Updates

I'm trying very hard to make Saturdays a no-schoolwork zone, instead concentrating on writing, submitting, updating, and digitally publishing. Easier said than done!  Still, progress:

Revere Karma is my collection of 4 previously published stories about my hometown in Massachusetts.  It's on Smashwords and Amazon.  It includes my story Mrs.Gillingham's Constitutional, which was one of my very early sales and has never been reprinted. (Trivia: I was so sure it was a rejection that I didn't open the SASE for two weeks. Thank you to Space & Time for a lovely sale.) The story is about an elderly woman trying to turn back time and really, how many stories start with naked old ladies drawing magic circles with carpet cleaner? 

My cowboy sexbot romp Seven Sexy Cowboy Robots is also on Smashwords and Amazon.  Just in time, too, because the companion story Sexy Robot Mom will appear soon in Asimov's.  The third in that series is Robot Monkey Rules the World, which I'm currently writing.  I don't think I can get away with Sexy Robot Monkey Rules the World. 

My last Asimov's story, The Monsters of Morgan Island, is my homage to the Blue Heaven workshop each year on Kelley's Island, although Charlie Finlay doesn't usually make us march down Main Street or jump into quarry pits or such, and that's on Smashwords only right now. It made the 2009 Tangent Online Recommended Reading List, which was nice. 

Some Reading

Some reading:

- "Blood" by Roddy Doyle in the book Stories, edited by Neil Gaiman.  Strongly written, evocative, ends on a strong turn - good job!

- "Fossil Figures" by Joyce Carol Oates in the same collection.  Extremely well written, great details, strong emotional beat, establishes a theme and sticks to it.  The first half is the strongest; the rest loses the narrative power but still remains strong.

- "Stone Mattress" by Margaret Atwood in The New Yorker.  Very well done.  Maybe one of my new favorites from her.  Here's an interview with her about it. 

- Passionate Minds - Women Rewriting the World by Claudia Roth Pierpont.  I picked this up in a Daytona Beach used bookstore. First chapter I read was about Gertrude Stein, because hello, Midnight in Paris has me thinking about her  and Alice and Paris, and their open house, and how their lives were.

Write more in 2012

Just in time for all those New Year's resolutions, my latest video!  I had a lot of fun thinking about what makes a writer productive and playing around with Flckr, iMovie and Macjams.

True story:  my first novel, which is in a box under my bed and will stay there forever, took 4 years to write. That's first draft only.  I only wrote when I felt "inspired" or when I had days off from work.  My second one (also under the bed) took about 18 months. After trial-and-error I got the process down to 6 months. Now, depending on the length, a first draft takes 3-4 months, and the rewrite about 2 months.

In 2011, I wrote 9 stories and sold 8 of them. I also wrote gay teen book #2, and rewrote that. I rewrote book 4 of the Outback Stars and wrote/revised another ya book.Let's say about 250,000 words total. I consider that okay prolific.I mean, it's not Jay Lake levels of prolific, but still pretty darned good along with teaching 6 classes a term at 3 different colleges.

I think I can do better in 2012. So I made this video to remind myself of how to stay on track, and hopefully there's something in there that can help other writers too (like my favorite software) (or the picture of the blanket toss)(or the pirate joke).

 It's 3 minutes long.  Please check it out and tell me what you think, or how I could improve it.

Best Gay Stories 2011

In the Lambda Literary Review, Reginald Harris talks about the Best Gay Stories 2011.  He write:

"Collections such as this also invariably bring up the question, “What is a ‘gay story,’ anyway?” Is it simply a story that a gay person has written? Something that features gay characters prominently? How much focus needs to be on the uniqueness of gay life, or can the protagonist be someone who “just happens to be gay?” Does the author have to be gay—or male—to do it justice? With this anthology, Peter Dubé makes the case for stories that show gay men as people, not a stereotyped “sassy gay friend” appendage to someone straight without an interior life of their own. In these stories characters get up, walk around, and speak to the reader as flesh and blood people would. The men portrayed in Best Gay Stories 2011 are wounded, real and above all very human. It is a valuable family portrait, a snapshot of our many different stories and many different lives."

A nice review, and there's a nice shout out for my story, too.  Best Gay Stories 2011 is available at Amazon and independent bookstores. 

Indie reviews

From Indie reviews:

Speaking Out: LGBTQ Youth Stand Up by editor Steve Berman is an excellent collection of thirteen short stories for and about LGBTQ teens and young adults. The anthology offers a diversity of life experiences and covers a spectrum of issues that LGBTQ youth face in living as out, from first crushes, falling in love and relationships, to forming supportive networks, standing up to homophobia and other discrimination, and planning for their future.


There's a shout-out for my story -- yay! Read the whole review here

Beyond Binary

From Brit Mandelo, editor:

Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction will be released by Lethe Press in May 2012 - and here's the official table of contents!

"Sea of Cortez" by Sandra McDonald
"Eye of the Storm" by Kelley Eskridge
"Fisherman" by Nalo Hopkinson
"Pirate Solutions" by Katie Sparrow
"'A Wild and a Wicked Youth'" by Ellen Kushner
"Prosperine When it Sizzles" by Tansy Rayner Roberts
"The Fairy Cony-Catcher" by Delia Sherman
"Palimpsest" by Catherynne M. Valente 
"Another Coming" by Sonya Taaffe
"Bleaker Collegiate Presents an All-Female Production of Waiting for Godot" by Claire Humphrey
"The Ghost Party" by Richard Larson 
"Bonehouse" by Keffy R. M. Kehrli
"Sex with Ghosts" by Sarah Kanning
"Spoiling Veena" by Keyan Bowes
"The Metamorphosis Bud" by Liu Wen Zhuang 
"Schrodinger's Pussy" by Terra LeMay

I'm delighted to part of this.  I think Terra wins for best title :-)

The Phantom Interview, part 2

Recently I read an interview with William Gibson in the Paris Review.  It's pretty good stuff, even if every single science fiction writer he lists is a guy.  I like when he talks about the end stages of writing a book, when "the state of composition feels like a complex, chemically altered state that will go away if I don’t continue to give it what it needs. What it needs is simply to write all the time...downtime other than sleep becomes problematic."  I'll raise my glass to that.

The Paris Review hasn't called me for any interviews lately, but in my phantom interview, I was asked about what my friends and family thought of my work.  This was a pretty horrifying question.  Why on earth would I show my work to friends and family?  It's like, "What do your friends and family think of your underwear?" or "What do your friends and family about your bank balance?"  Because (1) I wouldn't share my underwear habits or my bank balance and (2) I sincerely hope they don't show me theirs.

Maybe underwear and bank accounts aren't apt analogies, so let's try a baby picture.  You have a baby, and you show a picture of it to your friends. You are not asking them for honest feedback.  You are asking for praise.  You are asking for acknowledgement of this wondrous and sleep-depriving and drooling and amazing thing in your life.  Any friend or family member who says, "This kid's pretty ugly" is bound to get a big black mark in that secret ledger of your heart, even if it's true.

(I remember thinking Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen were the homeliest toddlers I'd ever seen.  Guess they took that to the bank, huh?)

I don't want my friends and family to read my work because I protect the baby (and my own ego).  But also, showing it to them would start to change the work - I'd be seeking approval, consciously or unconsciously, instead of being true to whatever inner voice I've listened to so far. Writing the difficult, the strange, the uneasy or the weird is hard enough without worrying if Aunt Jennifer or your best friend from high school will "like" it.

The only one in my family who reads my work is my Mom (hi, Mom!) and that's only after I've sold it.  I value the feedback and input of my critique group and writer friends, but only after I've gone over the draft enough to be know my own goals and intentions.  Some other special readers offer advice, too, and I'm always grateful.

But it's like the saying goes:  friends don't make friends read their stories.