Yes Gay YA

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On Monday, Young Adult (YA) fantasy authors Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith posted an article on Publishers Weekly’s Genreville blog about their experience trying to sell a post-apocalyptic novel that featured a gay Japanese character.

An agent offered representation on the condition that they change the character from gay to straight, or remove him from the manuscript and/or omit references to his sexual orientation.

The character in question had a boyfriend, and according to the authors, the relationship was depicted in-line with those of the non-gay characters, i.e. no graphic sexual content, basically PG-rated.

I encourage people to read the entire article, which provides an excellent call to action for agents, editors, authors and readers who support LGBT portrayals in YA.

It’s a topic that has come up before, most recently when author Jessica Verday pulled her story out of the YA fantasy anthology Wicked Pretty Things, because the editor asked Verday to change the gender of one of her main characters to depict a non-gay relationship.  The incident sparked the creation of the fansite GayYA.org to promote LGBT portrayals in YA.

Brown and Smith make the point that their experience is not an isolated incident, and they invoke the heterocentric tendencies of the publishing biz.  Certainly, some  LGBT YA gets published, but it’s a tough mountain for authors to climb, in an industry where the slope is insanely steep regardless of what you’re writing about.

Author Melinda Lo wrote a great article on the subject:  “How Hard is it to Sell an LGBT YA novel?”  Therein, she makes the sensible point that LGBT YA will always be tougher to get published than non-LGBT stories simply because the readership will always be smaller.  Most readers aren’t LGBT.  The number of non-LGBT readers who are interested in LGBT books is relatively small.  Thus, the bar is higher for those of us who write LGBT characters.  Our stories must be spectacular and resonate with a “wider” (meaning:  non-LGBT) audience.

Lo says she never felt any pushback from the publishing industry in writing her first novel (ASH) with a lesbian heroine, but many authors do.  So for authors of LGBT YA, it’s not just the added burden of writing a novel that will appeal to LGBT and non-LGBT readers alike (does anyone ever ask authors who write books with heterosexual characters:  could you make your story more appealing to an LGBT audience?).  It’s the added burden of having to sift very finely through the heap of agents and publishers, to find one who is willing to get behind a high quality LGBT novel because they believe that LGBT portrayals are important, even if it’s a tougher sell to non-LGBT readers.

I don’t think this is a problem that gets solved on an agent-by-agent or an editor-by-editor level (nor do Brown and Smith argue that point).   It’s about increasing the visibility of LGBTs generally so that the publishing industry sees us as the vital market that we are.

Beyond that, we need to educate publishing folks about our community.  An interesting issue to be explored is:  do LGBTs – and LGBT teens specifically – read more than their non-LGBT peers?  My experience working with LGBT youth points to yes.  As a routine evaluation of young people’s developmental assets and needs, we ask kids at my agency how many hours each week they spend reading.  Youth at our drop-in center consistently score higher on this measure than youth in comparable, non-LGBT specific youth programs.

It’s just a preliminary indication, based on a small sample, but it makes intuitive sense to me.  LGBTs frequently turn to reading for escapism, to reduce stress or to validate their marginalized experiences.  It’s a positive coping mechanism.  I’ve shared before that as a closeted gay teen, I sought out any gay lit I could find; in the 80’s it was gritty stuff by William Burroughs and Paul T. Rogers, so I can imagine how much more affirming it would have been for me to have the breadth of LGBT YA titles that are available today.

But it’s time for those titles to get out into the mainstream so that more readers know about them.

Back to the Grind

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I’ve been tight-lipped here for a little while, owing to a walloping on a couple of fronts.

I’m teaching my first ever college class this semester, balancing that with my full time job, and trying to widely hedge my bets on an agent for The Seventh Pleiade.

(You can all put down your bets on how soon the mental breakdown will arrive).

So, on the agent front, I’ve got some folks reading my full manuscript. Cross your fingers!  Querying/pitching is pretty torturous, but at least this time around I am getting some response.

Also on my mind lately:   Lambda’s announcement about changing guidelines for its 24th annual awards.

Responding to strong criticism about restricting nominations to self-identified LGBT authors and poets, Lambda’s Board re-opened the field to all writers, excepting three categories that recognize authors in stages of their careers: debut, mid-career, and lifetime achievement.

I’ve got a heap of mixed feelings about the announcement.   On one hand, exclusion rarely feels right to me.  When authors — LGBT or not — write fresh and honest stories about queer people, they are part of a united fight against censorship and marginalization, which are still very real obstacles in publishing.   Increasing the number of good queer portrayals is something to be lauded whether the author is non-LGBT, like George R.R. Martin (Song of Ice and Fire), or gay, like YA author David Levithan (Boy Meets Boy, Wide Awake).

On the other hand, I believe there is a need to celebrate queer authorship specifically, to have an occasion where people step up to the podium and validate that being a queer author matters.   It’s not just about the content of our work.   Queer authorship is a tradition, a history, a common struggle, and a triumph.   By celebrating queer authors, we celebrate more than simply queer themed work, as though it were a genre of fandom, like sci fi or romance.   We’re celebrating, and creating, community.

According to Lambda’s Executive Director Tony Valenzuela, the organization does not anticipate the policy change to have an impact on the number of queer authors nominated.   There were no restrictions on nominees for most of the Lammy’s history (notwithstanding the period of 2009-2010, when a 2009 policy was in effect restricting most awards to LGBT authors).

In correspondence with Valenzuela, he pointed out to me that queer authors have always competed extremely well, even dominating the competition.   Says Valenzuela:   “I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”

Birthday reflections

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I’ve never worked on my Birthday.  The idea is inherently repellent to me. Maybe I’ve been spoiled, growing up in a family that always took vacation during the last week of August.   But I’m breaking the tradition this year.  Truthfully, I did a little frontloading to get this post out on a Wednesday, which happens to be my 42nd birthday.

It makes me reflect on my writing career, which could be characterized (generously) as a slow-burner.  I got my first academic publication before I turned 30.  At that time, I set a goal to have three times that many, and maybe a book out before I turned 40.

Not to be. I managed to get a series of academic pubs, mostly in my early 30s.  Teetering toward the edge of thirtysomething, I got my first fiction break.  The late John Stahle gave me a chance by publishing my retold fairytale The Vain Prince.

I could qualify things by pointing out that I’ve worked a demanding full-time job for the past 17 years.   In fact, through most of my post grad life, I’ve taken part-time work on top of that.  But there’s two sides to the coin. I’d love to have lots more time to write, and I think I’d be more productive and faster if I didn’t need a full-time job to sustain myself.  But there’s also the wise adage: if you want a job done well, give it to someone busy.

I think about my writing in the same way that I think about my coming out at times.  What if I had started younger?  Think of all the amazing experiences I would have had…all the wasted years.  But regret doesn’t stick with me as much these days.  Things happen for a reason.  It’s not a religious sentiment (perish the thought), it’s more like being practical.

Every experience I had shaped my life as a writer, and as a queer man. I could only do what I did at the time with what I had at the time.  Besides, the Japanese just proved that time travel isn’t possible. No going back and switching majors in college or swaggering around campus as a self-empowered queer.

So, my goal for this decade is to write as much as I can, to build my readership, and to try not to take myself too seriously.  I find that last one gets easier with age.   I don’t mean not taking my writing seriously, or not setting ambitious goals.   Ambitious goals are good.   I mean being open to the knowledge that’s out there beyond my inner world.

Socrates put it this way:  the more I learn, the less I know.

The photo isn’t my Birthday cake.  It’s just a stock image I found and thought was funny.  Who wouldn’t want a Chuck Norris Birthday cake?

Queer Writers, Queer Community: The LLF Retreat

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I’ve been riding a wave of pride, community, and inspiration, since returning from Lambda Literary Foundation’s 2011 Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices.

There were forty-two of us Fellows in the program, and I’ll be adding blog links to some of the fabulous writers I connected with.

Many people have been asking me to describe the experience. On a nuts-and-bolts level, it’s easy.

I was in the Genre Fiction workshop (Genre Queer, we quickly named ourselves).   There were ten Fellows in that track.   The instructor was lesbian mystery and sci fi author Katherine V. Forrest.

For six days we participated in half day workshops that were part didactic, in terms of craft, and part critiquing each others’ work.   Then there were evening programs with panels, featured speakers (including trans historian and artist Susan Stryker), and readings by the Fellows.

All this was great, and gave me a fresh perspective on my writing, the publishing biz, etc.   What was less expected, and a bit harder to describe, was how the program impacted my identity as a queer writer.

A writer’s life can be a lonely.   For minority writers, it can feel even more alienating.   This I was aware of well before the retreat, but meeting queer writers from parts of the country where there’s even less queer visibility drove the point home deeper.

A debate among LGBT/queer authors comes up frequently.   Are you an LGBT author?   Or are you an author who “happens to be” LGBT?

We’re all searching for a readership, and I guess folks who respond better to the latter question resent being limited in their reach because of who they are.   Or, they may prefer to say, being queer is an infinitesimal part of who they are (thank you very much), and it has nothing to do with their writing.

Fine.

I’ve always felt solidly in the queer-identified author camp, and the LLF retreat reinforced that.   A different way of looking at the debate is: how does being an out and proud queer author expand your reach?   I think it does, since it tells readers what they can expect from you, not merely in terms of what kinds of stories you tell, but also your point-of-view.   You have to define your product in order to market it.   You have to know yourself in order to sell who you are to other people.   Yes, I believe writing is necessarily an extension of who you are, whether it’s intentionally autobiographical or not.

So, back to the retreat, I guess it was the experience of being surrounded by so many other queer writers, who love queer fiction.  We were all eating it up ravenously, no questions about “will this play to a non-queer audience?” or “will other readers get it?”   This was what changed me.   I want to celebrate queer lit.   I want to shout it from the bell towers.   I found the place where I belong, and it’s fucking great!

Queer lit can change the world.   It’s happening every day.

Studying Heroic Fantasy: David Gemmell’s Lord of the Silver Bow

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Three posts in as many days?  How do I explain.  I think it’s part neurotic overcompensation (I won’t be posting again until the week of August 14th) and part pre-Writers Retreat mania.  Anyway, I’ve been working on this review for a little over a week, it’s done, so I’m posting it.

Trying to catch up on recent ancient world fantasy, I picked up David Gemmel’s Lord of the Silver Bow.   It’s the first book in Gemmell’s Troy trilogy, which reimagines the famed conflict between Mykene Greece and Troy, this time from the Trojans’ perspective.   A British author, Gemmell died in 2006.

Who am I to critique Gemmell, one of the most prolific and popular writers of heroic fantasy?   My study of the genre is growing, but still spotty, and I have two unpublished historical fantasy manuscripts to my name.   So take this review as the perspective of one writer, one reader with an interest in the time period, and the mythology, and a preference for great characters and stories that illuminate our state of being, triumphant and horrifying as it is.

Lord of the Silver Bow casts Aeneas—Gemmell calls him by his childhood name Helikaon—as a respected military hero, and a reluctant politician.   He abdicated his claim to the kingdom of Dardania, a strategic ally of Troy, because he blamed his tyrannical father for his mother’s suicide.

The central story concerns how Helikaon will find his way in a brutal world that’s undergoing rapid political changes, and switched alliances, including those that guide who he can or cannot marry.   When he falls in love with his Trojan cousin Hektor’s bride-to-be Andromache, he’s caught in a familiar bind: will he follow his heart or follow his duty?

Adding to the tension, Helikaon is being targeted for assassination by a multi-national pact to avenge the death of a popular Greek war hero.

I found that the story shone brightest when portraying the complexity of human nature.   Warriors commit merciless acts, yet they are fiercely protective, even tender toward their family and comrades.

One chapter concerns a mercenary who murdered Helikaon’s half-brother and raped his stepmother.   Hard to portray a rapist in a textured  way, but I feel that Gemmell succeeds by telling the story from the mercenary’s point-of-view.   There’s no apology or circumspection, but I thought it was a realistic portrayal of a ruthless military lifestyle in which the choices are to kill or be killed; and the men therein guard their place, and loved ones, by a vicious cycle of ever-increasing violence.

It’s the character contradictions that make for the most interesting reading here.   Bound by a code of honor to refrain from violence as a guest at a foreign feast, Argurios, a Mykene, a natural enemy of Helikaon, slays a pair of his countrymen when they try to assassinate the prince.   A master assassin proudly reflects on having made his way by killing men, but per a priest’s advice, he will only carry out his vocation from Spring to Autumn so as not to displease the god of the Underworld.   Beliefs around religion, ethics, morality are evocative of an ancient time, yet the questions and struggles resonate well today.   Is there ever honor in violence?   Can a man who commits monstrous acts be redeemed?

Less successful for me was the narrative structure.   The story changes point of view every single chapter, with over two dozen character perspectives represented, and many of them are minor characters rarely or never to be heard from again.  Each chapter feels satisfyingly complete, a nice short story in itself.   But early on, I found myself wondering:   who and what is this story about?   Ostensibly, it’s Helikaon’s journey, but he disappears for such lengths of time, I didn’t fully engage with him.

The length is also daunting for a story that only lasts a week or so: nearly 500 pages!   There were times I slugged through it rather than enjoyed it.

Another weak spot was the romance.   Part of the problem relates to the above, not enough focus on the couple we’re supposed to care about:   Helikaon and Andromache.   But I didn’t trust that the author had it in him to create a compelling love story anyway.   There’s a cliched love-at-first-sight meeting (forgivable if there’s an intriguing follow up), but it was kind of like trying to root on the two most popular kids in school.   Helikaon and Andromache are treated so generously, I didn’t really care if they ended up together.   Slightly more compelling is the counterpart love story between the hardened, exiled Mykene warrior Argurios, and always-the-bridesmaid-never-the-bride princess Laodike.

But most regrettable was the portrayal of Andromache’s bisexuality.   It’s a facet of the story that appears to exist solely to titillate non-gay readers.   There’s no depth to Andromache’s (supposed) affair with another woman from her wild lesbian-segregated past, and meeting Helikaon, of course, “straightens” her out anyway.

So, I give Lord of the Silver Bow three stars or maybe a B-.   I don’t know that I will read more in the series.  On one hand, there’s terrific rendering of the ancient world setting and sensibility.   But there’s room for improvement in character development and the complexity of romantic themes.