Hey, SCOTUS, make me work harder!

As you may have heard, the Supreme Court of the United States is hearing arguments this week about marriage equality. This topic is of interest to me as a writer of Male/Male romance, because romance novels generally tend to have a marriage in there somewhere.

Romance novels are also supposed to have conflict in there somewhere. When I’m writing a M/M romance, I can easily create conflict by tossing some random homophobia into the story. I can dash off a father who kicks his son out for being gay, or a mother who won’t speak to her son’s boyfriend. How about a landlord who refuses to rent an apartment to the couple, or a town that won’t allow a same-sex wedding in the park where other weddings take place? 

See? Instant conflict, pulled from today’s headlines, not even requiring me to make anything up using my imagination.

If the Supreme Court rules that the Defense of Marriage act is unconstitutional, every state in the US will have to recognize marriages from other states, even if both spouses are the same gender. It will effectively make same-sex marriage legal throughout the country. And it will remove a nice, big source of potential conflict for my characters.

Now they'll be like any other couple in any other romance novel, where their decision to marry will depend on more complicated things: family opposition based on class or culture, fear of commitment, whether or not they want kids, trust issues, or a million other things I’ll have to WORK to think of. I’ll have to come up with inner conflicts to keep them apart, instead of relying on state or Federal laws.

As people’s sexual orientation becomes less of an issue, more sources of potential conflict for my stories will slip away. I’m going to have to work harder and harder to come up with believable conflict if I can’t fall back on cardboard bigotry. If someday Congress passes an Employment Non-Discrimination Act, then my character won’t have to worry about losing his job for being gay, which means I’ll have to come up with an entirely new conflict for him. And that’s hard, thinking stuff up!

SCOTUS, if you dismantle DOMA, I’ll have to work harder to create conflict in my characters’ lives. But I’m willing to try, because that will mean that real same-sex couples will have less conflict in theirs.

New Year!

Happy New Year 2013!  Man, these 20XX numbers still look like science fiction to me....

I lived in Japan during my formative years, the ones immediately after college.  New Year's there is a big deal:  you go to a shrine at midnight, toss in money and pray for a good year, then you try to find a hot canned drink vending machine that isn't empty at 2 AM because it's fricking freezing, Mr. Bigglesworth, then you take the train home at 4 in the morning, because it's the only time they run all night. 

The next day, you watch old foreign movies dubbed into Japanese or whichever 47 Loyal Ronin TV movie was on that year while you eat clementines and address your New Year's cards. 

New Year's is not as big of a deal in the US, maybe because most people are exhausted from Christmas.  But we do have a tradition of resolutions here, as if an arbitrary "clean slate" date will somehow kick us into more motivation than we had all last year.

Last year I had an epiphany about behavior modification:  just because you fail at something doesn't mean you have to give up even trying to do it.

Example:  I really need a to-do list.  I used one when preparing for my arangetram, then I stopped looking at it.  But that doesn't mean I can never look at it again.  I just need to try to remember to use it more often.  Maybe it will eventually become a habit.

Same with New Year's resolutions.  Just because you go to the gym the first week in January and then skip it the second week doesn't mean you have to stop going the rest of the year.  Admit you dropped the ball, then pick it up again and keep playing.  That's what I'm going to do with the following resolutions:

Organize time better (fit in revising as well as writing)
Read more books
Clean the house
Continue to get rid of stuff

I plan to keep those resolutions by spending less time on the web.  I don't need to read EVERY comment on EVERY post at Joe.My.God.

What are your resolutions, and more importantly, how do you plan to keep them?

I did something!

Newest item in my inbox:
------------------

Samhain Romance Submissions	9:28 PM (0 minutes ago)
to me

**This is an auto-response**

Thank you for your submission to Samhain Publishing's romance line.

Please allow 12 to 16 weeks for a response from an editor.  If you
haven't heard from us after that time please feel free to email for a
status update.

Samhain Publishing
---------------------------

I really need to submit stories more often -- my heart was pounding just composing the query email.  :P

Were the world ending....

Just because the 13th b'ak'tun is ending doesn't mean that the world is. (I trust NASA.) But what if it were?  We hear all the time, "Live each day like it's your last!"

Well, that's not really very good advice, since if it were everyone's last day on earth, we'd be eating vats of whipped cream and punching our bosses in the face.  Or maybe that's just me....

But we ought to be able to find a happy medium, and not put off too long the things we'd really like to do in our lives.

I have two items on my bucket list, and I'm worried I've waited too long.

1.  Eat a deep-fried Twinkie.
2.  Ride in a rumble seat.

If Hostess really goes under, there may not be any more Twinkies.  And if my ass gets any bigger, it may not fit into a rumble seat.  So if I'm going to cross those two things off my list (and yes, I see the irony, that achieving the first may make it impossible to achieve the second), I've got to get my giant ass to a state fair and then to an antique car show, by way of many, many Zumba classes.  Maybe I won't get both of those items crossed off by Friday, but I'll make it a goal to get them crossed off by this time next year, in case the Mayans missed a decimal point or forgot to carry the one.

What are some of your bucket list items, and how do you plan to achieve them? 

gettin' stuff done!

I now have three first drafts finished:  Emily's Magical Bejeweled Codpiece (~14k), A Cunning Plan (~40k) and Here Lies Treasure (~140k).  Yeah, that one will need a few cuts.

And I think I need to take a class on revising.  Maybe there will be something at Moonlight & Magnolias -- this weekend, y'all!


So who's up for NaNo this year?!! *headdesks*

In good news, my friend Ulysses' sequel is out!  Vampire In Suburbia is now available at the Amazon Kindle store, as is the book that precedes it, Desmond, which was previously published by Alyson Books but has been re-released in e-format.

Hey, at least someone is getting stuff finished.  :P

Saturday Snark - first try

Going to try Marie Sexton's Saturday Snark for the first time.  My godawfully long WIP pirate historical is sadly lacking in humor, way more angsty than I usually write, but here's an exchange that might qualify for the Snark blog hop.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Captain?”

“Aye, lad?”

“I must ask you to untie my hands.”

“And I must refuse your request.”

Philip drew in a breath and blew it out again.  “Please.  Sir.  I...I must answer the call of nature.”

“You’ve got to piss?”

“Y—yes.”

“All right.”  William opened a cupboard beneath the bunk and pulled out a tin chamber pot.  Setting it down on the chair between Philip’s legs, he reached for the buttons on Philip’s pantaloons.

‘No!” Philip shouted, recoiling so violently that he upset the chair and would have fallen to the floor had William not caught him.  The chamber pot went flying, ending up in the corner of the cabin. 

“Ho there!  Calm yourself, lad!”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m helping you take a piss, that’s all!”

“No!  You can’t...please untie me, and I’ll do it.”

“You’re mad if you think I’m going to untie you.”  William looked him up and down.  “You’re a very dangerous young man, despite your appearance.  So you can let me pull out your prick so you can use the pot, or you can wet yourself.  Your decision.”

“Your chair.”  A glimmer of defiance under the fear made William blink.

“What’s that, now?”

“This is your cabin, isn’t it?  And it will be your chair soaked in p—piss if you don’t untie me and let me use the pot myself.”

“Hmm.  Clever lad.”  

guest blog post at Laptops & Lingerie

Hey, head over to Laptops & Lingerie and check out my guest blog post!  (Don't think about why I have time to guest there when I'm not even posting here, pay no attention to the writer behind the curtain, this isn't the blog you're looking for....)