H.B. Pattskyn's Blog, page 15

And the Plot Thickens....

Or more accurately, the plotting continues!

Okay, so a few of you know I thought I was supposed to go out of town this weekend...turns out that's NEXT weekend. But that's allowed me plenty of time to work on plotting--although what I'm plotting is the WIP I've been working on for a little over a month. Not really be best course; I'm looking forward to plotting "correctly" with the next book! (By correctly, all I mean is plot first THEN write).  So far, I've spent two days working on fully developing my characters and plot points (yes, I'm bad, I usually just dive right in and start writing). A number of plot bunnies (or I guess sub plot bunnies) have been birthed in the process and I'm really excited! So far, the plotting is worth the effort even if it's put me behind (which probably wouldn't have happened if I'd just done it this way to begin with.) I bought this book: http://www.amazon.com/Outlining-Your-Novel-Success-ebook/dp/B005NAUKAC/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1367592236&sr=1-3&keywords=k.m.+weiland   While I'm not sure what Ms. Weiland actually does for the  three months  she says she usually spends outlining (I'd lose my mind if I spent three months writing ABOUT the story in my head--not to mention, my goal is to finish a book in two months ), I have found some good advice (including a rec for yWriter  software, which has been way cool to work on).  Yes, some of the advice is just plain common sense, but sometimes we need that little pep talk (and she makes a point of saying that outlining is an individual process and what works for her won't necessarily work for others. To illustrate the point, she interviews a bunch of different authors with different outlining techniques to give insight into how different people do it.) The best news: I'm enjoying myself! This isn't the tedious job it used to be (back when I thought an outline really had to look like the ones they taught us to do in school: I -- Chapter one    A) boy walks into a bar         1) boy is there because friend talked him into it, he's miserable    B) boy meets another boy  Yeah, I'm bored already. No wonder I never stuck with any kind of outlining or plotting.  Like I said, I definitely can't see spening more than three DAYS on the process (maybe four or five starting from scratch with a brand new manuscript), but letting go and asking "what if?" in a plot notebook is a lot easier than doing it in endless revisions (one of the many things that went wrong with Hanging by the Moment before I was finally able to finish it. There was some personal stuff going on in my life, too, but I probably would have completed the book a lot sooner if I'd had a better handle on it from the beginning.) This is all a part of my effort to really be able to make a living off my writing (bearing in mind, I have a husband with a decent job, so mine isn't the sole household income!). That means putting out a minimum of 6 books a year.  Oh and that reminds me: I was reading my friend Dora Badger's blog  (she's been talking about the state of the publishing industry). I had no idea that the "Big Six" was in the habit of contractually limiting the number of books authors could write in any given year. (I highly recommend her series on publishing to everyone who either currently writes or wants to write for any kind of profit, be it a full time living or play money.)
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    Helen Pattskyn, Fantasy Artist, Gay Romance Author

Diversity in Romance Novels

I was flipping through my ideas notebook last night trying to sort out what to work on next (because come Hell or High Water--or camping this weekend--I AM finishing A Place to Belong next week. EARLY next week).  Anyway, I flipping through my notebook and going over my Word files (where I also have some ideas stashed) and thinking about the characters, the stories, and what's in the best shape to go next (and what's too close of a repeat to what I've done most recently) and that got me thingking about diversity in romance.  Yes, I write boy meets boy, which is certainly a little off the beaten track as far as mainstream audiences are concerned. But why do we see so variations in ethnicity in romance? Why are all of oure men young with washboard stomachs and our heroines (if we read het romance) busty and beautiful with 26 inch waists? Where are the heavy set boys and girls? Where are the older men and women? Where are the people of different ethnicities? Is it because our demographic  is (at least by our own perception) caucasian? Do our readers want stories about people that at last superficially look like them? (because I doubt our readers look like Barbie and Ken any more than we do).   Have we just simply been so conditioned to believe that in order to be desireable we (or at least our characters) have to be physically perfect? One of the my favorite books from last year was Rick Reed's Chaser . Rick took the idea of "changing for you partner" and turned it on it's ear with a story about Caden, who is hopelessly attracted to men with a little meat on their bones, though he himself is quit fit. He meets and falls for a wonderful, very average sort of man (Kevin), at a bar, but when circumstances separate them for a while, Kevin decides the only way to keep a guy like Caden interested is to get fit. (Well, okay, like most of us Kevin has some body image issues, not to the point of angst, just the normal, "I wish I looked different" think I think we all go through). Long story short (and not to give away the story), Caden is shocked and has to figure out if who he loves is the guy inside the hot new body or the wonderfully cuddly man he fell for from afar that first night at the club.   I love stories that turn tropes on their ear! (And Rick isn't the only great author I've read who breaks out of the perfect body mold. I haven't had a chance to read Zahra Owen's book The Hand-Me-Down yet, but it's SO on my list of books to read!) Anyone who follows me on Facebook saw my post last night about the BDSM Librarian--basically, I got frustrated with the number of "perfect rich Dom" stories I'd been seeing and wanted to turn that around, have Dom who's laid back, as an average job, an average income, an average apartment, and a sub with a high pressure, high paycheck job (and all the nice things that go with a fat bank account--nice things that he doesn't get to enjoy as much as he'd like because I'm sorry, when you have a job that rakes in big bucks it tends to come with a lot of work responsibility and little time to play).  But even so, all of these guys are caucasian Americans. Where are the Latino men? Where are the African Americans? Shoot over to Amazon and type in Gay Romance (or even just Romance) and scroll through the covers. What will you find? Hunky white men and women along with vampires and were critters (most of whom are also hunky and white). So...diversity is a sprinkling of paranormal?  I'm working on shaking that up a little in my own work. Hanging by the Moment has a character who is Native American (and not living out West, he lives right here in SE Michigan and drives a beer delivery truck for a living). Daniel hot as hell (oh he's gorgeous!) but otherwise he's a pretty average guy with a pretty average (some might say really hard) job. The man he meets (Pasha) is five foot ten and has a 36 inch waist. He and his father own a failing Greek/Coney-type restaurant. Pasha seriously does not understand what Daniel sees in him because guys like Daniel can walk into the bar any night of the week and have their pick of the hot men lined up along the bar. And it's true. Hot men (and women) often have their pick of the other hunks and some people really are superficial enough to ONLY care about a person's looks. It's really sad IMO.  But even looking over my own notes about story ideas, I'm seeing a staggaring lack of diversity and I'm pretty sure I'm bothered by that, because there are some great stories to be told there. (And anyone who knows me knows how much I love writing about people who don't look or act like me. Pasha is a devout Russian Orthodox; yes, it's where I came from, but I'm not Christian anymore. I want to write a Jewish character, I want to write a Muslim character, I want to explore every facet religion and culture that I can comfortably wrap my head around--and when I'm not comfortable, I want to push my comfort zone out a little to see if I can do it anyway).  So what do you think? Are you sick of the rich man/poor man trope? Do you want to see roles flip flopped? Do you want to see different shades of skintone on romance covers? Maybe a few more chubby guys and curvy gurls?    Here are two parting thoughts: One of them is from Midnight Secuctions, and it's called " It's Raining Billionaires " and I love it! And the other one will explain why I haven't used the word "race" once in this post (and why you'll hardly ever hear me use the word unless I mean that thing that athletes do).        Helen Pattskyn, Fantasy Artist, Gay Romance Author

Writing books, writing workshops

...or how Helen comes off as an utter snob

Let me start out by saying I'm not a snob. I know my shit stinks. I'm not Steinbeck and I'm not Hemmingway.  I don't need to be, those aren't my goals. I just want to write books that people who like m/m romance want to read. My books aren't really fluffy or light, but they're not Wise Blood either. (I'm on a Flannary O'Connor kick, lately).  And it's very possibly my (percieved) snobbery comes from many, many, many years of not only writing (not publishing, just sitting down with a pen and a notebook and filling up hundreds of thousands of pages with stories--most of them bad), but also of reading about writing .

Researching writing.

Researching publishing .

By my very nature, I research everything so that by the time I get to doing it, I know exactly what I want--at least in that moment.

I subscribed to Writers' Digest magazine for years when I was a teenager/young adult. I bought dozens of books on the craft of writing, checked dozens more out of the library, tried to sit through Creative Writing classes in college, and even got accused of plagerism once because my Composition 101 teacher because my writing was "too good". (Seriously. He handed me a paper back with "plagiarism" written across the top. This was back in the day when they just told you to re-write it. So I wrote on a whole different topic, something so totally personal that no one could accuse me of copying it from another source--not that the first paper had been copied. It hadn't been, I just wasn't at a point in my life where I wanted to fight with teachers. When the semester ended, I went to the guy and told him, "Just for the record, I have never plagiarised anything in my life." That's when he told me he just assumed I had because the writing was "too good". I guess I'll take the compliment, but seriously, what a weenie. The writing really wasn't that good. I was all of 20 years old.)

As I was saying... I've been doing this for a while, albeit in a completely unprofessional capacity. And I like to think I've learned a thing or two.

In fact, I know I have.

Every time I consider buying a book about writing, I have to ask myself: have I read this before? Is this just a rehash of the same old stuff, stuff I know already?? 99 times out of 100 the answer is a resounding yes . Honestly, if it's published by Writers Digest Books, I pretty much don't even crack open the cover. I've saved myself a lot of money that way. (Five or six years ago, I re-subscribed to WD; I let it lapse after the first year. They just keep rehashing the same stuff; that's great if you're just starting out, but I've read all that before, I want something fresh!)

So what got me feeling so snobby today?  I was looking at a "Master Class" being offered locally. "Write body language and dialogue like a psychiatrist".  Hmmm.  Okay, there is ALWAYS room to improve one's craft. ALWAYS. But I've been so badly burned by classes that I'm an uber-skeptic. I get even more skeptical when the class offers to teach things like writing for "tone, pitch, and volume"--and yet the "best of the best" advocate the use of he said/she said as dialogue tags. Period. No embellishments, no nasty adverbs, just "said".  (Which isn't to say I follow that rule, I'm merely aware that it exists).

And really, I'm a pretty observant person. I think all writers are. We have to be. So why should I pay someone to teach me stuff I already know about body language? Why should you? If you don't understand body language go to the mall and sit and watch people for a few hours. Watch people at the grocery store and in the bank. Can you guess who's anxious to get out of there, which of your fellow patrons are in a hurry? Can you hypothosize as to why? Is that woman up ahead tapping her foot and looking at her watch? Are the corners of lips downturned? Why? Is she on her lunch and running late? Maybe this isn't the first time she's been late getting back from lunch and her boss is getting pissed at her.  Does that guy in the other line you look unhappy? What makes you think that? His scowl, the way his brow is furrowed? The clenched fists or clipped speech? Why do you think he's upset? Is his account overdrawn? Or maybe he's had a fight with his girlfriend over money.... writers are not only observant, we are constantly making up little stories about the people around us.

And that'll be fifty bucks for that "class".

I've taken way too many classes and gotten absolutely nothing in return to just jump in and take every class that sounds interesting. And it's not because I think I'm so smart or know so much; I've only been published since 2011. What I want is somebody to teach me thing things I don't know. Tell me how to make my writing better, give me the secret forumula, show me where all of my mistakes are what I need to do to fix them...

Oh. Right. That comes with time and experience. It comes with practice.

And this whole episode this morning reminds me of something a room mate once said to me when I was about to buy another Wicca 101 book for my bookshelf. I'd been a practicing witch for five or six years by then and she asked me how many "how to" books I actually thought I needed.

Good question, huh?

Maybe I should have called this "in which Helen gets cynical". 

That said, what are your favorite "how to" writing books? (Because I wasn't kidding, there is ALWAYS room for improvement and just because a how to book can't deliver the "magic bullet" doesn't mean you shouldn't read them)

Mine is How NOT to Write a Novel
There's nothing truly new in it, but I love the way the material is presented.

And I even just bought a WD book:
Revision and Self Editing
because even though there is nothing new under the sun, sometimes it's nice to be reminded of the things you already know. And $7 seemed fair. Helen Pattskyn, Fantasy Artist, Gay Romance Author

The Militant Baker: Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls... SO I WILL.

TOTALLY awesome blog post! It SO bears checking out, especially all you ladies (and gents) who have heard too long and from too many people that you're not beautiful just the way you are.

The Militant Baker: Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls... SO I WILL.:  (All images by the incredible Liora K ) Things that I wish I knew earlier  Things that I've learned in real life.  Thing...Helen Pattskyn, Fantasy Artist, Gay Romance Author

Plotting vs. Pantsing

I admit it, I'm a pantster (as in, I write stories by the seat of my pants with little or no plan as to what I'm going to do when I start). But lately that's been proving problematic. Case in point, the story I'm supposed to be wrapping up this week. Suddenly, I can't remember what happens next. I can't even remember how I want it to end (beyond the obvious). So I've started plotting. Not every little detail, just general situations, notes about scenes I'd had in my head at one point or another. I'm writing them all down on index cards so I can rearrange them as necessary and see how they work. I still want the story to be fluid, but I find that if I want to keep my deadlines, I need some idea of where the bleep I'm going.  It's a new experience. The times I've tried to outline before, my characters have gone left instead of right, or worse, by the time the outline was done, I was totally bored and didn't want to write the story. I'm hoping this idea of index cards will help keep things both fluid and flowing.  What about you, do you plot out in meticulous detail or do you fly by the seat of your pants or do something in between? What are the pros and cons of each? I'll be reporting back in a month or two about how my new "plot decive" (sorry, couldn't resist!) is working.Helen Pattskyn, Fantasy Artist, Gay Romance Author

Trope or Trite?

When is something a tried and true trope? When it it simply cliche?  What got me thinking about this was my promise to get some titles and short synopsis into my publishwer so we can talk about publication dates (assuming she likes what I send her of course). I have a notebook full of ideas, but I'm kind of waffling on a couple of them because suddenly, they seem soooo cliche.  But then again, there's nothing new under the sun, is there?

When I say "trope" in this context, I don't mean it the same way my college lit prof. did. Rather than ways of using words, I'm talking about situational conventions in (usually genre) fiction. The Scary Movie series cheerfully pokes fun at not only individual horror movies, but  horror movie tropes as well: the blonde bimbo (why is she always blonde?) who gets killed in the first ten minutes, the girl alone babysitting, the man in the mask. There's some interesting psychology behind some of these tropes.
Some popular tropes in m/m include the "gay for you" theme, in which the previously self-identified straight man suddenly falls for another guy. Another one (and I'm stealing from Goodreads) is "insta-dad finds himself in need of boyfriend/partner" (usually this involves someone who suddenly becomes the guardian of a younger sibling or a child he didn't know he had until the mother dies, runs off, or is otherwise incapacitated).  Some more general romance tropes include things like the secretary and the boss, the poor rancher and the billionaire neighbor (or land developer) who falls for him/her and saves the farm instead of destroying it. The high school enemies who meet up again 10 years later and become lovers. The naive college kid and the gazillionaire BDSM king. (And seriously why are all subs poor schmucks and all Doms rich?) Let's face it, we've all seen (and purchased) these stories a million times. Or maybe that's hyperobole...but you get the idea. When do those situations move from being tropes into the realm of cliche? And what do writers do when they have a great idea for one of these situations simmering on the not-so-back burner and they suddenly realize crap that just might be cliche! (I would SO love to see Jeff Foxworthy do a "....you might be writing cliche." skit! Maybe I'll have to come up with one).  So what do y'all thing? What's cliche and what's trope? When does trope become cliche?  What tropes are you tired of seeing and which ones will you read every single time no matter what because you're just a sucker for that kind of story?  Which do you prefer, the stories that push the boundaries of romance (the stories set in unusual places or with unusual characters, like Renn Faires and Circus Big Tents), or more familiar ground like office buildings and ranches filled with sexy cowboys?    Helen Pattskyn, Fantasy Artist, Gay Romance Author

POV

Deciding on POV--Point of View--can be tricky, at least for me. The most convention in romance novels for POV shift back and forth between the two (or more) protagonists, usually in close third person. (Close third person has been the preferred POV for a while now. It allows the reader to experience the world sitting on the protagonist/s shoulder/s, but without the limits of first person, where we can only see/hear/smell/taste/touch what the first person narrator does because with third person, even close third person, the author can “pull back” and give her readers a wide-angle view of the scene. She can draw attention to things her protagonist doesn’t necessarily see—although some people would say that’s breaking the rules. I break a lot of rules.) I’m coming at this assuming that most people know what I mean when I say things like first person, third person, but just in case it’s been a few years since Composition 101, let me clarify. First person: I couldn’t believe I was out of eggs again. Off to the store I went to get more.   Third person: Jimmy was out of eggs again. He went to the store to buy more.Second person: You were out of eggs again. You went to the store to buy more.      It is exceedingly rare to find novels written in the second person.  Close third person: Jimmy couldn’t believe he was out of eggs again. Off to the store he went to get more.Clear?  So.  Throughout my fanfiction writing career, I got dinged for “head hopping”—which I cheerfully admit that I did.  Head hopping is jumping indiscriminately back and forth between main characters (note that I make the distinction between main—i.e. important—characters and the bevy of side characters that fill out the background. It’s downright careless to jump into the head of everyone who walks onto the page; the only heads that matter are the heads of the people the reader is expected to care about. In most cases, that does not include the letter carrier, the paperboy, or the teller at the bank). The trick to getting head hopping “right” (and it is rarely right in the world of published fiction) is to always make it clear whose head you’re in. It’s also nice to not shift back and forth too fluidly (although sometimes in romance this works really well. I don’t do it myself, but I love reading it, particularly when the story starts out with very clear blocks of This Person’s POV and That Person’s POV and after they start to fall in love the author shifts seamlessly back and forth from paragraph to paragraph. I find it very symbolic of the relationship growing and the men—since m/m is what I read—coming together.) And if you’ve read my second novel, you’re probably wondering what happened, why everything that happens happens only in Jason’s POV. My third novel (due out Sept/Oct 2013) is the same way. It’s told exclusively from Pasha’s POV. I started writing Bound with alternating POVs, but I found that most of what I was writing was in Jason’s POV, Henry just wasn’t getting much page time. (I’ve had some real fun re-writing a few scenes in Henry’s POV). Writing from Jason’s POV just worked for me. Writing Hanging by the Moment in strictly Pasha’s POV was an intentional decision that I made at the onset. I didn’t care if the readers knew going on that Daniel was HIV positive, but I didn’t want them “discovering it” until Pasha did, and there was no way Daniel could go through a first date with Pasha without thinking about his status.  Right now, I’m clacking away on a book called Strings and wrestling with POV (oh yeah, and it’s due in like a week! Okay, so it’s going to be a little late… I’m actually making good progress, it’s just a matter of the POV question weighing me down). Part of the issue is that I want to get into Andy’s head, it’s just not a real comfortable head to be in. Andy is a near-homeless 18 year old prostitute who indulges in ecstasy (although I’m given to understand the “hip” term these days is “molly”, at least on the rave scene), and self-injures. Getting into his head is difficult for me and not because I’ve never done any of those things. Writers write about things they’ve never been or done all the time, it’s part of the art of crafting fiction.  So I’m struggling with what will make the better story, allowing the readers to discover Andy’s life (his past, his present, his vices) as Dillon does, or letting us all into the dark places in the head and heart of a kid who was kicked out of his house because he’s gay.  Just like I’m donating a portion of the proceeds from Hanging by the Moment to HIV/AIDS awareness, I’ll be donating a portion of the proceeds from Strings to homeless LGBT youth, because it’s another one of those heart sickening situations and one that is all too real.  And that’s the real reason I’m struggling writing Andy—and the reason I’m writing this blog instead of working on the novel. Blogging as therapy. Yup. It works! Sorta. I just chopped 20K words. Yikes. Okay time to get writing!       Helen Pattskyn, Fantasy Artist, Gay Romance Author

Love

Do you believe in love at first sight?

I bring it up because I recently read (and reviewed over on Good Reads) Grace Duncan's Choices and one of the things that bugged some other readers was the "insti-love" between Bathasar and Teman. Now, I would have liked the falling in love to have been drawn out a bit more, but that has more to do with how angsty it would have been and how much I love angsty romance. I definitely believe in love at first sight (I'm pretty sure all of my characters do, too).  Of course love at first sight doesn't always work out well. Once upon a time when there was a starry eyed teenager sitting in 9th grade algebra doing her best not to fail. One day, somewhere round abouts the middle of the year, a new student walks into the room and our starry eyed heroine's heart starts to beat a mile a minute. And as luck would have it, there's an empty desk right by hers... sigh. I think we had a grand total of six conversations and truthfully, he was a bit full of himself, although as memory serves, he was really only average. But that didn't stop me from making a royal fool of myself over the boy.  Love is a powerful emotion and I honestly don't know what triggers it, especially when we're talking about insti-love. When I first met my first husband, I didn't quite like him (sorry, hun! I believe it had something to do with that outburst about me wearing a pentacle; I didn't know quite what the follow up was going to be!)  But by the end of the class period (we met in a college lit class) I'd decided he was worth enough of a shot to go out on a date with. The first date went very, very well and I think we were engaged within a couple of months. Obviously we're not married now, but we are good friends (and he's married to a wonderful woman), so it definitiely all worked out for the best. (But when readers start saying my writing isn't HEA enough, I kinda gotta ask what makes HEA? I've been married three times, so it's not necessarily a wedding ring.) I'm very sure I didn't fall instantly in love with the man I'm married to now. We met at a party and hit it off really well, but it was just friendly chit-chat; we're both introverts and neither of us knew too many people there so we sort of found a quiet corner to talk. Or not talk. But little by little we got to know each other and became good friends and eventually started dating. (Actually we dated on and off several times before we hooked up for good).  I used that slow build (although a little faster than *years*) in my third novel Hanging by the Moment (due out Sept/Oct from Dreamspinner Press). There was an instant attraction, but the boys got to know each other over a series of weeks, through text messages, late night phone calls, a crisis or two, and of course some old fashioned dinner dates.

But my first book ( Heart's Home ) was much more the instant attraction type of love, although there was that whole werewolf thing going on. Wolves and their dang mating instincts! I let my belief in love at first sight influence me there a lot.
 Right now, I'm clacking away on what I'm hoping will be my fourth published novel and that got me thinking about romance writing, love at first sight, and what attracts us to a mate to begin with (and more importantly, what keeps us together with that mate). Dillon and Andy don't experience love at first sight--in fact, initially, Dillon tries to give Andy the brush off because Andy is not his type at all. Eventually he gives in because if it's just going to be a one night stand (which is all he's expecting) than it doesn't really matter what Andy looks like. (Andy is hot, by the way, he's just Dillon's type). But the more Andy gets Dillon to open up--and vice versa--the more Dillon realizes that even though they don't have much in common (at least not on the surface), Andy makes him happy and happy isn't something that Dillon has been in a long, long time.  So what do you think? What is love? Is it really just a chemical reaction in our brains? Is there such a thing as a soul mate? Helen Pattskyn, Fantasy Artist, Gay Romance Author

R - Romance!

Yes, I've totally fallen off the A-Z bandwagon. Sigh. I am scrambling to meet a deadline. But I did want to still post for a couple of the letters that were important to me, and Romance is definitely one of them. Why? Because I write romance.  All right, yes, it can be very erotic romance, but there's a difference between erotic romance and erotica. How do I know? Elizabeth says so!  (sorry, that's an inside joke; someone asked our wonderful Executive Director what kinds of manuscripts she rejects and one of her answers was "erotica". Even though she sometimes gets some very well written erotica, it just isn't what she publishes. The other answers were the sorts you would expect to get from anyone who has ever had to slog through a slush pile. Grammar is nice. Spellcheck should weed out *most* typos. She didn't mention word salad, but I'm sure she wouldn't appreciate it).  So what is romance? At its heart it's two (or more) people falling in love, overcoming obsticals, and living happily ever after. In that respect, it's fairly predictable--what makes it fun and interesting is the circumstances under which the people meet and the obsticals they must overcome in order to be together. Well, fun for the readers; my poor characters sometimes have to go through hell and broken glass to be together, but that's because I love angst (in fiction!)   What's erotica? Well written porn. Really well written porn. It's sex for its own sake with little to no plot--although good erotica will at least have a nice set up. One party might surprise the other with a sexy bondage weekend or a romantic night with the kids off at the sitter's and the phone turned off. Well written erotica involves lots of scenes not in between the sheets (IMO), where as porn (and there's nothing wrong with porn!) tends to ignore the wine and roses and goes straight for the condoms and lube. I have no problem with that at all; porn can be fun and sexy and really, really hot; it just doesn't happen to be what I write. Well. Okay, the guys I'm writing now started off with the condoms and the lube and had dinner later, but the point is they're having dinner, getting to know each other, and falling in love . For me, that's the key phrase: romance is about falling in love.  I think the reason this is kind of a sensitive subject for me (although less so than it was a couple or months ago) is because I left a really amazing critique group, filled mostly with people I really like, because I got tired of my writing being labeled "porn". Even when I presented a scene for critique with no sex on the page (or even hinted at), I got told it was kind of "like the porn studio that runs out of ideas and drags out the Star Trek uniforms". (I'd presented the start of a sci fi story). I was both flabbergasted and hurt. That wasn't a critique, it was an attack and no writer needs that. We need support and nurturing--and yes, if the writing sucks, we need to be told. But the writing was (mostly) good. It was the subject matter that caused umbrage. The funny part was that at the time, I let it go and kept coming back until one day I pulled that story out to work on a little and the words came flooding back to me. I realized exactly how out of line the other guy had been.  That's when I left the group--and that still makes me sad, because I like most of the people in it. They're great writers and I learened a lot. I even like and learned from the guy who made the porn crack. I think the real issue is that he doesn't know the differences between romance, erotica, and porn. I'm not even sure he's in the minority, because we are so conditioned to think that sex is dirty or nasty or wrong (I can *so* see my grandmother nodding her head: sex wasn't something to ever be discussed, it was something that married people did behind closed doors.)  But when we don't talk about sex, when we don't explor it, we attach feelings of guilt and shame and that doesn't do anybody any good! Human sexuality is a beautiful thing and it is very much a part of the romance that I write.   Helen Pattskyn, Fantasy Artist, Gay Romance Author

So....

Clearly, I've stumbled on the A-Z blogging. I was in Chicago last week and optimistically thought "oh I can blog anyway".  Ha!  I'll try to catch up and at least finish out the challenge.

But in the meantime Dreamspinner Press is having an awesome Earth Day sale (guess who's going shopping today?)  Don't put it off--this is today only!

 http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/Helen Pattskyn, Fantasy Artist, Gay Romance Author