Keegan's Week: "proper" gay books. Uh huh.

I fielded a weird question the other day -- and the worst part of it was, the person was absolutely serious, and intended at least half of it as a sincere compliment. "Your work is so wonderfully written," she said, "why don't you write proper books?"

And I went blank. Utterly. For about ten seconds. You might have thought I was having a "senior moment," but in fact the processor was whirring, trying to make sense if the question, only to land back at the hurdle --

What the bloody hell is a "proper" book?

Of course, what she meant was, why don't I write heterosexual books? Or, to slightly rephrase the question so it'll make sense to the rest of us, "Your work is so wonderfully written, why do you write gay books instead of proper ones?"

Deep breath, now. Be calm. Count to ten. In Klingon.

Well ... who in the [expletive deleted] says that gay books aren't proper books? The next thing these people will be saying is, John Barrowman isn't a "proper" singer or actor. And Tchaikovsky wasn't a "proper" composer, and T.E. Lawrence wasn't a "proper" army officer, and Nijinsky wasn't a "proper" dancer. Or that gay people are not "proper" people. And I'm Not. Going. To. Go. There. Period.

Be happy: have a nice day, yes?

In fact, the properness of gay books is increasing greatly -- not exponentially, but nicely. It turns out that 10% of the male half of the population is gay anyway; and about another 15% on the male side of the fence is ac/dc by inclination, which makes 25% of the part of the population that shaves and dreams of power tools would enjoy a gay narrative ... and about 25% of folks on the female side of the fence like to read gay books, for boatloads of reasons. Some are themselves gay; some are straight enough to fancy the hell out of beautiful guys; some get a kick out of the homoerotic; some love a romance but don't like guy/gal romance, because it almost always seems like the gal is getting s/exploited. Some are "modern age" enough to see as far as the romance, and genuinely don't believe gender matters.

That's 25% of the population as a whole, folks.

So, for every million literate people who read, there's 250,000 who would enjoy a gay book, in the highly unlikely event they were ever in a position to see one, and have the opportunity to actuallt buy it.

That's eight times the population of Fairbanks, Alaska. It's about equivalent to the entire population of South Australia that lives outside the metropolitan area. It's about 8.5% of the entire population of New Zealand (I think; if I'm wrong on this one, it won't be by much -- and feel free to give me a kick).

In a country like Australia with something like 20 - 24 million souls, depending on who you talk to, and who's being counted into the complement, you probably have something in the order of about 16 million literate adults, and about 12 million who actually read --

So, three million Aussies would enjoy a gay narrative, if they were allowed to make the reading choice, at the store, or wherever they get their books.

But if you walk into a bookstore down here and look for gay books, you'll soon start to wonder if anyone's publishing them at all. And the reason is that every bookstore down here is an outlet for a chain. It's B&N, it Dymocks, it's A&N, it's the book department in Kmart or WalMart or Target or Myer, or whatever.

No gay books. Why? Because gay books do not sell enough copies, per title, to attract the attention of the distributor. Each individual title might sell 400 right across this country, IF they were shelved with the generosity or impunity with which het books are shelved. But they're not shelved with such catholic generosity...

Why? Many reasons. Management is terribly aware of minors and the elderly, who form a significant part of their customer base; they're equally aware of the religious minority, for whom the "god" books are shelved alongside yoga, holistic food and Relaxation for Uptight Dummies.

Not wanting to offend anyone, Management literally hides the gay books: top shelves, bottom shelves, dark corners, out of reach, out of sight. And -- what a surprise! -- the books sell poorly.

Gay books are seldom advertised on magazine pages or in windows where the average reader would see them. Same reason for not putting a nice, big ad in the window down at Dymocks. And as per magazine advertising --

Do you know what an ad in a major literary magazine costs?!! An ad to run in one issue would put about $2 on the checkout price of each copy of a gay title! Not going to happen, people. (Few mainstream, print media book reviewers will review a gay book ... saaaame reason. Minors, the elderly, and the God Squad.)

So ... gay books don't sell bigtime, and another reason for this is that they're double-marginalized. They're already in the "gay" category at any online bookstore. Then, they're ... what? Gay-SF, or gay-fantasy, or thriller, or western, or historical, or romance, or erotica, or ...

Uh huh. Double-marginalized. So you have someone saying, "Gee, I'd love a new gay book, but I don't want SF, and I've read enough breeches-rippers (the gay equivalent of the bodice-ripper) to last me a lifetime. Uh ... I don't like westerns. I'm not in the mood for a murder mystery..."

Double jeopardy. The gay writer has two hurdles to get over, not one, and if each hurdle is a "filter," then gay books get filtered twice, before any sale is made.

Meaning, a hell of a lot of gay books are sold, but not that many of any individual title.

Another thing that's killing gay book sales, at least in this country, is that books are so expensive. Small printruns make for expensive books, and few people can afford to buy many, when the damned things are $32 and upwards. A lot of readers are landing at the book exchanges, where you can trade something you've read and pay $2 to the store, and get something you haven't read before --

Guess what doesn't often get traded? Right. Gay books are seldom traded (for which the reasons are many), so you probably won't be able to pick up a new one at the book exchange ... and even if you could, the publisher and the writer wouldn't know a thing about it.

Here is where it gets mildly interesting. A few years ago, when readers were still in the habit of sending a few words of feedback, I used to hear that someone had picked up one of my books at a book exchange in, say, Madrid or Munich or Manchester -- Europe, where gay books are treated with a lot more generosity by booksellers. Secondhand dealers in Europe will trade in gay books, where many (most?) of our local dealers are still not quite "there" yet -- inordinately concerned about the minors and elders and religious bods ... which is no bad, thing, in reality. Taking care of kids, and not giving cardiac episodes to others is a laudable goal in itself.

Fact is, the Internet is a far better place to do business. The people who find you deliberately came a-hunting. One seldom has to deal with folks who arrived on a gay page by accident.

There's also a "book swap" subculture out there, where books are changing hands in every direction...

And a writer has to wonder how many sales he or she has actually achieved. Say, 5,000 or 10,000 when the book was new (depending on the printrun -- and they're all over the place, there's no "norm"), plus an extra 1,000 or 2,000 per reprint ... and then, the swaps, the trades, the book exchanges -- for decades.

So, actual "sales" might be way ahead of anything the publisher knows about. Think about that. Nice. I mean, we don't earn royalties on the swaps and trades, but it's so nice to know that new people are buying the old books.

The last thing that makes it tough for gay writers is the sheer volume of the competition. It's astonishing. There are so many gay titles being published these days -- it's a a lit-fest. Heaven on a stick for anyone who has an ebook reader gizmo -- most of these books are available digitally, thank heavens. Makes them reachable for Aussies and Kiwis, because there's no shipping to pay. Postage across the Pacific. Yee-ouch!

Speaking of ebooks and gizmos, I'm still looking for just the right deal on a bit of hardware to do the job, and my hunt has brought me to this quarry:

The Acer Aspire One netbook. It's at least as functional as even the most advanced dedicated ebook reader, with a color crystal brite screen, and a keyboard that some reviewers say is a joy to use ... and it's less than half the price of a good, dedicated ebook reader. On sale, you can get the thing for A$350, which is just about right for my budget. So my fingers are itching to reach for the credit cards... 8" screen, weighs under a kilo, like handling a hardcover book. Boots up in 8 seconds, loads a browser in another 10, wireless, 2 card readers, 3 USB ports and VGA out. And you have GOT to like that. Yes, I know, the battery life is about 2.5 hours, running the browser and modem with the screen at 60% brightness. Now, turn the screen down to 30% and run just the Mobipocket reader on the local system -- no connectivity, no graphics. Ebook reader. Check. Should go about 4 hours between recharges, even with the silly little 3-cell battery that ships with the machine; and that'll do fine.

Still on the subject of ebooks -- I've been busy in the last week, making more available at Smashwords:


$10.95, for iPhone, Mobipocket, Palm Pilot, and more...


$10.95, for iPhone, Mobipocket, Palm Pilot, and more...

...so, there you are. Proper books for your proper ebook reader. Proper gay books, at that. Somebody try telling John Barrowman that he isn't a "proper singer," and his albums are not "proper" albums, because when he sings a lovesong, he's singing about a guy he adores not a gal. I'm not saying JB would bestow a black eye; but if he did, I do believe Scott and Mel would be standing there shaking hands, patting backs and saying, "Well done, mate."

I mean -- seriously!

Cheers,
MK

Blogger on the run

At last -- a few minutes to sit down and blog a little! It may be Saturday, but it's been busy in this neck of the woods. Work-wise, at least. I'd love to tell you I won the State lotto and have spent the day planning a trip to Europe, but there wouldn't be a word of truth in it.

Thanks to Aricia Gavriel for submitting Legends to one of the major online fiction directories. That was a great idea, and most kind, AG. I appreciate it. So let me give you a plug here: there have been some great posts on both of Aricia's blogs in the last week or two, including one that has me fascinated: The Thunder God commeth ... in 2011!

I had heard a rumor about a year ago that Marvel Comics was looking at (finally!) doing a movie version of The Mighty Thor, and it seems it's on -- they're casting it right now. I used to get this comic way back in the 1960s, when it was the princely sum of sixpence ... it stretched my infant imagination and no doubt helped to form it (warp it?) into the adult imagination which is behind NARC, Hellgate and so forth. So if you don't like Hellgate -- blame Stan Lee, who is at least part-way responsible!

I was also fascinated by John Barrowman and -- who? So that's Matt Smith! I confess, I never heard of Matt Smith before he was cast as the 11th Doctor. I'm trying not to say, "Goog golly, he looks awfully young to be the Doctor." I'm also trying not to say, "Good golly, Jack will eat this one alive. And come back for seconds." Anyway -- shoot over to Aricia's Album and check him out. There's another post in there, http://ariciasalbum.blogspot.com/2009/02/captain-jack-and-11-john-barrowman.html ... fascinating reading.

Little other than work is happening in my own life, and I won't drivel on here about that. I'll leave you with a couple of links, and a plea:

Come on, guys! Legends is FREE, for cripesakes. Tell your friends, get them onboard ... and for those of you who are visiting, and are wondering when the hell Soran and Faunos are going to get together, much less let it on (!) ... you need to be there now.

I did two posts to Legends today:
http://mel-keegan-legends.blogspot.com/2009/02/iridan-speaks.html
and
The Hand of Fate (part one)

...and the bit you've been waiting for is on.

I've also managed to get some fresh posts up to Digital Kosmos:
Strange life forms
Surf's up!
Days of steam remembered

...sorry to all concerned that I've been "down" for a few days with this project. WORK. However, I have great optimism that publishing in some form is actually beginning to bloom, and with luck I'll have more time to spend on projects in the near future.

On that note I'll leave you for now. I can't honestly say that anything is happening in the Mel-o-Sphere. The lull is actually nice; it just doesn't make for spectacular blogging.

Cheers,
MK

Odds, ends, the new Doctor, and where's Jack?!

Life is a process of waiting, before you rush maniacally through some vital chore so that you can get back to waiting again. And then waiting some more.

You guessed: I'm watching the mailbox for the proof copy of THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE. Our postman has recently discovered that he can actually shove a book parcel from CreatSpace into the mailbox, if he pushes hard enough, so the proofs aren't up on the porch anymore; they're sticking up out of the mailbox, down on the road.

Except HARBENDANE isn't -- not yet. And yes, I knooooow the Christmas mails are slow. I know I have to be patient. I know I won't see the proof for a week yet, and even when I do have it in my hand, it'll take another 10 days or so before it shows up in the engine at Amazon. But still ... one is keenly aware of all the WAITING.

The browser page for the book is done and also (!) waiting to upload, but there's little point putting it out there till the Amazon engine actually knows what the blithering hell everyone is talking about. Harbendane? Where's that, somewere in Denmark?

Otherwise, work continues slowly, as usual. The good news is that Amazon sales are very promising indeed. How about two per day in the period since the New Year break, without a shred of advertising being done yet?! Keep this up, and the numbers soon turn very, very "friendly" indeed. I'm guardedly optimistic, especially since soon -- I swear by any deity you care to nominate, including Marduk, the Babylonian god of war, if you like! -- I'm going to start some bloody advertising. You're supposed to market your books: I know, I know. The real world, however, is about TIME, or the lack of it. (In other words, I can blog, or I can write a new story, or I can edit/polish an existing story, or I can do marketing work ... or I can go to work and pay some bills, buy some groceries. Right now I'm juggling all these things, which is why work progresses slooooowly.)

A couple of things of interest: the latest version of my favorite imaging program, Irfanview, has been released. Get the free download here: http://www.irfanview.net/. Wouldn't know what to do without this program -- best on the market, except it isn't on the market, it's free. You can help development of further versions with a $12 donation (or set your own amount). Best program of its kind.

Cheers to Aricia on the new blog, which is the featured blog right now at The Book Bloggers. AG put me onto this site back at Christmas -- it's a great innovation which should help a great many writers both old and new. Go here: http://breenibooks.today.com/. Also, thanks to AG for the excellent reviews of my vampyre novels, which were just uploaded. Much appreciated.

Peripheral to Torchwood, the, uh, part of the Doctor has at last been recast. We've known for some time that David Tennant is departing after some impending movies; but which face would he be regenerating into? Here it is, plastered on the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/4124591/Doctor-Who-Introducing-Matt-Smith-the-26-year-old-Time-Lord.html

This will be the youngest Doctor yet ... and one has to speculate about a Doctor in his tender mid-twenties, and, uh, Jack. Nudge, wink, and so forth. I guess they know where they're going with this!

It's certainly going to make the next season or two of DW interesting. Personally, I'll miss David Tennant, who is responsible in large part for making the Doctor "the role in UK television."

Not bad for a show that started about 45 years ago and had the cheesiest scripts, effects and sets ever seen on the tube. David T. was certainly the best doctor, though I must admit, there was a flirty sense of fun between John Barrowman and Christopher Eccleston's delightfully goofy/angsty Doctor ... there, you felt that "something could happen."

And on that note, I'll leave you and head back to work!

Cheers,
MK

YouTube vidoes not loading?!

Just a service message here (with a little help from Torchwood):

If your YouTube videos are not loading ... you're seeing a white area where the movie should be -- it's a very safe bet you need to update your Flash player. It's as simple as that.

In fact, if you have your system configured to update automatically, all you're probably need to do is reboot your computer.

To figure out if you need to do this ... if you're seeing this video, you're fine, if you're seeing a white space, give the computer a restart:


[John Barrowman singing Anything Goes on the Torchwood set]

Hope this fixes problems! (And a liberal dose of John fixes most...!)

For more John Barrownman videos and so forth onsite here:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/mel-keegan-show-and-heeeeeers-mel.html
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/07/racehorses-gravions-and-gremlins.html
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/10/captain-jack-webpages-and-hunks-in.html

Captain Jack, webpages, and hunks in harm's way

We're having all kinds of fun today. So much fun, we're thinking of hiring a marquee and throwing a garden party, and inviting y'all.

Not.

The "fun" is all about webpage design. Now, design work is relatively easy. Basically, you treat the monitor as a page, and fiddle with elements to achieve the same kind of harmonious balance as you would get on paper ... book covers are a perfect example. Making a full wraparound jacket work, much less the dustjacket for a hardcover, is not the easiest job in the world. Thank gods, Jade at DreamCraft has been doing this for over fifteen years now, and things like the below example just fall into place:

(I still smile when I see this cover, because the painting, "The Jungle Book" was done first -- it was the painting that made the whole story jump into my mind. The hunk turned into Sonny Moran, the tiger just was Indhira, the location was the Tarkine. My brain is weird. I know.)

The beauty of working on paper is, you know ahead of time what size it is. You tell the printer what size to print on, and upon pain of death s/he (or more likely a digital printing robot these days) does exactly what s/he (or it) is told.

Webpages are different. For a start, monitors come in all shapes and sizes, and are never the same color twice. What's pale butter on one screen will come up as the brightest shade of sickly yellow on another; and their brightness settings are such that you can never, predict how images are going to appear. Worse than this, there are so many moitor resolutions today that designing a common page, something which is going to look good on them all, is a job that's assumed the proportions of the the Labors of Hercules.

Right now, we're designing a raft of new pages for the MK OnLine site ... trying to make it easier to get through the jungle to the "point of sale" whatsit; trying to get as close as possible to "one click shopping." And it's not so easy.

The design itself is simple enough ... making it work well, and look good, on anything from a square screen laptop with a 1024 x 768 resolution, to one of the big widescreen doohickies, is something else.

We'd hoped to have the new pilot page up and testable today, but it's still not right. We might get it online later, or it could be tomorrow. Bear with us: we look forward to your feedback. We read everything and listen to criticisms with a completely flexible mind. You'd be surprised how often a design (especially in the fluid pixelic world of the web) has been changed along the lines of visitor comments.

So that's the thrilling work which has us all shackled to the desk today; and not surprisingly, in the midst of boredom and frustration, my mind is wandering...

Wandering back to the last episode of the latest season of Doctor Who (went to air here last Sunday, on ABC 1), which was deliciously crossed with Torchwood and a new show I know absolutely nothing about, but which seems to revolve around the inimical Miss Smith, her kid, the tin dog, and a supercomputer that sounds like a wine waiter.

It was very, very nice to see Captain Jack back: John Barrowman looking great, as always. One could have wished they had devoted more screen-time to the character, but the script called in so many guest stars, there's a limit to what can be given to any single character.

In the limited time he had available, Jack was very effective, and Cheers to all concerned for a great job. You really had to concentrate on this one, though; blink, and you'd lose the plot -- which makes me wonder how this show will go down with critics, esp. in the US, where the third segment of the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN trilogy was apparently way to complex to be followed by the poor widdle dears viewing on the free critics' passes.

(Well, if you insist on continually running out of the cinema to take phonecalls, smoke, use the loo because you've drunk buckets of watery coke to wash down your wheelbarrow loads of popcorn ... you can expect to lose the plot of a complex movie; critics shouldn't blame a film for this. However, re: POTC3 ... they did!)

I haven't looked at reviews of the end of the latest DW season yet, but I suspect the less cerebrally gymnastic of the general media critics will be saying the end was incomprehensible -- NOT true. But you did have to know your Doctor Who inside out and upside down (they didn't stop for one second to explain who in the hell Davros is; did you notice that?) ... and you had to stay glued to the screen with both ears open.

Lastly, Americans and other non-British native speakers might have their work cut out for them, following the rapid-fire dialog which is delivered in regional accents -- David Tennant and Catherine Tate, both amazing (how they get their tonsils around that lot beats hell out of me), both very British, and both so fast, one is reminded of the line from Pirates of Penzance: "This particularly rapid, unintelligible patter isn't generally heard -- and if it is, it doesn't matter." Personally? I had no problem with the accents or dialog ... then again, I have almost as much family in the UK as I have in the US, am used to the dialect, and was prepared to give it benefit of my few remaining brain cells! I thoroughly enjoyed the show; and it looked to me like the actors themselves were having a blast.

Lastly, for today, since I haven't given an update on the progress of LORDS OF HARBENDANE for a week or more, it couldn't hurt to do that right now. The book is well along, and we're still looking at a release date of end-October, which is in good time for Christmas.

Galleys are being proofed at this time, and the cover is under design. The cover blurb has not been written yet, but I can give you the book in a semi-coherent nutshell: "Gorgeous Gay Hunks adventuring across a fantasy landscape, with battles, sword fights, horses, shamanic powers, savage tribes, barbarous enemies, a cast of thousands, some sizzling pages (!), a fully-detailed fantasy world which might astonish you, and a (gay) romantic streak at least foot wide." You know me by now!

We should have sample readings online in the next couple of weeks, and you'll be able to download a PDF right off the blog here. Later on, we'll do the full book launch on the blog, just as we did for AQUAMARINE. (Incidentally, many thanks to all who sent feedback on the new edition of that one. We labored long and hard on it, and the good work showed ... we hoped it would!)

And now, it's back to the grind: trying to figure out a way to make the same damned page design look good, and work properly, on screens, and resolutions, that are so different, it's like trying to design a cut of LORDS OF THE RINGS that'll look terrific on your Pocket PC. Oof.

If we do manage to get the new pages online today, I'll post again later -- a recruitment ad for test pilots. Till then (or till tomorrow),

Cheers,
MK

The Mel Keegan Show ... and heeeeeer's Mel!

Someone said to me the other day, "Geez, your blog's gotten serious lately." And he was dead right. The last time we had a little fun on these pages was when I stated (categorically and somewhat emphatically, I Am Not Kevin Keegan, nor Am I Mel Gibson; and before that it was "Happy 100th Post," the infamous press release for Martian Boys are Easy starring Clooney and Pitt (Biff and Billy Bob)...

http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/clooney-and-pitt-to-star-in-hot-gay.html
(Golly, I'd love to see "The Cucumber Vanishes"...)

http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/will-real-mel-keegan-please-stand-up.html
(Strange, nobody's ever asked if Kevin Costner moonlights as Mel...)

So it's high time this blog lightened up and had a little fun, since I talked about politics an doomsday for several consecutive posts, and then delved into the serious business of publishing for almost a week.

Welcome to the Mel Keegan Show, all-singing, all-dancing.

[catchy theme music; chorus line of high-kicking dancing boys in skimpy costumes; spotlights wander about the stage, looking for tonight's Theme Host ... and there he is! Zoom to full shot.]

HOST: good evening, gents, ladies, and anyone else tuning in. My name is Johnny Depp and I'll be your host tonight, for an evening of mayhem and madness ... Keegan style!

Last week, Mel climbed aboard the political bandwagon for a short trip that went through fun territory like human rights, the end of the world as anyone knows it, World War III, Armageddon, the second coming and loads of good stuff like that. Well, Mel might have nailed a lot of the problems facing us in months and years to come, but here's Julie Brown, who set the whole thing to music ... and it goes like this...

JOHNNY: Thank you, thank you, to the lovely Julie Brown for saying it all for us. And here's a good one that's going around the Internet today: "How do you make Sarah Palin's eyes light up? You shine a flashlight in her ear."

[drums: drrrrrrr baboom!]

But moving right along, now, we want to bring you some good advice on this show. It's not all about doing what you want to do and having success handed to you. You gotta work ... you gotta strive, as MK's been saying for the last week (till most of us were tired of hearing it, right?) ... but in a lot of ways The Keeg makes a point. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. And here's the cat to prove it...

Now, was that cute, or what? Raise your hands, folks in our live studio audience here tonight, who's got a cat? Who's got a cat that sleeps on the bed? Who's got a cat that sleeps on the bed and throws up on the bedside carpet right where you step out in the morning? That's disgusting. You people are disgusting --

So maybe we'd better move right along to our celebrity feature. On tonight's show, we're pleased and proud to bring you the very lovely and talented Mister John Barrowman!



And as the late, great Eric Morcambe used to say ... there's no answer to that.

Now, not all of our rabid JB fans know that John just happens to be a native speaking Scotsman. In fact, some of you might refuse to believe it, so here's proof, and if you still don't believe, write a nice letter, take it up with JB:



There you are, you see? He's the Tartan Terror at home. And unfortunately that's all we have time for on tonight's show, so we'll go cut to the Highballs, who'll dance us out of the end titles ... and don't miss next week's show, when your Theme Host will be Sean Bean, and our celebrity guest is Ja Ja Binks.

From all of us here at The Mel Keegan Show ... have a good one!

Just a link in the chain, today

Today is Keegan's Official Day Off (hereafter referred to as KODO), and since I'm trying to not even look at the computer (fat chance; I've been here for the last hour ... but not working. There's a difference), my post today is going to consist mostly of a link, to a page where someone else is going to say it all for me ...

Because I couldn't have said it better. In fact, I've said all these same things so often, I'm hoarse, and I know for a fact there are legions of GLBT actors, writers, directors, producers and (!) VIEWERS out there who are saying the exact same thing.

I received an email forward of the body of this essay from a friend who is still plugged into a 'list' which began as a movie-review 'circular' eons ago and morphed into a 'GLBT political rant' list in later years. And there's lot to rant about. Still. (You ever feel like you're invisible, or that you've falln off the radar? We're not out of the woods yet, kids.)

Ayway, KODO and all, here's the link:

Ilene Rants a Little ...

...on the network page for The L Word (which, I confess, is a show I haven't even seen. To the best of my knowledge it does't air down here; I don't get cable (don't have time for it); and to begin with, I hardly ever watch TV. (The closest I've come to following a TV show in the last several years? Torchwood. And its parent show, esp. when the Cap'n is aboard. And I've had a look at Dante's Cove on disk, but by the end of the second season (where it turns into gay softcore with soap opera plots), I gotta admit, I don't know if I can even be bothered even watching the third season. It's already so stutteringly weak in all departments save the ripped muscles and bronzed limbs and bonking, can the next season, dramatically, get any worse???)

One longs for GLBT characters in real, serious, 'proper' TV shows. God knows, I'd watch the damned things myself. But even Torchwood Season 3 is slithering into the family entertainment end of the market, and John Barrowman won't be there for most, or all, of the five-episode short season.

Someone needs to get in quick and cast John as a sleuth, a detective, a coroner, a pilot, a troubleshooter, something that would make for REAL stories. I want a gay take on shows like JAG, and TOUR OF DUTY, and FIREFLY. The central character can have boyfriend woes and delicious gay romances on the side, but (sorry!) the story has to pivot around the hub of REAL drama, good writing and so forth, or the next time you look, you're sliding the way of Dante's. Now, don't get me wrong: Dante's Cove is fine and dandy when you're in the mood for ripped muscles, bronzed limbs and a whole lot of gratuitous gay bonking ... but think about this: straights, who can stand any amount of the above so long as it's dedicatedly co-ed, get blushingly embarrassed and tune out if/when it's gay ... which is not what we want. The whole object here is to craft shows that are so bloody good, the mainstream audience tunes in religiously, despite the fact (not because of it!) that the hero is gay. And I don't mean 'subtext' shows like Xena; nor do I mean 'gay reference' scripting like Firefly. I mean the real, genuine McCoy. Shows that will give the GLBT community visibility and credibility in the big world picture ... or at least in the slightly gaga landscape of TV Land, where most people seem to live these days.)

And I really am going to throw to that other page right now, and get started on KODO. We have tickets booked for an afternoon show, THE DARK KNIGHT, following a healthy(ish) lunch, and Keegan's out of here. Here's your link again: Ilene Rants a Little.

Batdude, start polishing the car; we're on our way!

Racehorses, gravitons and gremlins

Thursday finds me still trying to work out how to get a YouTube video to play without vertically squishing itself. It's really weird, and difficult to describe, so rather than try to describe it, I'm just going to paste the thing in here, and let you see for yourself.

This is the clip I was talking about a few days ago, where John Barrowman is getting eaten alive by a racehorse. It's a great clip, and about six months ago (when I discovered it) it used to play perfectly. Then something happened either on this end of YouTube's end, and now ... it's squished. Someone, somewhere must have a clue about what's going on here! A little help, please??




...like I said, great clip. You gotta love the man. And the horse. The only wrinkle is the way it plays back -- and it's playing back this way from YouTube direct and from this link, on three different computers that I know of, including two XPs and a Vista machine. I could have understood it, if it was just Vista was stuffing around. I've been an observer at the high-jinx of trying to get Vista to play nice, and ... I think I'll stick with the ol' XP.

Speaking of which, Microsoft must know they've got a turkey of epic proportions on their hands, because they said a short while ago, they're going to support XP till 2014. By which time, one hopes, they'll have come out with a whole new operating system. Like, maybe, one that works.

The latest episode of Tales from the Mel-o-sphere is about the frustration of not being able to get on with what I want to do (WRITING) for the avalanche of fiddling little details in other projects which have to be attended to first. I know, I know: you get patches like this, when the gremlins get into the machinery. What one needs is a tiny little baseball bat, with which one can reach into the aforementioned machinery and bash their tiny little gremlin brains out. Or a cricket bat, for that matter. I've never been fussy. Put it this way: just wait till I get my hands on the little buggers.



And now, welcome back to the world of HELLGATE, as I try to answer a very, very good question from a reader in the Chicago area, without rambling on and boring everyone else to death.

In the HELLGATE books (and particularly in PROBE), I talk about gravitons, and the existence of this particle is pivotal to the development of the technolgy that's going to drive the rest of the series ... and I do mean drive! Moreover, I talk about J-type gravitons, known in the world of HELLGATE as Jung particles. The question is this: are Jung particles real science? Come to that, are gravitons real science?! (Like I said, it's a very, very good question.)

Gravitons: yep. They're almost certainly as real as photons, though at this moment they're stll theoretical. String theory predicts that they most certainly do exist --as 'closed strings' with the tiniest possible 'packet' of energy ... the gravity equivalent of a photon. As for Jung particles (being J-type gravitons), sorry, those are a product of my feverish imagination. The J-type graviton is one of many kinds of gravitons knowin 600 years in the future; this one exists on the very line where this dimension of ours nudges up against e-space, or hyperspace. Does hyperspace exist? String theorists are developing math to describe many more dimensions than our own, so ... oh, yeah. More than likely hyperspace is very real. Now, as to WHAT a graviton actually is --

Want to drive yourself nuts? Chase links around on this site: World of Physics. There's a couple of books you need to read, too. HYPERSPACE by Michio Kako, and THE FABRIC OF THE COSMOS by Brian Green. Here's my thinking, in a nutshell (and this is what's driving the technology in the later HELLGATE books). Mass and energy are interchangeable, if you remember your basic Einstein (E=mc|2 ... I have no idea how to make this thing superscript to get the 'squared' symbol, so you'll have to interpolate there). The graviton is predicted to have micrcoscopic amounts of energy, which have to be derived from mass (ain't nowhere else energy is going to come from), so if gravitons carry/transmit gravity, and they're made of converted mass, and they pump out of black holes at the rate of how many gazillion tons per nanosecond? Well ... you chase this snippet of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and you might get a glimpse of where HELLGATE is going. Then again, maybe not!

To answer an oft-asked question (actually, two quesions), YES, I know exactly where HELLGATE is going, at a detail level which would probably surprise you. And YES, the next book is on my agenda. In fact, this is one of the reasons for the frustration I was talking about above. How sweet it would be, to be able to tell the world to go away, and have time to WRITE. I imagine it's every writer's dream.

'Work' is the other four-letter word ending in 'K.' Somebody needs to put that on a bumper sticker. Or a teeshirt.

Tales from the Mel-o-sphere

We managed to get the code working for the eBay connection ... well, I saw 'we' but I basically stood back and watched while DreamCraft's tech-head and fixer did something to it which made it, uh, work.

All of which means, if you've been hunting around for the old GMP versions of my early works, and if you were predisposed to shop via eBay, and didn't mind giving me a click from the blog here (or the website), when the sale goes through, a percentage comes this-a-way like a royaly. Which would be very nice indeed.



It's been a long time indeed since GMP passed into history, and like many people (writers and readers alike) I still mourne their passing. Something very like GMP desperately needs to be launched right now ... a publishing house that caters to both new and sesoned writers, delivering books with gay themes or issues, characters or content. If I had the time or the investment capital, it's a project I'd be in without hesitation.

(Fair enough, I'm doing nicely as a writer, but -- you have to be realistic. I have 20 books at Lulu, and about 25 at Payloads, and a half dozen more in the works, plus giftware galore at Zazzle, and a marketing campaign working for me. Now, what writer just coming along with his (or her) first book, or first couple of titles, is going to be able to do that? There's a vacuum left behind with the extinction of GMP, and I'd be delighted to see it filled by a new publishing house with eclectic tastes and the ability, and the compassion, to give new writers a try.)

Work continues in jigsaw-like bits and pieces; there's an odd sense of dislocation right now, where various projects are complete, others not quite begun, loads of loose ends to tie and fiddling details to be resolved -- like the eBay code, which wouldn't work till it was given a swift kick. (It worked on the webpage, I admit; just not on the blog. Turns out, Blogger runs on a software platform which can be persnickity when it comes to add-on code. Ain't computers wonderful?! Mind you, can you imagine trying to live without them? [asthmatic whining sound]

Little of interest is happening in the Mel-o-sphere ... it's bucketing down, which is good, because we need the rain; the high winds in the last couple of days tore the TV aerial loose, so it was pointless even trying to watch the new Doctor Who, with two words out of three being snipped by a digital feed gone bonkers. David Tennant turned into a lot of little colored squares and danced off the side of the screen, and that was that ... and I spent the afternoon writing an article for the 'write your novel' website, which is due up in August or September.

When it goes up, I'll give you the link and invite you to the launch. It's actually a hell of a good idea for a website, and is turning into a very attractive website to boot. (Jade strikes again: some of the best looking sites on the web start right there. Apparently, the knack comes from spending 12 years reading code, and 15 years before that designing for the print media. Makes you cringe, doesn't it?) Put it like this: the new webpage is already the kind of website I'd have been damned glad to find when I was a late-teen trying to figure out what the hell I as writing!

And if the quality of a lot of the writing on the web is anything to judge by, there are several million people out there, all trying to answer the same fundalemental questions. Like, "How many b's are there in 'rubbish?'," and "do you put a a 'K' in pathetic?'") I've been surfing around a bit on fiction sites, right across the spectrum, to get a feel for what's out there. Damnit, some people need help.

With nothing interesting happening ... at least, nothing I care to blog about ... I'm not going to talk about politics; I swear to gods, I'm not going to talk about politics! ... I'll cut this one short.

Oh -- before I go:

I wanted to put in a link on the blog here to a really great video on YouTube, where John Barrowman gets halfway eaten alive by a racehorse, but the vide (which used to play just fine six months ago), is playing vertically-squeezed. Does anyone know how to configure a YouTube feed to get the damned video to playu right? If anyone knows the answer to this one, great. Because the video will be enjoyed by all and sundry. Advice would b appreciated muchly, guys. I don't have much more than a nodding acquaintance with YouTube.

Ciao for now,
MK