Oh Friends List please calm down. it’s not the end of the world, it’s just social networking. Surely there are more important things in life to get irate about like child abuse or cruelty to animals or floods or earthquakes or something GOOD you could be doing and not whining about whether someone copies your posts into another forum? If you have people who will deliberately post your private stuff in public then they aren’t your friend, and basically, they could have done it at any point before now. Nothing to stop anyone copying private material and posting it in public. Wrong, yes. Doable, definitely. If you are telling me you’ve never shared a juicy bit of flocked gossip with someone who wouldn’t know about it otherwise, then I’ll stare in amazement and hand you a halo.
As to the FB/Twitter button, that’s easily removed by downloading Greasemonkey and using this plug in. http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/85105 It works immediately and lo and behold you can simply press enter again without having to skip.
As for me? I very rarely friends lock, and it’s usually because I want to have a personal whine about me, which I think most people won’t be interested in. I don’t give a rat’s arse if you post your comments on my LJ on your FB/Twit page – although why on earth would you want to, and who the hell would be interested?
In other news, I finally read my first Josh Lanyon book The Dark Farewell, and really liked it! I shall read more of you, Lanyon, so be warned!
I’m actually really enjoying my new eating regime. Today: Breakfast-Optivita cereal with semi-skimmed milk. Tea. Lunch: Very low fat veg soup, organic brown crusty bread, two pilchards and salad. two apples. Dinner will be homemade chicken curry with basmati rice, and fruit to make up the five a day. Lovin’ it! Take that, cholesterol!
After four scheduled release dates (February, March, April, and August), the Jim Carrey Ewan McGregor true story gay prison romance I Love You, Phillip Morris is now set to appear in US theaters on December 3.
I watched “Dorian Gray” last night. And actually I really enjoyed it. I didn’t mind the changes—I could see the reasons they did it – I suppose they had to have a much more exciting ending than the book, but I’d have preferred that Dorian’s death was his own choice, as the book, and not bloody Firth’s. But it all worked pretty well with what I do remember. Not too sex obsessed and enough male interaction to make it clear that’s what the author meant Grey got up to (well der). Barnes is beautifully pretty, but he still isn’t my mind’s eye of Dorian. Who is quite like Barnes but … more so.
Isn’t it funny how sometimes people can make you doubt yourself? I remember when I was doing the copy edits for Transgressions, and it was quite a long time between me having written the book and doing the edits (about 4 years) that whenever the editor asked me “is this fact correct?” I found myself rechecking everything, and doing the research all over again (and believe me, some of the research made me scream in frustration the first time.)
I didn’t really want to know the 40 positions used when firing a matchlock musket the FIRST time!
When I had the Brownworth Blather recently, she accused M/M of using “incorrect” words (because heaven forfend we ever play with the language) and one of the words she quoted was “fisting” – used in the context of “fisting one’s cock” and she made Great Mock of this. I’d actually put it to the back of my head, along with the rest of it, but today I was re-reading some gay porn: one of John Patrick’s anthologies (JP is pretty much one of the godfathers of gay porn) and over and over again, I read “fisted my cock” and “he was fisting my cock” and so on. Well, that explains where I got it from, anyway!
I guess my point is, if I ever have one, is that you shouldn’t necessarily be swayed by one person’s opinion, and to change your writing vocabulary, just because someone Makes Mock.
Health update – I went for my Echo heart scan today, and they confirmed that I still have arrhythmia, (well, der, I could have told them that.) She says I should have already been prescribed aspirin or wolverin (don’t know how to spell that) so I need to contact the doctor tomorrow as I need to prevent clotting. Also one of my valves is leaking a little, but she thinks that’s because of the arrhythmia– but I will wait for the results before I start to panic
To be perfectly frank, health and writing are more important to me at the moment than any internet wank. However…
I wrote a calm letter to Lambda expressing my disappointment and feelings regarding the Brownworth diatribe and thankfully they agreed to close the comments, (which they did immediately) and will be considering moderation—although I appreciate they don’t have the staff to do so.
Ms Brownworth let off a last salvo, and Ms B, I answered your question over at Teddypig’s journal. I didn’t ban you from my Livejournal, it’s rather paranoid of you to think that—but I don’t allow anonymous comments, that’s all. So your comment would have stopped at source, which is why I didn’t see it.
And finally, I had six long tail tits in the garden today!
Eyes are definitely improved today. I put this down to my having a huge whine yesterday to myself and slumping around feeling immensely sorry for myself. Obviously my eyes took notice and are pulling themselves together. LOL. Oh by the way, Oculists use eye humour. “My specialist said – there’s definite improvement and that’s what we have to focus on.” When I called on her on this I had to bite my tongue because a million eye puns shot into my head (yes I am Chandler Bing) about aqueous humour and the like. Which I’m sure they’ve heard a million times.
As for the cholesterol eating plan, that’s going very well. It’s lucky I love pilchards and pulses and fruit and veg. I’m eating more than I normally do, which often happens with healthy eating—and I love the idea that crumpets+Flora+peanut butter is a GOOD thing. One thing about Flora, though, is that it’s like Dwarf Bread. It’s so disgusting it lasts forever.
I’m staying out of the whole OUT/Lambda/I’m a REAL lesbian debacle, because it’s the professional, and sensible blood pressure-caring thing to do. (although how patronising does one come off saying you’re a true lesbian. Are there different shades?) People know my view on the gay fiction matter—and going and repeating it over and over and over to people who aren’t going to be even a little bit swayed by my opinion is entirely pointless. Tracey’s comment summed it all up for me, I think, on Teddypig’s (all hail the Pig) post:
I find it most peculiar that an organization filled with writers who have been marginalized because of their sexuality is intent on marginalizing other writers based on their sexuality.
Just in case Gawker decide not to approve my comment, I’ll post it here.
Dear Mr Moylan,
Oh dear – where to start? It’s a bit of a joke that lazy journalists don’t bother to check any of their facts, but what’s not new is that they really, really don’t. I don’t know how you could have got more facts wrong unless you made it all up. Oh, yes. I see!
1. M/M isn’t new. It didn’t start with Kirk and Spock either.
2. And it’s not "erotic novels" either. If you had bothered to look at any site that dealt with it, there are all levels of romance—just as there are for heterosexual romance. Are you saying that heterosexual romances, which these days nearly all have sex scenes much more explicit than I remember from when I used to read ‘em, are straight porn. Granted, my first two novels do have sex in them, quite a lot of it, but that’s the PUBLISHER’S insistence. Some publishers want a sex scene in every chapter.
3. Dirty Stories? So gay sex is dirty? That’s a nice attitude you have there, Mr Moylan. Considering that you consider your own penis to be dirty, I think I understand where you are coming from.
4. "they aren’t doing it for the boys who like boys." No, we aren’t. Neither are we writing for women. That’s entirely false. The press release for the Running Press line originally said "written by straight women FOR straight women." Considering that none of the four flagship authors (Alex, myself, Lee Rowan, Donald Hardy) are straight women, we squashed that at birth. I don’t write for anyone but me, the fact that straight, bi, lesbian women and gay and bi men like my work is bunce.
5. The stereotyping of suburban women reading romance is so offensive I’m amazed you are kept on the site. These people probably do exist, but they are exactly the type that DON’T read gay romances. The Romance Writers of America for example are making sure that gay novels don’t get accepted by their organisation. At one point they amended their definition of Romance to read that it had to be between a man and a woman. As you can imagine there was a shit storm about that and they had to recant.
6. As to our "secretly wanting to be gay men" – there’s nothing secret about it. Have you never heard of intersex? Transex? If I could have the surgery, believe me, I would. It’s not that unusual, but no – you choose instead to make fun of something you have no way of comprehending. http://www.dearcupid.org/question/i-feel-like-im-a-gay-man-in.html
7. I don’t know where you live, Mr Moylan, but newsflash. Gay sex isn’t "forbidden" in the UK, and most? of the USA, (as far as I know). I find your farcical pseudo-psychobabble hilarious as you pathetically attempt to understand why – if I was a man – I’d be a Top. I love men, actually—and have no aspirations to stick it to any of them. Never owned nor used a strap on either, no interest in doing that. I’m a top in female relationships too. Not that it’s anyone’s business.
8. *still giggling at the term "vanquisher" * I must go and buy me one of those metal pointy bras.
The echoes from the OUT article rumble on. Lambda online weighs in with an interesting point of view, that of saying that perhaps we need to redefine GLBT fiction. Well, der. Dog bites Man.
Plus hasn’t Lambda just done exactly that?
What stunned me about that article (as I’ve commented about there) was the suggestion that we (females) seem to be heteronormalifying our gay men because we are pairing them up and putting them in committed relationships.
*blinks* Well, bust my breeches, were we REALLY the first writers to do that? I don’t think so!
Teddypig weighs in better. I’ve decided needs to have a shrine in my house, so I’m surfing to find a hairy pig for the centre of my Lares Shrine. Hell, Lafayette’s got one, why shouldn’t I? (I don’t think TP is on Lafayette’s shrine.)
Ta da! A pig that is also a bear! Note to self: surfing “hairy pig” wasn’t the best search you ever did. Some of those images have scarred my already tender eyeballs.
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” was a rallying cry once upon a time. Teddypig has suggested a new one for us writers of gay fiction.
FUCK YOU, I LIKE THIS
The Pig is dead right, though. We tried and tried to turn the interview towards our work, other writers’ work (we mentioned a huge list of names, but only Josh Lanyon got a mention) We suggested that they talk to Josh, or Donald Hardy, or other male authors. But it was all about The Porn, and Ms Wilson’s seeming bafflement about why we weren’t putting females into our gay books.
FUCK YOU, I LIKE THIS. I shall be iconing this later!
… could they pass on a message to her that her email box is full? I’m trying to ask her if she’d like to do an interview on Speak Its Name, but I can’t get a message to her. I reviewed her latest book “Helpless” yesterday, and I really really liked it. I’ve left a message with her agent, but I don’t know if she’s still her agent. Do give Helpless a try, and don’t be put off by the cover!
I’m reading “Counterpoint” now by Ruth Sims. I read this a couple of years ago when she had first finished it, so I’m looking forward to seeing it in its final incarnation. Due to the eye problems, my reading has slowed up hugely, and Speak Its name is suffering for it.
Eye news: Went to the clinic yesterday, and they are very pleased with my progress. There’s marked improvement and the muscles are working harder than they were before. This explains how I can focus on things now – although it takes an act of will, rather than being automatic. Still no insight as to WHAT is causing it, and they haven’t yet arranged an MRI. Rolls eyes as best as I can…the S in NHS certainly doesn’t mean Speedy. I have a heart scan on 24th and then after that I need to book a glucose tolerance test. How exciting.
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