Amazon has approved the file upload, so I’m gonna go ahead and declare Acceleration live. Some retailers will take longer. B&N, Kobo and Itunes haven’t finished processing yet. But Acceleration is here!
Monthly Archives: November 2012
Acceleration is now live!
Filed under Uncategorized
Less than 36 hours to go to Acceleration!
In the wee-small hours last night, I sent to final proof of Acceleration to Michael at Booknibbles to be formatted and converted. Since the upload and approval process for Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo takes 24-48 hours, I will begin uploading it as soon as he has it back to me (hopefully tonight.)
What this means is that there’s a chance that Acceleration will actually be available for purchase at various times the day before the official release, since I have no control over when the file actually gets approved and posted to the various sites. I don’t know what time zone All Romance Ebooks is in, but I know it’s at least an hour or two ahead of me, so if you bought Acceleration on pre-sale there, it will be available perhaps midnight Central or Mountain time (maybe even Eastern, I dunno.) I plan to upload it and have it live at Rainbow Ebooks and SmashWords around the same time.
I will be posting buy links as they become available.
It may be another week or two for the paperback to become available, as that process takes considerably longer due to the need to ship and approve physical copies.
Now, for those of you who are interested, a little insight into the life of a self-published author.
I don’t usually bother saying stuff like this, because I want readers to buy from the website that is most convenient for them, which is why I have it available at so many places. But, if you’re indifferent to where you get the file and want to know which sites are the most profitable in me (thus enabling me to continue writing once my kid is in school full-time rather than getting a day job) here’s the breakdown of the royalties I get from the various sites:
SmashWords: 85%
Kobo: 80% through Nov 30, then 70% after
Amazon: 70% minus a few cents for the file transfer fee
Barnes & Noble: 65%
All Romance Ebooks, Itunes and Rainbow Ebooks: 60%
So SmashWords definitely pays me the best, though if I had to express a preference for where people buy, it would actually be Amazon and ARe, even though I get lower royalties there. The reason? Because they have bestseller lists (Kobo, Itunes and B&N probably do, too, but my sales on those sites are practically non-existent so I’m not going to hit them anyway, and SmashWords just doesn’t move the volume for it to matter if I’m one of their best sellers.) If I end up on the bestseller lists for Amazon or ARe, however, I will get a lot more exposure and sell a lot more books.
The same principle applies to the paperback. I make about $3 more on a paperback sold through the CreateSpace website than I do on one sold through Amazon, but sales on CreateSpace aren’t going to boost my rankings, thus giving me more visibility and sales.
Of course, the question everyone is going to be asking once they’re done with Acceleration is “When does Velocity come out?”
The good news is, I’m much more knowledgeable about the process going into Velocity than I was going into Acceleration. Inertia was a whole other animal. No one was expecting it, I hadn’t done any marketing beforehand or generated any sort of anticipation. There was no timeline except when I felt it was ready to be released.
I’m actually a bit embarrassed at my own naivete there. :)
It didn’t take me long to realize Acceleration would be different, because people were expecting it. I had to set a release date. I had to set target times for cover art and edits and such to be done and ARCs to be released, because people were watching and waiting for it. I didn’t plan ahead enough (for instance, I didn’t lock in my reservation for when my editor would be available until after I had the manuscript written, which meant that a lot of the delay was simply the manuscript gathering dust because it couldn’t go anywhere until my turn in her queue came up. Likewise, the cover art reveal was a little rushed and haphazard because I didn’t schedule a slot for my artist to work on the art until much later than I should have.
What this meant was that if I wanted to get the book released before the holidays (which I’ve since learned wasn’t really necessary as apparently ebook sales aren’t great in December-I imagine it’s actually after the holidays, when everyone is cashing in their bookstore gift cards, that ebook sales take off) I was really cutting it way too close. But even without the factor of the holidays, there was the fact that people were demanding Book Two and I really needed to get it out there before people lost interest and I fell off the map.
I’ve learned my lesson with Velocity and hopefully have my ducks in a much neater row. I’ve scheduled my slot with both my cover artist and editor well in advance this time. I hope to have the cover art by the end of December, preferably for a January cover reveal. The turn-in date for the manuscript to go to my editor in mid-December and I’ll have it back in mid-January.
So when will Velocity be out? Well, if you’re looking at that banner up top here on my blog, it says March 2013. At which point in March depends on how extensive the revisions I need to do once I get my edits back. If the revisions are minor, I hope to have ARCs available at the beginning of February and will release at the beginning of March. If the revisions are more extensive, we’re looking at mid-to-late February and March, respectively. I’ll have a better idea once I have my edits back in mid-January.
So. Keep an eye out. We’re in the final stretch of the wait for Acceleration. If you would like your chance to win a copy, the drawings at Stumbling Over Chaos and The Novel Approach are still open, so be sure to go register. And also, I’m doing my first GoodReads giveaway, too! I’ll be giving away a paperback of Acceleration at the end of December. Be sure to go enter!
Finally, for those of you who are interested, because it’s being released on November 30, Acceleration will still qualify for the Members’ Choice Awards over at the GoodReads M/M Romance group! Nominations close December 5. The award I’m most concerned with there is the Cover Art award, because Kerry and Michael’s hard work deserves to be recognized. Inertia has been nominated there, but Acceleration has not. If you want to know what other categories Inertia and Acceleration might qualify for, I will list them here:
Nomination - Favorite All Time M/M Romance Book (Inertia or Acceleration)
Nomination - Favorite All Time M/M Series (Impulse)
Nomination - Favorite All Time M/M Author (moi)
Nomination - Favorite All Time M/M Character(s) (Derrick and/or Gavin)
Nomination - Best Debut Book (Inertia has already been nommed)
Nomination - Best Cover (Inertia has been nommed, Acceleration hasn’t)
Nomination - Best Title (Inertia or Acceleration)
Nomination - Best Couple/MC’s (Derrick and/or Gavin)
Nomination - Best Sex Scene (take your pick from either Inertia or Acceleration)
Nomination - Best Side/Supporting Character (Miss Ingrid, LeeAnn, Andi, Devon or Hannah)
Nomination - Best Tearjerking scene (there’s one from Acceleration that just might qualify. You be the judge)
Nomination - Best First Time (this would be Inertia naturally, though honestly, after having read the first time in Frat Boy and Toppy by Anne Tenino? Hoo doggies! I don’t stand a chance.)
Nomination - Funniest Quotes/Best Lines (take your pick)
Nomination - Best book of the year (take your pick)
Nomination - BDSM (sex content) (probably Acceleration more than Inertia)
Nomination - Contemporary (genre) (take your pick)
Nomination - Hurt/Comfort (theme) (maybe? I dunno.)
So. If you decide you want to participate (and this is not meant to be pushy: as I’ve said, the only one that will break my heart to not see the books get the nod is the Cover Art category) check out the rules for the contest, and you have until December 5 to make your nominations.
So excited for people to start reading Acceleration! It’s almost here! Whee!
Two chances to win Acceleration!
The drawing over at Stumbling Over Chaos is still open, if you want to enter. And also there is another drawing hosted by The Novel Approach. Don’t miss your chance to win!
Filed under Uncategorized
Get Inertia and pre-order Acceleration, Two for the price of One, today at ARe!
All Romance Ebooks is having a 50% rebate sale today only, Monday, November 26. Which means you can get buy Inertia and pre-order Acceleration for $3 each. Don’t miss your chance to get them both for the price of one! (Acceleration will be released Friday, November 30!)
Busy Friday! Guest posts and thoughts (mostly about sex) all over the place!
Happy post-Thanksgiving to everyone!
Today I’m appearing on not one, but two blogs. The first is over at Pam Singer’s blog, where I’m talking about being a week out from the release of Acceleration and what you can expect to see from the book. Pam was lovely enough to do a beta read of Acceleration for me, which I think was an enormous boon that helped shape several important bits of the story.
The second is a small Derrick and Gavin ficlet over at Cryselle’s Bookshelf, entitled Lessons. The two posts actually work quite well together and I recommend checking out the ficlet after reading the post.
Finally, also tying in rather nicely to the theme of my blog post over at Pam’s blog is this article by Ethan Stone entitled Celebrating the Horndog Within, in response to which I had several thoughts I shared in the comments. The quantity of sex content in a book has become an issue of sometimes contentious debate among readers, reviewers, and authors. It’s a decision to which we authors have to give serious consideration and figure out what works for us, and hope it works for the readers as well.
So, yeah. I’m all over the place today. Bounce around with me and check it out!
Filed under Acceleration, Announcements, Musings, Other Authors Blogs, Upcoming Releases
Acceleration Giveaway at Stumbling Over Chaos
Chris at http://stumblingoverchaos.com is hosting a giveaway for a shiny new copy of Acceleration on release day. Head on over and comment according to the rules to win!
Filed under Acceleration, Announcements, Contests, Upcoming Releases
Response to “Is Male/Male Romance Fundamentally About Men” over at Jessewave
A very thought-provoking article has been posted here at Reviews by Jessewave, to which I want to respond. However, for some reason their response form keeps telling me my comment is spammy, which it’s not and I can’t figure out why. So I’m posting it here instead.
Well, I was feeling pretty proud of myself for bucking the conventions regarding physiotypes predetermining sex roles until I got to the stuff about biting and hair-pulling.I think we have to differentiate here between tropes and kinks.I find the idea that one’s stature determines one’s sexual inclination to be ludicrous. It’s an absurd trope that springs solely from the desire to heteronormalize gay couples. So yes, I would consider that very damaging and demeaning. I base my character’s sex roles on their personalities, not their body types. And sometimes the larger guy DOES have a more aggressive/dominant personality. But it’s not because he’s larger.So I might have the skinnier and less muscular of the two men be more aggressive, more sexually experienced, and just all around tend toward dominance, while the larger and more “masculine” guy is more retiring and (this is somewhat due to his relative lack of experience) more desirous of being guided. But another story might have things work differently, but that was because of the characters, not because of some heteronormalizing trope.However, as a woman coming from the kink community (and keeping in mind the kink community has a huge QUILTBAG presence within it and I’ve been to munches and play parties where at least 50% of the attendees were QUILTBAG) I always figured if biting/hair pulling/marking/claiming were such prevalent kinks and turn-ons shared amongst so many, there is no reason it WOULDN’T be shared by my m/m characters if it suited their personalities.Hair pulling is just flat-out sexy, especially in a rough sex context. It’s sexy for m/f and it’s sexy for m/m. I don’t think it’s a thing that people assume m/m couples do disproportionately. I think it’s a hugely common kink and people want to read about it. As my husband well knows, pull my hair and I am yours.I regret nothing.As for biting, I think there is a very animal appeal to it. Especially at the neck. Mating animals often bite each other there, and I think we associate it with something savage and primal in our minds. So when my characters are in a savage, primal mood, they go there. When my husband and I are in a savage, primal mood, we go there. The next time, however, my characters are just as likely to tenderly make love.Personally, I don’t see this as demeaning. I wouldn’t feel and have never felt demeaned to be bitten by my husband/lover and I can’t see why it would be demeaning for my characters to do so either.Maybe it’s my perspective as a woman, but the idea of being “claimed” by someone I am intensely involved with, to the point of wearing a physical mark representing that claim, is a very powerful and compelling one. Why do you think so many lovers get tattooed with something that reminds them of their lover?What romance is about, at its heart, is our desire as human beings, to belong to and with someone. We read romance to experience that sense of belonging vicariously. When we feel a connection that intensely, we want to wear it on our skin, and we see that reflected in the romances we read and write.Again, I don’t see this as either stereotyping gay men. I see it as reflecting something a great many of us desire and find appealing. And I’ve been to play parties and munches where gay men and women preened and bragged and showed off their bruises just as enthusiastically as the straight femsubs.So while I think that yes, there are troubling tropes in the m/m romance genre that could be demeaning to real gay men, I have to take exception to the citation of these kinks. Because to say these kinks are demeaning to m/m couples implies there’s something wrong with having these kinks, and that toes the line of kink-shaming, and we just don’t want to go there.I’m new to this genre, and really to m/m fiction. And the reason I’m new to it is that I was very afraid for a long time of presuming to… I dunno… “appropriate” stories of gay men when I can’t possibly ever truly understand the perspective of a gay man. So when I finally did step into the pool, I made sure to do so very cautiously, trying always to keep in mind the need to avoid stereotyping, to avoid problematic tropes and to deal with troubling themes respectfully. Whether I’ve succeeded or not, only my readers can say. But that has been my mission so far and will continue to be my mission from here on out.
Filed under Uncategorized
Acceleration Release Date: 11/30/2012 (Available for pre-order at ARe)
Having now received my edits back, I can announce a release date for Acceleration, Impulse, Book Two. The release will be November 30.
My options for making pre-orders available are pretty much limited to AllRomanceEbooks, so that’s where you can go if you absolutely HAVE TO HAVE it ordered and ready to be all yours on November 30!
If you have a review site or blog feel free to contact me and ask for an ARC if I haven’t already contacted you!
Filed under Acceleration, Announcements, Upcoming Releases
SUCCESS!
As Kerry slept Sunday night (it’s Monday morning for her already) PayPal, only a few hours of sending her a canned response telling her that her account hold was there to stay, sent her another email rescinding it.
I can only suppose that a little bit of public pressure, in the form of this article by Nate from The Digital Reader, who helped lead the charge back in February during the SmashWords debacle, helped sway PayPal to a more reasonable stance.
So I’m very glad for Kerry (and her sister also, whose account was likewise restored) that they don’t have to go through the inconvenience of finding another means by which to conduct their businesses.
I hope this was an isolated incident, and not an attack on erotic books by new means. So far no other cover artists have come forward, which is a good thing.
I do think we all have to be vigilant, those of us who publish independently and even the small presses who may rely on PayPal to conduct transactions with vendors or customers. If PayPal does decide to go on the censorship warpath again, it could be a mess. Hopefully we nipped this in the bud.
Thank you all for your support.
Filed under Activism
It’s not about copyright: A clarification on the PayPal matter
Yesterday, in an attempt to be jaunty, I made a big issue of the fact that one of the transactions targeted by my cover artist was of Loki. I did this because at the time, we weren’t sure specifically which other transactions were being targeted by PayPal because my cover artist was still going over her records comparing transaction IDs.
This gave some people who are discussing the matter elsewhere, the impression that the problem was actually copyright.
It’s not. That much is very clear by the email PayPal sent my cover artist, which reads as follows:
Dear KERRY CHIN,
We are hereby notifying you that, after a recent review of your account activity, it has been determined that you are in violation of PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy regarding your sales / offers of adult commisions of digital art on http://dragonreine.deviantart.com.
Transaction ID’s redacted.
Therefore, your account has been permanently limited.
Per the User Agreement, when PayPal permanently limits an account due to an Acceptable Use Policy violation, we may hold your funds up to 180 days. In addition, you will be liable to PayPal for the amount of PayPal’s damages for each violation of the Acceptable Use Policy.
To read more about your liability, the actions we may take and other
relevant information pertaining to the User Agreement, please refer to the
following URL: https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=ua/UserAgreement_full&locale.x=en_USYou will need to remove all references to PayPal from your website/s and/or auction/s. This includes not only removing PayPal as a payment option, but also the PayPal logo and/or shopping cart.
The PayPal User Agreement states that PayPal, at its sole discretion,
reserves the right to limit an account for any violation of the User
Agreement, including the Acceptable Use Policy.Under the Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for certain sexually oriented materials or services or for items that could be considered obscene.
The complete Acceptable Use Policy can be found at the following URL:
https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=ua/AcceptableUse_full&locale.x=en_USTo learn more about the Acceptable Use Policy, please refer to our Help Center page here:
https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/helpweb?cmd=_helpWe thank you in advance for your cooperation. If you have any questions, please contact the PayPal Brand Risk Management Department at
[email protected].Sincerely,
Jared
PayPal, Brand Risk Management
Now. I’d say there is very little ambiguity in that message regarding the fact that the issue here is “obscene” images. Upon further research, it turns out one of those redacted transactions was my second payment for the
We still don’t know what the third transaction was, because in the process of freezing her account, PayPal is also cutting off Kerry’s ability to view her own transaction history, and she cannot find the email receipt for the third transaction yet.
ETA: one of those three redacted transactions was the down payment for the cover of Acceleration, and the other one is the second and final payment for the cover of Acceleration.
How the Loki art got mixed up in there, I can’t guess. Probably they’re trying to legitimize their targeting of the suggestive/homoerotic art by tacking on a little copyright intimidation.
Now, here’s the kicker, and this is why we are in absolutely no doubt that PayPal is on an anti-obscenity kick, even if it’s small-scale. I have been vague about naming names and details because I didn’t know how private the person was about this matter, but she’s being very open about it, so I’m going to share it here.
This is an email received by Kerry’s sister, who is a fetish model, when HER account was frozen, within minutes of Kerry’s account being frozen:
This is kath’s email. Note the vagueness of their accusations, and if you check the listed sites, she never asks people to pay for shoots with PayPal. She read aloud all her received payments to me, and they are all for sales of secondhand clothing, or contributions from friends to help her buy her higher-priced corsets.
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: <**********>Date: Nov 8, 2012 11:12 PM
Subject: Your account has been limitedTo: <***********>
Dear Kathy Chin Chew Lee,
We are hereby notifying you that, after a recent review of your account activity, it has been determined that you are in violation of PayPal’s
Acceptable Use Policy regarding your sales / offers of fetish and pin up
photo shoots on
http://kathteakatastrophy.blogspot.com/?zx=e666d08f00168f92,
http://www.modelmayhem.com/2337096, and
http://kathtea-katastrophy.deviantart.com/.(transaction IDs redacted also)Therefore, your account has been permanently limited.Per the User Agreement, when PayPal permanently limits an account due to an Acceptable Use Policy violation, we may hold your funds up to 180 days. In addition, you will be liable to PayPal for the amount of PayPal’s damages for each violation of the Acceptable Use Policy.
To read more about your liability, the actions we may take and other
relevant information pertaining to the User Agreement, please refer to the
following URL: https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=ua/UserAgreement_full&locale.x=en_USYou will need to remove all references to PayPal from your website/s and/or auction/s. This includes not only removing PayPal as a payment option, but also the PayPal logo and/or shopping cart.
The PayPal User Agreement states that PayPal, at its sole discretion,
reserves the right to limit an account for any violation of the User
Agreement, including the Acceptable Use Policy.Under the Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for certain sexually oriented materials or services or for items that could be considered obscene.
The complete Acceptable Use Policy can be found at the following URL:
https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=ua/AcceptableUse_full&locale.x=en_USTo learn more about the Acceptable Use Policy, please refer to our Help Center page here:
https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/helpweb?cmd=_helpWe thank you in advance for your cooperation. If you have any questions, please contact the PayPal Brand Risk Management Department at
[email protected].Sincerely,
Jared
PayPal, Brand Risk Management
This is not about copyright. If it were, there would be Cease & Desist letters being issued, not account closures. That is traditionally how IP owners have handled the matter. Furthermore, if it were about copyright, my cover for Acceleration would not have been targeted, nor would Kerry’s sister’s account.
This is about PayPal being on an anti-obscenity crusade, even if it’s not a very large one. Are we clear on that? Good.
Filed under Activism
PayPal and Censorship… AGAIN
So, apparently PayPal is incapable of learning their lesson.
I hadn’t entered this crazy genre last spring when PayPal attempted to strong-arm booksellers like SmashWords into censoring the content they sell or face losing their accounts. After a couple weeks of furor, PayPal rescinded that ban.
Kinda. Now they’re not going after big companies like SmashWords. They’re going after private, individual accounts.
How do I know this? Because my cover artist, the brilliant Kerry Chin, aka DragonReine, is one of the accounts they’ve frozen for distributing indecent material.
You’ve seen her beautiful work for the covers for Inertia and Acceleration, already. Do you want to see the image that got her banned, the commission transaction that was flagged for distributing indecent material?
It’s so outrageous I don’t even dare embed it in my blog. I have to link back to it.
Mmhm. Yep. That’s a portrait. Of Loki from The Avengers. Fully dressed and doing nothing but smirking. And while I am fully aware that Loki’s smirk inspires any number of obscene thoughts in the minds of the people who behold it, I’m unaware of it violating any actual decency statutes. Keep in mind, it’s posted on DeviantArt, which doesn’t even allow art featuring erect penises.
So I’m failing to see how it violates this, which is the terms of service PayPal put into use after the erotica-banning debacle last March (courtesy of The Digital Reader:
Update: Paypal has clarified the new policy on their blog. (Boy did they back down.) Their new policy only affects potentially illegal images, and the blog post specifically states that it doesn’t cover text only ebooks.
First and foremost, we are going to focus this policy only on e-books that contain potentially illegal images, not e-books that are limited to just text. The policy will prohibit use of PayPal for the sale of e-books that contain child pornography, or e-books with text and obscene images of rape, bestiality or incest (as defined by the U.S. legal standard for obscenity: material that appeals to the prurient interest, depicts sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, and lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value).
In addition, the policy will be focused on individual books, not on entire “classes” of books. Instead of demanding that e-book publishers remove all books in a category, we will provide notice to the seller of the specific e-books, if any, that we believe violate our policy. We are working with e-book publishers on a process that will provide any affected site operator or author the opportunity to respond to and challenge a notice that an e-book violates the policy.
ETA: THIS IS NOT A COPYRIGHT/LIKENESS ISSUE. The notice she received targeted one of the transactions for my Acceleration cover as well as the Loki art, and specifically stated it was for explicit content.
Here is a snippet of the email PayPal sent her, with the transaction IDs redacted.
Dear KERRY CHIN,
We are hereby notifying you that, after a recent review of your account
activity, it has been determined that you are in violation of PayPal’s
Acceptable Use Policy regarding your sales / offers of adult commisions of
digital art on http://dragonreine.deviantart.com.Please refer to:
- Transaction *redacted*
- Transaction *redacted*
- Transaction *redacted*Therefore, your account has been permanently limited.
One of those redacted IDs is my second payment for the Acceleration cover. One is for the Loki art. Kerry is having a hard time tracking down the third because in the process of freezing her account, PayPal locked her out of seeing her own history and researching the transaction.
Furthermore, it’s not just Kerry. A acquaintance of Kerry’s also works in the field of erotic art, and her PayPal account has been suspended for the same reason, only hours before. I don’t know how many others have been affected, but it looks like there might be another indecency purge going on. A smaller, more insidious purge, because it targets the little guys who can’t fight back, instead of companies that are in the public eye like SmashWords and ARe.
ETA 2: please refer to http://ameliacgormley.com/2012/11/09/its-not-about-copyright-a-clarification-on-the-paypal-matter/ for updated information.
Where does it stop? Will my PayPal account be suspended for commissioning my book covers, or for selling books with those covers? After all, you can see a little bit of Derrick’s ass on the cover for Acceleration and not to mention also OMGZGAYLOVE.
Will other book cover designers also be affected? How is this going to impact our genre?
If my PayPal account is suspended, I will have to stop distributing my books on SmashWords, as I don’t make enough in quarterly royalties for them to cut me a check (or I didn’t last quarter, at least. Hopefully it will pick up after the release of Acceleration.) How many of the rest of us in this genre sell books with covers which could be deemed indecent?
So, a heads-up, folks. This could be happening again. Like last time, I think we need to raise a hue and a cry, before it gets out of hand.
Filed under Activism
Politically neutral? I don’t think so.
I know prevailing wisdom is for authors to remain politically neutral. It’s one of the things the publishing guru blogs warn about if you want to attract and hold an audience.
That ain’t gonna happen here.
First of all, I’m about 99% certain the vast majority of my audience leans liberal, politically, and I happen to share those leanings, and I am happy to commune with my audience about our shared hopes and fears.
But secondly, I write for and about people and issues that have a lot at stake in our present political climate. Who are the main audiences for m/m romance? Women and LGBTQ folk. Both of which groups have a lot to lose or gain depending on which way the political winds blow.
So no. I’m not going to be neutral. Not now, not ever. It’s not going to happen. I am a woman, and I have too much to lose. And I stand united with LGBTQ folk of all stripes, fighting for their rights and well-being. I may be privileged not to have had to live their struggle, but I will fight to ease it and make sure they have equality if I can.
Filed under Politics
Fascinating article on Slash Fandom and Queer Fetishization
Read this post. Do it now. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
Admittedly, it’s about fandom, but since a sizable portion of the m/m romance genre seems to have originated in fandom, I think it’s still relevant.
Some of you have seen my muse before on my early slash experiences in author interviews, but in case you missed it:
Back in the late 90’s/early 00’s, I was primarily involved in X-Files fandom. It was my first fandom as an adult (I was into ST:TNG as a teenager) and my first internet fandom. In fact, The X-Files was really one of a very few fandoms at the very vanguard of internet fandom as we know it today, back when most of it happened on Usenet. Email mailing lists were just becoming a thing and there were no YahooGroups, LiveJournal or web forums.
The noun “‘shipper” and the verb “to ship” originated there. I know, because I helped coin them (interestingly, since I started publishing, I have noticed no less than THREE other former XF fic authors publishing as well, one of whom was on my list and I met in person; heck, I even attended her wedding. I am, however, the only one who changed my pen name, but then back in the day, I was foolish enough to use my real name or something close to it.)
I haven’t participated in many fandoms since, in large part because something about internet fandom makes them feel a leeettle skeevy to me at times. There’s a distinct lack of recognition of acceptable boundaries. On my mailing list, I had to declare a moratorium on discussion of the actors’ personal lives after David Duchovny got married and there was a huge outpouring of very personal hate toward his wife, Tea Leoni.
One list member emailed me and told me I shouldn’t declare the subject verboten because she and others needed the list as a “support group” to get them through the ordeal of his marriage. And I boggled for a moment and replied, “Support group for what? You don’t know the guy, you’ll likely never meet him, you’ll certainly never be romantically involved with him. You’re not his jilted lover. Just what trauma do you need support for?”
Almost twenty years later, I’m still repeating the same refrain. Perspective. Find it, fandom. Do it now.
The point of this rambling is to say this: my being skeeved out by a lot of what I saw in fandom extended to the slash offerings. From the very start in XF fandom, something about slash didn’t work for me, and it had nothing to do with homophobia or that it wasn’t my ship of choice.
I had a hard time and really struggled to find words for what it was that troubled me, and I dealt with a lot of personal angst that maybe, however much I tried to convince myself that I embraced diversity, that I was being homophobic. I was afraid to criticize slash handling of characters for fear of being accused of being homophobic. Certainly other people thought I was because of my distaste for slash offerings, and it really was distaste. I got a bad impression of the whole thing, so bad that I avoided anything to do with slash for nearly fifteen years and benignly eye-rolled at slash fans, until I finally peeked at it from between slitted fingers and discovered there were some people handling slash in ways I didn’t find objectionable anymore. That opened the door to me venturing into the realm of m/m fanfic, which then led me to writing original fic. But I came to it very, very late.
That troubling element is put into words quite concisely here:
Slashing damn near every attractive white cis* het dude with every other (even across fandoms that do not ‘mesh’ well with each other), even when it is OOC for them to do so. ”Because it would be hot” is not enough of a reason. Put some more thought into it than ‘hotness quotient.’ Who someone is and the environment (canon) they exist in defines who they are likely to be attracted to, regardless of our intent to ship them.
This. So much this. In all my years in XF fandom, the only slashfics I saw that didn’t make me automatically want to gouge my eyes out were the Skinner/Mulder fics, and that’s because the other common pairings, especially those involving Krycek, ignored or warped or fanwanked characterization completely out of recognition in order to justify the pairing. They didn’t do it to explore the characters, or to add diversity, they did it because Krycek was hot and they wanted to see him boning or boned by Mulder or Skinner. Or both.
But Krycek killed Mulder’s father. He tortured and blackmailed Skinner. Just about every interaction Mulder and Skinner had with him was edged or even filled with violence. And not sexy violence. Unhealthy, hurtful violence. The only POSSIBLY believable sex these characters could have had with him would be violent hatesex or, at best, extreme dub-con (in Skinner’s case, I’d call that non-con because FFS Krycek had the ability to kill Skinner with the nanite things if Skinner didn’t do exactly what Krycek said, and there was no way that dynamic could ever be truly consensual.)
And there’s nothing wrong with hatesex or dub-con in and of itself, if that is what someone chooses to portray, as along as there is some acknowledgment that it’s unhealthy and injurious. But these people were trying to make a HEA relationship between these characters. They were handwaving and minimizing issues of consent and other unhealthy dynamics. Not because it worked for the characters, but because they found the mental image of the characters hot.
Ugh. Ugh ugh ugh.
Skinner/Mulder I could buy a bit more, assuming it didn’t marginalize Scully or, worse, turn her into a shrew in order to invalidate Mulder’s feelings for her to justify why he’s boning Skinner instead. Which far too many did. This was the other problem I had with slash fandom, back then: its treatment of female characters. Again, in these situations, characterization was ignored in favor of teh hawt.
So anyway. This article hits on the head a lot of what I have struggled with regarding slash in fandom for nearly two decades, but struggled to put into words because I was afraid I would be perceived as trying to rationalize homophobia.
Filed under Musings
(NEW) New covers, upcoming releases, housekeeping, and GO VOTE!
So. Remember those new covers for Inertia I rolled out a couple weeks ago?
LOL, well, it turns out those aren’t going to be the final versions. While the high-contrast filters looked wonderfully bright and eye-catching on the computer screen, it just wasn’t going to work in print, especially on the Acceleration cover. So my wonderful cover artist Kerry put her head together with Michael from BookNibbles to come up with something that combined Michael’s eye-catching layout with Kerry’s brilliant art. The results are below.
Sorry things have been a mess while my lovely artists have worked this out, but I think it’s for the best. I’m waiting on the latest version of the print proof for Inertia, but assuming the proof goes well, I hope to have that available within another week or so. I had intended to have it available by now, but we faced two setbacks. One was that the cover simply didn’t work in print, and the other was that in the process of trying to remake the cover, a hurricane struck the east coast, which affected our ability to work with Michael to get things finalized. Of course, redoing the cover for the print version meant redoing the cover for the ebook version as well, so now I’m on my third release of this title with different cover art. the listing over at GoodReads is a mess, BUT I think it’s worth it to have the best possible cover.
Speaking of Hurricane Sandy, don’t forget that from now until Nov 7, I am donating a dollar for each copy of Inertia sold. If you’ve been thinking of checking it out, now is a great time to do so!
Another area the hurricane has affected has been the editing process of Acceleration. For a while it had looked like my editor might be able to get the edits back to me earlier than our contract had specified, but Sandy has set that back as well, and so now instead of the late November release I was considering, it might be pushed back into early December.
A lot of this can be chalked up to the fact that I’m such a neophyte at this self-publishing gig. I’m still learning the best and most efficient way to go about things. If I had to do it all again, I would have held off on the release of Inertia until Acceleration was closer to being ready for release, and I would have made any sort of public statement of intent for the release of Acceleration based upon mere estimates and guess work. I think things will be much more streamlined moving into Velocity as now I have a better idea of what all is involved of balancing a release with marketing. That wasn’t an issue I faced with Inertia.
One thing I will be working on more in the near future is adding more feature content to this blog. So far it’s been pretty exclusively dealing with details of my upcoming releases, etc. I actually feel quite self-conscious pimping myself so much, but so much of what I do now is focused on preparing for the print release of Book One and the release of Book Two that there isn’t much else for me to say. But as I build my back catalog and branch out into other realms, that’s going to change and hopefully the blog won’t be so much “oh, hey, look at my book! (that you’ve seen a hundred times before.)
Before I close this out, allow me to encourage all my readers in the U.S. to get out next Tuesday and vote. There is a lot riding on this election; don’t let your vote go to waste.
And while we’re speaking of voting, the M/M Romance group over at GoodReads has opened up nominations for their Readers’ Choice Awards. I’m not egotistical enough to nominate, or ask for nominations, for my own books, but I would really love to see Kerry and Michael’s hard work acknowledged by seeing one of these covers nominated for the Best Cover category.
Filed under Acceleration, Announcements, Inertia, News for Released Titles, Upcoming Releases
