I’ve got the apartment to myself this weekend. My plans for this lazy Sunday include watching baseball — I am SO GLAD baseball season is back, I can’t even express it — and working on The Novel.

I haven’t written much about what I’m writing, because there are about a million blogs by aspiring authors that are probably much more interesting and informative than mine would be. I only mention it now because I’m finally switching gears on this project: that is to say, after almost a year of writing in fits and starts (and one major computer death that took 15,000 words with it), I’ve finished the rough draft and am now starting the revision process. And since when I write I plow straight through without revising at all as I go (or even, for that matter, rereading to make sure I’m keeping things consistent), that’s quite a daunting process.

But enough about that. Since reading and writing is what’s on my mind, have some related links.

Amazon Follies

On Amazon.com two days ago, mysteriously, the sales rankings disappeared from two newly-released high profile gay romance books: “Transgressions” by Erastes and “False Colors” by Alex Beecroft. Everybody was perplexed. Was it a glitch of some sort? The very next day HUNDREDS of gay and lesbian books simultaneously lost their sales rankings, including my book “The Filly.” There was buzz, What’s going on? Does Amazon have some sort of campaign to suppress the visibility of gay books? Is it just a major glitch in the system?

Of course, it turns out, it is not a glitch. Amazon has decided to exclude “adult” material from appearing in searches and on its best seller list, and automatically considers all books featuring GLBT characters and themes adult. I rarely shop at Amazon anyway; I definitely won’t be at all until this is remedied.

See also: Amazon Rank.

Straight Talk on Race: Challenging the Stereotypes in Kids’ Books

I trudged back and forth between cultures, relying heavily on stories for insight into the secrets and nuances of North American life. But exactly what did those stories communicate about my place as a brown-skinned foreigner? And, in that mostly white suburb where I went to school, why can’t I remember any educators who were bold enough to raise the issue?

The best-case scenario is that my teachers were consciously giving me freedom to experience the pleasure of reading without adult interference. But would it have diminished my enjoyment if an educator had raised questions about race in The Chronicles of Narnia or The Secret Garden, for example? Looking back, I don’t think so. Especially if that educator had appreciated these stories as much as I did.

Interesting and informative stuff about how to discuss race in school reading assignments, ranging from common stereotypes and tropes to cover art and beauty standards. (Via Justine.)

Gender in the Publishing World

I have to say that I have been pleasantly surprised by the number of boys who read Alex and really enjoy it. We are told often that boys will not read a book with a female protagonist, and I actually had a boy the other day look at me in shock when I mentioned Alex was a girl. This boy had already read the book, in which I say often that Alex is a girl, and yet I suppose because it isn’t about the fact that she is a girl, that she isn’t particularly “girly”, whatever that is, he actually forgot he was reading about the opposite gender and saw her more as an “everyman” (everywoman?) kind of character. Something, I must be honest, that was indeed one of my goals with the book, so I am immensely pleased. But at the same time, does this mean that if I write a “girly” protagonist I will lose the boys who so enjoyed my other books simply on that fact alone?

Adrienne Kress (whose first book, Alex and the Ironic Gentleman, got five cupcakes over at Active Voice) writes not just about her book, but also about the question of women writing in general, women working in publishing, and — of somewhat personal interest to me — about being a funny female writer. Good stuff, good discussion.

Fantasy in Asia

Fantasy in Asia is as natural as mermaids swimming and fairies flying. That is to say, the mythology of Asia lends itself organically to the world of fantasy. Long before Tolkien invented a hobbit, a monkey king jumped its way through the pages of one of the four classic novels of China, Journey to the West, while Scheherazade wove her thousand and one tales to her Persian king in the Arabian Nights. Classic Asian tales have spawned a vast array of stories, books and movies that weave in fantastic elements that are quintessentially eastern. To hear of Aladdin and his magic lamp, is to be swept away into a world of djinns and sorcerers that somehow has been garbled up and translated to a western audience as a frenetic blue genie voiced by Robin Williams in a Disney movie, or immortalized by Barbara Eden in the classic TV hit I Dream of Jeanie. Meanwhile the Monkey King is a superstar in China who has never successfully made the transition outside of Asia.

In my last post, I linked to a couple of essays on non-Western-centric fantasy, and this is another great one. Ellen Oh looks at some of the Asian myths that haven’t ever caught on outside Asia, and the invisibility of fantasy novels that do use them — unless they’re suitably westernized, of course.

I’m late. So sue me.

So Dumbledore has been outed by JK Rowling. This is big news; not for GLBTQ anything, not for literature, but just in general. It’s so big that when I saw the Gentleman Caller last Friday — the man who wore a shirt that proclaimed “Proud Muggle” when he was working at a Borders HP7 release and didn’t know what his shirt meant meant — the first words out of his mouth were, “So, did you hear about Dumbledore?”

Which, I think, says more about the impact these books have had on our culture. But that’s not really what I want to write about, or at least, not directly.

I think there are several stages of Dumbledore Is Gay:

1) Joy. There’s a character everyone loves (or is supposed to — Harry, our POV character, does, and we’re meant to agree with him), and it turns out he’s gay! Score one for queer characters in the media!

2) Confusion. Why wasn’t it made explicit in the books?

3) Irritation. If any writer, any series, has the clout to get away with having a beloved character who is openly gay, it’s JK and HP! How is casually stating it after the fact doing anything special? If you want to have a gay character, make it clear in the books!

4) Contemplative. You mean the only confirmed gay character in the books died? And spent his whole life alone and unhappy? Gosh. Huh.

5) Acceptance. Okay, maybe the whole thing isn’t as awesome as it seemed in stage one, but it’s still more awesome than a lot of things.

6) Bonus stage! More irritation, that as a blogger and a fantasy reader, I don’t have more original things to say.

That said, while I don’t presume to know why JK did things the way she did, I’ve thought a lot about and it is better than I first…um, second-through-fourth thought. I do kind of like that having a gay character isn’t a huge deal, and doesn’t have to be his defining character trait. (Though, in this case, textual acknowledgement would have been nice — in a heteronormative culture, if it isn’t explicit, he’ll probably be read as straight. But still.) And springing it on unsuspecting readers after the fact…well, why not?

Say you have a Hypothetical Reader. Hypo maybe isn’t totally comfortable with gays, or is maybe an on-the-fence, what-you-do-in-the-bedroom-is-none-of-my-business-(please-keep-it-that-way) type of person. They do exist, in spades. Anyway, Hypo reads the books and likes Dumbledore, as he is pretty much the coolest mentor since Obi-Wan. Hypo then feels a little uncomfortable…but deals with it. Because it doesn’t change anything. Albus is still Albus. And so…maybe Hypo still likes the character, because he liked the character first and didn’t avoid reading it to avoid dealing with the hype over the gay character.

Maybe it’s not that different than mentioning it textually in the seventh book would have been; I suspect most people who read the first six would have wanted to finish the series, regardless. But she avoided it being What The Book Was About, while still being public about it. So…I’m justifying here, but who knows what her reasoning was? It wasn’t necessarily bad, is my point.

On a more selfish level, I’m quite pleased, regardless of when and how it was done. I write YA fantasy and scifi; I’m at an awkward phase of doing rewrites and trying to get manuscripts in shape so I can start seeking an agent. Eeeeeeek. But one thing that I’ve been going back and forth on is my inclusion of queer characters — I don’t think I’ve written anything without at least one in years. And I’m never sure if having them there openly is going to hurt my chances of publication. I’d like to think that hey, Dumbledore was gay and people are mostly okay with that, so maybe I can include my queer characters without having to turn them into subtext, and still get their stories out. Anything that nudges gay characters towards being just characters is a good thing, as far as I’m concerned.

So I accidentally tuned into Spike TV’s miniseries, The Kill Point. I have a strange fondness for mediocre cable shows and action movies; it seemed like a good compromise between the two, despite the fact that I possess ovaries and Spike is, you know, TV For Men. And overall, I enjoyed it; I’ve been a fan of John Leguizamo basically since he was Luigi in the terrible, terrible Super Mario Bros movie. He made the villain basically likable but still very dangerous and obviously able to kill someone. And I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Donnie Wahlburg and didn’t walk away humming any New Kids on the Block songs. Also, I enjoyed his character’s grammar obsession; any hero who makes his big dramatic point by correcting the apostrophe placement on a restaurant sign is someone I will enjoy, even if it felt like the series wanted that to be A Big Moment and it didn’t actually make any sense.

Anyway.

But what really did impress me was near the end of the episode I saw. The police have shut off the building’s electricity; Wolf, Leguizamo’s character, is threatening to kill a hostage unless it gets turned back on. One of the hostages has a panic attack, freaking out that he’ll be the one killed, until Bernard, an elderly man (mentioned in passing as gay), steps up and says that he’s the logical choice to kill if it comes to that. Wolf agrees, and the police see Bernard with a gun to his head and turn the power on the moment before Wolf would have pulled the trigger.

What’s interesting is the conversation between Bernard and the man who panicked after he sits back down with the other hostages. The man asks how he possibly found it in himself to do that, to willingly sacrifice himself for everyone else. Bernard answers, simply, “I came out of the closet in 1953.”

That got me. For one thing, it’s a clear break away from cultural stereotypes that paint gays as weak and cowardly; Bernard was strong and calm. It also is an acknowledgment that coming out (especially in a hostile environment–things have improved since the 50s, but not uniformly) is an act of courage, and that simply living as gay and out is an act of courage. Bernard’s sexuality was tied directly to his strength of character and was what made him admirable to the other hostages, to Wolf, and to the viewers.

A bit more progressive than I’d have expected from the All James Bond, All The Time channel. Color me pleasantly surprised!