If you’re desperately looking for something to do – even something small – to protest at the anti-Gay bill in Uganda, and maybe, just maybe, get someone in power to rethink, you may want to join this Facebook group
Anglicans who want THIS statement from Canterbury
The Archbishop of Canterbury has failed to exercise moral leadership to protect gays & lesbians in Uganda and has instead exercised political pressure to attack a bishop-elect in Los Angeles because she is a lesbian.
As Anglicans who treasure their Communion and expect more from their Archbishop, in the Advent spirit of John the Baptist’s cry to the religious leaders of his time, we call on+Rowan Williams to repent of his earlier statement and issue this one instead:
“The proposed legal actions that would make homosexuality punishable by death in Uganda, and the lack of outrage regarding this proposed action by the Church of Uganda, raises very serious questions not just for the Church of Uganda and its place in the Anglican Communion, but for the Communion as a whole.”
“The proposed legislation has not yet become law, and could be rejected, with the Anglican Church of Uganda leading the opposition. That decision will have very important implications. The bishops of the Communion have collectively acknowledged that offering pastoral care and listening to the experience of homosexual persons is necessary if our bonds of mutual affection are to hold.”
We believe with God all things are possible — and we pray together during this Advent season of repentance and new beginnings for the revitalization of our Communion on behalf of the Gospel and for the liberation of all held captive by homophobia. (read less)
It’s been a bit of a trying month, with both shoulders now getting in on the freezing act, scarcely any range of motion left in the left hand one, and permanent tiredness due to not being able to sleep. However, some things somehow make up for it all and today I’m feeling very very lucky 🙂
Sarah Frantz at Dear Author has picked False Colors and Blessed Isle in her list of top Romance Books of 2009
and Jayne at Dear Author has picked the I Do anthology in her list of top Romances of 2009
I feel like a bit of a waste of space at the moment – I can’t even do my own hair – so this makes me feel that at least I’ve managed to do something good this year. Thank you so much, Sarah! Thank you Jayne 🙂 Big virtual bunches of flowers all around 🙂
This year the standard was even higher than last year, and we were, again, struggling with the problem that we had so many good stories that we had to reject some for no better reason than that they were too long, or they were ever so slightly less relevant to the theme than other stories of the same length.
Strangely enough, the heat level is way down this year, making this a volume highly suitable for buying for friends and relatives who might be supportive of civil rights without wanting to read too much erotica. But otherwise we have perhaps more of a wide spread of subjects and settings than we had last year, and a real international line-up with authors from the USA, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland and Australia.
In no particular order – almost certainly not the order in which they will appear in the book, these are our stories for 2009:
Two Men: A Fugue by Sophia Deri-Bowen
The Uneven Chance by Charlie Cochrane
Work Experience by Bruin Fisher
Elephants In Her Tea by Julia Rios
Mountain Ash by Ruth Sims
Inner Truth by Alex Beecroft
Mallory’s Gift by L-J Baker
Cakewalk by Nathan Burgoine
The Song Inside by Nexis Pas
Turnabout by Lee Rowan
Home Cooking by Brian Holliday
Morbidly Obese by Rick Reed
Ships that Pass by Jamie Freeman
Honolulu Hula by Neil S. Plakcy
Aim Higher by JL Merrow
Hitched by Michael Gouda
No Queens on Pickett Street by Martha Miller
Even Guys Cry by D.C. Juris
Ganymede by Lenore Black
Under the Shadow of Your Wings by Jill Palmer
Touche by James Buchanan
Stripes by Nigel Puerasch
Mister Right by Rob Rosen
Congratulations to everyone who’s in, commiseration to everyone who isn’t, but it’s worth repeating that the standard was so high we were turning publishable material away.
Thank you to genrereviews for including the I Do anthology in their list of books they rate as “Best of 2009” 😀
I Do! anthology
Even ignoring the fact that all proceeds for this anthology go to support equal marriage rights, this is just a beautiful, beautiful collection of stories that explore the gamut of love, in every setting and every stage of the game. Some of the stories involve awkward encounters, some are quietly uplifting, and some are spicy hot. All are worth reading, which is quite the feat for any anthology.
Who make the point I was trying to make about reviewing, only in a funnier way and without being too worried if anyone thinks they’re being rude.
I was reading their book, “Beyond Heaving Bosoms” this week, which is wonderful, and very funny, though not directly relevant to the m/m part of the genre. But it struck me as very timely indeed when I came across this:
Camp Number One consists of those who Just Don’t Get It. They’ve either never read a romance novel before, or they picked one up, discovered it was awful, experienced permanent retinal scarring from the terrible cover and wrote the entire genre off…
Camp Number Two is the cheerleader camp…. Their attitude seems to boil down to: “Romance is awesome, and if you don’t have a nice word to say then you should just shut up. Bless your heart.” … On one hand, they would have made Rodney Dangerfield proud with the way they growl about how romance novels get no respect… On the other hand, when reviewers point out some romance novels are about as substantial as a house built entirely of meringue… these people are often the same ones who claim that romance novels are escapist fun, and somehow exempt from rigorous literary examination.
…heads up and break out your red pen and your English degree! While it’s undeniable that romance novels are great fun, they should absolutely be subject to rigourous examination. We lit nerds say so.
Moreover, and worst of all, some romances are utter fucking crap. Complete, utter shittastic fuckcakes of crap with a side order of “How in the world did I pay actual money for this?”
LOL! I feel an attack of fangirling coming on 🙂
Quite aside from the scarily well timed remarks about criticism, this is a great book, with a choose your own romance at the back, a flow chart with which you can easily separate Old Skool and New Skool romances, a heroic name generator (my next hero will be called Lord Hawkhollowfire, a werewolf billionaire secret agent.) A chapter on cover art with a colour by numbers activity and a “Spot the Bullshit Regency Term” game. And lots of other fun stuff, combined with some fascinating analysis that helped me to understand some of the themes of Romance which have always seemed so massively screwed up to me. (Summed up in the handy phrase “The Irresistible Woman’s Magic Hoo Hoo Tames the Untamable Mighty Wang.)
LOL! I think it would be fair to say that the status of m/f romance has definitely gone up in my estimation as a result of reading this. *And* I sat in public with the clinch cover proudly displayed and chortled so much that the entire cafe ended up giving me funny looks. Very funny and well worth reading.
I now haven’t written anything since mid November and I suspect I won’t write anything more for the rest of the year, given that my children break up from school on the 17th and I will be having to keep them entertained until they go back again in January.
I feel a bit lost, to be honest. Part of this is that I have recently finished Shining in the Sun and got it accepted for publication, and my 18th Century mojo seems to have run out. I want to do something different, but I don’t really know what.
I have now completely re-plotted Away with the Faeries and I am lots happier with the plot I have now than I was when I was half way through Nano with it. This time things in the plot don’t just happen because it might be fun, they happen because they were caused by earlier things in the plot. This pleases my sense of neatness. I do need to think of a reason why Chitrasen can’t just turn up with his war elephants and take his daughter back by force, and how George and Sumala manage to get a message to him so that he can turn up just at the right time at the end instead. But that’s minor stuff compared with the addition of a het love story, a love triangle, a convoluted political rivalry and some serious backstory for both our main heroes which changes their characters and the dynamic of their relationship quite a lot.
I’m very glad I stopped to do that! I now feel that I know who the characters are much better, and I have a better idea of pacing. It’s going to be more bitter-sweet than I thought at first, and a lot more serious. Having said that, though, I think quite a bit of what I wrote during Nano can be cannibalised and may make it into the new version, so even that’s not wasted.
Perhaps my plan is to start writing that again as soon as the girls go back to school. Maybe I can spend the last few days before the holidays trying to come up with a plot for Dragon of the Fen, so that I can go straight on to that afterwards. And then I’ll have to think about what I want to do after that! But by that time it’ll probably be 2011 anyway 🙂
The Rainbow Awards have now concluded. So I want to say thank you so much to Elisa_Rolle and all the volunteers who helped her to set up a hugely ambitious awards system in record time and run it so smoothly.
Mega congratulations to the winners! Especially Tamara Allen and Kyell Gold, joint winners of the Best Overall Gay Novel. Kudos to you 🙂
False Colors won the Best Setting award, and came #2nd in the Best Historical Novel award, so I’m very happy 🙂 Also as a bonus, the cover of False Colors comes in at #7 in the top ten of covers, and the cover I did for Frost Fair comes in at #10. Thank you to everyone who voted for them!
And they’ve already been at #1 and #2 in Amazon’s gay romance chart
Tangled Web: An M/M Romance by Lee Rowan
2.
Lover’s Knot: An M/M Romance by Donald Hardy
All four of us – Erastes, Lee Rowan, Donald Hardy and I are going to be chatting over on the Coffee Time Romance group tomorrow afternoon, so I imagine there will be plenty of excerpts and news about the new books then. If you’ve got questions about the series, or about any of the books, or whatever, please come along and ask them, we would love to see some friendly faces 🙂
As a follow on to my post about the terrible anti-gay bill in Uganda, I found a petition against it. It’s particularly important for the Christian leaders to condemn the bill because the bill is apparently being pushed through by pressure from USA fundamentalist groups.
Thank you for signing the “Christian leaders must condemn Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill” petition at iPetitions.com website.
Your signature is valuable and makes a real difference. Please encourage others to sign the petition as well. To do that, just forward the text below to everyone who might be interested:
——- FORWARD THIS TO YOUR FRIENDS ——-
Hi,
I wanted to draw your attention to this important petition that I recently signed:
“Christian leaders must condemn Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill”
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Uganda_Christians?e
I really think this is an important cause, and I’d like to encourage you to add your signature, too. It’s free and takes less than a minute of your time.
Thanks!
Another review, another disgruntled author. Recently, since I’ve been reviewing relatively regularly on the SiN site, I seem to have been making one enemy after another. This time, after I drafted and redrafted my review in order to say what I had to say in the most gentle way possible, I’ve been accused of being damned rude. Previously I’ve been accused of deliberately looking out for things to hate, with the implication that I am a mean spirited harpy who enjoys badmouthing the work of others.
This makes me sad. In so far as I know myself and my own motives, I can tell you that it isn’t true. But the perception seems to linger, and as I can’t promise to give only glowing reviews from now on, I thought I’d do a little post about how I approach reviews to explain where I’m coming from and why calling me rude or malicious is not going to change my mind about an author’s book. Read the rest of this entry »
