"Straighten up your gay kids or find another agent!"

Here's a great blog entry about a pair of writers who encountered trouble when a prospective agent demanded that they "write the gay away" -- i.e., remove the gay elements of one of their teen boy characters in a YA fantasy novel they had written. The writers stood their ground and wrote this excellent blog post alerting fellow writers and genre fiction fans to the problem, which appears to run pretty deep in the publishing industry. There's not much I can add to what the writers say or to some of the terrific comments that follow their post. This incident makes me anxious to finish my gay YA steampunk fantasy novel Wrath of the Gryphonwind and get it self-published. It also convinces me that I was correct to go ahead and publish WotG myself. Keep an eye here for updates on that novel, and go read some gay YA fiction! If you want to read something shorter than a novel, try one of my stories listed on the left side of this blog and enjoy!

"Authors Say Agents Try to “Straighten” Gay Characters in YA" -- Genreville

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I'm in Ravenclaw House Myself...

Congrats to my best friend for a gajillion years Claudia White, flute-player extraordinaire, who landed an awesome gig tonight playing for a whole host of celebrities and guests as part of an orchestra at the grand opening of the new Harry Potter theme park at Universal Studios in Orlando. I understand author J.K. Rowling will be there along with the stars of the Harry Potter films, and the orchestra Claudia is playing in will be conducted by none other than John Williams! Woo!

The degree of separation between me and John Williams has now been reduced to one. This is exciting! I was a John Williams fan before anyone knew who he was. Seriously, do you know anyone who actually owned (I may still have it somewhere) the original soundtrack recording of The Towering Inferno? On LP?!? I credit Williams’ lush scores with introducing me to the world of great orchestral music, laying the groundwork for my later interest in classical music. A favorite JW score? Too many to mention, and he has had his ups and downs. But who of my generation can forget that day when we first sat down to watch some brand new space adventure flick called Star Wars, and Williams’ iconic theme tore out of the speakers and into our ears for the first time? You knew in two seconds this was going to be the best adventure of you life ‘til then. Currently, I’d have to rank JW’s score to Catch Me If You Can as one of his finest, mostly because the jazzy riffs were totally unexpected. One of my most enduring favorites by him has to be his score to Empire of the Sun, a very underrated classic from Steven Spielberg that introduced us to some kid named Christian Bale – wonder whatever became of him?

And J.K. Rowling herself? Don’t get me started. This is the woman who took fantastic tales that most people regard as children’s stories and made them respectable for everyone to read. Outside of the pleasures of the Harry Potter series itself, would we have Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book or China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun without HP’s success? The best writers have long known that if you want to write inventive stories with memorable characters, you write for young people – or the young-at-heart.

Anyway, congratulations once again to Claudia White, who has put up with more of my insanity than any reasonable person should. I toast thee with Maker's Mark!

Incidentally, there's a live web feed available here tonight and Friday morning.

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The Parent Problem in Young Adult Lit

Via Neil Gaiman's Facebook post, here's an interesting article from the New York Times about the "problem parent" in YA novels. When I was a kid, I didn't like the genre of "problem novel" very much -- I had plenty of my own problems which I found every day when I rolled out of bed, thank you very much, and I sure didn't want to waste good reading time on reading about other kids and their too-close-to-home problems. If you're going to do that sort of thing, at least be creative about it, which is exactly what Neil Gaiman does in Coraline.

You have to wonder how the distracted, failing parent became such a ubiquitous image in pop culture. In Neil Gaiman’s novel “Coraline,” from 2002, the lonely title character wanders into danger in a creepy new house because the parents are busy and preoccupied. “Go away,” the father says cheerfully the minute she appears. This theme was made more explicit in the 2009 movie version, in which both parents seem to be transfixed by their computers. “Hey Mom, where does this door go?” Coraline asks, and her mother replies without looking away from the monitor: “I’m really, really busy.” Near-fatal adventures ensue with terrifying “other parents” in the alternate world behind the door — who begin by offering Coraline delicious meals and toys, but actually want to turn her into a kind of soulless rag doll with button eyes — because the real parents are on deadline writing a gardening catalog.

The author of the article makes this sound like such a bad thing...

Not that I don't agree with the cynical outlook -- believe me, I haven't forgotten the way kids think about their parents, and quite often, it ain't good in the best of times. Getting the parent(s) out of the way so the kid can begin to live and/or have an adventure is a problem all writers face (if this is the sort of writing you do). Anyway, an good article if you're interested in YA books, or if, like me, you want to portray kids and their lives accurately.

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Tell Them Anything You Want

Okay, someone needs to tell Spike Jonze that I can't take more than one movie in any twelve month period that leaves me all broken up inside, and WTWTA already has that honor for a few more months. Sheesh! I just watched Tell Them Anything You Want, the HBO documentary about Maurice Sendak made by Spike Jonze and Lance Bangs. It's only 39 minutes long, but I was all tied up in knots by the time it was over (and I could have watched another hour of it). I remember the Sendak documentary Mon Cher Papa that was run on PBS' American Masters series in 1987. That film moved me deeply, too. Is there something about Sendak that speaks to whatever it is in me that is creative? Hell, I dunno. But this HBO doc is wonderful. Get this DVD and watch it! Watch the extras too, especially the Q&A with Sendak and Spike.

I love Sendak's dog. I love the shot of Maurice with the box on the table next to him that has an image of a medieval Virgin Mary icon on the side, and a Mr. Incredible doll behind it. I love the life-size Barack Obama stand-up in Sendak's living room. I love his crankiness. I love his drawings. I simply love this man.

And Spike looks pretty darn sharp with a beard, eh?

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Young adult lit comes of age

A great article in the LA Times about the popularity of YA fiction amongst adults.

"YA authors are able to take themselves less seriously. They're able to have a little more fun, and they're less confined by this idea of themselves as Very Important Artists. That paradoxically leads them to create far better work than people who are trying to win awards."

I’ve written a lot of stories and novels with young people as central characters, although I wouldn’t classify any of them as YA – I like to reserve the right to use appropriate levels of sexuality, violence, and vocabulary in my work where needed. (You can understand why I so love Spike Jonze’s description of his film Where the Wild Things Are as a movie about childhood, and not necessarily for children.) And I have known for years that if you want a ripping good yarn with memorable characters and, very often, trenchant observations about life, you should give YAs a try. I felt quite vindicated when Harry Potter became a success. (I read them all, and loved them.) Expect more of this from my writing – the world caught up to me once, maybe it will do so again.



The article doesn’t mention one of the most popular adult writers who has crossed over more or less full-time (at present) into YA and children’s books, and that is the inimitable Neil Gaiman. Pictured at the top of the post is one of my favorite YAs, China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun, about an alternate world existing parallel/underneath the real London. Miéville cited as one point of inspiration for this book Gaiman’s Neverwhere, another book I love. Compare the two sometime.

Young adult lit comes of age (LA Times)

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