Scotty Bowers ~ Full Service
From: Grove

The whole “I was a Marine hooker” is nothing new since there really is not a hell of a lot of social stigma around it. In fact it is pretty typical when you are talking about a guy with good looks and no money looking for a way to get ahead but the guest list in this case is stunning. Check out the write up of the book here.

Frank Tuttle ~ The Broken Bell
From: Samhain Publishing

Frank Tuttle is just one of those quiet authors from Samhain on my auto-buy list and if you are not reading The Markhat Files you ought to be. Frank is also one of the few really good writers out there I never see over exposing themselves on the internet with promotion. What ever is done is always top notch and well thought out much like Frank’s covers.

REFRESHING!

Otherwise Frank seems to be all about keeping the pen to the grindstone and putting out good book after good book.

I wish more authors did that.

Josh Lanyon ~ Lone Star
From: Carina Press

Review of: Josh Lanyon ~ Death Of A Pirate King

Marquesate ~ Basic Training
From: MLR Press

Review of: Marquesate ~ Her Majesty’s Men

K.A. Mitchell ~ Bad Boyfriend
From: Samhain Publishing

Sarah over at Rain On The Roof is doing her best of 2011. I am impressed because frankly I cannot even begin to do one. I think the closest I got was adding Marquesate ~ Her Majesty’s Men to my Christmas must have eBook list.

So of course I am going to have to buy that other Marquesate book that Sarah mentioned in her list along with this K.A. Mitchell number. There you go Sarah and I both like Marquesate. That’s two whole Military Gay Romance books by the same author, buy now, go!

The facts are too many Gay Romances this year even from some of the top epublishers blew the fuck up over content editing. Lots of lazy drawn out highly noticeable instances of telling the reader instead of showing. The authors in many cases had written top heavy (Too many setup chapters) or bottom heavy (Too many closing chapters to get to their idea of an HEA) stories with parts in need of trimming and/or fleshing out and the Editors were obviously absent to tell them to fix the content issues. Then in the “candy wrapper” crew you have Gay Romance epubs like Dreamspinner getting away with what seems to be absolutely no editing or direction at all. I simply refuse to buy from them anymore because they are tragic and from their lame excuses you know, they know, they are selling rough drafts.

When an epub “Editor” (I use that term loosely… Because when did pushing a button in a Spell Checker and maybe one of those new Grammar Checkers qualify you as an Editor?) has no clue what the basic “no brainer” difference is between a Gay Romance and your typical everyday Gay Fiction and that slapping on a few chapters at the end for a quick sex scene and maybe a kiss does not make up for having no focus on any developing relationship arc the rest of the book well I just have no time for pathetic excuses or people who promote themselves as selling “Gay Romance” trying to tell me their books suddenly do not have to follow “Romance rules” because they are now “Dark” or “M/M” or whatever newly made up definition they want to use mid-conversation…

Yeah, whatever you freaking prima donna. If you cannot prove you know what something is in the first place and sell it to readers properly labeled and edited how can we trust you to know how to get anything else right?

Sure it’s my opinion, and a few others mind you, but I am first and foremost a Romance reader of both traditional Straight and the newer Gay type of books for years now and I have a great deal more experience than these clowns even reading Gay Fiction growing up back in the good old days when we had Gay Fiction or as they like to call it now Gay Lit writers worth reading so get the hell out of my face with the whole “I don’t understand”. I might be a dinosaur but you are a fucking putz so fuck you!

Anyway, 2011 for me was frankly a disappointment when it came to discovering new writers to talk about because unfortunately in most cases the authors I thought had something going for them chose to be published by crappy “candy wrapper” epubs with no real Editors in sight to say the least. The few authors I talked to honestly about this issue knew they were choosing this and made some off the wall excuse for it. How do you even begin to recommend that mess? I can’t, that’s how. I won’t. If you want to stay amateur in thinly veiled fan fiction land with the pretty covers and nothing else to offer. I’ll let someone else shower charity upon you precious. Oh, she’s such a nice person even though she knows she is ripping off her readers with unedited rough drafts and bare outlines of stories. Isn’t that special?

Pretty pictures might make the sale but your unedited story was a big old fail.

Catch me I’m bustin a rhyme! Don’t worry Pookie there is always the idiot zombies on Goodreads that will tell you how great you are and slather you with endless five star reviews and make excuses for every failure. You won’t learn anything and your writing will still be packaged like so much fan fiction but hey the fanbois are there for your little “self pubbing” ego boo when in reality none of that makes up for a professional Editor that tells you “no” often and never let’s you off the hook and a couple of really honest critique groups that know where you live and will hound you till you get it right.

From what I have seen and been involved in just the few years of blogging about Gay Romance if you are trying to do this all by yourself with no professional help and without any honest interactions or confrontations to your vanity you are so fucked. Shallow back patting and social niceties are for dinner parties not books. Smart bitches expect an honest answer even if it means they might have to go back to the drawing board.

So no big 2011 lists from me. It would be too short to matter.

Samantha Kane ~ Love’s Surrender (Brothers In Arms 9)
From: Ellora’s Cave

Review of: Samantha Kane ~ The Courage To Love (Brothers In Arms 1)

Ensan Case ~ Wingmen
1979 Avon
From: Cheyenne Publishing

Speak It’s Name Review

Early World War 2 Gay Romance
Reprint announced February 2012

Tom Cardamone ~ The Lost Library
From: Lethe Press

Now On Kindle!

Pretty cover! It’s described as a series of essays by Gay Authors writing about “out of print” Gay Lit books that influenced them growing up. Sounds interesting, but also potentially dull or overly self referential. Depending on the author and there is always a few in every crowd especially that motley crew in the Gay Lit club.

I figured now it was finally on Kindle in eBook format I will give it a shot which I am doing with a lot of these type of maybe yes, maybe no, books.

Thing is, I hope a lot of those “out of print” books they talk about start showing up in eBook format and make these glorified reference books about books anyone can now read obsolete.

Erastes ~ Junction X
From: Cheyenne Publishing

Looky what I gots!

Lauren Dane ~ Once And Again
From: Samhain Publishing

I was reading Erec and caught this….

Congrats to the ever talented Lauren Dane & Samhain Publishing for making the NYT Bestseller List… Again!