Kyell Gold's Blog, page 39

Me and the 49ers

I did not grow up in the Bay Area, or even on the West Coast, but I did grow up, sort of, with Joe Montana. Not in a literal sense (though we ate in the same restaurant he was in once!), but when I was learning to appreciate football, he was in his prime. Already a legend because of “The Catch,” the addition of Jerry Rice made him something really special. He was a football player for the 80s: TV-ready, with a great smile and beautiful eyes that endeared him to the ladies (and young guys who didn’t quite understand why yet) as much as his confidence and accuracy endeared him to the men (and football-loving women). The friend who taught me to appreciate football told me, “You’re going to tell your kids that you saw this guy play.”

I grew to love the red and gold from a distance. The Niners were never MY team, but they were top of the list of teams I’d root for when my teams were gone from contention. I remember sitting in a car during the NFC championship game in January 1990 listening to how the Giants had beaten up Montana all game, had knocked him around and made him leery of contact, and I hated them for it. I mean, I already hated New York, but this made it worse. I listened as the Giants’ kicker (Matt Bahr–still remember his name) lined up for the field goal, down 14-12. It wasn’t a gimme, and I sat there, listening, hoping he would miss…

He didn’t, of course, which led to the famous New York-Buffalo Super Bowl, also decided on a kick that did miss. And that was the end of Montana in San Francisco. He played another year or two and then moved on to Kansas City to make room for Steve Young, who brought the Niners one more championship(*).

* Steve Young, unlike Montana, has remained active in Bay Area sports media and politics; though a Mormon, he donated to the fight against Prop 8. He’s a good guy.

After that, the Niners went up and down. I moved to the Bay Area in the middle of a long streak of irrelevance; Young and Terrell Owens, who had briefly made magic, were both gone. I went to one Niners game in my time here, mostly to see the visiting Colts and Peyton Manning (who won easily).

And then Jim Harbaugh arrived, and turned things around. Living in the Bay, with those old Montana memories still kicking around in my head as well as memories of Jim Harbaugh nearly taking the Colts to the Super Bowl (one of my closest friends is a big Colts fan), I of course adopted the Niners.

Here they are, back in the Super Bowl, nearly twenty years after Steve Young set a record in beating San Diego. And while I don’t wish Baltimore any ill will–in fact, most of the teams in the playoffs this year were teams I would not have minded seeing hoist a championship trophy–I am going to be rooting for the red and gold.

But if there is one player I will be talking about in a post twenty years from now, I don’t think he’s wearing red and gold. I think I will be telling people that I saw Ray Lewis play, and that, win or lose, he was a marvel in his last game.

Green Fairy – Behind the Scenes 4

Jean’s turn.

Where to start with this noble asshole of a chamois? I almost had the reverse problem with him that I did with Sol: he was going to be immediately sympathetic by virtue of being the narrator of his own story, starting out in prison, and writing a good-faith (supposedly) letter to his father. What I channeled for him was that backwards rationalization we feel when we find ourselves at the end of some adventure that has not turned out at all the way we’d planned and we are trying to justify it. I think if you had asked Jean before he met Niki whether he would think himself capable of the things he ended up doing (trying to avoid being too spoilery), he would have hesitated. I don’t believe he thought of himself that way, and–paradoxically–even less so upon reflection in prison. He feels that his friends and companions and Niki himself drove him to those acts, and so he shifts the blame away from himself in his own mind as well as in his story.

Of course, he is further altering his story to appeal to his father, leaving out things like “I gave a dancer twenty francs” and substituting, “My purse was stolen” (one of the lies you get to see through Niki’s eyes). But while it is manipulative–Jean thinks he can get people to do what he wants and think of him the way he wants, and perhaps Niki’s greatest crime in his eyes is being immune to that–it is not completely dishonest, not in his eyes. He believes that he should be allowed to do whatever he wants, like dress up a boy to impersonate a girl, and congratulates himself on his cleverness when he succeeds, but blames others when he fails.

My favorite aspect of Jean’s story is that his tone doesn’t change, but once you start to see Niki’s viewpoint, you begin to understand that Jean is a very unreliable narrator. Everything from then on is thrown into question, and everything you’ve already read, as well. His friend and former lover becomes much more sympathetic (I think).

But by the end, I think the narrative actually becomes a little more honest, and there is something of a transformation there, although not much. Jean is unable to escape the cold fact of what he’s done, and as much as he rationalizes it, when it comes to having to describe it to his father, he cannot run around it, because it is the entire reason for his story. He can’t just explain it away. So he has to construct a reason for it, and I think he does not land too far when he says there is love. As I was writing Jean’s take on it, I felt him lose his desperation to justify himself to his father–he regains it, a bit, when the whole episode is over–but I think his writing, there at the end, is mostly to justify himself to himself. And I am not entirely sure he succeeds.

Footnote: one person said that the footnote about where the manuscript was found was cold and heartbreaking, in a way. I am glad that so much of a story can be told in one line.

That Whole Chris Culliver Thing

As you may imagine, I got linked a bunch of times yesterday to this story about a 49ers player saying there were no gay players on his team and he would prefer it remain that way (using different words). My response to this was generally: (1) are we surprised? I mean, if the NFL (or any sport) were a happy fluffy gay-friendly environment, one of the many gay players now active would certainly be out. (2) Just wait like an hour or two.

Sure enough, the 49ers immediately issued a statement that Culliver does not speak for the entire team, and today Culliver himself issued a retraction that certainly sounds like it was written by a 49ers media relations person, and some generic “that’s not what’s in my heart” statements that, you know, we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on.

Couple lessons here.

First, a statement by one guy does not mean that gay rights has suddenly regressed ten years or twenty years. There’s homophobia in the NFL. That was true Tuesday, and yesterday, and it’s true today. What’s important is the reaction from the rest of the world, from the team, and from fellow players.

Second, following on to that point, the immediate reaction from everyone and the fact that he not only issued an apology but sat and talked to reporters about it for 45 minutes speaks volumes to where we and the NFL are with respect to gay rights. I am sure there are players in the league who are fuming today, angry that someone can’t say boo about gay people without getting slammed left and right. But you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are fewer of those players than there are actually gay players. I think this kid has at the very least learned to watch what he says in public, and maybe that will lead him to re-examine the way he feels about things.

It’s been said over and over again that the best remedy to homophobia is knowing a gay person. But a pretty good remedy is talking to a lot of people about it. I’d guess that Culliver never really knew gay people, that the topic never really came up in his life, and the most thinking he did about it was growing up as a teen or playing football in college where you would call someone ‘faggot’ as an insult. Maybe he knew you shouldn’t do that anymore, but hadn’t really thought about why.

Now he’s part of a conversation about it, and he’s being made aware of it, and I hope maybe he’s realizing that these beliefs he had weren’t founded in anything. Homophobia is the default setting in some communities without anyone really understanding why, but that’s changing as the conversations in our world become more open. When forced to examine these beliefs, a lot of people realize that these ideals they took for granted don’t really hold up.

So this isn’t, in the grand scheme of things, a big terrible event. It’s part of the process, and I think it’s been handled about as well as we could hope.

Discussions and News

If you want to discuss “Divisions” (or other books), I am trying to keep a closer eye on my forums again. There are registration instructions on that page, so read those before registering!

Also, if you are interested in seeing a preview of the new Argaea story, there is only one way to do that before June: sign up for the mailing list! It’s non-spammy and full of useful info, I promise. New mailings go out once a month on about the first Monday of the month, so the next one is coming up…

Green Fairy – Behind the Scenes 3

Or: All About Sol

Sol was a tough character to write. Not because I didn’t know him; I know him pretty well. He was tough to write for the same reason Yilon was: he was a teenager who was very lost in his own world and his own problems. You can be sympathetic for a kid like that because you know he’s a good kid inside, but when you’re starting a story showing what he has to learn, you have to show the problems. Unfortunately, Sol’s kind of problem (“I just want to do what *I* want”) is one everyone is intimately familiar with, and generally seems to have less patience with than other problems I write about (“I’m gay but I don’t want anyone to know!”).

So we start with some of the factors that isolate Sol. His brother just went off to college. His father has a very firm idea about what his son should be like, partly to do with being a wolf. Sol is hiding his homosexuality (although he does have friends who support him, in school and online), which does tend to isolate someone. So what I was aiming for was that he has reasons to be isolated and moody; he’s just not handling it very well.

As the story goes on, of course, he reacts as any of us might to hyper-realistic dreams that bring things back into the real world. At least, he reacts the way someone might if they hadn’t grown up on a diet of fantasy/occult books or paranormal romances. I tried to approximate as best I could. The culmination, of course, comes when all of the support Sol had built up comes crashing down, and he realizes that he has to rely on himself. HeraLedro on FA pointed out after the last segment that Sol’s narrative being in third person makes sense because he relies so much on the world around him (as opposed to Jean’s self-centered first person), and although I admit I hadn’t thought of it that way–I only wrote it that way because it felt right–it fits well.

As a teenager, I was a lot like Sol, though I didn’t identify as gay then and I didn’t play any sport well enough to be on the varsity team. I lived apart from most everyone I went to school with, and we didn’t have cell phones or the Internet then. I didn’t have a great relationship with my family, so I spent a lot of time in my room. I don’t know that I thought about escape as much as he did; in fact, my first year in college I came home to visit once a month. But certainly I was very wrapped up in my own world, and yet I didn’t have a great ambition. Much like Sol, I was waiting for someone else to define me.

So this story, Sol’s story, is kind of my way of going back to tell teenaged me: don’t wait for other people to define you. Define yourself. This applies to Internet boyfriends or school friends or parents (although parents do define you up to a point, and you should keep your relationship with them if you can).

(As we will see in an upcoming book, though, Sol’s problems are not entirely over…)

Green Fairy – Behind the Scenes 2

Multiple narrators. What the heck?

Okay, so honestly, it has been a long time since I wrote a book with a single POV narrator. Like, a whole entire book. “The Tower and the Fox” is the most recent (and its sequel “The Demon and the Fox”), but before that you have to go back to…”Waterways” for anything novel-length, and “Pendant of Fortune” for a book written all at once. That’s a long time.

The OOP series falls naturally into two narrators, watching the progress of a relationship. Through that, I learned to play with dramatic tension, although I first did alternating chapters in “Shadow of the Father.” Honestly, I love using multiple narrators, and will likely do a lot more of it where I can.

In “Green Fairy,” I wanted to do something a little more like “Cloud Atlas,” where each narrator is part of a different story that affects all the others and also has a very distinct voice. This was easy to do once I had three characters with very distinct personalities. Sol is kind of my traditional everyteen hero, put upon by his parents and peers and society, who has to learn to stand up for himself. His was the narrative voice I sort of default to, though maybe a little less sarcastic than Lee, less confident than Dev, but still very contemporary. He resembles Kory more than anyone else I’ve written, I think.

Jean and Niki are different. Jean tells his story from the past, knowing the end and changing elements along the way to justify the ending. He is calculating and yet not that good at being calculating; he is blind to the fact that he cannot manipulate the people around him as well as he thinks he can, which makes him even more desperate to hold on to the one person he can manipulate with money: Niki.

Niki’s story is told in present tense, with the immediacy of dreams, and yet Niki also knows the end of his story, not for certain, but in the way that you know how a book is going to end because you’ve read all of the author’s other books. Niki is desperate to bestow love on anyone and to see love returned even where there is none, or little, and ultimately this is his downfall.

They provide an interesting set of poles for Sol to choose between: cynical and open, both desperate for love but showing it in different ways, and ultimately neither of them comes to a good end. Desperation leads to seeing love where it may not be and believing in it long after it fails, and this is the lesson Niki teaches Sol–well, one of them.

But having both of those examples open to him, seeing Jean’s manipulations laid bare and Niki’s open heart lead him astray, both of those help solidify Sol’s learning through the book. And that’s why I wanted to tell both of their stories alongside his.

Well, that and I wanted to play with the language of 1901 Paris. I did so enjoy writing those segments. ^^

Ursa Majors: An Announcement

The Ursa Majors are open for nominating again, and for the last seven years around this time, I have posted something in this space about what I have that’s eligible and encouraged you to go vote for whatever you like, whether it’s mine or not. This year, I’m doing it a little differently.

I’ve notified the Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association that I am respectfully withdrawing my works from the Ursa Major Best Novel and Short Story categories this year, and for at least a few more going forward. This is not a decision I made lightly; in fact, it’s one I’ve been thinking about since last summer. So I’ll spend a little time talking about what went into it.

There is precedent in other awards for frequent winners stepping back. One of the people on the Ursa Major committee told me that in a musical award, when someone wins three years in a row, they are retired from that category by the award. That’s not how the Ursas work: they have been very hands-off and admirably resistant to public opinion. When Stan Sakai won the Best Comic award multiple years running, they assured people that in time, other comics would win, and they were right. In response to my multiple wins, they have assured people that, in time, other authors will win. I have no doubt that they are correct, given the profusion of talent in the fandom. In fact, each of the last two years I have been convinced I would not win one of the two awards (perhaps neither). But I have also observed that it would probably be better for the writing scene if that day comes sooner rather than later.

Ultimately, what it comes down to is this: I’ve won a dozen awards over seven years. I know you guys love me and my books. But I’d like to help the fandom’s literary scene mature, and part of that is showcasing more of the authors that are doing really good work. My name’s already up there in the lists; let’s see some of the other people.

In addition, this allows me to recommend other books in the fandom for you to read, other stories to look at, without being conflicted. I would really like you guys to keep reading and keep voting in the awards, because that’s important to the fandom.

What this does not mean: It does not mean you should stop voting. It doesn’t mean I’m stepping out of the fandom. I’m going to keep writing, keep going to conventions, keep posting to FA and answering mail and whatnot. You guys aren’t going to get rid of me that easily.

You can still show your support for my books the way you always have: buy them and tell your friends about them. I still appreciate all of that, more than I can express. And since I won’t have one time a year and an award prompt to tell you, I’ll just have to remember to do it on my own. Honestly, if you had told me when my first book came out in 2005 that eight years later I would be voluntarily stepping down because I had won enough awards for my writing…well, I would’ve said, “I must get a whole lot better–and have a lot of really awesome fans.” I know at least that last part is true. So thank you guys, all of you, for all your votes over the years, for all your support, and for putting me in this position. I will continue, as I always do, to strive to be worthy of it.

Green Fairy – Behind the Scenes 1

Because I feel like it, I’m going to do a series of posts talking about what led to the book Green Fairy and some of the lesser-known things that went into it. When I was leading up to the e-book release of Isolation Play, I did eleven, I think, or however many days it was before the book was released. Now I’m thinking it’ll be something between seven and ten, because Green Fairy is already out as an e-book, so it’ll just be whenever I run out of things to say.

First of all, the origin story, which I’ve told a lot. Green Fairy was born on the plane flight on the way home from FWA 2011, where I had just been invited to be a Guest of Honor at FWA 2012. The theme, I was told, was going to be the Moulin Rouge, and the other GOH was my friend Rukis, a talented artist. Rukis and I had been looking for a project to do together for a while, and as FWA doesn’t have a conbook in which I could write a story, I figured I would write something and we could publish it in a small format or something.

Initially we were thinking comic, but Rukis was already quite busy with her own comic at the time, and the workload of another one to come out around the same time (Red Lantern, it turned out, was released at FWA 2012 along with Green Fairy) would have been too much. So I started thinking of stories.

I wanted to combine the Moulin Rouge theme with FWA’s location in the south, and at the same time I had been sort of itching to write a cautionary tale for young gay guys with Internet boyfriends. I’m sure there are different ways you could go about that, but I’ve also been intrigued by the supernatural for a while (even though my stories are, save for the furry element, generally blindingly normal and unfantastic–even the Argaea books are more “historical fiction” than “fantasy”), and so I thought, what about a kid who dreams about being in the Moulin Rouge?

Actually, I’m not sure my first thoughts were even that coherent. I just thought, “parallel storylines going on in the Moulin Rouge and a mid-size Southern town” and started sketching out the outline. Clearly, if I were going to do a story in which a guy learned that you can’t always trust who people say they are (e.g. on the Internet), I would have to have something like that going on back in the Moulin Rouge story. And so I started writing about Sol, and Jean, and Niki.

(Next: Multiple narrators? WHY?)

Back to Argaea

There’s an anthology coming out this summer from FurPlanet, edited by the industrious Fred Patten, called What Happens Next. It’s new stories by established authors revisiting their worlds. I have a few worlds to choose from, and initially had thought about a “Waterways” short or a “League of Canids” short, but nothing was gelling. Then I remembered the idea I had for a bonus story for “Shadow of the Father” that I never got around to writing, because the book didn’t quite hit a thousand copies in its first year.

On the recent plane trip to Minnesota, I finished it, and it is now out with the writing group for critique, so it seems likely you will see it in the anthology. Here is a little more about it:

By the end of “Shadow of the Father,” Yilon has matured a great deal in just a week. But what of his brother? Volyan is conspicuously absent from the reunion at the end of the book; Volle and Ilyana tell Yilon that his brother “missed the carriage.” How did that come about? What could he possibly have been doing that was so important as to miss his brother’s Confirmation as Lord?

Well, knowing Volyan, there was probably a girl involved. And there was.

But that’s not the whole story.

Keep an eye on the FurPlanet site and Twitter feed for news of What Happens Next…

Divisions and Green Fairy discussions

Okay, after a quick and informal survey on FA, I have created boards on my forums to discuss “Green Fairy” and “Divisions.” If you haven’t registered for the forums, you will need to send an e-mail verifying you are a real person (because I had a flood of Russian spammers) and then I will get you registered.

Also, while I’m at it: if you want to sign up to the mailing list, next month’s sneak preview is from a new story coming this summer that I will tell you about tomorrow…