I’m back and here to talk about gay romance

Holy balls! It’s been almost half a year since I’ve blogged. Aunty Mommy strikes again.

So what have I been doing? What kind of incisive commentary or big life events do I have to share? I mean… there’s a lot… like I “own” (the bank owns) a house now, and I moved, and politically everything’s a disaster even as my life is going well and…

I’ve been reading a lot of gay regency romance novels. Like. A lot. (Silly pre-November 2016 me didn’t think she would read romance novels, even while making a case for them. You sweet, stupid summer child. You know nothing.) Continue reading I’m back and here to talk about gay romance

What Unsolicited Querying Feels Like

So. I wrote a novel, and now I’m looking for an agent to represent me. This is a long process that I’ve just begun, and all my querying has been unsolicited, which means I come out of nowhere to these people and usually end up in their enormous slush piles. I’ve read that I shouldn’t give up until after about 100 query letters. This is what that feels like.
(Click to embiggen!)

Please don’t ask me what the novel is about. I’ll let you know when, well, probably after a couple drinks. But when you try out for a musical, I’m not all, “Hey buddy, sing me your audition song!” That’s mortifying, and a post for a different day.

Maligning Romance

First of all, I missed my blog’s birthday because we all know that I’d be a terrible mother. My first post was June 11, 2015; so sorry, Blog, that I’ve neglected you. People are giving me money to write and stuff, so that’s gotten in the way.

Have cake, Blog, and feel better.

So! I had said a long time ago that the romance genre is much maligned for various reasons and that I would write about it. What has finally gotten me around to doing the post is actually making an attempt to write a bit of romance.

Even a small piece, about 800 words as a thought exercise, is proving difficult. The gears that make romance writing tick are not easily manipulated. Granted, writing anything out of one’s sphere isn’t easy and takes practice, but making a decent, entertaining, little scene requires a deft hand. Otherwise everyone’s rude, creepy, and inappropriately horny in a strangely ambiguous historical setting (where my characters currently are right now.)

Continue reading Maligning Romance

Thoughts on Harry Potter Now that I Am Grown

When I first started reading Harry Potter I was about 13, and I grew up with the books in a way. The petty rivalries and teenage miseries spoke to me. Of course, the delightful world of magic did, too.

I am rereading the Harry Potter series as an adult and while I still enjoy them, perhaps even more than I did as a kid, there are somethings my heartless adolescent self did not pick up on. Continue reading Thoughts on Harry Potter Now that I Am Grown

The First Romance Novel I Read by Which All Others I Have Secretly Read Are Judged and Found Wanting

Some time in middle school, a family friend dropped off a huge box of books and I proceeded to read nearly all of them in a summer. The only age appropriate ones I remember are By the Great Horn Spoon!, which is a sheer delight full of cleverness, boxing butlers, and the California gold rush, and The Once and Future King, which had some parts that were still outside my grasp. Though the Arthurian legend in general is emotionally fraught, containing incest, patricide, and the weird situation of loving one’s wife while also loving the guy she’s cheating on you with – I don’t blame myself.

This box also provided The Age of Innocence, which taught me about love and conforming, and that a gentleman can be thrilled when a lady’s eagle feather fan brushes his knee. It also taught me that after a lifetime of mooning about someone, said same gentleman could decline to see her because, “She’s more real to me this way.” WTF, dude?

Continue reading The First Romance Novel I Read by Which All Others I Have Secretly Read Are Judged and Found Wanting