Kyell Gold's Blog, page 6

Since You Asked…

After the recent Slate article about “The Time He Desires,” I got a few inquiries from people to the effect of “don’t you think it’s ironic to be defending Islam with a character who would be executed in most Muslim countries?”

The questioners were not actually interested in having the conversation so much as pointing out supposed logical fallacies in liberal views, but it’s an interesting conversation to have, so I’ll have it here on the blog anyway.

First, I’m going to take their preconceptions at face value and answer the question, because no matter what the facts are about Muslim countries actually executing gay people (hint: most Muslim countries do not execute gay people, and of the few that do have the death penalty for gay behavior, only one regularly acts on it), the idea is that many Muslim countries are hostile to gay people, and that’s not false.

I’m touched by the questioners’ concern about the welfare of gay people, to start. Gay people of faith have it hard in any country; the point of the book is reconciling your sexuality with a faith that tells you it’s wrong. That could be Islam, or most branches of Christianity, or Orthodox Judaism. So the book is about faith. It’s not about countries, though there is a little bit about countries and their practices in the book–in fact, the mistake the main character has to walk back from is assuming that his home country’s practice of Islam is the only way. Muslim countries differ in their interpretations of Islam, and Islam itself is bigger than any single country.

In addition, the book is about an American immigrant from a Muslim country, so the fact that he would be persecuted in a Muslim country is exactly the point of the book. So no, even given your hypothetical world full of bloodthirsty Muslim countries, the defense of Islam with a gay character is not ironic. It is exactly the point I am trying to make: to change your understanding of Islam from being defined by a few violent individuals to being defined by the strictures that actually define it.

Now let’s take a look at that hypothetical world. It’s true that gay people are persecuted in a lot of Muslim countries, and there’s a great overview of that in The Guardian from last year. If you don’t want to read the whole article (you should though), here’s a summary: the number of Muslim-governed countries that regularly executes gay people is 1. That’d be Iran. Among other countries:

In Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen and Mauritania, sodomy is also punishable by death – though no executions have been reported for at least a decade.

Among other Arab countries, the penalty in Algeria, Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia and Syria is imprisonment – up to 10 years in the case of Bahrain. In those that have no specific law against homosexuality, gay people may still be prosecuted under other laws. In Egypt, for example, an old law against “debauchery” is often used.

These laws have a catastrophic effect on the lives of people who are unlucky enough to get caught but, despite occasional crackdowns, the authorities don’t, on the whole, actively seek out gay people to arrest them.

Wikipedia lists 45 countries in the “Muslim world” where Islam plays a role in the government to varying degrees, from forming the basis of government to being separate from government affairs. By my count from their LGBT Rights page, 31 of those countries consider homosexuality illegal, so about two-thirds. But that’s out of about 75 countries in the world where homosexuality is illegal, many of which are Christian countries (like for example the 85% Christian country of Uganda, where an American Christian pastor traveled to encourage the government to tighten their laws against homosexuality). And only two countries in addition to the Arab countries mentioned above have death penalties (Nigeria, in some areas, and the Palestinian Territories), and in both it’s unclear whether anyone has actually been recently executed.

Yes, Muslim countries are in general less accepting of gay people than non-Muslim countries. I absolutely don’t want to give them a pass on that. But I think it’s important to characterize things as they are rather than with radical hyperbole. And more to the point of my book, there is a large population of American Muslims who follow American customs in addition to their religion; there are gay populations in many Muslim countries. The picture is complicated, and taking some time to learn and understand the difference between a religion and the culture of some countries that follow that religion would not be wasted time. It was in fact with the hope that some readers would do that that I wrote a novella about a Muslim character attempting to undergo that same journey.

Further Confusion Schedule

Hey, Further Confusion is almost upon us! I’m excited to have the first book in my new Love Match series coming out from FurPlanet, and hope you guys will check it out. I’ll be around that table Friday for at least the first couple hours the dealer’s room is open, and probably for more than that as well. If I’m by the Sofawolf table, you can buy Love Match (and any Cupcakes you might be missing) and bring it over; likewise if you’re missing any of my Sofawolf titles (or Hot Dish 2, which I have a story in!), you can buy them and bring them over to me. I’ll sign any of the books anywhere!

Saturday and Sunday I’ve got some panels. When I’m not at the panels I’ll likely be back around the Sofawolf or FurPlanet tables and I’m happy to sign books. Come say hi!

Here are the panels I’m doing. I’m pretty excited about all of them and hope to see you guys at some of them. (To answer a frequent question: recording is at the discretion of the convention, and with the exception of Unsheathed, I haven’t made any arrangements to record any of them.)

Sat 4:30p – 6p: What’s Your Problem? –with Fuzzwolf of FurPlanet, Jakebe, Ryan Campbell. A full time editor, some part time editors, and authors with experience explain the many and varied reasons why your story might have been rejected.

Sat 10p – 11:30p: Adult Furry Writing –with Rukis and Not Tube. The marvelous and unpredictably hilarious staple of furry writing tracks. We talk about writing pr0n/erotica/romance.

Sun 11a – 12:30p: Brainstorming in Real Time –with Jakebe, Ryan Campbell, and Watts Martin. Having trouble coming up with ideas? We’ll walk you through a brainstorming session with input from the audience.

Sun 3p – 4:30p: Write Now! –with Jakebe. We’ll go over short story structure and a handy formula for getting your story’s bones in place, and then you’ll have time to actually START WRITING IT.

Sun 10p – 11:30p: Unsheathed Live –with K.M. Hirosaki and Not Tube. Our pretty-much-only-at-cons podcast returns so we can talk about furry fiction, conventions, pop culture, drunkenness, and anything else that comes to mind. This year we have a special surprise for you guys, so don’t miss it!

The Time He Desires E-book Available Now!

AND in other book news, you can get the e-book of The Time He Desires at Bad Dog Books right now, in ePub or MOBI (Kindle) format! Remember, all proceeds in January go to benefit the ACLU.

(In February, the book will be available on other platforms. Audiobook still in planning stages.)

Love Match Comes Out Next Week!

It was just over two years ago that I announced I’d be working on a new novel (and Rukis of course told me at once that it was going to be a series) and that I’d be making the WIP available on Patreon. Well, Patreon wasn’t for everyone, and for those of you who opted to wait, good news! Your wait is over.

Love Match (vol. 1, 2008-2010) will be published next week from FurPlanet Press, available at their table at Further Confusion and on their website. It’s the story of Rocky, a fourteen-year-old jackal arriving in the States on a tennis scholarship to learn to be a professional tennis player. Of course, tennis isn’t all that happens to him: he has a girlfriend and a boyfriend (not at the same time) and lots of other (mis)adventures on his way through school–not to mention worrying about his sister, left behind in Africa until he can make enough money to bring her over.

Rocky’s story takes place in the Forester Universe and in fact, fans of OOP will spot a tie-in rather easily. There are right now projected to be three volumes in the series and each will be lavishly illustrated by Rukis thanks to the generous folks who subscribed to the Patreon. If I had to guess, I’d say the second volume will come out in 2018 sometime, and the third probably not until 2020.

(Wow. 2020.)

The e-book will come out on Bad Dog Books in February, on other platforms in March. There are no current plans for audiobooks but I will be investigating them as the series moves along.

Princess Leia and Hazel-Rah

I don’t remember when I first picked up my parents’ copy of Watership Down. For sure it was before the fifth grade, because that’s the year I tried to push it on a friend of mine. In what is an excellent example of how to make sure someone doesn’t like your favorite book, I pestered him nearly daily to find out where he was in the story and how he liked it. That would have been fine (probably) if he’d loved the book as much as I did, but alas, he did not.

I soon got better friends, and I got better at letting people tell me about why they loved books.

It was probably around that time that I discovered Star Wars and Princess Leia, the toughest and prettiest movie star I’d ever seen. I watched that movie obsessively, loving how Leia fit in perfectly with the sassy, smart-mouthed cast, holding her own against the idealistic young Luke and the jaded, sarcastic Han–even the huge imposing Chewie (“will someone get this walking carpet out of my way” remains one of my favorite lines).

(I had no idea then how difficult Carrie Fisher’s life was. Much later in both our lives, I got to see her one-woman show, “Wishful Drinking,” in which she openly discussed how the success of Star Wars exacerbated an already-difficult family life and a drug and alcohol dependency she would suffer from for years.)

One of the many things I loved about Watership Down was Hazel’s compassion and determination. He wasn’t the smartest or the strongest, but he was the one everyone trusted, the one who could figure out how to leverage the smartest and strongest, the one who encouraged them to build on small successes, kept their spirits up through failures, and never let them lose sight of what was important. He was one of the purest examples of what a compassionate leader should be that I’ve encountered in fiction, and I thought he was marvelous.

Princess Leia, in addition to being tough and smart, was also a great leader. She inspires Luke to stick around and help the rebellion. She suffers through horrendous torture and never gives up the secret of the rebel base. There’s never a doubt that she cares deeply about the people she’s leading, but there’s also no doubt that she understands the sacrifices needed to achieve her goal. She never loses sight of that goal, and I might not have understood at the age of 8 or 9 what a “rebellion” was or why it was important, but I understood her passion and her dedication.

Those two fictional characters were hugely important in shaping my ideals when I think of leaders, fictional or otherwise. And Carrie Fisher, moreover, grew to embrace her Star Wars character; in her show she railed against promotional materials that had Leia dressed in sexy skimpy clothing. That wasn’t her character! She was tough, and so was Carrie, building a successful life and career after a difficult start.

Richard Adams was 96 and lived a good, long life. Carrie Fisher was 60 and while she might have had many more years, you can’t say she didn’t make good use of the time she had. They both influenced me hugely and I’m sorry to see them both gone. But I’m glad that their work will live on after them, that for a long time kids and adults of any age will be able to watch Star Wars (or any of Carrie Fisher’s other work, depending on their age) and read Watership Down and be as inspired as I was.

Sales of The Time He Desires support the ACLU

Hey, I keep forgetting to tell people this–my bad. I talked to the wonderful guys at FurPlanet over MFF weekend and they have agreed to join me in donating all proceeds from the first month of sales of The Time He Desires to the ACLU. For the print book that’ll be December; for the e-book (on sale only at BadDogBooks.com as of Jan 1) it’ll be January.

The Time He Desires is not about prejudice exactly, but it presents a Muslim main character and his struggle to understand homosexuality. There were a lot of organizations we could have chosen, but the ACLU is committed to protecting the rights of LGBTQ people, Muslims and people of all faiths, and anyone else whose rights are in danger. Their work is particularly important with the incoming government having spoken of registering people in a database based on their religion and appointing Supreme Court justices who will roll back women’s and gay rights (to name only a couple terrifying things). I’m donating to them monthly anyway, but the FurPlanet folks and I agree that we want to help out more and this book seems like a good way to do it.

If you want to help out the ACLU even more, you can donate on their site or set up recurring donations as little as $1/month.

Firebirds jerseys are back!

Hey, were you waiting for your chance to get an authentic Firebirds jersey? We have finally got the store open again, and you can also order a Sabretooths jersey if you like! The store’s open until December 15 but we’ll open it again next year if you miss this (narrow) window.

Here’s the link: https://firebirdsonline.itemorder.com...

The names and numbers for each team are in the product pages, and if you want you can order your own name as well. For players not listed, shoot me a private note over e-mail or on FA and ask, and I’ll see what I can do about figuring out their number.

If you’re trying to reach me…

…this week (or if you sent me an e-mail this week or last), my apologies. I have some communications queued up to respond to but I am super-busy this week trying to prepare Love Match book 1 to send to FurPlanet this weekend so you can all have the print copy at Further Confusion.

I’ll be back in touch with folks next week for sure, and in the meantime I’m taking short breaks on Twitter so I don’t go crazy. @.@ Thanks for your understanding and I’m sorry for taking a while to respond to things.

MFF Schedule!

Hey, I’m going to be on a bunch of panels at MFF. And when I’m not there, I’ll likely be in the dealer’s room at either the Sofawolf or FurPlanet tables. You might’ve heard that I have a book coming out at MFF.

Anyway, here are the panels I’m doing. They’re pretty self-explanatory, and you can find the locations and more descriptions in the con book. They should be a lot of fun! Come listen and ask me and my co-panelists questions about stuff!

Friday, December 2

1:30pm

Character and Dialogue

7:00pm

Scene and Story Structure

8:00pm

Erotica: Adult Writing

Saturday, December 3

12:00pm

What It Takes to Write: Process, Discipline, and Lifestyle

1:00pm

Novel Writing

2:00pm

New Release Reading

7:00pm

RAWR: A Furry Writing Workshop

Sunday, December 4

1:00pm

Building an Audience

3:00pm

Science Fiction and Fantasy

Looking forward to seeing all you lovely fuzzy people in a couple days!

Happy Thanksgiving!

To all my American friends, hope this is a lovely day of enjoying friends and family and food and maybe taking a short break from fighting to keep the world from sliding into the abyss. We will be making a lot of our Thanksgiving favorites anyway and then probably heading out to see a movie.

And to my non-American friends…happy Thursday!