Week 42 - A Glimmer of Hope

 

Can a book like this be published today? I sure hope so...

Update – Not so good, but getting better. After a week-long descent into video game addiction, I finally got my shit together and started writing again. Not much, but I’m building momentum. I actually took the laptop to one of the county libraries and wrote a couple paragraphs in public. It’s a little exercise I came up with to spur creativity and, frankly, get out of the house. If I get stuck, I can pick a book off the shelf and read for a while. Wins all over the place.

November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, so I’m going to attempt what I was going to attempt last month, and write the first draft of a book over the course of the next thirty days. I haven’t fully decided which book, so I picked a contender at random from my list of possibles. If it doesn’t pan out, I’ll try another and maybe another until something sticks. Pity there’s no Start a Book in a Month program. I’d be a whiz at that.

Whichever book I end up on, it’s going to written longhand. This will keep me away from the internet and all its enticing distractions. That’s how I wrote the detective book, and that turned out okay. Anyway, I can’t type with my fingers crossed but I can still hold a pen. I’ll let you know how it worked out next week.

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Meanwhile, back at the writer’s block…

Recap: I wrote a book I had hopes for, until I looked at the markets. At the moment, my target market (SFF) is caught up in the throes of diversity. Straight, white characters, especially men, are anathema right now. So are male authors, and not just in genre. I recently made the mistake of watching a YouTube post about how women have taken over publishing in general and are making the decisions on who and what gets accepted and published, to the point that straight white male authors like Brandon Sanderson, in spite of an impressive sales record, have moved on to self-publishing. The upside for him is, he doesn’t have to share his sales profits with a publisher any more. Other, less popular authors, regardless of skin tone or gender leaning, probably won’t be as fortunate.

I, of course, insisted on writing a book about a straight white male in a straight white male profession, with the added red flag of choosing a male Anglo-Saxon pen name to keep impressionable kids from hunting up the erotic romance books I stupidly signed my real name to. I did manage to work in a Black character, but these days simply being Black isn’t enough, any more than my being simply female will help me get my foot through a publisher’s door. I should have published the sexy romance with the bisexual Hawaiian/Pacific Islander vampire slayer heroine. That was over-the-top when I wrote it; today she’d just be another face in the crowd.

Then, as a finishing touch, I had the only contender for Token Lesbian come out as straight with a vengeance, when she hooked up with a literal caveman. Let’s just pound those nails into the book’s coffin with a sledgehammer, shall we?

With all this going against me, added to my many insecurities, is it any wonder why I went on a writer’s block? (It’s no excuse for the video gaming, though. That’s on me.)

But there is hope. The SFF genre may be out of reach at the moment, but trends do change. Tastes change. The pendulum swings one way, and then it swings the other. In a market glutted with diversity books, some small publisher might be willing to take a chance on something new/old with a twist. It doesn’t have to be SFF anyway; my book can still be classified as mystery, although with a touch of the fantastic. If necessary, I’ll try querying mainstream publishers. As far as I know, they still publish anything and everything. With women running the industry, I may have a shot in spite of the male lead and byline, because at the ultimate heart of the book is a love story. (And how writers of all stripes get shafted by publishers. I'm hoping nobody notices that.) The Bridges of Madison County was written by a man, after all. Is Nicholas Sparks still publishing? I’ll have to check that out.

And if all else fails…I think for Christmas I’ll treat myself to the latest edition of Self-Publishing for Dummies. Maybe ask Brandon Sanderson for marketing tips. You only fail when you stop trying. In the meantime, it’s back to writing smut romance and hope I can garner enough income to offset the drop in my paid job. Failing that, it’s back to my scheme to blackmail the Pope. That one’s a long shot, but whatever happens I can always write about it. See y’all next week.

 

Week 40 - Tossing in the Towel

 

Update – Not much went on last week. Mostly I worked on paid stuff. Did a little work on the detective book, played some games (which I’m not supposed to be doing) and got the lawn mowed. That one knocked me out; we had rain, drizzle and gloom for roughly a week and a half, then finally it cleared up but left some tall, thick green behind. But I got it all done, beating out most of my neighbors. I wasn’t the first, but I was up there in the top five. By the time Monday rolled around we all had our grass nicely clipped again. The weather’s gotten chillier. I’m hoping this means the end of the mowing season. I may need to chop it down one last time as we go into November. I never did get the yard work done. Maybe next year.

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Here’s something else I never got done: a first draft of a book—any book at all—in a month. I was going to do one per month every month this year. I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I got some bad eggnog at New Year’s and it gave me delusions. Something gave me a massive block this year, part of the reason (along with work, financial anxiety and depression) I couldn’t write as much as I thought I could. So I’m calling it quits. I’ll continue work on the detective story, even though that’s hit a rough patch. How can you get blocked on a second draft? I’ve got the bones of the story written; I just have to dress 'em up nicer and pick better words than what I feverishly scribbled in longhand in two of those 1-subject school notebooks. But going back over it, I keep running into mistakes and plot holes that I glossed over the first time, and I have to straighten everything out so the story still works. It’s a work in progress, folks. That’s all I can say.

There’s another reason I may have gotten discouraged, and that’s the current market. Assuming I ever get it done, where do I send it? It’s not firmly slotted into one specific genre. It’s primarily fantasy, but it’s also a mystery, a detective story and partially a romance. I tend to refer to it as my Twilight Zone book, which would put it in the fantasy category. If I got the right agent, though, I could probably sneak it into mainstream. That’s where Stephen King’s books were first shelved, even though given the subject matter (psychic powers, vampires) they should have gone into the Science Fiction and Fantasy section, where H. P. Lovecraft and his ilk got lumped in with the elves and the rocket ships. King obviously had an excellent agent.

I’ve already sent a query to a SFF publisher for one of their open calls; we’ll see if anything happens. Other than that, I’m considering Hard Case Crime. Those are straight up mysteries, but they’ve published a couple of Stevie’s books, so I know there’s leeway. I just have to hope mine’s good enough.

Why not just query the SFF publishers? Back when I started, in the distant past, that would have been my go-to genre. But now I’ve hit a road block that I’ve touched on before, and recently saw an article on the Internet confirming my worst fears: SFF has essentially been taken over by the diversity crowd. It’s not just a moratorium on straight white male characters—now they want to block out the straight white male writers. Only female leads written by female authors—preferably an author of color and any gender other than straight—need apply.

(Insert screams and lots of colorful swearing here)

But you’re female, I hear you saying. You’ve got a ticket in. For the cheap seats, maybe. I’m still white and straight, writing about straight white male heroes. The problem is, I was planning on using a male pen name for this book. This book was going to be my entry into the horror genre. Stephen King doesn’t write the type of books that made him famous any more. I was hoping my nom de plume could step in and fill the void. But if white males are being elbowed out of my target genre, what’s a girl-passing-as-a-male-writer supposed to do?

So why can’t I use my real name? Because about a decade back, when I switched over to racy romance, I stupidly used my real name as my byline. Suppose the book sells well and piques people’s interest. They’ll look up my backlog and find my sex books. The ones with two guys, or one woman and two guys, or women with vampires and/or werewolves, doing fun activities together. The kind you don’t want your kids finding out about until they’re at least 27. I can’t use my initials because that’s what I used for my SFF stories, and that one YA romance with the vampires that sold maybe five copies, if that. So my real name and my initial name are both out of the running. And so’s my whitebread male pen name, it seems.

I’m still going to give it a shot, but my hopes aren’t high. My goal for 2025 will be to learn how to successfully self-publish.

Although…

Remember that screed I posted a few weeks back, about the publisher who wanted the male author to make his book “inclusive”? De-age the characters and play up the romance, only make it gay. I came up with a version of my book that did exactly that, eliminating all straight white maleness entirely. I meant it all sarcastically, getting my frustrations out of my system.

But what if I went ahead and actually wrote that version? Then queried both versions to the same or similar publishers? Which would sell? One? Both? Neither? What if I sold one and self-pubbed the other? Would I be sued for plagiarizing myself?

(Don’t laugh; that happened to John Fogerty, lead singer/songwriter of Creedence Clearwater Revival. He was called into court for writing a solo song that sounded too similar to a song he’d written for the band. It all depends on who owns the rights to what, and he didn’t own the rights to his CCR songs, even though he'd written them. The law's a funny thing.)

Might be an interesting experiment. It would make me feel like I’m actually doing something writing-related. I may just fiddle around with that next year, unless the diversity fad passes in the meantime. I’ve heard stories of romance e-book writers who do a traditional (MF) version, then rewrite the story as MM and sell it twice. I considered that, but while plotting I realized I was coming up with two separate storylines. I can’t even plagiarize myself correctly.

Or I could just go back to writing sex books. I need to do something to pay off the credit card before the interest kicks in. It doesn’t help that more and more outfits are saying, “We accept AI-assisted material.” Great. Like regular competition wasn’t enough, now I have to contend with Skynet’s literary efforts. I predicted that on here too. And you wonder why I’m depressed all the time. I think I’ll go watch TV. See y’all next week.

 

Week 30 - Currently Trending

 

Update – Things are going much better this week than they have for the past few months. I’m back working on the detective book, even though I still fear for its chances in the current market. I’ve started a romance story, now that I know I’ve still got a job and the publisher’s not going under. Not this week, anyway. Next week I’ll be getting an assignment, which always messes up my schedule. Or something else could break down and require expensive repairs. My upcoming paychecks aren’t anywhere near as generous as the one I had to nudge for. Better cut junk food out of the budget.

All the recent controversial topics (diversity in particular) along with my tendency to whine in public (well, I am using this blog in place of therapy. Like I said, the budget’s tight) has apparently cost me viewers. The Hong Kong bots have abandoned me entirely. Looks like Singapore has taken their place, though not in the former huge numbers. A few folks in the US of A are sticking by me; probably white Republicans. My faithful fan in Switzerland still shows up from time to time. And I’ve got my first Russian bot! Only the one, but it’s a start. Is that you, Vladimir? Doubtful, but the notion of my words appearing on a screen in the Kremlin does bring a smile to my face.

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The other week I mentioned the possibility I’ve written a book that may not be sellable in our current political climate, burdened as it is with a protagonist who’s a straight white adult male. I’m not going to change him. At my glacial rate of production, tastes and markets and publisher mandates may well swing back in my favor by the time I’m finally ready to shop it around. In the meantime, I detailed how easily my idea could be…well, let’s just call it “adapted” to better fit current publishers’ preferences. If somebody faster wants to take a whack at writing and marketing that version, knock yourself out. Your characters won’t be anything like mine, and the execution of the general idea will be totally different, I guarantee it. Just give me a nod in the dedication, m’kay? (Do not dedicate it to Rod Serling. I call dibs on him for my dedication.)

The other ideas in my pipeline at the moment are all romances, which always have a market so I’m not worried about them, even though they’re paranormal and that’s on the downswing right now. I have a couple small epublishers in mind who are always hungry for content, so we’re good.

Then there’s the currently-lucrative Young Adult market. At the moment “romantasy” appears to be the flavor of the month. Near as I can tell, that’s a standard romance in a fantasy setting, preferably with main characters at or below voting age. We had those in days of yore; they were shelved in the Science Fiction section because there really wasn’t a separate Young Adult genre back in the Paleolithic. Apparently romance writers are writing these now, by aging down their characters and throwing in dragons and elves. Hey, whatever puts food on the table.

Actually, I’d had this idea myself a couple years ago. I had some romance book ideas that I realized would probably work a lot better as YA novels. Just make the protags between 17-20 and keep the sex to a minimum. I grew up reading and writing stories like this so it’s not a huge stretch for me.

Except, me being me and therefore contrary, I’m putting my own spin on it. No generic dragons and elves, chosen ones or palace intrigue for me. The ideas I’m toying with fall firmly into science fiction’s purview. The one involves a group of genetically-engineered teenagers with superpowers; the other is about an invasion of alien shapeshifters out to take over the earth. In both cases the lead is female, mostly because, like I said, these were originally going to be standard adult romance novels. At least I was ahead of the curve on that one.

As far as adhering to diversity goes, I think that’s covered too. My superheroine is white and straight, but one of her comrades is Asian. I don’t know why or when I made that decision; it just seemed to fit him. The biggest problem is going to be one of the other girls who, frankly, is a ditz. Mean girls are okay—they’re  practically a requirement in YA—but I don’t know if honestly stupid girls are allowed in books any more. She’s also white and blonde. If she was male this wouldn’t be a problem. I’ll worry about that when or if I ever write this. As for the invasion story, the aliens in their natural form are vaguely humanoid; they take whatever shape is required by circumstances. They’re literally gender fluid, normally sexless but going from male to female as needed for breeding. My heroine here is an alien who lives among humans. She imprinted on the woman who raised her so she thinks of herself as female, although she has no problem with turning male if a mission calls for it. When she meets another of her kind, that one adapts to her by assuming the form of a handsome male. She literally makes a man out of him.

I can’t say when or if I’ll get around to these. It depends on how the others work out. Should I write one, I’m guessing by the time it’s done the romantasy fad will be over. That’s fine. Good books don’t follow trends anyway. They start them. Maybe I can start a trend and be ahead of the curve for once. At least it gives me something to aim for. See y’all next week.

Weeks 27 & 28 - Vindication

 

Update – First of all, I want to thank however many of you—yes, even the bots, and especially you, Switzerland—are actually reading this thing. I’m sorry I’ve let you down. This was supposed to be a blog about me trying to write a book a month over the course of a year. Mostly it’s been one long whinefest of me making excuses and the various creative ways I’ve discovered how to procrastinate. Every now and then I do actually write something, and I did sub the book I’m STILL working on, so it hasn’t been a total loss.

But there’s not much of an update to give because over the last two weeks I haven’t done all that much. June pretty much got eaten up by a mass of overlapping paid assignments—which, to date, I haven’t been paid for. The publishing house is HQ’d in Texas, which has been having problems lately, with hurricanes, flooding, power outages and heat waves. For all I know, the owner is one of the millions of Texans currently without power. Or maybe the bank they use to transfer my money has fallen off the grid, or been washed away. Meanwhile, my ten-year-old furnace has picked right now to have an expensive breakdown, so I could really use that paycheck. Those of you with jobs, start saving NOW. You’re going to need that money down the road, because Social Security won’t pay enough to live on. Assuming it even still exists by the time you turn 65.

I have been going through my old notebooks, and I have uncovered a couple of ideas I want to explore and maybe even turn into quickie books for much-needed cash. But first I have to write them, which for me is clearly the tricky part. I want to say I’ll get my butt in gear and do better, but I can’t give any guarantees. Remember, I’m a writer. We make things up for a living.

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While screwing off watching YouTube one day—one of the reasons I haven’t written anything but flash in the last two weeks—I came across this video, “My Ex Literary Agent Told the Truth” by a writer going by BBG. The words “literary agent” grabbed my attention so I tuned in. I’ve forgotten how to make links and don’t want to bother with experimenting, so just go to YouTube, type in the title in Search and it’ll pop up. That does work.

Briefly, here’s his tale of woe: his agent invited him out to lunch (her treat, even) and told him she might be able to sell his fantasy book to a subsidiary line of a major Big 5 publisher. However, he would have to make certain changes: 1) change the B-plot romance to a gay relationship and make it more important to the story; 2) de-age the adult protagonists to better fit a Young Adult/New Adult audience; and 3) emphasize the writer’s own sexuality (which he didn’t go into, but let’s assume it’s not straight) when marketing the book. Nothing was said about racial diversity, but that’s okay. If there aren’t any main characters of color, they’ll just put something symbolic on the cover. Worked for Twilight.

In short, the publishers weren’t looking for well-written books, they were looking to check trendy boxes. As the agent told the writer flat out: “They have a quota.”

At which point I nodded my head at the screen and uttered a sigh of relief that I’d missed out on the Berkley open call. I wasn’t being paranoid or defeatist. My adult-themed fantasy with the straight, white male protagonist and his romance with an equally straight white woman is probably unsellable in today’s market, at least if I try to go through traditional publishing. It probably wouldn’t even make it past the query stage. Maybe not even past the agent stage. Not without serious rewrites. I do have a tough prominent female character who, if you squint hard enough, might pass for a lesbian, but since the only other woman in the book is technically her sister there’s no chance for romance there. The new lead would have to be the black kid, the nephew of the writer who created the only black character in the story. Nope, hold on a sec. He’s straight and male. Better gender-swap him. Now the black writer’s niece and the blonde white lesbian can have a steamy romance while solving the mystery. Hell, we don’t even need my original straight male lead.

Yeah, that’s not happening. If you want to read that other book, somebody else will have to write it. I’m sticking to my story as originally conceived. My book would not have been chosen as is, not by a major publisher. And it wouldn’t be my fault. I have been vindicated.

Not that any of this makes me feel any better.

As for the writer in the video, he couldn’t make the changes either. The required changes would have gutted it and destroyed his whole intent. It would have been an entirely different book. It wouldn’t have been his anymore. In the end, he walked away, and so did his agent. At the end of the video we’re told the agent left the industry. She couldn’t sell books any more. Not original books by original writers. Not unless the writers were good at churning out generic box-checking diversity books because that’s all publishers want right now. I’m not sure if it’s what the readers want. If I knew what the readers wanted, I’d be writing that.

Because that’s the only way this climate is going to change. Somebody’s going to publish something that’ll become the Next Big Thing, and all the other publishers will scramble to become the first to be second. The books they’re publishing today will be sitting on Barnes and Noble’s discount shelves, or languishing, barely touched, at library used-book sales.

I hope that writer in the video writes that book. I’d rather it be me, but—well, go back and read the update. Or maybe I can fix that. Who knows? I’ve got the rest of the year to get my act together. See y’all next week.

 

 

Weeks 22 & 23 - What Grinds My Gears

 

Update(s) – Things went better last week, the week I’m writing about, than this week, the week I’ll be writing about next week. These updates would go better if I wrote them on Sundays, which was my original intention. Last week (May 26-June 1) I got stuff done, including paid work and writing. This week (May 2-May 7, the day I’m typing this) I finally started cleaning the weeds out of the yard and wrestled with a bad bout of constipation, culminating in a two-day descent into computer game hell once again. However, I got back to the writing this morning and I’m confident I can get the paid work done before deadline, so it’s all good. Next week I’ll see about getting myself back onto a less confusing schedule.

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As I feared, my last posted topic may have had internet repercussions. Over the last week my readership dropped alarmingly. Even the Hong Kong bots deserted me. Traffic’s slowly picking up again, though, so maybe it was just a glitch. And Switzerland’s still there. (waves) Maybe I’m just being paranoid.

To summarize, with clarifications: I am not against racial and sexual diversity in my reading and viewing material. I’ve included diverse characters in my own works, but only if it enhances the plot. I wasn’t planning on adding other races to the cast of my current book, but the Token Black Mercenary character started developing a personality, which led me to the conclusion his writer must have been a black man. This gave my main bad guy, the greedy, self-absorbed editor, the excuse to fire him for the crime of Writing for a White Audience While Black. The editor does a lot of reprehensible things, but that one should guarantee his infamy. It also made a crucial info source black as well, because he was the fired writer’s nephew and had actually met the two other writers the detective’s looking for. Plus it solved a background issue of my story being set in Philadelphia. Philly, like most major cities, is a melting pot of what Star Trek used to refer to as “infinite diversity in infinite combinations.” If I hadn’t included at least one Person of Color in the cast, it really would have been a fantasy.

What I do object to is having diversity forcibly crammed down my throat, in the form of a constant stream of feisty Girl Bosses who can do no wrong (think Mary Sue, but as a lesbian POC), or race- and/or gender-swapping established characters in the name of “equality” (Doctor Who; Thor: Love and Thunder). I tune in to see Superman stopping bad guys, not Superman’s young-adult bisexual son sexting with his gay boyfriend. Yes, that scene appeared in a comic book.  There are exceptions: My Adventures with Superman, the Adult Swim cartoon, is a true delight, even though Lois Lane is now biracial (she’s half Korean, according to the producers), and Jimmy Olsen appears to be permanently black, continuing the race swap initiated by the CW’s Supergirl show. That’s because everyone, regardless of skin tone, still remains true to their original characterizations. The writers clearly respect the characters and their history. That isn’t always the case. When the writers start using someone else’s characters to pound their pet agendas into our heads, it’s time to close the book or turn off the TV. Or get the hell off the internet.

But what really ticks me off is what may be the true motivation behind the surge of inclusivity, at least for the corporations that own the IP rights to all these characters getting largely-inappropriate makeovers. As with everything in a capitalist society, it all comes down to money.

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Three real-life stories, two of which happened to me personally, two of which deal with diversity…at least on the surface. Story 1: Back around 2008 I lost what turned out to be my last full-time job when the company, a printing firm, sent its work to India. This was also around the time the economy tanked, and finding jobs was a chore. I got lucky and signed on for the US Census, essentially a two-year temp job with no benefits but great pay. When that ended I still had unemployment to tide me over while I started a new job hunt in the slowly-recovering economy. I found two possibilities on the internet: a newspaper editorial position that, from the location and description, sounded like my old newspaper job, just under new management. The other was a writing job I’d applied to years ago but didn’t get; I think I may have botched the interview. Both were the types of jobs I’d been doing for years, had an interest in and experience with. Both ads contained the lines Recent graduates encouraged to apply. Experience is fine, but not required.

In short, they’re not looking for pros. They’re looking for young and cheap. Preferably women, because women traditionally get paid less. That’s how I got to be an editor in the first place. I wasn’t young, but I had no experience and would accept pittance wages to get it. The other woman, who had experience, wanted more money. Guess who got the job. Now I had experience and needed full-time work. Good luck with that.

I clicked on the Apply Now tab for the newspaper job, only to learn it was already filled, probably internally. I sent a resume to the other one. Never heard back. They probably saw the writing-related experience I had and decided I was too rich for their blood. I eventually got my work-from-home job, so things worked out, more or less.

Story 2:  It’s a few years later. Harlequin, the romance publisher, was looking for editors for Carina Press, which I think is an e-book line. They had a list of qualifications that my work-from-home job had given me some experience in. The pay sounded a lot better than what I was getting. They also used the “recent grads” line, along with a new one encouraging interest from members of “traditionally marginalized groups.” Again, experience was welcome but its lack was not a deal breaker, and diversity was a plus. I sent in my resume, answering all the questions. And got a reply: “We’re not going to interview you.” It’s the only line I remember from their response. Not even: “We had 1000 applicants who live across the street from our offices” or even “We’ve decided to hire last year’s interns.” My application itself got shot down in flames. I wish they hadn’t responded at all. Nothing like asking about a job and getting a smack in the face for it.

Months later, I checked out their “meet our new members!” page to see who’d won the lottery. It looked like they did hire a lot of interns, or people who actually knew their way around a publishing house. Can’t fault ’em for that. Some of their hires had pronouns, like “they/them”. Hey, if you’re qualified, fine. What you do on your own time shouldn’t matter anyway. But my favorite part of this story is what happened some weeks afterwards. Both the editor and the assistant editor (I think, but can’t recall for sure, if she was the one who responded to my application) were abruptly fired. The editor was on vacation at the time. She’d been there for years and had built that line from the ground up. She was also probably pulling in a higher salary than the new kids would be getting. Last I heard, she was marketing herself as a “freelance editor” and offering paid tutorials in editing. She’s not young and cheap any more, and probably not diverse either. Such is karma.

Story 3: One of the writers at DC Comics—Zack Snyder, I think, I don’t feel like double-checking—[Correction: I ended up looking it up; Scott Snyder is the comic book writer. Zack (no relation) is a director who has done DC-related movies] had been running a workshop in comic book writing for several years before I learned about it. I applied for what turned out to be the last one. Only a set number, maybe ten, would be invited, but some of those lucky few would get jobs writing for DC. I was always more of a Marvel fan, but what the hell. I always wanted to write for comics. This could be my last shot.

Well, it missed. I didn’t get picked. I did not get to take part in the workshop. In the end, Snyder picked a trans woman. Most of his previous picks were people of color, trans, black, and any and all combinations thereof. Word is that Snyder, himself a straight white man, was deliberately seeking diversity hires to broadcast his “wokeness” and secure his own job. Hell, if I’d known that was a requirement, I could have faked being a lesbian. I even supported the Harley Quinn/Poison Ivy ship before it became canon. But there y’go. Now DC Comics is in the dumpster and the writers are begging their fans for money to pay their bills because wages are even lower than they were back in the 1990s, when comics were popular. And good. And yet these people are still getting assignments, although the work’s drying up as the backlash sets in. I probably get more from Social Security than they do writing for comics. I think I may have dodged a bullet here.

$$$$

All this is why I’m glad now I missed out on the Berkley open call. That “fresh, new voices” bit was the warning shot: published writers, fogies over 40 and white folks stay away. We’re not looking for good books; we’re looking to check boxes. Quality is an afterthought. My guess is, advances are going to be a lot smaller than they were ten to twenty years ago. Assuming they even pay advances. If it’s e-books, they offer a percentage of net sales. Either way, the publisher’s going to make money; you can bank on that. The writer? Maybe not so much. But with very few exceptions, that’s always been the case.

And yet I persist. There’s nothing much else I can do. I’m no longer young and cheap, and I’ve always been boringly white and straight. I have become unhireable. Might as well go out doing something I enjoy. And no, I don’t mean playing computer games. See y’all next week.  

 

Week 21 - Diverse Thoughts

 

Update – Finally, something succeeded. I did, for starters. I began making a short daily schedule with time earmarked for writing, dealing with the paid work, and doing mundane chores. And it flippin’ worked. I started writing again. I got the paid assignment done ahead of schedule. I took time out at the end of the day to wind down and slept a whole lot better. Then I took the weekend off for Memorial Day and fell right back into my unproductive habits. I’m going to call that my vacation. I get another assignment tomorrow so I’ll be going back to the now-proven plan. I’m going to get another sub out in the mail by the end of June. This I swear!

I continue to be popular with Hong Kong bots, and my US numbers are starting to jump from single to double digits (10 counts as a double digit, remember). My reader from Switzerland still shows up occasionally, and there’s a new one from Singapore. I can’t believe I don’t have more traffic from Russia; I thought they had bots that hit blogs for a living. What’s the holdup, comrade?

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I could have had a second sub this month, but didn’t find out about the opportunity until the deadline had passed. Maybe that was a good thing. I’ll let you folks be the judge. The publisher was Berkley Books, a division of Penguin Random House so it’s legit. They had a three-day open window, same deal as the one I entered: synopsis, set number of opening pages. More genres, though. Mine’s a mix of a couple but still would have fit. Except for…

After the fact I went on the site and checked their specs. It was pretty much the same as the one I entered, with one additional paragraph that included the words “diversity” and “fresh new voices.” That right there told me all I needed to know, and what my chances would have been. They want publishable (and hopefully sellable) books, but that’s secondary. Their primary goal is to show how progressive they are by checking as many diversity boxes as possible.

I am a woman. Once upon a time that by itself would have made me a diversity hire. However, just being a woman isn’t good enough any more. Gay is the in thing now. Or being trans. Or being a person of color, as long as it’s other than white. If you’re a black trans lesbian with no previous experience, you can write your own ticket. Don’t believe me? Check out who’s been writing Marvel and DC comics for the last five years. In addition to being female, I’m white, straight, and over the age of 50. Strikes one, two and three right there. My book’s protagonist is a straight white male doing traditional straight white male things (he’s a private detective). Forget about getting a turn at bat; I’m not even going to make it to the plate. Not at any publisher that openly states they’re looking to include inclusivity.

What I’m about to say is going to be offensive to a lot of people. Fortunately, most of those people are on Twitter/X, which I’m not. I doubt if any of them are reading this blog. I should be safe enough to speak my mind.

Here’s the deal: I’m a white woman. I grew up in the ‘60s in white suburban neighborhoods in a lower middle class white family. This continued into adulthood, by chance more than choice: I moved to Amish country to be close to a job and just stayed there. Not much racial or gender diversity on display here. That’s my background, that’s my comfort zone. It’s what I know. Writers are always told to “write what you know.” When I write, all my characters start out white and straight. Except when I’m writing M/M romance; then they’re white and gay. Or nonhuman. But that’s a whole other topic. The point is, white and straight is my default mode, and that’s not in fashion right now. What, and who, I choose to write about may cost me sales, or even publishing contracts.

But here’s the thing. I’m not against diversity. I grew up reading science fiction, where all the nerds and misfits hung out. All the ideas conservative mainstream publishers wouldn’t touch were crammed into one little genre. So were all manner of writers, of varying skin tones and sexual persuasions. Nobody really gave a damn, as long as they told a good story. Yeah, women still had a better chance if they used initials or unisex pen names, but that was fading out by the ’70s. Mostly. J. K. Rowling’s publisher advised her to use initials because they were afraid boys wouldn’t read a book written by a woman. Again, I digress.

My characters start out white and straight. That doesn’t mean they have to stay that way. I’ve already had characters swap race and gender while I was writing. My M/M romance Belonging was conceived with a traditional straight man and woman couple until I discovered Supernatual. Then it became secret Wincest fanfic. It was my best seller to date, by the way. I “cast” Sam and Dean in another book. Dean made it through intact, but Sam turned into a brownskinned man. His character just worked out better that way. I’ve got another book, already written, in that stalled series of mine, where a character who was meant as a walk-on tribute to Buffy the Vampire Slayer morphed into a bisexual Pacific Islander/Hawaiian woman and became vital to the plot. I was really proud of myself for that one. I was checking diversity boxes that didn’t even exist. That was a couple years back, though. Pacific Islanders have their own tribute month now, shared with Asians.

Maybe I could have sent that one to Berkley’s open call. I don’t think it would have helped. Because, in spite of her inclusion, the lead is still a straight white male, in love with a straight white woman. (Who shapechanges into a rattlesnake. Where’s the reptilian shapeshifter representation? Huh?) I’ve already got plans to give Hawaiian Girl her own story, but that won’t happen until after the series is over, and the series heroes are all straight white males. With guns. From Texas. I think that project may be doomed.

Too bad. That’s how I conceived that series, and that’s what I’m sticking with. Same for the detective story. It was supposed to be an all-white cast, but the mercenary characters’ series had been created in the late 1970s, so their number had to include a token Black member. He ended up adding to the story, and necessitated a race change for another character. None of that changed my lead, who will remain straight and white. Nor would it have swayed the editors, whose quest for good books is just a smokescreen for an opportunity to virtue signal.

Books aren’t supposed to be about representation. They’re supposed to be about the story. If a trans black lesbian writes a compelling, superior book, by all means snatch it up and get it into bookstores. That’s what you should have been doing all along. Quality books by any writer deserve to get a shot. Those books enrich us all. But if you’re going to pass over good books in favor of box-checking, or force changes to a story in the name of “representation,” that’s not diversity. That’s tokenism, and that doesn’t help anybody. Least of all the writers and the markets you ignored for decades and are now trying to court because it’s trendy. And now that I’ve successfully shot my budding career in both feet, I’ll shut up, like a good little straight white woman writer. See y’all next week.

 

Ah, Screw It

 

UPDATE: Very little progress on the series. At the moment I’m more focused on finishing the side project, which is almost at the end. This morning I killed an important character. I’ve known for weeks this was coming and I still cried over it. Luckily that scene is followed by a happier one which I’ll be writing later so I can put myself in a better mood. Then it’ll be done and I’ll have no choice but to work on the series. Or find (or create) another excuse not to. The drama continues…

***

I’ve been trying to write this blog over almost a week now. The problem was my chosen topic: character diversity in writing. It’s a touchy subject…so ultimately I’ve decided not to touch it.

Here’s the deal: when I conceived the series several years ago, I made the conscious decision that my heroes would all be straight white men. I had my reasons. In the current political climate, that right there is enough to get me cancelled. I recall there was a flurry of condemnation over the Throne of Glass series, where Sarah J. Maas neatly paired up all her major characters in traditional boy-girl relationships. Even the one who proclaimed on the page he was bisexual. Even the one a segment of the readership insisted should have been a lesbian, regardless of how Maas, the writer and creator of the character, saw her. (Upon reflection, she probably should have been a lesbian, or at least bi. Maybe even asexual. Their scenes together were awkward, to say the least. Those two had no chemistry at all.) Readers blasted Maas for promoting “the het agenda.”

Welp, too bad. She’s the author. That’s how she wanted to write it. Apparently the readership was good with it too, because Maas became and continues to be a best-selling author. Maybe not to a vocal minority of fandom, but you can’t please everybody. These days it seems like you can’t please anybody.

So I’m not going to try. I’m going to go ahead and write my books the way I want to, the way the story tells me it wants to go. Anyway, just because characters start out white and/or straight doesn’t mean they have to stay that way. I thought the side project’s cast would be solid Caucasian. Boy, was I wrong. Turns out one character was African-American, which changed the ethnicity of two others, all of them playing vital roles in the story. That’s the way diversity is supposed to work. I feel my book is better now. They added to the tale.  If having diverse characters makes no overall difference, if you’re putting (insert ethnicity/gender identity here) into your story just to check off a box, it’s tokenism and you’re short-changing everybody—you, your story, the readers, and the characters. It’s just as bad as exclusionism. And you’re going to get lambasted anyway no matter what you do, because there are always going to be people who scream just to hear themselves make noise. Please yourself. If your work has merit, it will find an audience.

***

Here’s how you don’t do diversity right. (Disclaimer: the following rant is based on rumors that may or may not prove to be true. Only time will tell. Given the players involved, I’m inclined to believe the worst. The rant is also personal opinion. I’d be more than happy to be proven wrong, but…)

If you’re a Marvel Comics fan and/or a fan of Disney’s MCU, you’re probably one of the hordes excited at the news that the X-Men will finally, officially be joining (rejoining?) the Marvel Universe. Years back, before Marvel started making their own movies, they sold off film rights to their heavy hitters to other studios—Spider-Man to Sony, X-Men and Fantastic Four to Fox. Then Marvel Studios opened for business, and built an empire on their B-, C-, and D-listers like Iron Man, Ant-Man, and Guardians of the Galaxy. Then Disney bought Marvel. And then they bought Fox. They couldn’t pry Spidey away from Sony, but they were able to do a crossover deal to get Spidey on Disney-owned screens. And now, thanks to Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, it looks like we’ll soon get the true Marvel versions of X-Men and the FF, now that they’re back where they belong.

Wellllllll….maybe not so much.

Over the past few days I’ve been seeing articles and videos pop up regarding Disney’s plans for the X-Men. According to rumor and alleged leaks, Disney wants to race-swap several if not all of the X-Men because…well, reasons weren’t actually given. Which made me and several commenters wonder if they were going to make Storm white. Imagine the shit-show that would kick up.

I mean, why? Sure, the originals from the ‘60s were WASPs, but after the team went international in the ‘70s reboot that wasn’t an issue any more. As the cast continued to grow, so did representation. At one point Storm, the African woman, was leading the team. The X-Men have been diverse for years. Hell, Nightcrawler’s blue. What more do you want?

Apparently, what Disney doesn’t want is straight white men. It gets worse: according to the leaks and rumors, the plan is to deliberately lure fans in with the white versions we’ve already seen in the Fox movies (like Patrick Stewart’s cameo in MoM) then ease those versions out in favor of more racially-diverse ones. Why Bishop—who’s been black in the comics from Day 1—continues to be absent from the roster I can’t say, and it seems that neither can Disney. Do we really need a black Rogue (already hinted at)? Or an Asian Cyclops? Iceman’s already gay; maybe they’ll leave him alone. But what’s the point?

Here’s my theory, my personal opinion based on these unfounded rumors: it’s not about inclusion, or story, or upgrading characters to reflect the modern era. It’s about money.

For decades comic book writers and artists were work-for-hire. They freelanced for the companies. The characters they drew and the stories they wrote became property of the company. This was true for Marvel and DC, at any rate. I assume it was true for Harvey, Charleton, Fawcett, and the other companies. That was the industry. Comics were cheap, disposable entertainment for kids. The idea that some dweeb in tights would bring moviegoers into theaters worldwide to the tune of billions of dollars was undreamed of.

Enter Superman: The Movie and Tim Burton’s take on Batman. There was movie gold in them thar capes. The writers and artists who’d written those stories and designed those capes, costumes and characters naturally wanted a piece of the action. The companies said no, they owned the rights, they were entitled to reap the financial rewards.

Legal battles sprang up. You may have noticed the dearth of new, original characters from the Big Two over the years, and the growing number of independent publishers. Nobody wants to pour their efforts, let alone their heart and soul, into a character that could end up earning millions not just from movies or TV but from merchandising, for some corporate suit while the creators are scraping by on mac ‘n’ cheese. Things have gotten better over time, with more creators getting screen credit and therefore additional checks. But corporations run things now, and there are ways around doing what’s right.

Which is why I believe Disney is planning to race-swap, maybe even gender-swap, the white characters out of the picture. Those are the ones created by those hard-working writers and artists all those years ago. The people now demanding their fair share. But wait. Thor’s a woman now. That’s not who you created. This is a different character, derivative of yours but not your creation and therefore you don’t get any money. Sorry, writer/artist person, looks like you’re SOL. (Google Gerry Conway, Alan Brennert or Paul Dini with the key word royalties and let me know what you find. Or Jim Starlin, creator of Thanos, to find out where the real money in movies is for comics creators.)

And that’s why we now have a gay Superman (who’s not Clark Kent), a black Batman (who’s not Bruce Wayne) and why we’re liable to have a black Prof. X in the future. Because corporations are greedy and cheap. They’ve got 50 years’ worth of stories and characters to mine for gold, and they don’t want to share even a penny with the prospectors who discovered the mine. At least, that’s my take. When I sell the film rights of my series, I’m going to include a clause in the contract that they can’t race- or gender-swap any of my characters without permission. The series is erotic romance, with threesomes and foursomes and people doing it with vampires and werewolves, so I’d think race would be the least of their concerns. Stay tuned…    

 

 

Here We Go Again

Let me start off by saying it’s not my intention to single-handedly bring diversity to the world of M/M romance. Or romance in general. Or any genre currently dominated by straight white characters. I myself am straight and white, so that’s my default position. As with a lot of businesses and institutions in the U.S. of A., publishing tends to be dominated by straight white people. I almost wrote “men,” but I recall reading somewhere that there are more women than men involved in the publishing industry, at least in editorial. Somehow I suspect it’s a man sitting in the CEO’s chair. It usually is. Men are obsessed with sex and money, while women would rather read a book. That’s right, sweetie, she’s faking it. You’re nowhere near as good as she’s making you think you are.

That’s neither here nor there, however. We’re talking about diversity.

There’s been some squawk among readers and writers about all the straight white males that populate popular literature. Where are the gay, bi, and trans characters? Where are the people of color? Where’s the Asian trans bodybuilder and the asexual black queen of the fantasy realm? I’m sure they’re out there somewhere, but if so, they’re minor characters. The leads and their circles of friends are still predominantly white.

A glaring example: DC Comics. The characters they’re now trying to make billions with in movies were created back in the 1940s. Take a look at any copy of Justice League from the 1960s, during the height of the Civil Rights movement, and you’ll behold a sea of white faces. (Okay, Martian Manhunter’s green, but when he changed form to fake humanity he changed into a white guy.) They tried to course-correct in the ‘90s cartoon by including the John Stewart (a black guy) version of Green Lantern, but now that a Justice League movie is looming on the horizon they’re reverting back to whitebread Hal Jordan. Cyborg, formerly of the Teen Titans, is now part of the Justice League as their sole black member. Welcome to tokenism, Vic.

Marvel Comics has it a bit easier. They came of age in the 1960s, with younger, hipper creators than stodgy old DC. They’ve always had racial diversity. Joe Robertson, editor of the Daily Bugle in the Spider-Man comics, was always a black guy. Marvel had the first black superhero (Black Panther, born in Africa) and the first African-American superhero (the Falcon). Okay, there was Wong, Dr. Strange’s Asian servant, but nobody talks about him. And Nick Fury wasn’t always Samuel L. Jackson. He used to be a white guy. And almost every prominent character in the first Avengers movie, with the exception of Mr. Jackson and Ms. Johannsen, was white, male, and supposedly straight. (Loki has been a woman in the comics, so he gets a pass.) I never said the system didn’t have its glitches.

The point is, pretty much everybody populating those thousands of books in the Barnes & Noble is a straight white person, probably male. The readers buying those books, however, run the entire gamut of the racial and sexual spectrum. They want to see characters that reflect who they are. Can you blame them?

Just try to swerve off the straight white path if you’re a straight white writer, however. Publishers will smell the possibility of a lawsuit on your manuscript and email it right back to you. Apparently only people of color or different sexual orientation can safely write about characters of same. Then they’re told there’s no market for their books, and the status quo perpetuates itself.

True story: a straight, white male writer of children’s books wrote a story about a biracial boy. It was rejected by the publishers he sent it to, and word leaked back to him the reason for all the nos was because he, the writer, was a white guy. Here’s the kicker: his wife is black. His son is biracial. So it’s okay for him to raise a biracial kid but not to write about one. A point he publicly raised at a publishing conference, in front of an audience and panelists that was mostly white.

What does all this have to do with me and my M/M stories? Nothing, usually. I stick to my Caucasian comfort zone. Except when I find I don’t have a choice.

Like now.

I’ve written black characters before. My last ménage had a brown-skinned lead character, but the book took place on an alien planet so he slid under the radar. I work the system by not calling attention to any character’s race. I’ll drop in a couple of hints that suggest a different ethnicity and let the readers picture them any way they want to.

The problem reared its head when I started my current WIP, which involves a circus populated by shapeshifters. I work on the theory that a shapeshifter’s human ethnicity is determined by their animal form’s continent of origin. Shapeshifters can’t stay animal all the time. They have to blend in with the human population. Therefore a tiger’s human form will be Indian, wolves will be white European or Native American, and horses will be white European, or maybe Arabian. Simple evolutionary survival.

What do you find at the circus? Elephants, tigers, lions, bears, camels, the occasional monkey. Where did those animals originate? Not in the white countries, that’s for damn sure. If I’m to remain true to my personal rules, my white hero is going to walk into a predominantly African/Asian/Native American environment and meet the other hero, a lion shifter. Who I originally pictured as a white guy, but if he’s a lion his human form will have to be African-American.

I didn’t sit down with the intention of writing an interracial gay romance. It just turned out that way. I’ve already given in to panic and made my lion shifter half-human, so he can keep his blond hair and green eyes. (Clearly his mom was a white woman.) As for the rest, I won’t dwell on race. There’s a brief passage where the hero considers the ethnic diversity surrounding him, then it’s never mentioned again. If an editor asks me to delete that scene, I will. Or maybe I’ll just change it to the shifters and the human circus workers eating at separate tables and make that the only overt racial diversity. (Another true story: during the filming of the original Planet of the Apes movie, the actors had to go to lunch in full ape makeup. Within days they began segregating themselves: chimps ate with chimps, gorillas with gorillas, orangutans with orangutans, regardless of the skin color of the human actor underneath the prosthetics. Birds of a feather. We are indeed a strange species.)

With the race problem out of the way, I can concentrate on the important stuff, like my human hero falling in love with the lion man while trying to catch a killer. The killer’s a straight white male, by the way. I’m not taking any chances.