Friday, January 03, 2003
No sun today, but there was no sun for most of yesterday. A rainy Southern winter.
Yesterday was not entirely unproductive. I vowed to force myself to sit at the computer until 5 p.m. In that time I caught up on e-mail, I sent additional text for Bast #3 to DC, but, most importantly, I got back to work on my notes for Murder of Angels. Much of the notes were concerned with having discovered, via Google, that there's a band on the Middle Pillar label called A Murder of Angels, and I'm trying to figure out if this is actually an issue for me or not. I made a list of alternate titles, none of which seemed right. I divided the book, the book in my head, into three sections and discovered that three of the alternate titles made great titles for parts one, two, and three. I spent about a page and a half debating with myself whether or not it was a bad move, at this point, to return to a novel where the main characters are gay. For some people, it was an issue with Silk. It's idiotic and bigoted that it was an issue, but it was, and I've heard a lot of crap from people who would have had an easier time getting into the novel had Spyder and Robin, and then Niki Ky, not been lesbians. Plus, there were a number of lesser male characters who were gay. An equal number of characters were het, but it seems that the people who were put off by lesbians weren't mollified by that fact. This is one of those shitty parts of writing, having to weigh my own artistic concerns against market concerns. It's not that a book can't deal with gay characters and be popular; it most certainly can. But it has to do so in a "non-threatening" manner or risk relegation to the dreaded ghetto of gay fiction. And in Murder of Angels, I'm looking at both protagonists being lesbian, Daria and Niki. Of course, I would hasten to point out that I've written two novels since Silk — Threshold and Low Red Moon — that essentially lack any gay characters, but the people who are put off by gay characters wouldn't care. So, I have to deal with this. If I'm going to write the damned book, a sequel to Silk, avoiding central characters who are lesbians is out of the question. It's one of those situations where I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and see how it goes when the book hits the stores. It's always like that, really. I thought Threshold was way too weird to ever do well and it's already on its third trade paperback printing.
Today it's back to my notes, and a contract that has to be gone over, and a letter that has to be written. Tonight we might go see The Two Towers again. Spooky hasn't seen it yet. Tomorrow, I get a road trip to Tallahassee to visit Rogue and Jessica (The Crüxshadows) and I won't be back until Sunday, so this will probably be my last post until Sunday night. Last night, I watched Minority Report for the second time.
Finally, tonight the Sci-Fi Channel will be rerunning the three most recent episodes of Farscape, before the first new episode on January 10th. Here's the schedule (all times ET):
6: 00 PM "A Prefect Murder"
7:00 PM "Coup By Clam"
8:00 PM "Unrealized Realities"
"Unrealized Realities," in particular, is one of sf's finest television moments.
And, once again, if you need the primer, it's here:
Primer
See you all Sunday.
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