Cecilia Tan's Blog, page 12

Where to find Cecilia Tan & Circlet Press at Balticon 50

That’s right, I’ll be at the 50th Balticon this coming weekend doing the following:

Friday

6:15pm-7:15pm Autographing

10pm-10:50pm Panel: Trends in Erotic Short Fiction, with Nobilis!

11pm-11:52pm Erotica Reading: with KM Sparza & Stephanie Burke

Saturday

11am-12:20pm Workshop: Web Serial Toolbox

11pm-12:20am Panel: Hot Hot Hot or Not?

Sunday

11am-11:50 Panel: Writing Series: Good Idea? W/RA McAvoy, Michael Swanwick, and Allen Steele

10:30pm – 12:20am Circlet Press Variety Show

Full details below the cut!

Friday, 6:15pm-7:15pm Autographing

PDR Table 1. Bring stuff you want signed or drop by to peruse my small selection of books I’ll have with me for purchase. I’m not bringing a lot so if there’s something you want, ping me ASAP so I can pack it before Thursday when I head out!

To reach the Watertable Private Dining Room (PDR), go all the way through the hotel bar on the 5th floor. The PDR is behind the glass wall on the left just before the RPG Gaming Salon.

Friday, 10pm-10:50pm Panel: Trends in Erotic Short Fiction, with Nobilis!

In the St. George room. “Panelists discuss this years trends in Erotic Short Fiction. What’s themes are we seeing more of? What are we seeing more of: character driven stories or pot-driven stories? How about the quality of the writing? Audience Q&A welcome!”

I may have giveaway goodies for those who come with questions to ask!

Friday, 11pm-11:52pm Erotica Reading: with KM Sparza & Stephanie Burke

Also in the St. George room!

Each of us will read something scorching hot and then send you off to have erotic fun of your own by midnight.

Saturday, 11am-12:20pm Workshop: Web Serial Toolbox

In Parlor 9029 (Renaissance).

This is the same workshop I taught at the Nebulas weekend but with a longer timeslot so hopefully there will be time for Q&A.

Serialized fiction is an old art form with a 21st century medium: the Internet. In this workshop we’ll discuss how a web serial can be a crucial cornerstone in building a writing career: not only why but how to run a web serial, the pros and cons (mostly pros) of serializing your fiction online, the difference between serializing novel you’ve already written in order to build readership or draw attention to a series and developing a serial and writing it in “real time”, the various platforms available for writers for serialization, ways to publicize your serial, monetizing your serial, free online tools, and much more.

Saturday, 11pm-12:20am Panel: Hot Hot Hot or Not?

In Parlor 8059 (Renaissance), with me, Arinn Dembo, Ally Bishop

Panelists discuss what they think makes erotic SF/F hot for women. Or Not. They’ll be reading examples of both for the discussion.

Sunday, 11am-11:50 Panel: Writing Series: Good Idea?

In Parlor 8029 (Renaissance), with me, RA McAvoy, Michael Swanwick, and Allen Steele

The tremendous success of the Songs of Ice and Fire is only one of the examples of how popular can book series be. Yet, something can also be said for great stand alone books. This panel will discuss advantages and disadvantages of writing book series, and some of the unique challenges authors face when they are writing sequels and reintroducing the same characters and worlds all over again.

Sunday, 10:30pm – 12:30am Circlet Press Variety Show

Ballroom (MD Salons CD) (Main Tent)

Circlet Press, as you might know, specializes in Erotica For Geeks. That means mostly erotic science fiction and fantasy, with some forays into other alternative sexualities as well. In our Variety Show we’ll have some erotica reading, some fun prizes to be won (by the audience), a quick round of the Telepaths Don’t Need Safewords Game Show, and who knows what other sexy fun we’ll cook up?

Help choose the cover of the next Daron’s Guitar Chronicles ebook -CLOSED

Well, folks, I’ve been poking around at this cover long enough that I really can’t tell which one is the best. I’ve already put the book up for pre-order on Amazon and other retailers (B&N, Kobo, iTunes, etc.) but I haven’t picked a cover yet. So I’m putting several possibilities up for your feedback here!

Poll is at the bottom now closed, but qualitative feedback is helpful, too!

(and if you’re interested in being involved in the reveal of the final cover, an excerpts and release blitz, or reviewing the book on Amazon or Goodreads, please fill out: this signup form).

Images under the cut:

First, here’s a reminder what the previous 8 volumes of book covers look like:

All images below come from Dreamstime.com and because these are comp versions they have the swirly Dreamstime watermark and crosshatching on them. Ignore that part, OK?

IMAGE A “Guy in Red Flannel”

With three text treatments, 1, 2, and 3:

A1:

A2:

A3:

Things that Image A: Guy in Red Flannel has to recommend it. Daron’s red flannel shirt is canonical, mentioned more than once, and red’s his favorite color. Or, as he explains it, the only bright color he feels men are allowed to wear without getting their masculinity into some kind of image jeopardy. Also, I’m a big fan of hands, and these are sufficiently Daron-like for me.

IMAGE B “Man Nipple”

With two text treatments, 1 & 2:

B1:

B2:

Image B: I believe the man nipple speaks for itself as to its merits. (The drawback is this is not erotica and I don’t want people to be misled into thinking it is.) Nice hands here, too.

IMAGE C “Long Haired Dude”

With two text treatments, 1 & 2:

C1:

C2:

Image C has the advantage of demonstrating that Daron’s been letting his hair grow for like three years at this point and it’s about time one of these covers showed how long it’s gotten? Also nice hands and a nice bit of face, what we can see of it. The guitar isn’t in the canon but it is red, which as mentioned is Daron’s color.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Help choose the cover of the next Daron’s Guitar Chronicles ebook-vote now!

Well, folks, I’ve been poking around at this cover long enough that I really can’t tell which one is the best. I’ve already put the book up for pre-order on Amazon and other retailers (B&N, Kobo, iTunes, etc.) but I haven’t picked a cover yet. So I’m putting several possibilities up for your feedback here!

Poll is at the bottom but qualitative feedback is helpful, too!

(and if you’re interested in being involved in the reveal of the final cover, an excerpts and release blitz, or reviewing the book on Amazon or Goodreads, please fill out: this signup form).

Images and poll under the cut:

First, here’s a reminder what the previous 8 volumes of book covers look like:

All images below come from Dreamstime.com and because these are comp versions they have the swirly Dreamstime watermark and crosshatching on them. Ignore that part, OK?

IMAGE A “Guy in Red Flannel”

With three text treatments, 1, 2, and 3:

A1:

A2:

A3:

Things that Image A: Guy in Red Flannel has to recommend it. Daron’s red flannel shirt is canonical, mentioned more than once, and red’s his favorite color. Or, as he explains it, the only bright color he feels men are allowed to wear without getting their masculinity into some kind of image jeopardy. Also, I’m a big fan of hands, and these are sufficiently Daron-like for me.

IMAGE B “Man Nipple”

With two text treatments, 1 & 2:

B1:

B2:

Image B: I believe the man nipple speaks for itself as to its merits. (The drawback is this is not erotica and I don’t want people to be misled into thinking it is.) Nice hands here, too.

IMAGE C “Long Haired Dude”

With two text treatments, 1 & 2:

C1:

C2:

Image C has the advantage of demonstrating that Daron’s been letting his hair grow for like three years at this point and it’s about time one of these covers showed how long it’s gotten? Also nice hands and a nice bit of face, what we can see of it. The guitar isn’t in the canon but it is red, which as mentioned is Daron’s color.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Ten Things I Learned at SFWA Nebulas Weekend

Ten Things I Learned at SFWA Nebulas Weekend

by Cecilia Tan

This past weekend was the SFWA annual gathering known as Nebulas Weekend, which is not only when the Nebula Awards are given out, but also a conference for professional science fiction writers. People tell me that in the past Nebulas Weekend was mostly a party/schmoozefest and not so much of a professional development seminar. That might explain why I never bothered to attend before. I go to plenty of schmoozefests at other cons and book industry functions where I can rub elbows with the elite writers and editors in science fiction/fantasy (viz: the SFWA suite at any Worldcon or World Fantasy, the SFWA annual “Mill & Swill” in NYC, ICFA, miscellaneous book launches and parties, various regional fan cons, et cetera). I didn’t need another one. But a pro development seminar for sf/f? Sign me up.

Before this, there was no open attendance professional development seminar for sf/f writers. There are the application-only writers workshops like Clarion, Odyssey, and Viable Paradise. There are science courses like Launch Pad and the Schroedinger Sessions. But nowhere within sf/f except occasional tracks or workshops at cons to learn career skills, i.e. self-marketing techniques, social media management, website management, legal issues, and so on. I had been advising writers I know to attend their nearest regional romance writer conventions (even if they didn’t write romance) in order to get some of that.

Thanks to the co-location of this year’s Nebs with BookExpo America, presentations at the conference included many by service providers of various companies in the publishing ecosystem, as well as the opportunity to sit down one-on-one to pick the brains of many presenters. (Schedule) Reps from Kobo, Draft2Digital, Patreon, Kickstarter, Amazon/KDP, Audible.com, and others were here, and also various members put themselves forth for brain-picking in the Ask an Expert area. So I picked some brains, went to some seminars, and here’s what I learned during Nebulas Weekend: (details below the cut)

1. We Clean Up Pretty Good

2. Kickstarters Should Be Pretty

3. At Patreon a Little Means a Lot

4. Dictate for Artistry

5. The Myth of Self-Publishing

6. White Knights and Online Harassment

7. Think Globally

8. You Can’t Be in Two Places at Once

9. John Hodgman is Really Funny

10. Not the Hugos or the Worldcon

1. We Clean Up Pretty Good

The conference was held at the Palmer House Hilton, one of the 26 “grand hotels” left in the United States. The place is swank in a Gilded Age + Wifi sort of way. For the first few nights we were treated to several different prom groups in ballrooms near ours. One night as I waited for a ride, I watched many limos and minivans and shuttle vans disgorge dozens upon dozens of pairs of teens in formalwear. So I was quite up to date on the very best fashions in ball gowns. My conclusion after the pre-Nebula reception? We measure up quite well. Anyone who thinks otherwise? Fight me.

Zomg #nebulas opening dance/song you must see #sfwa

A video posted by Cecilia Tan (@ctan_writer) on May 14, 2016 at 7:10pm PDT

(Note: We’re still nerdy as all get out, of course, even when we’re cool.)

2. Kickstarters Should be Pretty

In recent years, Kickstarter has moved from just being the funding source for DIY art projects to being a major part of the ecosystem moving the sf/f genre forward. Not just the amount of money raised but the amount of attention centered on efforts like Lightspeed’s “DESTROY” campaigns, the creation and launch of anthologies like Long Hidden, publishing enterprises like Rosarium (who used IndieGogo), and the launch and continued success of Uncanny Magazine. And those are just the ones I thought of off the top of my head. So it was great to be able to sit down with Margot Atwell from the company to talk about best practices since I just wrapped the latest Daron’s Guitar Chronicles Kickstarter myself and Circlet Press is likely to run one in the near future. One thing she stressed was the importance of great graphics. Although the header art for a campaign has to be 16:9, which is the wrong aspect ratio for a book’s front cover, try to make something that will be as beautiful and enticing as the cover. Successful campaigns usual break up their wall of text with some images, too, and the overall aesthetics of a campaign are often what can get you noticed. Also, December is a very rough time to try to raise funds, but January is not as hard a month as it used to be. So noted.

3. At Patreon a Little Means a Lot

Of course the other paradigm out there feeding money onto the indie publishing ecosystem is Patreon. Fireside has shifted to Patreon rather than running serial Kickstarters since after a while repeated Kickstarters fatigue the audience and the company as they are a lot of work. The biggest tip I took away from talking with Jamie Crabb is to come up with a reward for $2 supporters. I use Patreon to support Daron’s Guitar Chronicles but I only ask for $1 per pledge. Her suggestion was come up with just one incentivizing reward to add at the $2 level. That could potentially double income with only an incremental change at my end. In retrospect I should’ve thought of that, it seems such a no-brainer, but that’s why it’s important to talk to people. Can’t think of everything.

4. Dictate for Artistry



Nebula nominee Martin L. Shoemaker did an ask-an-expert session about dictation. I went to it to try to find out all I could about whether at some point I can or should switch from typing to dictating since it would appear a new RSI is trying to rear its head: my thumbs hurt. Martin did have lots of info for me about Dragon Naturally Speaking and encouraged me to look up some stuff about how the iOS/Mac platforms have some kind of native speech recognition/dictation ability as well. But the most fascinating thing to learn was that he doesn’t dictate to save himself keystrokes: he dictates in the car while commuting for his first draft and then does a re-typing pass. This isn’t only to save time. Though it started out as a way to turn a non-productive commute into a productive one, dictation has made Martin a better writer.

“Sometimes it’s a pure brain-heart dump,” he says, in which the internal censor is switched off. “It comes out like a long session of burst writing when you’re ‘in the zone.’ I am in the moment. Though not ttoo in the moment, since I am driving.” Martin’s best stories have all come through dictation instead of direct keyboarding. “Is it small sample size or is there a correlation? I don’t know but the ones that I’ve typed aren’t selling and the one’s I’ve dictated are.”

It takes him three hours to do the transcription on one hour of dictation. His last tip for those trying to use speech recognition: the better the microphone, the better the accuracy.

5. The Myth of Self-Publishing

Mark Lefebvre of Kobo Writing Life, a Toronto-based ebook publishing/selling platform akin to the Kindle Digital Platform, said something I havent’t heard many self-publishing advocates say. “There’s really nothing ‘self’ about self-publishing other than maybe that it’s self-directed.” At every step of the way from first draft to publication, the author typically relies on a lot of other people to edit, polish, format, design, etc etc etc the book: in other words, not that different from a big publisher. Where it differs is in who’s in control. It was also interesting to note his spin on the difference between Kobo and Kindle: “Kindle draws mostly bargain readers who are very price sensitive. Kobo has more good readers who will pay $4.99 and up.”

6. White Knights and Online Harassment

One seminar I sat in on was Annalee Flower-Horne’s workshop on online harassment, specifically talking about how to deal with stuff like ugly trollstorms and how to help friends who may be going through it. If I took away one counterintuitive thing from it, it’s that if you are trying to “defend” a friend from a troll, you are most likely doing more harm than good. Examine why you are doing what you’re doing. If you’re trying to “draw fire” from them, you’ll fail: trolls are not grizzly bears who can be distracted from their original target. They can do two things at once and if you only make them even more angry, you can cause things to escalate when they might have de-escalated on their own. If you’re trying to “be a hero” to your friend and your way of doing it is arguing with the abuser and cc’ing the victim in each argument, all you’re doing is forcing your friend to be part of the argument and/or trying to make brownie points with your friend instead of actually improving their situation. Do not cc or add people to arguments online without their consent. And never ever call the police on someone else’s behalf without their knowledge and consent. If you really want to be a hero, offer to document the abuse online so the victim doesn’t have to see it, so that if and when they need the evidence you’ll have it.

7. Think Globally

Draft2Digital are a company I’ve heard a lot about from romance-writing colleagues so I was interested to talk to Dan Wood, the head of author relations for the company. They offer a lot of snazzy, useful tools that look well worth the 10% of revenue they’d take as a publishing portal to B&N’s Nookstore, Inktera, iBooks, and the other places they upload books to. But the point he made that really stood out for me: other countries haven’t had their ebook “gold rush” yet. The early ones in a market are the ones who make the most. Through D2D right now you can get in on the early Spanish and German markets, probably with more to come in the future. So that’s worth thinking about.

8. You Can’t Be in Two Places at Once

The problem with the Nebulas being co-located with BookExpo America/The BookCon is that meant one was always missing the stuff happening at one while attending the other. So I missed a lot of things at the Nebulas I would have otherwise been present for, including the first 80 minutes of the Mass Autographing (my publisher took me out to dinner–I was not going to say no) and meetings/presentations with Amazon/KDP, Jeremiah Tolbert’s talk on Websites for Authors Best Practices, and much more. (There was also an entire legal track.)

9. John Hodgman is Really Funny

’Nuff said. The guy who was the PC in the Mac/PC TV commercials (among other credits) let his inner nerd shine while at the conference. Find a video archive of the Nebulas ceremony and you’ll see what I meant. I move that his opening remarks be published in the SFWA Bulletin as a humorous essay of their own.

10. Not the Hugos or the Worldcon

Even before the whole “you SJWs are ruining the good ol’ genre with your political agendas” attitude that underpins much of what the Sad Puppy/Rabid Puppy camps came along 2-3 years ago, there were self-identified “liberal” individuals within the fandom organizations that produce the Worldcon and regional cons advocating various flavors of “not our kind” campaigns. Some moved to add to the by-laws to artificially keep the price of Worldcon high, for example, specifically to keep the “young” riffraff who “clog up” comic-cons out. (The by-law change movement failed, btw.) I can understand wanting to preserve institutions for tradition and fearing fundamental change that might destroy from within, however believing that fans who founded these cons decades ago (Balticon 50 is this year, Worldcon will be 75) were all white, straight, middle-aged, and middle-class “like us” because that’s who dominates some fan organizations currently does not mean either that a) the belief is true, nor b) that now that cons have become the domain of the white, straight, middle-aged, middle-class they should stay that way “because tradition.” Sorry, but no. If your vision of science fiction fandom is that limited, it deserves to die out. The thing is, of course, the diversity that has always been present in science fiction (both in the literature AND in the fandom) has been erased by collective memory. In the places where the concoms have always celebrated and embraced their own diversity (like Arisia and Balticon) the cons flourish and continue to grow, while the concoms that have put the clampdown on assimilation and against adaptation or change (Boskone, Philcon) have seen their numbers shrinking.

Our genre–and the sociological community of both writers and creators that surrounds it–has always been polychromatic and nonconformist and outside “the box” in every possible way. You know what happens when you stop trying to whitewash or suppress and you instead give equal access to all regardless of privilege? You get something a heck of a lot like this year’s Nebulas Weekend program as well as this year’s Nebulas nominee slates. (I didn’t even realize that all women had won Nebulas this year until I saw the headlines today.) When what matters is the writing, the quality, the ideas, and the love, and not, in fact, the race or privilege level (high or low), you get an incredibly robust garden of biodiverse flowers instead of a monoculture that is easily susceptible to invasive, opportunistic vermin. Ahem.

So. Here’s to the continued robust health of SFWA.

My hope is that in the future SFWA will continue to beat the professional development drum, both for the Nebulas conference and overall. If the organization is going to continue to serve writers, staying up to date in a rapidly changing publishing ecosystem and maintaining access to the shifting players and stakeholders is going to be necessary not just for us writers, but for the organization itself.

Cecilia Tan at #TheBookCon and #Nebulas Schedule

Here I am in Chicago! It’s very foggy here. Figured I’d post a rundown of what I’m doing and where to find me in case any of you need it:

SATURDAY May 14 at The Book Con

at the McCormick Place convention center, Chicago

1pm – 1:30 pm AUTOGRAPHING

at the Romance Writers of America (RWA) Booth 1716

I’ll be signing copies of TAKING THE LEAD, my latest kinky rock star romance.

1:45 – 2:45 pm AUTOGRAPHING (YES MORE AUTOGRAPHING)

at the Grand Central Publishing/Hachette booth 1716

with my fellow Forever Romance authors Elizabeth Hoyt and Debbie Mason!

I’ll again be signing and giving away TAKING THE LEAD

3:00 – 4:00 pm DIVERSITY IN ROMANCE PANEL

in Room W470

Very excited to be speaking on this panel on a subject very important to me, moderated by Joyce Lamb of USA Today’s “Happy Ever After” blog. Official description: The #WeNeedDiverseBooks initiative is being passionately embraced by readers of all genres – and authors of romantic fiction are absolutely passionate about the movement! Browse the selection at booksellers, and you will see ever-increasing title offerings that feature LGBTQ characters and couples; books that feature multi-ethnic perspective and give love to the silver fox set. In this panel, moderated by Joyce Lamb, curator of USA Today’s Happy Ever After blog, and featuring Cecilia Tan, Taking the Lead (Forever), Sona Charaipotra, Tiny Pretty Things (Epic Reads), Dhonielle Clayton, Tiny Pretty Things (Epic Reads), will frankly discuss meeting reader demand for Diverse Books in the romance genre; as well as propose tactics on how to support the growth of this market segment.

Sunday May 15 at the SFWA Nebulas Weekend

at the Palmer House Hilton

11am – 12pm Web Serial Toolbox

I’ll be teaching a crash course in everything you need to know to start your own web serial. If you can blog, you can publish a web serial! I’ll be talking about both creative and business reasons to serialize, as well as why *not* to serialize, and discuss what free & inexpensive tech tools are out there to keep your overhead costs non-existent to under $25.

My #whitewashedout story, a short-short story by Cecilia Tan

Here’s a story I wrote in 1993, in the MFA program at Emerson, in Pam Painter’s short-short story class. It’s actually an autobiographical piece about the disconnects between my “identity,” “ethnicity,” and “heritage.” It’s a very American longing, I think, not unique to POC, but it felt like in the wake of the #whitewashedout tag going around Twitter today, that in this story I had already said everything I would contribute to the tag. So I decided to post it:

“Learning the Alphabet”

by Cecilia Tan

All the words of Chinese that I know I can list on a single page.

Bok choy: chinese cabbage, something I do not like to eat.

Confucius: a philosopher, but whose name could not have been that originally, any more than my name would have been Cecilia if I had been born in China, a Spanish first name married to a Chinese surname. Dad’s name is Sergio, so I share that in common with him, like filipinos who were given new names by Magellan and the Spaniards who ruled the islands for three hundred years; but my grandfather who came from China is named Francisco, and I know that could not have been his real name any more than Confucius was Confucius’. Even Dad does not know what his father’s real name was, like a secret identity, a Chinese identity, that grandfather hid when he moved from China to the Philippines. For some time he had even changed the name of the family to Martinez, but that must have been too much for him and he changed it back to Tan, though he still never taught any of his children Chinese and scolded them whenever they were disobedient: “You rotten filipinos!” in a filipino dialect of course.

Given that my father never heard a word of Chinese when he was growing up, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I know so little of it. How about waray waray then, the filipino dialect only my father and his generation of the family speaks? I don’t know a single word of that either, since my father came to the United States, and like his father has only spoken the local tongue to his children — “You American kids!” — so I will stick with Chinese, of which I know so few words.

Junks: the boats they paint eyes on the front of in China, this I learned from a children’s book, full of painting of men with round hats like cymbals.

Kung Fu: the martial art, this I learned from David Carradine, along with shao lin, Grasshopper.

Lo Mein: noodles, I think, but so are chow mein, chow foon… chop suey, Chung King?

Mei Fa: the art of hair sticks, this I learned in Macy’s from a perfumed, rouged woman with too many gold rings, who raised her clawed hands like a hieroglyph to show off how her blond, intricate whorls were held in place with what looked like short chopsticks sprouting from her head. Now I wear them, too, but I have my doubts that Confucius’ mother ever did.

Oolong: black, this from my Jewish boyfriend who likes Chinese tea.

Peking duck: but of course, it is Beijing now, and I know how to cook it, but what good is a “traditional” recipe that is only one generation old?

Quit this obsession with China, I think, and get back to eating apple pie and worrying about democracy. Really. So did I mention that my father thought apple pie was disgusting when he first moved to the States?

Tai Chi: something I always dreamed my grandfather would teach me when he came to visit us in the States, but he didn’t. Unless I spoke first, he never said a word to me, two generations of languages distant and nothing to talk about. Very often he received Chinese-language newspapers in the mail, and I used to steal them from his room and pore over the tiny black characters regimented in columns and rows, waiting for some moment of magic to strike me, to bring my Chinese blood out in me, and make me understand these symbols, this one like three boxes piled one atop the other, that one a lily next to a mountain, this one a robot by an easel, that one a picket sign–the only symbol I ever learned since the magic never came–the symbol which meant “Number One.”

Waiguoren: foreigner, this I learned from a book by a white American woman about an imaginary future China that had become the last superpower, but then I forgot it and had to learn it again when I read a book by a white American man about how he spent his life studying kung fu, Chinese language, Chinese history, and was finally granted a visa into the country to teach English at a medical college there. Xenophobic is how he described the Chinese, afraid of foreigners, waiguoren, aliens, rotten filipinos, whatever you call it, so it is no wonder my grandfather never told his secrets to waiguoren like us. You cannot blame him, I tell myself, but it hurts.

Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo: People’s Republic of China, this I learned just now out of shame, to at least be able to say the name of the place I will never call home.

—

Notes on this story:



This story originally appeared under the title “Lexicon” in OTHER Magazine, edited by Charlie Jane Anders, Issue #3, 2003.

This is the first story that ever made me cry while I wrote it.

I wrote this 23 years ago. I can’t believe how little has changed.

Guest blog! (A new sci-fi romance from @kayelleallen)

Guest on my blog today is the fab Kayelle Allen, a tour de force in science fiction romance! Her new book, Bringer of Chaos, just went live yesterday!

Get it in print and on Amazon, with other sites coming soon!

Kayelle Allen is a best selling American author. Her unstoppable heroes and heroines include contemporary every day folk, role-playing immortal gamers, futuristic covert agents, and warriors who purr.

Sempervians never die. Neither does their love. Nor their thirst for revenge.
The immortal Pietas. Bringer of Chaos. Soul Ripper. Hound of Hell. Impaler. Slayer of Innocents. Hammer of God. If, in the history of a planet, there’s a famous despot or killer, chances are it was Pietas. Imprisoned on Sempervia for the last ten thousand years, he’s about to be discharged — not because he’s paid his debt to society — but because he’s too violent for the other prisoners to tolerate. Once he’s unleashed, the galaxy will never be safe again. Unless the spy among the hundred who dare to follow can find a way to change his path — or kill him.

• Amazon •

Romance Lives Forever Reader Group https://kayelleallen.com/bro

Homeworld https://kayelleallen.com

Twitter https://twitter.com/kayelleallen

Facebook https://facebook.com/kayelleallen.author

Pinterest https://pinterest.com/kayelleallen/

G+ https://plus.google.com/+KayelleAllen/

Live YouTube chat this Thursday about Daron & Kickstarter

I’ll be hosting a one-hour live chat via YouTube Live, streaming on my YouTube channel! This Thursday from 9-10pm Eastern (Apr 21) I’ll be talking all things Daron, the latest Kickstarter, and reading from Daron’s Guitar Chronicles, as usual!

As a bonus, if we can pass the $3,000 milestone by the time of the chat, a special one-hour text chat with Daron will follow for backers only! You can back the Kickstarter for as low as $1, right here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ceciliatan/darons-guitar-chronicles-third-omnibus

You can pull that chat up on YouTube directly at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSJWPwxEjGA

OR should be able watch the video chat via this embedded video:

Please spread the word, invite your friends, and thank you everyone for your support!

NY Times Bestsellers tell self-pub secrets at #RT16

One of the panels I attended yesterday at RT Booklovers was a packed house on the subject of self-publishing ebook platforms. “Power of the Platforms” was moderated by K.A. Linde and featured three (possibly four?) New York Times bestselling authors: Jamie McGuire, Laurelin Page, Alessandra Torre, and CD Reiss.

They had a lot of tips and information to impart for any author or small publisher – and for each other, often pausing to take notes on each other’s remarks.

The first topic of conversation, and the one that went on the longest and came back up the most times, was about the most disruptive recent change in the digital marketplace: Kindle Unlimited, aka KU.

For those unfamiliar with KU, it’s a “Netflix” type model where readers pay Amazon a fee for unlimited access to books in the KU program. To be in the program, a book has to be ONLY available via KU for 90 days before it can be sold anywhere else, and the author is paid a small fee determined by pageviews which doesn’t come close to what they would have been paid if all those reads were actual sales. Every publisher I’ve talked to doing romance or erotica, including my own imprint Circlet Press, Riverdale Avenue Books, Samhain Publishing, and even the LGBT publishers Riptide and Bold Strokes Books saw revenue from Amazon drop suddenly when the KU program came online.

Here’s what the panelists had to say:

(Disclaimer: I type as fast as I can but I only get about 60-70% of what people say and I occasionally get mixed up on which person was speaking, but I’ve tried to capture the discussion as accurately as possible.)

KA Linde: Let’s just get this right out in the open. Kindle Unlimited. Do any of you do KU exclusively? (Some authors have pulled all their books from elsewhere and only do KU.)

Jamie: I don’t. I say open as many doors as you can. I see narrowing the platforms as narrowing the audience. This is the time when promiscuity is a good thing! Do everybody! (audience laughter)

Alessandra: KU is really tempting to a lot of authors and everybody is flocking in that direction, but everything changes and you are cutting out a lot of readers if you just stick to one platform. And there are a lot of opportunities on the small platforms who are more willing to work with you.

Laurelin: I have some books that are just on one platform because I want to reach all audiences. KU is a specific group of people that exists so I rotate things in there. But I never want to do that only since it cuts off all the other platforms. I had some books in there that I then pulled out and went wide and they did very well on the other places. The little ones can really add up.

KA: But do you reach readers in KU who wouldn’t have bought the book?

Laurelin: Yes, there are people who don’t ever need to go anywhere anymore because there such a selection [in KU]. That’s their book budget for the month. But if they fall in love with you there, they will follow you other places.

Several panelists argued that the KU audience is a separate audience and isn’t representative of “all” romance readers: it’s only a select few. (So if you want to reach everyone you really are leaving out a LOT of readers if you only do KU.) The panelists then asked for a show of hands in the packed room of who uses KU as a reader: only two hands went up. One of them said: “It’s so affordable compared to what I used to spend on books. I have a Kobo and a Kindle and I’ve migrated everything to Kindle now.”

Laurelin: I have gotten emails once in a while from Nook readers asking why the books aren’t on there and I tell them it’ll be coming. Have a plan for how you’re going wide. Don’t do a panic move. Make a plan.

CD Reiss: You have to make sure you have a mailing list for Nook or other people. [She explains this later.] Plan a BookBub for when you go wide. You can put a title back on other platforms but if you do no promotion for them you will just cry.

Laurelin: It’s like waiting for something to come on Netflix or Amazon Prime. They cycle things out. People understand that.

Jamie: Some people want to watch the Walking Dead that night on AMC and other people are going to wait for syndication.

CD: KU is not for everybody. It’s not for every reader and not for every writer. Some people feed their families exclusively through KU and that’s what right for them.

Alessandra: You can’t just say “oooh KU is evil, it’s a disease it’s terrible.”

CD: KU saved a book of mine. I had made a mistake and gotten two books in a series flagged as adult on Amazon [which prevents them from coming up in search results on Amazon] because the covers were too racy. I got a new cover and released in KU and it excelled there. It got me a ton of new readers, and it saved the book. And THEN I will go wide with it and have a BookBub–I have already bumped the sales with emails to my Nook and iTunes/iBooks readers.

KA: What other strategies have worked on the other platforms?

Laurelin: iBooks works well for me. “First book free” in a series on iBooks really worked for me, the first time I ever made more from iBooks than any other platform. Those people who read on iBooks were really loyal.

Jamie: It’s a very deliate balance. Amazon is 60% of my sales. If you do something for someone, you have to do it for someone else. If I set up a promotion on one site I turn around and offer it to the others. If I do something with Amazon I turn around and ask iBooks if they want to do it, too. I once did a book early with iBooks, where I releeased it a week early there: It wasn’t an exclusive, so for the bestseller list it was still a wide release.

KA: Ibooks likes a lot of lead time. If you have a Bookbub coming up, tell them a month in advance.

Laurelin: I talked with Kobo about how box sets do really well there. They don’t have the problem of dinging your royalties on box sets priced above $9.99. We’re going to sell one at $24.99 and have special promotions through Kobo.

CD: I have one huge box set only on the other sites (not Amazon) and it is high price, but it sells like 30 a month which really adds up!

KA: I have no strategies for Barnes & Noble. I feel like they’re sinking.

CD: Hardball sold well at Barnes & Noble. Here’s how I market to Nook readers. I take everyone who has ever clicked on the Nook links in my email newsletter and I segregate a special email to them only. Then they feel special because I’m communicating directly to them. It really works.

Jamie: I could not get pre-orders to work through Nook Press. They would not do it.

CD: I sent them a nasty letter saying look all my author friends have this, why don’t I? And they gave it to me.

Jamie: I tried to do that and they ignored me.

KA: I was all Smashwords in the beginning but now I’ve moved to iBooks directly now that it’s easier to do. I bought a Mac just to upload to iTunes.

CD: Once you go Mac you never go back. (laughter)

Jamie: Oh no, no no, never. (more laughter)

KA: Have you ever done something different with iBooks with cover or description? I feel like their readers want more conservative covers and descriptions. They don’t like abs.

Alessandra: Here’s something I learned today about iBooks! When you’re on pre-order you can give up to 250 download codes for people to leave pre-release reviews. I did not know this until today. You have to request them and then there is a 28 day period where they’re active. You don’t have to request all 250 at once.

Laurelin: It’s great. You can just request like 16 codes at a time. And then you build up your iBooks readership.

(Audience question about rankings and preorders.)

Jamie: On Amazon when you have a long pre-order period each sale affects your ranking immediately, so you never get as high since you don’t get them all in the short period of time. Whereas on iBooks they all pool and they all count on the first day.

KA: You can hit the top in iBooks sometimes with only 250 preorders. And Nook does that now, too.

Jamie: So much of my career is luck and because I was in early. I don’t know how people break into it now because it was easier to establish yourself before KU came in. The top 20 is just FULL of KU books.

Laurelin: I had a book co-written and we only did a four-day preorder on Amazon, whereas the last one I had a 6 month preorder. The short one stayed in the top 100 for a couple of weeks, but in the six month one I think maybe I only cracked the top 100 for one day. But the sales in the end were equal. The lack of visisbility doesn’t always hurt. It’s do you sell them beforehand or after.

Alessandra: I like the 4 day pre-order. It gets you in the “people who saw this, saw this” feature in Amazon but it doesn’t dilute your rank so much as a long pre-order period. But on other platforms you can start collecting preorder a year in advance on just the title alone, not even a cover! And you can change the pub date if you need to. Put it a year out with a plan you could move forward, you can always move it earlier.

CD: I had an 8-month pre-oder for Hardball. I had 1500 pre-orders before I released the final blurb and cover, and I got it up to 3500 after that on Amazon. Release day sales were still good but I had to PUSH. And PUSH. And PUSH. And it cracked the top 100 finally. I did Facebook ads, I did takeovers up the wazoo, a fan blast, blogs, etc.

Jamie: I did an experiment. Rebecca Donovan has a financial advisor named Anthony who is amazing. [Four of the five authors then reveal they all work with this same financial advisor, and the fifth one was jokingly admonished to.] He had an idea that I do an experiment. On Facebook only a few people see the things you post, and I was doing ads where I was spending a lot but didn’t seem like I was getting much. But he said ONLY TARGET THE PEOPLE WHO LIKE YOUR PAGE. In the five days on 200 bucks, my Amazon rank jumped in the thousands.

KA: More questions about KU: the short term versus longterm approach to diversity versus exclusivity? Did we kind of cover that?

Alessandra: I have a question for Laurelin about that: when you put a new release onto KU did your new unit sales drop?

Laurelin: They did after a while, but that would happen anyway. That co-written book I was talking about, I wanted it specifically to be a moneymaker in the interim between the books we had to deliver to other places. KU was the best plan for earning some money quickly. Sales did not drop until after the first week.

CD: I was selling 500-600 a day.

Alessandra: I was in the top 10 on Amazon, but my sales dropped to 40-50 sales a day after KU, while my pageviews were through the roof. When I put my backlist into KU it doesn’t do anything. It seems to be directly a correlation of where your rank is. If you’re in the top 3000, KU puts it in a really high spot.

CD: Maybe do a BookBub and right when that ends and your rank is high, you drop it into KU?

Laurelin: I have them do a KU-only BookBub!

CD: They’ll do that?

Alessandra: So you do a Kindle Countdown Daily Deal, you get the 70% earn rate, and then you do the BookBub…. [all the authors on the panel writing notes quickly]

Audience comment: I did a scary experiment. I took everything out of KU and went wide last summer. Sales fell off a cliff, but very gradually my also-boughts were changing. The KU books were disappearing and now there are 107 books in my also-boughts and only 15 are in KU. And then when my next new release came out, sales tripled. I was scared I had done something really bad, but it worked out. It’s a white knuckler. You have to hang on for several months or so. I also raised prices to $4.99. And that worked, too.

Laurelin: That’s what I was saying about have a plan and don’t panic. Don’t do it as a panic move.

CD: You almost have to think of KU as a publisher. You know you’re going to do certain products for them and do certain things strategywise.

Laurelin: The KU readers aren’t loyal to you: they’re loyal to KU. It’s a different audience from the audience that comes to this conference. As our show of hands showed.

Jamie: The reason Amazon moved to pageviews is because KU people hoard books and don’t read them.

KA: Should we talk about Google Play? We haven’t mentioned them yet. [murmurs of discontent]

Jamie: Google is great to work with once they get everything working, but they came to me. I wouldn’t have bothered if they hadn’t come to me.

Laurelin: It’s a nice little bonus check but it’s not a major player/major platform for me.

(Audience question about using newsletters to promote.)

Alessandra: I have 12,000 newsletter subscribers, a 34% open rate, and I give something away every newsletter. And now you can re-send to the people who didn’t open it the first time. I use Constant Contact and they have that feature. Some people do quit if they get a second one from you, but if they don’t want it and they get off the newsletter list, that’s great since you don’t want them anyway. You have to pay for every subscriber so why pay to keep someone on your list who isn’t reading what you send?

CD: My list is 15K, open rate was 34% before started segregating. Now I separate the list into bargain hunters (people who click the 99 cent links), Nook and iBooks people, and my clicks went up. Use the analytics you get from ConstantContact or MailerLite–I use MailerLite–to break the list into groups based on which links they’ve clicked on. I thought it would be a lot of work but it was like 15 minutes.

KA: I also upload my own to some places. I still use Smashwords to get all the little places, but I unclick Apple, B&N, and Kobo and do those direct. Mark [Coker at Smashwords] is great about helping with iBooks promo though if you’re going through Smashwords to iBooks.

Laurelin: I’ve also used Draft2Digital to publish German-language books to the German version of Amazon called Tolino. That’s the only way to get to them. And do you all use the Kobo promotions tab? They have discount codes, and it doesn’t get price matched since it’s a coupon, not a price drop.

Alessandra: I don’t think I’ve ever seen the promotions tab.

Laurelin: You have a bunch of things you can apply for. It might not be on everyone’s dashboard. You can email them at writing life and say you want to be on the promotions list, though.

Jamie: The number one thing to take away from this panel is ask, ask, ask!

KA: What about Audible for audiobooks? If they buy your book on Amazon readers can “whispersync” for only $1.99 and you can build a bigger audiobook audience that way.

Alessandra: I never saw a dime from any of the audiobook sales [when I sold the rights to others]. Now I self-pub ALL my audiobooks and they all pay back. I pay the production costs and they all earn back.

Laurelin: I make a ton of money off Audible. I get huge checks from them.

And then we were out of time!

NELGBTC Conference: Thoughts on Sex, Queer Activism, Asexual Inclusion

I’ve been so busy running from event to event to event this month that I haven’t had a chance to blog my thoughts from the NELGBTC Conference until now, 10-11 days later. NELGBTC is a queer student activism conference that moves around annually from campus to campus. I was invited by the SUNY Stony Brook TNG group and presented two sessions there. Far as I can tell in my digging and research NELGBTC is the successor to what was called the NELGSAC/NELGSU Conference back in 1985, which I attended as a newly minted queer student activist at Brown University. (NELGSU had reformed as NELGBSA by 1992 and the mantle of national student queer organizing umbrella organization had been taken up by NELGBTC by about 1997, far as I can tell from searching Internet archives.)

When I got to college in 1985 I knew I was bisexual but didn’t know what that “meant” as far as answering the question “who am I?” I was trying to figure a lot of stuff out (as usual at that age) about sexuality, including what it “meant” to be a sexually active woman (even heterosexually) in a society that was pretty condemnatory about that (I was still technically a virgin at that point, btw) and how to deal with stuff like the fact I wasn’t comfortable being/presenting as a typical cisgendered female–especially when the (bullshit) messages I was getting from society were that if I wanted to explore sexuality then adopting cisgender female attire and “looks” was how one was supposed to signal sexual availability. The “problem” of course wasn’t me, it was society, and the fact I hadn’t yet found “my people,” i.e. other folks whose identities and sexualities were outside the heterosexual cis norm.

I found those people at my first LGSA (Lesbian Gay Student Alliance) meeting, even though at the time there was no “B” in the name and I still wasn’t totally sure if as a bisexual I was welcome in that space. Well, first it was me who wasn’t sure I was committed to entering that space. I had seen the posters advertising a meeting and I had tried to “casually” pass by the meeting room to “just get a look” before committing to going in. But at the time of the meeting…the room was empty. How weird, I thought. I went back to the bulletin board to check the time and place. I wandered around trying to pretend I had another reason to be in that building. I buzzed past the room again. Still empty. My anxiety about this whole thing was starting to spike and I thought forget this, I’ll just go back to my room.

I stepped outside the building and there were a bunch of people unloading grocery bags of snacks and soda from the back of a car. They took one look at me and said, “Oh are you here for the LGSA meeting? Can you help carry this?”

Well, apparently “my people” recognized ME and knew I belonged. So my very first act of queer student activism was to help set up the snacks and drinks for a meeting that I had not been totally sure I was going to attend. (I was soon taught about “gay standard time,” LOL.)

I stayed the whole meeting and was active in the LGSA for the next 4 years–and that first year was when Brown happened to host the NELGSU conference.

Here’s an indicator how much of an outsider I still felt, though… At that conference the keynote speaker was Gerry Studds, “the first openly gay congressman” in the U.S. He gave his speech in a packed banquet room in Emery-Woolley on the Brown Campus, a huge room with a high ceiling and large windows that opened onto a courtyard.

I listened to the speech standing alone in the courtyard.

Yeah, I know.

Inside the room 600+ queer student activists in the Northeast Lesbian Gay Student Union were cheering–I still remember the biggest cheerline to this day: “Harvey Milk’s message was ‘come to San Francisco and be gay.’ Well, the message of today is stay where you are and be gay.'”–and I was standing outside listening to it.

It was empowering to hear even if I was still not really sure if this community had a space for me (I was still laboring under the mistaken impression that me and David Bowie were the only bisexuals on Earth) or if what I was going to have to do was fight an uphill battle to make sure there was space for me. After the speech there was a huge pride march through the campus. It wasn’t a parade so much as a protest march, an important step in visibility, and HUGELY empowering, including all thousand-plus (lots of people joined in for this, including me) marching through the quad where all the frats were–the frats we were pretty sure were responsible for vandalizing the Pride Week display of the pink triangle on the college green. (Much as we wanted to, we couldn’t actually muster guards for 24-7 sentry duty over the triangle for that entire week. Back then “pride” was one week–now it’s a month.)

I should also mention that in my dorm a huge controversy broke out over the fact that our head counselor, who was a quiet, unassuming, but gay med student, had given permission for some of the student activists attending the conference to sleep in our lounge. This was a standard thing: he’d given that permission to the Princeton marching band a few weeks before and no one had batted an eye. But some people in our unit felt that to allow gay people to sleep there was wrong (fear of AIDS??) and he should have taken a vote (??) and so on. Of course the result was that all four of the queerfolk on the hall including me had to come out during a contentious all-resident meeting that was called to say “You don’t like gay people sleeping nearby to you? SORRY BUT YOU ALREADY DO.”

Yeah, it was like that. How interesting that out of 40 students in that dorm unit, exactly 4 of us came out that day. The mythical “one in ten” rule of thumb was upheld. Meanwhile it turned out there were four of us but only two admitted homophobes making all the ruckus.

So, my first queer student activism conference was a bit of a trial by fire. I’ve stayed in queer activism in some form or another ever since. I’ve marched on Washington. I’m a regular donor (now that I’m not flat broke) to the Bisexual Resource Center. I’ve been the keynote speaker at the BECAUSE Conference. I’ve dedicated my life to the cause of freedom of sexual expression in both fiction and real life.

You can probably see why speaking at the NELGBTC Conference was a kind of homecoming for me. And the conference was fabulous. Excellent job by Stony Brook of hosting and NELGBTC for putting together a great program. I see progress! I see so much progress. It felt to me like the B, T, and other non-conforming gender and sexuality expressions were assumed to be a part of the coalition in a way that 30 years ago it wasn’t assumed. (The year after I left Brown, the “B” got added: LGSA (Lesbian Gay Student Alliance) became LGBA–largely thanks to the agitation of Rebecca Hensler, I think. Some time after that, the T came onboard as well. Nowadays the main queer umbrella organization at Brown is called the Queer Alliance and apparently there’s a whole LGBTQ Center on campus. It took until the mid-90s to get the B added to the New York City Pride’s name and mission.) In particular it was heartening to me to see so many folks at NELGBTC of non-conforming gender identities because for a while there the momentum (and mainstream coverage) of queer activism was so centered on marriage equality I was starting to really worry that conformity had become far too predominant. Happy to report that at least in student spaces, that doesn’t seem to be the case. All too often conformity = the closet and the closet is not the answer.

This is of course a crucial moment in need for an upsurge in all forms of gender non-conformity, what with “bathroom bills” becoming the latest fear campaign of the political right trying to force us back into the closet at any cost and what feels like all forms of non-het-cis male being under attack in tech and STEM spaces lately.

But this question of conformity and the closet, makes me want to turn my attention now to another letter of the alphabet who seem to be fighting for inclusion and recognition within the community in much the way we B for Bisexuals were: A for Asexual. I saw some tweets and sat in a few conversations during the course of the weekend on this subject: how do we make a queer activist space–which has traditionally been about liberating our oppressed sexual identities–without that liberation itself creating a toxic space for asexual folks?

Let me clearly state that I believe asexual folks belong in the greater coalition of LGBTQA+ activism because we have a common shared goal and suffer common discrimination. The goal is a world where all forms of consensual sexuality outside of the heterosexual cisgendered norm are valid–including BDSM and polyamory–and including not being sexual at all. Asexual people are discriminated against, judged, and made to feel lesser for not participating in society’s sexual norms. We are all fighting for the freedom not to be forced to conform to those norms.

The tweets in particular that started me asking these questions about how to make queer activist space inclusive without making it a new kind of sex-negative closet were the two that read:

Hey #NELGBTC2016, the opening performer is HYPER SEXUALIZED. Maybe keep this in mind next time you pick someone to perform?

Also #NELGBTC2016, something we’re trying to fight is the hypersexualization of the queer community. #ImHellaUncomfortable

Hey #NELGBTC2016, the opening performer is HYPER SEXUALIZED. Maybe keep this in mind next time you pick someone to perform? #Asexuality

— Anna Nichols (@annaspazs) April 1, 2016

Also #NELGBTC2016, something we're trying to fight is the hypersexualization of the queer community. #ImHellaUncomfortable

— Anna Nichols (@annaspazs) April 1, 2016

The opening plenaries by poets/performance artists Regie Cabico and Kit Yan (one cis, one trans) were fantastic in my personal view: fierce and important in their unflinching, absolutely frank depictions of sex, sexuality, and sexual longing. Those are the kinds of depictions that are, as far as I’m concerned, 100% necessary and empowering for those who have never seen their sexuality represented proudly, or any way but negatively (if at all). We heard everything from Regie Cabico’s humorous and self-deprecating comedic poems about failing to meet Mr. Right to those about himself being objectified and fetishized as an Asian man by non-Asians. We heard powerful pieces from Kit Yan ranging from what happened when his little brother adopted gay tortoises (who have loud, frequent sex) to what it felt like as a transman to have penile-vaginal sex with a cis man (pretty darn good, apparently). I consider these kinds of performances to be not only personally brave, they are crucially important visibility, an incredible tool against oppression, and central to queer sexuality activism overall.

Me and @kityanpoet at #nelgbtc2016 !

A photo posted by Cecilia Tan (@ctan_writer) on Apr 11, 2016 at 7:58pm PDT

The difficulty is of course mainstream heterosexual society is “uncomfortable” with any sexuality outside the cis het norm to begin with, and the message we are given over and over is that we queers should shut it down because “it makes people uncomfortable”–and of course we FIGHT THAT. Take something as innocuous as public displays of affection as an example. If a straight man holds his wife’s hand on the subway and kisses her on the cheek, no one considers that something they would have to “hide the children’s eyes” from, but if two men or two women do it, it is often labeled worthy of censorship, only fit for adults to see, or “hypersexualized.” As queer activists we’re fighting for the right to not only to publicly display our affection, but to have it considered as normal and non-controversial as the straight couples’ behavior. So hackles are going to go up and people may feel their rights to their sexual identity are being attacked by that watchword “uncomfortable.” I don’t think that was what was happening here: I feel the activist who tweeted #ImHellaUncomfortable was being honest about their feelings and not trying to censor expression or perpetuate sex-negative oppression. Can the needs for visibility and positive, frank representations of sexuality for queer activists be reconciled with the needs of asexual activists who are trying to find a safe space to work on common issues and goals?

I don’t have an answer how, but I do know that this won’t be the last time it’s going to come up, and queer activists of all stripes are going to have to wrestle with this. (Also note that the battle for bisexual and trans inclusion in “gay and lesbian” activist spaces isn’t “won;” we’re still fighting it, and just getting the “B” and “T” added to the names didn’t change biphobic and transphobic attitudes overnight. I still feel we’ve made good progress and that give me hope for continuing evolution and positive change in our movements and communities.)

Talking with some students at the conference who consider themselves asexual, I asked them their take on whether they felt unwelcome and whether the space was hypersexualized to them. One said it would only be a hypersexualized environment if the conference itself were a hook-up meat market–that performances and talking about sex didn’t constitute hypersexuality or being too “in your face” about it (but if there had been something like speed dating it would’ve been). Another pointed out they weren’t uncomfortable themselves but they were glad that the plenary was preceded by trigger warnings that the performances would include sexually graphic references. (I hadn’t even really thought about who those trigger warnings were for.) They felt such warnings were sufficient to warn both asexual attendees and anyone else who might be triggered to opt out (i.e. sexual abuse survivors).

I think trigger warnings are a good step but I still worry that asking people to leave the room if they’ll be uncomfortable has the same effect of making them feel not-included. But perhaps some form of compromise where we offer people the option to self-care is going to be the best we can do? In the same way not every dish at every meal served can be compatible with every dietary restriction, will asexual attendees need to pick and choose only from some offerings and not others?

This is a dialogue that ultimately needs to take place between future conference organizers and the communities they serve–my personal stake in it is admittedly small since I’m only a presenter and writer and not a conference organizer myself (and not asexual). What steps can conferences and organizations be taking to ensure an inclusive atmosphere without recreating a sex-negative or oppressive one? Thirty years ago I stood outside the banquet literally unsure if there was a place for me at the table. I simply don’t want anyone who should be a part of our coalition to have to do that again.

Some historical stuff that may be of interest to NELGBTC folks:

March 1986 newsletter of the Boston Intercollegiate Lesbian & Gay Alliance

http://129.10.107.157/gsdl/collect/michelle-glbtnews/index/assoc/HASH01b5.dir/doc.pdf

“Unity ’86” was the title of the recently held Northeastern Lesbian and Gay Student Activists’ Conference (NELGSAC) at Brown University in Rhode Island. The conference’s designers managed to keep this theme in mind while planning the events. Comedian Kate Clinton had many gay men joining lesbians in an activity that many had never imagined they’d do: laughing at feminine hygiene jokes. By going strong at 70, Flo Kennedy, an older, lively, flamboyant black woman showed us that we must join with each other for strength. U.S. Representative Gerry Studds reminded us that a show of lesbian and

gay unity like this conference has just become possible in these last few years. The most powerful show of unity was the parade on Saturday night. Playing marching music, the Boston Freedom Trail Band trooped into the formal dining hall, and led us to the College Green. All the attendees then marched across Brown’s campus to protest the omission of sexual orientation in the university’s non-discrimination clause.”

Huge archive of queer student organizations/information from the 80s-90s at Northeastern University:

http://www.lib.neu.edu/archives/collect/findaids/m65findseries.htm

Article on the 1987 conference from the Columbia University Spectator:

http://spectatorarchive.library.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/columbia?a=d&d=cs19870326-01.2.6&e=——198-en-20–2468–txt-txIN-Columbia—-1987-

A book on student activism (including queer activism) of the 1980s and 1990s: New Voices by Tony Velella

Storify of some photos and tweets from the conference:

[View the story “Northeast LGBT Conference 2016” on Storify]