Tag Archives: LGBT writers

Wrestling out of the Squeeze

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So this is what it feels like now that the Spring semester has started.

And why I haven’t posted anything for a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, some cool things have happened.  Through my series of posts on mythological characters, I connected with an up-and-coming British artist Rhea Babla. We got to talking about Dionysius, and she did this illustration.

I love the colors, and the mix of styles.  It almost scans to me like superimposed images.

So, besides balancing two jobs, I’ve been working on POSEIDON AND CLEITO here and there, and me and a friend of mine, the fabulous writer C.A. Clemmings, started organizing a critique group for LGBT fiction writers.

We’re looking for folks in the NYC area who can give and receive critique, support each other’s projects, and commit to critiquing 10-40 pages every two weeks and submitting their own work at least once every six weeks.

If you’re enthusiastic about LGBT fiction and it sounds like something you’d be into, drop me a line.

Happy Groundhog Day!

From Lambda to Omega

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I just got accepted into Lambda Literary Foundation’s 2011 Writers’ Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices!!

It’s a weeklong immersion program, and I’ll be in the genre fiction track with  eight to ten writers, under the tutelage of prolific crime/sci fi author Claire McNab.

The retreat takes place at UCLA, so my trip to Los Angeles will hopefully also give me a chance to catch up with long-neglected West Coast friends.

In the meantime, I’m finishing up my rebuilt fantasy manuscript, and–with contradictory sentiment–can report that I am 50 pages away from completion.

On one hand, I’m encouraged that this massive rewrite—which often seemed too big, too high, too labyrinthine—is really, truly in my reach.   On the other hand, I find myself wallowing a bit in anticipatory grieving.

I’ve fallen in love with my characters, even the difficult ones who slyly hid their motivations, missed their scene cues, and argued continually with my direction.   With the end—the curtain call—in sight, I realize soon I’m going to leave them piled under many files in a ‘Documents’ folder, maybe to be visited from time to time, but no longer a part of my daily life.

The other day I re-read my manuscript, not to proofread or edit, just to re-experience what I had written, and get to know the characters and the story again.

With months ahead of writing, workshopping and incorporating feedback, it seems silly to say, but it’s going to be hard to say goodbye.

Weekly Progress Report

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I decided that Wednesdays are the best day to write a weekly progress report.  It’ll keep me focused on my writing goals at a time when work and personal life demands are compounding, hold me accountable, and create a mechanism for charting my progress.  Plus these progress posts are pretty easy to write even in the midst of “everything.”

So I’m a little less than halfway through a third read and “light” edit of WHEN THE FALLEN ANGELS FLY.  This is what I do:  write a big novel chunk then pore over it until I can live with moving on with the story.  I wrote 45,000 words of the novel from July to September, and I figure I’m about two-thirds to the end.  Right now, I’m re-reading the part where my protagonist Richard Carroll confronts a second assignment in his training to become an angel.  The re-read/edit is pretty tedious.  I’m hoping to get to the end of my draft in two weeks.  Then, it’ll be a lot more fun writing the last third of Richard’s story.

Quixotic publishing news and non-updates:  Believe it or not, The Paris Review rejected my short story THE TROUBLE WITH FINKLESTEINS.  So maybe submitting there was a little unrealistic, but I couldn’t help myself.  Now I go to Duotrope Digest and find a better publishing match.  Two of my pieces are out on submission:  CROTCHWATCHERS at Nighttrain and MIKE’S POND at Crazyhorse.  I should get verdicts in about a month.

I just sent THE REGISTRATION to the wonderful author Eric Mays.  We connected through the Facebook group LGBTI Writers and Allies and struck up a correspondence.   It’s been really great talking to someone with experience in the biz.  I haven’t tinkered with THE REGISTRATION or had it read for about six months so it’ll be nice to get a new perspective.

Last, I added a link in the spirit of my on-going OPERATION:  OPTIMIZE.  GayWisdom.org maintains a gay history archive, and you can subscribe to their free listserv and receive a daily e-mail telling you about significant events, biographies and quotes from gays past and present.  I’m thinking this will be an awesome source of inspiration for my writing.