Reesa Herberth's Blog, page 7

Guest Blogging at All Romance ebooks – Bisexuality in Fiction

I’m guest blogging about the “B” in LGBT (or QUILTBAG, but that wasn’t the theme they gave me) on the ARe Cafe Blog today.  Come check it out, and comment on your favourite Bi/Pan/Omni-sexual characters and books!

SFWA and Sexism in SFF

I think the hardest part of seeing all the fallout from the SFWA Resnick/Malzberg article is that as long as I’ve wanted to write, I’ve wanted to write speculative fiction, and almost as long as I’ve wanted to write SFF, I’ve wanted to join SFWA. It’s one of my “real writer” goals.

To see them give voice to blatant sexist bullshit in the official publication of the group isn’t just sad because it’s more sexist bullshit out there in the world. As a writer, as someone building a career in the field, it’s disenchanting to see that a group made up of people who dream about every possible world, futures both ideal and less so, are being outshone by someone who’d rather spend time keeping his view of the world narrowed to such an ugly little window.

Do Resnick and Malzberg speak for some of the members of SFWA? I’m sure they do.  Do they speak for all of them?  Of course not.  They surely doesn’t speak for most of the female members, nor do Resnick and Malzberg speak ABOUT them with anything like real respect.  Every article published in the SFWA Bulletin isn’t going to appeal to all its members.  However, it would be nice if, instead of diminishing and degrading the work of the women in its membership with outdated sexist ramblings, the official journal of the organization used that space to talk about the betterment of the genre, the fandom, and the SFF publishing community – something women have had a huge part in, and something deserving of the respect and attention of our colleagues.

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The Galaxy Express talks about the Old Boy’s Club here.

Jim C. Hines has a roundup of things here.

Ann Aguire’s thoughts and infuriating personal accounts here.

Checking In

First I had a deadline, a head-down, nose-to-the-grindstone sort of deal that didn’t leave me room to breathe, much less blog.  Then I went to Phoenix (and environs) to see my sister graduate from college and take a family trip to the Grand Canyon with my Mom, Dad, Stepmom, sister, and nephew.  Oh, and Daisy, the most mournful yellow lab on the face of the planet.  Did you know that nobody has ever fed her?  It’s sad, really.

Upon my return from Arizona, the Land of Fire and Dust, I headed off to the Frederick Book Festival with Michelle, where we met all kinds of fantastic people.  (Somewhere in there, I also saw Star Trek: Into Darkness.  Twice.)

My garden is unhappy with me, my post-renovation room isn’t unpacked, and my next book is gearing up to be a finished first draft.  All is well in Reesaville, and I’m looking forward to the weekend, when I can properly indulge my newfound love of twinkling watercolours.

Wanna see something pretty?

 

I love it!  It captures the whimsical, sweet nature of the story perfectly.  So excited to be working with LT3 and London.

Huh, where did the last hour go??

Kitten Cam  This site is EVIL!  It has the evil cuteness of a thousand burning suns!

 

Okay, so that metaphor isn’t the greatest.  Let’s just say that the kitten cuteness here will pull you in and suck your brain dry.  Or if not suck your brain dry, suck up every bit of your free time and then some.

 

Go.  Look.  Come on, you know you wanna.

What do you read?

I’m going to take a chance and say some controversial things here.  Feel free to disagree.  Feel free to think I’m shallow, one of the dirty, uneducated masses.  It’s all cool.

 

I don’t read literature.  I find people who say they only read literary fiction pretentious, but that’s okay because I’m unlikely to be hanging out with them.  Me?  I read books.  Books that tell awesome stories about fascinating people.  And if these stories happen to have prose that sings down the heavens, that’s great, but it’s not why I read.  I’m looking for a lot more than that.  If you can’t suck me into your story, make me care, then it doesn’t matter how many fancy words you use, how perfect your use of literary allusion is… it’s not a story, it’s a bunch of prose.

 

I’m going to go even further out on a limb here and say that I want a happily ever after.  I know there are a lot of folks out there (probably the same ones who only read literary fiction) that say the HEA is a cheat, that it’s unrealistic.  You know what?  I.  Don’t.  Care.   If I want depressing realism, I’ll turn on the 6 o’clock news and find tons of people that bad things have happened to with no hope of it ever getting better for them.  I have a very limited amount of free time in my life and I want to read stories where bad things can happen, but in the end it’s all okay.

 

What about you?  What do you read?

Come see us!

What’s Michelle Reading?

Due to a long weekend in St. Augustine that involved a plane flight, I’ve had more of an opportunity to read than in what seems like forever.  Day to day, the most I can do is grab ten minutes during my fifteen minute lunch break.  Better than nothing, but still not enough.

 

So on my wonderful long weekend, I…

Read straight through Abigail Roux’s “Gravedigger’s Brawl.”   Great story!  The perfect mix of scary and sexy, good characterization, good dialogue.  Seriously, who wouldn’t adore Wyatt?  And I loved seeing Richmond in a story, what with being a seventh generation Virginian and all that.

 

Almost finished Jonathan Bloom’s “American Wasteland.”  Harder read, if only because of thesubject matter.  Don’t even want to think about how many times I’ve cleaned the fridge and dumped out food that I enjoyed/had every intention of finishing, but just never quite did.  Given that my grandparents brought me up to NEVER waste food, this is an uncomfortable subject for me.  After reading, I’m shocked at how much is wasted before it even reaches consumers.  Food for thought and all that (ha, ha).

 

Just started and can’t put down John Betancourt’s “Pit and the Pendulum.”  I had the pleasure of meeting John at last year’s RavenCon… very cool guy!  I enjoyed interacting with him so much that I picked this up, despite never having been a mystery person, and I’m so glad I did.  “Pit Bull” Geller is the perfect damaged hero, and John’s mixed humor and drama in just the right measures.

 

I’d love to keep reading at this pace, but with deadlines coming up and editing to be done, it’s not likely.  Maybe I should book another flight somewhere…

“If Wishes Were Coffee”

Less Than Three Press will be publishing “If Wishes Were Coffee”!

 

I wrote it for their submission call If you’re reading this but the story took off on it’s own and strayed a bit away from the guidelines.  But imagine my huge beaming smile when they contracted it as a stand-alone short story!  Just completed first round edits and cover art request and I have a release date of September 18.  Yaaaaay!

 

The story takes place in my perfect, imaginary little town of Playa Escondida in northern Florida.  I’m thinking I’ll be visiting there again in the not-too-distant future.  I mean, there’s a haunted stretch of beach resulting from the wreck of a Spanish galleon in the 1600s, and that has to get into a story somewhere, somehow!

 

This story has a wee connection with “Enchanted Grounds” (Dreamspinner Press) in that there’s some sibling cross-over.  What can I say, I have a thing for coffee shops and magic!

Scumbag Writer Brain

Deadlines, family events, out of town guests, and cat-ass-trophes (that’s where your cat draws punctuation marks on the carpet with her hind quarters) have left me with tons going on that’s either unbloggable (the writing is going well! I can’t tell you anything else.), hasn’t happened yet, or really SHOULD be deemed unbloggable. (Until Widget, I wasn’t aware that cats also did the butt scoot boogie.)

In the meantime, I’ve made you something.  A trifling token of affection for writers, or really, anyone who sets out to do something creative.

Scumbag Writer Brain.

Blew through your word count like a boss? Why don’t you have that dream where Publishers Weekly gives you negative three stars, and reviews your book only as a cautionary tale.