GLBT Week Contest

Any good blogging event has a contest, and this one is fantastic! I've got a great pack of GLBT books and the prize pack includes these books-

Love Drugged by James Klise (signed paperback)
I'll Get There, It Better Be Worth the Trip: 40th Anniversary Edition by John Donovan
Jumpstart the World by Catherine Ryan Hyde (ARC)
What They Always Tell Us by Martin Wilson (signed hardcover)
Scars by Cheryl Rainfield
I Am J by Cris Beam (ARC)


All you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this post. To get extra entries, you can also leave substantial comments (i.e. they have to have some thought other than "great interview/guest blog!") on any of the other posts this week, getting a total of 10 entries into the contest!

The contest will run until Wednesday, October 20 at 11:59PM. It is for North American residents only. Good luck to everyone!

GLBT Week- Interview with Brent Hartinger

To start off GLBT Week (btw, it's also National Coming Out Day!), I'm posting an interview with one of my absolute favorite authors, Brent Hartinger. To find out more about him, go to his website. Enjoy the interview!
1) What was it like growing up with so few GLBT books available to you? Nowadays, who/what are your favorite GLBT authors/books?

Oh, the world was so different that it's almost indescribable! Mostly, I remember reading books I liked and just sort of "imagining" they were really about gay people -- books like The Outsiders and Ordinary People that aren't "gay" at all, but that have sort of an "outsider-y" perspective.

Favorite authors? I guess I like authors with a sense of humor, because recently I've liked How I Paid for College by Marc Acito and Band Fags! by Frank Anthony Polito. I also like fantasy/sci fi, because I also love Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunner series, Steven Harper's Silent Empire series, and Robert Sawyer's Hominids series.


2) You write for AfterElton.com. How did you get involved with that, and what's your favorite aspect of the job?

That really is an interesting story. Years ago, while publicizing my first book, Geography Club, a woman called to arrange an interview with me for a website called AfterEllen.com (about lesbians in entertainment). We got along so well during the phone interview that I eventually asked where she lived, and, weirdly, it turned out it was only a few miles away. She and I and her partner and my partner decided to meet for dinner, and we all got along famously -- so famously that we even became housemates for a year and a half!

Anyway, about a year after we met, Sarah decided to start a website for gay men. My partner Michael was unhappy with his job, so she asked if he'd be interested in editing this new site, and if I was interested in writing for it. We both hemmed and hawed -- writing for the internet didn't seem like it was something either of us was interested in. But eventually, he decided to go for it, and we all came up with the name "AfterElton.com" (after Elton John) to go with "AfterEllen.com."

With Michael on board, traffic exploded, and about a year after that, both AfterElton.com and AfterEllen.com were acquired by MTV for Logo, a new gay television network. So Michael and I found ourselves with salaried positions in a bold new enterprise.

The sites have just continued to explode, and we're rapidly closing in on a million visitors a month! Together with AfterEllen.com, we're the single largest gay network online. It seems surreal to me that I was there the night the website was born -- and that it only happened because I wrote Geography Club.

I only work for AfterElton.com half-time, and the intensity of writing for the internet can be overwhelming -- the demand for content is insatiable! But the best part of the job is when I get to break some story, or write some long in-depth piece that gives me a chance to learn something I didn't know.

And I have to admit, it's fun to interview celebrities, which I do almost every week!

A couple of years ago, I even started my own website (in all my free time!), TheTorchOnline.com, which is devoted to all things fantasy-related.


3) What book(s) are you working on now? Can you tell us anything about them?

My next book is called Shadow Walkers, and it's a supernatural story about a gay teenager who experiments with "astral projection" in order to solve a mystery. There just may be some romance in there as well!

It'll be about in February, and I'm enormously pleased with it, because it's the kind of book I read and that I've been wanting to write for ages.


4) What was your coming out process like? Did you find it hard to accept yourself? What obstacles, if any, did you have to overcome?

You know, I never had a problem accepting myself. I think it's because I was always "different" in just about every way possible: my (straight) friends and I were all artsy geeks. I never had any interest in any of the things the boys my age were interested in -- cars or guns or sports. Then again, I wasn't interested in any other things the girls were interested in either -- fashion or clothes or hairstyles. My friends and I just wanted to play D&D and play video games and go to movies and read and work on all our geekly little projects.

When I was twelve or thirteen and I realized I was gay, I thought, "Well, this is just one more thing!" But honestly, the fact that I'd never ever fit in anywhere (except with my buddies, who I'm still friends with to this day) actually made it easier, I think.

I did worry about how my friends would react, which was stupid, because they were all unbelievably cool, even back in 1986. My family was a different question. My parents reacted pretty much exactly how Russel's parents reacted in Split Screen. That's basically my story. But the good news is that they eventually came around!


5) Do you have any advice for anyone thinking about coming out, or questioning their sexuality?

That's there's absolutely no rush! Everything becomes clear in time. And on the whole subject of "labels" and stereotypes, it's not important what other people think of you. What's important is what you think of yourself, that you make sense to you.

You can spend a long time living your life for other people, to please them or to live up to some expectation they have of you. But it's an absolute recipe for unhappiness -- for everyone involved, I might add. You'll be tired and bitter and resentful, and everyone around you, everyone you're trying to fool, will sense that, and they'll be unhappy too.

Find out who you are, then be that person, and everyone is better off in the end.

Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
"“I’ve left some clues for you.
If you want them, turn the page.
If you don’t, put the book back on the shelf, please.”

So begins the latest whirlwind romance from the New York Times bestselling authors of Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist. Lily has left a red notebook full of challenges on a favorite bookstore shelf, waiting for just the right guy to come along and accept its dares. But is Dash that right guy? Or are Dash and Lily only destined to trade dares, dreams, and desires in the notebook they pass back and forth at locations across New York? Could their in-person selves possibly connect as well as their notebook versions? Or will they be a comic mismatch of disastrous proportions?"- summary from Amazon

To start off, this is probably the best Cohn and Levithan book to date. I loved their previous two endeavors to bits, but this one just had such a great premise that was executed really well and both Dash and Lily were great characters to read about.

It's such a compelling read because I wanted to know what dares would come up next, what Dash or Lily would write in the notebook they passed back and forth, their eventual meeting in person- it's a thrilling ride. There's also tons of great secondary characters, including quite a few gay ones. My favorite secondary character was probably Lily's brother Langston (a gay one- surprise!) because he was pretty funny. Also vying for that title was Dash's friend Boomer, who is just such a fun, endearing but crazy character.

I did have a couple pet peeves, but nothing that really put me off. In Lily's sections (the book alternates between Dash and Lily), most characters seemed to describe Dash as snarly, which didn't really seem to fit my perspective of him. Snarly seems more mean to me; I'd probably describe him as more of a smart aleck. Another thing was the dialogue- while I did enjoy the dialogue for the most part and laughed a lot (I feel like this is probably their funniest book yet too), at times I would think to myself "These characters are way too quick-witted and eloquent." and it threw off the realism for me. But these are just minor quibbles and more personal preference than anything else.

Overall though, this is a great addition to the Cohn/Levithan collection and I hope they continue to write books together.

FTC: Recieved ARC via Around the World tours. Link above is an Amazon Associate link; any profit goes toward funding contests.

Fragment Friday- Dash and Lily's Book of Dares

Fragment Friday is a weekly meme hosted here on this blog where you read an excerpt from either your current read or one of your favorite books and post it on your blog to share with others!

Today, I'm reading from Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, which will be out in stores on October 26!



Put your link down in the Mr. Linky below!

The Candymakers by Wendy Mass

The Candymakers by Wendy Mass
"Four children have been chosen to compete in a national competition to find the tastiest confection in the country. Who will invent a candy more delicious than the Oozing Crunchorama or the Neon Lightning Chew?

Logan, the Candymaker's son, who can detect the color of chocolate by touch alone?

Miles, the boy who is allergic to merry-go-rounds and the color pink?

Daisy, the cheerful girl who can lift a fifty-pound lump of taffy like it's a feather?

Or Philip, the suit-and-tie wearing boy who's always scribbling in a secret notebook?"- summary from Amazon

I don't know how she does it, but Wendy Mass just hits it out of the park with every book I read by her. The way she writes her characters make them compelling, realistic, and hard to leave behind when the book is over. Even though the book is 450 pages (it's a surprisingly quick read), I still felt sad when I got to the last page and had to leave these wonderful characters behind.

What's fun about this book is that it's told in 5 parts- the first four give each character to give their own account of the two days spent at the candy factory and then the fifth goes back to Logan for the night before and day of the contest. It was interesting to read what each character was thinking during a particular scene but it also didn't get repetitive as the same scenes weren't focused on in each part. Not only that, but I really enjoyed the callbacks to previous sections and having to piece the puzzle together as the story went on. What was also cool was the various prior connections between the four kids that come out as the novel goes on.

The humor in this book was fantastic. I was laughing out loud many times during the course of the book. It was wonderful. Also, candy will have to be present while reading this novel because the kids take a tour of a candy factory and of course have to make their own candy as well, and Mass doesn't spare on the descriptions. It was sad for me because I was poor at the time of reading it so I couldn't go out and buy some candy to munch on. It was amazing too to read all the fun candy names and descriptions she came up with for the factory to have, as well as the contest entries too.

Overall, this is a wonderful middle-grade novel with a fun and fast storyline but with some great depth to it. A must-read!

FTC: Recieved ARC at BEA (signed!). Link above is an Amazon Associate link; any profit goes toward funding contests.