This is one of those posts I write to keep track of my thoughts...in true fashion of a journal, which is what personal blogging was always intended to be in the first place. Although I veer off track sometimes and post about many things, I do like to keep certain posts for my own thoughts.
When I first thought about editing and publishing a book of short stories about women who love to love gay romance, I wasn't sure how it would play out. Would anyone be interested in submitting a story to a book like this? Would authors be willing to write fiction that gets into personal feelings? These and many other questions ran through my mind and I didn't take this book on lightly.
One of the practical things I wanted to do with this book was give authors the time they needed to write and submit a story. That's why I made the announcement in January and gave a deadline date of May. I didn't want anyone to feel rushed, and this isn't the kind of book that needs to be rushed. As far as I know, no one's ever done a book that contained fiction all about women who love gay romance and actively participate in gay romance. If there is, I didn't know about it. I do know there's one non-fiction book about why women read gay romance. But this is something completely different. My book is about the women who read gay romance actually getting a chance to be part of gay romance...in fiction. And I've always believed that's what fiction is all about...what if? It's something that should take the reader away for a short time where he/she can dream and think and wonder.
And I've received some excellent submissions from these women authors. I'll be honest. At first I was worried about that, too. I've done other anthologies and I haven't loved every single story. It's one of the reasons I haven't done an anthology in a long time. But this time I'm amazed each time I start a new story and begin to edit it. The emotion is there, and so is the intimacy. The stories are sexy in different ways, and ways that I think are tasteful. Nothing is too over the top, so to speak. And the ways in which the authors approached the theme continues to surprise me.
I'm down to editing the next to the last story. Although I've read them all in raw form already, now that I'd editing them I'm getting a deeper appreciation as to why so many women love to love gay romance. I'm learning things I didn't know, and these are things I want to know. And when I write my own next story or novel all of this will be something that helped me grow as a writer, too.
The Women Who Love to Love Gay Romance might even be released sooner than I thought it would. The stories that have been submitted don't need too much editing because they're all very neat and tight. And one thing I've learned as a writer is to never tamper too much with an author's work while I'm editing. I've had that done to me far too many times to know how it frustrating it feels. And most of the time it was done to me it only took something away from one of my stories by an editor who didn't know my readers as well as I know them.
So this book is moving along nicely, and I'll post a release date soon. Contracts are ready to go out and I'll be getting in touch with the authors very soon. And, a huge thanks once again to everyone who did submit to this book. I can't tell you all how much I love these stories.
Wednesday 12 June 2013
The Women Who Love to Love Gay Romance Anthology
Posted on 18:15 by Unknown
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment