Robin's comments (member since May 15, 2008)

Robin's comments from the Gay fiction/non-fiction group.

Susan -- Sorry it's taken me a while to reply to you; busy times. Anyway, I also am a straight woman. I don't have a gay son, but I write novels for them, just the same. Check out my page for the two that are available now; more coming soon. (http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/441...)
I'm glad your son is reading Alex Sanchez. His books and mine have a very similar goal: proving that the only thing wrong with being gay is how some people treat you when they find out.
Please lurk!

Wayne -- Welcome, indeed, especially since I see you've read (and liked) one of my own novels, THINKING STRAIGHT! ;-) Hope you enjoy the group.

Ralph -- I read it a few years ago when I was thinking of signing up with Kensington for my books (Kensington published WORLD...). I did find it depressing, as you indicate. I'll withhold other comments until others have read it, but I do agree with you.

Ralph -- Have you read either of Julia Glass' books? THREE JUNES and THE WHOLE WORLD OVER both have central characters (the protagonist in JUNES is gay), and for both books their orientation is not the point. As a bonus, she's a terrific writer.

Also, my next novel (which will be released in a year) will fall into this category as well. And in fact, it's my goal as an author to get to the point where what you describe is par for the course, because accepting people of all orientations will be just that -- par for the course.

Great question!

As soon as I decide whether to use this as an excuse to get a Kindle or just order the book, I'm in!

It looks as though amazon is most of the way through repairs, whatever the reason was. Latest news is a hacker is being blamed, but others say his technique wouldn't have worked. We may never know.

I'm glad to say that rankings on both my books have been restored.

This has been a valuable lesson, not only for amazon but also for this community. There's POWER here!

This evening I received a response from amazon to the message I sent yesterday. I'll bet they've been bombarded. I hope so.

The message I received called it "...an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that
prides itself on offering complete selection."

I'd like to believe this. Honest. I'd much rather not think that this company would target the LGBT -- or any -- community to treat unfairly. But in their response to me, and in notices I've seen elsewhere, they offer neither an explanation to the response that Mark Probst received from "Ashlyn D" (which said that "adult material" had been "excluded") nor anything by way of an apology.

If this is a glitch, the magnitude (judging by the response if nothing else) warrants a little more than "Oops. Our bad."

If it's not a glitch, and the lie that it is speaks to their face-saving attempts, at least we can hope they've learned their lesson.

I've just heard from a reader who's also in the video production business in NYC and evidently is an online member of Publishers Marketplace (I'm not). He says he found this item (below)this afternoon. Amazon is calling it a glitch without responding to the letter from Ashlyn D at all. And I don't see any evidence here of regret/remorse/apology. My opinion is that they're desperate to save face.

The groundswell on this was huge. The petition site I posted above, which had just over 6,000 signatures and a goal of 10,000 last night, now has nearly 20,000 and a goal of 100,000.

Anyway, here's the text I was sent, and I hope the promise holds true:

[Headline:]After GBLT and Erotica Titles Lose Rankings and Other Features at Amazon, Company Says "Glitch" Will Be Fixed

A groundswell of Internet-driven protest built up on Sunday after YA author Mark Probst posted on a Live Journal blog that two days prior the Amazon sales ranking for two recently-released gay romance books had disappeared from the titles' Amazon pages. An Amazon Advantage publisher, Probst posted the explanation he says he received from Amazon Advantage Member Services representative Ashlyn D: "In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude 'adult' material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature."

As word spread via blog postings and Twitter (where #amazonfail became the top "trending" topic), posters asserted that sales rankings and other search-matching features had disappeared from what appeared many gay and lesbian books on Amazon, as well as erotica/erotic romance, in both cases often involving prominent authors and books.

But on Sunday evening, Amazon spokesman Andrew Herdener told Publishers Lunch, "We recently discovered a glitch to our Amazon sales rank feature that is in the process of being fixed. We're working to correct the problem as quickly as possible." Without commenting on the explanation attributed to the Advantage representative, Herdener assured that "things will go back to how they were before."

And yet more information I'm just getting now: it seems that one major result of this policy, and something that could explain some of the inconsistency, is that any book that had been given a ranking strictly in a Gay and Lesbian category was affected. Sounds like discrimination to me.

I'm also noticing that books that had some other category assigned to them prior to the policy change (and therefore had a fall-back category) are much lower on the ranking scale than they had been. You'll have to take my word for this, because I can't prove it now, but there were two LGBT-themed books (one being Alex Sanchez' THE GOD BOX) that still had good rankings last night (just over 100,000) but not today. GOD BOX is now at 770,829.

Keep in mind that any book without an amazon ranking has no hope of showing up in the bestselling lists on amazon. As things stand, no book that's labeled "Gay and Lesbian" will appear on this list.

Ted -- If it's a glitch, it's one that has many publishers and agents up in arms. I just spoke with my agent, who had heard about it through his own professional sources not through me, and he was livid. And in his professional circle, he's not alone.

The fact that you're seeing inconsistencies is hardly vindication of the practice.

Obviously you aren't seeing the importance of this censorship, and that's your prerogative. I will do everything I can to end it.

Ted – I can understand the confusion. Let me see if I can outline it more clearly. I’ll provide a very specific example.

On amazon today, if I leave the search category on All Departments and search on Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, it brings up a page with her book, including the sales rank (“Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,625 in Books” at the time I’m typing this).

If I leave the search category on All Departments and search on A Secret Edge by Robin Reardon, it brings up a page with the search engine’s next best guess as to what that might be; you don’t see the page with my book on it. If you change All Departments to books, you will find it, BUT the sales rank is not displayed. Before this new policy was in place, the All Departments search worked, and the sales rank was displayed.

This narrower search requirement and the removal of sales ranking has been applied to a disproportionate number of GLBT books and romance books. Elisa Rolle has provided a page showing how many of her personal top-rated LGBT books are now in this category: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/59311...

Hope this helps clarify what’s happening.

Ted -- Perfectly reasonable. I wish I'd had a response from amazon to provide for you. Here's what I do have, though...

The ranking on both of my books has been removed in the last few days.

A number of authors and publishers say they have received this following notice in the last few days when they wrote to inquire about LGBT books (and others, probably) getting short-shrift on the description page...

"In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.

Best regards,
Ashlyn D [no last name given:]
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage"

In addition, some high-profile Web sites have posted information. Here are a couple:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketco...

http://www.afterelton.com/blog/christiek...

As I get more info -- and especially if I get a response from amazon -- I'll post it here.

Ted -- I haven't found it (yet) on amazon, but I've seen information about it in a few places, and a little snooping around in terms of which books were targeted confirms the external info.

I've sent an e-mail directly to amazon's mailbox, from the position of not having any idea why my books suddenly have no stats, and we'll see if they answer.

Thanks for signing!

Has anyone else heard about Amazon's new policy in which they limit the amount of information, including sales rank, for books they consider to be "adult?" In yet one more example of the bigoted discrimination against the LGBT community, a large proportion of LGBT-themed books have been targeted, including mine.

If you've read either of my books (A SECRET EDGE, THINKING STRAIGHT), you will have some idea not only how ludicrous this is, but how very anti-gay the policy would have to be to apply to my books.

There is a petition online that I have signed against this new policy. Anyone who is interested should consider signing:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/petition/...

Thanks.

Steven –

Glad to hear you’re enjoying A SECRET EDGE. When I was writing it, I thought it was a YA book; that was my intention.

I’d read and enjoyed David Levithan’s BOY MEETS BOY and Alex Sanchez’s RAINBOW BOYS. The former was well-written and hit Levithan’s stated objective of depicting a life where it was mostly just fine whatever your sexual orientation, and a gay boy was just a boy who happened to be gay. It was fun to read, but it didn’t surprise me to learn that most of his readers are teen girls; there wasn’t a sex scene from cover to cover. The latter is, of course, the stuff of legends (given Sanchez’s success and phenomenal following), but I could see the agenda written between every two lines. While I applaud his work and agree with his agenda, I didn’t want to write quite the same way.

So I thought I was writing a YA gay teen book that had some grit and some reality, but both my agent and Kensington said it should be marketed as adult. The same thing happened with my second book, THINKING STRAIGHT.

I’m glad, as it happens, because otherwise I think fewer adults would have read it. And I have to say that I get extremely touching e-mail from both general age groups.

Anyway, I like to think of A SECRET EDGE as ... well, as accessible. But if you think it’s YA, I won’t argue with you! ;-)

Scott –

I did see the “The Trials of Ted Haggard” documentary, and I’ve followed his story regularly, if not <sorry> religiously.

While I would never try to advise anyone on forgiving someone else, just what is it you would forgive Ted Haggard for? "Indiscretions and faults" means what, exactly? If it’s for lying and drug use, the Christian attitude toward forgiveness seems appropriate, if you believe his repentance – which could be credible, and I won’t try to argue against it.

But he has not even asked for forgiveness for the harm done to many, many other people. He has not “seen the light” in terms of what he and others have done to limit God and to limit love. He has not condemned those who would celebrate hatred and divisiveness. In other words, he has said nothing that indicates he “gets” WHY he lied to his wife, his colleagues, his friends, his children. And until he does get it, he will keep lying, not only to them but to himself. His male prostitute is not the only other man with whom he was sexually intimate over extended periods of time. This makes him at the very least not heterosexual. He may be bisexual, or he may be gay, or he may be something in between (we really should stop trying to make this characteristic so binary, as though human sexuality had an on/off switch). But he is still lying, even if he doesn’t realize it.

So I’m reluctant to look at him with forgiveness. I’m thinking pity is a more appropriate attitude. And I do pity him. But he’s still dangerous.

Kevin -- I'll have to check into Mel White's book; thanks for the reference.

Since you're particularly interested in this subject, you might like to check out my Goodreads "Writing" section (http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1640...).
In it I use science, history, and logic to prove that the only thing wrong with being gay is how some people treat you when they find out. The final sections relate specifically to religion.

Let me know how you like my books when you get a chance. Thanks!

Ted -- Fantastic! I'd love to know your thoughts after you've read it.

For anyone who's interested, there's a lot about the whole "ex-gay" movement in a couple of places. One is http://www.exgaywatch.com, and another is the blog of Jeremy Hooper, http://GoodAsYou.org (GAY, if you look only at the captials).

Ted -- Yes! There are many. Too many. There's Exodus, there's the Refuge program under Love in Action -- there are too many to name here.

(For anyone who hasn't read THINKING STRAIGHT, I create a fictional "ex-gay" camp called "Straight to God.")

I wrote THINKING STRAIGHT after reading an article about a boy whose parents were putting him into one of them. He had a blog before he went in, and he posted his fears as well as an electronic version of the center's manual, which he wasn't even supposed to see. The story of this boy (Zack, from Memphis, is all I know about his identity) was big news for a time.

"Straight to God" is fictional, and it isn't modeled precisely on any one of those centers, but the story of teens who go through this is very, very real. The only thing I "swiped" whole cloth was a quote from the director of one of these centers, who afterward denied having made it. It was this: "I'd rather lose a teen to suicide than homosexuality."

I looked for new posts after Zack's experience, and he had only one or two before he shut the blog down. His writing sounded like a different person: hesitant, fearful, confused, trying too hard, and wanting desperately to believe the lies (ed.) that he'd been told. He asked people to leave him alone.

If you're open to a fictional account of a real life situation, I hope you'll consider my second novel, THINKING STRAIGHT.

It's about a gay teen, Taylor, whose parents put him into an "ex-gay" summer camp to straighten him out. The story has a very positive outlook, denigrating neither religion in general or Christianity in particular. And Taylor finds a way to remain true both to himself and to his religion, no compromise.

While the situation has a Christian setting, the way in which Taylor reconciles his orientation and his religion could apply equally well to Judaism.