Search the Community

Twenty-five years ago, when I began writing queer SF, there were over a dozen gay bookstores in the United States... ...if you didn't find what you were looking for on the shelves, you could learn about new books in the pages of Christopher Street or The Advocate or the gay newspapers that every major city in the United States supported. ...one would think homophobia did not exist in those days. But it did: bookstores were vandalized, patrons were thankful for paper bags hiding the books they bought, and if you were not a young white male who moved to San Francisco or New York City, you likely found a distance between yourself and the characters in the books. Nowadays, while independent bookstores are recovering, gay bookstores are all but extinct. So too the daily newspapers, the print literary magazines, where you could discover a good book. ...in 1986 a man in a small town in a conservative state might happen upon a book in the library or if he traveled to a large city, but now he can purchase any book from Amazon.com with the confidence of anonymity. And how many choices he has! I'll mention the elephant in the room: no, you do not have to be a gay cis-gendered man to be a successful author of gay fiction. This has never been an issue. Kushner considered herself straight when she wrote Swordspoint. Mary Renault had a tremendous following for her historical novels (and likely still does). Annie Proulx and 1997's "Brokeback Mountain" . . . need I say more? Do not think either your gender or sexuality limits your writing. Gay anthologies are rare and most are romance-themed because that reaches, arguably, the most readers, who also do not happen to necessarily be gay men. The genre of m/m fiction has become a popular one, and its target audience is not gay men but female readers, many of whom identify as heterosexual. General gay fiction novels remain a hard sell. Social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, is full of authors trying to promote their own books. Rather than shout into the abyss an Amazon.com link, start a meaningful dialogue about gay life that your book touches upon. ...do you fret about your book having too much erotic content? Obviously among the small presses, some are more tolerant of sex scenes than others. But I don't know any gay man who has ever said, "Whoa, there is a penis in this book and I found I had to stop reading." Are you worried that you'll be pigeonholed? Don't be. I can give you the names of dozens of acclaimed authors (Laird Barron, Kelly Link, Holly Black, Paul Tremblay) who wrote the occasional gay-themed story; ...ask yourself why you are writing a gay-themed story... because I want to write a tale where I can see myself as the protagonist, where gay men can have adventures, find love as well as heartache. Too often gay people are confronted with negative representations in media and entertainment. You have the opportunity to change that depiction, and today is as good as any other day to try. Extracts from the blog by Steve Berman - Strange Horizons http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/columns/some-advice-from-a-gay-publisher-on-writing-gay/