Sloan Parker Blog

How anyone can watch this video and not see a beautiful, loving family deserving of respect and the same rights as any other family is beyond me.

There’s a new free fiction event at the M/M Goodreads Group

Love Is Always Write

From the group page: “What’s more wonderful than love? How about a summer filled with short custom written love stories by our talented writers? What about stories written just for you but shared with all? How about a lot of them? Our member writers are being encouraged to indulge us with their creativity.”

You have to be a member of the group to see the event pages, so if you haven’t joined, now would be a great time to do so. That way you’ll be all signed up when the authors start sharing these free stories.

Another favorite performance on Glee

Last week I posted some of my favorite performances. I was talking with someone on Goodreads and realized I forgot one. Can’t believe I forgot this moment.

“Just The Way You Are”

A New Interview

Huge thanks to Doug Starr for the recent interview on his blog and for the amazing compliments about my work. I’d much rather talk about my characters than myself, but I have to say, Doug’s questions were a lot fun to answer, even the personal ones. :) Thanks, Doug!

In the news

• Gay Marine’s homecoming kiss goes viral
• Related to the above if you haven’t seen it yet, here’s a great video about the Navy first: Same-sex couple share first kiss at homecoming
• Statistics from Digital Book World and AllRomance.com
  • 77% Of Romance eBooks Being Purchased On Laptop
  • 67% of romance eBooks purchased are PDF or ePUB
  • Most readers buy eBooks from the popular book retailers
  • 15%  buy from publishers websites
  • 97% of eBooks purchased have at least a 3 flame rating on Allromance.com
  • Someone buys a romance novel every five seconds (according to Businessweek)
  • The full All Romance eBooks survey
• Slippery Slope: Erotica Censorship. PayPal requires bookstores remove titles that contain content relating to “pseudo-incest” and what they called “barely-legal” sex. And related: Amazon Pulls Thousands of E-Books in Dispute and PayPal petition

Event Info

UK Meet for fans and writers of GLBTQ Fiction

New Site: Embrace the Rainbow

“A challenge to us all, particularly to those within the m/m romance and broader book blogging communities”

Hope you enjoy the links and hope your week is a good one.

Sloan

Here are some of my recent tumblr finds. (Love, love that site, but I have to limit myself to a few minutes. I could spend hours browsing around for all sorts of story and sex scene inspiration.)

One of the best Justin/Brian (from Queer as Folk) videos I’ve seen. Not safe for work viewing but oh so inspiring to watch.

• A Rush of Ideas: my group blog post where I talk about one of the aspects I love most about writing: the start of a new story. As I work on Walter and Kevin’s book, I’m getting the ideas down for a new story, and I’m having a fantastic time with it (and yes, I still have two more MORE books coming also). I love when there is no shortage of ideas.
• A yaoi role-playing game: Hot Guys Making Out. I read what one guy said about playing this game (in a private email) and it sounds neat. (Thanks to my uncle for sharing this one. Thanks, T!)
• Interesting… an M/M romance in which you enter your own details and customize the book.
• Joanna Stampfel-Volpe responds to a recent PW blog post on LGBTQ YA. On Being Used, the Lack of LGBTQ Characters in YA, and Why It’s Important to Work Together

Source: (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

• Repeal of gay ban causing few waves in military
• Airman tells dad he is gay as ‘don’t ask’ policy disappears. From his Youtube video: “I called my dad to tell him the hardest thing that gay guys will ever have to say.” Brought back memories of talking to my own parents. Not an easy thing to do even when everyone already suspects. (thanks to my niece for sharing the link. Thanks, A!)
• As gay military ban ends, officer sheds his alias
• I haven’t really had time to check out this blog but it looks interesting: gaytwogether
• For the writers out there, this is an excellent article from Joseph O’Connor. He shares his tips for writing fiction and I’ve included a couple fab quotes below.

  As Checkov said: ‘Don’t tell me the moon is shining. Show me moonlight reflected on broken glass.’ One of the strangest paradoxes of writing fiction is that the more you tell the reader, the less he or she knows. If you write ‘we were very happy indeed’ the reader thinks ‘big deal’. If you write ‘we grabbed each other and hugged and we couldn’t stop laughing’ the reader is in the scene. Putting the reader in the scene is everything to the storyteller. So describe what you can see, not what you know. Use visual words when possible. And never be afraid of leaving something out. Leaving something out is a powerful invitation to the reader, an incitement to the imagination of the person you must never forget. The reader is an essential participant in what you are writing. Meet them half way, and never more than that.
  - From: Joseph O’Connor

  I think of it in musical terms. The writer is providing the sheet music. It’s the reader who is singing the song. To know who you’d like to make sing is an important factor. It also helps to stop writing being egotistical. Writing must always be about the reader, in the end, not the writer. If I have one single commandment, that’s it.
  - From:  Joseph O’Connor

• And another one for writers: Paper Boats: Bail water or bail out? Knowing When to Abandon Your Wip by Josh Lanyon
• And a little eye candy for everyone:
  • Loved the second photo on this blog post.
  • This is an old post but there are some lovely pics over at Yummy of the Day (link is NOT WORK SAFE)
• Lastly, because you know I love this site, here are some screenshots from Damn You Auto Correct
  • I Don’t Remember That Sesame Street Character
    
  • When Craigslist Goes Wrong: 5 Autocorrected Text Fails
    

Have a great weekend, everyone! I’ll be doing some brainstorming with my local writing group. We have such a blast when we get together to work on our story ideas. The conversations that come up are priceless. Last year there was mention of Fire Lube and artificial immaculate insemination and orgasming (is that a word?) your way across a room full of bodies. I wonder what we’ll discuss this time around.

Sorry I disappeared from the blog for a bit. Last week was a long, long week with a sick cat, computer virus, and internet issues. But I’m back online and wanted to share this lovely video.

Quote from YouTube: “This video is for everybody. Who has ever loved. And has been loved in return. To those that think it never does or will get better. It does. It does get better, it becomes beautiful.”

“I long for the day I’ll dream of your kiss no more, when your lips will caress mine for real, when your touch makes me alive again, and the sight of you arouses all my senses.”
-Unknown

It’s been a while since I’ve shared some inspirational eye candy, and I really like this one (from Lily).

Enjoy!
Sloan

I have yet to watch more than a couple episodes of this show (it’s on my list of things to catch up on), but I just love this scene. It’s from the episode titled “Captain Jack Harkness.” Very powerful delivery.

“Stuck in 1941, where the dance hall is being used for service personnel. Jack meets the real Captain Jack Harkness, the man whose identity Jack took after his death, which Jack learns will be the following day at a training exercise.” (read more) Watch as Captain Jack comes out of the closet and shares a public kiss.

Video embedded above. If you can’t view, try the original blog post.

Enjoy,
Sloan