Two Times the Madness?

So, I’m finally winding down work on the 1950s novel I have posting about here for eons. I have one more round of revisions to make, and then my plan is to send it to my agent before I leave for a writers’ retreat in August (by the way, someone remind me to blog about that retreat, will you?). And after that, of course, there will be at least one more round of revisions based on my agent’s always-helpful notes on the draft. So, “winding down” might be kind of a strong term; “no longer panicking desperately over the first few rounds of scribbled drafts” is probably more accurate.

But in any case, I recently sent out the draft of the 1950s book to some beta readers, and decided to work on my next project, aka the Shiny New Idea, while I waited for their feedback. So I spent a week outlining the SNI, and then last week, I settled down to start writing the draft.

I did not think this would be a big deal. After all, “real” writers seem to have multiple projects going at once all the time.

But I think real writers must have more space in their brains than I do, or something. Because I constantly feel like mine is about to explode now.

Everything is doubled. Ideas that float into my head when I’m trying to fall asleep, demanding that I get out my phone and email them to myself before they float away for good? Yes, yes, I’m used to that, but now it’s happening twice as often. Constant nagging worry that I’m not working hard enough, that I shouldn’t be reading that book or watching that show or looking at those pics of Kate and Wills? Yes, only twice with the constancy. Oh, and you know what else is doubled, is that pain in my wrist that all writers know so well. Fun times.

Not to mention that I now have two very different books to keep straight in my head. One of which I’ve been writing for many months and know very well, and one of which I’m still getting to know. Also, one book has a main character named Linda and the other has a main character named Lily, and so obviously I’m always typing the wrong name into the wrong document.

But aside from that, the two books are very, very different, which is probably contributing to my insanity. One is contemporary, the other historical. One is paranormal, the other realistic. The main characters of both are LGBT, but in one book that’s just another fact of their lives, and in the other, it’s catastrophic. One book is very wholesome, with plot points revolving around singing hymns and begging to be allowed to wear lipstick. The other is, I can safely say, the first YA I have ever written that includes the use of a certain descriptive term for female anatomy that I am not going to use here lest my Google traffic take an abrupt left turn.

And, since I’ll still have at least one more round of revisions left on the 1950s book after this one, my two-timingness isn’t going to go away anytime soon. So I guess my options are to either embrace the insanity and spend my days writing Linda/Lily fanfiction, or figure out how to work on two projects at once without losing it completely.

So, any tips, from those who have traveled the two-or-more-projects-at-once road before me?

YA Books with Less Than Happy Endings

This morning I posted a call on Twitter for recommendations of young adult books with unhappy or bittersweet endings. I got way more suggestions than I was expecting, most of which I haven’t read yet, so I thought I’d share so we can all update our TBR lists.

• Pretend You Love Me by Julie Anne Peters
• How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiford
• Plain Kate by Erin Bow
• Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
• Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
• Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan
• FEED by MT Anderson
• The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson
• With or Without You by Brian Farrey
• The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
• Sarah Dessen’s most recent novels

Thanks so much to everyone who made suggestions! Love this community!

A Virtual Tour of Teen Life in the 1950s

So, my current work in progress is a young adult novel set in Virginia in 1959. To bone up on historical details of the era, I went to a Virginia library this weekend to look at period high school yearbooks. Which was AWESOME. There were so many fascinating photos (not to mention witty descriptions written by yearbook staff) that I had to share some of my favorites with you guys.

I took these photos by holding my iPhone above the pages, so there will be places where the pages were curved or where you can see my finger holding the page down. Which only proves that these are AUTHENTIC.

Enjoy!

One of the only color photos in the whole yearbook, and my favorite representation of 1950s teen gender roles ever.

More under the cut…

How to Talk to Writers

So, I know a lot of very nice non-writer-type-people who will often try to talk to me and other writers about our writing. Because they are nice, and they know that it is nice to ask people about the things they are doing with their lives. And because they are genuinely curious about writing, too. After all, writing is interesting! Writers are bizarrely fascinating creatures, with our recurring carpal tunnel and our wild sleep-deprived eyes and our tendency to type frantically for hours at a time without so much as getting paid for it.

The problem is, being non-writer-type-people, they generally have no idea how to talk to us about writing.

So here I have written a few tips. Feel free to share with the various nice non-writer-type-people in your own life.

Hello, non-writer-type-person!

Here is what you should say if you want to ask someone about their writing.

You should start out by asking, “So what kind of stuff do you write?”

Or, if you already know the answer to that, you can say, “What are you working on now?”

Either one of these questions will give your writer friend the opportunity to say as much or as little as she wants to about her writing, and will make her feel like you are genuinely interested in it.

If she doesn’t seem to want to talk about her own writing, you can ask her about what she likes to read, who her favorite authors are, etc. Writers love to talk about other people’s books, and you may discover you have a favorite in common.

However, please don’t ask the writer you’ve just met, “Have you had anything published?” If the writer has been published, she will likely mention it on her own. And if she hasn’t been published, by asking, you’re making her feel inadequate. (It’s not your fault — she knows you didn’t mean to. It’s just that all writers are extremely neurotic. As you will quickly learn, depending on how many writer-types you regularly associate with.)

Also, please don’t ask, “Have you written any books I would’ve heard of?” Because, no matter how successful said writer is, the odds are still about 98% that the answer to this question is always going to be no, and then you’re both left feeling awkward.

If a writer mentions that she’s revising her work at the behest of an agent or editor, don’t express dismay. The writer is not being asked to compromise her artistic vision; she’s getting help from a professional at making her book better.

Most writers, even published writers, have day jobs, so feel free to ask them about that too, but don’t phrase it as if writing is their hobby and their day job is their “real job.” Most writers see themselves as working two jobs (because that’s what they’re doing).

And finally, please don’t ever, ever say, “I’d love to write a book someday, I just can never find the time.” Even if that’s true. The writer you’re talking to has been waging a years-long, if not life-long, epic struggle to fit writing time in among her other responsibilities. It wasn’t any easier for her than it would have been for you.

Hey, writers! Anything I left off?

Born Wicked cover reveal

So my fabulous friend Jessica Spotswood has a fabulous book coming out in February called Born Wicked. You might have heard about it, there was a fabulous deal involved.

And to top off all that fabulousness, check out this newly released, utterly FABULOUS cover:

It is very sexy and wicked and flowery and entirely appropriate to the tone of the book. And if that doesn’t make you want to pick up a copy, then I don’t know what will.

But I suppose just in case you want a tad more info, I will include the description too:

Everybody knows Cate Cahill and her sisters are eccentric. Too pretty, too reclusive, and far too educated for their own good. But the truth is even worse: they’re witches. And if their secret is discovered by the priests of the Brotherhood, it would mean an asylum, a prison ship–or an early grave.

Before her mother died, Cate promised to protect her sisters. But with only six months left to choose between marriage and the Sisterhood, she might not be able to keep her word…especially after she finds her mother’s diary, uncovering a secret that could spell her family’s destruction. Desperate to find alternatives to their fate, Cate starts scouring banned books and questioning rebellious new friends, all while juggling tea parties, shocking marriage proposals, and a forbidden romance with the completely unsuitable Finn Belastra.

If what her mother wrote is true, the Cahill girls aren’t safe. Not from the Brotherhood, the Sisterhood–not even from each other.

Also it is already available for pre-order on Amazon! I am so tempted to go write a review. But then I suppose the spoiler police would be annoyed. Seeing as how I am myself a tried and true member of the spoiler police, I will avoid hypocrisy and abstain. But hey, if you pre-order it you might get your copy early, at which point you can go write your own spoilery review, and I will be too polite to police you for it. Everybody wins!

What to Do If You Relate a Tad Too Much to Brittany and Santana; Or, Some Unsolicited Advice for Queer Teen Girls

Q: Does the fact that you find Naya Rivera hot mean you’re gay? A: No. It means you have EYES. HELLO.

So, like any good obsessive blogger, I keep an eye on what search terms people are using to land on my blog.

Lately my search terms have included a lot like these:

“Going through the same as Santana.”

“I can’t tell if I’m lesbian or just love Brittana.”

“Have the same issues that Santana and Brittany had.”

So, I figured, if you’re looking for that info, and you’re desperate enough to come all the way to my blog, I might as well try to help you out.

Brittany and Santana are actually going through quite a few different things, though, and since I don’t know which ones you’re looking for, I’ll take them in turns. [Btw, in case you have no idea what I'm talking about: link]

Disclaimer: Everyone’s experience is different. What works for me won’t necessarily work for you; neither will what works for your best friend, or that girl you met online, or your high school guidance counselor. Or, for that matter, Brittany and Santana.

Now, let’s dig in, shall we?

Issue #1: Am I gay? Bi? Something else? ARGH.

“I don’t know. I made out with a mannequin once. I even had a sex dream about a shrub that was only in the shape of a person.” — Santana

For a lot of people, especially a lot of girls under the age of 25 or so, this is the hardest part of all.

Let’s take, as our example, the Googler who doesn’t know whether she’s gay or whether she just really likes Brittany and Santana.

It’s an understandably tricky thing. Naya Rivera and Heather Morris are both really hot.

Hey, do you know who else is really hot? Darren Criss. Or Mark Salling, if that’s more your style. Or Harry Shum Jr.

Also hot? Dianna Agron. Jonathan Groff. Lea Michelle. Apparently even Cory Monteith has people drooling over him.

There is a theme here. Wait for it:

Famous people tend to be really hot.

And therefore: Which famous people you find hot usually has nothing to do with your sexual orientation.

The people you find hot in real life will offer you a better clue. But that’s not definitive, either. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between sexual attraction and friendly affection, or respectful admiration, or straight-up loathing.

What sucks about all this is that there’s no magic formula for figuring out where you reside on the sexual orientation spectrum. Your only option is to figure it out for yourself. And what sucks even more is that often, figuring that out takes a long time.

In my opinion, Glee’s writers (who all happen to be guys ― I’m just saying) rushed Santana into claiming a lesbian identity too quickly. Unless she was lying to Holly Holliday (which she could’ve been), Santana was conflicted about her sexuality only a few weeks before she was putting on that “Lebanese” T-shirt.

It generally takes longer than that to figure yourself out. It takes a lot more introspection. And it often takes a lot more life experience.

Eventually, your feelings will fall into place. There’s no way to know how long that will take. And there’s no way to know what your final conclusion will be. Some people never come to identify with one of the three most common sexual orientations (straight, gay, or bi) ― because sometimes, sexuality is just more complicated than those arbitrary labels allow. And that’s fine. Those people still live perfectly happy lives.

So I can’t tell you when, or if, you’ll know the answer to that question that I know seems so important to you right now.

But what I can tell you is that you can’t force it.

You can think and think and think. You can talk and talk and talk. You can tear your hair out waiting to have a prophetic dream that explains it all to you.

Or you can suck it up and wait for it to work itself out on its own.

It will. Someday.

And here are some things you can do while you’re trying to figure it out:

• Write about your feelings in a journal. This can be especially useful if your feelings change from day to day, because then you can come back later and remember how yes, there really was a time when you considered inventing your very own sexual orientation so it could revolve entirely around James McAvoy.
• Talk to a trusted friend. Someone who will listen to you and help you try to sort out your feelings. Not someone who will try to impose their own feelings on you. You’ve got enough to deal with already.
• Talk to a trusted adult who is familiar with how gayness works. Sadly there are still a lot of people who aren’t yet informed about this stuff.
• Talk to other LGBT teens who are going through the same stuff you are, through groups in your community or on sites like Oasis or Scarleteen.

Oh, and by the way, if you’re thinking you can take a shortcut to figuring this out by having sex with a bunch of people of various genders? Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. When you’re having sex, no matter how you feel about the person involved, there are a ton of hormones flying all around that make it hard just to tell your left from your right, much less which gender you prefer. And the rarely-discussed truth of the matter is, sexual orientation is a lot less about body parts than it is about feelings.

By all means, sleep with whomever you want; I’m not here to judge. I’m just saying, it’s not going to help you with this particular question.

And no, to answer another question that apparently people are Googling like crazy ― you don’t have to have had sex to know what your orientation is.

Issue #2: Coming out.

“I can’t go to an Indigo Girls concert. I just can’t.” — Santana

Ah, the eternal debate.

Who to tell? How? When?

Not to repeat myself, but: Only you can answer that. Everyone’s situation is different. Blah, blah, blah; I know you’ve heard all this before.

I will offer some advice based on my own experiences and those of some of my friends, but please take every single word of this with the biggest grains of salt in your vicinity:

• Don’t start with your parents. At the very least, you need some practice before you go there. Start with a friend, or an adult you trust not to turn around and tell your parents without your permission.
• Until you’re ready for your parents to know, don’t come out to everyone at school (i.e., don’t walk around the halls holding hands with your girlfriend, or show up in math class wearing an “I Heart Pro-Choice Girls” T-shirt). You might think there’s no chance your parents will ever hear your school gossip. But you might be wrong. And it’s not a chance worth taking. Your parents deserve to hear the news from you, not some girl in the checkout line at Old Navy.
• When you do tell your parents, plan it in advance. Sit down and think through every reaction they could have. Tears of joy? Tears of despair? Tears accompanied by shouts of “You are no longer my daughter”? Think through every single realistic possibility, and think of what you’ll say in response to it. Write and memorize a script if that helps you. Your goal is to approach this logically, not emotionally. Your parents will already be emotional enough for the both of you.
• No matter who you’re telling, remember that coming out isn’t just a one-time thing. Anyone you tell will probably have questions for you in the days and weeks and months that follow. If the person asking questions is someone you care about, then answer their questions respectfully. Don’t make them feel stupid or shitty for asking you. Remember, you’ve known who you are for a long time, but they’re adjusting to a whole new reality.
• Unless they ask you if the lesbian experience is just like the Katy Perry “I Kissed a Girl” video. If they say that, then throw something at them, please.

Issue #3: Girl trouble, of the unrequited variety.

“Please say you love me back. Please.” — Santana

What if your concerns are less about identity and more about a particular girl?

Well. I wish I could say that’s easier. But if I did, I would be a big lying liar who lies.

I can say it will probably be less time-consuming in the long run than the identity questions. Both relationships and non-relationships tend to last months, not years. Not so much for that other stuff.

But I promise, no girl trauma is insurmountable. Your goal in all things romance, though, should be to avoid screwing yourself over whenever possible.

So, let’s say you’re in Santana’s situation. There’s a girl you like, and she likes you back, but not in the way you want her to. What are your options?

1. Have a screaming fight and swear never to see her again.
2. Keep hanging on and hope she changes her mind.
3. Give up on the romance and resolve to just be friends.

I suppose these options aren’t mutually exclusive. Though for your own sanity, they should be.

Option #1 is for the drama queens among us. Some of us, in fact, might follow this pattern over and over again. It’s exciting. Like living inside your very own soap opera.

But it gets old. Very, very old. And I promise, your friends will get sick of hearing your stories about your latest girl drama way before you get tired of telling them.

Option #2 is probably the most popular choice. Hey, it’s what Santana picked. And after all, you never know, right? Maybe your wildest dreams will come through in the end, and she’ll come back to you. And in the meantime, you get someone to talk to, and maybe to snuggle with, and maybe more too.

Here’s the thing, though. If you like her more than she likes you, and she knows that? Then she’s the one who holds all the cards. And that way lies heartbreak, sweetie.

It’s always possible that she’ll come around, change her mind. But it’s not likely. Much more likely is that she’ll find someone else she does feel just as strongly about as you feel about her right now.

And when that happens, do you want to be the friend watching from the sidelines while you cuddle with your new GF, the one who likes you too? Or do you want to be the girl who gets the awkward text messages reiterating what she tried to tell you back when you first talked about your feelings?

Option #3 is by far the hardest. It will hurt. A lot. But the sooner your heart gets broken, the faster it heals, as they say. (Wait, do they say that? Well, they should.)

Also, the girls you were once in love with make the very best friends. I know that probably sounds cruel, but it’s the truth. Those girls know you better than anyone. And when you do fall in love again, they’ll be thrilled for you ― and they’ll be the very best shoulder to cry on, when you inevitably need one.

I’m about to go all Lima Heights now.

OK, so here is the thing.

I wish there had been someone like Santana, or Brittany, or even Kurt, on TV when I was 16. Instead, all I had was Ellen DeGeneres and Melissa Etheridge. Which was more than the girls who came ten years before me got.

But when I was a teenager, if there had been teen girls making eyes at each other on primetime soap operas, I probably would’ve tried to emulate them in every possible way. I know I would have, because I did the same thing with the straight characters I related to. If there had been gay girls on my TV, I would’ve convinced myself that my situation was exactly like theirs. That I was going through the same problems they were, and that if I did things the way they did them, the outcome of my story would look a lot like theirs.

And I’d have been wrong.

Because TV shows tend to tie things up into unrealistically neat little packages. That’s just the nature of the medium. But it’s not the nature of real life. In real life, relationship issues don’t need to be resolved by season finales, and people’s sexual orientations don’t change just because someone wants them to.

It would be nice if the world really did work that way. But, alas.

So by all means, look for examples of your experience in the images around you. But don’t expect your life to go the way those fictional people’s lives do. Because yours is going to be a lot harder.

But it will be OK in the end. Really, it will. You can trust me on that one.

*hugs*

Let us make a deal, please.

We will all just pretend that I am a very conscientious blogger and post here all the time.

And I will run along and keep rewriting my WIP for the 80th time.

Everyone is on board with this plan, yes?

Very good then.

*scuttles away*

The Importance of Outing Dumbledore

Today I guest blogged at Gay YA:

While the Harry Potter series was still being released, I kept crossing my fingers one of the kids would turn out to be gay.

It didn’t seem that far-fetched an idea. After all, the series was otherwise doing a great job of representing diverse characters.

But more importantly, when I was reading the books for the first time, I was in my early 20s, and I was still getting used to the idea that this whole being-gay thing might indeed be a lifelong deal. I was eagerly looking around for representations of people like me. Seeing gay characters and gay celebrities made me feel normal. It made me feel like someone had noticed I was there. …

If J.K. Rowling had outed Dumbledore in the books themselves instead of doing it after the fact:

1. It would’ve made Deathly Hallows a stronger book, because readers would have had better context for understanding Dumbledore’s relationship with Grindelwald.
2. Readers of the book ― kids and adults alike, gay and straight alike ― would’ve seen a major gay character in the biggest book series of all time.

When people talk about gay visibility? This is what they’re talking about.

Check out the rest of my post there.

In Which I Mercifully Skip the Whining in Favor of Sharing Awesome Linkspam

Things I am not going to blog about today:

• The fact that people are STILL stumbling across my blog via Googling “Harry/Pippa fanfic” after I made ONE joke about that on Twitter the night Osama Bin Laden died. (Look, Obama took his sweet time stepping up to the mic and I had to do something to keep myself entertained.)
• The fact that my WIP simply will not refrain from kicking my ass, no matter how many times I tell it to, and insists on being reoutlined so many times I may just give up and become a pantser after all.
• My sudden irrational fear that my as-of-last-week favorite character will die in some horrific fashion on tomorrow night’s Glee prom episode (they wouldn’t do that to us, they wouldn’t, dang it!).

And so, because I am not going to blog about those things, I will instead point you to some fun stuff on the interwebs:

• “Nobody is simply the sum of the aspects of their identities,” says Everett Maroon in this post for Gay YA, which is the best post I’ve seen (in that I agree with it the most, ha) about (among other things) the importance of ensuring that your LGBTQ characters are, above all, sufficiently layered.
• I’ve had this post by Susan Beth Pfeffer, my favorite author blogger, open in one of my Chrome tabs for weeks now because it sums up everything I want to keep in mind as I revise my WIP.
• This collection of ancient British Baby-Sitters Club covers, courtesy of What Claudia Wore, is now what I look at whenever I feel the need to lighten up [via].
• And finally, because I recently saw Tangled for the first time and can’t stop thinking about this song, I will go so far as to embed it here. The relationship between Rapunzel and her “mother” in that movie is, to me, emblematic of the very best YA writing, and I only wish I had thought of it myself. The romance plot in the movie left me going “Eh,” but this was pure gold:

It’s OK if your gay character has a lisp. Really.

So, I read (and write) a lot of YA starring LGBTQ characters. It’s my thing, as it were.

Lately, because of several factors but especially the hoopla over the now-canceled Wicked Pretty Things anthology, people have been talking a lot in the blogosphere about LGBTQ YA. Which is fabulous. More dialogue translates into more book buyers, which, hopefully, translates into more LGBTQ YA being published, which translates into more LGBTQ YA for teen readers to choose from, and everybody wins.

So I feel bad for even thinking the way I am in this post. Shouldn’t I just be thrilled these conversations are happening in the first place, and not let myself get bothered by the odd detail?

Ah, but writers spend our whole lives noticing and being bothered by the odd detail. It’s why we scream when we pick up our book in Barnes & Noble and spot a glaring typo on page 64. (Or, in the case of us not-yet-pubbed authors, it’s why we dream about doing so.)

So in that light, I’ll just list a couple of my personal pet peeves when I see people talking about LGBT YA.

Pet peeve #1: “Coming out stories are overdone.”

I’ve never once heard anyone argue that coming-of-age stories are overdone in YA. That’s because YA is ABOUT coming of age. Well, for LGBTQ kids, coming of age IS often coming out. See where I’m going with this?

Coming out tends to be part of books with LGBTQ characters in some way or another, whether it’s considered a “coming out” story or not. Hero by Perry Moore? The book about the gay superhero? Is about him coming out. And saving the world, but guess which storyline resonated with me more. Will Grayson, Will Grayson, the bestselling LGBTQ YA of all time, is about lots of things, but I would argue the most powerful scene in it is Will coming out to his friends in the cafeteria.

Not to mention that nothing in LGBTQ YA can possibly be overdone. There have been too few YA books with openly LGBTQ main characters for that to have been the case yet. If you’re tired of reading about kids coming out, well, I’m tired of reading about heterosexual girls falling in love with sketchy paranormal beings, and look where that’s gotten me.

Look, kids will always be coming out. Unless the book is set in an Ash-like alternate universe, coming out is something every single LGBTQ character will have to deal with at some point. And usually it’s a pretty big deal for them. It’s usually a pretty big deal for LGBTQ teen readers, too. If an LGBTQ teen character is narrating the story of their life, odds are, coming out will be a part of it, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s a realistic thing.

Pet Peeve #2: “Avoid stereotypes.”

I would scream this from the rooftops if I could figure out how to get up there. This is how strongly I feel about it:

It is totally OK if your gay male character is a lipsing cheerleader who wears nothing but pink and loves Barbra Streisand.

It is also totally OK if your lesbian character has a crew cut and rides a motorcycle. It is totally OK if your bisexual character sleeps around a lot.

What matters, the only thing that matters when you’re writing ANY character AT ALL, is that all those people are REAL.

So often I see people in Twitter chats asking which LGBTQ stereotypes they should avoid. As if they’re making a checklist so they can feel satisfied that they’ve written a strong gay character, just because he doesn’t have a lisp.

WHETHER OR NOT YOUR CHARACTER HAS A LISP HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WHETHER HE’S THREE-DIMENSIONAL. HE’S ONLY THREE-DIMENSIONAL IF YOU’VE GIVEN HIM OTHER CHARACTERISTICS TOO. IF YOU WANT TO WRITE A THREE-DIMENSIONAL CHARACTER, YOU NEED TO WRITE A THREE-DIMENSIONAL CHARACTER.

I’m not going to bring up Glee as an example here, since we could be here all night arguing about that, so instead I’ll use Scott Pilgrim v. the World. Awesome teen movie. It includes a gay-male-best-friend character who exhibits just about every stereotype every gay-male-best-friend character has ever exhibited since the beginning of time. He sits around in the background of every other shot, a martini glass permanently in hand, stepping in to offer sassy commentary on the action and offer insightful heterosexual love advice. And yet he’s as three-dimensional as every other character in that movie. Because the writers made an effort to make him so.

Pet Peeve #3: “More YA authors should write about characters who ‘just happen’ to be gay.”

I wrote a whole post about this a while back, so all I’ll say here is:

No good book is only about any one aspect of a character’s life. I have never read a single YA novel that I would describe as being only “about” a character’s sexual orientation or gender identity or, for that matter, their race, gender, disability, socioeconomic status, etc.

But it’s impossible to write a fully developed character who “just happens” to be any one attribute, and have that attribute be otherwise irrelevant to the book. Every attribute of a character dictates other things about that character. Every aspect of a character’s identity is part of their story. Whether the A-plot of your book is a girl coming out to her parents or a girl colonizing the planet Xenu, if she likes other girls, that’s going to affect her life sooner or later.

Pet Peeve #4: “There are more books about gay boys than gay girls because no one is writing gay books about girls, and/or because most readers are straight girls and straight girls don’t want to read about lesbians.”

That’s not why. There are lots and lots of writers writing books about gay girls. And plenty of straight (and “straight”) teen girls are interested in reading about characters who are different from themselves.

But for whatever reason, books about LGBTQ girls don’t get published as often as books about LGBTQ boys. As for why that’s the case, I don’t know, but I’m sure there are a million contributing factors (and I have lots of theories, but I won’t go into that without a few glasses of wine first).

---

All right, that’s enough ranting for seven in the morning. I should note that this isn’t targeted at any one person or site in particular; this is all stuff I’ve been thinking over for years as I’ve read discussions about LGBTQ YA on the Internet (which I’ve been doing since 2007 or thereabouts).

And as I’m still actively thinking all this through, I could very well be wrong about any of the above. So if you disagree with me, please let me know! I am totally up for having my mind changed.

Except about the lisping.

#morelispinginYAnow!