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While I (finally) finish writing my novel "Greenboy", I thought I'd publish a collection of short stories. They're all loosely based on folklore and fairtyales, both rural and urban, Welsh and English, and almost exclusively queer. They're gay re-tellings of known stories, or completely made up contemporary tales for modern fairies.
Here's the contents/tracklisting:
1. The kissing tree
2. Fairy tale
3. Hiraeth and the ladybird
4. The three sons of Gwydion and Gilfaethwy
5. Gwydion and Blodeuben
6. Y Gwernfrenin (The Erlking)
7. Footprints in the Sand
8. Finding a bible
9. How to make an egg
10. Gingerbread
11. Days of our lives
12. Reasons
The reason I say 'tracklisting' is that everybody who buys the ebook, will get a voucher to download a whole LP of music for free. Each short story will have its own music track, evoking the mood and feel of the story.
'Fairy tale', 'Days of our lives', and 'Finding a bible' have all been previously published, the rest have been marked as "too weird to publish" by all of the publishing houses I've shown them to. Everybody wants me to write modern gay urban - but I'm only one and a bit of those things! I was brought up on Tolkien and The Mabinogion; I was told stories by both Grandmothers of ancient Welsh Kings, fairies and goblins; it's in my soul.
I thought that to show that I have more in me than the modern gay urban being pushed on to me (yes I'm gay, and yes I live in the big city, but I'm not very modern - my soul is green) I'd self publish this, and make an album of weird music, to go with my weird words.
I'm planning to make it free for a while before it goes up to £1.50 or something. It's not for making money, it's for expressing myself. There will also be some poems in it, and maybe a knitting or crochet pattern too. Like I said, I'm a weirdo: unashamedly so!
Having enjoyed the recent meltdown of self-published author Jacqueline Howett, I found that this wasn't an isolated case. Author meltdowns happen not only to self-published or unknown writers, but big names too, like Anne Rice. Sometimes, like with Jacqueline Howett, the situation is funny; other times, like with Victoria Laurie and DeborahAnne MacGillivray, it gets a lot more serious. Laurie reported posters on Amazon thread to the FBI and MacGillivray allegedly hired a private detective to obtain names and addresses for a bad reviewer's family. Not good.
Laurie and MacGillivray both write romance novels, which I am not interested in, so I can't comment on how good or bad their writing actually is; never read and and never will. Howett's book, at least, may have sounded mildly interesting to some people; maybe something you'd have picked up to read the back of. Had The Greek Seaman been a printed book, and I had read the back, I'd have quickly put it back down again. The spelling and grammar of the back cover blurb make it very hard to read. From the Amazon page:
"Description to The Greek Seaman novel.
What is an eighteen year old newly wed doing traveling on a massive merchant ship anyways? Hadn’t she gone to Greece on tour in a ballet as a dancer? These are questions, Katy asks herself while traveling the high seas with Don her chief officer. However, little do they know a smuggling ring is also on board for this ride, on a blue diamond exchange and when explosions and threats to sink the ship also happen, they must try to save themselves.
Getting to know the smugglers, the Arabic and Pakistani deck hands and Don, the Greek Seaman is an exciting sea adventure with enough suspense and romance that will make you laugh and cry. It will take you on a voyage to experience the magnificent soothing wonders and beautiful scenery at sea, dolpins, flying fishes and takes you through storms and hurricanes where Katy finds herself navigating through it with a seasick crew. From Piraeus, Greece, your visit the ports of Lebanon and Libya and enjoy the exotic magic of the bazaar. The love between Don and Katy, in their ordeal at sea makes this a memorable story."
Description to The Greek Seaman novel? She makes a grammatical error on the second word that a reader will read before deciding to buy her book. That's just not good enough. When I read her first comments on Big Al's Books and Pals blog, I sniggered a little, but then got angrier and angrier as I read further down the comments. Some posters gave examples of poorly constructed sentences, such as:
"Don and Katy watched hypnotically Gino place more coffees out at another table with supreme balance."
and her response was: "...what I read above has no flaws. My writing is fine." I watched a YouTube video of her reading an extract of her novel, and I did feel sorry for her. When she reads it, it kind of makes more sense. She pauses, when reading, so the sentence is clearer, but neglects to insert commas into the written text. To me it seems that she is trying to write as she thinks an author should write. When speaking, one might say "Don and Katy watched Gino putting coffees down on another table" which doesn't sound particularly interesting, so she has tried to write it in an 'authorly' way - but it just doesn't work. If she had left well alone, none of this would have been emailed, tweeted or blogged by as many people as it has (me included!)
To the people who say that we should leave her alone, and that this is bullying, I say: no we shouldn't, and no it isn't. She started posting childish and defamatory replies which ended in her telling various posters to "Fuck off!" for that, she deserves everything she gets, and long may it continue. Other posters have pointed out that Al (of Big Al's Books and Pals) has grammatical errors on his own blog, and that he is a hypocrite. Tripe. Al does not charge people to read his blog, so he is entitled to write it however he wants to, bad grammar or no. He is not a hypocrite.
I feel very sorry for Rebecca Black, who some have compared to Howett. I don't think she should have been subjected to such vicious attacks - she's only a kid. Don't get me wrong, I think the song is utter shite, but it's no worse than many songs being played on the radio at the moment, by older, and supposedly wiser, artists.
I will continue to watch this train wreck to see what Howett does next. I think it's appalling that family members posted 5 star reviews on Amazon, and are continuing to do so. That's another reason she deserves all she gets.
Edited: I've been reading more and more blogs saying everyone should lay off Howett, or talking about dogpiles: "Seriously, it’s one thing to righteously smack someone down when they’re giving you a hard time. It’s another to join in on a dogpile. Dogpiles are for cowards and for fascists.
And it’s completely another if you’re a famous author with a million followers to feed that dogpile. For real, NEIL GAIMAN? I’m defending some poor crazy lady from NEIL GAIMAN?"
All Gaiman did was point at Howett's behaviour and say "don't do that". When someone suggests this to the blogger they respond "The more power you have, the more careful you have to be. I can write a whole couple of paragraphs trashing Neil Gaiman, and not have to worry that I’ve harmed him in any significant way; for someone with a million and a half readers, even pointing to something like this can constitute a kind of cruelty." I would agree with the blogger if Gaiman had written somethign horrible about this woman, but he didn't. He pointed at her on his Twitter page. People seem to forget, this is the internet. Everyone can look at it, and comment on anything on it, as much as they want. What Howett did was done on a public forum - it's like she came into a café where I was enjoying a coffee, and screamed in my face. If Gaiman wants to do the same thing, that's totally allowed. It's the internet. It's public. If you don't want to discuss yourself on a public forum, you make a choice not to go to that public forum and discuss yourself.
Man alive!
I've finished the book, but I don't know how to react to it quite yet. The blurb on the back says: "They're Britain's 'Wild Ones'-the motorcycle cow-boys who live for fast machines and faster girls.
Who ton-up along the Motorways, terrorising drivers and defying the law. Who experience sex too young, marry unthinkingly and live only for the next kick-whatever or wherever it is.
THE LEATHER BOYS is a savage, brilliantly told novel of these aimless young men and women. It is also the story of Dick and Reggie and the strange, twisted love that developed between them."
Hmm, where do I start with that? I know the book was marketed as sleazy pulp fiction, as that's what was selling at the time, but this blurb really angered me; and for a few reasons. Firstly, it alludes that the characters in the story are British versions of characters from The Wild One (a 1953 Marlon Brando film); then it says that these characters ‘terrorise drivers’ on motorways, yet none of that happens in the book; and the story of Dick and Reggie is the main story of the whole book, so I don’t understand why that is given such little precedence. I’m also upset by the description of their love as strange and twisted, but I realise I’m looking back at it from 2010, and attitudes are very different now.
Okay, the writing isn't as bad as I was expecting. I was expecting it to be a lot more sensationalist, sleazier somehow than it was. The writing focused on telling the reader what a particular character was feeling, “Dick was anxious”, “He was happy here. He liked the friends he had made, or at least he liked Reggie. He was looking forward to going out with Reggie tomorrow”, “Reggie felt lonely and depressed. What a mess life was.” Gillian Freeman obviously hadn’t heard ‘show don’t tell’ when she wrote this book. It’s actually a novella, and only 125 pages long; I read most of it in a few hours. The writing is not great, but there are some lovely stylistic quirks, and the speech is brilliant. The character of Gran especially, she is often hilarious; and old lady’s funny little ways are captured beautifully.
I just didn’t believe the characters: they weren’t developed, and weren’t given the time (both time together, and not many pages) to develop. The film is about Reggie and Dot’s life and their marriage failing, and Pete (Dick in the book) coming into Reggie’s life and turning everything upside down. The book is much more about Dick’s life and Reggie coming into it. In both versions, Dick/Pete is obviously gay; in the book he hasn’t yet accepted it, in the film he has. Freeman’s explanation of what makes a gay man, and how to make a gay story acceptable is to have characters not 'realise' they are gay until they find the right man. Up until he meets Reggie, Pete feels no sexual attraction at all; and when they finally kiss and have sex in Gran's house that's the first time he's ever felt like that. It was obviously written by a straight person, and meant for a straight audience.
All that said, I did enjoy it - but I enjoyed the film more than the book.
I was aware of fanfic already; had read a bit from some of my favourite universes (from Harry Potter to Lord of the Rings) because I was curious why X said that to Y, what Y really thought of Z, and how the drama of X and Z finally getting it together would play out – but hadn’t thought about how or why fanfic writers went about doing what they did. I’d even written some, without really knowing my reasons for doing so. Pugh’s incredibly well-researched investigation into the genre answered those questions, and raised many more. I must admit that I had always dismissed fanfic (and all its sub-genres) as a silly little aside that ‘real’ writers did for fun; or something that people not good enough to be ‘real’ writers did because they loved the characters that they’d come to know so well from books, films and TV.
Not having explored other fandoms online, I was amazed at how many there were, and the diversity of that range. The Bill, Men Behaving Badly, Hornblower, Blakes Seven… I can understand why people would want more from those universes, but for the life of me I cannot understand why anyone would want to read any more Jane Austen that they had to at school! Since reading The Democratic Genre, I’ve gone on to read and enjoy many excellent stories mentioned or quoted in Pugh’s investigation, even from The Bill which I have never really watched.
My opinion of the genre has changed, and I can totally see the literary tradition that helped to shape modern fanfic. Shakespeare took well known stories, and wrote his own versions of them; correcting what he didn’t like and making the characters interact in the ways he wanted to see them doing (Macbeth killing Duncan in Macbeth’s own castle, for instance). Pugh’s own novel Kirstie’s Witnesses is basically fanfic, from the foreword:
“The real Kirstie’s story is contained in several documents, notably the minutes of the Parochial Board, an application form, and evidence given at a trial and an inquiry. These items are all in the Shetland Archive.” She took these facts, and weaved a life out of them; isn’t that what fanfic writers do? The only difference I can see between this and typical fanfic is that the character was a real person, the methods used to write the novel remain true to fanfic's narrative forms. The same can be said for Tom Stoppard’s amazing play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; it could have been written as a book or story, but Stoppard, in keeping with the source material (Shakespeare’s Hamlet) he made it a play. Fanfic writers use the source material to generate new stories for their characters, in the style of the original. Pugh gives an example of a Bill fic that is written as a screenplay, using “the narrative techniques of [the] source material.”
I’ve read slash stories for various reasons: titillation; the oddness of seeing two people together who would never be like that in real life (the real life of the universe in which they live, that is); the enjoyment of queer writing; the exploration of sexuality. Pugh herself once said “anyone, up to and including a serial killer’s head, is legitimate territory for a writer to explore”. I embrace that sentiment, as have many other writers. For slash writers, changing the sexuality, or at least questioning or challenging it, is that same legitimately explorable territory. I still find it hard to understand why there are so few male slash writers. The answer to the question of why there are so many female writers and readers of slash was always obvious to me, and Pugh answers it so nicely “two good-looking men getting it on appeals to some women just as the reverse scenario does to some men.” She continues "some slash writers who were themselves gay may have wanted to explore this territory partly for ideological reasons, but many fanfic writers, both gay and straight, just followed their insatiable curiosity about alternative scenarios.” They are my reasons for reading and writing slash.
Pugh's investigation has deepened my interest in the genre by showing how fanfic can be a literary genre (albeit a rather odd one), as surely as the writing of the beat generation, pulp fiction or steampunk are. Yet fanfic can also be so much more. Some of the writers Pugh has interviewed in the book have explored their chosen characters by plunging them into different universes: a Blakes Seven/Cabaret crossover; Green Eggs and Hamlet (a particular favourite of mine); the first person tale of a mutoid from the B7 universe slowly reverting to humanity. When reading a book, my partner will often stop and stare at the wall or sky for minutes on end; he recently told me that what he’s doing is continuing the stories and conversations, in his head – what if X took Y to one side before the start of chapter six and explained about Z’s behaviour? Pure fanfic. I’ve told him to start writing them down! Another thing I found refreshingly positive, is Pugh’s assertion that just because someone is not paid for their writing, it doesn’t mean that it’s not good writing. I’m paid for hardly any of my writing! My own experiments in fanfic (mostly slash, I’ll admit) have been shorter fics and drabbles (100 words), character studies, or little in-between scenes to get to know a quirk I’ve read or imagined – but now I want to write more, something as clever and furiously inventive as the stuff Pugh introduces in her book.
Buy the book from Seren Books
or Amazon
I've got some time free today, so I thought I'd catch up on some book memes (all nicked off other blogs/sites). Feel free to join in, I'd love to see what your answers are.
What is your favourite:
Work of historical fiction?
The Love of Stones by Tobias Hill
Piece of comic writing?
Any of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books that has Gytha Ogg in it; The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Work of poetry and/or book of poetry?
OMG, too difficult, too many! I recently re-read Mark Doty's My Alexandria, and got a lot more out of it than I did when I was eighteen.
Essay?
Lady Love Your Cunt by Germaine Greer
Science fiction novel?
Neverness by David Zindell, A Scanner Darkly By Phillip K. Dick, Rogue Planet by Greg Bear (which I think was a huge influence on James Cameron's Avatar); The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin
Fantasy novel?
Any Tolkien; all Terry Pratchett; Robert Holdstock's Mythago Cycle is a big influence on my own writing
Romance novel?
Berta La Larga by Cuca Canals
Book about food?
Food For Free by Richard Mabey
Epistolary novel and/or novel in diary form?
Dracula by Bram Stoker (not too sure I've read many, to be honest. I loved Adrian Mole when I was a kid, but Sue Townsend's books about him being in his thirties are just plain boring)
Murder/crime novel?
Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite
Work of classic fiction ?
Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, or Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Horror novel?
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, genuinely scares the hell out of me!
Biography or autobiography?
I'm not really one for biographies, but I did enjoy Mozart by Peter Gay (so much so that I bought Mozart's Letters, Mozart's Life by Professor Robert Spaethling straight away)
Work of children's literature?
Harry Potter, obviously; Hobberdy Dick By Katharine M. Briggs; The Tree That Sat Down (and The River That Stood Still and The Mountain of Magic) by Beverley Nichols; The Hobbit (of course); I also love Rupert the Bear
Piece of young adult fiction?
I Am David by Anne Holm; Toby's Lie by Daniel Vilmure; The Book of Dead Days by Marcus Sedgwick (the rest of the series is pretty damn good too)
Short story?
Ping by Samuel Beckett; Oh, whistle and I'll come to you, my lad by M.R. James; Pastoralia by George Saunders
20th century novel?
Queer by William S. Burroughs, heartbreaking; The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things by JT Leroy (or whatever her real name is) - I don't care that she made it all up, her writing is superb, and I appreciate what she was trying to do. The whole JT Leroy literary scandal says a lot more about us as readers, than it does as her as a desperate writer. Think about it.
Here is a list of promises that I am going to keep:
I will be unrepentantly queer
I will be strong
I will sing
I will practice my musical instruments
I will speak Welsh
I will take more photographs
I will remix Caroline’s Eyeball
I will write more
I will publish a book
I will release a single
I will have more exhibitions
I will be happy
