Personal attacks are uncool

I’ve generally tried to stay out of the whole thing between STGRB and the Goodreads Reviewers groups. Although I identify with the GR side more, I’ve always thought that both sides had very, very good points. Some authors need to learn how to react better to negative reviews and some reviewers need to understand that their reviews are seen as hurtful, which makes them less helpful to people discovering the book or author. I think both sides will occasionally overreact to various situations, dragging them out far longer than necessary. Especially since after a while the conversations eventually go from the actual subject at hand, the review and the author’s reaction, to conversations and speculation about people’s personal lives.

Even if the personal lives of whomever is involved does have some bearing on the situation at hand, which it usually doesn’t, this always turns very ugly very fast. What should be a conversation about the review or the author turns into a “he did, she did- wait, what about the book” type of conversation where both sides end up feeling like nothing was really accomplished because nothing was.

Why I'm bringing this up is because recently one of the members of STGRB did something that was so uncalled for, so appalling, that I couldn't stay silent about how I felt about it. The other day Carroll Bryant posted three blogs about various people, John Green, Amanda Welling (whom Bryant alleges is GenX), and Jude (the girl Bryant was in an online relationship with). I want to note that GenX denies being Welling and says that one of the STGRB admins also told Bryant that they weren’t the same person.

Rather than talk about everyone's parts in the whole STGRB/GR scenario, the blogs only existed to post personal accusations and remarks. Some of them included open speculation that was pretty far fetched and even if by some chance they were true, had absolutely nothing to do with reviewing books. Which is what STGRB is actually supposed to be about. In all fairness, I think this was all Bryant and not anything condoned by STGRB themselves as far as I know.

What were the remarks? GenX has screenposts, but they're pretty awful. Bryant accused GenX of having an affair, alleges that John visits prostitutes because he tweeted a porn star on Twitter, and posted a lot of personal information about Jude, the girl that he was supposed to have been in a relationship with. None of it had anything really to do with books. At all. The only thing that had anything to do with any of the past events was that Jude was supposed to have written a review for him and their relationship ended badly on both sides. I'm particularly horrified that Bryant is putting out more information about Jude than about him accusing GenX of infidelity and of John of being, well, a john. She was a minor at the time and regardless of how rocky the relationship was on either side, it's very poor form to go out and start releasing such private information. I can't vouch whether or not she's supplying information to anyone, but from what I've heard, Jude has wanted to remain out of the spotlight and keep her private life private. Continuing to release information about her serves no purpose and only makes Bryant look bad because of it.

I just have to ask... what did any of this really accomplish? What purpose did any of this really serve? I know that in the past people have speculated about Bryant's personal life, but I don't see where that merited a series of attack blogs. Part of what I hate about some of the stuff on Goodreads from both sides is that people bring dirty laundry into the argument. Forgive me if this sounds callous, but I don't care what people do in their personal lives. Let me rephrase that. I care if someone is going out and beating on nuns with a baseball bat. I don't want people to hurt other people. It's wrong and it shouldn't happen. But when we're discussing the merits of a review and whether or not authors should or shouldn't respond to a review they find over the top, I don't think that speculating on whether or not John has paid for sex has any place in that argument. If I were to go about doing something like that then all it'd do is discredit myself and any argument I was trying to make. It also draws away from what we should really be talking about.

Again, what did any of the blogs really do? For the most part I don’t see where a lot of people were really talking about Bryant anymore until his recent spate of activity where he began rehashing his Goodreads run in and his relationship with Jude. But really, what will this accomplish? It only makes Bryant look bad and by extension, further tarnishes the reputation of STGRB, who didn’t start out with a stellar reputation in the author/blogging world to begin with.

My point of posting this is to give my own viewpoint about this. These guys are my friends and I'm posting this not because I want to make a statement about the whole STGRB/GR scenario, but because I find actions like this disgusting. I'm not comfortable with everything that GenX or the GR group does, but hey- I'm a wimp. I'm the Fluttershy of our group of friends. I'm not an activist. I just couldn't see those blogs and not remark on them. I know I'm opening myself up as a target and for those who might want to take a swipe at me, know that this will probably be one of the few blogs I'll post about the STGRB/GR stuff. If you want to villainize me, then fine. I just felt like those blogs were uncalled for and I'd really like it if such personal speculation and remarks could be left out of it.

Update:

I'd been mentioned in a blog by Bryant and I'm going to post another blog about stuff.

Manga Review: Demon Love Spell Vol 2 by Mayu Shinjo

Title: Demon Love Spell Volume 2
Author: Mayu Shinjo
Publisher: VIZ Media
ISBN: 1421550776
Release Date: 03/05/2013





I have to say that this series is starting to bring me closer to the type of fan I was when I began reading Shinjo's work with Sensual Phrase. You could argue, and be correct, that her work suffered due to various companies forcing her to churn out SP clones, but it's taken her a while to really get her creative juices flowing again. This has to be one of her strongest works lately, in my opinion.

A supernatural romance by the creator of Ai Ore! and Sensual Phrase 

Miko is a shrine maiden who has never had much success at seeing or banishing spirits. Then she meets Kagura, a sexy demon who feeds off women’s feelings of passion and love. Kagura’s insatiable appetite has left many girls at school brokenhearted, so Miko casts a spell to seal his powers. Surprisingly the spell works—sort of—but now Kagura is after her! 

Shrine maiden Miko has sealed the powers of the sexy incubus Kagura, who has vowed to protect her. But now a fox spirit has transformed himself into a human to proclaim his love to Miko, making Kagura jealous. Miko relents and allows Kagura to enter her dreams again, but now he can no longer regain his incubus powers?!

I think part of what makes this volume work is that the romance between Kagura and Miko is being built relatively slowly while still having plenty of nice steamy situations for them to tumble into. Miko does want Kagura, more so than she's really ready to admit, so most of the romance development in this stems from that aspect. Kagura's rather patient for a demon so much older than Miko is, but at the same time it kind of hammers in that Miko's still an inexperienced teenage girl. I kind of like that because this type of series is better when you have to make the two main characters work through their own personal issues before getting together. There are other plot points that come in and try to separate them, but the biggest issues are the ones that come directly from themselves and their own hangups or problems. This is part of what made Sensual Phrase so good, that even though the plot d'jour might have been sparked by some guy/girl/potted plant out to take one of the two people in the couple for themselves, the main problem was really some pre-existing insecurities or issues that the rival brought to the surface. I'm starting to see where this will be the case with this series and I'm pretty excited about that.

The artwork is, of course, top notch. Fans of Shinjo's steamier works will be a little sad to see that there isn't anything graphic in here, meaning no sex, but there are still a lot of pulse pounding scenes to be had. The artwork does a great job of bringing across the emotions. I'll admit that some of it is typical Shinjo and it'll be the same type of character designs that you've seen before, but the nice story lines help keep it from being too familiar.

I really loved this volume and when it ended, I was sad that I didn't have at least another chapter to flip through. This is turning out to be a series that I'd recommend to fans of steamier stuff and to older fans. Since Kagura is an incubus I wouldn't recommend it to younger readers for obvious reasons, as much of his actions are sexually driven. Incubi gotta eat, after all. There are no sex scenes, but there are sexual-ish situations and it's referred to frequently. Older teens would be fine with this, although parents will probably want to exercise some caution. You know what you want your kids reading, after all.

4 out of 5 stars

(ARC provided by VIZ Media)

Press Release: IDW Announces New DUNGEONS & DRAGONS Miniseries!

IDW Announces New DUNGEONS & DRAGONS Miniseries! CUTTER Cleaves into Comic Shops this April! San Diego, CA (February 7, 2013) – IDW Publishing is thrilled to announce another action-packed entry in their line of Dungeons & Dragons comics! This April, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: CUTTER, a five-issue miniseries written by R.A. and Geno Salvatore with art by David Baldeon and covers by Steve Ellis, weaves the tale of a family fiercely divided and at odds with itself, with a legendary sword hanging in the balance! When the battle-hardened Drow renegade Tos’un must choose an heir to his legacy, his half-Drow son Tierflin and daughter Doum’weille become locked in vicious competition. But what will the prize, the bloodthirsty sword Khazid’hea, have to say on the matter? “These comic series have become a wonderful tool for me to fill in the blanks and to crystallize my thoughts on the Legend of Drizzt novels going forward,” explains R.A. Salvatore. “The fallout from the twisting events in Neverwinter Tales not only came into play in the last couple of Drizzt books, but allowed me a strong plot line for an upcoming novel I’ve yet to pen. The same is true for Cutter – I see it already. So while these comic stories are self-contained, they open up to the wider stories going forward.” From the writing team of powerhouse Dungeons & Dragons veterans R.A. and Geno Salvatore comes a tale steeped in action and intrigue, woven into the fantastically imaginative world that can only be found in the Forgotten Realms of Dungeons & Dragons. Rounded out by the vivid art of David Baldeonand Steve Ellis’ striking covers, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: CUTTER is sure to be a wildly fun ride for fans of Dungeons & Dragons and comics everywhere, not to mention an unexpected tie-in to this summer's blockbuster R.A. Salvatore novel! Dungeons & Dragons: Cutter (FC, 32 pages, $3.99). In stores 4/17/13. Diamond Code: FEB130303

About IDW IDW is an award-winning publisher of comic books, graphic novels and trade paperbacks, based in San Diego, California. Renowned for its diverse catalog of licensed and independent titles, IDW publishes some of the most successful and popular titles in the industry, including: Hasbro’s The TRANSFORMERS and G.I. JOE, Paramount’s Star Trek; HBO’s True Blood; the BBC’s DOCTOR WHO; Toho’s Godzilla; and comics and trade collections based on novels by worldwide bestselling author, James Patterson. IDW is also home to the Library of American Comics imprint, which publishes classic comic reprints; Yoe! Books, a partnership with Yoe! Studio. IDW’s critically- and fan-acclaimed series are continually moving into new mediums. Currently, Warner Brothers and Barry Sonnenfeld are attached to adapt LORE into a feature film starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Jerry Bruckheimer Films and Disney are creating a feature film based on World War Robot, with Michael Bay‘s Platinum Dunes and Sony bringing Zombies vs. Robots to film.

The Curious Case of Mike Kearby

Here's a potential "author behaving badly" for you: Mike Kearby. For those of you unfamiliar with what's going on, here's the summary:

Last year several bloggers were solicited to participate in a blog tour. Like most blog tours, blogger/reviewers can opt to either post a review or a book promo of some sort. One reviewer, Lizzy Lessard, didn't much care for the book and chose to post a book promo. Months later, she decided to go through her list of books she'd read and rate them on Goodreads. Her review was a very brief one star review where she basically said that she didn't like it and couldn't finish it. The review was finished off with a statement about how only a few blogs opined to post reviews. The author, Mike Kearby, read the review and made a comment and that's where it essentially all went to you know where in a handbasket.

What Kearby posted is as follows:

"A perfect example of a reviewer from the Simon Cowell generation. Lizzy: yes - you have the right to be critical of editing, wordbuilding, transitioning, etc...what you do not have a right to do is lie to enhance your review. Your last sentences, - where you pronounce that only two FMB bloggers opted to give reviews, seems on the surface to make your review universal in acceptance - except for the fact that your statement is not only inaccurate but a lie. You know that more than ten reviews came from the tour, most 4 and 5 Stars - and if you didn't know this, then you shouldn't have indicated that you did. It might be wise to get your facts straight next time."

Lessard then removed the last few sentences from her review and apologized for making the generalization. This didn't stop here, as Kearby continued to comment, making further posts such as "Thank you. But remember You are dealing with people's lives and how they make a living. You should always be respectful of that. it isn't a game or a joke to those of us that write." and accusing Lessard of outright lying. From there Lessard posted a blog of her own with screencaps (see here) and Kearby took to every social media site he could possibly find to decry what he saw as a "drive by reviewer", among other things.

Now here's my take: Kearby did have a right to ask that Lessard remove the comments about the book only getting a few reviews from other blogs. It was supposedly inaccurate and even if it had been accurate, there's really no reason to make comments like that. There's no way of knowing the reasons why other reviewers wouldn't have posted reviews, some of which wouldn't have anything to do with disliking the book. Other than that I think that Kearby was out of line when it came to several different statements.

Accusing Lessard of lying is definitely over the top. She made a generalization that was wrong and when informed of this, she removed the comment. There was no reason to imply that she did this on purpose by saying she lied. Also saying that she was being deliberately disrespectful is also over the top and doesn't really do anything to make him look better. As far as the comments in various social media sites go, that's another thing that's fairly inexcusable. If Lessard had been equally indignant when replying and done anything other than remove the final part of the review, then that might justify a tiny bit of further anger. But going onto every social media site you have an account with merely to blast her to the hills for what's ultimately a small review is overkill. In his blog post Kearby wrote that Lessard was a frustrated author, implying that this was revenge against him for having a publisher. Note that I say imply. He didn't outright state this, but the implication is there. This is why you try to be as careful as possible when writing rants. It's entirely possible that your words will make you appear not as a wronged author, but as someone getting mad over what's ultimately small potatoes.

Her review probably would have been largely ignored by readers at large. Commenting and overreacting to the situation just ensured that not only would hundreds of eyes discover this review, but it'd put a lot of readers off of your work. Case in point, myself. Without knowing about the review and the comments, I'd probably have read this book at some point in time. It has a fun cover and a B-movie vibe that I tend to enjoy with some of my reads. But now? I'm not sure if I'll read it. I've had more than one promising book get ruined by author shenanigans.

This is pretty much a classic case of someone getting more upset over something than they should have. It probably wasn't good for Lessard to make a blanket statement like that, but it's even worse to go onto her review and make catty comments, then go onto the internet and blast her over every single social media site you're a member of. If anything, this called for a short e-mail to Lessard requesting that she remove her comments about the blog tour. If she refused then you should probably go through Goodreads, but if you're concerned in the meantime then it's better to leave a polite comment correcting her. Getting affronted over the comment only makes you, the author, look bad.

There will probably be some rallying cries of "totally bullying" from various websites such as Stop the Goodreads Bullies or such, but the cold hard fact is that this is ultimately one author overreacting to what was a flippant remark on a largely insignificant review. I don't mean that as an insult to Lessard, just the fact that unless your review is printed in the New York Times or put on Good Morning America, our reviews don't really affect large scores of readers. Most of the larger bloggers only get about a few hundred or thousand hits on a review. Some of those readers still buy the books afterwards. Lessard has a decent fanbase, but nowhere near as big as someone along the lines of Oprah Winfrey. Her panning a book or making a generalization isn't likely to completely kill your sales. Overreacting probably will.

Further reading:

*The review
*Lessard's blog post
*Kearby's blog post

UPDATE:

Kearby's comments have been removed and his account appears to be inactive. He's still complaining on his blog, but the more he talks, the worse he's sounding. He's sticking to the claim that Lessard was absolutely lying in a hurtful manner as opposed to her making a mistake or exaggerating. I'm saying mistake and exaggerating, as lying implies intent. I didn't really see intent in the review, just her trying to make a generalized statement to show that she wasn't the only reviewer who disliked it.

What has really surprised me is that for once, Stop the Goodreads Bullies isn't jumping on the "defend the author" bandwagon with this one. They actually defended Lessard rather than Kearby. That has to really say something, that a site that is known for twisting situations to defend authors under pretty much any stance is agreeing that Kearby's attack was too much. I'm rather glad they aren't defending him.

I just have one thing to say to Kearby: Stop. Just stop. You said your piece. You said more than your piece really warranted. Now it's just getting into personal attacks and you're making yourself look bad. If the good people at Damnation Press haven't e-mailed you to tell you to hush up, it's only because they haven't seen your comments yet. There's a difference between "setting the record straight" and getting angry over what's ultimately nothing. You're getting angry over nothing and you're pushing reviewers away. Kearby has stated that he has a small core of readers. That's nice, but publishing your work is also about gaining new ones and this isn't how you do it. I might have read his book if he'd walked away after the first few comments. Maybe even after the blog. But at this point? I don't think that I could distance his work from his tantrum, no matter how hard I tried.

Further further reading:
*Authors, Please Dont Do This (Stop the Goodreads Bullies)

Victoria Foyt wants YOU! (to review her book)

I know, I know. Some of you are immediately scoffing and rolling your eyes at the idea of reading the second book in general. Others might already be sharpening your pitchforks and licking your snarky  chops in anticipation of tearing the book apart.

I've been debating whether or not to order a copy of the book. I've hesitated due to the price and the knowledge that I'm very likely to not like Adapting Eden. Part of me does want to see if the series could improve and I'd like to think that I would go into it with the idea that Foyt could have taken in some of the criticism thrown at her from the previous book. I know some would tell me it's a hope in vain, given the snafu everything turned into, but I'm a fairly optimistic girl. It's part of why I stuck with Anita Blake for so long: I just kept hoping that eventually Hamilton would take the criticisms to heart.

Anywho, I wanted to drop this quick note to let any potential reviewers know that Foyt is soliciting for reviewers via Twitter. If you're interested, drop her a line. My only reservation would be that if you know that you are likely to give a negative review, be honest about it. You don't have to detail about how you're going to write a twelve page snark review, but at least let her know that you will be going into this with a handicap. I'm not saying that you shouldn't leave a negative review or maybe even post comments as you read, just be up front about everything. The last thing we want is for her to get upset because someone misrepresented themselves. If she reads this, I want to be clear: I did leave a negative review and I did post book snark, but I am willing to give the series a second chance. I do not promise that I will give a positive review or that I won't snark while I read, but I will promise to at least try to be open minded.

Here are the two tweets that Foyt posted:
*Status #1 via @SaveThePearls
*Status #2 via @SandDollarPress

I have to admit that I'm not exactly expecting a review copy.

GenXposé: How STGRB is threatening to dox the wrong person

John Green alerted me to this earlier this morning and I have to say that like so many other people, I'm long since ready for STGRB to fade into obscurity. What is STGRB? Many of you have already heard about this group, but for some the whole scenario is so long and elaborate that you're kind of lost on all of what is going on.

To sum it up as briefly as possible, STGRB stands for "Stop the Goodreads Bullies". It's a group that claims to be working to stop bullying on Goodreads. However nice that might sound, the group doesn't really do any of that. What should have been a group aimed at trying to be a diplomatic go-between for authors with hurt feelings and reviewers set on defending their peers is instead a group that is not only known to side only with the authors, but in the past has also released highly personal information on some of the reviewers they deem "bullies". They've since claimed that they have never revealed personal information, but more than one blog has screengrabs of the group posting things like names, locations, and personal habits along the lines of telling people where the reviewers go on certain days. Some of the reviewers have claimed that people have used this information to call them and harass them. STGRB claims that it wasn't them, but once you put someone else's information out on the internet you run the risk of someone else using it to find and harass whomever you claim is "bad". The thing about releasing that type of information is that you can't give the internet everything but their underwear size and then say "now totally don't call up this girl and make death threats, K?" That's not how it works and that's why doxing people is so bad, even if you say you have no plans or intents for anyone to harass the user.

Their justification behind this was the idea that people wouldn't make such harsh comments if not for the veil of anonymity that the internet requires. Maybe they wouldn't, but it's really hard for STGRB to throw stones when almost all of their users are anonymous themselves. The only person on their site who is readily open about who they are is the author Caroll Bryant. Like him or hate him for all of his actions, at least the guy has the balls to state who he is. As far as who exactly the other people are on the site, it's anyone's guess. Some people say that Melissa Douhit runs the site via several sockpuppets. Others say that it's a number of self-published authors. Either way, nobody really has 100% confirmation on anyone's identity aside from Bryant. What irritates so many people about the whole doxing that STGRB does is that they claim that they want things to be transparent, but hide behind their own smokescreens. I mean frack, people have even been saying that the site has a firewall that bans random people.  And really, what does doxing really serve? So you say that Nasty Reviewer X is Roberta Robinson of WallaWalla Washington. So what? What good will that ultimately do for author/reader relations? If anything, it puts everyone on the defensive and makes people that much more likely to jump to the defense of the latest reviewer, whether they view the review as unnecessarily nasty or not. And yes, some of these reviews do get a little nasty sometimes.

Moving on to why I'm writing this blog, I wanted to state the above to show that doxing can be serious business and that ultimately it serves no purpose. What makes doxing even worse is when you're wrong. That's what happened with GenX and reviewer Amanda Welling. Both are people who have been particularly outspoken about the whole STGRB fiasco, but both people have claimed that they're not the same person. According to her blog, GenX has said that she's been threatened by STGRB to either stop her blog or they'll publish all of her information on the net. Needless to say, GenX didn't take this very well, especially when she knows that they'll be releasing the information on someone that isn't her.

There's just something very nasty about telling someone that if they're not quiet that you'll spread their information on the internet. This includes the implication that people might use this information to harass said person. Given that the previous round of doxing ended with several people getting royally harassed at home and that even posting the names of various reviewers has resulted in them getting harassed via blogs and other social media sites, you can't say that they aren't fully aware of what releasing the information might result in. Even if they did have the right person, threatening to release personal information to get your way is NOT the way to accomplish your ends unless all you want is to cause more trouble.

This just isn't cool. I have to say that I've yet to see STGRB do anything that really benefited any of the people they're supposed to be protecting. I do think that there needs to be a group or a person to help soothe tensions when an author reacts badly to a review that they think is unnecessarily harsh or when a reviewer takes an author's comment badly. This just isn't the way to do it and I have to say that since STGRB has come out onto the scene, tensions between authors, notably indie or self-published authors, and reviewers have actually gotten worse. This is part of the reason why most authors, when discovering that STGRB is "supporting" them, tend to disavow any connections with the group. They know that even though the group claims to be working in the interests of the author in question, their help will hurt more than it heals.

I'll give STGRB the benefit of the doubt that they started their efforts in good faith, but at this point the whole scenario is so toxic that it's better for them to just cut their losses and find a new way to deal with what they see as bullying. Perhaps rather than screaming "so and so is bad" or "this review is bad and this reviewer is a bully", they could say how they would have phrased the review to more eloquently get the reviewer's displeasure across? In the process they should remember that although some reviews seem unnecessarily harsh or even mean spirited, those reviews are someone's opinion and those reviewers do technically have the right to say what they please. Sometimes it's just better to walk away.

Further reading:

* I made the Fab Four (or is it Five?) (GenXposé)

Hmmm...: Out by Laura Preble

I discovered Laura Preble's book Out today. I have to say that I'm kind of leery about it, but I am curious. Here's the book's synopsis, if you're curious:

In a society where “perpendiculars,” opposite-sex couples, are forbidden, persecuted, freakish…Chris Bryant, a preacher’s son, finds himself in love…with a girl. 

Chris has always been faithful to his Anglicant religion – even though he’s never felt like everyone else, never felt…parallel. And then it happens: he meets her. Carmen. Daughter of one of the leading Perpendicular prosecutors…the girl he knows he can’t live without. 

Carmen has always thought the treatment of Perps is barbaric – but to actually be one? To fall in love with Chris and openly admit to it is suicide. 

Their only chance to be together is the Underground, a secret society Chris’s sister introduces him to that is determined to mount an attack against the social restrictions of the Anglicant church. They want to make an example of Chris and Carmen, two Perps from high social families, to become the catalyst for an uprising that will threaten the traditions of their society’s families and church. 

But the cost of involvement just might be death for them both.

The thing about reversing situations like this is that it has to be very, very delicately done and you have to have incredibly good justifications as to why everything is the way it is. When it comes to stuff like this it's very easy for stuff like this to fail even when the author has very good intentions because sometimes it can read as homophobic even when that's far from the author's intentions. That's why when you have books, movies, and shows that establish same sex couples as the norm for society, many choose to set up the society as being completely separate from other genders. It makes it easier to justify how same sex couples would become the norm and why any other pairings would be seen as strange.

I guess what one of the biggest problems with reversing whatever -ism the book is about is that at some level it's always going to be faulty. Simply reversing the sexuality of the society doesn't work because you're dealing with the idea that heterophobia would end up looking exactly the same as homophobia. You also have to build up the world pretty well to explain how it would come about. Just saying "society developed with same sex couples" isn't really enough, nor is just saying that scenario X caused humanity to do Y. It's so insanely hard to build up enough of a world to adequately establish this that many choose not to go this route. It's possible for it to happen, but for every Noughts & Crosses you get a Save the Pearls that pretty much misses the point.

Part of the issue with simply reversing the mainstream opinion in the story is that you're assuming that all it takes is to swap places. That rarely works because it's not as simple as just swapping one sexuality for the other. There are a lot of things that go into homophobia and part of the issue some had with STP is that it oversimplified the problem of racism by saying that it's just a matter of Caucasians being the norm.

In any case, I'm slightly curious and considering that the author has yet to really post anything strange, I'm willing to give it a chance. This book could end up covering the material in a sensitive manner, so anything is possible.

So far she's been pretty decent about the flak she's getting, with this being the only thing I've really seen so far from her end:

I've already had hate mail about this book, even before it was available to read. People read the description and decide I'm a gay-basher, which is as far from the truth as you can get. I've been a Gay-Straight Alliance advisor for nearly twenty years, my own son is gay, and I've worked for PFLAG, GLSEN, and many other groups. This book is not about anything except love. It's a love story, just as the story of same-sex couples in our country is a love story. My goal was to give people who are in the lucky majority, the opposite-sex couples, a glimpse of what it would be like to be told that who you are and whom you love is deviant and unacceptable. LGBT people live every day with discrimination, both subtle and direct. I've seen it happen at my school, with my son, and with other people less close to home. I've done research; there are still people who believe in reconditioning LGBT people, or "praying the gay away." This isn't fiction or far-fetched. It exists. There are people who still believe that aversion therapy is the way to go, that psychological torture will "heal" people of their "addiction" to their same-sex attraction. The world of OUT is, of course, fictional. It is heightened reality. Our society does not physically imprison people for being LGBT. But in many subtle ways, the system does imprison them. People are still beaten, killed, ostracized, and disowned for being gay. I know students in my high school GSA who cannot be in the yearbook picture because if their parents found out, they'd be without a place to live.

So, I suppose people who read the book will have lots of reactions to it, but at the core, I meant it to be a love story between two people whom society did not see as acceptable. Love is love. No matter what anyone else says or thinks, I know that is the message of my book.