I meant over the weekend to write some follow-up about the madness that is Harlequin!fail, but then someone pointed me to Jackie Kessler’s really excellent post about it. She’s continued, in later posts, to express cogently what’s wrong with Harlequin Horizons, what makes Harlequin!fail distinct, and generally answer objections from dissenting voices.

RWA’s decision to deem the Harlequin imprint ineligible for RWA resources (and thus its writers from certain levels of membership in the RWA, and books with that imprint from certain awards) is, frankly, awe-inspiring. That the MWA and SFWA are also expressing concerns and making similar moves encourages me no end. Harlequin Horizons is bad news on its own. Additional practices — including massive conflict of interest issues such as funneling Harlequin’s slush pile toward Horizons — have come to light and under fire. You can find out more about the whole mess over at Publisher’s Weekly.

And that’s enough of that because I’ve got exciting news from the world of print. Idol Musings, an essay anthology of writers who participated in an online writing contest, is going up for pre-order. Three of my essays (”The Rope and the Lobster,” “The Near-Virgin Pedestrian,” and “Concerning My Next Step”) are featured, and those second two have never seen the pixellated light of Internet day. The Fae Publishing site is very new, and kind of a work in progress, so be gentle.

(Note: I’m told some folks are having issues with US pre-orders. If you do, let them know, or drop me a note with the exact error you’re having and I’ll pass it on.)

I love Crossed Genres. Their editors are progressive allies, their concept is cool and works well in the execution, and they really love SF/F. They’re also new, though, and small. One year in, they’re gearing up for their first anthology. To succeed, obviously, they need interest and support.

For the month of November, if you pre-order their antho, you get a free one year subscription. You also get the satisfaction of knowing you’ve helped keep a fantastic small magazine in business. I’m waiting for my next paycheck, but you bet your sweet bippy I’m taking advantage of that deal.

K.T. Holt, CG’s co-editor, has challenged readers and fans to play a game of six degrees. Do you give good signal boost? Know someone who gives good signal boost? Know someone who knows someone who gives good signal boost? Tell them about CG. Encourage them to blog about it. Encourage them to pre-order the antho. Every little bit helps.

This past weekend I finished Anathem by Neal Stephenson.

I first became aware of his books when my friend Paul recommended Cryptonomicon to me several years ago. I wound up reading most of it on a long bus trip. When I started dating my primary partner, he lent me a copy of Snow Crash. His Baroque Cycle was an early piece of our courtship. (Is it any wonder our relationship is complicated?)

If someone asks me for a list of favorite authors, Stephenson is going to be high on that list.

The thing about him, though, is that he writes enormous, dense prose. Reading his books requires an investment of time, concentration, and energy. Worse, as a writer I always come out of his stuff feeling like a rank amateur with no vision. There is a reason he has that look to him in his author’s photo in the back. He’s just that talented.

Anathem runs just shy of 1,000 pages in mass-market paperback, and I honestly can’t say any of those pages is padding. It starts out somewhere near The Name of the Rose and A Canticle for Leibowitz and moves through territory sufficiently epic that when I was 4/5 of the way through, J. found he couldn’t spoil me because things were too complicated.

I won’t say I sat down with it and didn’t get up again until I finished. I’d have died of dehydration and lost my job if I’d tried that. I will say that Anathem held my interest for a length of time during which I could have read about five other books, though, and I regret nothing. Big ideas, massive scope, fulfills the promise of its premise. Plus, Stephenson doesn’t skimp on his trademark lessons in mathematics and theory.

Rating: Five complex geometric solids out of five.

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com

If you know me in my free time, you’re already aware that sometimes my reading and writing habits veer a little saucy. I’m not above a bit of romance, or even slash, erotica, or outright porn. I might use a pen name when I indulge in transformative works, but who I am isn’t much of a secret. When writing is a hobby as well as a job, business and pleasure can dovetail nicely.

So you can imagine how over the moon I was earlier this week when I heard about Harlequin’s forthcoming Carina Press e-book imprint.

There are three beautiful things about Carina Press.

One, they’re actively seeking work that doesn’t always get a lot of play from more traditional houses. Their guidelines for romance and erotic romance are inclusive of LGBTQ themes, multiples as well as couples, and genre crossovers. They’re open to genre fiction, and particularly genre fiction aimed at women.

Two, they’re committed to a DRM-free e-book model. DRM-free means consumers can easily back up what they buy, share it between devices, and enjoy the books they buy without having to invest proprietary equipment or software.

Three, they’re actively working to welcome new talent into the pool while maintaining editorial quality. I’ve heard nothing but good things about Angela James, for example.

In short, Carina looks poised to be a very good thing for Harlequin, for the industry, and for writers who want a digital-only imprint with some solid backing.

Which is what makes the introduction of Harlequin Horizons all the more perplexing. Even the most cursory click through of their main site makes it obvious that they’re a vanity press.

And when I say “vanity press,” I don’t mean a friendly little PoD service like Lulu. I mean the worst sort of vanity press that wants to dupe rich hopefuls into spending $20k on a 60-90 minute trailer in hopes that it will make them bestselling authors.

And no surprise. Harlequin Horizons is a partnership with Author Solutions, Inc. Author Solutions, Inc. is a vanity press that’s been snapping up PoD houses left and right. Compare Harlequin Horizons’ services to PublishAmerica, and you’ll come away with a not-so-fresh feeling that can only be remedied by intensive therapy.

No, this is not good at all. And it’s a shame, because it makes the whole PoD industry look shady when it isn’t. PoD makes a lot of small-press and specialty market publication possible.

What makes companies like Author Solutions, Inc. scummy is not that they’ll print on demand. It’s their sales pitch. They offer services that mimic some of the services a book and author might receive from a traditional publisher, but without the clout, professional relationships, or the good reputation of same.

Are there times when self-publishing is appropriate, or even a better solution? Sure. But those are few and far between, and are best entered into without the fairy tale. If it really worked that way, we’d all be Stephen King right now.

To quote Cassandra Claire: “Still not King.”

At the end of the day, the real insult (as pointed out to me by a friend) is that the imprint that’s likely to give us quality and a heap of great new talent isn’t the one that Harlequin put its name on. And yet, somehow I’m not surprised. After all, how else are they supposed to lure the rubes into writing that check for twenty grand?

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There’s a poetry reading and open mic at The Center Project here in Columbia, and I think I’m going to go. Not sure what I intend to read (if anything), but TCP is pretty awesome, and so if you’re local and wanting for something to do tonight, you should come along!

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I’m a bit late to the party on this, but I’m excited to announce that my short story “Finished” will be appearing in issue 12 of Crossed Genres!

I’ve seen the cover art, and it’s gorgeous. I’m this close to framing a copy and hanging it in my office. If you’ve never been, go check them out. Their current issue — Issue 11, Horror — is damned good. You’ll be glad you did.

Issue 12 — the LGBTQ issue — goes live on Sunday, November 1.

Speaking of excellent markets, Verb Noire is in some trouble and could use some support (you can find a bit of info here and here). If you’ve got a few dollars to spare, consider sharing a bit via PayPal with verb.noire@gmail.com.

I’m otherwise awash in the festive season. I was poised to participate in NaNoWriMo this year, and then got a bit waylaid. Plans have been downgraded to using November as a catch-up month, which is probably the best decision I’ve made since last November. In the longer term, the plan is to dedicate a solid chunk of 2010 (probably starting in February) to working on some novel-length work. If any of you remember the Noveling Workshop of 2008, next year is probably going to sound a little bit familiar.

Reading-wise, I recently finished up with Paul Cornell’s British Summertime, which I enjoyed enormously. Cornell’s got the distinction of being one of the few authors to not only make me miss my bus stop — I had to walk an extra two blocks to get home that night — but also make me nearly miss switching buses on a commute because I was too engaged to realize the bus was no longer moving. It’s hard to say much about the story without ruining the way it unfolds, but Cornell’s got a real knack for fulfilling the promise of his premise, and when British Summertime ended, I was smiling because it ended exactly how it was supposed to.

I’m currently about a third of the way into Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, which I keep wanting to compare to The Name of the Rose and A Canticle for Leibowitz. I always want to hate Stephenson a little bit because he writes such amazing, dense, perfect prose (including a heaping helping of plot-relevant mathematics and science, which is just blatantly unfair), but I can’t. His books are too good. They’re artful and difficult and always take me forever to read because they’re so rich.

Have a great weekend, world. If you celebrate something — Halloween, All Souls, Calan Gaeaf, Day of the Dead, two days off of work, etc. — do it up properly.

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Some weeks it seems like I can’t walk across my own living room without tripping over some new moment of !fail in the genre. This weeks glittering gem: “The War on Science Fiction and Marvin Minsky.”

Now, before I go on, it bears pointing out that the blogger — who believes “technology is the key to defeating feminism” — is the sort of man who feels threatened now that the dominant-heterosexual-breadwinner-in-charge-of-his-women-and-children model of masculinity is no longer the only game in town. When men are made to share the cultural mic in a proportionate, appropriate way, he lashes out at women and declares that he is being oppressed.

In short, this man is a gutless, whinging wingnut. His opinions should by rights be beneath the notice of sane (or at least observant) people anywhere. Even ignoring the batshit rhetoric, his post is so riddled with half-truths and inaccuracies (Dirk Benedict’s personal butthurt notwithstanding) that debunking him almost a waste of time.

Almost¹.

And yet, while his screed is the kind of tripe that I ought to be able to dismiss out of hand — like so — his attitude is something that I keep seeing played out in the industry. (See Also: the aforementioned !fail problem.)

That writers who are not white, male, heterosexual, or cisgendered have to work twice as hard as writers who are (just like everywhere else) isn’t exactly a secret. You only have to look as far as a certain anthology, or consider the matter of gender bias where certain awards are concerned, and…

Well, to be frank, if we’re not being That Guy, many of us are certainly walking in his footsteps. The writers I know, read, and listen to are still complaining that it’s harder to sell books with female protagonists because the industry thinks ‘boys won’t read girls, but girls will read boys.’ There’s still fallout from Amazon!fail. Queer writers, writers of color, and women writers often see their books pigeonholed based on content, who they are, or both. I can’t count the times I’ve heard women writers talking about using a pseudonym or initials.

This isn’t a zero-sum game, people. The LeGuins, Atwoods, and Butlers writing in the genre haven’t diluted it, nor have the Captain Jacks and Kara Thraces diminished it. It’s the small-minded men who throw little tantrums when confronted by the possibility of having to work and succeed according to their merits rather than the privilege afforded them by their masculinity that make us smaller.

It’s a ridiculous lack of imagination that locks people and characters out, and if one boy fails to be inspired by a hero of science fiction because she happens to sport a pair of breasts, or he happens to like kissing other men?

Well, he’s probably not somebody I’d want my friends’ kids to be an astronaut with when they grow up anyway.

—
¹ Women have written science fiction as long as it’s existed; Captain Jack Harkness was created by a married heterosexual man; the SyFy name change happened on Dave Howe’s watch, not Bonnie Hammer’s, though the WWE came to the channel while Hammer was President of the channel; and Captain Kirk was doing aliens long before Captain Jack, so drop the shock-horror act, Techie-boy.

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com

I occasionally wonder if choosing to pursue being a writer is a bad choice for me.

It isn’t the work, because I love the work. It isn’t that I wake up in the mornings wanting to be an investment banker or a train conductor or a traveling salesman instead.

It’s the way I seem cursed where deadlines are concerned.

Give me something important. Put me on a schedule. Tell me you want a set of essays or a short story or a bit of poetry. Ask me to officiate at your wedding. Something will go wrong.

Poisoned by environmental hazards? Check. Mom has a heart attack? Check. Major household emergency? Check. Family/Friend/Relationship insanity? Check. Salmonella in the peanut butter? Double-check, and oh gods never again.

Is tomorrow a big deadline? You betcha.

Is the world on fire today? You betcha.

*facepalm*

Edit to add: but this comic just made everything better.

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I’m a little later to the party on this than I’d like, but as an out queer writer who reads queer stories when and where he can find them, I’ve got a vested interest in this whole thing.

The short version is that the Lambda Literary Foundation (or LLF) recently updated its nomination guidelines for the Lambda Literary Awards.

In the past, a book with LGBT content could be nominated for a Lammy wholly on the basis of its content. Who authored the book mattered not; gay and lesbian, bisexual and trans, straight and asexual writers were judged equally. If it was a good story, and it was about us, it was welcome.

However, in the wake of continued discrimination in bookshops and libraries — thank you, conservative evangelicals, for making mainstream the presumption that any acknowledgment of LGBTQ matters and people is automatically an inappropriate sexualization of the conversation that decent people should not have to endure — that it was time to revise who was eligible for the Lammy.

“It seems more urgent than ever,” they say, “that LLF be as active and supportive a service organization as we possibly can be for our own writers…”

Those writers being self-identified, out LGBT writers.

Now, I can appreciate their intentions. As a fledgling pro, the message that writing queer stories, or being an out queer person is probably detrimental to the career I’m only just starting. It’s not far from the message that YA writers so often hear: girls will read about boys, but boys won’t read about girls. Messages like this have a chilling effect on writers, whatever their own orientations and genders may be. Which, arguably, is why the LLF (and other groups like Broad Universe and the Carl Brandon Society) are necessary.

I get what the LLF was trying to do when they “took into consideration the despair of our own writers when a heterosexual writer … wins a Lambda Award.” That is, as they say, a fair cop. I’d love dearly to see more queer writers recognized.

But, you know, that despair is nothing compared to the despair I feel at the message this sends our straight allies, or to queer writers who make their stories in the closet, or to writers whose sexualities and gender are ambiguous or deeply private.

Does it mean a lot to me when a story I love is written by a queer person? Absolutely. But it also means a lot to me when a straight person is willing to write something difficult and beautiful about our lives. Telling our allies and friends that they’re not welcome does nothing to advance our presence in mainstream literature. If anything, it closes a very valuable door.

It also, in spite of what the LLF wants to assure us, creates a culture in which an awards committee can vote a writer worthy or unworthy based on their own willingness to disclose facts about their gender or their private lives. Are we seriously asking our modern James Tiptrees to out themselves as Alice Sheldons? How could this possibly be useful or fair?

And really, how tacky is it to diminish the status of those (presumed) heterosexual writers who’ve won before? That larger, more inclusive pool surely had a number of excellent things in it. Are those stories somehow not the best anymore because of who their authors sleep with?

How is this not what the bookstores and the industry do to us? How is this helping?

At the end of the day, I think the LLF had all the right intentions and made entirely the wrong call. I sincerely hope they reconsider, or find a better way to pursue their goals. As much as I think the LLF’s mission is laudable, I think the award is diminished by exclusion.

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com

2008 was Year of the Workshop. Which is to say, it’s the year I finally began structuring my writing time, and it’s the year I declared I’d be published.

As it happens, I was. Just a little. 2009 has been the year to build on that. So far so good. I’m thinking about 2010 already, contemplating goals, and so on.

Even so, every story comes with a heaping helping of doubt. This morning I went crashing into it headfirst with a story I’ve been working on for a couple of weeks. I’m angry at the story and I’m angry at myself for being angry at it. I’ve shown the first few hundred words to a friend, who sent it back “intrigued.”

“Intrigued” is a good word, right? I should be happy and hopeful, right?

But I’m not. I’m stuck in that loop of doubt that says that I won’t be able to deliver on the promise of the premise. My inner critic can’t stop going on about how my transitions are rubbish, my action is bland, and my dialogue is stunted and cardboard. And while I know that every writer goes through this (many of us on a regular basis), I just want to bang my head against a desk until I knock myself out and wake up to find everything has been fixed by the Manuscript Fairy.

Oh, now there’s a Halloween costume…

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I’m elbow deep in a short story, a novella-length project, and what I hope will be a fairly brilliant essay. I’ve got one longish short story languishing in editing hell. I’m basically stacked solid until November.

It’s a good feeling, if a little overwhelming. And really, I can’t say a whole lot about it because nothing is certain. Just because I’m submitting things doesn’t mean people will take them. It just means that I’m writing, and that I hope they will.

On the subject of hope, now’s as good a time as any to plug two groups that make me feel pretty good about humanity right now: Broad Universe and The Outer Alliance.

Broad Universe is, in their own words, “an international organization of women and men dedicated to celebrating and promoting the work of women writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror.” They do readings, advertise, and share resources. Considering that this was the year of The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF (in which there were no women or people of color), and much talk about how thin on the ground women are on the Hugo shortlist, this is definitely a group to support.

I became aware of The Outer Alliance when a friend linked me to the Crossed Genres blog post about how their ad soliciting submissions for their upcoming LGBTQ issue was rejected by Flash Fiction Online editor Jake Freivald. The Outer Alliance helped spread the word, and supported Crossed Genres in figuring out how to respond. They’re new, they’re grassroots, and their mission is to “advocate for queer speculative fiction and those who create, publish and support it, whatever their sexual orientation and gender identity.”

And with that, I’m off to…do things. Write, probably. Oh, projects.

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com

The plan, at least for me this year at D*C, was to play. I wasn’t a panelist, I didn’t have anything to sell, and the only guests I was really planning on watching out for are a) friends and b) people I’m fannish about. I was going to Atlanta to have a good time with people I rarely see in the flesh, have a hilarious cosplay experience, and make serious progress pickling myself.

I should have guessed something was up when I took my card case. “Take it,” the little voice in my head told me. “You might need it for something. You could be MacGuyver.” Granted, this is the same little voice that told me to take my Doctor Who sonic screwdriver torch and pen set (”You might need a flashlight! And a pen!”) and a kazoo (”There could be a party where kazoos are super appropriate!”).

Yeah, all of that stuff went in my bag, too. What?

I could write a detailed play-by-play, drop names, and make D*C look like something it wasn’t. Or, I can fess up and say that I went in with the intent to play, and that while I did a fair bit of that, those moments that turned into working moments arose as if by magic.

In a handful of cases, I was in drag when they did. In one case, I was wearing an absurd, fuzzy orange hat with fox ears on it. In retrospect, I wonder a little about how useful it was to be in that mode, or how much of a hindrance. First impressions are strange things, and I’m still learning to navigate a fair bit of territory. I’m already wondering about D*C next year. Half of me wants to build a phenomenal costume to wander around in. Half of me worries I’d run into the opportunity of my life and miss it on account of fancy dress.

But the play element? Oh the play element. It was good. I got to watch people whose work I love talk about craft more this year than last year. Terry Gilliam in particular was astonishing. He seems completely in love with his work, and watching him revel in it was completely energizing. I’m still kicking myself for not making it to one of his signings.

I went to two Broad Universe readings, initially because a friend was in them, but was really glad I went because it reminded me to look at them a bit more closely. I love their mission, and I want to support it.

Like last year, the YA Lit track was better than I expected. I don’t read a lot of YA, or when I do I tend to forget that it is. Their track director and moderators deserve a trophy for being brilliant and reminding me that the genre (or, rather, genres under the YA umbrella) is not only worthy, but often better than a lot of things marketed to adults.

Most importantly, I saw friends in the flesh I don’t get to meet very often. This year, I enjoyed their company without looking for the party, and that was pretty rewarding (in part because we’re a fairly amusing party on our own).

If there’s a lesson in this year’s D*C, it’s that next year I want to be another few steps down the path. If anything, I want the whole quandary of play v. pro to be more overt, and I want to take what I learned this year and apply it. I’d love to have the credits under my belt to panelize a bit because there are themes in SF/F that I care deeply about. Last year got me on my feet. This year was a kick in the ass.

Fortunately, I keep my card case in my back pocket.

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