Progress and accuracy

[erastes]

2000 words yesterday. Total word count 28,000. I’m so happy! It’s got to the stage now that I could probably write an outline and submit it to Perseus for consideration for their next Spring release, but I’m a little nervous because if False Colors and Transgressions don’t do well, there might not be a next Spring release… Aw buggrit. I know that I should just do it. My motto is “don’t ask don’t get” after all… Well, one of them, at least.

There’s a couple of interesting discussions about historical novels and the accuracy thereof on the net at the moment.

Fanficrants discusses it

Hayden Thorne discusses it

Both are worth reading, AND the links, if you haven’t seen them before-and as always the comments too.

My view is pretty well known by readers of this blog. Like Hayden, I think that if you write gay historical fiction and completely sweep the problems gay men would have had under the carpet, then you are doing the men from those times a disservice. And after all, if all you want is pretty uniforms, fancy clothes and hot gay sex you can easily make it AU, or in the future with steampunk Victorian or sci-fi Elizabethan. Of course one doesn’t want to read a book all about the horrors that being gay might mean—but I think that the fear has to be there when necessary.

I wouldn’t ever state that I am anything other than a flawed human and I know that there are mistakes in my books—Alex pointed out one in Transgressions yesterday where I’d referred to “shells” as cannon fire, because to me, shells, shot, cannonballs are all interchangable terms, but of course… they aren’t at all, and if I’d checked that out, I’d have realised it! It just shows you how easily you can be tripped up.