Bill Konigsberg's Blog, page 14

Old Writing, or, How to Breathe New Life Into an Old Manuscript

I used Grammarly to grammar check this post, because, there is; nothing. worst then a poorly-grammarfied Blog Post written by a Professional Authors.

I have a conundrum.

You see, it’s time for me to start a new project, and I have two completed projects sitting in my desk drawer. One of them — let’s call it Hank — was already purchased by a major publishing house in 2008, but was later cancelled after my editor left that house. The second, also my only adult literary manuscript, — we shall call it Jase — is probably my finest work from a literary standpoint.

It would seem to make sense to dust off Hank or Jase and get to work beautifying him. I mean if Hank, the runt of my writing litter, was already deemed publishable five years ago, and I’m a more established author now, he certainly would still be publishable.

But it’s not as simple as that.

You see, timing is so important.

As a follow-up to Out of the Pocket, Hank made a lot of sense. It’s about a boy who is sent to football camp against his will. In trying to step out of his comfort zone to please his father, he pleases no one. Funny and sad, it seemed a nice sport-related partner to that first novel of mine.

But I’ve changed and grown, and my career has moved into other areas. I can’t help but feel that Hank is old stuff for me. How do you make an old novel new? How do you breathe life into a project that was penned in 2004?

And then there’s Jase. Ah, Jase.

So dark, this novel is. It focuses on a family of three males — a single father and his two sons. Unable to accept the abandonment of the mother/wife figure, all three have turned to addictive behaviors to fill the hole in their hearts. This novel goes to dark, dark places, touching on gambling, sex, and food.

The problem is, I have changed. I don’t know that I care at this point in my life to put my name on a project that, while well done, will leave readers feeling darker than when they picked it up. Eight years ago when I wrote it, I was feeling dark. Today, that darkness is gone. Do I really want to revisit it? Would it be possible to lighten it up while staying true to the story and characters?

This post includes more questions than answers because right now I have more questions than answers. I simply don’t know how to proceed. Every time I pick up Jase to read it, I feel the darkness, the heaviness of the manuscript, and I put it down.

I haven’t even gotten up the nerve to look at Hank yet.

So what does an established writer do with old manuscripts?

Openly Straight – The Playlist

So a fan of Openly Straight made me this playlist. It’s really, as he describes, a soundtrack for Ben and Rafe’s relationship.

So with a huge thank you to Ethan Letter, here is that soundtrack. Enjoy!

“Untouchable” — Luna Halo

“Goodnight and Go” — Imogen Heap

 

“Things I’ll Never Say” — Avril Lavigne

 

“Gravity” — Sara Bareilles

 

“Everblue” — Mandy Moore

 

“Mother We Just Can’t Get Enough” — New Radicals

 

“Kill! Kill! Kill!” — The Pierces

 

“Holland” — Sufjan Stevens

 

“Save You” — Kelly Clarkson

 

“I Want Someone Badly” — Jeff Buckley

 

“Dream On” — Depeche Mode

 

“What if You” — Joshua Radin

“Stolen” — Dashboard Confessional

 

“Make You Feel My Love” — Adele

 

“Someone to Die For” — Jimmy Gnecco & Brian May

 

“Give You Back” — Vertical Horizon

 

“Save Me” — Hanson

“Beautiful Man” — Lori McKenna

“Back to December” — Taylor Swift

No copyright infringement intended. All credit for all videos go to the copyright holders.

What do you think? What songs did the book make you think about? 

Two Truths and a Lie, Take 2

1. When I was in my freshman year at Oberlin College, I almost got beat up by a football player.

I was hanging out with a close female friend whom I’d known from Oberlin Theater Institute, which we’d both attended the summer before. She introduced me to the guy she had gone out with the night before, and when he found out I was gay, he threatened to beat me up. When she saw this side of him, she was mortified and immediately broke up with him.

We went out to the quad outside her dorm, and we drank beers and cried about what had happened. It had scared both of us. At one point she said, “I’m just not happy,” and she threw her beer bottle. It hit the concrete leg of a bench, shattered, and beer spilled all over the grass. We looked at each other and started to laugh, because we both thought it was a hilarious way to deal with being unhappy. I then threw my bottle, and while it didn’t break, the beer did spill out.

2. That same year at Oberlin, I joined the baseball team.

At Oberlin, there is a one-month period (January) when students focus on one or two projects, and I became part of a comedy improv group and did the winter workouts for baseball. I was openly gay at Oberlin, and word spread pretty quickly about this. One of the team captains was sensitive to this, and made sure the other guys treated me well. They did treat me well, but they also mostly avoided me, and it felt so awkward that I knew I’d wind up quitting the team. Which I did, after three weeks.

One day during my second week, after a practice, this senior pitcher named Ben waited for me outside the locker room. I remember it was a particularly gray day, and he walked me to my dorm. As we walked, my heart was thumping because I wasn’t sure if this was some sort of pick up. Then he started asking me questions.

“If I were a gay guy, would I be considered hot?”

I told him, “Yeah, kinda hot.”

He asked, “Should I get a new haircut?”

I was like, I’m really the wrong kind of gay dude for you to ask. But instead, I told him, “Maybe a bit shorter in the back.”

He thanked me, and we never spoke again.

3. That spring, the comedy improv group became my everything. I had quit the baseball team, I was barely going to class, and I’d sleep in most days. Unbeknownst to me, I was clinically depressed, and I handled it by mostly hanging out in friends’ rooms talking and drinking, and coming up with funny sketches.

We’d have shows on weekends. Some of our scenes included “A.A.” (Annie’s Anonymous, where former child stars who once played Annie would get help), and “The boneless family,” in which I played father to a rebellious girl named Barley, and the more she rebelled, the more my bones would stop supporting me.

In early May, we did a show where only five people showed up. I remember the feeling of doing the show for an unresponsive, tiny audience, and after the show I felt numb inside. I went out and sat under a tree. It was pouring rain, and I sat there, motionless, for most of the night. I simply couldn’t figure out how to move my body. Within three days, I was heading back home to New York to deal with what the doctors called a severe depression.

—-

Two of these things happened to me during my youth. One didn’t.

Can you guess which is the lie? I’ll tell you at the end.

The point is that all three are indicative of a certain kind of character in a certain kind of circumstance. All three certainly could have happened to Bill the First-Year College Student, who, we now understand, was still struggling with feelings.

I mention this because it speaks to a terrific writing exercise that you can use, especially if you write realistic fiction, especially if you use some of your own life experiences to shape your characters. I cannot tell you how many “well-formed lies” and “almost happeneds” populate my fiction. Hundreds.

Write down two true stories from one period of your life that are interesting. Capture as much singular detail as you can remember. Now come up with one story that almost happened, or you wish happened, or just about happened but change some facts. Make sure you use the same singular detail, even if some or all of those details are false. Make them seem true.

Do it, and you’ll now know what it feels like to be a fiction writer. Because that’s what we do.

The above story about bottle throwing? Truly happened to me. I transposed it into a scene in Openly Straight between Rafe and Claire Olivia.

The soccer teammate asking Rafe whether he would be considered hot if he were gay? Never happened, though it could have, I guess.

The apple-picking scene where the kids created apple gangs in Openly Straight? Happened. Then getting kicked out for throwing apples? Almost happened.

The quiet, sexy moment in the laser tag arena in Out of the Pocket? Happened. The girl and guy placing their guns directly against each other’s targets and shooting each other during the ensuing argument? Could have happened.

That’s what fiction writers do, and we’re lucky. Fiction allows us to mine our lives and use our experiences, and also to change our experiences to make them more true to our characters. It also allows us to conjure up situations that are emotionally true, if not actually.

I can see that 18-year-old baseball player, so excited that an upper-classman had waited for him and was talking to him. I can feel his heart pulsing fast as he wonders what will happen next, and I can feel the sinking sensation in his gut when the boy says goodbye.

It doesn’t matter that it didn’t happen. It easily could have.

The truth is that I have become so accustomed to mining my life for emotional truths that I sometimes lose track of what is true and what is a lie.

In fact, as I wrote this, I realized that I am only about 60% sure that my facts are correct in the two “full truths,” the first and third stories. And some of the second story is true: I did practice with the baseball team that January, and I did quit. Truths morph into lies, and lies morph into truth, and keeping track of what really happened is an exhausting task for which I hope never to be graded.

That sounds terrible, but I’m guessing any fiction writer worth his or her salt probably will tell you the same thing. It’s hard to keep fiction and non-fiction separate after a while. Lots of things could have happened in my life. Some did.

*If you’re suffering from deja vu with this article, it may be because you saw it last week. I wrote a similar article and then took it down for personal reasons.

Homophobic Gays

Homohobic gay football player David Karofsky from Glee.

I read reviews. Once in a while, I Google myself (I know God says it’s wrong, but I’m human!), and I read blog reviews of Openly Straight. And I will occasionally (read: fifteen times a day) peruse the reviews on Amazon and Goodreads.

I know there are authors who say this is wrong and a waste of time and energy. They are right. So are the people who say sugar kills. This has not stopped me from eating the chocolate cake at Wally’s Pub in Arcadia. Sooo gooood!

So this morning I read a new Amazon review, and it fascinated me. What fascinates me about reviews is that they tell me as much if not more about the writer than they do about my book.

Like there was the reader who sent me an interview for a column who wondered why I had created a bisexual character. I’m open to the idea that my character is bisexual, but it simply had never occurred to me to label him as such. The reader did that. The reader’s frame of reference includes thoughts about the label bisexual, and that’s what she took from reading the book. That’s what my book brought out in her.

Some readers have been so happy that I had taken such pains to create likable parents. This tells me about their frame of reference as much as it does about my intention. I’m glad the parents are likable, but I didn’t set out to create them that way. They just are.

Which brings me to the review from today. It brought up an issue that was raised in a few reviews of Out of the Pocket.

“A key element of my frustration with the book was Konigsberg’s handling of the central character, which was confused and somewhat hard to decipher. I’m not bothered by Rafe’s decision to avoid outing himself at his new school.

But the novel merges this idea with the idea that Rafe is only attracted to straight-acting men and not only can’t get interested in a more flamboyant sort of male, but actively can’t stand being around them even as friends. And in fact it’s hard to tell how much the author intends these two concepts to be thought of as one. Thus it is difficult to know how to read Rafe’s antagonism towards any gay kid who is the least bit effeminate or unattractive. He frequently goes on about how these guys just aren’t his type, and he and the kind of guy he’s into probably seem boring to them and it just so happens that he fell in love only with a big meaty soccer player and that probably those other gay guys wouldn’t even like that type. But clearly Rafe is only interested in men who don’t seem remotely gay and with one exception, he doesn’t want to even be acquaintances with gays who are the least bit obviously so. There’s one exception, but that almost seems like a case of tokenism. And a broad-shouldered powerful jock with meaty thighs is EVERYBODY’S fantasy, not just his own unique preference.

I really can’t figure out if this is Konigsberg’s attempt to create an anti-hero, if he sees as identical the issue of not wanting to be labeled and being homophobic. Are we supposed to be frustrated with Rafe when he espouses these preferences? Or is the author depicting Rafe’s interest in “real men” supposed to be simply a preference he’s entitled to (and a preference many gay men share)? Are we to take the final resolutions as a slow step away from both his attraction to straight-acting guys and away from homophobia? It’s very unclear.”

Now to be clear: I have no issue with this take. At all. As a self-centered human being, I am often fascinated with the insights people have about my novels and how they relate to ME, the author. So I read it not angrily, not in the least. The title of this blog is not about the reviewer, but about the issue he raises. About gays who only like “straight-acting” men.

I read it thinking: did I create a homophobic gay teen? Because it wasn’t my intention to do so, exactly. I wanted Rafe to have issues, as we all have issues. His homophobia wasn’t central to my thinking.

Are these critiques valid? Does Rafe only like “straight-acting” guys? And is that a thing? And if it is and he does, is that homophobic?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. I do think that the writer has taken some of his own issues and superimposed them on the book, because I’ve not heard this critique before. First off, I think Rafe isn’t entirely “straight acting.” I love the guy, and I want to take him out for ice cream, and it isn’t because he’s superbly straight acting. When he comes out to his best friend (a female, by the way), her response is, “Duh.” In fact, what is “straight acting”? A deep voice? An affinity for motor sports? A distate for facial products? I wrote about this issue a year ago on my blog, addressing the need some people have to label gay couples using outdated straight terms, such as, “Who’s the man? Who’s the girl?

But maybe he’s on to something. The love interest in the book is a more masculine kid. Rafe does mention, early in the book, that he has an affinity for such types of guys. I take issue with the idea that Rafe doesn’t want more effeminate men as friends, as one of his two friends, Toby, is quite effeminate, among other things. (By the way, I really don’t think it’s fair to call it “tokenism” when said effeminate guy is a survivalist who brings a bow and arrow to a fire drill on a frigid night. The token effeminate survivalist? Toby is a person, not a token). At the end of the book, when Rafe makes other friends, they are not all “straight acting.”

And I disagree strongly that Rafe feels antagonism for anyone. I think he’s way too laid-back to feel that way. I have to believe that’s about the reviewer, not the book. But as I always say, perhaps I’m wrong.

And maybe his attraction to guys who are more “straight acting” is homophobic. Is it? What do you think about this? Is Rafe a homophobic gay person for being attracted to Ben?

The Boy Who Cried Cry

I am sensitive. Much like John Boehner.

I have a writerly tic. It showed up in early drafts of Out of the Pocket, and to a lesser degree in Openly Straight. It is happening big time as I finish the first draft of my newest novel, The Porcupine of Truth.

My protagonists tend to cry a lot.

They also tend to hug a lot.

I’m a nice guy. It’s like, an emotional thing happens, and I want to let them let the feelings out. I also like to make them feel better. Hence the hugging.

This is a bad habit. For one thing, a lot of crying tends to lower the impact of, well, crying. In the same way that riding rollercoasters on a daily basis would make a trip to the amusement park less of a special treat, constant tears is a great way to bury the climactic moment of a book, should that moment include tears.

So what’s a writer to do? How do you break bad writerly habits? 

In my experience, you don’t. You simply let ‘em rip in your first draft, and then you go back and get rid of all the bad stuff. For giggles, I am going to search through my current manuscript for some of the writerly tics of which I am aware. Here’s how many times the following words or phrases are used in Draft One of The Porcupine of Truth:

really: 187

laugh: 126

smile(s): 67

hug: 38

cry: 20 (uh oh).

kind of: 61

sort of: 16 (I’m getting better!)

in a way: 29

avert, as in “avert my eyes”: 3 (Yay! Not as bad as it used to be!)

So what does this tell me? It tells me that the final week of July, before the book is due, will be spent with me pouring over the text, removing my bad habits.

It’s okay. We all have them, I assume. We can’t all write perfect sentences throughout our first drafts, or even our final drafts. We do the best we can.

But for now, it would behoove me to cut the amount of crying that happens in my new book in half. That way, when the big emotional moment occurs, readers won’t think, “Not again!”

10 Tips on How to Find (and Keep) Your Ben

When I was 18, I was in a performance of “The Normal Heart” at Oberlin College. Larry Kramer, the author and one of my idols at the time, came to see it.

Billy (not Bill, not yet) in 1989.

“You’re a cute kid,” he said to me after, when I went up to fawn over him. “Find a boyfriend. Fall in love.”

He repeated this advice to me a year later, when I returned to New York from Oberlin and asked him about how to get involved with ACT UP. To be clear: that was not his advice about how to become more of an activist. He said it more along the lines of, “I remember you…” and then he repeated it.

Larry Kramer – author, playwrite, and founder of ACT UP

So today I would like to be Larry Kramer to your young Billy Konigsberg. No, I do not think I could ever fill Larry’s shoes as a writer or a human. The point is, I’m a writer and you are (ostensibly) a young gay person.

To me, this is not trivial advice. Finding a boyfriend, compared to joining ACT UP, seems trivial, but I think Larry’s comment was meant to help me realize the value of finding someone to share my life with. Yes, AIDS was then and still is the worst tragedy of our lifetimes. Millions have perished, and millions more may. Larry’s generation of gay men suffered horribly; a large percentage of gay man who would today be 50-70 died, and way, way too young, and horribly. But even that does not trivialize the importance of the advice he was offering me.

“Be happy,” he was saying. “Happiness is found in relationships with others. Especially in the most important relationship you’ll ever have. The one with your partner.”

Now, in the name of being real, I must tell you that I didn’t find my One for 14 years after getting that advice. And also in the name of being real, I made every mistake in the book, and some not in the book, along the way. And keeping it real, I continued to make tons of mistakes during my relationship, and those mistakes continue to this very day. I am a deeply imperfect man. I assume most of us are deeply imperfect, but I know that I am especially so. I am selfish and self-centered and moody. I am impulsive and I have never met a feeling I didn’t think I should express freely. All of these things conspire against a good relationship.

All that said, I would like to offer you 10 tips on how to find your Ben.

Ben, as some of you may know and many of you may not, is a character from Openly Straight. He is loosely based on my Chuck, with whom I have been in a relationship since December of 2003.

When I was on the Openly YA Tour a couple weeks ago, I was amazed at how many people came up to me and told me that they’d read Openly Straight and now had the biggest crush on Ben.

Chuck in 2012, with our dog Mabel. Chuck minus 30-some years plus a little more soccer-playing ability equals Ben.

 I totally get it.

Ben is an unusual guy, not quite the typical teen heartthrob; he’s muscular, but thick muscular rather than swimmer’s build-muscular; he has a great vocabulary and he likes to read; and he’s sensitive and thoughtful. He’s a hot nerd/farm boy/athletic-but-not-a-jock.

So with no further ado, here are my 10 tips for finding a great partner, and then keeping him. The caveat is that I may or may not have achieved these things myself. Do as I say, not as I do…

1. Be friends first. I know, I know. The excitement of a new person is overwhelming. I’ve been there. Many, many, many times. Add a few manys and you’ll get the idea. But if you’re serious about wanting this person in your life for a while, consider putting those feelings aside for a while. Years from now, it will be far more important if you like to talk to this person than if you like to … you get the point.

2. Don’t put those feelings away for TOO long. Bert and Ernie became Bert and Ernie because they decided to be ONLY friends, and then they got curmudgeony together, and soon they just sat in bed, railing against the injustices of the world, or the alphabet, or whatever it is Bert and Ernie talk about. It’s been a while since I’ve watched Sesame Street.

3. Get offline. I’m sorry, but it needs to be said. Yes, I met Chuck on Match.com, and yes, many people meet that way. But it’s so easy to get sidetracked when we start with photos and stilted, written conversation. How do we know what sort of friendship/sexual chemistry we have with someone we meet electronically? Instead, focus on being active in groups where you think like-minded people may also be active. Also, being online can become addictive. If there’s a constant stream of possible companions on your computer, it makes it really easy to decide you’d rather keep looking for the perfect one, even after you’ve found him.

4. If you’re outgoing, seek out the quiet ones. Those of us who like to have fun, sometimes we see shiny things and we get intrigued. Shiny can be exciting for a while, but in the end, the luster goes away. If you really want a long-term boyfriend/husband, seek out someone who isn’t so “out there.” You may be surprised at the unseen depth, and the fact that some people wear their shine on the inside. Allow your outside shine to be matched by their inside one.

5. If you’re not outgoing, seek someone who is. Your comfort zone is solitude, which is great. If you marry another quiet person, you may find yourself in a few years wishing you had someone to help you expend your horizons.

6. Be you. Not, like, from the first minute you meet him. That’s just crazy. You need to put your best self forward if you want your Ben to want to see you again. But the truth is we’re all messed up. You are, I am, Ben is. We all have stuff. The longer you shield each other from that painful truth, the worse a jolt back to reality it will be.

6a, or 7. Let’s be really clear about this, shall we? This means you are not a super-human who never goes to the bathroom. This means you don’t just happen to wake up with beautiful, fresh breath every morning because your insides are lilacs and pansies (poor flower choice, I know). This means you sometimes get pissed off with no reason, because that’s just a fact. Let this be clear sooner, rather than later. You may be surprised to find out that your Ben is glad to know these things, too. And if he isn’t, you don’t want to get too close to him, because he’s gonna always be looking for someone who isn’t human, and he’ll never find him.

8. Don’t spend too much time talking about your exes. It’s human nature to want to share your stories with your new boyfriend, but there are problems here. If you’re talking about the old, you’re still living there. Also, your new boyfriend is painfully aware that a comparison is being made. Even if it’s favorable NOW, he knows that you are speaking about someone you used to hold in high esteem and now you don’t. Bad choice. Let your exes go.

9. Know that you are the problem. If you’re unhappy with the person, take a close look at things. Have you had this problem with previous boyfriends? Frequently? What role do you play in this problem? What’s the common denominator in this problem you’ve had multiple times? Could it be you? Frequently our own attitudes shape our happiness or lack thereof. If there’s something you really can’t take, and you’re sure of that, fine. But often, if we look closely at places where we feel our partner is making us unhappy, we may be able to see places where we keep doing the same thing, and it’s not working. We can make changes to ourselves far more easily than we can change our boyfriends/partners/spouses.

10. Make decisions about your relationship boundaries, and keep communicating about them. Nothing is worse for a relationship than lies. Withholding information builds a wedge between you, and only the truth can vanquish that wedge. So what I’m saying is, there are tons of ways to build a relationship today. You can have total monogamy, you can have an open relationship, you can have a relationship with more than one person. In the world we live in today, anything is possible. But it takes communication. Do not assume you’re in the same place. Talk it out. Always talk it out. Never assume you’re in the same place. Make sure you are.

So … you’re a cute kid/guy/gal/woman/man. Find yourself a boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife!

Teen review of Openly Straight

Here is a new favorite review of Openly Straight by Daniel, a 17-year-old from the south who, based on his new blog, is on the verge of coming out.

Nothing makes me happier than when a teen finds something in one of my books that speaks to him/her. Truly. I have trouble not smiling on a day when I receive an email like this, or see a blog posting like this.

By the way, Daniel: You write really, really well! I hope you continue to review books!

Two starred Reviews for Openly Straight!

The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books loved Openly Straight!

The result is our second “starred” review. The first came from Booklist. I assumed I had blogged about that review, as it was the most beautiful review a book of mine has ever received, but as I look back I see no evidence of this. So I will post both of the starred reviews here.

A starred review, for those who don’t know, is reserved for books of “special distinction.” BCCB has given 25 starred reviews this year so far. Booklist gives starred reviews to somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of the books it reviews. This last piece of information may not be precise. I couldn’t find anything online about it that was reputable.

Booklist Review:

Now a junior in high school, Rafe, who has been out since he was 14, is thoroughly sick of being labeled “the gay kid.” So he does something bold: he leaves his Colorado school to enroll in a private boys’ academy in New England where no one knows he’s gay and he can be a label-free, “openly straight” part of a group of guys. Does this mean he goes back into the closet? No, he tells himself, not exactly; “It was more like I was in the doorway.” But is he fooling himself? Can you put a major part of yourself on hold and what happens when you then find yourself falling in love with your new (straight) best friend?

Lambda Literary Award-winner Konigsberg (Out of the Pocket, 2008) has written an exceptionally intelligent, thought-provoking, coming-of-age novel about the labels people apply to us and that we, perversely, apply to ourselves. A sometimes painful story of self-discovery, it is also a beautifully written, absolutely captivating romance between two boys, Rafe and Ben, who are both wonderfully sympathetic characters. With its capacity to invite both thought and deeply felt emotion, Openly Straight is altogether one of the best gay-themed novels of the last ten years. – Michael Cart

BCCB Review:

Rafe has been out and proud since eighth grade, and it was fine: his school friends were cool, his parents threw him a party, and his mother has become the president of Boulder’s PFLAG chapter. All this has become rather tiresome, though, and Rafe longs for a life without labels, where people can see him as Rafe before they see him as the gay kid. He hatches a plan to attend a posh boys’ boarding school out east where he can start fresh. Though initially perplexed, his parents and his best friend ultimately support him as he explores life in boyworld where his orientation is not a barrier to his being fully accepted by the jocks as well as the geeks. He develops an intensely intimate relationship with a sensitive jock named Ben that leads to his falling in love, however, and he realizes that true intimacy has to start and end with honesty. This unusual treatment of the subject of labels, integrity, and the role of sexuality in identity forthrightly explores life after homophobia; no one in Rafe’s life is troubled by his sexuality, but that doesn’t completely answer the question of when and under what circumstances his orientation is relevant. A creative writing teacher pushes Rafe to explore what he’s doing and why, and his comments on Rafe’s writing, while not preachy, offer some clear lessons, as do Rafe’s honest and painful reflections after he and Ben take their relationship as far as it can go in the context of Rafe’s omission. An important but subtle undercurrent here is that Rafe is an introvert in a family and culture that expect him to be more open about everything in his life; this aspect of his character is not explicitly named as such, but astute readers will come to see it as fundamental to all of the things he does explore, such as his tendency to carefully manage his self-exposure in his writing. Readers and discussion groups looking for new and deeper ways to think about what it means to live honestly in a world that sorts by labels will find this fresh and evocative. – KC

Thank you, reviewers, for helping readers find this book!

Openly YA Tour – The Recap

Thanks to Publisher’s Weekly, we have a great recap (along with some terrific photos) of the Openly YA Tour!

And also, this picture.

Yes, that would be me prancercizing with Alex London, Aaron Hartzler, and A.S. King. Rob Dougherty at Clinton Book Shop requested it, and who were we to say no? 

Actually it was a lot of fun. There is a video, and you can see it here if you scroll down. Thanks, Sara, for posting that. 

What can I say? Spending a week with David Levithan and the boys (and Amy King, who joined us in Clinton, N.J.) was good for my soul. Each one of them is a terrific person and a terrific writer, and the best thing that I can say about this wonderful week is that I truly felt that we were not competing with each other. It really felt like we were supportive of each other through the whole thing, and that’s not so easy to find in this world. For a week, we were family. So yeah, buy their books, please. Even if I didn’t love those guys as friends, I’d love them each as writers. So, so good.

So there you have it. Will there be more of the tour? Yes. Definitely at YALLFest in South Carolina in November, and at the Texas Book Festival in September. Hopefully some other places, too, if we can figure out how to schedule it and pay for it.

I hope so! 

Openly YA!

So today is the launch of the Openly YA Tour!

For those of you wondering, this means “Openly Young Adult.” Several friends who are not aficionados of young adult literature have wondered what “Ya!” means, which has led me to imagine a North Dakota schoolmarm saying these words about a gay fellow in a sentence, perhaps, “Oh ya, he’s living openly, ya!”

And since I have a hint of OCD, that sentence gets stuck in my head and I can’t make it stop, which is another story for another time.

Anyhow what Openly YA is, is a tour that has never happened before. Four young adult authors, all gay, sharing the stage and sharing their novels together. I could not be happier because I get to work with David Levithan, who is a rock star (to say the least); Alex London, who has written an amazing dystopian novel with a gay protagonist called Proxy; and Aaron Hartzler, whose memoir Rapture Practice, about growing up in a deeply religious household, had me in tears and occasionally stitches.

Think, for a moment, about the diversity of subject matter here. There may have been a time when all gay young adult novels were coming out stories, but David helped change that 10 years ago with the publication of Boy Meets Boy. So we have in that novel a utopian world where gay is considered the norm, a dystopian world in Proxy where divisions of class far outweigh divisions of sexual orientation, Aaron’s depiction of a deeply religious household where a family awaits the rapture, and my own Openly Straight, where a boy is already comfortably out but tired of being labeled.

So it is interesting to me to see what similarities and differences we find as authors, as storytellers, etc. Does the label “gay” overwhelm the discussion, or does it fall to the backburner? This is a new world order, and I couldn’t be happier to be part of it!

Catch us at one of these venues!

Wednesday, June 19, 7pm: McNally Jackson Bookstore, 52 Prince St., NYC

Thursday, June 20, 3:00pm: Children’s Book World, 17 Haverford Station Rd., Haverford, PA

Thursday, June 20, 5:30pm: Giovanni’s Room, 345 S. 12th St., Philadelphia, PA

Friday, June 21, 7pm: Clinton Book Shop, 12 E. Main St., Clinton, NJ (with Special Guest A.S. King) — RESERVATIONS REQUIRED!

Saturday, June 22, 2pm: Books of Wonder, 18 W. 18th St., NYC