Arts

Honest Writing and Dual Natures

One of the most difficult aspects of writing (for me; your mileage may vary) is treading the line between my own life and experiences and the situations I create for my characters. Most of us jokingly talk about our characters as though they have minds and wills of their own, but the truth is, they come from inside us, from the collection of our thoughts and feelings and histories.

I’ve been wrestling lately with the ongoing conversations about #OwnVoices books and good representation. I cannot, and will not try to, represent every person from a particular group. Anyone looking for perfection or someone who captures their personal experience is better off looking for either an author whose history closely matches theirs or else writing their own. That is not to say I won’t be sensitive to poor characterization and stereotypes, but trying to get every detail “right” is an exercise in futility. There will always be someone who claims it’s wrong for them, and the effort can result in books that read as “educational” rather than authentic storytelling.

With that in mind, I wondered what it is that I can bring to the table. I sometimes feel inadequate as a writer. I’ve only been at this for a comparatively short time, at least in publishing. Almost exactly three years ago, I sent my first manuscript to a publisher. I will be forever grateful to the friend who encouraged me and a publisher willing to take a chance. I now have half a dozen novels to my credit (#6 is out in less than a week), with one more in edits, one in the writing stage, and one in the planning stage. Hardly a veteran, but at least now I know more what I’m doing than I did at the start. Even so, it’s hard not to be insecure in the face of so many successful authors.

I’m finally beginning to see some patterns in what I write. For most of my life, I’ve felt like I was “in between.” I’ve never really fit into one category or another in many ways. This comes out often in my writing. In particular, I like dealing with the juxtaposition of faith/doubt, belief vs. unbelief. Interestingly, I get comments quite often on this from readers.

My relationship to religion is complicated. On the one hand, it’s been a source of great pain and trauma. There are many things in my life which likely would have been different if I had not spent so long in conservative/fundamentalist spheres. On the other hand, it’s been a source of life for me as well. This is something I like to grapple with in my work. It’s where I’m most honest.

I’ve written a lot of religious-spectrum characters, more often than not fictionalizing my internal struggle. I also like to play around with what it means to be a person of faith, sometimes allowing my characters to freely express themselves spiritually in ways the church considers taboo.

It’s possible there will never be a time when I feel whole, fully healed from these spiritual wounds. I’ve come to accept that. I went through a period of time when I wished I could “pick a side” in many ways. Now I see it as being a good thing, a way in which there are opportunities to grow and find balance and harmony between my dual identities. Belief/unbelief is simply another facet of that, and one which drives a lot of my creative force.

There’s no telling what the future will bring, but I think rather than worrying about whether I’m “getting it right” when it comes to a character’s identity, this is what I want to focus on. I can be brutally, painfully honest about these matters because they are so close to my soul.

What about you? What brings you to your place of greatest creative energy?

Rainbow Snippets Old and New

Fiction, Other Relationships, Writing

Happy Saturday! I don’t think I’ve posted since seeing WICKED. It was amazing, of course. We followed it up with a trip to the mountains, and now it’s the end of vacation week. It’s been pretty relaxing all around. I’m gearing up for one last concert next weekend, and then performance season is done for me but just starting for my kids.

I have a new release on May 1: Nightsong (Notes from Boston #2). This is the sequel to last year’s Anthem, about a Christian contemporary artist coming out as bisexual. I’ll be posting from the new release starting next week, complete with a giveaway or two.

The series is mostly standalone, with a new couple each time but mainly the same characters. There’s a series-long subplot, but otherwise they can be read together or apart. As a bit of background, I’m snipping from Anthem this week to give a bit of the history between the MCs of both books (Trevor in Anthem and Nate in Nightsong). Context: They’ve just moved into an apartment. Nate and Trevor have a history. Bit over 6 sentences, sorry.

Trevor looked down at his hands. “No. Real because it’s more than just messing with each other in bed now and again.” He glanced at Nate, whose face was stony. “I’ve always been with Marlie, and I thought it was understood she and I would eventually stay together. What you and I did was great, but it’s part of the past now. Fooling around between friends. Did it mean something else?”

Nate’s head was tipped back, and his gaze was firmly fixed on the ceiling. “It’s how I knew I would never be able to pretend to like girls.”

Rainbow Snippets is a safe and welcoming space for LGBTQIA+ authors, readers, and bloggers to share 6 sentences each week from a work of fiction—published or in-progress—or a book recommendation. Feel free to join in!

WIPpet Wednesday: Blast from the Past

Fiction, Other Relationships, Writing

Happy Wednesday! We’re on spring break here. Our family spent the first few days out of town. Now that we’re back, I’m catching up on all kinds of reading. I’ll be posting a number of reviews in the coming weeks. I’ve had a bunch of requests for reviews of science fiction, which should be interesting.

Speaking of catching up, I’ll have some writing to do once everyone’s back in school next week. I need to finish my short story about the former missionary. I’ll post from that for a bit until I have enough written in my other WIPs. I ended up cutting about half of what I had written. Usually I wait until edits, but I figured out I was taking it in the wrong direction. The story is far less bulky without it, and I can always recycle bits of it for another WIP.

WIPmath: 4/19/17 = 1 + 9 = 1 paragraph, 9 sentences

Jo looked at the RSVP phone number. Of course it was Annie James. If Jo called her, Annie would talk her into going. With any of the others, Jo could have politely declined, and that would’ve been the end of it. They likely only invited her because they’d agreed to, not because they wanted to see her. Jo imagined all of them as adult versions of the girls they’d been. Pretty, proper women with “hearts for the Lord.” Like Jo, they might have adult children following in their footsteps. Unlike Jo, their children probably still spoke to them, probably allowed them contact with their grandchildren.

Like what you read? Be sure to check out the other entries and add your own. Just post a bit of your WIP, connect it to the date, and link up with us. Many thanks to Emily Witt for giving us this space. Happy reading and writing!

Review: Reunions (Hiding Behind the Couch #7) by Debbie McGowan

Books, Reviews

About the Book

Title: Reunions

Series: Hiding Behind the Couch (#7)

Author: Debbie McGowan

Categories: Contemporary/general fiction

Publisher: Beaten Track

Publication date: 19 April, 2017

Length: 808 pages/240k words

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30975954-reunions

Synopsis

When greed, fear and obsession rule the senses, danger is never more than a heartbeat away.

A night of celebration affords the perfect opportunity for an unlikely band of criminals to make their move, but as details emerge, it soon becomes clear the crime is far more sophisticated than the police first thought.

And that’s only the beginning.

* * * * *

Reunions is Season Seven in the Hiding Behind The Couch series.

This instalment follows chronologically from Two By Two (Season Six) and Those Jeffries Boys.

* * * * *

WARNING: this story touches on themes of suicide ideation, sudden infant death, cancer, dementia, drug dependency and dissociative PTSD. These are not graphically or gratuitously depicted, but may, nonetheless, cause distress to some readers.

The story also includes a few brief scenes of an intimate (non-explicit) nature.

Purchase Links

Beaten Track [paperback] | Beaten Track [eBook] | Amazon | Amazon UK | Smashwords

Review

Note: I pre-read a copy of this novel, but to my knowledge, there are no large changes to the plot or structure. This review does not contain spoilers.

If the length of the novel seems intimidating, don’t let it fool you. There’s enough going on to keep readers’ interest all the way through. Although I highly recommend starting this series from the beginning (many things will make a lot more sense), in theory, this could be read alone. There are spoilers for the entire rest of the series, but readers who don’t care about that should be able to catch up easily. A lot of it is briefly recapped in the text. If nothing else, it might spark an interest in the rest.

This is a novel which reads almost like a television series, and it works perfectly every time. The sections are divided into “episodes,” and there’s a season-long plot thread with two converging strands. It’s partially a mystery which unfolds as the story goes on. We start off knowing (mostly) whodunnit, but there’s more than meets the eye. I loved this arc because we’re introduced (and re-introduced) to some fantastic side characters. I would love to see what ultimately happens to them, but I’m equally content to let their storylines be. I thought that plot strand was fantastic in showing how someone gets wrapped up in something he shouldn’t and the intricacies of leaving a non-romantic/non-intimate abusive relationship.

And speaking of romance and intimacy, there’s plenty of love going on. There are a lot of couples, and as much as each character has a personality, they also have a “couple personality.” I’ve enjoyed the developments and changes between them over time. There’s a range of heat levels to the intimate scenes, all while keeping them understated and low-detail. I appreciate this because I think in this context, it would become tedious reading multiple explicit sex scenes. I would rather not spoil previous books for anyone who hasn’t read them, so I won’t outline the pairings. I will say that there are couple-related storylines which held me emotionally captive for being so real and exposed.

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Josh. I started reading these books because I liked him so much and had to know more about him. I found it interesting that he seemed to take less center stage in this one than in previous books. Not that he didn’t have plenty of page time, but it was almost like he stepped back just a little bit. This is all right with me, as I’ve now become attached to everyone else and will gladly read about any of them. That said, one of the sub-plots involving Josh and his family grabbed my attention because it involved some tough decisions by the adults regarding the teenagers. It was quite well done, enough that I asked my own teenager/pre-teen how they would handle such a situation with a friend.

There’s a lot of really good social commentary throughout, from a wide range of ages and perspectives. There are some heavy themes, as detailed in the content note on the synopsis. As with the intimacy and the mild/infrequent violence, they’re not explicit or heavy-handed. Everything is carefully crafted to give readers a good experience rather than played for shock or to upset. Still, handle with care, as these things may bring up strong feelings. I hope that they also stir compassion for the various things the characters are dealing with.

I’m already feeling a bit of loss that I finished; I’d like more. I don’t think I’ll ever be tired of reading about these people.

For characters who are like family, deep and broad emotional range, and excellent writing, this gets 10/10 fountain pens.

About the Author

Author, publisher, social scientist. My academic specialism is gender and sexual politics and identity, so you can expect this to crop up now and then in my writing too! Not in an “in your face” kind of way – subtlety wins hearts and minds.

I write character-based/driven fiction – mostly general/contemporary, some (M/M, F/M, N-B) romance and a bit of sci-fi fantasy (light). Basically, I write about life. I’ve written a few stand alone novels and short stories, but my main work is the Hiding Behind The Couch series, which these days I’m referring to as a literary soap opera. Each novel/novella concludes, but there are always a few loose ends to be picked up and threaded on to the next instalment. There are longer threads and shorter threads.

Novels and short novellas are stand-alone and can be read individually, or as part of the series.
I know readers find it hard to navigate a series, so here it is in order (November, 2016):

Beginnings
Ruminations
Class-A
Hiding Behind The Couch (Season One)
No Time Like The Present (Season Two)
The Harder They Fall (Season Three)
Chain of Secrets
Crying in the Rain
First Christmas
In The Stars Part I (Season Four)
Breaking Waves
In The Stars Part II (Season Five)
A Midnight Clear
Red Hot Christmas
Two By Two (Season Six)
Hiding Out
Those Jeffries Boys
The WAG and The Scoundrel
Breakfast at Cordelia’s Aquarium
Reunions (Season Seven)

I also run a socialist (profit share) independent publishing company: Beaten Track Publishing.

Social Media

Fitting in and Finding a Home

Books, Writing

After yet another big blow-up in the M/M romance community, I was feeling pretty down. I blogged about The Incident last week, and you can read that here. I’m not going to rehash it. To be honest, I don’t have a dog in this fight in the sense of being part of the M/M community anyway. That’s the part I want to talk about today because I think it might be important.

A whole lot of people said their piece about The Incident, but this blog post was the one which really struck a chord. Not because I identify with the author’s specific journey (I obviously don’t) but because of this quote:

I started out writing stories as a form of therapy. It was my catharsis, my coping mechanism for processing my grief. I wrote from my core, from my very soul. It was never about appealing to the right demographic in order to sell a lot of copies.

I’ve been turning over in my mind what it is I get out of writing and why I do it. And I’ll be honest, whether or not I want to keep writing and/or keep reviewing books. I even had that conversation with some trusted friends and got some good advice. Namely, figure out why the hell I’m an author.

It was sort of an accident, but now that I’m here, I like it. I write because of the reason above. It provides a way for me to express some of the things I can’t say any other way. (I could write a whole blog post on why it makes me absolutely lose my shit when people demand “perfect” representation even in Own Voices books, but this is the main reason why. If I’m writing on a subject, it’s because there’s something deeply personal to me about it. Go away with expecting my actual life to look like your perfect representation or with telling me you’re “tired of” seeing people deal with issues.)

I don’t have a huge following, and I’m not sure I care. I have an oddly loyal fan group of open-minded straight men. I’ve also got a group of my fellow bi folk who like what I have to offer and a handful of others of various genders and orientations. Interestingly, even though I don’t write explicitly Christian fiction, I also have a following of Christians who like my work. Go figure.

What I’m missing, though, is the feeling of community. The biggest challenge for me has been in promotions. If I were self-publishing, it would be no big deal. But I’m not, which means I owe it to my publisher and colleagues to contribute to the company. That generally means having people review (and not hate) my books, as well as networking and some amount of marketing so I have actual sales.

Thus brings the difficulty: I don’t write romance.

That might not sound like a problem, but trust me, it is. Not writing in a specific genre can be a huge problem. Genre is, essentially, a marketing tool rather than a type of story. However, readers tend to get attached to their preferred genre. Books are categorized by various methods, but one thing I’ve found to be consistently true is that if there is a relationship between two LGBTQIA characters, it’s often classified as “romance” even if it’s also included in other genres. The problem with that is how it doesn’t match reader expectations, even if it’s true in a broad sense. The same thing can happen in any genre, but Romance as a category is one of the largest, regardless of the characters’ genders.

The other problem is in finding reviewers. There are a limited number of blogs reviewing LGBTQIA books in general. The majority of those cater to M/M romance because it’s the largest volume of books. Within the blogs which take other books, many reviewers still prefer or expect romance, even if it’s lesbian or trans or what have you. Even more narrowly, there’s still an expectation that within the context of those books, they will conform to certain standards. If a book’s genre is listed as Romance, then most people want the book to deliver. That’s not entirely unreasonable, but it does get frustrating when it comes to listing books which contain elements of different genres but don’t fit industry expectations.

With LGBTQIA books, there’s an emphasis on the “pairing” even when you make it clear you don’t write romance or that particular novel isn’t a romance. I’ve participated in a lot of promotional blogs/tours, and it’s unbelievable the number of places which want you to fill out data on the two romantic leads regardless of your stated genre. This is not always easy even when the story does involve some type of romantic plot. It’s downright impossible if there’s no pairing or the relationship is complex.

So what the heck do I do with a bisexual literary novel with a romantic plot involving a polyamorous family where there isn’t ménage? Or the one with a pair of men in a primary relationship, both of whom have partners unconnected to each other, including women? How about the one with a triad of a bisexual cisgender woman, a bisexual trans man, and their bisexual aromantic cisgender male partner? Those are the relationships, but neither the romantic elements nor the characters’ genders/orientations are the focus or the main plot.

I’m not the only one with this problem. A lot of us write crossover fiction (spanning more than one genre) or have a primary genre and a secondary one. It happens a lot in LGBTQIA fiction because the emphasis tends to be on people’s partner relationships. A constant struggle for me is that I often include a romantic/love plot, but it isn’t the biggest thing going on in the book. This puts people off who are looking for Romance Genre.

So here are some of the people affected by genre M/M Romance taking center stage:

Authors writing romance that breaks genre boundaries or includes non-traditional elements
Authors writing romance about sexualities, genders, and pairings other than cisgender male/male
Authors of gay romance or erotica (distinctly different from M/M)
Authors not writing romance, particularly literary fiction
Readers looking for any of the above

My sense is that authors of romance outside traditional, genre M/M are finding each other and creating space. There’s an active lesbian romance community, and there are blogs dedicated to reviewing trans and non-binary romance. The asexual community is also connecting. So the people most affected are those of us who don’t write romance/exclusively romance.

There’s definitely some overlap, since some books may not be Genre Romance but contain a love story. Which is how we end up with muddled messes periodically, including fighting over what “belongs” in the category. A lot of us have felt that we didn’t have a home, so we needed to try to fit into the M/M community. I can’t speak to anyone else’s experience, only mine. After my first novel, which was absolutely not a romance, I learned exactly how people feel when they think they’re getting M/M and discover the book isn’t that. I tried to write a “real” romance, and let me tell you, I am not good at it. But I didn’t see any other place for my work than to try to conform.

Please excuse me while I go laugh my ass off at myself. There is no possible way I will ever conform to anything.

I don’t really know how to resolve this. I know that after last week’s mess, I want nothing to do with a community in which someone can behave like that and not care one iota about it while others sit back and do nothing (or actively contribute to hate). I’m not very interested in all just getting along and having a love-fest. That should’ve been a time for people to step up and tell these folks that what they did was unacceptable. Instead, over and over and over both allies and even some queer folk stomped on the people who were upset. I don’t feel welcome, especially since I was never wanted anyway as a non-romance-writer.

So that leaves us…where? Many of us rely on “LGBTQIA” (read: M/M romance) review blogs to boost sales and get our books noticed. But if we don’t feel safe or welcome for whatever reasons, then where do we turn? I don’t have a good answer.

I’m only one author, with a handful of colleagues and readers. Even this blog will probably be read by approximately 10 people, most of whom will agree but may not have an answer or be in a position to do anything about it. I’m open to ideas, though, and I definitely want to find my not-a-romance peers, especially if they’re open to a wide range of LGBTQIA stories. It would be great to be able to read and/or promote each other’s work.

WIPpet Wednesday: Former Missionary

Fiction, Other Relationships, Writing

Happy Wednesday! We finally got to see WICKED on Sunday. What a show! No wonder it’s my daughter’s favorite. Not one but two of my acquaintances had friends in the cast. So before the show, we got to message with one of the actors, and afterward, we met the other (as well as getting autographs from the two main characters). My 11yo had chosen to see this one, so I didn’t think I’d get to go to any others this season. But another friend asked if I wanted to go see Cabaret, so in a little less than a month, I’ll be back in the theater for that one. In almost exactly a month, my 13yo and the rest of the cast of Barnum will be back on stage in that same theater for a local event. Next season, we’ll be seeing Rent, and the year after…Hamilton! (In case it’s not clear, I love musical theater in any form.)

Okay, on to the WIPpet. I have several WIPs going:

Short stories related to Cat/Micah
A longish short story about a former missionary
Drumbeat, the sequel to Anthem and Nightsong
An as-yet-untitled YA
A sequel to An Act of Devotion

Yes, I know that’s a lot. But my brain doesn’t work well trying to focus on one thing until I have enough written that I hyperfocus. I share some traits of ADHD with my son, and that’s one of them. So I’ve learned to go with it.

Today, I’m setting aside the short about LR and posting a bit from my (needs a title) short about the missionary. It’s priority right now, as it’s the next thing I need to finish.

WIPmath: 4/12 = 4 + 12 = 16 sentences

Jo stared at the card in her hand. It was addressed under her pre-married name, Hodges. She hadn’t yet changed it back, even after two divorces, the most recent one less than a year old. The person had sent it to her eighty-three-year-old mother, who had laughed and forwarded it on. Even she recognized the sheer foolishness of anyone thinking Jo wanted to be reminded of her missionary summer.

Forty years. That was the reason for the postcard invitation. When they were still untouched by the events at the end of their trip, she and five other girls had agreed they would meet every ten years on the anniversary to catch up on each other’s lives. Whether it was because she’d moved—and changed names—twice or because her mother had thrown out the previous invitations, Jo had never received one until now. She wouldn’t have been surprised to learn her mother had burned them, though she couldn’t fathom why she would pass this one along.

If everyone showed, all five of the others would be meeting back in the same part of Chicago where they’d spent a summer fixing houses and making Bible-themed artwork with school-aged children. Jo was the only one, as far as she knew, who still lived there. She’d stayed to make it right after what had happened that summer, but she’d only succeeded in making more messes. Three of them, in fact. She supposed she was fortunate her mother had come around eventually. If only some of that would rub off on Jo’s grown daughter.

Honest Writing and Dual Natures

Rainbow Snippets Old and New

WIPpet Wednesday: Blast from the Past