Writing What You Don't Know

Wanna know a secret?  Most writers don't like to talk about their work.

Oh, we'll glibly babble on about the origin of a story...if it makes a good story. The safe-for-work antics of other people's editors are fair game...so long as we've filed off all the serial numbers. (You never know when you might have to work for that nutjob--I mean, respected senior editor.)  Our research is even better.

Notice something about all these things we like to talk about?  The farther away the material gets from anything that might make us uncomfortable, the easier it is to talk about. When it touches on our (many) writerly insecurities..not so much.

Which brings us to this month's theme and why it's hard for me to blog about it. I'm a heterosexual female from a relatively privileged background. What business do I have writing from an LGBQT perspective, ever? I can't know what it's like from the inside.

As somebody who goes to extreme lengths to research her fiction, that bothers me. It bothers me that I don't know what it was like to walk the streets of fifteenth century or the corridors of the Hindenburg just before it exploded, too. But in both those cases, the only people who care whether I get it sort of right are other history nerds, and even for them the issues are purely academic. If I misstep in my depiction of LGBQT characters--or characters of color or characters with physical or emotional challenges--people could get hurt. 

I hurt my characters. A lot. I challenge them every way I can think of. It's what writers do. I want to challenge my readers, too. But I don't want to hurt them by being an idiot about something I'll never know.

At the same time, the world is not populated entirely by privileged heterosexual females. I'm good with that. I'm boring in real life, and if my stories were only about people like me, they'd be boring, too. So I write about women and men at all levels of society, of all countries, races, and orientation. 

Perhaps the most important human character in "Fixed", my story in The Modern Fae's Guide to Surviving Humanity, is a gay vet tech based on one of my favorite coworkers. The original was a retired military officer who was built like The Refrigerator. Seriously, if you just saw this guy's face and his shadow, you would NOT want to meet him in a dark alley. But once the lights went on, you'd find yourself looking at someone with the fashion sense and mannerisms of Nathan Lane. Incredibly nurturing, too. So I could really see him working with lost and injured animals. But mostly I loved the way he talked and his own idiosyncratic way of taking no nonsense from anyone. He brought an incredible brio to the story. I loved writing his lines and how much his presence made everything better.

A lesbian couple were the main characters of "Personal Demons," my story in Hellebore and Rue, the award-winning anthology about lesbian magic users. The story is all about the cost of magic--and how that cost might not be what you think. For Anita, my exorcist, the cost was the alienation of her lover Deborah's affections.

I confess I used a lesbian couple because it made everything worse. Anita is a tantric sorceress, so there is a sexual component to her magic. Her lover sees this up close and personal in the middle of an exorcism. If a man had seen what Deb had seen, he would've felt betrayed, gotten angry and left to get drunk. It would've been nasty. There would've been a cost. But a man never feels soiled--polluted--in the same way a woman does. So his girlfriend has congress with demons. All he has to do is wash himself off and he's good to go. But a woman takes her lover inside her body. It's a whole different level of intimacy. You cannot simply rinse away a demon's touch, even at one remove. 

Having made that decision, I tried to treat both characters as if they were me. How would I feel in their respective positions? It's the only way I know to respectfully step in someone else's shoes. 

I'd like to think I got their emotions right, especially since sooner or later a story will demand another character who isn't me or anything like me. I want very much to get it right every time, because no matter where we come from, what we believe or who we love, we're all human beings. We deserve that dignity, in fiction as much as real life.

Jean Marie Ward

Tossed Salad

Photo: WANA Commons, Lynn Kelley Author

According to our blog schedule, this month's theme is  LGBQT,so I sat down to write a blog. At first I thought I had nothing to say on this subject, except to be supportive of my fellow writers. I am a traditional woman/man, woman/werewolf, vampire/man, sort of writer. Those are the stories my muse tells me. Then I remembered something, I might not have heroes or heroines who fit the theme, but I do sometimes have more minor (but important) characters that do. I will admit, none of these manuscripts have yet to be published, but I have reason to believe that is about to change.
So why not heroes and heroines? No clue. As I said, those are the stories my muse tells me. And,  I suppose, what my audience expects at this point. So will my readers accept these minor characters who happen to be of a different sexual desire? I think so. My stories tend toward the theme of acceptance and finding one's place in the world. I would hope that whatever differences the characters within the stories my muse tells me have, my readers will be open to at least giving those characters a chance. In my—not so humble—opinion, our world is not that "melting pot" I've always heard about, but rather a salad. And really, what's more interesting, a pot of oatmeal, or a bright beautiful salad with all kinds of colorful fruits and vegetables?

Take care!
Cheryel
www.cheryelhutton.com

Interview with Ally Blue

Please welcome Ally Blue, Rainbow Award nominated author of m/m romantic fiction. Thank you for agreeing to be grilled interviewed for the BtV blog's Loud and Proud: LGBT Characters theme month.

My pleasure! I love grilling. As long as someone else is doing it. Heh.

 What is it about m/m stories that drew you to writing m/m romance?

Like a lot of readers of gay romance, I cut my teeth on reading slash fanfic. I started reading that because it was different, it was intriguing, and it was hot. At least when it was well written, LOL.

However, the thing that kept me reading on into original character fiction – and what drew me to writing it as well – was more than that. I found myself fascinated with the dynamic between two men in a romantic relationship.

It’s so different from the dynamic between a man and a woman. I’m not talking about power or equality here, though there’s always an element of that in any male/female relationship in our society, even in fiction (and I’m not getting into that here because no one wants to hear me preach from my soapbox, ha). You can have plenty of inequalities for one reason or another between two men, and there will be power struggles more often than not, I guess.

The difference in dynamic is because men simply interact with one another in a different way from how they interact with women. That’s interesting to me, and I like to explore it. Plus there’s the factor of the unknown and unknowable. I’m biologically female and I identify female as my gender, therefore I can never be involved in a gay male relationship. This makes that relationship the most fascinating one in the world to me. It’s simple human nature.  

Other than the H&H both being male, would you consider your stories to be traditional romance? I guess what I'm getting at is, with the moving target called "erotic", would you consider your books erotic by today's yardstick?

Not really, no. Some of my older ones are erotic by anyone’s standards, since they have a lot of sex scenes, but they’re all pretty vanilla, I think. I don’t do BDSM or D/s or any of that stuff which is so popular now. A few of my guys have dabbled with some toys, but they’re really just playing, not invested in any hardcore lifestyle. There was one three-way in Love’s Evolution and a pretty intense episode with plants in Fireflies but mostly my boys just do it the old-fashioned way, even when they do it a lot. LOL.  

A common complaint I hear about m/m romance is that authors take a female character and simply change her feminine name to masculine, and call it m/m. How do you "keep it real", and do you think this is a core reason why readers love your work?

 I always start by considering my characters as people, not just gay men. They have backgrounds – parents, extended families, childhood and teen experiences that shaped them, etc. They have jobs, favorite colors, music they love, bad habits, particular ways they dress, pet peeves, personal values and morals, strong opinions. They’re talented at some things and terrible at others. They have personalities of their own that develop more and more as I outline the story, and even more as I write it.

 I think when a character doesn’t come alive, it’s because an author sees that character as a character, not a person. No one is going to care about your hero if he’s just a generic gay man you stuck in the lead role for the sole purpose of being a gay man in a book. He has to be real, which means being a gay man is only a small part of who he is. I like to think my guys are pretty real, and that’s why those who love my books love them. I have a lot of fans who are gay men, which makes me very happy.

As the mother of a newly minted RN, I know how much self-discipline it takes to get through nursing school. Does your nursing background carry over into your writing M.O.? What's a typical writing day like?

Man, I wish self-discipline spilled over into my writing life. Sadly, it doesn’t as much as it should. I graduated nursing school almost 25 years ago, which was B.C. for me (Before Children), when I was marginally more organized than I am now and had WAY more free time. LOL. These days, I have no “typical” writing day. It all depends on what else is going on. I work part-time, which is awesome because I have a lot more time to write than I did when I had to work full-time.

On work days, I write when I get home. Unless it’s one of those 10 or 11 hour days, in which case my brain is usually fried and I just fall on the couch and watch TV like a total slug. I never know what kind of day it’s going to be, which is fine because I get paid by the hour. :D On my off days, I check my email, Twitter, etc. then try to get some writing done while I’m having coffee and breakfast. After that I go for a run – I’m training for a half-marathon in September, yikes! Wish me luck! – then get back to writing unless I have other things that need doing.

My goal is always between 1K and 2K words per day, so that if I get more than that I’ll feel really good about myself, LOL. Sometimes I make the goal and sometimes I go over. If I have other obligations, I might not make the goal. Like the last month, when I had one kid graduate college and the other graduate high school. I’ve either been out of town or had family at my house almost constantly, which has put me WAY behind, but it was all for a good cause.

Congratulations to your new RN! That’s wonderful! We need more dedicated nurses.

Thank you! And good luck with the half marathon! Which comes first for you when it comes to inspiration for stories – does a character pop into your head? Or a place that compels you to set a story there? Or a situation you hear or read about that sets off the "what if" domino effect?

It’s happened to me in all of those ways, and others. Probably characters come to me first more often than anything else, but I’ve been inspired by places and situations lots of times. The Happy Onion was actually inspired by a cartoon on the back of a grocery store delivery truck. LOL.  

Though writing is essentially a solitary profession, we do seem to find our "herd". Where do m/m authors and readers congregate? Are there specific conferences that are good places to go to meet and connect?

Oh man. I don’t get to go to nearly the number of conferences I’d like, so I’m not positive about most of them. But GayRomLit is probably THE gay romance con to hit. In fact it might be the only one, I’m not sure. This year will only be its second year, but after the kickoff in New Orleans in 2011 it’s already gained a reputation as the best conference for gay romance authors and readers to gather to hang out, talk, play and generally raise hell. Heh.

This year’s con is in Albuquerque. I didn’t make it last year, but I’ll be there this year, yay! I think the m/m crowd manages to find each other at any conference, though, simply because we’re usually in the minority. We tend to make plans pre-con to get together for drinks or dinner or whatever. Usually drinks. :)  

How has writing m/m changed your own relationships with the men in your life?

I think that simply meeting and hanging out with so many more gay men than before gives me more patience with my men (husband, son, dad, friends, etc.) because I’ve gained more insight into some of the things they do and say. My gay friends tend to be more like me than any of the other men in my life – that is, they say what they think, they don’t hold back, they tell the whole truth. They talk to me, in other words, which is something it’s difficult to get some other men to do.

 Of course I can’t extrapolate that behavior onto all gay men, any more than I can say all straight men like comic books just because my husband does. But I like being able to talk openly with my friends, and I’ve been able to figure out a surprising amount about the other men I love from those conversations. Which is awesome.

 Has it affected your own sexuality?

Ha, interesting question! No, it hasn’t. Which is not to say I haven’t learned some fascinating things about the range and scope of human sexuality, because I have. I’ve met many people who identify as gay, lesbian, transgender, pansexual, and other “nontraditional” sexualities. I feel like my life is much richer for having met so many wonderful people who are so different from me in their sexuality, and realizing first hand that we’re all pretty much the same tough, tender, loving, vulnerable human beings inside.  

Would you consider writing a f/f romance?

I would if I thought I could write one that wasn’t crap, but I seriously doubt I could. I’ve tried writing female leads before and they come off sounding like men. Which is maybe a little weird, but there you go. LOL. That’s why I don’t write m/f romance also. I can’t write a realistic female romantic lead! That seriously annoys me about myself.  

I am a native Tarheel living in "exile" in Ohio, so I envy your location in the western NC mountains! Do you find that living in what many consider the "Bible Belt" makes it more difficult to be "loud and proud' about writing in the LGBT genre?

Oh, definitely, yes. Not so much because of the public in general. I live close to Asheville, which is pretty much a shining liberal jewel in a dark conservative sea, and Buncombe County is one of the ones where the populace voted against the notorious Amendment One. But I have to keep my writing under wraps because there’s no guarantee I wouldn’t get fired from my day job if they found out about it. They can fire an employee for any outside activity that, in their sole opinion, reflects poorly on the organization.

I don’t know for sure that I’d get fired for writing gay romance, but I’m not betting my income on it. I don’t make nearly enough from writing to support just myself, never mind my whole family. Maybe I’m wrong, but I can’t help thinking this wouldn’t be an issue in a more generally open-minded area.  

What's next in the publishing pipeline for you?

Graceland releases from Samhain on July 3rd, and Demon Dog, the first book in my brand-new Mojo Mysteries series, is scheduled for release from Samhain in December. Aside from that, I’m working on one – still untitled at this point – that should release from MLR Press in October if I can manage to finish it in time. We shall see. O_O

After that I promised my Samhain editor, the lovely and magnificent Sasha Knight, that I’d whip up a proposal for an urban fantasy. Well, my take on it anyway. I have an idea I really, really like and am anxious to start working on.  

Now for the important question. Eastern or Western NC barbecue?

LOL. I really prefer Western. Always have. So delightfully saucy and spicy!  

Thank you for joining us, Ally!

Thanks for having me, it’s been fun :)
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Visit Ally's web site at www.allyblue.com

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Carolan Ivey
www.carolanivey.com

Loud and Proud: LGBTQ

I posted yesterday for my "regular" day, but Mr. Bradbury's passing took precedence.  Fellow author Sela Carsen asked for someone to take her day today, and I agreed.  Thank you, Sela, for giving me the opportunity to write my thoughts on our theme for June - Loud and Proud!



I remember my first time. Omni Magazine. The image: The lover, alone, lying in bed with her hands still perfumed with her lover’s scent. I read a bit before I realized both were female. The shock that hit me surprises me now. How naïve could I have been?

“Dyke.” “Lesbo.” “Tuna-melt.” “Skank.” The words are many. The hatred and vitriol return to my memory like creosote comes to the surface of a board, foul and noxious, and sticky. So sticky. Back then, Mia Hamm hadn’t made it big. “Women in comfortable shoes” was the nicest metaphor in the public eye and at that, it wasn’t very nice. In small-town California, no one was out. No one was proud. And when you out-threw a varsity boy in discus, it wasn’t forgiven. Not by a long shot.

When I came out as bi (I still don’t like the word “bisexual” even today) in college, both sides gave me grief. My straight friends wondered whether I’d hit on them. “You know I support you right? Just don’t hit on me.” Like bi people have less self-control than het folks do. My gay friends accused me to being on the fence. “You’re just playing it safe.” My ex-girlfriend, dating a new dom girlfriend, asked me at dinner – in front of my then-boyfriend – “Why don’t you just admit you’re a lesbian?”

A couple years ago I marched in the Chicago Gay Pride Parade with a group of Pagan Gay Pride supporters. I’ve been in the closet since moving here, since I work in the Midwest in a conservative field, but I wanted to show my support for “my” people and to experience one of the nation’s largest parades. The Bisexual Union had… thirteen people in attendance. Out of several thousand. They were the only out bisexuals I could find.

The first book I read with a lesbian theme, Rubyfruit Jungle, didn’t titillate me as much as I wanted. The next one, a strange story about a woman who meets her lover while in prison and then, upon getting her liberty back, can’t decide if she’s gay and realizes she misses being dominated, didn’t do it for me. These weren’t “normal” people with “normal” concerns. The fact of their lesbian-ness took center stage to the story and became the story, in many ways. That’s not good storytelling, that’s polemicizing.

Then I found Mercedes Lackey’s Vanyel stories. A friend of a lover recommended it to me when she found out I was bisexual. It was the first time someone respected me enough as bi to not ask a bazillion questions and to not make me feel like the only giraffe in the Antarctic section of the zoo. I devoured Lackey’s stories and realized that they are fully-realized fantasy novels about characters, and that the characters just happen to be gay. It wasn’t flag-waving, it wasn’t “in-your-face,” it just was a fact. Vanyel has black hair and silver eyes, and he’s gay. It is central to his coming-of-age, but it’s a coming-of-age story – not a story about a gay guy who comes of age. The distinction is telling.

Now, in 2012, the debate over “lifestyle choice” has become a darling of the national media. Folks pontificate about what other folks should or should not do in their own bedrooms, waxing poetical about what religion and a punitive god have to say about the subject. Other, more moderate folks – on both sides of the line – keep quiet so as to avoid an uncomfortable topic. As we did in the 60’s with interracial marriage, we are obsessed with what two consenting adults want to do with their lives together, as though this somehow has a seminal effect on our own lives.

I still live mostly in the closet, for my own safety and out of fear. Some genies you cannot put back in the box. I write, however, from a very out perspective. When I am in my writing-brain, I allow myself the freedom to BE myself, completely and totally. I blog about being bi, poly, Wiccan, a textile addict, a cat and dog lover, all the things that make me Noony. But I am not yet Noony in my day-to-day life.

Slowly, that’s changing. But society isn’t yet ready to embrace itself. When we can still have national dialog about “gosh, did you realize we have a Black president” as though being Black is more important than whether he can do the job (which he can, and has proven himself capable of doing), when we become obsessed over whether two adults of the same sex can marry and share a legal contract the same as het folks, when we can still seriously discuss whether a woman’s body is her own to do with as she chooses, we do not live in an open and safe, out and loud and proud society. And because I have to live in that society, and make a living in it, I am not nearly as loud, proud, or out as I want to be.

My hope for my children is that they do not have to think on these things and that, one day when they are my age, they will look back on this time and say, “You mean gay people weren’t allowed to get married back then?” the same way we ask a similar question now: “You mean a black man and a white woman couldn’t get married back then?”

A Tidbit for Sampling from Moondancer Drake

Since this is my first post at Beyond the Veil, it seems appropriate to introduce myself. I’m an Eastern band Cherokee, a two-spirit woman (Native LGBTQ), a mother, a practitioner of earth-based spirituality, an environmentalist, an activist, in fact there are many sides to Moondancer.

The reason I say all this is that as a writer all these ingredients that make up who I am, are part of everything I write. Being a Native American woman growing up loving speculative fiction yet never finding anyone like me in the stories I read, all the fiction I write now is multicultural. My real live experiences and passions effect my writing as well. In the city where I live so many people are separated, segregated, in fact from very young our Western culture is taught to be selfish, to “look out for #1”. Culturally and personally I believe strong and supportive communities are crucial to a society’s well being, even to a personal physical and mental health. I love reading about women living in strong, supportive of communities where belief systems like mine (and other non-mainstream spirituality’s) are fully accepted and even embraced. As a writer of paranormal fiction I can create these communities I wish I lived in. I can fight the fights against the evil of this world that we also often feel helpless against by bringing that evil into my world and having my heroines fight it there. It’s an empowering feeling for me as the author of the stories, and I hope for my readers as well.

Currently I have two published novels; Ancestral Magic and Natural Order, a new ebook novella called Seeking Light in the Shadows, as well as numerous short stories published in anthologies. Today I thought I would leave you with a taste from my new urban fantasy coming out next week or so, Worlds Collide.

***

Once she was in place on the garage roof, Rune pushed the ladder away from the edge and watched it fall back to the grass with a low thud. She wouldn’t need it to get down and didn’t want to draw attention to her presence. Rune hung her torso over the gable of the garage and peered into the window below.

Beyond the glass, one man walked across the room with his armed wrapped around a busty blonde. Past him, Rune could pick out five more women and another ten men moving about the flat. They all looked normal enough, but that was the trouble with vampires — as long as they fed well, the leeches looked just like everyone else. It was their scent — a rancid mixture of sweat and old blood — that made them stand out to a hunter like herself. Vampires didn’t sweat, because they had no need to; neither heat nor cold affected them in any but the rarest of cases. The sweat she smelled was from the humans on whom they feasted.

Laughter from the back of the room caught her attention. A group of four vampires was gathered in a corner of the room. Above the din of the music, Rune could just pick out the sound of a woman’s voice behind them. A vampire roared with amusement, taking a step forward, and Rune realized it was his laughter that had first drawn her attention. That was when she heard the woman scream.

Rune grabbed the edge of the gable and lowered herself, dangling by her arms. There was barely enough time to shift before she swung back and crashed through the window. She landed on the carpeted floor, legs bent and spread in a combat stance. She had not taken the form of a wolf this time. The eyes of many of the vampires widened with fear to suddenly find a werewolf in their midst.

Pandemonium raged as the smarter of the vampires hurtled for the door. The bouncer took a step back and the crowd scrambled past him, stampeding down the stairs. He glanced at Rune, the group in the corner, and back again. She braced herself for the charge that never came as he swore under his breath and dashed out the door.

Smart man. She grinned and turned back to those remaining.

The vampires fanned out from the corner and Rune glimpsed the three people on the floor. The man’s body was stretched out on a wide strip of wood flooring just beyond the carpet, while his two female companions hugged each other and shivered, eyes closed.

“You know, Farrell, I’ve always wondered what shifter tastes like.” The vampire ran a hand over his shaven head and licked his lips hungrily. “You boys help me bag this one, and we can all have a treat.” Pete and Jumala glanced nervously at each other, but didn’t move forward.

Her eyes narrowing malevolently, Rune snarled at the bald man, “You’ll never live to find out, parasite.