New review and musing
Jul. 21st, 2012 07:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catherineldfI woke up to a nice review of "Silver Moon" at Lambda Literary Reviews this morning and am, by and large quite pleased. http://tinyurl.com/brotc9h
What follows is general commentary, not specific or unique to this review, which I think is a perfectly nice review and which I will be thanking the reviewer for in a few minutes.
I will admit to some frustration about the need expressed here and elsewhere for all genre books with LGBT or Q characters to be romantic and/or erotic. If you write genre, it seems like it has to contain these elements to sell, to be seriously considered for awards, to get glowing reviews. And I gotta ask - are we nothing more than our sexual identities? Not everyone comes out of the closet in a blaze of glory and falls madly (and successfully) in love with the first other queer person they meet. I realize that's the ideal but it feels like there was more leeway a few years back for telling stories that were about a range of queer experience, possibly even not romantic things. One of my all time favorite books is Ellen Galford's "The Fires of Bride," which is, in part, about falling out of love with a person and in love with a place. It's a brilliant book. But I suspect it didn't sell worth a damn and it certainly didn't win any awards. I'm not sure that it would have been published by most of the current LGBT publishers and that strikes me as a damn shame (Firebrand Books did a bunch of risk-taking terrific books like this one, well worth tracking down). Personally, I have a hard time reading the more formulaic queer romances but I understand why other folks find them comforting and appealing. But I don't think they should be the only stories out there, not by a long shot. I want me some nuance and I hope that's what I'm writing.
What follows is general commentary, not specific or unique to this review, which I think is a perfectly nice review and which I will be thanking the reviewer for in a few minutes.
I will admit to some frustration about the need expressed here and elsewhere for all genre books with LGBT or Q characters to be romantic and/or erotic. If you write genre, it seems like it has to contain these elements to sell, to be seriously considered for awards, to get glowing reviews. And I gotta ask - are we nothing more than our sexual identities? Not everyone comes out of the closet in a blaze of glory and falls madly (and successfully) in love with the first other queer person they meet. I realize that's the ideal but it feels like there was more leeway a few years back for telling stories that were about a range of queer experience, possibly even not romantic things. One of my all time favorite books is Ellen Galford's "The Fires of Bride," which is, in part, about falling out of love with a person and in love with a place. It's a brilliant book. But I suspect it didn't sell worth a damn and it certainly didn't win any awards. I'm not sure that it would have been published by most of the current LGBT publishers and that strikes me as a damn shame (Firebrand Books did a bunch of risk-taking terrific books like this one, well worth tracking down). Personally, I have a hard time reading the more formulaic queer romances but I understand why other folks find them comforting and appealing. But I don't think they should be the only stories out there, not by a long shot. I want me some nuance and I hope that's what I'm writing.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-22 08:41 pm (UTC)