Andrew Q. Gordon's Blog, page 76

What A Difference A Year Makes

In fifteen days my daughter turns 1 year old. A year ago, I couldn’t wait to meet her and hold her. Now I wonder where that year went. She’s all but walking, she’s animated and vocal, she’s happy and playful, in daycare and about to turn one.

Some milestones this past year – some good, some sad:

My parents celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

My niece(s) graduated college.

My first book was purchased by a publisher and is now out.

My second book was purchased by the publisher for a release date in early 2013

My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, had surgery, chemo, radiation and is now cancer free.

We lost our dog, the first dog we got when Mike and I bought our first house.

We learned we don’t like derechos - not that we knew what they were until we lived through one.

We’ve watched her lay there, sleep through the night, sit up, roll around, stand up, get teeth, and start to show her personality. [We're probably in trouble if what we see is a sign of things to come.]

We’ve been stay at home dads for a time, had a nanny and are now beginning the daycare/pre-school experience.

On her birthday, both sets of grandparents will be here to celebrate. The surrogate is coming with her aunt and cousin. It’s the first time the grandparents will meet the surrogate.

It’s hard to imagine another year with this much happening. Like I said, what a difference a year makes.

Marriage Equality In Maryland – Vote Yes In November to Question 6!

Yesterday I suggested that authors, like businesses, need to take a more measured approach when offering their opinions. A wise person who has been generous with his insight in the past, asked me, what good is the first amendment if we fail to exercise it by self censoring ourselves.  He further said that if something was near and dear to my heart before I began published a book, I ought to continue to speak out for it after the book came out. – Thank you Podga.

That said I don’t know that I totally agree in that my online persona is not me in real life. In real life, using my true name, I can and do voice my opinions on things important to me – like the Gay Marriage fight in Maryland, where my partner and I are raising our 11 month old daughter.  But one thing that I came to realize, while taking a side on the gay marriage debate might not be the best thing to do for Dan Caty and Chik-fil-A, it will have zero effect if I do it.

For those that don’t know, Maryland passed a bill in the spring to allow gay and lesbian couples to legally marry. In an odd quirk, the state recognizes gay marriages from other states, but won’t allow its citizens to marry in their own state. This came about when the Maryland Supreme Court refused to expand the definition of marriage to gay and lesbian couple, stating that ought to be something the legislator should do, but they found that state law required them to give full faith and credit to ALL out of state marriages.  So in effect, every gay couple in Maryland could go to DC, get married and Maryland would recognize it the same as if the ceremony had been done in Maryland. Practically, Maryland already allows gay marriage, you just can’t have the ceremony performed in Maryland. How such tortured logic can come from the ‘highest’ court in the state is baffling.

The law that passed in the spring is, however, up for a referendum in Nov.  The wording is somewhat different than in past referendums in other states on the gay marriage issue.  In other referendums, the vote was to redefine marriage as only a man and a woman. Maryland’s referendum is much simpler. Do you want the gay marriage bill to remain a law – yes or no.  A straight up referendum on the law enacted.

Some say this will help the law remain in effect because past battles a yes vote meant you were in favor of restricting marriage.  I think that’s wishful thinking. If you’re counting on  people not reading the question or being too stupid to understand it to win, that doesn’t say much about the strength of your position.  Rather I think people are able to figure out – yes, means keep the law – no, means overturn it.  Simple right?

Having cleared up all lingering confusion, if you’re reading this and you live in Maryland – VOTE YES ON QUESTION 6.

If you have family or friends in Maryland and you can exert any influence over said friend or relative, urge, cajole, shame, whatever it takes, to get them to VOTE YES ON QUESTION 6.

The vote is close, but current polls suggest the referendum will pass and the law will remain. I would dearly love for Maryland to become the first state to uphold the gay marriage law in a statewide referendum. Let’s make it happen!

Writing In The Age Of Amazon And ePublishing . . . and a couple shameless plugs.

Things have changed a bit for me since my book got published. For one thing, I need to be more careful of what I say on line. Take Dan Caty, President of Chik-fil-A whose anti-gay statements earned him a boycott by my family. Had Mr. Caty kept his views to himself, he would still be the same anti-gay marriage person he is, but he wouldn’t be pillared by so many LGBT people and their supporters.  Lessons learned:  1) What people don’t know they can’t hold against you; and 2) if you’re selling something, be as Switzerland like as you can in your on-line life. Thank you Dan Caty.

What brought this up were two distinct events.  The first is a review – or rather a rating – I received on Goodreads for Second Shot. For those that have followed my writing, you know that this was my first attempt at a novel and I posted it, without any real editing, on Gay Authors to get feedback on how to improve.  Somehow it got listed on Goodreads and this week someone gave it 1 star.  Clearly this person didn’t like it, which is fine. I wish they’d have told me why, but in the end it doesn’t matter.  And from what I could tell of this person from their history, they have given more than a few 1 stars as well as 5s, 4s, 3s, & 2s.  It was not someone who joined up just to trash me.  So, while it’s a bit of a downer, it’s also a valid reflection of what a reader thought of the story. As the old adage goes, you can’t please everyone – Or can you. . . ?

The second reason event that got me thinking about the whole on line rating/review system is that I read an article about a guy who made $28,000 a month writing fake book reviews for author’s on Amazon.  Here’s the story. The jist is, for a fee, he’d see that your book twenty or more 5 stars. That way, however good or bad the book, it would appear to be fabulous and hopefully attract a bevy of new-i.e. real, booking buying- readers.  I can say that I’ve read a number of books lately that have good ratings and reviews and been less than thrilled by the content.  None lived up to the hype given.  So even if they weren’t the product of a paid fake reviewer, who’s to say they weren’t done by friends and family at the request of the author? 

The point is, how good/useful/accurate is the ‘peer’ review model that seems to rule the internet? Somehow because it’s ‘real’ people not professional reviewers giving the feed back, it’s supposed to be far better and more accurate than the old NY Times book review system.  I’m questioning this because it is so easy to manipulate these ratings.  Don’t think your rating is high enough? Get some friends to create an account and jack you up, or do it yourself, or better yet, do both.  Don’t like someone? Do the same in reverse and trash whatever they’re selling.  A 1 star rating can drag down someone’s rating more easily than a 5 star can pump it up. Getting on someone’s bad side can certainly negatively impact your rating.  And since a high peer review is necessary for getting sold, be as close to Switzerland as you can in your on line life, because you’re going to get enough 1 stars even without pissing people off. 

 

Okay shameless plugs for those who have made it this far:

 

First as you know, (Un)masked is out and available for sale. What you might not know is that the Goodreads M/M group is holding a fund raiser for a LGBT Youth organization one of the Moderators works with.  Anyta and I made a pledge to the M/M Romance Group Gives Back Charity Event tied to book sales of (Un)Masked. Basically for every book sold we’ll make a donation. Here’s a link to the Charity Event post, our pledge is the last post on the first page of the topic.  So if you’ve been thinking about buying the book, buy it in September because you’ll be helping a good cause too. [Not just my daughter's college fund. ]

 

Second, my nephew, Nicholas A. White, wrote a book.  He’s all of 20 and studying to be an engineer at Clemson. It is not a gay romance story, but it’s worth reading.  The book is called Forever In Carolina it’s available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble. If you need more of a reason to buy the book than to help out a first time author, he’s donating 20% of all profits from the book to Cancer Research.  Since it was self-published, he has a bit of upfront money to recoup, so help him out and buy the book if you can.

 

Last, if you read this – the few of you that do – a comment now and then would be great. I’m weird like that, I like to hear from folks reading.  Even if it’s to say this.

 

Thanks

 

Something New

A wise someone suggested I do a bit more posting to let readers get to know me a bit better. The same wise person also pointed out why my new story wasn’t going to get very far as I started it.  Given that he was totally right about the story, I suspect I ought to give him credit for being wise and try my hand at doing more posting.  So I’ll strive to it more often.

Our daughter started daycare today – I’m not sure who that was more traumatic for, her or us. If I say so myself, she looked adorable in her school outfit.  From the comments we got from the staff, I think we might want to reconsider using cute outfits and go with boring basic clothes she can get all messy.  We’re learning, slowly.

Writing wise, I’m sort of in a quandary; too many ideas/projects to work on and not enough time. Some, the urge to get out is greater than others, but all have their own issues.

Chosen of Honorus: is Due out early next year, though I may want to change the name.  It might be too ‘weird’ to attract readers. The sequel – and this is going to a series of at least 4 books, maybe as many as 7 – is written in a very very rough form.  I find rewriting to be almost as hard as writing from scratch.  The problem is, sometimes it is better to blow it up than try to clean it up.  The concept/idea is still good, but the writing isn’t nearly good enough.  I find it hard because I’m constantly fighting the battle of clean up vs blow up.  Often that makes things long and tedious.

Archangel: About a year ago, I wrote a short story for Gay Authors called Archangel. I said at the time I wanted to work on it and suddenly I have a muse – you know who you are – who has inspired me to work on this.  Since the short story is out there, I won’t be giving away too much of the basic plot.  The more detailed plot isn’t available so I won’t give that up. After four chapters, I need to go back and redo most of them. The plot is good—at least I think so—but the opening chapters need a bit more umph.  So I’m working on Chapter 1 again.

AGG: This is the code name for a new book Anyta and I are working on. We are about 5 chapters into it, but I think there is something missing from the plot/story so we put this on the back burner for the time to see if we can’t figure out how to make it better.

Second Shot Sequel:  I started this, but haven’t really gotten very far. I have the basic story out lined, but I trying to get to more projects before getting back to this.  It might actually be the easiest to write if I got to it, I don’t know.  But I’m up and down on this. I love the universe of characters, but I also want to create new ones.

Dlgen: I’ve done almost nothing with this, but I see this as  5 book story based on the characters of A Cold Rain something else I wrote for the GA Anthologies.  That one would be a major project too. Not sure I can do that, Archangel and Chosen without going crazy.

Okay that’s it for now.

Sex, No Sex, Somewhere In Between.

Yesterday’s blog resulted in some good advice on how important sex scenes are to the story.  But I’m hoping for a few more opinions before I out this to rest.

Maybe my opinion would help people to way in. For me, I think it’s best to get the characters excited and aroused, but not – as one person said – give a blow by blow, lick by lick accounting of their bedroom gymnastics.  I prefer to get them to the point of sex, then fade out.

I have several reasons for preferring this approach. The first is I don’t anyone who reads my books to think that is how I prefer to have sex. I know it’s stupid, but when I read a sex scene – especially one between two men written by a gay male – I begin to wonder if that scene is drawn on a prior experience. If not, it clearly is something the writer imagined.  So in a way, it’s revealing my own imagination for sex and I almost feel that is too close to home to what happens with me and the husband and I don’t want folks ‘wondering’ if that’s what we do.  Stupid I know, but still.

Another reason is that by NOT giving out the details, the reader can imagine the characters doing whatever they want the characters to do. Which in a way allows for something of an interactive experience. If I define their sexual activities, the character’s sex lives are limited to my vision. If I get the reader but so far then leave the details to their imagination, they can-and maybe do-do just about anything and everything anyone can think of. Some would say that’s lazy, but I don’t think that’s the case. I can write sex scenes, but there needs to be a reason for it and then, to be honest, an 8-10 page ‘lick by lick’ account is way too much.

Last I don’t think everyone likes sex scenes, but no one can be turned off by getting the MCs to the point where the lights go out and leaving the intimate details to the mind of the reader. But the flip side to this, is good sex writers sell a LOT of erotica books. So if the goal is to make lots of money – and it’s not for me – then I ought to not only write sex scenes, but write losts of them and brand the stories Erotica.

So with that in mind, those who have not responded already and have an opinion, fire away. Those who have already, I think I know your opinions, but feel free to expound if you feel so moved.

 

 

 

 

So the real questions are 1) how important are sex scenes to a non-erotica story? If you think it’s needed, how explicit? 3) Some examples of stories that had it right, needed more, had too much.

 

New Story – looking for input

I while back I wrote a short story for the Gay Author’s Summer 2011 Anthology.  The title was Archangel. The short story can be found here:

Archangel

I’ve always wanted to go back and create a bigger, fuller story using this as template.  There is a lot to the story arch I did not delve into with the short story and I won’t give that out in public – folks are going to have to buy the book to find out.  But if you’ve read the story or will read it and care to help out, here are a some questions I have that I’d like to hear from readers and/or other authors. You can email any comments or post them here if you like.  andrewqgordon@gmail.com

1) Sex – I’ve read quite a few m/m stories lately as a means to see what’s out there and what’s selling.  I know that erotica is very popular and it sells better than drama/romance.  I’m not an erotica writer, sorry.  But that said, I’ve read romance stories that are replete with long detailed sex scenes.  I find myself skimming them, if not just turning pages until they ends.  Many of these scenes last page after page.  Some are ‘flashbacks’ to prior relationships and they are still pages long.  I personally find these very boring. I’m rarely turned on and even rarer do I feel a detailed sex scene added to the story.

What about others readers?  Do you find it useful, desirable, necessary spice for the survival of the story?

2) If you read the story, is the description of the characters – Nick: whom everyone thinks is really nice, but is just an average guy; and Alex: the beautiful guy that everyone swoons over because he’s handsome and rich – too over done?  There is a real reason for the Alex character being ‘devilishly’ handsome and stinking rich – he’s an archangel who’s centuries old.  [not giving anything away since the short story is there for the reading.]  Would it be better for the Nick character to be better looking than he believes, but maybe not in the same class as his best friend and Alex? Or just leave it as it is?

3) Is one long story better than several shorter books?  i.e. just fleshing out the story arch from the original short story could come close to filling a 100K word novel.  The full story could be 3 books long, or I could just make it 1 or 2 books. Any thoughts?

Okay, we’ll see if anyone has any useful suggestions.

Thanks

Andy

(Un)Masked is out today!

After several months of waiting, editing, reviewing, tweaking, rereading and the like. (Un)Masked is finally published. If you’re interested, here is where you can buy it. It’s available in print, or eBook in all the formats. Here’s the link again:

 

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/stor...

 

Thanks to everyone at Dreamspinner Press, they were really amazing to work with.

Hope everyone who buys the book enjoys it. Anyta and I had fun writing it – cliche? perhaps, but it is still true. It will always be a great memory for me the time I spent working with her on this.

 

 

 

 

(Un)Masked to be released August 17, 2012!

The big day is almost here. The day our first book gets published.  It might be a bit bigger deal for me than Anyta since she has ePublished a number of books herself so she’s already seen her work in ‘print’ and offered for sale. Me – first time.

Here’s a link to the release notice:

(Un)Masked Release Date

That’s for the eBook, they are doing a paper release as well.

To the millions  . . . . and millions [okay so I'm not the Rock, but it sounds good] of fans who are looking to buy the book – paper or eBook – would go to the publisher’s site to buy it, that would put a little more change in the author’s pocket, but Amazon or B&N or wherever you buy your books is just fine too.

Chosen Of Honorus is getting published

Last week I signed the contract to have my second book - Chosen Of Honorus published.  Dreamspinner Press purchased it and we have a tentative date of early 2013.  Chosen is the first in a series – not sure how many books it will be, depends on the length of each but I envision at least four probably six or seven. Now that I know it is going to get published, I’m working on cleaning up book two so there isn’t too long of a break between books.

 

More details to follow when they become available.

 

Andy

Cover for (Un)Masked

Another step closer to our book being published. Anyta commissioned this from a friend of hers, cover artist Caroline Wimmer. The publisher Dreamspinner Press has approved the cover so we can share it with the world.