Tag: m/m romance

Something About You

‘Tis Tuesday morning and all is well; at least so far, at any rate. It was very cold at the office yesterday, which didn’t make a lot of sense. The temperature did drop overnight Saturday, as I may have mentioned yesterday, but man, it was so cold in the office yesterday it made me sleepy and my knee joints ache–which is a new ache, I might add. I was also experiencing some pain from my left Achilles tendon yesterday, that I noticed particularly as I pushed the cart around the grocery store last night. I did make good on my plan to stop and make a little groceries last night on the way home, but was very tired from the cold and once I was home, collapsed into my chair with Sparky. The apartment was very warm and comfortable when I got home, but I also realized yesterday that I didn’t dress appropriately for the cold, either. It’s 39 right now outside, so yes–layers and a jacket for the day (and a sweater and a T-shirt). Did I mention that it was insanely cold in the office yesterday? Feel free to mock me, people from the frozen tundra up north, as y’all are wont to do. I don’t care.

I also decided yesterday that one thing I definitely need to do this year is get the ebook of Jackson Square Jazz put up at long last. I just need to revise and copy edit it, and I may even do a bit more polishing on it than was originally done. I don’t know why I was so determined that the ebook be exactly like the (long) out of print hard copies, but there you have it, you know? My insistence that it be exactly the same and not changed or revisited at all was came from the obsessive part of my brain and now that I’m medicated, that’s no longer a thing. There’s no point in setting a personal deadline, because I always blow those in any case (kind of like the publisher ones), but I can add it to the long list of things to do (I still need to update my to-do list, don’t I?) and can at least try to get it done by spring. I do have a three-day weekend coming up this weekend, too….and no Costco trip, either, so that won’t wear me out. Huzzah? I guess the national championship in football game is this week, too? That should tell you something–that I don’t even know when the game is being played. Anyway, I need to reread the book first at any rate, and since my mind seems unable to focus enough to read something, anything, else…maybe this will kick-start my brain back into reading some more.

You know what straight women who consume queer content but try to exclude queer people from said content are? Homophobes. I saw over the weekend a horrible post in which a gay man in Utah went to an advertised watch-party for Heated Rivalry, and long story short, the straight women kicked him out because “he made them uncomfortable.” Seriously? I’ve seen a lot of this sort of “gatekeeping” on this show, but also on gay romance. Almost twenty years ago, I was attacked and lied on and smeared and slandered because I dared to say that there was clearly homophobia in the “m/m community”–which there was, always has been, and there still is obviously1; and I certainly do not need any cisgender straight woman to tell me what is and isn’t homophobic, thank you very much. If you’re MAGA and read/write gay romance, you probably shouldn’t be–because you aren’t allies, you don’t care about us or our rights, and how fucking dare you appropriate our lives and stories (and spaces) to make money? I have always said anyone can write anything they want whenever they want; I am not in the habit of telling any artist how to express themselves creatively. It isn’t a matter of can you, but more a should you. No one has a right to be published–and no one has a right to book sales and an audience, either. I don’t want anyone telling me what I can and can’t write; and I am not going to tell anyone else what they should write or read or watch or anything like that.

And as the watch-party story spread across social media, one of the terrific things I’ve seen is actual straight women allies calling that behavior out as exclusionary and homophobic, which is a lovely change from the way they all used to pile on anyone with the mildest question or concern about said writings and writers, particularly those who thought making jokes about queer identity when not being actually queer wasn’t homophobic.2

And for the record, I know any number of straight women who write excellent fiction about gay men.

It really is amazing how Heated Rivalry is driving so much discourse, isn’t it? I’ve also taken to occasionally watching reaction videos of straight guys watching and loving the show; my favorite are the Empty Netters, who’ve gone kind of viral. It is really, really nice seeing straight guys getting vested in the show–they tuned in for the hockey but got caught up in the story. I tend to think those men probably weren’t actively homophobic, or really were, deep down; I’m sure they’ve made gay jokes and used gay slurs to be funny with other straight men. But being open to watching a gay romance show, getting vested in it, and spreading the word about the show to get more viewers? That’s awesome, and the sort of thing we need more of in the future, despite the country burning to the ground.

And on that grim note, I am heading into the spice mines.

I’m very pleased with how this picture, from the Iris parade a few years back, turned out.
  1. The attacks on me were incredibly homophobic–and I will never forgive nor forget those bitches. ↩︎
  2. I also loved how some of them were horrified at how queer fiction is marginalized in the industry. I mean, duh. ↩︎

Guitars, Cadillacs

Merry Christmas Eve Eve! I just have to get through the day and then it’s holiday vacation time! I got a lot done at work yesterday, but was very low-energy. I wasn’t tired, or fatigued, or even sleepy (the three stages of tired for me), but just a little bit off. More of an “odd energy” day than anything else, I suppose. But I wasn’t in the mood to stop and make groceries on the way home as I had planned–and didn’t realize until just now how stupid it is to go to the grocery store the night before Christmas Eve…heavy heaving sigh, but it’ll have to do. I’ll just go uptown and get the mail when I leave the office today, swing by the store, and get gas. No worries, no problems, and no big deal. There was hardly any traffic yesterday morning when I drove to work, and not really much on the way home, either. Here’s hoping that will last through today, right? Sparky was needy when I got home last night, too, so I didn’t get much of anything done last night, either–which is perfectly fine. I did think some things through during the day and evening, so it counts.

It’s the malaise, I suppose. My mind is also unfocused right now, so my creativity energy is bouncing all over the place and so many different works that are in progress right now racing through my brain…it’s actually fun, if annoying. I think I will actually spend Christmas Eve and Christmas not doing much of anything other than mildly picking up and straightening the house, and reading. Then I have three full days to get things done before I return to the office on Monday for a mere three day work week before my next day off, then work at home Friday, and another weekend. I am getting terribly, terribly spoiled.

Hilariously, someone had put up a voodoo doll dressed up as an ICE agent and stuck full of pins here in New Orleans, and that (of all things) went viral over the weekend. The result? MORE of them popped up all over New Orleans, especially after our Attorney General Liz Murrill (aka Pam Bondi Lite) reacted publicly by threatening people with criminal charges for putting up–wait for it–voodoo dolls1. Apparently a significant portion of them have been calling in sick since the first one went up. Thoughts and prayers, guys, thoughts and prayers.

One thing you have to say about Heated Rivalry–it’s enormously popular and driving a lot of conversations. As always, the discourse on who can write who, who can make money writing about whom, and who gets their work adapted for the screen popped up again, as it inevitably does; and it is a conversation that does need to be had…but without hurt feelings, nastiness, and homophobia. As I always say, writers can write about whatever they want and for whatever reason they might have, whether writers should is a different and highly nuanced conversation that cannot be had on social media, for the record.

Let me say this, though: whatever anyone wants to say about them, at least m/m writers don’t write tragedy/trauma porn, and they don’t kill off their gay characters, which put them miles head of most straight authors, who choose to write gay characters as sad, tragic losers destined for unhappiness, misery, and early death.

The noble, tragic gay trope is very, very tired.

And I love that the show is opening eyes, hearts, and minds. What more could anyone ask for? (I do love seeing older straight white women explaining to Gen Z queers how hard it used to be to come out; isn’t it still?) It still burns my ass that Netflix canceled Boots like the craven cowards they are, but they have a history of this; see Dead Boy Detectives (but I think that was canceled because of Neil Gaiman predator blowback, other than having a gay main character). But there is already a second series of Heated Rivalry greenlighted; not sure how that will precisely work.

And on that cheery note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely pre-Christmas Eve, and I will be back on the morrow for more holiday cheer!

Ah, the things I would do to Mario Lopez…
  1. And I love that ICE is afraid of voodoo in New Orleans. Shouldn’t have come, Gestapo man, shouldn’t have come. And the curses laid upon you here will follow you for the rest of your life… ↩︎

Third Rate Romance

Monday and back to the office with me this morning. The Saints lost yesterday, but at least it was an exciting game. I slept well and feel good this morning, which is a good thing. I have to cover the clinic today instead of having an Admin day, and we’re book pretty solid, just as we were last Thursday and almost everyone showed up. It’s fine, I do love my job after all, but sometimes that’s a little draining. Ah, well, I can go home after work and chill out with my Sparky, who was cuddling with me this morning after the first tap of the snooze button. Bless his little heart, that’s not exactly helping me get up in the morning.

Yesterday, despite the Saints loss, was pretty good. I felt good when I got up in the morning–there was some fatigue still in my hips, but nothing horrifying–and while I didn’t do all the chores I wanted to get done, I did do some, and ran the dishwasher. I still have all those boxes from Costco to take out to the trash, but maybe I can get that done tonight after work. But while the Saints game was on, I actually wrote and read some more of The Hunting Wives, which is so different from the show but in a very interesting way. And the writing work I got done was good work; I could tell as I was working that this was good stuff, which is awesome. The short story is due today, and I just need to sand down some of the rougher edges on it before I turn it in, and then full focus on getting Scotty finished. I was actually thinking a lot about the Scotty yesterday, too, which is kind of cool. I feel like I’m getting back into the writing groove again, and once the Scotty is finished, I’d like to get a rough draft of Chlorine finished by the end of the year and perhaps start another novel before January 1. We’ll see, I guess.

We also didn’t watch the Emmys, primarily because we don’t care that much, choosing to watch The Thursday Murder Club, with its incredible cast, instead. I’ve not read the book it was based on, but have heard great things about it, and the movie was absolutely charming and very well done. I do hope there will be more of these…and then we watched this week’s Platonic before starting the new season of Only Murders in the Building. (I saw someone on social media this weekend say that they were convinced the best way to watch the show was to assume Steve Martin and Martin Short are playing a gay couple–which I can actually see, but alas not canon.)

As many of us saw many so-called allies to marginalized communities slip into their Klan robes over the course of the last week and weekend, outing themselves as, if not racists and homophobes, then are certainly okay with homophobia and racism and oppression…this morning I noticed on social media that there’s yet another furor in the m/m community; this time about those conservative women who idolized the late unlamented provocateur and everything he stood for…I generally no longer comment on this subgenre of literature as a general rule because I have nothing to gain by saying anything. I noticed back in the late aughts that there was an awful lot of homophobia and bigotry and fetishization in that community, and merely asking “why do you want to write about gay men when you hate and marginalize them?” unleashed a torrent of hatred on me…you know, typical straight white women who cannot stand being questioned about anything. One of the “authors” publicly claimed that I was “clearly jealous of their careers”–um, you’re neither Harlan Coben nor Stephen King nor Nora Roberts; why would I be jealous of you? The vitriol and hate and dogpiling by these horrible women ON ACTUAL GAY MEN with questions about them and their motivations…no, can’t possibly be homophobic, could they? They also would threaten us with voting against queer equality unless we knuckled under to their appropriation and creation of a fake public homosexuality. The stark refusal of any m/m authors to denounce homophobes within their own community back then was kind of a tell to me that I and other gay men are not only not safe in those communities, but that they would always close ranks if there was anything critical from an “outsider.”

I’ve never cared who writes what, to be honest. If you want to write about gay men falling in love and finding their happily ever after, go for it and I wish you well with your writing and I hope you do well with it, as I do every other author out there (until you prove yourself to be filth). But if you’re going to, and you don’t support queer equality (or vote against it because reasons), you really need to look inward and reexamine yourself and your motivations: why are you writing (or reading) about people you don’t support or care about? How is that any less of a betrayal than those of performers who make money off queer audiences but actually hate them and are transactional (cough Kristin Chenowith among others cough)? If you write about queer people we are always going to assume you’re safe.

Talk about a bait and switch. You’re contemptible– a deplorable, if you will.

And yes, we get angry when we are stabbed in the back. It’s also why I never completely trust “allies.”

But it is nice, in 2025, to see m/m authors calling the homophobia out. Thank you, m/m writing community, for standing with us in this moment.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, and I’ll be back in the morning.