Ryan Field's Blog, page 523

What Happened to This Transgender Actress?

This is an interesting piece, about Aleksa Lundberg, a Swedish transgender actress and her experience.

Here the link.

Guess Who Just Edited An Erotic Romance?

The other day someone told me the most unlikely book reviewer on the Interwebs was contracted to edit an anthology of erotic romance stories. Though it probably shouldn't, this announcement surprised me because this same person has been attacking erotic romance authors for a long time. And, she has a crew of beige drones following her around cyberspace.

I'm not talking about giving out fair, honest reviews about not liking various erotic romances. I'm talking about roasting books in public, making fun of erotic romance authors in public, and abusing social media...to the point of driving a few authors I know to the brink of psychological despair.

My parents are therapists and I once asked them what motivates an anonymous book reviewer to behave this way. They both responded the same way, without even knowing all the facts: sometimes people are just plain rotten to the core and there are no explanations. That was good enough for me.

There are a lot of new authors out there who are learning, and creating what they believe is good erotic romance. They are learning how to deal with criticism in all its forms. And they don't know how to handle honest rejection yet, let alone a vicious attack by a devious reviewer who does it for sport.

And now, ironically, this same reviewer has an erotic romance coming out, the very sub-genre this reviewer has been blasting for years. But I'm going to wait until this anthology is released to make any comments at all. Who knows? It might be great. And I'd hate to jump to conclusions, for the sake of the authors in the anthology. In all likelihood, I'll take the high road and I won't even review it or comment on it...unless there are fundamental flaws in writing styles or something I know can be backed up with fact.

Then again, I might not even bother. Some things just aren't worth the energy wasted and total dismissal is usually the best approach.

Sneak Peak: The Computer Tutor, A New Adult Christmas Story

Here's a sneak peak about a new adult erotic Christmas story I have coming out for the holidays. It's going to be titled, THE COMPUTER TUTOR, it's 16,000 word story, and it has a strong storyline about two young men who are just about to begin their real lives.

I think the concept of young people beginning their real lives is fascinating. Some begin them sooner than others, but we all begin them eventually. And we don't always know it at the time. I know some people who think they've been practicing for their real lives for twenty or thirty years before it dawns on them they've actually been living their real lives all along.

Here's the blurb. Below that is an excerpt. No cover yet. But I'll post it when I get the draft.

For the first time in young Drew's life, he can't wait to go home for the holidays as an adult instead of a college kid. He's just started a new job, working as a veterinarian at a 24 hour emergency care clinic. But his boss at the animal clinic tells him he has to work Christmas Eve and a good part of Christmas Day because the other ER vet broke her leg. Then it starts to snow on Christmas Eve and Drew's assistant asks if she can go home to set up gifts for her children, leaving him all alone in the clinic with two older dogs who are recuperating from surgery. Drew is bored out of his mind, feeling sorry for himself because he's all alone on Christmas. But it all changes fast when a handsome young man with black hair storms into the clinic with a basket full of newborn puppies in his arms and he begs Drew to save the mother's life.

When I phoned my mom a week before Christmas Eve and told her I was looking forward to spending the holidays with the family, I honestly meant it this year. For the first time since I could remember, I was smiling at the thought of going back to Asshat, USA for a few days. Though I was still waiting for my real adult life to begin, I knew my young adult life in Asshat was over for good.

After years of hard work, I'd finally graduated and landed my first authentic paying position as a veterinarian in an emergency clinic the previous August, and I hadn't been back home since Easter. I'd grown up in a small town about four hours northwest of Philadelphia. In high school, a group of us had nicknamed the little town, Asshat, USA and it stuck with me all these years.

In Philadelphia, I'd shared a dingy college apartment near University City with various guys for almost seven years, including a full time lover. I wasn't one of those students who went home every weekend. I only went when it was absolutely necessary.

Ever since I left home for college, going back to Asshat for the Christmas holidays always filled me with anxiety and made me feel trapped. It was as if that little town were a magnet and it was sucking me back with a force too hard to resist. I experienced nightmares two days before I left Philadelphia. My heart raced at the thought of being locked in Asshat forever, working alongside my dad in his small veterinary practice, waiting to die a long, slow death. Landing my new job at the twenty-four hour emergency clinic had helped dissipate my fears. Now I had my own studio apartment in Philadelphia, a few bucks in my pocket for the first time in my life, and I was going back home as an adult, not a needy student.

This realization makes a huge difference: knowing that you're completely self-sufficient and no one can tell you what to do anymore. Though you're not a complete adult yet, you're on your way. When you know you're going home for a just a visit and nothing more, your childhood bedroom starts to take on an endearing, nostalgic appeal instead of a depressing, confined look that tightens your chest and makes you want to heave chunks. Mom and dad can't even suggest what you should do with your life in a nice way anymore…because they love you so much. Your life becomes none of their business. I knew my dad would have loved to have me come home and take over his small practice. My mom would have loved me to marry a local girl, settle down, and provide her with a litter of grandchildren.

The trouble is that wasn't me.

Unpublished Non-Fiction Authors Building Platforms

Although I don't write non-fiction and probably never will, I do find the process of building a platform fascinating. Unless you're famous for something millions of people know about already, your chances of getting a non-fiction book deal are slim to none unless you've already started to build some type of a platform. With fiction you don't really need a platform; just a book people might want to read. But with non-fiction, it's a completely different ball game.

And building a platform isn't simple. If you're trying to self-publish non-fiction, which I've posted about several times here before, I would imagine it's even more difficult. In fact, just grasping what a platform is can be tricky. So I'm linking to a great post about it over at a publishing blog I check out at least two or three times a week that I think gives an excellent explanation of the concept of having a platform. Here's the link.

A Nice Little Review For One of My Books

I don't post all reviews for my books on this blog. I post some, but never all. And this is because I think it's important to know where to draw the line between promotion and "asshatery" (I wish I could say "asshatery" was my own creation; I swiped it shamelessly from Janet Reid's publishing blog.)

I try to keep this blog more like my own personal journal, and while I do post some reviews I receive, I don't post all. To post all would make me an absolute asshat, and I'd be guilty of "asshatery" in the first degree. And I'd rather not bore people to death with reviews. From the feedback I receive, readers are more interested in blog posts where they can either be entertained or enlightened about something. Or they want product information about books they can't get in other places.

But I did get a nice review today for one of my older books. It was so adorable I wish I could link to it. But I'm not mentioning the review because that would be promotional "asshatery" and I'd rather post about a more current book later this week. The interesting thing is this is the first time a review actually made me smile since 2009. The reviewer kept comparing the book to different movies throughout the review, as if wondering out loud whether or not I'd based the book on these movies. At one point, I really think he wanted the book to be loosely based on a movie, and in a big way, too. He seemed to be working awfully hard at it. But he couldn't seem to nail it exactly. He made more than a few suggestions, but he was wrong every single time. He did mention he stopped thinking it was about a movie at one point. This time he was right.

But when something like this happens it makes me smile. Whether or not the book was based on a movie doesn't really matter. In this case, the book in question wasn't based on any of the movies the reviewer suggested. And I thought it was a nice review. It's just as nice to see that people are guessing about something I wrote. This is a huge compliment. I don't always plan these things, but I like it when it happens.

Secretary Clinton's Mother Passes Away

Here's the link.

It's never easy, no matter how old the parent is who passes away.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's mother, Dorothy Rodham, died shortly after midnight Tuesday morning. She was 92.

Clinton canceled trips to London and Turkey Monday in order to stay by her sick mother's side in Washington, D.C. and was with her when she passed away.

"She was – a warm, generous and strong woman," the Clinton family said in a statement, "an intellectual; a woman who told a great joke and always got the joke; an extraordinary friend and, most of all, a loving wife, mother and grandmother."

Despite her daughter's public life, Rodham stayed largely out of the spotlight, granting only one televised interview, which aired on the Oprah Winfrey show in 2004.

Rodham, who has been living with her daughter outside of Washington since 2006, fell ill Monday night. She died at Georgetown University Hospital surrounded by family, according to the Clinton family's statement.

LGBTQ Retirement Communities Going Under...

When I read the article below, I was slightly shocked at first...with regard to gay people not fitting into mainstream retirement communities. Maybe this is because I live in an area where there's a large LGBTQ community and we don't see these things. But I guess it does happen in other places, and LGBTQ people are interested in having their own retirement communities for obvious reasons.

Frankly, I don't plan on retiring...ever...and that's a fact. I've been around for twenty years writing, and I'll be around for the next twenty writing, and then, with luck, twenty more after that. I may be writing something different. Who knows? But I'll still be working full time, nonstop. It's the way I'm wired. I don't take days off, I only require four hours of sleep at night, and I'm not all that fond of vacations where I have to be a tourist. Travel is one thing, but you won't see me on a cruise ship any time soon standing in line at the buffet. Given a choice between a warm beach and a quiet office with a keyboard, I'll take the keyboard any day. But I have a lot of gay friends who have retired, or are thinking about retiring, and I always listen closely to what they say. There's a lot of hidden fear in their conversations.

GLBT Retirement Communities on the Rocksby Kilian Melloy

It seemed like a good idea a few years ago, but now some gay retirement communities are either in financial trouble, while others haven't gotten off the ground, the New York Times reported on Oct. 28.

Acceptance of gay individuals and their families has grown rapidly in recent years, but that shift in attitudes is largely generational. Younger Americans are much more likely to accept their GLBT peers, whereas older Americans are more likely to cling to stereotypes, anti-gay sentiments, and the biases to which those things can lead.

Indeed, some gay elders have faced harassment, threats, and rejection at the hands of their fellow residents in nursing homes, not to mention unsympathetic and judgmental treatment, and even neglect, from health care workers--all because they are sexual minorities.

An October 2007, New York Times article reported that GLBT elders frequently encounter homophobia, social isolation, and even abuse in elder care facilities. One senior citizen named Gloria Donadello, a lesbian in her 80s who came out to her fellow residents at an assisted living facility in Santa Fe, New Mexico, found herself frozen out of the limited social fabric of the facility. It was isolating; it drove her, the Times article said, into a depression.

The same article recounted how a gay man in a senior care facility in an East Coast city was removed from the general population of healthy, lucid seniors because other residents, and their families, protested his presence. The man was warehoused in a section of the facility for patients suffering from dementia. Before more suitable accommodations could be arranged for him, the man, who had no family, hung himself.

A 2011 documentary titled "Gen Silent" examined the crisis of GLBT elders by following six Boston-area residents in their dealings with a health care system (as well as family members) that often seemed less than sympathetic.

"Many who won the first civil rights victories for generations to come are now dying prematurely because they are reluctant to ask for help and have too few friends or family to care for them," text at the website for the film's director, Stu Maddox, said.

"Gen Silent shows the disparity in the quality of paid caregiving from mainstream care facilities committed making their LGBT residents safe and happy, to places where LGBT elders face discrimination by staff and bullying by other seniors," the text added.

The Oct. 28 Times article recounted how residents at a Santa Fe-based GLBT retirement community, RainbowVision, have become disillusioned after the community opened five years ago. A link to the Santa Fe Reporter led to an article in that publication detailing how residents of RainbowVision were being charged more and more for fees, even as the services they were provided declined. RainbowVision eventually filed for bankruptcy.

Part of the problem is the economic meltdown. A stagnation, and in some parts of the country a decline, in real estate and development has meant that revenue the creators of such retirement communities envisioned was not available. For some retirement communities, that's led to financial crises, while other projects have withered on the vine.

The New York Times noted that "such communities in Austin, Tex., Boston and in the Phoenix area never opened because of a lack of finances. A development near Portland, Ore., is struggling at 25 percent of capacity, and another near Sarasota, Fla., has--like RainbowVision--filed for bankruptcy."

The head of Services and Advocacy for G.L.B.T. Elders (SAGE), Michael Adams, called the trend "very concerning." SAGE recently announced that it had won a contract with the city of New York to open what will be the city's "first full-time center for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) older adults," an Oct. 19 SAGE media release noted.

"SAGE the country's oldest and largest organization dedicated to improving the lives of LGBT older adults," the release added. "The SAGE Center, slated to open in January 2012, will include program sites in all five New York City boroughs--bringing a comprehensive array of services and support to LGBT elders throughout the city.

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"In addition to the robust array of programs SAGE currently provides at the LGBT Community Center and SAGE Harlem, the new Center will offer hot meals, programs covering issues from health and wellness to workplace skills, comprehensive social services, a wide range of social activities, and much more," added the release.

But a center for GLBT seniors is not the same thing as a residential community where older gays--the same people who fought for equality during a time when being openly gay could carry significant legal and social penalties, as well as taking a high emotional and physical toll--can spend their final years in peace and dignity.

"In a study released in April by the National Senior Citizens Law Center, many older gay men and lesbians and their family members reported instances of mistreatment at long-term care centers," the Times reported.

SAGE, too, compiled at report, published last year, which documents anti-gay abuse of elders at nursing homes.

The economic downturn has affected elder care community developments in other ways. For one thing, the article noted, the ailing economy discourages many older Americans, gay as well as straight, from selling the houses where they raised families and moving to locales where the climate (social as well as weather-wise) might be easier on them.

But some older GLBTs worry that an inability to move forward in their golden years could mean a drastic step backwards--into the closet once more.

That was a fate one RainbowVision resident, John Wojtkowski, speculated might be in store when he spoke with the New York Times. "Without RainbowVision, there's no other place to go," he said.

Younger gays are less likely than their older counterparts to be alienated from their families, and they also exhibit a desire to form marriages and families of their own that older gays may has eschewed in their own youth.

Because gay elders often lack family support systems, they may face financial and logistical hurdles to accessing quality living situations that they cannot overcome on their own. Moreover, the myth of gays being on the whole wealthier than heterosexuals is, largely, just that: a myth. On average, gays make less money than do their heterosexual counterparts.

That personal lack of resources together with the general state of the economy could go a long way toward accounting for why no major shift in GLBT-specific eldercare housing has yet taken place, even though the baby boomer generation is now hitting retirement age. the baby boomers are a large cohort, and are politically and socially significant; like any other demographic, they include a certain percentage of GLBTs.

Mathematically speaking, GLBT elders should, on the strength of their numbers alone, be a force to be reckoned with--except that many of them, terrorized by an anti-gay culture from decades ago, may never have emerged from the closet.

For others, numbers of a different sort--money--exert a tyranny over their life choices even as the years grow short. Money also dictates what the market will provide, and to whom. Taken all together, these factors suggest it's not so surprising after all if GLBT retirement communities have not become the booming trend that early entrepreneurs had hoped for.

"For the low income, obviously there's no money in it, so if you're a for-profit developer this is not what you want to do," Mark Supper, executive director of Gay and Lesbian Elder Housing, told EDGE in a May 13, 2010, article. "In the criteria to acquire funds, you have to have a lot of development experience and you're also a landlord and social service provider. There's a lot of bureaucracy, in a sense, in running these things."

Kim Kardashian Files for Divorce

Kim Kardashian files for divorce after only 72 days.

First, who cares?

Second, we knew it would happen anyway.

Third, every single couple I know in a same sex, long term relationship has been together for twenty years or longer and they aren't allowed to legally marry.

I do not watch The Kardashians and never will. But I did think this was an interesting fact to post.

Insight Into Gay Men...

This might sound like a social media post in the beginning. But it's not. It's more like an experience of sorts I went through with a "friend" I made on facebook. As always, no names mentioned to protect the innocent. I also know these things happen in the straight community all the time on social networks and it's not exclusive to just gay men. But I have experienced this before, and not on social networks, and I think the motivation with regard to gay men is different. What I'm going to tell you has happened several times to me long before social networks ever became popular. And it's always been because the gay man was hiding something...in most cases their identities...and it was always based on fear and anxiety.

Sometime last summer I "friended" someone on facebook who lived near me. He'd actually just moved to town. The person in question is a gay male, probably close to thirty years old, and seemed to have solid, honest credentials. You never know with social media. My gut feeling is that facebook and many forms of social media rely on either anonymity or faslehoods to keep going. (Which is also why I wonder how long social media will last, being that it's based on so much deception...but that's another post and I could be totally wrong.)Though I don't give out what I consider too much information, what you see on my facebook page is authentic. But I would estimate about 75% of what I see on facebook is not authentic. And, there's nothing wrong with that. Social media lends itself to this form of deception just by the very nature of what its all based upon. Also, some people do social networks for fun, and they fudge the truth a little. There's nothing wrong with that either.

But that's another post, too. This time I only want to concentrate on the alleged "friend" I met on facebook. First, and I want to emphasize this, we're talking just a "friend." I do not, and would not, look for sex on social media. It's way too creepy for me, not to mention dangerous. I know some people do it and they have a blast. I say good for them. But it's not for me.

It's no secret that I'm usually very busy. I barely have time for a social life with work demands and family demands. I live in a small town with a large LGBTQ community where I've had the same friends, gay and straight, for twenty years, which also keeps me busy. So I wasn't rushing to make dinner plans with someone from facebook. Most of my friends and family don't even like or care about facebook. But getting to know this new "friend" on facebook was nice in the sense that it was new. We hit it off well, had many things in common, and, like I said, this guy seemed authentic. Then, the few times we arranged to do dinner he backed out, which didn't bother me at all. I figured we'd just meet sooner or later and I didn't give it a second thought. I also figured he wasn't taking social networks all that seriously either and he might have had his doubts about me, too. Perfectly normal.

After months of communicating almost daily on facebook, something interesting happened. I received an e-mail that said I'd been tagged in a FB photo by a virtual stranger. I knew the photo I'd been allegedly tagged in was from a facebook "friend" of the guy I'd become friendly with. This time it was a woman "friend" of his. She seemed nice enough from what I saw on facebook. I didn't give it a second thought...at least not until I went to the facebook page and checked out the photo I'd been tagged in. And, keep this in mind, I don't know how to tag on facebook. I know the bare basics about posting updates and photos. But tagging isn't something I've bothered to learn. And when I open an e-mail where I've been tagged in something I'm honestly not sure what it's all about.

While I was checking the photo out, I read the names of the people in the photo. They were all strangers and I wasn't in the photo, which didn't surprise me. I don't post personal friend or family photos online anywhere. I have one of two authentic photos of me out in cyber space and that's enough. But there was my new facebook friend, in this "tagged" photo, with a completely different name. My first reaction was this had to be a mistake. So I did a little cross referencing and checked a few more photos of him...I'm a writer who majored in journalism and I know how to dig for information...and found this friend of mine was using two different names, two different facebook profiles, and basically two different identities. At least this is how is appeared to me. There were too many photos with various names to make it coincidental.

So I thought about it and then e-mailed him. I didn't want to be rude about it, but I thought we'd at least established a friendship to the point where we trusted each other. (Actually, I was joking about it in the e-mail I sent because I wanted him to know that if he was protecting his identity he had nothing to worry about with me. The last thing I'd ever do it out someone.) Basically, I asked him what was up with the name "thing." And I did this with a friendly tone, to make a point of showing him it was okay if he wanted to use different names. I didn't care, but I was curious. And, to a certain degree, being completely honest now, I felt duped. I'd been honest with him. I hadn't given him false info about me. There's a lot of info about me on the Internet and I can't give out false info. I've learned it's much easier to just keep it real and stand behind everything I post or write. This way if I'm ever attacked, which I have been, I have nothing to worry about.

And I did think we had a connection, with potential for a nice friendship outside of social networks. So I was curious as to why this guy felt the need to lie to me...if, in fact, this is what he was doing. I honestly still don't know for sure. I never received a reply from the original e-mail I sent asking about his various names and profiles on facebook. And I didn't pursue it any further after that. It's obviously something he doesn't want to discuss and I respect his privacy completely. There wasn't much time or effort invested in the "friendship" and I'm sure we'll both live happy lives without ever meeting each other.

But this did remind me of an aspect...and insight...into what gay men often do...and to what lengths they will go to protect their identities. My very best friend, who passed away from a massive heart attack at a very young age, never even told his family or friends he was gay. They found out at his funeral...or, rather, it was confirmed at his funeral...they'd suspected for years. So my experience with this facebook "friend" isn't the first time I've run into a gay man using a different identity and I'm sure it won't be the last.

Sometimes it's so hard to be open and honest about being gay, some men will resort to reinventing themselves entirely. Some have separate identities and maintain them for years. The psychological impact of being gay, for some, is still just as traumatic now as it was twenty or thirty years ago, and not all gay men have reached a point where they are comfortable being themselves and living authentic lives.

This is sad on so many levels it's hard to write about. It looks like we've come so far, and yet I see things like this and I realize there's still so far to go. And the thing that bothers me the most is that all these gay men who believe they have to have different identities don't fully understand that no one really cares anymore (at least not in most cases...I know some have valid reasons for not coming out). Like my best friend who died suddenly: his family already knew without him telling them. But the fear and anxiety some gay men have is something they've made up in their own heads, and they live with a sense of paranoia and denial when there's really no need to do it. In many cases, unfortunately, the lies become a way of life and some never change.

Release Day: A YOUNG WIDOW'S PROMISE

Today is release day for A YOUNG WIDOW'S PROMISE.

You can read more about it here.

Or you can do a search on the blog for A YOUNG WIDOW'S PROMISE and read a pre-release review or an excerpt. I've written a lot about this novella while I was in the editing process because there are a few historical facts I found interesting.

It's not based on a true story. It's fiction. But the setting is based on a real location that I've always found interesting...a Confederate cemetery in New Jersey, on Yankee soil, which you can read more about here.

Felecia Roundtree is thirty-seven years old, she's already lost her husband in battle, and prays each morning her two young sons live to see another day. With her own two hands, she's turned the front of her property at remote Locust Point, NJ, into a burial ground for unknown Confederate prisoners of war, hoping someone will return a kind gesture to her own loved ones. Then one morning in August, just after she has a vision of her dead husband, three Confederate prisoners of war turn up at her doorstep begging for mercy. One is near death; the other two aren't much better. Though she's reluctant at first to help the enemy, she offers them food and shelter, and then eventually begins the romance of her lifetime with a young old Confederate named Calvin. When she learns a deep dark secret about the other two Confederates, she's not sure what to think. Felecia has no idea she's even falling in love. Nor does she realize she's preserving an important part of American History. But she's true to her promise every step of the way.