A Conglomeration

First, I'm happy to hear the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Proposition 8 unconstitutional. The battle isn't over but any victory helps.

Also, many of you are probably aware of the RWA/RWI debacle. I won't get into it here but the gist is the Romance Writers Ink chapter of the RWA decided no same-sex entries in their More Than Magic (MTM) contest this year. They apparently did not have a problem with same-sex entries before, since many GBLT books not only finaled but won in previous years. Supposedly, the reasoning was the members "felt uncomfortable" with such entries, hence the ban.

Well, to say the information went viral is an understatement. Members of the Rainbow Romance Writers (the GBLT chapter of RWA) protested and other writers, blogs, etc. picked up the rallying cry for the RWA and RWI to stop this discriminatory practice. Sadly, the RWI canceled their contest.

I hope the RWA does the right thing. Many of my favorite writers identify as GBLT. And lest you think this applies only to romance writers, let me also list a few who are noted among the literary: James Baldwin, Tony Kushner, Edward Albee, and Audre Lorde, among others.

On another note, I'm hoping to share some news soon. Also, here's my writing update, with a nod to Sara, who posted hers last week. (And I did say this was a conglomeration) :-) Anyhoo, working on the 3rd revision of The Ripper's Daughter. I used Lynn Viehl's The Novel Notebook to plot my story and it's really helped keep my story focused so these rewrites are going much better than the angel UFs, which I often had to restart from scratch. Either that or I've finally found my genre. LOL

Speaking of angel UF, The Zaphkiel Project is currently with beta readers/CPs. So things are moving along a bit faster than last year. I really want to submit two books this year, hence my drive. (Besides, I can't let everyone else have all the fun, right?)