Somebody fire that fuckin penguin.

It's happening again, guys. Come on. We need to get our act together.

Conservatives have discovered and exposed the gay agenda again.

This is like the millionth time we've been found out. It's bad enough that they saw through our thinly-veiled requests for equality in the equal marriage debate, now they're on to the Banned Book Week gambit. It's only a matter of time before one of these guys gets around to watching Glee and discovers Operation Klainebow in full swing. We can't subvert and destroy the fabric of society if people like Safelibraries.org and MissionAmerica.org are on the case, stitching it back together the second we rend it to pieces.

And somebody take Silo off the goddamn payroll. We paid that fuckin' penguin good money to play gay for us only to have him discover his male love for a female penguin. I said, didn't I, at the last agenda meeting? You cannot trust a penguin.

TRAITOR

Now we find ourselves in the awkward position of having to re-write 'And Tango Makes Three' to reflect the fact that the true story it was loosely based on has taken a different turn. I understand this to be a very common problem in the world of literature and entertainment. We can take our cues from Danny Boyle's apology for 127 Hours as a template for this:

"It is with great remorse that I unreservedly apologise for my film, 127 Hours. I understand that many people went to see it on the basis that Aron Ralston was forced to amputate his arm after a rock climbing accident. They were quite understandably outraged when they discovered that Ralston now has a prosthetic arm, rendering my depiction of him as a one-armed man quite false and very misleading. I have withdrawn the film from sale and will never make another film again."

Somebody get writing.

We made another classic beginner's mistake with Banned Book Week. Here's a summary:

Harvey said the ALA "has become a megaphone for leftist values and a disinformation tool to prevent traditional values from getting much shelf space in libraries."

I think we all see the problem here. It's obvious. The ten books that we are secretly trying to push into the hands of every innocent straight child in the world are FAR TOO BIG.

Shelf space is very important. These big gay books are taking up the space of maybe three or four traditional values books, and that's drawing attention to them. It's kind of hard to keep a low profile when the books we're subversively sneaking on to the bookshelves of sweet, unspoiled American libraries are taking up entire shelves that used to be occupied by stories about sensible, uneventful marriages. My recommendation, if it means anything to the board of gay directors, is that we pick another list of much smaller books as a matter of urgency. Maybe even just one or two page pamphlets that get right to the heart of the agenda.

Hello, young man. Kiss a boy, then adopt a baby!

There. That ought to do it.

I want this resolved by the next Agenda meeting, okay? Oh and Thommeusse, it is your turn to bring the plate of french pastries. Do not show up empty handed again.

Not sure if genuinely trying, or wasting time...

I'm in a bit of state of limbo at the moment. I'm juggling queries, waiting to hear back from people, and unable to touch any manuscripts for fear that someone will say 'please send me your work' and I'll only have a half-gutted draft. So what's a nervous aspiring writer to do?

Try something totally different, of course!

This is so different, however, that I'm kind of concerned that I'm completely wasting my time. I've outlined twenty-four half-hour episodes of a Sci-Fi Action/Adventure TV series called 'Sovereigns'. It's kind of a Firefly/Cowboy Beebop thing. I really like it, but I've never written screenplays before and I'm fairly sure that selling scripts like these is much harder than selling a novel.

All the same, here's the very first page of the very first episode, 'A Blackeye Junkie'. Exclusive to the Internet!

Currrently writing: Episode Seven. I might make it to episode 24 one day, who knows!

Gay Secondary Characters can slay the Dark Scary

I have a little fantasy that I sometimes allow to play out in my head when I'm bored. It requires that I make a few assumptions, big assumptions, listed as follows:

1) I have become an author successful enough to do a book tour.
2) I have written a successful series of books with a gay protagonist.
3) These books have generated a delicious amount of outrage in the conservative sectors of the world.

The fantasy begins in a Q&A session with avid fans of the books. Everyone, but especially me, is having an amazing time. The room's full of young gay readers who are stoked to find a leading man they can identify with. It's full of straight fangirls that just cannot contain their squees at the idea of two cute boys having a kiss and a cuddle. It's full of other straight readers and parents of children who are huge fans of the book's setting, plot and flavour. This fantasy is going swimmingly up until this point.

And that's when this one lady stands up. Or maybe it's a man, it doesn't matter. S/he is just old enough to have teenage children of his/her own, and they have an opinion they'd like to share. "Tell me," S/he begins, "what inspired you to write this mind corrupting filth? Was your goal the total collapse of moral framework in Australia/America/Europe/The World, or just the reckless destruction of the frail minds of my own children?" It is here, dear reader, that the fantasy goes into hyper-ego mode. What follows is nothing short of superiority porn.

"Sir/Madam," I begin, "this is normally where most authors would tell you that, if you are offended, you are welcome not to read the books in the first place. Common wisdom says that you're welcome to disagree with the content of a book and that nobody has a right to force it upon you. At the risk of offending, however, my response to you will be slightly different. Because you see, you are exactly the type of person that needs to read this book the most. Everyone in this room has seen and felt something positive after reading these books. The fact that you refuse to see the same things over such a trivial issue as the leading character's sexuality is proof positive that your horizons need broadening." 

At this point in the fantasy, I sound exactly like him.

Stunned by my wordy riposte, this imaginary sap doesn't even interrupt me. "You've walked yourself in to a nice little walled off section of literature, declared everything outside of it to be non-existent and dangerous, and slammed the door behind you. Well, knock, knock, sir/madam. Here I come. I hope you're afraid of the big, bad wolf, because I'm right outside. And I'm going to huff, and I'm going to puff, and I'm going to blow your goddamn house down."

Also, whenever I get to the wolf part in the fantasy, I look exactly like this.

The room erupts with wild applause and the deluded lady/gentleman that I've been addressing suddenly sees the error of their ways. All these people can't be wrong, they think, and even though I've just been used as a punching bag by an immature writer and had my worldview belittled and ridiculed, I'm prepared to forgive on account of it made me a better person. We look at one another and nod, having come to an understanding. Pizza arrives even though nobody ordered it. Then we all watch funny cat videos on YouTube for hours, occasionally laughing with our new found friend at how stupid their opinions were before they had their eyes opened.

As fantasies go, it is elaborate and snobbish in the highest degree. But it makes me smile, which is all a fantasy needs to do, and so it will always have a place in my repertoire of things to imagine when the internet goes down and I'm bored.


There are two nebulous reasons why this little fantasy could never be anything but a little piece of escapism (besides the fact that all of my assumptions listed above are most definitely false). The first is that I'm generally a polite and nice fellow and, even if I lucked out on being in the exact situation I'd been mentally preparing for, I would never say something so confrontational. The second is that such an exchange with somebody who was dead against gay themes in YA fiction would be utterly self-defeating and unhelpful.

I don't think I'll encounter many denials that people like the gender-neutral upstart in my fantasy exist. I mean, the campaigns to ban Harry Potter because of its 'inappropriate content' were widespread and well publicised -- and that was well before anyone discovered that Dumbledore had achieved an OWL in fabulousness.

If Grindelwald liked it, he should have put a ring on it.

There are always going to be those who are actively opposed to gay themes in fiction - especially fiction for children and young adults. On top of them, there are always going to be those who aren't necessarily opposed to them, but who also don't want to read these themes themselves. I'm paraphrasing that lightly. The way you might usually hear this is 'I don't mind that there are books with gay people in them, but I don't want them shoved in my face'. Actually, don't take my word for it. Here's a comment by 'Anonymous' on The Swivet that sums it up nicely.

As a reader, I don't want to be force-fed something I'm not comfortable with reading or dealing with. This goes for anything, not just homosexual content.

Do homosexuals exist? Do rapists exist? Do drug addicts and drug dealers exist? Do dark and scary things exist?

Yes. But that doesn't mean I want to read about it.

Please, readers, I'm asking you to put aside for a moment the fact that this person is conflating homosexuality with rape, drug addiction and 'dark, scary things'. We're all agreed - that says far more about this particular person's prejudice than it does about truth, reality and human decency in general. We know that they are wrong, we know why. So let's have a discussion about how we go about changing this particular reader's mind on the subject.

The chances that a fire-and-brimstone takedown of the like in my fantasy will work to expose a reader like this to the themes and the Dark Scary that they so hate are exactly zero percent. Likewise, the chances that a reader like this will pick up a book that looks, feels, sounds or smells even slightly 'gay' are exactly zero. This is a reader living within that walled off section of literature, barricaded off from the rest of the reading world. They've employed a bouncer to stand on the door. The policy is no gays allowed, and in their world there is nothing bigoted or wrong with that. It doesn't matter a single bit to them that, with minimal effort, they could discover that the Dark Scary they're so avidly avoiding isn't really anything to be afraid of in the first place. They just don't want to have to bother with it all.

The best way - and I'd be tempted to argue the only way - that somebody like this will ever be exposed to gay characters is if they exist in a secondary capacity. I know, I know - there's been a lot of work done and words written to drag the attitude of Gay YA readers and writers up to the point where it's agreed that gay people deserve their own stories. I'm all for that. I write queer protagonists, and probably always will. Stories with LGBTQ leads are incredibly important not only for LGTBQ youths, but straight ones that might be able to break through some old-fashioned ways of thinking and find new empathy for their LGTBQ peers.

That's not going to be helpful, however, if the perceived rainbow flags on the cover and in the reviews are going to turn a potential reader away because they simply do not want to be bothered with the Dark Scary within. So along with the sharp increase in books that focus on gay protagonists, which I'm looking forward to, I think we need to think about amping up the gay secondary characters while we're at it.

It's possible to do properly. I confess that I get a little bit annoyed with those who would dismiss every single gay secondary character that ever was as 'just a sidekick', as if the role of a sidekick has been worthless to every other type of character that ever filled that role. A properly treated and nuanced secondary character that is also gay can be just as, if not more, valuable than a properly treated and nuanced main character. Why? For the simple fact that readers who would not normally expose themselves to this kind of character are being shown things that they're not used to seeing. And wouldn't you know, the Dark Scary isn't all that bad after all.

I can name for you exactly one gay protagonist in a work of fairly mainstream science fiction: Captain Jack Harkness of Torchwood fame. It's worth noting that the reason he became the main character in a TV series that is notching up 5 seasons is because he began as a sidekick in Doctor Who. There's a certain 'from little things big things grow' attitude that I'm advocating here. Not because I don't think gay characters deserve equal standing (they absolutely do), but because there's something to be said for introducing readers to ideas they aren't comfortable with slowly. Is it sneaky? Maybe. But in a good way. Like how maybe you never knew you liked olives until you accidentally got them on your pizza one day. Make sense?

Captain Jack, depicted here about to shoot the Dark Scary.

We need more gay secondary characters in books. We also need more gay protagonists, sure, but maybe we need secondary characters even more. The market for gay-themed books within the LGBTQ community is kind of static - it directly correlates with how many gay people there are that read books. Bringing new readers in to that market from outside the LGBTQ community is important not just for sales and the improved health of diversity in YA fiction, but for showing people like the ones in my fantasy that the Dark Scary actually ain't all that dark and scary. That's the way to open doors and identify with one another. That's the whole point of books - particularly YA books, surely.

Show curious readers that there exist gay characters who aren't stereotypes, who aren't annoying distractions, who aren't comic relief, who aren't morally bankrupt and, most importantly, who aren't much different from straight characters. Pack your books with gay secondary characters and make them real. If you were going to have two heterosexual leads anyway, then consider the rest of your story a blank canvass. Try and convince some readers that gay characters aren't Dark Scaries. The flow-on effects could be better than we imagine.

I Never Asked For This, Cyberpunk.

I finished Neuromancer and have gulped down most of 'Ghost in the Shell' as part of my attempt to become a Cyberpunk Aficionado. I've seen all the matrix films, seen both versions of Blade Runner and played to death the Deus Ex videogames. I've watched Youtube videos and listened to talks and interviews by Neal Stephenson and Philip K Dick. Thus far, I have to admit - the genre still somewhat eludes me. I get the high tech/low life part. That's fine. I am all about that.

Booze + Guns + Robot Arms + Cigarettes - Colour - Shirt = Cyberpunk?

But there's a knife edge to Cyberpunk that I'm not even remotely comfortable trying to balance on. A very, very fine line separates, on one glorious side, serious and gritty Cyberpunk and, on the other god-awful side, embarrassing and hammy Cybercheese. I'd love to try my hand at Cyberpunk one of these days - maybe even soon - but I just don't feel ready. After all this time and immersion, I don't know if I'm capable of producing something that comes down on the right side of that line.

I'm convinced that there's room in the market for a Young Adult Cyberpunk series. I've got a loose framework for a story (very loose, but nonetheless existent). I can't recall, off the top of my head, any series directed at the teen market that you might call Cyberpunk. The gap is there.

I suspect my trepidation comes down to two things. The first is that Cyberpunk, or most of it that I've read, emphasises style in a way that I'm not used to. I think the difference between successfully selling the idea of a water-soluble contact-lens Nanoimplant for Social Networking will depend on how cool you can make it sound. If you can convince people that this implant is the sort of thing that they'd really want to get the second it becomes available, it goes from being a silly piece of scifibabble™ to a plausible bit of future tech. Basically, if you want to write decent Cyberpunk, I think you need to be the kind of person that the R&D team at Apple would be happy to employ.

And therein lies my second concern. We're living in a time where the phones we have in our pockets right now are going to be, in three years or so, less phones than they'll be hilarious memories. In a decade or so we're going to look back and say things like 'Remember how we used to have a phone and a computer and a TV and they were all separate things? Simple times.' Did you know there are people born right now that are old enough to have never, ever seen a VCR?  In fact, that's incredibly common. In about 5 years, kids are going to look at you like you're a headcase when you talk about DVDs.

People--and especially kids--are very, very hard to fool. Writing a near-future Cyberpunk story is all about fooling people into thinking that your crazy ideas about where technology is headed might be even remotely plausible. Reach too far and people will baulk at your pie-in-the-sky dreams of humans that can traverse cyberspace as a packet of consciousness. Don't go far enough and young people will bring examples of technology that outstrips your future tech along to your book signings. I don't know that my grasp of futurism is strong enough to fully imagine a world thirty years from now, let alone fifty. It's a scary thought, actually. I have absolutely no idea where this bloody world of ours is headed.

That, too, is one of the awesome themes of Cyberpunk. Actually, I think that might be why I like it so much. Half the fun of it seeing where Stephenson and Dick and all the others got it wrong. Or even better, where they got it right.

I'm going to keep ploughing ahead, because it's absorbing and I like a challenge. In the meantime, any Cyberpunk fans that can set me straight on YA Cyberpunk works feel free to leave a comment.

Lost Post Rage

I had what I consider to be a rather decent blog post prepared dealing with sexuality and literature. It took me all evening to write and shape after mentally preparing it all day. Unfortunately, as these things go, I tried to post it from the new blogger interface only to find it consumed by the depths of the Internet, never to be seen again.

'Rage' doesn't seem to be the right word.

I will re-craft this post in the coming days and put it back up. I'll make it even better the second time. But tonight will be dedicated to indignant wallowing.

AgentSearch™ Update: Not A No

It occurred to me that I ought to explain why this reading/writing blog of mine appeared without warning. I'm an aspiring writer, you see, and I've no idea if I'm any good or not. But, like most folk that believe stringing thousands of words together at a time is a good idea, I'm stubborn enough to give it a try. I've put together a Young Adult Sci-Fi adventure, revised it, re-revised and around may this year finally got the courage up to seek representation.


I spent a great deal of time researching the ettiquette of preparing a query letter and waited for the best opportunity to submit. I carefully put together my cover letter, synopsis and went through chapter one with a fine-tooth comb. On a plane. While sleep deprived. It was a bad idea, but nontheless, I did it. I was sitting in the common room of a hostel in the middle of London when I pressed 'send', firing my submission off into the ether. The whole process, I was assured, would take about 8-12 weeks. What luck. I just happened to be on a European holiday for exactly 10 weeks.


The holiday flashed by (no, really, it was not long enough), and I returned to Australia.


A few days ago I recieved a response from the agency. And it wasn't 'no'. I was to forward the entire manuscript and, after a decent lag time due to reading backlog, they would get back to me once more.


And that is the best response I've ever recieved from an agent, ever. It's a better response than many first-time authors ever get, which makes me both extremely lucky and extremely grateful. It also means another three months of anxious waiting to be told 'yes, you're good enough' or 'thanks for trying'. I plan to cherish that feeling, for it may never come again.


So from time to time, I'll post a little update here on the AgentSearch™ process.


Who knows? Maybe one day I'll be able to see Crisis Generation: Divide for sale at my local bookstore.


That'd be something.