Uncreated Conscience

On Twitter, I eavesdropped a little on a conversation between Barry Goldblatt and Malinda Lo about gay boys vs. gay girls in fiction (and specifically teen fiction). This, of course, got me thinking.

Cagney and Lacey, probably one of my first slash pairings ever.

LGBTQ characters are far from common, although thankfully they seem to be growing in visibility, although I feel (and this may not be true), that there is a bias towards gay boys, rather than gay girls. In YA, at least, I see many more gay boy characters than I do gay girl characters. Off the top of my head, I can think of several YA books with gay boy characters who are significant to their respective books, but I am having a little more trouble with books with gay girls.

I say significant to their books, not characters who exist as a walk-on to fulfill some sort of diversity quotient. Argh, tokenism.

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Pardón, estaba incomunicada la última semana porque estaba muy ocupada por mi trabajo. He ayudado una otra redactora a St. Martin’s Press con sus autores y no tuve tiempo para escribir en mi…blog? (¿Cómo se dice “blog” en español?)

Sorry, I have the habit of reverting to high school Spanish when I get a wee bit stressed. (Of note, I love that “editor” in Spanish is redactor(a). Henceforth I wish to be known as a redactor.) I’m a little rusty.

So, JJ, you might ask, what have you been up to? Oh nothing much, I might say, just running around the Flatiron Building like a chicken with its head cut off. I have been assisting another editor here with her list while her assistant is on maternity leave. Said editor is a genius, with multiple bestsellers on her list who need a lot of maintenance. I’m still working primarily with Cap’n Sweet Valley, but now I’m on another floor (but in an office!). Now that SWEET VALLEY CONFIDENTIAL is about to go into production, I’m getting my exercise running up and down two flights of stairs at least 12 times a day.

Because I myself haven’t contributed much to the publishing blogosphere lately, might I direct you to this awesome series of posts on LGBTQ stereotypes in YA fiction by Malinda Lo? Today she blogs about gender perceptions, expression, and performance and how gender identity and sexuality do not have a 1:1 correlation.

Anyway, while I’ve been buried up to my eyeballs with work, I’ve also been reading my face off, so expect to be seeing reviews of the following soon:

1. TENDER MORSELS by Margo Lanagan
2. THE ART OF SEDUCTION by Robert Greene
3. A CONSPIRACY OF KINGS by Megan Whalen Turner
4. ILLYRIA by Elizabeth Hand
5. MATCHED by Ally Condie
6. DELIRIUM by Lauren Oliver
7. ASCENDANT by Diana Peterfreund
8. THE REPLACEMENT by Brenna Yovanoff

But I do intend to talk more about craft and writing, especially now that I’m learning from Redactor Genius. So here’s my question, oh blogosphere: What writing topics would you like me to cover? Publishing business you can read about elswhere; I’m mostly here to talk editorial (redactorial?) stuff. So shoot. Leave suggestions in the comments!

Right, so last week I needed a break from my submissions pile and blasted through a pile of published books instead of muddling my way through manuscripts. I debated whether or not to review each book individually or together in one enormous post, but I decided separately would probably help the tl;dr.

Review of WILL GRAYSON, WILL GRAYSON by John Green & David Levithan

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan

For some reason, I keep wanting to type David “Leviathan” instead of Levithan. Anyway, WILL GRAYSON, WILL GRAYSON was the first book I purchased initially for my ereader. So this review has the privilege of being two-for-one: review of content and review of form.

First off, review of content. WILL GRAYSON, WILL GRAYSON is the story of two high school boys who both happen to be named Will Grayson, whose paths happen to cross accidentally one night and how it affects them. Except for me, the novel should have been titled TINY COOPER IS BESTEST CHARACTER EVER.

Because he totally is.

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