Q&A with Josh Lanyon discussion
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May Read 2011: Three Wrong Turns in the Desert
Neil wrote: "Any book has multiple inspirations, and Three Wrong Turns in the Desert is no exception. One of my inspirations was a picture of a very buff guy showering naked outdoors, and when I started to thin..."Neil - Thank you so much for responding to our comments and being so wonderful about it. If there's one thing this group enjoys it's dissecting and discussing a good book.
I've read both TWTitD and DWtT and have enjoyed them both immensely. You have a wonderful team and set up with Aidan and Liam; I can't wait to read more about them.
Mod
That Aiden, a teacher, didn't seem to have any conflict with it, didn't ring quite as true. But Neil's a teacher and Neil thought of the anthrax, so that's what happens when we make assumptions. :-) It could have been a great opportunity for a little conflict with Aiden and Liam, but these are quibbles.
Mod
Absolutely. Thanks for sharing your insights, Neil. And for being a good sport about the nitpicking. It's a great sign when the only problems we can find with a book are nits and niggles.
I think we're all looking forward to Liam and Aiden's next adventure.
Thank you all for your wonderful comments! You have cheered me up so that I don't mind (not much at least) not winning the Lambda for best gay romance.
Neil wrote: "Thank you all for your wonderful comments! You have cheered me up so that I don't mind (not much at least) not winning the Lambda for best gay romance."DId anyone else find that they hadn't heard of most of the entries, even in the romance category? I was surprised by that.
Neil, usually award winning books are depressing as hell, so I suspect that is where you went wrong. :-)
Thanks, Charming! BTW, the Lambdas have made it clear lately that they are for GLBT writers, not GLBT writing, so a lot of the people who are writing great gay romance novels (ie straight women) are not eligible to enter. And this goes across all categories, not just romance. It's not a policy I agree with but it does narrow the field.
Ok, this is stupid, I see Lambdas and I think Liambdas, and you clearly won that ;-)God, Liam... *whimpers*
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Neil, thank you very much for joining us and commenting on all of our comments! Everything you said was insightful and very interesting!
The plot for the third book sounds REALLY good!!!
As for the Lambdas award, I can see where they're coming from, and there should be an award like that just for LGBT authors. But, maybe someone should invent a new award that would cover all LGBT writing, no matter who the authors are? Then we could have both and us straight women could win awards too!
I think it's important to recognize the writers AND the writing.
I struggled with it, but I just can't not point this out: If a writing awards program publicly stated that they were only going to give awards to 'straight' people, they'd have lawsuits on their hands.For the record, I'm not feeling litigious.
I don't feel comfortable with this policy. Why is it important to make this distinction?
Sylvia wrote: "I don't feel comfortable with this policy. Why is it important to make this distinction?"My read on it is that it's a way to make sure GLBT authors are assured a forum where they are not going to suffer from discrimination. Since I don't have any clue what the politics of other awards programs are, I can't say, but it's possible there is some of this sort of discrimination going on.
I have really mixed feelings about it. I think it's affirming for a group who has suffered discrimination in the past to have a dedicated forum. OTOH, how many authors writing GLBT stories who are straight are going to be discriminated against? It's not like there are a lot of break-out books in M/M romance.
Neil wrote: "Thank you all for your wonderful comments! You have cheered me up so that I don't mind (not much at least) not winning the Lambda for best gay romance."Well, as I get older, I tend to avoid "literary" books if you know what I mean. When I was younger and idealistic, I bought Sartre, Kierkegaard, Frankl, Tolstoy even though they were so expensive back then. I downloaded many classical books including Virginia Woolf's books to read. The result? Most of them were dropped after few chapters. I couldn't get pass several pages of Mrs Dalloway.
I also read some winners at Elisa Rolle's Rainbow Awards. I find some gems like Strawberries for Dessert. But some are not THAT good, at least for me.
I find that most books I enjoy never win any award. Some are best sellers, but award? Very rarely.
Now I rely solely on my friend's reviews or my own judgment to buy books.
This discussion probably belongs somewhere else, but I've never been good at impulse control:How many people here will pick up a book, in part, because it says "Finalist in the XYZ Awards" on the cover/in the blurb?
I usually ignore that. Unless I want to feel like I'm reading something of great social and political import.
Anne wrote: "Sylvia wrote: "I don't feel comfortable with this policy. Why is it important to make this distinction?"My read on it is that it's a way to make sure GLBT authors are assured a forum where they are not going to suffer from discrimination...."
By discriminating and dissociating from other glbt writers? I probably don't understand the purpose of this organisation.
Sylvia wrote: "Anne wrote: "Sylvia wrote: "I don't feel comfortable with this policy. Why is it important to make this distinction?"My read on it is that it's a way to make sure GLBT authors are assured a forum..."
Well, I guess they draw a distinction between writers who are GLBT (presumably, they can win for books with non-GLBT issues), and writers who write about GLBT issues.
What I want to know is, how do they make the distinction? How bi is bi? If I had a girlfriend in high school, but I'm living as a heterosexual now, am I bi or straight?
I guess you have to be out as glbt, I hope they don't make people prove anything ;)
When this policy first came out a year or so ago, I asked if they were going to require proof. Would I have to get a testimonial from my partner? Would they require people to fill out an online form? But apparently it's enough to just say you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, questioning, transgendered, etc. I still think it's discriminatory but I understand the organization's point-- which is to provide a forum for GLBT writers. It's just unfortunate that there are so many straight allies writing wonderful books that wouldn't qualify for these awards.
Neil wrote: "When this policy first came out a year or so ago, I asked if they were going to require proof. Would I have to get a testimonial from my partner? Would they require people to fill out an online for..."Do you know if there has been recent discrimination against GLBT authors?
ETA: In other literary awards program, not in general....
If it were a gay writERS award, based on activism and contribution to the community, I guess I could see drawing that line. But if it's a writING award it really needs to be about the work. It seems a bit much to put limits on who the authors can be and then claim the award is all about the quality of the work.
That's what they have said, Becky. That's it's an award for GLBT writERS, not writING. And as to the discrimination issue Anne raised, I was told in person by the editor in 2009 that Romantic Times magazine would not review gay romance- but that they would accept advertising!
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Thankfully there's Jessewave for the rest of us.
Oh, lord, RT. I quit reading them 10 years ago. Nothing ever got a truly bad review, even though there are clearly bad books published, and the highest ratings always went to the ones that spent the most on advertising. This is probably easy for me to say, because I don't have a book that I'm trying to get exposure for. But not getting reviewed in RT is no great loss.
Romantic Times. Snort. They're barely on my radar, anymore. But that is just so easy for me to believe, that they would refuse to review GLBT romance but be happy to take the money.I've heard similar stories about other 'romance' organizations. I'm sure this sort of segregation is part of what leads to the M/M Erotica genre classification.
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Well, too bad for them, I don't read het romance anyway!
Jordan S. wrote: "Sadly, you're probably right Anne. Well, too bad for them, I don't read het romance anyway!"
We need an emoticon for thumbs in ears, fingers waggling, blowing raspberry.
Thank you, Sylvia! Load off my mind.Okay, and I've been thinking. There are awards programs (and other programs and orgs) out there that are just for women, or just for African-Americans, etc, so why not just for GLBT? I can't speak to whether an African-American book award wouldn't be awarded to someone who wasn't black but wrote about being black (did that make sense?), but I'm pretty sure an award for women writers wouldn't go to a man just because he wrote about being a woman.
Anne wrote: "Thank you, Sylvia! Load off my mind.Okay, and I've been thinking. There are awards programs (and other programs and orgs) out there that are just for women, or just for African-Americans, etc, ..."
I am staying away from this issue. lol. I remember there was uproar when the decision was announced and a lot of muds were thrown by each side.
Neil wrote: "But apparently it's enough to just say you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, questioning, transgendered, etc. "I just noticed the 'questioning' part. I think it might be safe to say that any straight women who's writing M/M has some questions....
Mod
Most of these books are about as realistic as those crazy historicals from the 70s or your average Indian romance. Think about it for a moment. There were/are gay kids growing up and reading gay romance stories written by women who have no more concept of what these kids can/should expect than...well, it's the whole conundrum of romantic fiction. Should we create such unrealistic romantic expectations in the minds of anyone?
To look at it a different way...should gay letters be exempt from the unreality of romantic fiction any more than any other genre? No. Of course not. But at the same time, it should be clear why there was an issue.
I do not in any way condone the decision to exclude straight writers -- it's made the awards essentially meaningless in my opinion -- but at the same time I do understand and support the Lambda committee's right to make such a decision.
BUT I think that it amounts to spitting in the wind. And it's driven largely by selfish considerations. However, this genre has suffered commercialization like no other in recent history. That's because same sex love is the one bastion of romance that had yet to be breached. To be commercialized.
If you look at it big picture...it's a positive thing. It could never be anything but positive that so many people now not only tolerate, they support the idea of same sex relations. The only people who believe this is not positive are those unwilling to take a historical look back. As recently as the 1950s, even the 60s...70s...well, not to go into a tirade.
Anyway, this is the last gasp of isolationism. It's the final and failing attempt to control the gay literary experience. The ultimate irony is that in order to be truly accepted and amalgamated into mainstream culture, this *had* to happen. To be truly accepted for what you are is to be turned into cheese whiz. :-D It cannot -- nor should be -- stopped. No one is exempt. In order to be absorbed by mainstream, there has to be a kind of leveling out and homogenization. But after that point is reached, it begins to swing around again and individual voices can be heard.
Welcome back, Josh. In no way I want to argue one point or another, but I am rather confused by your statement:
"Anyway, this is the last gasp of isolationism. It's the final and failing attempt to control the gay literary experience. The ultimate irony is that in order to be truly accepted and amalgamated into mainstream culture, this *had* to happen."
what is "this"? That Lambda Awards should make such a decision?
To be truly accepted for what you are is to be turned into cheese whiz. :-D
You mean for gays to be accepted or for women to be accepted as gay romance writers? And sorry, I am not familiar with US slang, cheese wiz?
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Jordan S. wrote: "lol, Cleon, cheese wiz is a fake cheese people put on crackers and eat. It comes out of a can, if I recall. I wouldn't eat it if you paid me, but some people love it!"EWW...
I don't know how to express myself and today is such a bad day I am probably not only bitter, but sour. Anyway. Sometimes I wonder if by reading and recommending m/m romance as a straight woman I am: a) exploiting feelings for my personal enjoyment that I have no right to embrace; b) if by buying and reading m/m books I'm doing more wrong than right; c) if some of my comments - which I admit are often childish and shallow but in good faith - may cause hurt or offence.
I just can't take it easy, lol
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Everyone posts something every now and then that they might regret. But as of yet, I haven't read one from you that would cause hurt or offence. At least not to me anyway.
Jordan S. wrote: "Emanuela, I don't get that at all. You have every right to enjoy what you enjoy. Otherwise, why both with anything at all? And by buying m/m you're doing more right than wrong. Everyone posts som..."
I agree. We enjoy what we enjoy, even if we don't know why. My friends think I am weird, but well... I am who I am, including liking M/M stories.
Emanuela ~Zstyx~ wrote: "I don't know how to express myself and today is such a bad day I am probably not only bitter, but sour. Anyway. Sometimes I wonder if by reading and recommending m/m romance as a straight woman..."
Emanuela, I totally understand what you mean, and I especially resonated with point (a). OTOH, I know gay people who read het romance, and they don't feel they're trying to 'own' some experience that they have no right to. Of course, they actually are one of the genders present in the sex scenes....
Cleon, I think what Josh is referring to is the explosion of M/M romance, and how the genre as a whole is becoming exploited. Just like any other idea that becomes popular, it gets sort of 'dumbed down' to make it palatable to more and more people. Dumbed down is probably a bad term, but....
My partner loves spray can cheese, and it's an essential part of our hurricane preparedness kit, along with a box of crackers. But it's pretty far from real cheese. William Styron was criticized for writing The Autobiography of Nat Turner; the idea was how could a white man write authentically of the black experience. I think Josh is saying that writing about someone whose sexual orientation (and, for the most part, gender) you don't share is the last of these barriers to come down.
We can, and should, write about anyone we want to-- as long as we work to make those characters real and authentic. The danger that the Lambda board felt is that if straight women took over the genre, they would be objectifying gay men, focusing merely on their sexual lives, to the detriment of everything else.
I can't say whether this has really happened or not; I'm glad to read good writing about GLBT characters, regardless of who wrote it. I have seen in this discussion a bit of complaint about the over-emphasis of sex scenes in some M/M romance; I think that complaint is connected to the Lambda Board's actions.
Most of what I write is in the mystery genre, and I know several straight women (P.A. Brown, Caro Soles, Haley Walsh) who write terrific gay characters in well-written books, and I'm sorry that this policy leaves them, and many great writers of M/M romance, out of contention for these prizes.
"Objectifying": that was the concept I wasn't able to express and that's what I wouldn't want to do.
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I actually knew about Lambda's policy (and I am fine with it - see below). I was still surprised I didn't recognize most of the entrants, but now that I have read Josh's comment, I think I know why. If Lambda is looking for more realism, that naturally tends to take them away from romance. I think they were looking for gay novels with a romantic element, more than true romance (though Neil's novel is a true romance, so I may be entirely wrong here). The winner certainly seems more, I guess, literary than most of what I have been reading lately.Now, the policy. As I said above, I am fine with it. I did enough course work to get a minor in women's studies, and I understand about feeling co-opted by the prevailing culture (feels funny to now be the prevailing culture!) It may be hopeless to try to exert this kind of control, but I don't see it as selfish or mean. It comes from a desire to protect something good.
Emanuela, I totally get what you are saying. It does feel a bit odd to spend so much time reading about relationships and sex scenes between two gay guys. I don't to want be objectifying or, you know, fetishizing. Again Josh's comments are helpful here - it happens to us all, and it comes with plenty of good things, so it's OK. We as women have certainly put up with people who aren't us being attracted to and intrigued by us. Unless someone is obnoxious about it, my feeling is it's OK. I hope so anyway.
I'm so glad you guys are discussing this, because I have to admit it's something I've worried over. When I was just reading and writing for myself, it was no big. Everyone is entitled to like what they like. But once I put books out there with m/m romantic and sexual interactions I have to wonder, am I doing it right? Does the fact that we're all human trump the fact that I don't have the equipment or the experiences to work from my own knowledge, so that everything I'm writing that's explicitly gay comes from stuff I've read. And a lot of what I've read was written by other women, so am I propagating errors like some literary game of telephone? Do gay men look at my work and cringe and hope that young gay boys don't take this stuff for real before they find out what the world is actually like? Are we turning aged cheddar into Cheese Whiz?I hope that the heart of the stories, the emotions and the humanity, trumps the errors that creep in. But I don't know, can't know. On the other hand I've never been a cop, and I've written about several of them too, so I guess I'm warping their world experience too. All I know is, I don't want to stop writing this stuff, and yet I don't want to offend the men who live it.
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Too many people say "write what you know" but how can you grow and change and get better as a writer, as a person, if you stick to only that?
Kaje wrote: "I'm so glad you guys are discussing this, because I have to admit it's something I've worried over. When I was just reading and writing for myself, it was no big. Everyone is entitled to like wha..."I've felt all those same things. But I read M/F for years, and women were mostly writing that, yet the same fallacies got play. For instance: the myth of the hymen. That doesn't make it right to perpetrate misconceptions in this genre (or any other), it just makes me feel a little better about it when I do make mistakes.
I can understand Lambda's policy and decision, but I think it has little to do with how realistic gay literature written by straight writers is. They should just go out and say that they celebrate achievement of gay writers, who are still a minority group that get often overlooked by mainstream book awards. Not necessarily an award for gay literature. I see the spirits behind Lambda the same as BET Awards, they are there to stand up for the black musicians more than the type of music they play. But even BET has non African American nominees? ;)
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No no. In order to truly integrate -- which I personally think is the healthiest option for society as a whole -- you (meaning art or culture or whatever the object under discussion) must not only be accepted by mainstream society, you have to be amalgamated.
And that amalgamation ultimately means being diluted. Diffused. Or maybe being "defused" is a better word.
What I mean is...people are afraid of that which is different and strange to them. And if they are ill-educated, they hate what they fear. So part of integration is to make common what was formerly exotic and strange, to make familiar, to make...comfortable.
But at the same time when you do that, you often take away what makes a thing special and unique. Or to grab a food metaphor: the hot tangy flavors in ethnic foods are replaced by milder spices so that more people can eat and enjoy them.
Anyway, not to get too heavy or philosophical. It's just that the romanticization and commercialization of gay romance is kind of a mixed blessing. With this familiarity comes acceptance and tolerance, but it also brings a warped reality of a gay experience as perceived by not-gay writers.
And this wouldn't be a big deal (maybe it really isn't a big deal -- there won't be any way of knowing for a decade or two) if there hadn't been this (relatively) huge explosion of popularity in this tiny sub-genre.
It's mind-boggling how many people are writing in this sub-genre merely because it looks lucrative. Writers go where the money is, of course, but in this case where the "money" is lies with someone else's cultural heritage.
Which is the long way of saying I don't blame the Lambda committee for their decision, it's just that -- looking at this big picture -- it's like the little Dutch boy.
I'm not sure I've ever seen such a massive literary appropriation of someone else's cultural experience before...although it's probably happened. The difference is that because of the tools of technology, it's happening in a more in-your-face manner (even though I believe that's not the intention of anyone writing in this genre).
Mod
Okay, and I've been thinking. There are awards programs (and other programs and orgs) out there that are just for women, or just for African-Americans, etc, ..."
It makes sense in this case for a variety of reasons -- the Lambdas are not just about literary merit.
The problem is they did *used* to be just about literary merit, so to change the criteria at this particular point in time does feel rather personal to many writers.
That's not to say that it shouldn't have happened, just that it's bound to result in mixed feelings.
Q&A with Josh Lanyon
Books mentioned in this topic
Primal Red (other topics)Lessons in Love (other topics)
Lessons in Love (other topics)
Lessons in Love (other topics)
Hi Neil, and thanks for answering the question. I was afraid you might not 'show your face' after we so completely dissected your story! :)
It's obvious from everything you said here today that you have a true love for these 2 characters; it also comes through in your writing of them. Your sense of place and plot is amazing. Like everyone else, I felt I was in Tunisia, not just reading about it.
The set-up you described for Book 3 sounds like the best one yet. I can't wait!
Thanks again for taking the time to comment.