Cecilia Tan's Blog, page 11

The NLA Writing Awards (for best BDSM writing) now open for nominations

I thought I would pass along the latest call for nominations for books, articles, and stories published in calendar year 2016! NLA: International is a pansexual leather/SM/fetish community organization with chapters in many cities.

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

Nominations may be sent to the contact email at awards@nla-international.com

(Columbus, OH) — NLA-International, a leading organization for activists in the pansexual leather community, is now accepting nominations for its annual writing awards for excellence in SM/Leather/Fetish writing for books, articles, novels and short fiction, which were first published between 1 January 2016 and 31 December 2016. The deadline for nominations is 31 January 2017. The finalists will be announced in March 2017. The winners will be announced at the National Leather Association’s Annual General Meeting. The five award categories are:

Non-Fiction Book (Geoff Mains Award)

Non-Fiction Article (Cynthia Slater Award)

Novel (Pauline Reage Award)

Short Fiction (John Preston Award)

Anthology (Samois Award)

Eligibility for all awards (short fiction, novel, non-fiction book, non-fiction article and anthology) requires first time publication of writing in the 2016 calendar year.

If you or someone you know has published a book, article, or story dealing with any aspect of SM, Leather, Fetish, or Kink Sexuality please consider nominating it for one of the above awards. Authors and publishers are encouraged to nominate themselves by submitting copies of their work. Nominated works should foster education and promote awareness and a positive image of the Leather/SM/Fetish community. They should entertain and educate, while building awareness and tolerance of the community and showcasing the talents of its members. There are no submission fees, but the judges will require either print copies of the nominated work or a digital copy (PDF), PDF preferred.

NLA-I has convened a jury of readers whose number includes noted erotica writers, past award winners and leading community activists. The judges are rotated regularly and their names withheld until after judging is complete to prevent lobbying by nominees. If you are interested in being on this jury, please contact award chair Candi Anne (awards@nla-international.com) as soon as possible.

Now in their tenth year, the NLA-I’s writing awards have received widespread appreciation and support. A “leather first”, they have become the preeminent awards for SM, Leather, and Fetish writing. Past winners include Laura Antoniou, Gloria Brame, Jack Fritscher, Lee Harrington, Anneke Jacob, Jeff Mann, Jack Rinella, David Stein, Cecilia Tan, Tristan Taormino, Claire Thompson, Alyson Tyler, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Mollena Williams, Annie Cox and Elizabeth Coldwell.

Nominations may be sent to the contact email at awards@nla-international.com

Cover reveal! The Prince’s Boy box set: gay high fantasy BDSM

At last I can reveal the new, beautiful cover art for The Prince’s Boy! The very talented cover designer Kanaxa created this and I couldn’t be happier. Look at those gorgeous guys! (Bigger sizes below!)

Dark erotic magic ensnares a prince and his whipping boy in a world of castle intrigue.

The new bundle/box set collects together volumes 1 and 2 into the complete story, and also includes two bonus stories, “Sergetten’s Tale” and “Jorin’s New Spell.” Pre-orders can be placed now and it’ll go live on November 15th.

Pre-order now at: Amazon | Barnes&Noble

Still to come: Kobo | Apple iBooks | Google | Smashwords | etc.

Full description & full size images under the cut:

Dark erotic magic ensnares a prince and his whipping boy in a world of castle intrigue. THE PRINCE’S BOY tells the story of Kenet, prince of Maldevar, and his whipping boy Jorin, as they fight to save their country—and their love—from evil.

The much-lauded tale of men, lust, and dark magic, now collected into one complete tale! Includes the full text of volumes one and two and two bonus stories.

Honorable mention in the Rainbow Awards (for gay fantasy fiction)
Honorable mention in the NLA Writing Awards (for BDSM-positive fiction)

In a fantasy world where the lust of male for male fuels Night Magic, Prince Kenet lives a sheltered life. Isolated from the war that threatens the kingdom, he and his whipping boy Jorin are of age, but still sneak forbidden pleasures in their bed at night. When a dark mage tries to bespell Kenet into sexual submission, the prince and his boy are thrust into the world of intrigue, sex, and war.

Drawing on complex themes of dominance and submission, the need for secrecy in a world where homosexuality is not accepted, and the intertwining of sex with magic, Tan weaves a complex, sex-filled adventure that is part “Three Musketeers” and part “Claiming of Sleeping Beauty.”

Cecilia Tan is “simply one of the most important writers, editors, and innovators in contemporary American erotic literature,” according to Susie Bright. She is the author of many novels and short stories, editor of dozens of erotic short story anthologies, and the founder of Circlet Press. She was inducted into the Saints and Sinners Hall of Fame for GLBT writers in 2010.

Praise for THE PRINCE’S BOY:

“Brilliant from start to finish, but whew! What a marathon! You’d better train up for this one, or be prepared to read it in small bite sized pieces (if you can put it down, and yes, it is that good). It is not for the faint of heart. There is graphic torture, rape, slavery, every form of questionable behavior one could think of. And with all that? A story not to be missed. By turns gritty and lyrical. It is the chiming of tiny crystal hand bells and the inescapable, thundering peal of the bells of Notre Dame. A powerhouse, a tour de force. Not to be missed. But buckle up, baby. It’s one hell of a ride.” —Elisa Rolle, The Rainbow Awards

“The story is a good one, the characters are well developed. I went looking for the next installment more for the story than the sex, though I will also say that there are areas that the sex carries the story.”

—BDSM Book Reviews

First day reviews roundup for WILD LICKS! (New BDSM rock star romance)

Wow! I’ve been blown away by how universally awesome the reviews have been pouring in for WILD LICKS! Apparently folks out there love dark, angsty Mal Keanneally and deeply kinky Gwen Hamilton as much as I do. Some excerpts:

“This one is great for those of you looking for plenty of smoking hot consensual BDSM sex.”

—Bustle “Ten Romance Novels for Steamy Afternoons”

“Emotional angst, drama, and a seemingly impossible romance are just the tip of the iceberg for a couple whose dark erotic desires can either bring them together in the ultimate salvation or drive them apart forever.”

—Heroes & Heartbreakers “Erotic Romance Best Bets, July 2016”

“Going into this book I knew that it had some BDSM elements in it, but wow I was blown away. This book is so beautiful and sensual and frustrating at times that I could not put it down. Did I forget to mention that it was HOT? Mal and Gwen we so hot together I had to keep fanning my kindle to keep it from overheating. I am generally not a huge BDSM fan in books, but the way it was portrayed in this series was so beautiful that I am a huge fan and cannot wait for the next book.”

—Jack of All Trades, Master of None

“Holy hotness! Cecilia Tan has done it again with Wild Licks! … this book hit all the right notes for me. It was (as mentioned) incredibly hot at moments – and wide-ranging, much more than just tie-me-up-tie-me-down BDSM – but also tender, and in particular I enjoyed the portrayals of the relationships between the secondary characters.”

—Bedtime Stories

“It was a verrry erotic book. A slightly over-the-top erotic book here and there. But pffff. We have lots of sexy and erotic and kinky moments. But also funny and serious and adorable and sad and moving moments. I really loved Gwen and Mal.”

—BJ’s Book Blog

“The chemistry between the two is off the charts. Gwen submits beautifully to Mal when they’re together. I really enjoyed reading this book. We got to meet Gwen in book one, and I loved getting to read her story. She was sweet and sassy during the day, only letting her wild submissive side out at night under disguise. I felt for her, not feeling she could be who she truly wanted to be. I loved Mal and dominant attitude. He was afraid of going too far, but couldn’t help what he wanted. I like watching him grow and come to terms with what he wanted and needed. I’m really enjoying this series so far and I can’t wait to read Chino and Madison’s story.”

—Nerdy, Dirty, and Flirty

“Cecilia Tan takes erotica to brave new heights, daring to explore the fascinating and frightening world of true S&M role play, and sub/dom interaction with a true to life honesty and realism that few authors dare pen… Cecilia is always careful to present the good, the bad, and the sometimes very ugly aspects of her characters, their lives, their pasts, and their play. Painting their eroticism with the same revealing brush, Ms. Tan takes readers from the giddy euphoria of pain edged play, through the search for reality within the fantasy. All the way to love…whips and chains included. Of course! Get ready for a story of pain, pleasure, passion, and proclivity that is sure to take your heart captive.”

—WTF Are You Reading

WILD LICKS

Release date: August 2, 2016

Paperback: $12.99 ISBN: 9781455533640

Ebook: $5.99 ISBN: 9781455533657

Indie Bookstores | Amazon | iBooks | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Hachette | GoodReads

Wild Licks: Released today! New rock star romance from Cecilia Tan

It’s here! It’s live! Get it now from all your favorite places!

WILD LICKS

Paperback: $12.99 ISBN: 9781455533640

Ebook: $5.99 ISBN: 9781455533657

Indie Bookstores | Amazon | iBooks | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Hachette

In this book the dark, broody guitar player we met in Taking the Lead gets together with sunny heiress Gwen Hamilton and discovers she has a dark side, too. But can Gwen bring out the light trapped in Mal’s heart?

Gwen wants to succeed at acting without using her family name: she wants to be judged on her own terms. But when an exercise in Method Acting leads her accidentally into the arms of Mal Kenneally, the rock star with a reputation for unusual sexual appetites, Gwen thinks maybe she’s found the ultimate test of her acting abilities. Or maybe she’s finally met the man who can see, and appreciate, the real Gwen…

Mal Kenneally has done his best to leave his aristocratic British family behind. The Rough, the rock band he started with his childhood friend Axel, is his family now. But will he be forced to choose between the brotherhood of the band and his growing obsession with Gwen Hamilton?

Mal and Gwen push each other’s limits, each convinced that one day they’ll go too far. But the farther they go, the more they discover that two can delve far deeper than one.

I’ll post an excerpt later! Just had to get this live before the day slips away!

Cecilia Tan’s Web Serial Toolbox: handouts from RWA16

If you missed my workshop on how and why to serialize your fiction on the web at the Romance Writers of America conference (or any of the other places I offered it, SFWA Nebulas Conference, etc…) or just didn’t get the handout, here are PDFs of both my full slide deck and the summary handout:

SLIDE DECK (100 slides):

Web_Serial_Toolbox_slides_RWA16_lowres.pdf

SUMMARY HANDOUT (2 printed sheets):

web_serial_toolbox_handout.pdf

Writing Advice: Paranormal Romance with Heather Graham, Nalini Singh, and Rebecca Zanetti

I went to the massive Romance Writers of America national conference this past week and one of the best things about this conference is that so many of the top writers in the genre are here. RWA and the romance community at large is extremely open. It’s the only place I know of where you can take workshops presented by writers who have literally sold in the tens of millions of books where they tell you how you can do it, too.

One event I did not want to miss was the Paranormal Authors Chat with Heather Graham, Nalini Singh, and Rebecca Zanetti. Since I have a paranormal/urban fantasy series starting with Tor Books in 2017 (The Vanished Chronicles), I definitely wanted to soak up whatever wisdom I could. These women are three giants of the field, plus Heather Graham was so unbelievably nice to me when I was a young struggling writer years and years ago that I still remember it vividly.

(The story: We were at a group signing together at a bookstore, I was feeling like an unknown, unwanted piece of chopped liver, while she had a line out of the door. I was at the seat next to her. She could have ignored me and instead she made me feel welcome and included. I love her forever, and this same spirit of inclusion and helping others pervades the whole RWA so far as I can tell.)

You can look up each of these writers’ bona fides but if you are new to them, they are all New York Times bestsellers many times over. Nalini Singh is the author of the Psy-Changeling and the Guild Hunter series among many dozens of other books. Rebecca Zanetti has published over 25 dark paranormals and has been a finalist for the RT Award. Heather Graham has written close to 200 vampire and paranormal novels at this point and was a founder of Florida’s chapter o the RWA. Giants, I tell you.

What I’m presenting here is a boiled-down version of the chat that took place. It looks like a transcript but I only capture about 60-70% of what is actually said, and I don’t always get exactly the right words, so don’t take this as quotable gospel. Also I only include here the portion with moderator questions. The audience questions were also fantastic and I learned a lot, but you know, if you want ALL of it, you have to start coming to these conventions yourself… (or buy the audio recordings of the convention, which are available through the RWA!).

Why did you chose paranormal?

Nalini: I write about telapths and shapefhuters and vampires and angels…why? I started with that because I’ve always been fascinated with the potential of our minds, if we could use 100% of our brains 100% of the time. But what’s the cost of that? What it drove you insane? That was the genesis of the Psy series. The shapeshifters just kind of showed up in the book, as they do because it’s a paranornmal. I wanted to write some shifter that were at home in their skins because I had just read a bunch of books wher the shifters are never happy! I thought I would love to be able to change into a tiger. Why aren’t there any shifters in books who like being shifters? So mine are. The Guild Hunter series… there are angels and vampires and… I just believe in not thinking too much about it. If you think too much about it you think, wow that’s weird… I really believe just let it out and it might be bonkers but let it be awesome bonkers.



Heather: I grew up on the Hammer films and Twilight Zone so I just loved [paranormal stuff]. So I have done all of it [vampires, ghosts, etc] except shifters. Well, except for the one where I wrote a guinea pig shifter–in that one he ate the wires and saved the day. I did a vampire one where Shannon Drake was turning into a vampire, she goes away every 70 years so she can return as her own descendent. Of course bodies pile up in her shop…(laugher)

I really love history but you can get history into your contemporary if you talk to the ghosts. In a really good way you can use ghosts because you don’t go through life without wanting to see the people you lost again. I would love to have Abe Lincoln and Lee at the same dinner table so we could discuss the whole [Civil War]thing.

Rebecca: I had a lot of advice saying not to write paranormal. They told me don’t do vampires, they’re over with, write anything else but vampires… so I wrote vmapires. I don’t like it when people say don’t do something–it makes me want to do it more. I was on these loops [author email discussion lists] and they were changing their heroes to were-muskrats and stuff. I had read a bunch of sad vmapires and I thought I want to write some that are happy with who they are. The secret is write what you want to write.

Is paranormal dead?

Nalini: No of course not because we are the undead. (laughter)

Heather: Look at how huge zombies are now. The Walking Dead is huge. Though maybe it would be a bit hard to have a romance with zomeone whose parts are falling off (laughter) But seriously people predicted the death of vampires 15 years ago. Hasn’t happened yet.

Rebecca: Yeah, paranomal is not dead. Maybe some book buyers [at chain bookstores] narrowed what they shelved but in digital it hasn’t been the case. I think internationally they are preparing for a big paranormal push right now.

Nalini: Everything goes in waves. Remember a couple of years ago the bloggers were doing “save the contemorary”? And now contemporary is this big wave. Do what you love. That’s what gives your books passion. You can’t follow the market. If you write to the market by the time it arrives it’s too late. Write something that is unique to you. The readership is there.

Heather: We are a visual society. I like to look at TV and movies, and I’ve been around for a long time. For a while everything was categories, then it was historicals, and then glitz and glamor, and then paranomal. So you remember the EF Hutton commercials? That’s the sale department calling. They asked if I could write a western and I listened. At the time I had never been west o f the Mississipi but because Dances with Wolves had just come out, everyone wanted westerns. So I sold them a trilogy about Custer and it was going to wrap up at Little Big Horn. After the second book they wanted me to take my Sioux Indians and put them in kilts, because Braveheart had just been a huge movie. I’m not kidding. I was picturing bagpipers at Little Big Horn. I had to come up with a way after the battle to get them to Scotland. The thing of it is things are always changing. I think it’s important to want what’s going on around us. I love Supernatural. They hired two very alluring actors, but they left the door open to use everything: angels, demons, you name it.

Nalini: Maybe Pokemon paranormal next! (laughter)

What’s next in paranormal?

(both Nalini and Rebecca hand their mics to Heather, much laughter)

Heather: Zombies I guess? But really write whichever one you love most.

Nalini: Yeah, I got nothing.

What are some of the bestselling tropes?

Nalini: Alpha heroes have always been big and they are still going strong. In paranormal you can break the rules so you have these super-alpha guys. Also the mates, fated mates and things like that is still very strong.

Rebecca: Alpha male is definitely selling. And really smart and diverse heroines, differently shaped heroines. They’re not all tiny anymore. If that’s a trope? That’s a character element, maybe.

Heather: One of my favorite things isn’t just the alpha male but what goes with him. In slasher films she gets out of the car when she shouldn’t and then trips and falls down while being chased… ugh. You want two people fighting in my opinion. Even with Disney, Sleeping Beauty, she pricks her finger and goes to sleep! That’s not an active heroine. Be a little more proactive. Get everyone working together.

Nalini: I agree. You want partnerships. There’s a lot of action, a quest, adventure–you don’t want anyone helpless. Competent is sexy.

What do you consider the best thing about writing paranormal?

Rebecca: The freedom to make your world however you want to make your world. You can let your imagination run wild. And how do you make real world applications in your world? You study some string theory and make your vampires teleport.

Heather: I love that you can’t have Conan or any of the morning shows say they know more about vampires than me. Whatever rules you create for you people ore creatures you have to stick with them and then you can go anywhere you want to go.

Nalini: There is so much depth to it. You can write a mystery or historical or all the subgenres within the world. I can have serial killers, but they’re telepathic serial killers.

What’s the hardest thing about writing paranormal?

Nalini: I do two long-running series. I’m writing book 16 now. So it’s continuity. They’re all connected. So I have 10 years of continuity to keep track of. That’s the toughest thing. That’s just the kind of books I write. It took three weeks of continuity fact-checking along on the last book alone!

Hetaher: I agree. The Crew of Hunters are FBI, they go though the real FBI academy. I have to keep coming up with dead people who don’t know who did it. Other agents come in to work with them so I have to remember what they need to know. A friend did a series with a guy with blue eyes but in the next one the eyes were green. By the third book they were… blue-green. (laughter) Once we’re done we have to be true to them or readers will catch you.

Nalini: You might have spent years between books but a reader is bombing through them in a week.

Rebecca: The hardest part for me is the after-school parties where there are always these two moms who are all put together and perfect who ask me “what do you do?” And I say I write books. “Oh about what?” Vampires. (Blank look) “Oh, what else?” Um, I also write postapocalyptic fiction? (Blank look) They just don’t understand.

How big is world building?

Nalini: It’s critical. I just jump in but I have friends who map it all out in advance.

Heather: My base is reality. But to me I find it very strange, this is the most demanding reader of any genre. I belong to every genre club out there, but no one is more discerning that the romance reader. You can do paranormal historical and you are given the least slack on the history.

Rebecca: I jump in. Sometimes you write yourself into corners and you have to backtrack.

Nalini: Changing your world takes the tension out of the story, if readers think you can just change it whenever you feal like it. You have to stay consistent with your rules.

Rebecca: And make it relatable. The fun part, too, is making these creatures relatable to readers.

Can you give some advice for those breaking into paranormal?

Rebecca: Write that weird little voice inside you that you’re afraid to share. I never would have written my first book if I thought my first grade taceher was going to be reading it. Pretend no one’s going to read it. I just write the book and let my editor worry about it. Write that book in the back of your head.

Heather: Read read read. If you forget to read you forget why you wanted to do this. If we’re going to do this you have to have that little seed of ego that says “yes I can do this.” When you read a book that makes you love it, you also think “but I would do it this [other] way!” And about how your voice is going to come out in it.

Nalini: Trust your voice. I would say if you are new into paranormal, don’t share too easily. Write in isolation for awhile until you get your voice true. Sometimes people are too helpful and your voice gets generic. Do the beta reads and stuff later.

Heather: Never forget this is subjective. You can give it to a ton of people and they won’t agree on the feedback. Some will think the plot needs work but the characters are great and some will think the plot is great but you need to work on the characters. If ten peope told you it’s a cliché it probably is, but if someone says they want to buy your manuscript that’s the one you should listen to!

What effect has Game of Thrones had on paranormal?

Nalini: I don’t know if it has. Twilight had a much bigger effect. Game of Thrones didn’t bring people in to romance.

Rebecca: Yeah.

Heather: We agree. We have no idea.

Who are some of the rising stars in paranormal?

Nalini: Us! (applause, laughter)

Nalini: That was a set-up right?

Heather Graham: I was going to say you! (points to moderator, a woman named Gina whose last name I didn’t catch, Fluehardy, maybe?)

Audience question: How do you keep track of worldbuilding?

Heather: I call it my Bible. I have all the info of who is connected to whom. I have it in the computer.

Rebecca: I have one of those big glass boards–a “murder” board–and I put pictures of the heroes and heroines on them and its a good way to procrastinate.

Nalini: I like to work in hard copy. I had a folder I flipped through. But as I went along it got to be too much and too large. I went to a private wiki online but I never looked at it. So now my assistant prints out the wiki and put it in a folder next to me. I also keep copies of the books because sometimes I remember where info is even if I don’t remember the information. And sometimes it’s just checking if the information is actually in the books and not only in my head.

Heather: I have a question for you guys. Have you ever had a parnormal experience?

Rebecca: Yes! I was a cocktail waitress one summer, and a woman had drowned at the lake where this place was. Big heavy doors would slam for no reason and it would get mysteriously cold. And I was the worst cocktail waitress because I spilled on people and the restaurant’s cleaning bills went up 185%. Next year they put me on the golf course cart instead.

Heather: In Miami-Dade I knew a cop there. One time there was a big multi-car accident on the highway and they were working trying to get people out of their cars because of spilled gas because it was going to blow. This cop dragged a guy out of car and the guy was saying get my daughter, get my daughter — so after dragging the guy out, he runs back and she’s hiding in the back seat. The cop gets her out of the back and runs back to the paramedic saying okay, where is the guy now? And the paramedic was like are you kidding? That guy was dead on impact with a snapped neck.

What do you read?

Nalini: I read very eclectically. I read all subgenres of romance and suspense and nonfiction.

Heather: Everything A cereal box if there’s nothing else availale. I love Poe, so creepy. But there are great nonfiction books out there that are just as creepy. I still love historicals. And paranormal historicals, of course.

Rebecca: I like reading law cases. [She’s a former lawyer.] If you can get a really good judge, the cadence of the opinion is like a story, there is humor inside that you can understand. I’m on a YA/MG kick right now. I’m reading the Jinx series right now. I really like alpha male across the genres.

Do you think there’s any topic or creature underrepresented in paranormal?

Heather: All of them! There is room for everything out there. Okay, I have not seen a lot of chupacabra books out there. But there are so many legends out there. I did a series called the Keepers a while back and one character was a leprechuan who was tall and good looking and he was fighting the stereotype of leprechauns being midgets. There are so many creatures and ways you can use them.

Rebecca: I say all of them too. If you have a story, write it.

Nalini: I guess if there are a lot of them out there, like vampire books, think about it why you want to go into that.

Heather: I talked to an editor who said yeah there are a lot of vampires out there, but if you have a really good vampire I want to see it.

Should the point of view be 1st or 3rd person?

Nalini: I think it depends on the author and what you’re comfortable with. I think there’s more first person in urban fantasy. That doesn’t mean you can’t write third person if you want.

Rebecca: We agree.

How sexy does paranormal have to be? Does it have to be spicy or can it be sweet?

Rebecca: I think you can definitely have a sweet one or you can do sexy, over the top, whatever you are comfortable writing.

Nailin: I just think it’s important to telegraph to the reader what you’re doing so they know. If it’s spicy and they think it’ll be sweet or the other way around they will be upset.

Heather: As long as people know what they’re getting they’ll be happy.

Launched today! Daron’s Guitar Chronicles Volume 9 by Cecilia Tan

And… it’s live! That’s right, the latest volume in my gay coming of age series, Daron’s Guitar Chronicles, is live in all ebook stores! It’s 99 cents for TODAY ONLY and then the price will be jumping to full price. So now’s your chance to grab it cheap!

Amazon Kindle | Kobo | Barnes & Noble Nook | Apple iBooks | Smashwords | or direct from Daron’s Guitar Chronicles home website

The year is 1991 and Daron Marks stands at a crucial crossroads in his career. He’s on tour with Nomad and his mentor Remo Cutler, but Ziggy wants him…as musical director, and more. Ziggy always wants more…

Collects chapters 637 through 708 of the web serial.

Cover Reveal: Secrets of a Rock Star #3 “Hard Rhythm”

The cover of the paperback leaked to Amazon a couple of weeks ago, but I’m psyched to share both the paperback and the super-sexy ebook only cover for HARD RHYTHM, the third book in the Secrets of a Rock Star series!

This time I get to tell Chino the drummer’s story! HARD RHYTHM can be pre-ordered right now at most bookstores and online retailers: IndieBound (local independent bookstores) | Amazon | Publisher website | Walmart (!) | Barnes & Noble | Apple iBooks | Google Play | Kobo

Images under the cut!

While we’re at it, don’t forget that WILD LICKS — book #2 in the series — is coming August 2! That one can also be pre-ordered right now via these links: Indie Bookstores | Amazon | iBooks | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Hachette

In the wake of Orlando: fans of Daron and DGC please help

I’ve been exchanging messages with a lot of fans of Daron’s Guitar Chronicles this week. Two different gun incidents happened in Orlando the same weekend, not only the Pulse shooting at a gay nightclub but also singer Christina Grimmie was shot while autographing after a show. Anyone who has read DGC knows that rock star life and coming out as gay and finding safe space to be one’s true self are the major themes that run through the series. So this hit really close to home for a lot of readers, as it did for me, too.

I’m deeply shaken by what happened. As I wrote in my author newsletter earlier this week: as a queer woman of color who spent a lot of time in gay bars in my 20s and just as a human being, I’m still struggling to absorb what happened.

Many of you have probably seen me wearing a T-shirt that says “Music Is My Salvation” on it. I probably wear it to almost every convention! It was a souvenir from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and I’ve worn it so much it’s almost worn through. It’s not an ironic statement for me.

Music is what brings people together in spaces like Pulse, to dance and find community, and to live shows and concerts, to find that ecstatic space of belonging that I think many people find in churches and other spaces of organized religion. Dance clubs and concert halls ARE my church. I worshipped this week at the altar of The Cure, a band that was all-absorbing to me when I was defining my art and my sexuality and my identity as a goth in my late teens and early 20s.

I last saw them in concert in 1989, more than half my life ago, but I saw them this week at the Agganis Arena in Boston. The show was amazing, transcendent, wonderful, and I couldn’t help but think that after David Bowie and Prince have both been taken from us this year, Robert Smith is the one left carrying the torch of “it’s okay to be weird.” That’s my religion, that’s what I preach: “It’s okay to be weird.”

That’s why so many of my protagonists are rock musicians and artists and nonconformists who can’t quite fit into a 9-to-5 world. Everyone has a right to be queer, in whatever way you are queer, whether in sexuality or in being not-like everyone else. You might be the same in some ways and different in others.

I learned in Bible camp (yes, I went to Bible camp) that our goal shouldn’t just be to go to heaven when we die, it should be to create heaven on Earth. My heaven would be one where everyone could be themselves freely without fear of being killed.

In particular it hurts that we are attacked for who we love or how we love. People sometimes ask me if I could be doing something “better” with my life. Right now I think writing stories about love and spreading a message that love is important and all kinds of love are valid is about the most important thing I can do.

But a lot of us are feeling helpless, powerless, angry, and empty since the attack. I know because you’ve been writing and texting and messaging me saying so. So I thought maybe I would propose a bit of collective action on the part of DGC fans and my readers at large: a donation drive.

Here’s how it’s going to work. You make an online donation to one of these three tax-deductible charities:

Equality Florida
The Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence
Rock The Vote

Equality Florida is a 501(c)(4) non-profit LGBT advocacy organization and this link goes to their specific fund for the victims, survivors, & families of those in the Pulse shooting. They’re trying to raise $7 million to pay for funerals, counseling, and much more. They’re at close to $6 million right now.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence was begun by Sarah Brady after her husband Jim, President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary, was shot during an assassination attempt on Reagan. Jim was paralyzed for life. It took three more presidencies before the “Brady Bill” to limit handgun sales was passed and the Brady Campaign to this day still works to change gun laws in the United States. Their current fundraising campaign, simply called “#ENOUGH” is taking donations at this link. They are a 501(c)(3).

Rock the Vote is a 501(c)(3) non-partisan non-profit whose goal is simple: get more young people to vote. They provide information on how to register to vote, run voter reg drives, and other great programs to increase voter participation because they know that the more people vote the stronger our democracy is and the better it reflects the actual country. You can give at this link.

After you make your donation of any amount, even just $5, email a copy of your receipt/confirmation (either a screencap or a PDF or your paypal confirmation) to daron.moondog @ gmail along with your mailing address, and I’ll email you back the bonus Daron’s Guitar Chronicles story I’m about to write. (Haven’t written it yet, but I will! All I know right now is it’s going to be from Ziggy’s point of view.) If your donation is $25 or more I’ll also send you some additional DGC stickers/tattoos (send me your mailing address). If your donation is $50 or more I’ll send you one of the remaining DGC red notebooks that I will have extra after the Kickstarter rewards are fulfilled. While Supplies Last of course!

Please help me do something good in this world and I think we’ll all feel less helpless. You are all heroes in your own lives already when you fight for inclusion, equality, and tolerance among your family, friends, and social circles. Please join me if you’re financially able in this step toward bettering the larger world, too.

This campaign will run through July and in the first week of August I’ll report the total amount raised, sound good? Thank you.

-Cecilia

The Cure at Agganis Arena June 2016: Concert Review

The last time I saw The Cure in concert was in 1989. I was freshly graduated from university and had just started my first (and only) full-time job. That job was in book publishing at Beacon Press in Boston. By taking that job I had formally “left” the music business, the industry I had been sure I was going to work in for several years at that point. (I had started working at WPLJ radio in NYC while still in high school, and many alums of WBRU FM, the station where I then worked in college, had gone on to high-powered jobs at MTV, Rykodisc, and so on.)

It was also the final year of my relationship with my first really serious love/soulmate/partner and we were on the rocks. He was in his final year at Brown. We were living together in Providence and I was commuting daily to Boston for work. I was exhausted from the constant work on the relationship and the constant demands of the day job. I was in a time of transition and still unsure how a lot of things were going to pan out, or if they were going to pan out. I was desperate to start my career as a fiction writer but even with a two-hour train commute and an early model Toshiba laptop I was creatively drained and unable to accomplish much of anything.

As it turns out The Cure were in a similar state when we saw them that September at Great Woods (the outdoor venue between Boston and Providence, later renamed the Tweeter Center, and now called the Xfinity Center). The Great Woods date was the final one on their North American tour (and supposedly was to be their last tour ever though I think I had not managed to read that news before the concert).

The 1989 set list looks epic. I remember being pleased they played some of the more obscure tracks I loved from their earlier albums. The concert was also plenty long–three encores, including a final one that included the members of opening band Shelleyan Orphan and which sounded, frankly, kind of like a mess. But ultimately my partner and I turned to each other at the end of the night like “that’s it?” The band had seemed to me to be going through the motions and not much else. I didn’t feel the connection I was expecting.

It was perplexing. But was it the band or was it me not connecting? Had I outgrown The Cure, or was it that I was so wrapped up in the life struggles of being early twenty-something that I couldn’t enjoy the moment? At that point in time I was about the hugest fan of The Cure I could be: they were the rock band I was most into of all time, surpassing The Police (who had surpassed The Beatles).

Flash back to April of that same year, to my 23rd birthday party, at which I had performed “The Walk” (and a few other songs) with musician/tech nerd Jon Drukman, whom I had never met before that day, but we knew each other from an alternative music discussion group on the Internet. (I had been the manager of the Brown University electronic music lab and had lots of sequencing software for my Mac and Jon brought down a Yamaha DX-7 that afternoon and we worked up a set. And yes, the Internet did exist back in 1989 even if only a few of us truly nerdy were on it at that point.) I had spent hours and hours deconstructing The Cure’s songs in the mid-1980s, continually marveling at how Robert Smith managed to completely bypass all the bombast and technical hype and musicality dick-sizing of British prog rock as well as all the anti-musicality/anti-poseur bullshit of the British punk scene to go straight to creating incredible well-made songs with sometimes deceptively simple ingredients. What did I do with all my college courses in music theory? I took apart Cure songs.

When Disintegration came out, it melted my brain. One of the early short stories I wrote in an intermediate fiction writing class at Brown bore the title “Fascination Street” because there seemed to be some aesthetic connection between story and song that I couldn’t otherwise articulate. I went to see the Cure concert film In Orange in the theater. (And then bought the video.) On my commute my Walkman was rarely without Pornography, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, or Disintegration, dubbed onto cassettes from the CDs.

I was, in short, a fan.

I left that concert at Great Woods feeling like I was extremely glad I had been there, but as concerts go that it had not been that great. What was wrong with me? Was it me, or was it them?

At the time I figured it was me, but I wasn’t the only one who felt that they’d been lackluster. As a review of the concert I discovered recently, from MIT’s newspaper The Tech put it, “After having played the same set for five months, the band performed like machines. They sounded right, but they did not feel right. They seemed tired, as if they just wanted to get it over with.” That matched my experience of the concert: the band seemed like they were straining and not quite reaching what they wanted, they just didn’t have the oomph. They didn’t connect.

Years later I would read interviews with Robert Smith stating that was one of the worst shows he could remember. They were so exhausted by both the grueling work of being on the road and the strife within the band, this was why he had been saying it would be the last tour and possibly the end of The Cure. In one interview I cannot now find again he says he was against The Cure turning into an “arena” band and he was ground down by playing these huge venues–and having the identity crisis that went along with it.

You and me both, Robert. We were both mentally tapped out and eager to move on to the next artistic phase of our creative lives but so weighed down by everything that neither of us could quite figure out what was supposed to come next.

For me, ultimately, it was a breakup with that boyfriend, a move to Boston, and then quitting the day job entirely to pursue writing full time (by getting into Emerson’s writing MFA program). For Smith it was severing ties with Lol Tolhurst, the other founding member of the band and his childhood friend, who had been booted from the band during the recording of Disintegration.

As it turned out, that September 1989 concert was not the end of The Cure at all, it was the beginning of several years of commercial (and critical) success, once Smith accepted that The Cure were in such demand that there would be many more tours of huge arenas. (If you’d like to see details of every Cure show ever, check out http://www.cure-concerts.de, see the set list from that Great Woods show at http://www.cure-concerts.de/concerts/1989-09-23.php)

Flash forward 27 years. I’m at the highest level of commercial success I’ve yet reached as a fiction writer. (One of my recent novels was sold in Target, won some major romance awards, and I bought a car with the royalties.) The world’s finally caught up to what I’ve been doing. The Cure, meanwhile, haven’t released an album or toured since 2008 but when they announced in November that they’d be touring North America for the first time in eight years (other than some headlining gigs at Coachella and the like) the shows began to sell out quickly. The places they’re playing are not small and they seem to have sold them out handily.

So it was that I put on a leather jacket that is 25 years old, and a T-shirt of the same vintage, and some black lipstick (much newer) to head down to the Agganis Arena for the show. It was a beautiful summer day, sunny, not overly muggy, and as I sat in a sardine-packed Green Line car out of Park Street I tried to pick out who else might be headed to the show. Not the folks in Red Sox gear (who mostly exited en masse at Kenmore) but perhaps the woman sitting next to me in the ’50s throwback rockabilly dress? The colorful yet butch girl with piercings in her lip holding the railing above me? Yes to both, as it turns out. The crowd was decidedly less old-school Goth than, say, the acoustic Peter Murphy show I went to last month, with a much wider range of people, many more from the suburbs.

The entrance to “the floor” at the back.

It was 7:25pm when I got off the train outside the arena. I was holding a ticket for Floor 1, the general admission area at the front of the stage, and we had a separate entrance and wristband. We also had a separate restroom–an auxiliary hockey locker room that had more showers (ten) than toilets (two, plus one urinal)–and I was in that restroom at 7:30 on the dot, making my last pre-show bladder-emptying before preparing to get as close to the stage as possible (and then not move). Also at 7:30 on the dot, The Twilight Sad took the stage to open the concert.

I don’t think I’ve ever been to a concert where the music began at the time printed on the ticket. I would say not even 10% of the audience was present yet. I hurried out to the floor and was pleased to discover I could easily get within five yards of center stage. That’s how few people were there. I ended up only three-deep from the rail and right in front of where Robert Smith’s mic would be set up, though I didn’t know it at the time since The Twilight Sad’s lead vocalist James Graham was positioned several feet to stage right.

Opening act for #TheCure are the cure-esque Twilight Sad from Glasgow

A video posted by Cecilia Tan (@ctan_writer) on Jun 16, 2016 at 5:04pm PDT

The Twilight Sad are very sonically influenced by The Cure which made for a very pleasant experience for Cure fans who weren’t familiar with them. I’d describe it as shoegaze meets The Cure, basically. They’re from Glasgow and I iTunes-purchased the song I liked best from their set as soon as I got home to wifi. (“There’s A Girl In the Corner” See them perform it on KEXP below.)

The openers left the stage by 8pm and then came the wait. I got chatting with the people around me close to the stage. Some were seeing The Cure for the first time. Others had seen them more than 20 times and were worried this might be the last Cure tour ever. (I refrained from saying that Robert now has a 27+ year history of saying that things are the last whatever, last album, last tour, and that so far it hasn’t been the last one of anything yet.) We all agreed that in heterosexual couples it has to be the woman who goes to get the beer, because we can move through the crowd more easily without resistance, not because we’re smaller but because we’ve mastered the “scuse me, scuse me” and people will get out of your way when they see you carrying two beers, they assume one’s for the guy who’s holding your spot at the front. (Three of us women who were there alone stayed put and did not get beer in the first place.)

I forgot to look at the time but I think it was 8:36 when The Cure took the stage. I suppose I could check the timestamps on my photos if I really cared, but the opening video graphic seemed to be saying to me that we were entering a time machine going backwards and so time really wasn’t going to matter:

Snippet of the first song in the concert. “Open” #TheCure

A video posted by Cecilia Tan (@ctan_writer) on Jun 16, 2016 at 9:06pm PDT

A note about the visuals: they very cleverly have five tall video screens, very similar to Adam Lambert’s setup (though he has four) except instead of every song featuring various video footage, much of the time the screens show portions of the stage, not to broadcast images of the performers but to capture the movement and cycles of the stage lights which then through video feedback create interesting loops and animated patterns. One song (“Push” I think?) also pointed the camera at the audience creating a mirror image of the band and their view of us which was really cool and created an amazing illusion of intimacy in a huge arena.

The main set opened with the song “Open” and ended with “End” — both from the album Wish, the followup to Disintegration. The story of Disintegration‘s commercial breakthrough is an inspiring one for anyone looking for an example where sticking to artistic vision instead of “commercial” advice yielded the most bounty. The early Cure stuff had a very dark and broody sound, very atmospheric and often somewhat slow for pop or post-punk. In other words, everything that radio programmers in the United States would consider anti-commercial, the opposite of “what people like to listen to.” After firing most of the band in the early 80s, Smith — with Lol Tolhurst in tow — carried on The Cure name by releasing, of all things, what were essentially alt-rock dance tracks with “Let’s Go To Bed” and “The Walk.” They charted. What followed were two very strong albums that codified The Cure’s ability to attack the pop music genres with idiosyncratic songs that simply don’t fit comfortably into any box but “music.” (Head on the Door and Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me) The selections were eclectic on these albums, veering from dark and raucous (“Torture,” “Shiver and Shake”) to playful (“Close to Me’) to depressing and uplifting at the same time (“Just Like Heaven”).

By all accounts in the media, the recording of Disintegration was a painful chore. Tolhurst spent the sessions drunk and contributed nothing to the recording and was dismissed/quit during the mixing. Smith himself sometimes refused to speak to anyone. He was depressed about turning thirty and had self-medicated with LSD for a year leading up to the recording. The album’s title seemed apt, as if everything in Smith’s world were fraying apart and the only thing to do was make a gorgeous tapestry of anti-commercial music out of it, trying to return the band to the dark sound of Pornography (1982, and incidentally probably my favorite album of theirs pre-1989). I’ve read various reports that execs at Elektra, the band’s U.S. record company, felt the record was commercial suicide. Who wants to listen to a six-minute dirge?

Lots of people, apparently. Disintegration went to number 3 in the UK and number 12 in the US, and “Lovesong” went to number two in the US singles charts. Up to that time that was the best they had ever done. The album went quickly gold, and soon platinum (and is now triple platinum worldwide).

The album that followed in 1992, Wish, vaulted from Disintegration‘s strong showing to debut at number one in the UK and number two in the States. The first single, “High,” charted very well, too, but it’s the “silly” love song “Friday, I’m In Love” that people remember best (though anyone who thought The Cure didn’t have silly sentimental love songs in them already weren’t paying much attention).

What struck me hearing the songs from Wish featured so prominently in the concert last night was that they seemed familiar to me but I didn’t have the visceral complete brain-body-spirit experience hearing them that I did with every other song and I wondered why. I kept wondering which album they were from and I was surprised to realize on checking the track listings that they were all from Wish. There is a Wish-shaped hole in my memory. I had to go to my CD shelf to see if I own it. I do. It’s there right next to Faith and Pornography. Perhaps y amnesia stems from the fact I was at the end of my rope depressed and waiting to hear if I was accepted into the Emerson MFA writing program when Wish came out. Or maybe it was just that nothing could quite live up to the benchmark that Disintegration had become.

I used to “mark” my albums, i.e. write capsule reviews of them and stick them to the cases. This is an old radio DJ practice, leaving your opinion about it so later you can easily recall what you thought and help you or your colleagues quickly decide whether to play a song from it next, when you have very little time to make that decision. This one is not marked and I think I know why. Because I couldn’t bring myself to write that after the masterpiece that was Disintegration, Wish was simply not that special. It felt to me like a follow-on. More of the same. Good, very good, but more of the same, and at that point in my life what I opted for instead was to listen to Disintegration a few hundred more times.

That meant hearing the songs from Wish in concert like this was a weird kind of deja vu. I recognized the songs and I liked them but I didn’t know them. Heard now, in the context of the entire Cure oeuvre on display last night, I realize that my reaction of Wish being lesser than Disintegration was more about me and the impact of that album on my life–and the lack of impact of Wish–than anything about the actual music. The music itself, yes, is “more of the same” because when you hear the breadth of what The Cure do strung together into a seamless performance on stage you realize it is all of a piece. It all fits together. As it should.

The main set spanned sixteen songs and did not end until nearly 10pm. I was thrilled to hear “The Walk,” which I consider a fairly obscure track but given that I played/sang/sequenced it on my 23rd birthday is still a personal fave. Every song was a “crowd pleaser” though, causing people to erupt with delight. The man next to me, a bald, goateed middle-aged guy, probably my age (49) and not apparently emo in any way, burst into tears when “A Night Like This” began and cried/danced happily through the entire song.

Robert Smith with an acoustic guitar he played several times. He used at least four different guitars in the show.

The “paradox” of The Cure that non-goths often can’t grasp is how a collection of songs that repeatedly mention love, Christmas, and cats can be moving rather than frivolous. Those of us who grew up goths can tell you though, the world looks different when you’re not afraid to feel or express negative emotions. The world *is* different when you make mortality and tragedy your bedfellows (and explore them through your art) instead of the things you gawk at, deny, push away, or hide at every possible turn.

Then there’s the fact that the music is so good. Maybe Robert Smith could write about anything and it would still be just as good. He’s been known, apparently, to go completely off the lyric sheet when performing in Japan or other non-English-speaking countries and just speak in tongues and invent new lyrics.

He stuck to English last night, though. When the main set was over, the crowd clamored for an encore and upon returning to the stage Smith actually addressed the crowd for the first time. The opening set had been played without any pause between songs other than the quick change of guitar here and there and no patter at all. The only one on the stage with a mic is Smith–no one else sings or speaks. Coming out for the first encore, he told us “This is a new song,” and launched into the playing of something called “It Can Never Be The Same”–the same words that are emblazoned in white letters across one of his black Schechter “Ultra-Cure” guitars. (The other guitar of the same model he used in the concert has numbers in the Fibonacci series: 1-1-2-3-5-etc. See photos of them here: https://www.facebook.com/easycure96/posts/10153812172679678)

During the performing of “It Can Never Be The Same” Smith became very emotional, first time I’ve seen that from him. Overall Smith’s emotions are on display for those close enough to see his face–and for the first time I realized the black eyeliner and slash of red lipstick are essentially functioning as a mime mask for him, accentuating each cringe, smile, and grimace. With no words addressing the crowd during the main set at all, all of Smith’s communication is through his face and body language and up close I could see him making faces at us, sometimes self-deprecating, sometimes concerned, sometimes moved, but most often he seemed delighted, and the crowd also reacted to most things in the show with delight. Not an emotion I would have picked for the top five to associate with The Cure. In Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, Delight has been corrupted into Delirium, a twisted version of her former self, but on this night it was like The Cure restored her to her rightful state. The “Cure” for what breaks us in modern life? A cure for the darkness and pain we’ve been through of late, Bowie and Prince, and the shooting in Orlando, and every other thing that beats down the weirdos we feel we are inside? Now that Bowie and Prince are gone, Robert Smith is one of few icons left bearing the “it’s okay to be weird” torch.

Perhaps the temporary expression of pathos and pain in “It Can Never Be The Same” was part of the medicine. Smith didn’t break down enough to stop the song but whatever it’s about for him, it’s affecting him deeply. I couldn’t make out all the words but with a title like that and what I could hear of it, I couldn’t help but think about how nothing’s been quite the same in my interior world since Brian died. (Lover of mine killed in a motorcycle accident a few years ago.) One fan has posted a first stab at transcribing the lyrics and they do seem to fit: http://craigjparker.blogspot.com/2016/05/it-can-never-be-same-lyrics.html. I’ve seen speculations that the song could be about Robert’s mother passing or it could be about Bowie. It’s of course both because Cure songs rarely are “about” merely one thing, which is part of what makes them as deep as they are. No, nothing ever is the same, yet life goes on, we go on, and music ensures there is still joy in the world.

The first encore had another of my favorites, “Burn,” the opening track to the soundtrack album for the 1994 movie The Crow, which I probably don’t have to tell you was a(nother) breakthrough moment for goth subculture into the mainstream. Another connecting thread to that watershed year (for me and The Cure) of 1989, the original comic book of The Crow began appearing in February 1989: my boyfriend and I purchased it in our regular weekly comic store run. I reviewed it in our comic book zine (it was the era of zines) and sent a copy to James O’Barr who wrote back thanking us for the support.

Both “Burn” and the song that preceded it, “The Snakepit,” featured Smith playing a bamboo double flute which had been hanging on his mic stand for the entire show. I kept wondering what song it was going to appear in and was trying to remember if the flutey sounds in “The Snakepit” and “Burn” were actual whistles or just synthesizers. It was interesting to see Smith add these sonic flourishes the analog way and to draw the connection between those two songs so tightly.

Robert Smith playing the bamboo double-flute/whistle.

I felt many of the songs could have been reordered and it wouldn’t have mattered. The Cure’s music is one large aural tapestry that, in hindsight, is whole cloth and not “eclectic” at all.

To open Encore #2, Smith again addressed the audience. “I was never one for nostalgia, I know that’s a surprise, but we played this song here in Boston on my 21st birthday so here it is tonight.” They launched (slid?) into “M” from Seventeen Seconds and the other two songs in the set were also from Seventeen Seconds: “Play for Today” and “A Forest.” I’ve always considered both of those songs to be underrated and was extremely happy to see them be featured thus. (Meanwhile for footage from that 21st birthday concert and Boston’s short-lived but influential venue, The Underground, check out this multi-camera footage from an MIT alum: http://www.vanyaland.com/2016/01/14/watch-rare-1980-video-of-the-cure-playing-a-forest-in-allston-on-robert-smiths-21st-birthday/.)

The crowd clamoring for the fourth encore #TheCure

A video posted by Cecilia Tan (@ctan_writer) on Jun 16, 2016 at 8:58pm PDT

Encore #3 brought two more mega-hits onto the stage with “Lullaby” and “Friday I’m in Love” in a four-song set, one from Disintegration and the other three from Wish. “Lullaby” was completely mesmerizing as Smith’s face essentially contorts through both the role of victim and spider. They left the stage after “Friday I’m In Love” leaving us wondering if that was the note they were choosing to leave us on.

The spider man is having you for dinner tonight… #TheCure

A video posted by Cecilia Tan (@ctan_writer) on Jun 16, 2016 at 9:03pm PDT

But the lights didn’t come up and the crowd didn’t let up chanting and waving their phone lights and the next thing you know they came back from a fourth and final encore. This time we went back in time again, every song from 1987 or earlier, starting with “The Perfect Girl” and then a succession of uptempo hits so essential once they were heard it was like “oh of course, they couldn’t leave this one out, could they?” “Let’s Go to Bed,” “Close to Me,” “Why Can’t I Be You,” and finishing with the oldest song they’d play all night: “Boys Don’t Cry.” Smith picked up his guitar before the first song, but then as the rest of the band kicked in he took it off almost sheepishly and then did the entire last set without one, singing only.

Snippet of that fourth encore #TheCure

A video posted by Cecilia Tan (@ctan_writer) on Jun 16, 2016 at 8:29pm PDT

(Note how the lights and video boards are interacting.)

A longer bit of Why Can't I Be You (Y