Manley’s Gambit, or, Chasing Universal Truth is a Mug’s Game
It used to bug me when blurbs for gay-themed novels, movies, tv shows, whatever, made a point of noting the “universal themes” in play. I guess it still bugs me, though you see it less often. It does...
View Article“I can hear you,” said Snake-Boy
So I updated Snake-Boy Loves Sky Prince again today. “I’m so glad to have found you,” said the faces of the spacecraft. The mouths of the snake-boys and other snake-creatures also spoke, all together,...
View ArticleA Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman
Nobel laureate Toni Morrison did not write her first published novel, The Bluest Eye, until she was 39. She didn’t write her most famous one, Beloved, until almost two decades after that. Writers are...
View ArticleHelp Me Come Up With a Better Tagline for ‘Snake-Boy Loves Sky Prince’
I had the title before I had almost anything else: Snake-Boy Loves Sky Prince. I still love that title. Next came the tagline: “a gay superhero teen romance.” It has been pointed out to me that...
View ArticleWord Processing on the iPad: Wahhhhh!!!!!!
I wanted to be able to work on the same word processing document on my Mac (assuming I get it fixed someday), my PC when it’s running Windows, my PC when it’s running Ubuntu, and my iPad. Maybe on my...
View ArticleToo Many Ebooks, Written Too Quickly, May Spoil the Soup
I joined a forum for self-publishing ebook authors a little while back, but found it depressing. Many of the posts were about how easy it is to write a book or two a month. One guy bragged that he...
View ArticleBook Idea: “The Poor Wood”
Last night I dreamed a book within a book. I am sharing this here because I just woke up and I don’t want to forget it. I may use it someday. Not anytime soon, though. It would be a big project. The...
View ArticleJames Salter as a Black Crowe
You know how The Black Crowes get played on “classic rock” nostalgia radio, along with the Allman Brothers and The Eagles, while Nirvana gets played on “Generation X” nostalgia radio, even though they...
View ArticleA Note on Genre
Whether we’re talking about heavy metal music or science fiction or alternative comix or anything else, genre is a conversation, an ongoing back-and-forth. The best genre works aren’t “timeless”– they...
View ArticleMy Problem with Christopher Bram’s “Eminent Outlaws”
In an attempt to argue for a continuous tradition in “gay male lit,” Christopher Bram’s “Eminent Outlaws” emphasizes two “crossroads figures,” Gore Vidal and Edmund White — each the “magnet” that drew...
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