But love, as we all know, isn’t so straightforward. St. Valentine had nothing to do with romantic love (though I suppose he may have felt it at some point), but in classic Catholic tradition, we celebrate his martyrdom as he refused to convert to paganism before his death. Meanwhile, in an ironic twist that only religious hubris can provide, we came to associate Valentine’s death with the pagan fertility festival of Lupercalia, the Festival of the Wolf where dogs and goats were the martyrs, not men.  A queer turn of events, indeed.

Lupercalia called for the men to dress themselves in hides and run through the streets, whipping all the women who lined up for their lashing.  Why, you ask? Because these lashing were said to inspire fertility and strength.  Could Lupercalia be the first holiday to celebrate the connection of pain and love?  Is Lupercus the patron saint of BDSM?

How queer.

Artist credit needed

To celebrate our queer history let’s remember that you can never guarantee how time will memorialize you, nor how our current lovers and friends see us compared to how we see ourselves.  Let’s celebrate that love and pain are inextricably linked, and that when we invite one into our lives, we help ourselves survive the other.

For the week leading up to February 14th, I’ll be posting a daily queer love poem on my blog.

These poems celebrate the love of the kill, the love of art, the loss of love and the love of loss, the longing for love and the longing for love’s release.

The poets are mostly friends and community members, beautiful people who have learned to see love from a different angle that most. If you love their poems, please be sure to let them know. 

I have me.

This lack of support means I could easily cloister myself, furtively hiding my process to avoid the stigma of self-publishing.  I could pretend that my process looks identical to an author with a big NYC agent and Broadway based publishing company.  I could do it. Many indie authors do.

Via Trancendental Colour

But that would indicate a shame for my chosen path. It would foster the idea that my choice to self-publish is somehow “less than” rather than intentionally chosen into.

So instead of shutting myself off to outside scrutiny, I chose transparency.  I vlogged about my process, even when it felt humiliating or demoralizing. I posted unedited excerpts from Lunatic Fringe.  I questioned the book’s title on Twitter, talked about painful editing processes on facebook, and ultimately published a book that is my first ever attempt at writing one.

I choose transparency for many reasons:

• I believe that my journey in learning how to unlock my voice, write my first novel, and publish it, can help other nascent writers with their own processes.

• I believe in the value of seeing artists as human, who all have our own learning curves. Books do not spring fully formed from our heads like Athena.  They often start out frail ugly little things that require constant feeding, nurturing, and tough love to turn into the critters we see sitting on our bookshelves. It’s important for wannabe authors to see this, in order to develop confidence in their skills.

• Writers are made, not born.  Writing well, like any skill or art, is a matter of practice. I’m going to keep writing books, and they’re going to keep getting better.  I don’t want my debut novel to be the top of my career.  I want to constantly learn and tighten my prose. I want each book to integrate all the lessons I’ve learned from the ones that I completed before it. Part of this means that every book will have problems.  Some folks may dismiss me as an author because of this, but I hope that others will see what I’m up to and appreciate, not only the stories I tell, but how I’m telling them.

• The way we relate to technology these days means we are all more transparent about our lives.  We’re sharing our relationship statuses with everyone on facebook, we’re tweeting about the fight we just had with our mom so that not only our closest friends know, but so do our 650 followers.  Some bemoan this turn towards the voluble. I exalt it. This transparency creates connection and undermines the ivory tower effect. When I read Neil Gaiman’s ga-ga tweets to his wife, it reaffirms the fact that Neil Gaiman is a real human being; he’s a writer who has achieved outrageous fame, but he got that way by writing and learning and writing and connecting and writing and working like a maniac.  He is not some avatar granted fame by the fates. He’s not fucking Harry Potter.  He’s a dude that worked hard and earned his worth.  This means that I can have opinions about his work and study his process and that I can actually learn something from it.

• Connection.  I love it when readers tweet me or send me emails.  I love it when they ask questions or offer suggestions. I love posting a reading on Facebook and then seeing people there who learned about it through friends. It makes me realize that my very real book is making a very real difference in people’s lives.  Maybe not hugely, but I don’t need to be huge to be important.  Particularly because Lunatic Fringe is a story about queer people and sexual identity, it’s more important to me that some folks connect to it deeply rather than a million people thinking, “not bad” and tossing it on the shelf.

• Transparency makes me braver.  Writing a book is scary. Publishing it is fucking terrifying.  Two years of my life are on sale for $14.99 and people are judging it on the internet. Fuck, right? People I really care about are reading it. People I want to respect me are reading it. People I want to sleep with are reading it.  And people I want to hire me are reading it.  So, every time I see someone I know who’s read the book, my heart starts getting a little overeager.  And sometimes these people tell me they loved it, or that they thought it was okay, or they give me the coldest silence I’ve ever felt.  And then I get to choose how I react. As someone who was a producer and curator before I endeavored to create my own art, I’ve learned both sympathy for the creator and calm gratitude in the face of criticism.  Of course I want people to like my work, but I also enjoy learning greater inner-strength when encountering the thoughtful (and sometimes not so thoughtful) opinions of readers.

I realize that, like self-publishing, not everyone will resonate with transparency.  But to me, it’s essential.  It’s why I self-published live on the internet, and why I’ll continue to connect this way, and share work in various stages, and post videos of me crying.  It’s who I am, and I want readers to see that, to relate to it, and to find their own voice by watching me find mine.

1) Give her muscles.

2) Give her a combat background.

3) Give her sensible shoes.

Tonight, my sweetie and I saw Haywire. I knew I’d like it, because I have a soft spot for female vigilantes, but I wasn’t aware of how deliciously insidious the film would be.

On the way home, my sweetie asked how I could reconcile my feminism with loving a character that needed to ascribe to male ideals of power in order to be considered strong.

It’s a fair question, but I think it slightly off the mark, because this film is about male power without being pointedly about gender. That is to say, the power that is on display throughout the film: physical strength, combat, cool headedness, strategy, logic, weaponry, and stamina, are ascribed masculine attributes.  But that Mallory, as a female protagonist, possesses these in spades isn’t really what the film is about.

In fact, very little attention is played to Mallory’s gender except in one line late in the film in which Ewan McGregor says, “Don’t think of her as a woman.  That would be a mistake.”  This is in reference to the feat the other operative is about to attempt, by taking Mallory out, but it’s also a nice directive to the audience.  The use of this line so late in the film works to drive the point home: If you’ve been thinking this movie is about a chick kicking ass as a means of titillation, you’re using the wrong lens. McGregor’s delivery is spot on.  A lesser actor would like try to turn this into a dig or a double entendre. Instead, this line is effective in its deadpan.  In the world of the film he’s saying, “Don’t underestimate her, or you’ll get your ass handed to you.” To the audience he’s saying, “You’ll like this movie more if you let go of the fact that she’s a woman.”

A couple years ago, critics were falling all over themselves about Salt, another espionage film starring a female lead.  The oft-cited anecdote described the writer and director as proud of themselves because the character was written for a man to play, and then, after Tom Cruise passed, they got the brilliant idea to cast Angelina Jolie instead.  Forgive my cynicism, but casting the most famous actress in Hollywood in a big-budget action film isn’t the most subversive thing in the world.

The brilliance of Haywire is that Soderburgh actually cast a woman that looks like a fucking Marine, a gorgeous Marine, but a Marine. This makes the fight scenes, which often use a stationary camera and long shots, spectacular to watch.  There is no doubt that the star Gina Carano, who had a real career in Mixed Marial Arts, is pulling off these stunts, hard core.

As a woman who likes action films, I’m always painfully aware of the way women are represented in such films.  When we’re lucky to get a woman who isn’t a shrinking (or shrieking) violet, she’s usually a skinny sex pot that tries to kick ass while wearing stupidly high heels and eyeliner.  You can guarantee there’s a least one seduction scene (which is apparently the only “female” power she gets to demonstrate), and the star will be so skinny as to make any fight seem woefully mismatched. Just watching Carano kick ass in sensible shoes and deliver a credible and solid flying kick with her sturdy legs made me want to give Soderbergh a bear hug.  The fact that the only obvious makeup Carano wears in the film is 1) day old eyeshadow from a really bad night and 2) tactical paint is the most refreshing fucking thing I’ve ever seen. (My only quibble with this is: can anyone tell me how long it’d take for a woman to do her own cornrows? That pushed my suspension of disbelief a bit.)

I usually have to go into every film willing to undermine my gender principles a bit.  I have to force myself to forget about the hair and makeup and anorexic body types. I have to put up with the pout and whimper, rape threats from the bad guys, and heavy handed gender dialogue, just so I can watch a decent fucking action movie.

Haywire was pure relief in this case. There were Very Bad Men who didn’t threaten to rape her and yet somehow maintained their status as Very Bad Men (shocking, I know).  Carano demonstrated some awesome fighting skills and solid acting chops. No where in the film was she made the butt of a joke because of her gender, nor treated as a sex object. She was treated with respect, even by the people who wanted to kill her.  I told you- insidious.

Folks are touting this as the next Bourne series, and I’d love it.  Soderbergh has earned my trust, not just as a stylish and confident director, but as a Dude Who Gets It. Brava.

An eagle eyed reader just alerted me to a big formatting error in the ebook of Lunatic Fringe. If you downloaded the ebook before today and want a clean copy, email me at moon(at!)talesofthepack.com and I’ll send it off to you asap.

Sorry for the problems and thanks for the communication!

xox
~Allison

In creating my own book, I became even more entrenched in the importance of design aspects of books.  The font, chapter layout, page scheme- these things matter.

I knew I’d have to get my own ereader soon, however.  I was, after all, invested in making my books available as ebooks and saw how ebooks were changing the market. Building Lunatic Fringe as an ebook was a sometimes frustrating endeavor.  I had spent hours upon hours typesetting my book to perfection, and now the Smashwords style guide was telling me to undo all of it? Really?!

But I did it.  I converted my book for Kindle, Nook and Kobo. I said goodbye to my Imperator font and my carefully kerned title page.  I abandoned my careful use of orphans and watched as my beautifully colored cover was converted to low-res grayscale.  And I watched my sales increase ten-fold.

Well, the market is changing after all.

For Christmas, I requested a Nook.  I wanted to be able to access these ebooks I was lauding so much as indie-publishing game changers.  I also wanted to be able to proof my work on an actual ebook device.
And, I had to admit their convenience. Bibliophiles have been exalting ebooks for years if only because they allowed such swift and ardent readers a way of traveling with their libraries without owing a debt to their chiropractors.  The more I travel, the more I wish I had access to multiple books to suit my mood. 

So Santa brought me my request.  I’ve enjoyed searching for books I’ve been meaning to buy and didn’t mind much if they weren’t paper. I was dismayed as I discovered a slew of desired books weren’t available in the Nook’s epub format (the lack of Kathe Koja and Elizabeth Hand titles were most distressing to me.)

I was also dismayed at how few of the major publishers were discounting their ebooks at all.  I knew this was a problem before I was a nook-owner, but the pervasiveness of $15 ebooks is a frustrating and unsustainable practice, which I illustrated as I breezed by these overpriced books in search of affordable reads I was eager to try.  (The book market has no dearth of quality product.  It’s easy to pass up one over-priced product and find twelve other terrific buys. I hope publishers will soon realize how they’re shooting themselves in the foot.)

I enjoyed taking risks on unknown work and experimental fiction, and researching favorite 2011 reads of my peers and idols.

So, I stocked up my Nook for the long roadtrip back to California.  This morning, as I was cozying up with Vanessa Veselka’s Zazen, I noticed something about my Nook I hadn’t yet considered.  With its stock fonts and low-rent graphics, with its text flow and bare-bones formatting, the Nook gave me something I hadn’t expected.  I was focusing, intently, on the words themselves.  There was no special font telling me what to feel.  There was no author name at the top of each page, reminding me that this was a work of fiction by a person I’ve never met.  There was no weight in my hands or highlighter for me to fiddle with as I awaited a transcended passage.  It was just me and the words.  No middle man, no artifice, no bells, whistles and manipulations.  I was experiencing the words as the author might, as they stood against a stark electric glow alongside a blinking cursor.  There was, in short, no “book” here.  I was dealing with the story.

It was akin, I suspect, to reading a handwritten, twine bound manuscript from a forgotten era.

Is this, then, the way books are “supposed” to be read, now that paper is nearly obsolete in both the creation and execution of a book?  Will print books become merely charming artifacts or purist paragons?

I, for one, welcome our ebook game-changers.  As a reader, they’ve forced me out of my comfort zone and encouraged me to interface with books in a new and exciting way.  They’re encouraging me to reconceive the way I write, and renewing my care to the words on the page.  I’m enthusiastic to see how this change in perspective trickles into all book makers and readers.

This year has obviously been a Pretty Big Deal in the timeline of my life. I turned 30. I became unemployed.  And, oh yeah, I may have published my first book.

In May, I went to WisCon, the feminist speculative fiction conference, for the first time. Through conversations with some of the successful authors there about what they’d do differently, I solidified my choice to self-publish Lunatic Fringe. I later turned my reasons for self-publishing into a manifesto available for free download on my site.

I finished my book in June of this year, after receiving a long awaited rejection from the only publisher I was courting. Knowing that my preference was to self-publish I hopped right into recording the daily process of getting Lunatic Fringe to print with 90 Days of Self Publishing. I hired an editor, a graphic designer, and spent the whole summer getting my book in tip-top shape.

I performed at Bawdy Storytelling twice, telling one story about trilingual sex in Barcelona and another about a certain Ridiculous Lesbian Orgy.

In August, I had the great privilege of attending the Lambda Literary Emerging LGBT Writers’ Retreat as a fellow.  The experience proved to be more profound in retrospect than in the moment.  Writing tends to be a rather isolating experience.  And, seeing that I am very much “emerging,” I haven’t done much work to carve myself a writers community.  I have ambitions to improve upon this situation, but in the meantime, I toil away alone, seeking feedback only in small spurts, when I’m sure I’m ready for it.  While this isn’t necessarily a bad way of going about things, it does leave me wanting.  The Lambda Retreat showed me an alternative that I could create for myself. I was in insta-community with 30 extraordinarily kind and creative queer writers. We geeked out by sharing our writing, even nascent works, with one another, which should have been terrifying, but was exhilarating and lovely.  I emerged with new self-confidence in my writing and a desire to craft an active community of writers.

Genre Fiction fellows at Lambda Literary Retreat 2011

Allison Moon, 2011 Writers Retreat Fellow in Genre Fiction from Lambda Literary on Vimeo.

Soon after, in September, I launched Lunatic Fringe. It was terrifying, but as with many things in my life, I ran so fast with it, I didn’t have time to psych myself out.  I threw myself a party at the fabulous El Rio in San Francisco and was supported by the always amazing Jiz Lee, kd diamond, Julia O. Test, and many many wonderful friends and family.

I took a much needed vacation to celebrate my 30th birthday with my honey, and returned to find I had been laid off from my day job.  Panic ensues.

Immediately after getting back from vacation, I hit the ground running, reading from Lunatic Fringe at Fleur De Lis’ sexy circus, LitCrawl, and doing radio interviews and blog interviews all over the place.

I launched Self Publishing 101, a class for folks interested in creating their own self-published book.

In October, I launched my mini-tour with a trip to New York City. Along with Salacious Magazine’s illustrious editor, kd diamond, I read at Bluestockings Bookstore, New York’s fabulous feminist bookstore/community center.  I also swung by Barnes & Noble in Union Square to see Lunatic Fringe featured at the top of the escalator. Amazing!

Me and Salacious Magazine's kd diamond at Bluestockings

From New York, I headed to San Diego for World Fantasy Con.  I got to meet Neil Gaiman and my inner geek girl squeed with delight as he took my picture with his cellphone.  I also met the sexy and smart folks from Nightshade Books, ChiZine Press, and Eraserhead Press.

Reading at Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego

Also in San Diego, I read at Mysterious Galaxy bookstore, a great and friendly place for all things speculative fiction.  Then I hopped up to LA to read at Craftnight. I completed the tour at Writers With Drinks at the MakeOut Room in San Francisco.

After that, I got naked with Jiz Lee to support their Karma Pervs non-profit fundraising program. You can still donate to Karma Pervs and see all the naughty photos from my shoot and the others.

Karma Pervs Shoot with Queer Porn Superstar Jiz Lee

I taught Self-Publishing 101 at Center for Sex and Culture and then hopped on a plane to Mexico to support my partner as he underwent some dental work and spend some time with the awesome Buck Angel and Elayne Angel.

Which brings us up to date.  I’m sitting in my parent’s home, trying to ignore the football on the television and trying to do more drinking than working.  So far, I’m doing alright.

After Christmas, I’ll be dropping the price of the Lunatic Fringe ebook until New Year’s Day AND roadtripping cross country on my way back to the Bay Area.  Then in the Spring, I’ll be hitting the road on a full scale book tour.  If you’re a college student or bookseller who’d like to bring me to your town, hit me up!

As an indie author, I rely on individual readers and fans, so THANK YOU for your financial and emotional support this year! I love this path, but it’s not an easy one, and your support means more than you can know.

Happy 2012!!!

However, now that I’m a full-blown indie author, my priorities have shifted.  I’ve had the opportunity to talk with booksellers from across the country and get to know the book business from the inside.  This, coupled with seeing the inner (shady) workings of Amazon and others has made me encourage folks to buy my books directly from their favorite indie shops.  Yes, sometimes they aren’t carried and you need to order them.  But the wait isn’t terrible and you get to keep the money in your community, in cool businesses.

Of course, my book is still available through the big guys, and I’m delighted when anyone buys my book at all. So, I won’t besmirch folks from going through Barnes & Noble or Amazon to get a copy. Not every community has a cool indie bookstore and the internet is beautiful for this equality of access.

Many folks in my community, because they want to support a hip indie artist (i.e. Me) have asked how they can buy the book so that I keep the lion’s share of the profit.  Since so many people have asked, here’s a list, in order of greatest profit to me to lowest, of where the money goes when you buy a book from a certain retailer:

1) Buying in cash from me:  I keep 100% of the profit and pay no shipping, so I get about $10 per book if you buy at full price of $15.  I usually sell them for $12 in person, too, so you save a couple bucks.

2) Buying online through my website.  I pay paypal fees, and you pay shipping & tax.  I don’t always offer books through my site, because they come out of my stock, and I have to do the order fulfillment myself or outsource to an assistant (thanks, Holly!).  This way I make about $7.5 per full price copy.  Again, I tend to sell books for $12 because I’m not paying a retailer to stock me.

3) Buying my ebook through me.  My ebook costs about $7.99 through my website, and you can get any format instantly delivered to you.  I keep 100% of the retail minus paypal fees. If you’re an ebook fan, this is rad.

4) Buying my ebook through Smashwords  I love Smashwords. They sell every format of ebook there is. I make about 60% of the retail price off ebooks sold through Smashwords and their affiliates. So, I make about $5 per ebook through them.

5) Buying my ebook through Kindle/iBookstore/B&N  Same.

6) Buying in person through an indie bookstore.  Most bookstores take my set wholesale discount of 50%.  Some only take 40% (thanks, guys!).  This means that I make about $3.50 per sale.  But of course it means I don’t have to fulfill the order myself AND it means you’re supporting local retailers AND it means you can buy them from a place where I am not. Right now, I’m carried by these amazing indie retailers:  Bluestockings in New York City, Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego, Charis Books in Atlanta, Modern Times in San Francisco, Pegasus Books in Oakland & Berkeley. Lunatic Fringe is also available to order through pretty much every bookstore in the US and abroad.  Just ask for it.

7) Buying online through any retailer.  Amazon, B&N and indie bookstores all order my book from the printer directly when you place an order. With the exception of Amazon (I’ll explain below), it doesn’t matter who you order through, you’ll get the same book ordered from the same place.  Because my books are Print on Demand, they aren’t made until they’re ordered, which means they’re greener and there’s no warehousing costs. In all cases, I make about $3 per book sold.

8 ) Buying online through Amazon.  I still make about $3 per book through Amazon, but that profit isn’t going to a local bookstore that pays taxes and remembers your name when you walk in the door.  Plus, books bought through Amazon will have a slightly different cover, different page stock, and different binding.  This is because my books supplied through Amazon come from CreateSpace, their own POD arm.  It’s not a huge deal, but if you’re an aesthete like me, you’ll notice the difference.

Again, I’m grateful that anyone wants to spend their hard-earned money on my art, so I’m thrilled that you’d buy my book from anyone.  Even the dude selling my book on the blanket on the street.  Seriously.  If any of you see a dude selling my book on a blanket on the street take a picture and send it to me please because that would make my day.

Money flows. Once it’s out of your hands, you can no longer control its vector. But, as someone who has money and uses money to support tastes, culture & causes, you get to divert that flow in the direction of your choice.  I find the most gratification when I realize my personal power in making that choice.  And as we near the biggest commercial time of the year, I hope you get to make choices that make you feel good, too.

You’ll learn:

* How to figure out if self-publishing is the right step for you and your book.
* The difference between vanity publishing services and creating your own press.
* The bare-bone, essential steps you need to take for your book to live.
* Where to scrimp and where to splurge
* Hidden costs and easily missed steps on the self-publishing
* How to develop a timeline and a budget
* What you need to do to get your book out there.

No matter where you are on your own publishing path, this will demystify this ever-changing market.

This class is essentially my 90 Days of Self Publishing project distilled down to the most salient steps, details and self-examination necessary to determine if self-publishing is the path for you and your book.

Download Self Publishing 101 now.