Cecil Wilde's Blog, page 2

Available for Pre-Order: Defying Convention

If you like geeks, cute trans boys, cute genderqueer people, and cute genderqueer and trans folk who are GIANT DORKS, Defying Convention is for you. The title is even a pun (which you love, you dork).

 

Danny and AJ have been online friends for years, and secretly in love with each other. When the opportunity to attend a comics convention comes up, they decide to go and share a room. But friendship online does not always translate to friendship offline, and both are anxious about how the meeting will go, and the friendship change, when faced with challenges easily avoided behind the safety of computer screens…

If you pick it up now, you get 15% off the release price! The release date is January 28th, so get in before you forget!

I would also like to draw your attention to another book from the Geek Out collection, and that is:

Long Macchiatos And Monsters by Alison Evans, which I had the good fortune to read before it was sent off for submission. It’s awesome, you should also check it out.

 

 

Contract: A Boy Called Cin

I am thrilled, if slightly late, to announce that A Boy Called Cin has found a home with Less Than Three Press.

This book is about a cute, but very broke, art student named Cin, who’s given a cup of coffee by a tech rockstar billionaire and tells him immediately what he thinks of him. Thankfully for both of them, Tom is persistent in his pursuit of the cute boy he ran into and what starts out as a casual affair turns into love and support for each other while both of them work toward being comfortable in their own skin; Cin through a ‘traditional’ gender transition and Tom through less conventional means.

It’s cute, okay? You’ll enjoy it. Cin owns a shoebox full of sex toys and Tom has literally never owned one in his 40 years of life.

Release date forthcoming when I have one.

Getting The Most Out of NaNoWriMo

It’s coming up on that time of year when writers around the world gear up for National Novel Writing Month (which is actually international but w/e). The goal, as you may know, is to write 50,000 words in a month. That’s 1667 words per day, which may or may not seem like a lot to you, over 30 days.

If it sounds like your kind of thing and you’re not already into it, you’ve got plenty of time to sign up over at the NaNoWriMo website. If you’re a veteran, good luck this season and I hope your novel goes well. If you’re new, new-ish, or not sure if you’re getting everything you could out of NaNo, here’s a few tips for the month ahead:

 Get involved with your local NaNo group. It’s possible that it won’t be AS awesome as Melbourne’s, but it’s probably still pretty awesome. If you’re in Melbourne and you don’t already come to meetups of various sorts, you totally should.
Remember that 50,000 words is A LOT. Also remember that you haven’t failed if you don’t make it. Every word you write is a word less you have to write toward a first draft. ‘Winning’ is cool and everything, but participating is a win in and of itself.
Do not fret about being an amateur/unpublished. That is the norm in most NaNo circles.
If part of the rules don’t work for you, feel free to ignore them. You’re not signing a legal contract. Rule-breaking is what creative types do.
That said, you’ll probably get more out of it if you start a fresh project on the 1st of November and see where the month takes you.
Experimentation is encouraged. Writing outside your genre is encouraged. Living on cupcakes and take-out is not exactly encouraged, but probably going to happen anyway. Embrace it.
Forget about what anyone says to discourage you. You can write a first draft in 30 days. 50,000 words is a ton and more than enough for a huge number of genres and publishers. Editing is a thing, you don’t have to call what you have on November 30th the final product.
Take the opportunity to put your head together with other like-minded folk over the course of the month. You never know what you might learn and you’ve got no idea how valuable casual discussion can be if you’ve never tried it.
Have fun. Seriously, have fun. Even if writing is what you do for a living, take the opportunity to chill out a bit and maybe work a little differently. Hang out with a bunch of new friends in a café, all writing their little hearts out. Enjoy the madness. Bask in word sprints and bonhomie.
THANK YOUR MUNICIPAL LIAISON. I’m not an ML, but I’ve seen how much work they do up close and they fully deserve your support and appreciation. Maybe a hug if they’re into that.

 

Are you doing NaNo? Is it your first year or are you an old-timer? Got any plans for this year’s round? Tell me about it!

Available for Preorder: The Wish Augur

Can you smell the cinnamon and hear the faintest sounds of carols in the air? Probably not quite yet, but if you’re itching to get into the Christmas spirit (or just start your preparations), I have good news! The Wish Augur is available for pre-order from Less Than Three Press.

 

Gabriel Juarez has only one wish for Christmas, uttered moments before midnight on Christmas Eve: a hug. He wakes up the next morning to find his wish being haphazardly granted in the form of an insecure elf called Felix, who works as a wish augur and couldn’t bring himself to let Gabe’s wish go unfulfilled.

Do yourself a favour and pre-order now so that come December 17th, when you’re overwhelmed and stressed, you’ll get a little email that will give you the perfect excuse to take a break and enjoy a little slice of happiness!

Plus, if you pre-order you get 15% off the normal price! Think of it as a little Christmas present to yourself

Fanfic + Queer Lit + You

It occurs to me there is a pair of points I’ve been vaguely nodding along with without actually sharing a clear opinion and if you know me you know I can’t let that stand.

Fanfic is SUPER FUCKING IMPORTANT guys. All fanworks are important, not just in themselves but in a wider cultural context because here’s the thing: public media, as in media that has been made available for public consumption, is public. It belongs to the consumer the minute it’s out there. Barthes liked to talk about Death of the Author (look it up if you’re into fanworks and haven’t already I promise you it’s some world-changing shit) but I like to take it one step further and to the side and say Fuck The Creator. Seriously, fuck them. You do not owe them shit.

‘Creator’ here being a super broad term describe to anyone with any level of creative control.

Let this serve as your reminder that media is art + commerce and you can’t forget about that second part. The commerce part is what makes it so important that you take ownership of it because you, collectively, bought and paid for it. Public media belongs to the public and anyone who doesn’t want you to play in their sandbox is either a fucking child or a greedy capitalist pig (often both) (also no offence intended to actual pigs, which are smart as fuck and have no concept of currency).

So it is absolutely your right if not your duty as a conscious citizen of the world to produce and consume fanwork. It’s outright revolutionary and now, when people are starting to sit up and take notice of it happening, is not the time to back down. Now is the time to leverage your position as consumer and therefore the only value a product has. Keep on truckin’ basically.

Secondary, intertwined and inextricable in many ways from this is queer lit. I’m gonna talk specifically about queer romance because I know of which I speak there. There are sO MANY THINGS I could talk about with regards to the way these things are connected but let’s stick to the media angle here.

Modern queer romance is very nearly a genre born of fandom. I realise I’m about to get an angry middle-aged author in my inbox/comments/twitter mentions for saying this but tough shit to them, it’s true whether people who want to be ~above~ fanfic like it or not. A huge number of the most prolific and successful genre authors are fannish and they are without fail the ones actually writing for a queer audience (I’m not gonna pretend there aren’t m/m books especially directed at straight women but I also don’t give a flying fuck about the commodification of normatively attractive cis male bodies with a gay-but-“straight-acting” personality tacked on as an afterthought.) The resurgence in popularity and interest and people who have both the skills and the inclination to write flat-out brilliant works for little to no money cannot be separated from fandom.

Now where the waters get kind of muddy is around the area of what you, average socially conscious person that you are, should be doing with all this information. And I’m gonna give you some advice that you’re obviously free to disregard because I am, as usual, not the messiah.

CONSUME AND PRODUCE FANFIC. Do that thing. That is an excellent, important, socially conscious thing to do. Fanfic is fucking great at tackling the problems of mass media and like I said: people are starting to sit up and pay attention. I mean, don’t do it if you don’t like doing it, but if you do, feel NO GUILT if it’s all you consume.

If you are interested in playing the long game, seek out queer media (of course this almost certainly applies to every other minority group but again: I speak of which I know). Seek out queer creators. Try their stuff. If you’re super broke a lot of them will trade you an ebook for a review (we can talk about why masturbatory attachment to print is horrible another time but I’m going to assume that if you read fanfic then ereading is not a problem for you). Things you discover will probably include that it reads a lot like good fanfic. If you’re offended by me saying your work reads like good fanfic, drop me a line!

You are not under any circumstances obliged to do this, obviously. I realise this is uncomfortable for a lot of people but this conversation is actually about money. Remember when I said you’ve bought and paid for public media? Well, the reason big media is big and small media is small is the number of people paying for it, pure and simple. A lot of the time you pay for it by being present during ad breaks and then buying those products. Sometimes you exchange cash for a physical copy. There are other ways.

I could talk to you all day about the economics of media consumption and if anyone actually wants me to I will (but I strongly suspect no one does) but basically, bottom line: if you want Marvel or Disney or WHOEVER to produce the kind of media you want, you have to proactively give that media value. Collectively. That’s why queer lit and fanfic are connected.

This is already a really long post so I’m gonna stop talking now but as ever I’m into intelligent discussion and question answering so like WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE?

You know where to click.

(I originally published this on my tumblr and while I like the ease of engagement there I also wanted it here to really own it as a creator because fuck me, also, if I’m not giving you the respect you deserve as a consumer. Nobody owes me shit either.)

New Release: Tea and Werewolves (Dawg Days anthology)

It’s release day for Tea and Werewolves, a story about an adorable trans werewolf who runs a tea shop with his sister and… well, you might just have to read it!

As of writing there’s still ~20 hours left to enter the giveaway to win a copy of Tea and Werewolves. Get in quick!

You can pick up either the short by itself or the whole Dawg Days anthology from the Torquere Books site! More retailers to come later.

New Release + Giveaway!

I’m late in mentioning that No Straight Boys is out (and proud!) on Liquid Silver Books, Amazon, and All Romance eBooks (other retailers coming soon!)

Since I was so late, I thought now would be an excellent time to mention that Tea and Werewolves, along with its associated anthology, Dawg Days, is going to be out on the 20th of August! I also thought it would be a good time to give away a copy! Enter below to win your very own copy of Tea and Werewolves, which will hopefully convince you to pick up the rest of the anthology as well! Get in quick, the giveaway’s only live for a few days!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Cover Reveal: Defying Convention AND The Wish Augur

I’m thrilled to reveal these two fantastic covers for Defying Convention and The Wish Augur. 

The Wish Augur is scheduled for release December 17th 2014, in plenty of time to get into the Christmas Spirit!

These beautiful covers are both by the gorgeous and talented Aisha Akeju.

Contract: Tea and Werewolves

I am ecstatic to announce that I’ve signed a contract with Torquere Press for Tea and Werewolves, a short story about werewolves, a tea shop, and finding your mate despite phenomenal odds.

It features Sev, a cute trans boy werewolf who runs a tea shop on Boston Harbour with his twin sister, and Connor, a corn-fed Iowa boy in town for school who just happens to get the idea in his head that tea is good for stress relief.

It’ll be released both in the Dawg Days anthology and by itself, so look out for it come August!

Continuum X: Moving Beyond the Gender Binary

I was thrilled this past Friday to speak at Continuum X, the 53rd annual Australian National Science Fiction Convention. I was on a panel called Moving Beyond The Gender Binary with several other lovely people who were very erudite and much better at the lit-crit side of things than me. Our charming moderator has provided a list of the texts that were mentioned during the discussion and I mean to pick up all the ones I haven’t read and would encourage everyone else interested in the topic to do the same.

I announced a while back that I’d signed a contract for a book called Defying Convention. There is a part of that book that addresses my frustrations with the way con panels on ~diversity~ tend to be disingenuous at best and harmful at worst, but Continuum was very different, very earnest, and I was pleasantly surprised to see the room packed with people who wanted to hear what the panel had to say about non-binary issues and inclusion.

I wished AJ from that book could have been there. AJ isn’t real, obviously, but if they were I would have wanted them to see this panel. I would have wanted them to swap with me, actually, but that’s beside the point. It was exactly what it should have been and I’m glad I got to be a part of it, and I hope the discussion will continue in various forms for years to come.