevin Smith film will get the joke. 

The story brings up another matter that’s been bothering me, though.  I don’t mind writing fluff…I guess.  But I like to think that my stories — even the ones with sex in them — are first and foremost good stories.  If they contain sex, then the sex is just something extra.  But it could be removed without damaging the story.  This, to me, is the distinction between erotic stories and porn.  I don’t mind porn, but I don’t think that’s really what I want to be known for.  I want people to read my stories and be caught up in the plot and the characters, and generally in the romance.  If someone happens to enjoy the sex scenes in the stories, great.  But that’s not my primary goal.

Is Zack and Larry more than just a loose framework for a bunch of porn scenes?  I wish I knew.  I have to admit, I’m enjoying the story because it’s raunchy.  But does it have any other redeeming value?  

I’m reminded of the explicit sex scene in John Cameron Mitchell’s Short Bus, in which Jamie, James and Ceth attempt a threesome.  The scene has to be explicit, because the humor revolves around the awkwardness of the situation, and the fact that our heroes have no idea what to stick where.  The scene is hilarious, and more importantly, it demonstrates how James and Jamie are trying desperately to save their relationship.  That’s what raises an explicit sex scene above the level of pornography: it’s an intrinsic part of the story.   

Hopefully, as I write it, the characters in Zack and Larry will take on a life of their own and there will be something going on between them that makes the story worth reading…as something other than masturbation material.

In other news, more reviews have come in for both The Christmas Wager and The Meaning of Vengeance.  Some good; some not so good.  The two worst reviews were 3 out of 5 stars, and both reviewers seemed to like the stories. 

The comment on The Christmas Wager was that it was “delightful,” but the major plot twists seemed forced.  This is, perhaps, a valid criticism.  I was less concerned with the plot in that story (which is, admittedly, rather formulaic) than I was with the romance developing between Thomas and Andrew.  This is, in fact, the real story.  It’s this story arc which requires action on the part of our heroes, in order to resolve successfully.  The story of the wager itself is resolved fairly easily.

The 3 star review on Vengeance was a little harder to fathom.  Apparently, he had thought the story was about the mafia, based upon its title, and that had intrigued him.  So he thought it was okay, but it wasn’t what he’d hoped it would be.  That’s fine, but it seems odd to me to read a story intended for a particular audience, then mark it down specifically because it was intended for that audience.  I didn’t write Vengeance for people who like stories about the mafia.  I wrote it for people who like Vikings.

On the plus side, The Christmas Wager has received two 5 star reviews from people who don’t generally like historicals, but fell in love with the characters.

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Filed under Christmas, Romance, Victorian, Viking, Writing

December 25, 2010 · 12:23 am

Great reader review for “The Christmas Wager” on Amazon!

A reader posted a terrific review of The Christmas Wager today on Amazon!

With Christmas upon us, I haven’t had much time for writing.  But I’ve at least been plotting a Christmas story for next year.  It’s been gradually morphing from a light comedy into something with a more emotional center to it.  But I need to work out some of the details, before it will make sense.

Merry Christmas and a Happy Yuletide!

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Filed under Christmas, Romance, Victorian