Dec 272017
 

In the fall of 2017, we received not one but two new Star Trek series. Well, one and a half. I’m speaking, of course, of Star Trek: Discovery and it’s underachieving, pot-smoking, distant cousin, The Orville.

What are these two series, and what exactly is their relationship to the established Star Trek corpus? To answer that, I will draw on Harold Bloom’s theory of poetry, arguing that all poetry is misreading of previous poems. However, some poems are “weak misreadings”, which merely replicate the previous poem, and others are “strong misreadings” in which the poet includes his own ideas. This distinction will help us understand where to place these two series.

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Sep 012017
 

A lot has happened recently. I have officially signed a book deal and my book will be published sometime next year, probably the summer. This is the fruition of twelve years of research, writing, submitting, presenting, and networking.

Right now, I am working on cutting the 120,000-word current draft to under 100,000 words. Most of that 20,000 words were a couple of chapters that I freely admit were a bit weak, and that material may appear on the blog or in other work. The rest of the words to cut are mostly overly long quotes and some redundancies.

I am also sourcing images. I had always assumed that publishers would pay for licensing of images, but this is not the case. The author has to do it. For a while, it looked like this work would be without images, but I’ve found some of the images I want to use for free in the public domain. There are other images I would like to use, and I’m debating whether it is worth paying for their licenses.

I will be updating this blog as I continue this work with my agent and publisher. In the months to come, you can expect to see a new title, cover art, and more.

I will also be in San Francisco for my first Folsom Street Fair in late September. If anyone there recognizes me, please say hello.

 Posted by at 17:14
Dec 092016
 

In September, the book I’ve been editing for the past few years, Our Lives, Our History: Consensual Master/Slave Relationships from Ancient Times to the 21st Century finally launched. It was a longer and more difficult project than I anticipated, when a friend referred MTTA to me to edit their commissioned work. I worked with great people, learned new skills, and got to travel to the US three times, including visiting the Smithsonian Museums of American History and Air and Space in Washington DC. But it’s out now in print, with an ebook edition anticipated next year.

 Posted by at 16:49
Nov 302015
 

Even after the prequel trilogy, I still have fond memories of going to see the original Star Wars with my uncle. I plan to do the same with my nephew and niece this holiday season. From what I’ve seen in the trailers and commercials, there’s cause for cautious optimism: a race and gender diverse cast, a world that returns to the tactile, lived in quality of the original trilogy, plus things that don’t need changing, like John Williams’ score.

There is, however, one thing I’m a little suspicious of. I refer specifically to what is clearly intended to be the breakout, cute character of the new trilogy.

I refer, of course, to BB-8. I am increasingly convinced there is more to this little automaton than meets the eye, and we all should be suspicious of him/her/it(?).

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Nov 302015
 

The audiobook of the Lovecraftian horror anthology Cthulhu Lives, which includes my short story “The Thing in the Printer”, is now up on Bandcamp.

The audiobook of the Lovecraftian horror anthology Cthulhu Lives, which includes my short story “The Thing in the Printer”, is now up on Bandcamp.

Nov 072015
 

My steampunk erotica story collection The Innocent’s Progress and Other Stories will be a part of The Circlet Press Steampunk Bundle which also includes the award-winning House of Sable Locks by Elizabeth Schechter, the bizarre and witty Erotofludic Age by Vinnie Tesla, and the exuberantly swashbuckling 1901: A Steam Odyssey by Lionel Bramble; along with Like a Wisp of Steam, edited by J. Blackmore.

This goes on sale November 15th, 2015, until February 15th, 2016. You can’t ask for a better deal than that.

Vinnie Tesla called The Innocent’s Progress:

Confident, humane, nuanced, slyly comic–it is excellent writing.

 Posted by at 23:20
Jun 242015
 

After about 163 queries to literary agents over four months, 40 of which resulted in rejections, one finally said he wanted to represent my book on the history of sadomasochism. We had a couple of phone conversations in which we talked about background and changing my proposal, and he sent me a copy of his agreement.

Unlike the previous agent, this included provisions for breaking off the agreement if I wasn’t satisfied. My friends who know about the writing business looked the agreement over for me, and were okay with it. After my usual anxious waffling, I put the printed, signed agreement in the mail. It should reach the agent in Toronto by the end of this week.

I have no idea what’s going to happen next. The agent says he will start showing my current draft of of the manuscript and a new version of the proposal to American publishers in July. I definitely want to keep revising the manuscript, as I’m running the chapters through my writer’s workshop. I have yet to look at certain research elements, such as Robert Bienvenu’s thesis.

I will continue blogging on this site.

In other news, the shared world science fiction project my writer’s group has been working on for six years is finally nearing completion and we are talking about self-publishing as a “season” of novellas.

 Posted by at 16:15
Apr 062014
 

The final stop on my blog tour to promote “An Angel Has No Memory” is at the Scarlet Letters blog:

How long is a book? SFWA says that a novel has to be at least 50,000 words long, and most novels today are much longer. But a novel isn’t the same thing as a book. A book can theoretically be of any length, contain multiple works by multiple authors, or even just be a compilation of LOLCats.
How long is a story? Hemingway wrote a story in six words: “For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.” I once asked a romance novelist what was the difference between a category romance and a literary romance. She said, “About 20,000 words.” Category romances are meant to be short, fast reads, compared to more involved reading of literary stories.
Mar 142014
 

The next stop on the blog tour for An Angel Has No Memory is at Stephen Zimmer’s blog, where I talk about straight men writing lesbian erotica.

First, should white people make hiphop? I say yes, for the same reason I think black people should make heavy metal, and indeed anybody should make anything. The claim that any particular group has a monopoly on any particular form of expression goes against the whole idea of freedom of expression. Hip-hop itself is based on promiscuous borrowing and recombination of culture items, defying conventional categories of race and class and genre.

Second, should white people dominate the charts and awards ceremonies for hip-hop, leaving black artists on the margins of the genre they created? That’s a thornier question.