Yeah, this part of backstory is gonna be longer than I anticipated, since I’m looking at at least another 6-8k to finish Jesse’s part.  So it goes!  Fine, I’ll get those three star reviews, TOO MUCH BACKSTORY BORING WHERE IS THE ROMANCE WHY AREN’T THEY TOGETHER ON EVERY PAGE FIGHTING THEIR ATTRACTION.  And I’ll live with it!  This isn’t just character development, it’s plot development, so it all comes together, trust me 🙂  On the bright side, this will probably be my longest novel ever, given, yes, how much more story there is still to tell after the backstory. This is not all of Jesse’s backstory, because, well, to give you all of it would ruin the surprises.  But I’m feeling this need to share it, maybe just to get some validation and approval and encouragement (yeah, definitely for that).  So, here you go 🙂   The knock on Jesse’s dorm room door was correct – three short knocks, three long, and three more [MORE]

Yeah, so um, I was swearing I would keep the backstory down.  And I am!  But there’s lots to see and do in Jesse’s past.  I’ve kept the focus narrowed, though, to a shortish time frame.  So while there will be more like 15k or so of backstory for him, it’s different than it’s been in previous novels. In said previous books, I’ve been really interested in my character’s childhoods, and how that directs who they are now.  Especially when you’re gay, let’s face it, your childhood is NOT normal, your place in the world is already NOT ordinary.  And besides, interesting people don’t have boring childhoods.  Boring children grow up to become boring adults, which hey, more power to you if you never have a day of angst, but that makes you a really shitty character for a novel. So.  This time, no childhoods, by design.  Partly to razor off the kind of wordage that imbalanced “Faith” and left little time for [MORE]

Man I was dead for a week from allergies.  Last year I endured a bunch of bullshit from doctor and insurance about “Oh well we want to try you on Flonase then Nasacort and only then give you a Kenalog shot,” so that by the time all that other shit had failed, and I could have maybe gotten an appointment for a few weeks later to get a shot, allergy season was over.  I DID NOT FUCK AROUND this year.  Two days into my severe sneezures I went into Urgent Care and got the Kenalog. Money is power.  I don’t have to fall to my knees and beg my insurance company or anyone else for what I want, or need, medically.   Urgent Care says, oh we don’t take Anthem anymore, so if you want to be covered you’ll have to drag your sick and sorry ass to another UC that does. I DON’T CARE I’LL PAY FOR IT GIVE ME A SHOT.  Thanks to all of you who’ve bought my books and given me HCFU (Health Care Fuck You) money! So yeah, not very productive this last [MORE]

Which I just have to repost, since it’s the perfect justification for using it: “For me personally, backstory is the difference between reading a book and remembering the plot but forgetting the characters …. and remembering the characters and wondering what is happening in their lives right now.” Hat tip to CrabbyPatty!  XO [MORE]

It’s an interesting experiment, forcing myself to write a novel with LESS backstory than usual, but retain the integrity of my process.  I’m never going to be a Pringles writer, who makes sure that when you open the can, you get the exact same potato chip every time.  My chips are irregular, some are more burnt than others, but they’re not predictable. I read my reviews on Amazon, every one of them.  Some of them make me laugh, and go, “whatever.”  But yes, I’m sick of the 2 and 3 star reviews that say BORING ALL FLASHBACK.  Not because I’m personally butthurt by them, but because they hurt my sales.  A lot. I’ve learned a surprising thing about myself as I rise in popularity.  And that’s that in some ways, I’m a competitive person.  I never thought I would be; the world is so full of assholes who excuse their behavior by saying “I’m just very competitive,” that I’ve always equated the [MORE]

Biggest!  Homo!  Ever!  This is fantastic news not just for me but for the M/M genre – it means that there is a big, and GROWING market for this stuff.  I see it time and again lately, in people’s Facebook comments:  “I was bored with the same old thing and a friend turned me on to M/M and now I can’t go back.”  We Are The Future! March won’t equal what I did in February – nearly 15,000 novels/stories in sales and borrows in February, and I’m at around 5,100 so far in March.  So I could make it again in March…my understanding is that 7k or so is enough to make the top 100 – so I might have just missed top 50 status for February… Amazon doesn’t give you an exact ranking, you only know your approximate status by the size of the bonus (yes, BONUS!) you get. My Fealty To Lord Bezos Never Endeth!  All Hail!  Maketh It [MORE]

So I posted on the FB forum yesterday to ask how a fully clothed puppet got reported for “nudity,” and this was the helpful response. “Sometimes people report photo albums or individual photos for nudity in spite because they know Facebook automatically takes photos that are reported for nudity down pending their review. If upon completing their review Facebook finds that your album does not contain any nudity, Facebook will make the photos visible again after their review is completed. Thus, you have nothing to worry about if in fact your album does not contain any photo that violates Facebook’s SRR and TOS.” OK.  But that begs the question.  Why is Facebook SO TERRIFIED OF A NAKED PERSON that they lock your account, and make your friends think you’ve been deleted, until you log in and confirm that you haven’t posted a picture of a naked body?  Why is nudity SO HORRIFYING that any random person’s accusation is sufficient grounds to [MORE]

OK, obviously that’s not the real article title.  But what makes the Happiest Place On Earth the doubleplusgoodest place for everyone ever?  Well, before actual humans with opinions showed up, Facebook was a happy place.  They had flowery meadows and rainbow skies, and rivers made of chocolate, where the children danced and laughed…OK I totally stole that from “Team America,” but apropos, right? So my first thought was, the deletion of my Puppet Kim was an automated process; how else could I have been blocked for “nudity” on the basis of this picture: Nope!  From the Times article: “Facebook will still rely on users to report violations of the standards. Ms. Bickert said that the company had review teams working at all hours of the day around the globe, and that every report was examined by one of them before a decision was made.” OK.  So some actual person at Facebook decided this picture was “Nudity”? But the damn [MORE]

Clearly Facebook’s default response to any and all complaints about photos is, “Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.”  Google it 🙂 I woke up to a giant wave of love…which is great, only I hadn’t finished my first cup of coffee, I have allergies from hell, and said wave of love consisted of concerned emails wondering why I had left Facebook… Well, I logged in and was told that I’d been blocked for a picture containing “nudity.”  And what came up as said blocked nude picture someone had complained about? So yeah, if you ever wondered if anyone at Facebook actually reviews complaints BEFORE they lock your account for a photo someone’s complained about?  I’d say probably not. So what to do?  Well, I’m laid flat with allergies, tree pollen is off the hook here right now.  I don’t have the energy for a Crusade, so to speak, against the tendency of every large media conglomerate to staff its [MORE]

Yeah, I managed to minimize Marc’s backstory to 9k words.  And I plan to doing the same with Jesse, after a bridge scene.  So that’ll take us to about 45k, which leaves at least another 35k in “modern times.”  I don’t want to get hit with that “it’s not a romance because it’s all flashback” thing in my reviews this time.  No childhood scenes this time!  Which is okay; they’re not really necessary for these two guys. Are we past the amount of wordage that shows up in the Facebook preview window?  We are?  Good.  Now I can vent!  Maybe I’m never going to make it to #1 on all the gayrom lists, because my idea of a romance is more than just “they meet hot on page one and spend three hundred pages angsting and fighting their attraction.”  Of course there’s angst, or there wouldn’t be a conflict, but shit!  Too often romance novels feel like the same scene over and over again, like [MORE]