Outer Alliance Spotlight #64: Mark Allan Gunnells January 28, 2011
Posted by juliarios in : interviews , 4commentsWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #64. The Spotlight features news about (and sometimes interviews with) allies who are active in supporting and celebrating LGBTQI speculative fiction. Our guest this week is Mark Allan Gunnells, author of Asylum.
Mark is a gay horror writer who enjoys putting incidentally queer characters into stories which aren’t about sexuality and orientation. His novellas, Whisonant, and Creatures of the Light, are collected in one volume by Sideshow Press, and his short story collection, Tales from the Midnight Shift, Vol. I is forthcoming from Sideshow as well. His newest book, Asylum, is the first product of Apex Book Company’s new zombie imprint, The Zombie Feed. Asylum departs form Mark’s usual style to take issues of sexual identity head-on–in the context of a zombie attack on a gay dance club.
Mark lives in South Carolina with his partner, Joel. If you’d like to learn more about him, check out his Facebook page or his LiveJournal.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #25: Lee Thomas March 12, 2010
Posted by juliarios in : interviews , 2commentsWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #25. Each Friday, the Spotlight features an ally who writes, reviews, publishes, or is in some other way involved with LGBTQI speculative fiction. Our guest this week is horror author, Lee Thomas.
Lee has been writing for as long as he can remember, but only submitting stories for publication since 2001. He won a Stoker Award for his first novel, Stained, and went on to win a Lambda Award for The Dust of Wonderland. Currently his short story collection, In the Closet, Under the Bed, is up for another Stoker.
Lee is gay, and writes horror feautring queer and straight protagonists for adults and young adults under the names Lee Thomas, Thomas Pendleton, and Dallas Reed. He has short fiction forthcoming in Dead Set, Darkness on the Edge, Armageddon Lightshow (Bloodletting Books), and Best Gay Stories 2010 (Lethe Press). Two of Lee’s novellas, The Black Sun Set (Burning Effigy Press) and Focus, co-written with Nate Southard, will also be released this year as standalone books.
In addition to his personal website, Lee maintains a LiveJournal and a Facebook page. He is the chair of the 2011 World Horror Convention, which will take place in his current hometown of Austin, Texas. He lives with one good dog, one good cat, and one evil cat.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #21: Rick Reed February 12, 2010
Posted by juliarios in : interviews , add a commentWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #21. Each Friday, the Spotlight features an ally who writes, reviews, publishes, or is in some other way involved with LGBTQI speculative fiction. Our guest this week is horror author, Rick Reed.
Rick has written several novels, both speculative and not. His novel about reincarnation and love, Orientation, won the EPIC Award for Best GLBT Novel last year, and two of his books are currently EPIC 2010 Awards finalists. Dead End Street is nominated in the Young Adult category and VGL Male Seeks Same is nominated in the Contemporary Romance Category. He’s also got a new novel called Blue Moon Cafe coming out in March from Amber Allure, and a short story in the forthcoming I Do Two charity anthology from MLR Press (proceeds go to the Lambda Legal).
Rick currently lives in Seattle with his partner and their Boston terrier, Lily. He is on Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook, and he maintains a blog at http://rickrreedreality.blogspot.com/.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #16: Angelia Sparrow January 8, 2010
Posted by juliarios in : interviews , add a commentWelcome to Outer Alliance Spotlight #16. Each Friday (except for last Friday, when your correspondent was busy welcoming the new year), the Spotlight features an ally who writes, reviews, publishes, or is in some other way involved with LGBTQI speculative fiction. Our guest this week is erotic writer, Angelia Sparrow.
Since 2004, Angelia has written seven novels, ten novellas, and many more short stories both on her own and together with her writing partner, Naomi Brooks. Their latest novel, Alive on the Inside, came out in December. An erotic horror novel about a traveling circus, Alive on the Inside has been nominated as a candidate for Best Horror Novel in the Preditors and Editors Readers’ Poll for works published in 2009.
Angelia and Naomi are planning to release a Western in 2010. Showdown at Yellowstone River will feature a drag king gunslinger and a bisexual sheriff. In addition to that novel, a couple of collections of previously published short stories are on the horizon. Angelia will be making appearances at several cons and events including MidSouthCon in March, Southern Delta Church of Wicca‘s Beltane, Hypericon in June, Either Memphit FurMeet or Dragon*Con in September, MidSouth Pride, Summerland Grove‘s Festival of Souls in October, and ConTraception in November.
Angelia is a truck driver and mother of four, who identifies as a bisexual, Butch Earth Mother. She grew up in Peculiar, Missouri, but has lived in the greater Memphis area for the past twelve years. She blogs about her writing at http://angelsparrow.blogspot.com/ (syndicated on LiveJournal here), and maintains a personal blog at http://valarltd.livejournal.com/. Angelia enjoys crochet and old movies, and donates both time and money to Memphis Area Gay Youth.
Linkdump #6 – Gay literature and TV November 10, 2009
Posted by zeborah in : links , add a commentMiscellaneous
Chris/M-Brane SF comments on the Maine/gay marriage situation and on those who opposed the Matt Shepard law.
A recent conference in New Zealand brought together leaders and youth from sexual minority communities across the Pacific; the article touches on Fa’afafine in Samoa and New Zealand.
On gay literature
Michael Stevens writes about the change in how important gay literature has been to him: “Now there are hundreds of books, by many different authors available. And yet I feel little compunction to follow the latest trends in gay fiction or poetry. It just doesn’t seem to matter to me any longer. Yet once it was central to me discovering who I was and how to negotiate the world.” and “By reading I learnt what it was to be a gay man.”
On LiveJournal community 50books_poc are three recent reviews of LGBT-focused writing:
- M+O4EVR by Tonya Cherie Hegamin, along with a general introduction about LGBT fiction, YA lit, race, and the few other books about African-American queer girls;
- Southland by Nina Revoyr
- “Gay Imperialism: Gender and Sexuality Discourse in the ‘War on Terror’” by Jin Haritaworn, with Tamsila Tauqir and Esra Erdem
And GLBT Fantasy Fiction Resources “provides an opportunity for readers to express their thoughts regarding fantasy and sci-fi with gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered protagonists through book reviews, essays, and reading lists in a non-commercial environment”.
Gay characters on TV
In the Bay Area Reporter, “Going, going, gone!: the case of the missing LGBT characters” looks at the dearth of gay characters on US television. [Though personally I'm disappointed that they describe Thirteen on House as "previously queer" and "now heterosexual" when the show itself has made it clear that she is and always has been bisexual and just happens to be dating a guy at present. The show does plenty else wrong, but - at least as far as I've seen - it doesn't deny her bisexuality.] An interview with writer/director Alan Ball discusses directions for gay characters (both existing ones and new ones) in season 3 of True Blood.
If you come across any links to share for next week’s linkdump, please post them to the Outer Alliance forum or bookmark them on delicious or diigo with tag “outeralliancelinks“.
Outer Alliance Spotlight #1: Michele Lee September 18, 2009
Posted by juliarios in : interviews, publications , 4commentsWelcome to the first Outer Alliance Spotlight. Each Friday the Spotlight will feature an ally who writes, reviews, publishes, or is in some other way involved with LGBTQI speculative fiction. Our first guest is Michele Lee, a writer and reviewer from Louisville, Kentucky.
Michele is bisexual and happily married to a straight ally. She thinks of herself as an inclusive writer, who doesn’t necessarily focus on including queer content, but instead on exploring the machinations of relationships, and how our sexual and gender identities develop. One of her two children is autistic, so Michele is also active in autism awareness.
Her short fiction has appeared in several places including Aoife’s Kiss, Black Ink Horror XXX, and Cthulhu Sex Magazine, and her novella, Rot is available through Skullvines Press. In addition to her personal book review blog, Book Love, Michele has written reviews for The Fix, Monster Librarian, and Dark Scribe. She is planning a Horror Day event in the Louisville area tentatively scheduled for the 14th of November, 2009, but she managed to carve out some time from her busy schedule to answer a few questions for us. (more…)