MATTHEWS, NC -- May 11, 2016 -- The latest news, blogs, and reviews surrounding Supposed Crimes and LGBT Publishing.
We're going to start keeping track of the cool stuff we post on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media each week. We're all over the place. Which is great! We have so much to share.
First and foremost, Stag and Hound by Geonn Cannon got a 10/10 review from Rainbow Gold Reviews. We love them! We send our books out to hundreds of reviewers for pre-release, but that doesn't mean they get a lot of attention. When they do, it's usually good. But this is great!
The best response we can get? "This is the book for my Pushing Boundaries Review. I would not have normally read a book like this." That says it all. Stag and Hound might be too violent for some, have too much men loving men for some, have too much women loving women for others. But for the adventurous reader it can be juuuust right.
More from the review:
Sandrine finds a stunning female lover who has a surprise of her own. Simon and Kenneth are slow to act upon their attraction to each other and I thought the slow build of the relationship between them was one of the best parts of the story. The love both the pairs of werewolves find was both sweet and wildly passionate as they were trying to cram enough love for a lifetime into a short amount of time (war does that)...I thought the author was able to blend WWII history with werewolf lore absolutely seamlessly. A very unique take and surprisingly realistic.
Fabulous!
Bisexual Awareness is something we constantly work on and that brings us to a guest column at Bisexual Books by our resident author, A. M. Leibowitz. Leibowitz tackles the difficulty of having a gender- or sexuality-fluid protagonist in a publishing world that demands the QUILTBAG letters match, not mix.
Zhe writes:
Having bisexual characters in name only is in part due to biphobia and erasure in M/F, M/M, and F/F communities. There are Rules. I get that, and I agree that if you’re writing in any of those realms, the idea is to have the characters land in a happily-ever-after or happily-for-now genre-matched relationship. The trouble is, bisexual people don’t fit those Rules, not in real life or in fiction. (And what do you do with people whose gender doesn’t fit any of the Rules either?)
But.
I want the proof, damn it. I want some evidence in the story that being bisexual has some impact on this character’s life. I don’t want it dropped in there on page 23 like the character is telling us about hair color or eye color.
Zhe follows it up with a pledge and a promise to readers and fellow writers:
This is why I write what I do. I write what I want to read—and what I want to read are complex bisexual-identified characters who have a wide range of experiences, from coming out to facing biphobia to navigating complicated relationships.
Queer Sci Fi, one of our favorite places on the internet, is chiming in on this very discussion, too. Read here on Facebook:
The lazy way to show someone being bisexual is to show them having sex with men and with women, either at the same time or serially. But there must be better ways that don’t rely on the physical act of sex. After all, I can write a perfectly good gay character who never does the dirty in the book. And there are tons of straight stories that don’t feature sex, and yet we understand those characters are straight.
So how can we write bi characters that don’t rely on actual sex to convey their bisexuality?
How can we be better writers? How can we be better advocates? Always discussions we're interested in having. Especially when procrastinating on our next great novel.
Supposed Crimes is a GLBT publisher focusing on genre fiction, crossovers, and the 3rd Wave. Come for the paranormal creatures, human heroes, and rock stars, stay for the romance.