Kyell Gold's Blog, page 34

Minnesota and Another Sea Change

Minnesota’s legislature passed a bill allowing same-sex marriage (technically repealing a law that had forbidden it) yesterday, which the governor was expected to sign today. This is, of course, awesome news, and I am delighted for all my friends and the many more gay couples who are not my friends in Minnesota.

The thing that startled me about this was that I had no idea it was happening until yesterday. Not that I’m supposed to be on top of all the marriage equality stuff, but you know, I am on a bunch of mailing lists, some Minnesota-focused (hi, Senator Franken!), some gay-rights focused. And usually when a legislature would consider marriage, I would be getting e-mails about how the bill was being presented, who to call to express my favor, etc. I heard that Illinois is preparing to consider a similar bill, for example.

But here, I’d heard nothing–and nor had my outside-of-Minnesota gay-rights friends, at least the few I talked to yesterday. I’m sure that within Minnesota it was bigger news, and partly I am sure this is because it was a legislative bill and not a popular vote, so it is quieter and more dignified by definition. But while the legislation still registers on the national scale, it is now less newsworthy than Angelina Jolie’s mastectomy (which is a big deal from the standpoint of helping women deal with that traumatic surgery, and probably will spike sales of the “Tomb Raider” movie this week among nostalgic young men).

We’re getting used to same-sex marriage. That’s pretty cool.

Hey, Mom (An Open Letter)

Hey, Mom.

No, not MY mom. You. The one with the gay kid.

Specifically: the one with the gay kid who thought homosexuality was a sin, who for a while was living with growing doubts about your child, worries you might not even have let yourself think. The one who, up until about three minutes before your kid said “I’m gay,” when you knew those words were going to explode into your life and you wouldn’t be able to keep them out any longer, prided yourself on not having one of them in your family (at least not openly).

Even more specifically: the one who looked into your kid’s eyes, hearing those words, and realized that the love you have and have always had for your child is greater than what your friends or your favorite TV/radio personality or your spiritual leader told you about homosexuality. The one who wanted to cry and yell “how could you do this to me?” but who realized in that moment that what your child was going through was far more difficult and far more life-altering than what you were facing. Who remembered that you are this child’s mother, and that the trust your child extended in saying these words to you shows how much that loving bond still exists between you. Who pushed back her own fear (terror) about what this meant to her life, who reached out, took her gay child in her arms, and said “I love you.”

Maybe you’re just starting a journey toward realizing that being gay is just part of your child’s life, and not a sentence to eternal damnation, not a phase meant to make you look bad to your fellow churchgoers, not the seduction of an innocent naif by a capriciously decadent society. Maybe your child came out to you years ago and you have made that journey and helped other struggling moms with it. Maybe you had a tough time getting through it and needed some support of your own while still standing by your child. Maybe you still think that homosexuality in general is bad/sinful/destructive, but you still welcome your child into your home, still ask your child to share his or her life with you. Hopefully you’ll come to see that gay people are pretty much just like you and me, but in the meantime you haven’t abandoned your child.

The important thing is: you love your gay child. You have accepted your gay child.

Your son, your daughter, did not choose to be gay. But you chose to love and accept them. And that is a choice not every mother makes.

So Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. And thanks.

(And if your gay kid doesn’t wish you Happy Mother’s Day, give ‘em the guilt treatment. You’ve earned the right.)

The State of E-Books

Well, Kobo has debuted a new interface for authors which makes it much easier to upload books. So I now have four Argaea books, uploaded arduously through the old system, Out of Position, Isolation Play, and Bridges uploaded through Smashwords, and In the Doghouse of Justice, Science Friction, Silver Circle, and Green Fairy uploaded through the new interface. Of course, none of that is visible to you guys; they just all look like they’re on sale through Kobo.

(I haven’t yet figured out how to put the Argaea books on sale because I can’t access them through the new interface, but I’m working on it.)

Meanwhile, Smashwords doesn’t like my re-upload of “In the Doghouse of Justice”–though it passed on the first upload, now they want “undergarments drawn on the nude figures” (what? what?) and they say that the cover page shows up black, which someone else reported as well, only I can’t make that happen on any of my ePub viewers…so I’m not sure how to fix it. But anyway, it still seems to be on sale in various places although Smashwords’ conversion of the Word doc still doesn’t work well…

But hey. Books on Kobo! Some people have been asking for it and now there they are.

Another Divisions Review

First “Divisions” is tapped to be the Furry Writers’ Guild Book of the Month, and now there’s another review up by Elisa Rolle. Elisa doesn’t really give “thumbs up,” but I think it’s pretty clear from the review that she likes the characters, and as a non-furry reviewing romance books, it’s nice to see a furry book given serious treatment. She says,

this is a very ordinary love story, a nice romance, with that just touch of sexy to make it good, about anthropomorphic characters, but that is like saying the guy had black hair and blue eyes, or the girl had long hair and brown eyes, only that here you have a guy with long stripes and big paws or the other guy with a fluffy tail…

I do of course love reviews wherever they come. It’s nice to see one on a non-furry site, and from someone who understands that furry characters are just another way to tell a story about people.

Ursa Major Awards Reminder

Hey guys! Remember that an important way to tell the creators in the fandom that you like their work is to VOTE in the Ursa Major Awards. They’re open to everyone, and all you have to do is go to this website –> http://www.ursamajorawards.org

There are lots of worthy candidates on the ballot this year. My writing compadre foozzzball has a Cupcake on the ballot–Dangerous Jade–which I am naturally biased in favor of because it’s a hell of a story, and hey, the Cupcakes are his and my and Rikoshi’s thing. You can also take your pick of Mary Lowd stories from the rest of the ballot.

Also, although I withdrew my work from consideration, two of my books are represented in the Best Published Illo category, and I find it hard to choose between them. I love both the covers of “Winter Games” and “Green Fairy,” and they are in there with some tough competition.

Whatever your taste, you’ll find something on there to like, so go log in and vote! You have TWELVE DAYS LEFT. GO GO GO!

Summer Sale

Oh, e-book pricing! I never get tired of talking about you. Wait, that’s a big fat lie.

Anyway. Lots of people have told me, in tones ranging from comradely to hectoring, that the optimal price for an e-book is $4.99, and while my books sell at a pretty good clip–enough to keep me in Coke Zero, anyway–if I would only drop the price to $4.99, they would magically attract enough people to MORE THAN MAKE UP for the loss in per-book revenue.

I have been skeptical of this for a couple reasons. First off, I don’t think my books are generally subject to casual browsing. People who buy my books seem to generally be going and specifically looking for them, and so $7.99 or $9.99 doesn’t seem as bad a price point (especially when the books have art). Second, when the books DO drop in price, I don’t see any bump in sales as a result. Granted, I’ve only gone down from $9.99 to $7.99, but still, sales are fairly constant.

Well, I decided to try out another experiment. As the anthology “What Happens Next” is coming out this summer from FurPlanet and it has a brand new Argaea story in it, I am going to make it easier for people to get to know that world if they haven’t yet. On Amazon, B&N, and Apple, Volleand The Prisoner’s Release and Other Stories will be $4.99 beginning right now, through August. Pendant of Fortune and Shadow of the Father are both $7.99 still, but if sales of the first two go well, I may drop those too.

And here’s the experiment part. If at the end of those four months the sales of the sale books remains consistently at a higher level, I will leave them at that price.

So spread the word and check out the books. YOU can help determine pricing going forward.

Review–Heretic

I don’t generally make a practice of reviewing furry books, especially those by friends, as I am kind of picky about what I read. I make certain exceptions when the book is good quality and I know the author well enough to know that an honest review will be well received. So that’s how I have come about to writing a review of Rukis’s novel “Heretic.” I should note that I wasn’t asked to write this review, nor given a free copy. I purchased it to support a very talented artist whom I knew already to be a skilled writer from her comic, whom I’ve also come to consider a friend.

“Heretic” ties in with the “Red Lantern” comic, exploring the history of Admiral Luther Denholme. This removes a certain amount of suspense from the book: we know that Luther lives, retains the name Denholme, and attains the rank of admiral. In many books, this would detract from the suspense and therefore the experience. In “Heretic,” it is kind of a relief. In the gritty, chaotic, brutal world Rukis builds for her poor characters to inhabit, knowing that Luther will survive is at least one thing we can hold onto. Everyone else, though, is fair game. There are, in particular, a few people Luther grows very close to whose notable absence from “Red Lantern” had me worried for their safety.

Given what little I knew of the world outside “Red Lantern” (I had not read the chapters of “Heretic” posted online), I knew only that Luther had had an affair with a senior officer, and I expected a large portion of “Heretic” to cover that relationship. It does–but only in retrospect. The book begins with Luther’s lover dying on a ship and proclaiming his love for Luther, for the first time, in front of their shocked and horrified crew. This lands Luther in prison, and the reader squarely in the grip of the story.

Without going further into the plot, I’ll just say that the book doesn’t grow boring, ever. The plot twists and turns, but holds up fairly soundly under examination, at least on a first read. There may be holes to be poked in it, but there was nothing that stopped me in the middle to say, “Oh, really?” The characters come vividly to life, and work out byzantine, desperate, and sometimes stupid–in other words, completely realistic–solutions to their problems. Luther himself grows over the course of the book, going from a young gay man with a man o’war-sized chip on his shoulder to a person who can accept the responsibilities life has put in his path. It’s not a smooth growth, not without its trials and unpleasant lessons. But that’s what makes for engaging reading, and emotional involvement with the characters.

The writing, too, is evocative. Manor house drawing-rooms and bloody wounds are described with equal care and affection. The sex scenes–there are sex scenes–are explicit enough to earn the book a “Mature” rating, while still well within the confines of what you would find in a mainstream romance novel. And the dialogue generally rings quite true.

My overall quibbles with the story and writing are few, and best left as private notes to the author. I will say that there are some typos and mistakes of punctuation that pulled me out of the story, but then again, I can’t turn off my inner editor, so that happens, and with books from just about every publisher I read. Your mileage may vary. Those aside, I came away from this impressed enough to want to tell other people about it. If you don’t mind the violent, unforgiving world of “Red Lantern,” I suspect you will equally enjoy this book.

If You Only Write One Thing Today…

… make it a tweet of support to Jason Collins (@jasoncollins34) or a supportive comment on one of the articles on SI. The first active athlete in a major US sport to come out is going to get lots of support, and unfortunately lots of hate. Let’s make sure the support side overwhelms the haters. This is something easy you can do, and it will matter. Show him we got his back.

That’s Not The Right Word

I see these things pop up every now and then. Just FYI.

“playing a roll”

No. Unless you are dressed as a small piece of bread for the “Thanksgiving Dinner” play–and even then–you are playing a ROLE.

“I’m making due with what I have”

No. You are making DO. It’s a weird expression, I know. Don’t make it weirder.

“may peak your interest”

Possibly, if you mean “this may represent the high point of your interest,” but what you probably mean is that it may incite, or PIQUE, your interest.

“managed to eek out a living”

Perhaps, if you are talking about a mouse, or the graduates of Monsters University, but you probably mean “managed to just barely make a living,” in which case you need to move one of those “e”s to the other side of the k (EKE out a living).

Added:

“he grabbed the reigns”

If you are describing a usurper to the throne, maybe. Otherwise, you are metaphorically describing the leather straps used to guide a horse, which are REINS.

More Gay Football News

There are already gay players in the NFL, apparently ready to come out–but what if a team drafted an already openly-gay player? There is a guy who fits that bill. He’s a kicker, so Charm fans will already like him, and he’s been out since the age of 15 without suffering any repercussions from it. He was undrafted last year but is hoping to be signed as a free agent this year, saying he didn’t really give it his best shot last year.

Good luck, Mr. Gendreau!