What I Do

I guess an introduction is a useful early post, for those of you who don't know me (yet) or only know one aspect of the many different things I do.

I often think of myself as a bookseller's nightmare, because my books so often straddles two or more genres or "groups," making the decision of where to shelve them a complicated one. And when it comes to the overall body of work--some 70 different titles--very few of my books get shelved in the same section of the store... making it harder to build a following than if every year I published another title in the same series or something.

I learned about Live Journal mostly from fellow writers in the science fiction community who have journals, but I'm probably best-known for two non-genre anthologies I co-edited with Carol Queen, SWITCH HITTERS: Lesbians Write Gay Male Erotica and Gay Men Write Lesbian Erotica, a project which questions the notion of gendered writing while opening discussions such as whether we feel desire more on an axis of orientation or of gender, and the collection of personal essays PoMoSEXUALS: Challenging Assumptions about Gender and Sexuality, featuring work from Pat Califia, Dorothy Allison, Michael Thomas Ford, John Weir, etc. (both published by Cleis Press).

More recently, I've published a couple of books exploring and reconciling Judaism and homosexuality, with the anthologies KOSHER MEAT exploring sexuality through erotic fiction and memoir, and FOUND TRIBE: Jewish Coming Out Stories grappling with issues of community and prejudice, whether coming out as gay in the Jewish world or coming out as Jewish in gay subculture (both Sherman Asher Publishing).

Blending queer fiction with SF, I published a collection of my own fantasy short stories with lesbian and gay protagonists, THE DRAG QUEEN OF ELFLAND, and also the more "up-scale" (literary) anthology THINGS INVISIBLE TO SEE: LESBIAN AND GAY TALES OF MAGIC REALISM with stories from Nancy Springer, Martha Soukup, Rand B. Lee, Sarah Schulman, Lesléa Newman, and others.(both from Circlet Press).

I edited three fantasy anthologies for DAW Books: TAROT FANTASTIC, with work from Charles De Lint, Jane Yolen, Tanya Huff, Lucy Taylor, Susan Wade, Nina Kirki Hoffman, and others, THE FORTUNE TELLER, with work from Neil Gaiman, Storm Constantine, Bruce Holland Rogers, Brian Stableford, etc. and CAMELOT FANTASTIC, featuring stories from Gregory Maguire, Ian MacDowell, Mike Ashley, Rosemary Edghil, etc.; as well as the four titles in the American Vampire series, which included BLOOD LINES: Vampire Stories from New England (Sarah Smith, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, etc.), SOUTHERN BLOOD: Vampire Stories from the American South (Dan Simmons, Fred Chappell, Delia Sherman, William Tenn, etc.), FIELDS OF BLOOD: Vampire Stories from the American Heartland (August Derleth, Nancy Holder, A. R. Morlan, etc.) and STREETS OF BLOOD: Vampire Stories from New York City (Suzy McKee Charnas, Alan Ryan, Ellen Kushner, Edward Bryant, etc.) all from Cumberland House.

I've edited a number of erotica anthologies, under my own name as well as other bylines, most notably (apart from the above mentioned) THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF GAY EROTICA (Carroll & Graf) featuring work from Alan Hollinghurst, Edmund White, Christopher Bram, Neil Bartlett, Paul Russell, Steven Saylor, Philip Ridley, and many others (it's nearly 600 pages!)

My collection of my own gay erotic stories, HIS TONGUE, was published in English by North Atlantic Books, and also has editions in Spain, Germany, and Brazil.

My third collection of my short stories, TWO BOYS IN LOVE, while written in English, has so far only been published in Catalan and Spanish translation.

To further complicate things, while I'm not Latino, I do also write directly in Spanish.

I've flirted with the world of comics for years--I've translated comics by Segrelles and others from Spanish to English; I've got a sestina in Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN: THE BOOK OF DREAMS anthology; etc.--but have fully entered that world only recently with the gay graphic novel VACACIONES EN IBIZA, with illustrations by Catalan artist Sebas, which has been published in Spain by Egales. I translated the book into English myself, and it's just been published in the U.S. by NBM under the title VACATION IN IBIZA. A French edition is forthcoming in May 2004, and Sebas and I are at work on a second installment with the same characters, in Paris this time around...

Writing in Spanish and English, I work with the great Spanish illustrator Sara Rojo (www.sararojo.com) to create children's picture books (and the occasional graphic piece for adults, such as a recent black and white sort-of-comic for a German anthology about clothes). Some of our titles include MISTERIO EN EL JARDÍN (Kalandraka), LA OCA DE LOS HUEVOS DE ORO Y OTRAS FÁBULAS (Ediciones Palabra) or the forthcoming NO HAY NADA COMO EL ORIGINAL (Destino Infantil).

Some of my other books include:

an AIDS-benefit cookbook, FOOD FOR LIFE AND OTHER DISH (Cleis Press), which gathered recipes and anecdotes from notable members of the gay and lesbian community, such as Martina Navratilova, RuPaul, Tony Kushner, Dorothy Allison, and many more, with all royalties donated to 18 meals on wheels programs across the country, such as God's Love We Deliver and Project Angel Food;

an anthology of poetry in Catalan, ELLS S'ESTIMEN: Poemes d'amor entre homes, which was the first anthology of gay (love) poetry in any of the languages of Spain;

the "he said/he said" anthology TWO HEARTS DESIRE: GAY COUPLES ON THEIR LOVE (co-edited with Michael Lassell; St. Martin's Press) which for the first time allowed both sides of gay relationships to have their say about each other and includes work from Christopher Isherwood & Don Bachardy, Edmund White & Michael Carroll, Paul Monette & Winston Wilde, Craig Lucas & Patrick Barnes, Douglas Sadownick & Tim Miller, and many other couples;

a joint biography of the dynamic record-breaking sisters VENUS AND SERENA WILLIAMS (Andrews McMeel);

and so on.

In addition to my own books, my shorter work has appeared in many different periodicals, including THE SATURDAY EVENING POST, THE TAMPA TRIBUNE, ISAAC ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE, PHYSICS TODAY, etc. as well as in over 170 anthologies, such as THE RANDOM HOUSE BOOK OF SCIENCE FICTION STORIES, THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF FAIRY TALES, BEST GAY EROTICA 1997 and 1998, and THE RANDOM HOUSE TREASURY OF LIGHT VERSE, among others.

My work has been translated into Basque, Catalan, Czech, Dutch, Esperanto, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, and Spanish.

For those who care about such things, I won a Lambda literary Award in 1998 for PoMoSEXUALS and have been a finalist on nine other occasions (as part of my being a bookseller's nightmare, I've been a finalist in seven different categories!)

The German edition of SWITCH HITTERS wont he Siegesseule Book of the Year Award.

My poem "How to Make a Human" from Bruce Coville's anthology HALF-HUMAN (Scholastic) won the Rhysling Best long SF poem Award in 2002.

My books have also been finalists for numerous prizes, including the Firecracker Alternative Book Award (twice), Small Press book Award, ForeWord Book of the Year Award (three times), Spectrum Award, (twice), etc.

For two years I served as co-chair of the Publishing Triangle, the organization of lesbians and gay men in the publishing industry, responsible for National Lesbian and Gay Book Month, BookAIDS (a program which delivers over 40,000 books free to PWAs each year), an annual awards series, and numerous other programs and events.

I'm currently in my third year as the Spain Regional Advisor for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

Sorry to go on so exhaustively. But it's probably best to get that over with once, at the beginning, so it's out of the way, and then to move on to more interesting subjects.

Recent Reading

So, my best friend Keith back in New York, the most wonderful human being ever, has been kind enough to feed my addiction to two mystery series--Jane Haddam's Armenian-American detective Gregor Demarkian and Dana Stabenow's Aleutian sleuth Kate Shugak--by digging up the earlier volumes and sending them on to me here in Spain.

While I'm generally a fan of starting series at the beginning and methodically working my way through them, I think both of these work just fine if one starts at the tail end (as I did) and then goes back to fill in the rest, even though the relationships between the characters do grow and evolve over the course of the novels. (By contrast, with S.J. Rozan's Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series, I'd strongly recommend starting with book one and proceeding from there. The series alternates viewpoints with each successive title, and I think that reading the series in order really enhances one's enjoyment of it.)

I've read more of the Haddams so far, having discovered that series earlier on (I think there are 19 titles so far). I find the books quite engaging, even when they're about subjects I've little interest in (such as the most recent installment whose title is also its subject: CONSPIRACY THEORY). Haddam has a way of putting you into the minds of multiple viewpoint characters, so that you begin to have sympathy even with the disagreeable sorts. She's very fair-minded in that way, and her Libertarian attitude also comes out in how pro-queer the books are. Some novels have overtly queer plots or subplots--such as TRUE BELIEVERS, which involves a conflict between various churches in Philadelphia, one of which has a gay priest and another of which is virulently anti-gay, or DEAR OLD DEAD in which, just before becoming a suspect in a murder, the celebrated director of an important free clinic in Harlem is arrested on a vice charge for engaging in public sex--but they're never simplistic, and the novels often have lesbian or gay characters scattered throughout other plots which have nothing to do with queer concerns.

A lot of the novels deal with organized religion in various manifestations, and it's been fascinating to read about the comparisons between different churches and the machineries thereof. (I think the only other novel set in an Abbey I've ever found so gripping was Rumer Godden's IN THIS HOUSE OF BREDE, which I also recommend to anyone who hasn't read it. In Haddams books, however, the nuns are constantly commenting on the differences Vatican II wrought in their lives and orders...)

It's also really curious for me to be reading these Haddam novels in Spain, because the books are so quintessentially AMERICAN. They are snapshots of different aspects of American life. Her SOMEBODY ELSE'S MUSIC is so much about the prom, how in a small town that moment of high school is the pinnacle of life for so many.

The Stabenows are also appealing for their fascinating glimpse into all these Alaskan concerns which I knew nothing about, but which are extremely relevant/curious: Native rights and the industry surrounding anything happening on Native lands, the oil industry, commercial crab fishing, how morels are harvested, etc. But mostly for the struggle Kate Shugak has with her Aleutian roots and living half in the modern world and half in the tribal "past".

I'd recommend both series. The Haddams start off a bit "slow"; there are usually 50-60 pages of prologue, establishing in multiple viewpoints the various characters who're going to later be pivotal in the crime, but she handles it very well (think George R.R. Martin in a contemporary setting). The Shugaks are more traditional in structure, although morally they're often more complex. (Not so much as the S. J. Rozan's, say, which is a series I absolutely love but alas have read all of them so they're not really recent reading as the title of this point claims I'm talking about...)