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how to win friends and influence people
Feb. 8th, 2007 08:35 amThose of you who are into both slash and het in your pro romance might like to know that there is a publisher that saw nothing untoward about sending out a contest call that included the following paragraph:
"Entries that include m/m, f/f, bondage, rape, or bestiality will not be considered and will be returned to the author. All genres of romance will be accepted." (Emphasis theirs.)
Now, I don't have a problem with publishers not wanting to handle m/m and f/f romance. But there are ways of saying they don't want it that don't involve equating it with rape and bestiality, and don't involve denying that it can be romance. I'm not too impressed with the equating all bondage with rape, either. It didn't really help that their promo company accidentally posted this ad to homopromo, which as you can probably tell from the name is a discussion group for m/m and f/f romance. But I'd have been pretty unimpressed by this ad even if I'd seen it first on one of the m/f romance discussion groups. I may write mainly m/m, but my reading ranges somewhat further. I won't be buying my m/f from Whispers at scarletpublishing.com/whispers
(You'll probably see more of this around the original slash writers' LJs today, because there was an apology on homopromo this morning that basically insisted that not only was there no intent to offend, the ad wasn't offensive anyway.)
ETA: Someone's confirmed that both the original ad and the mea culpa from the promo company were cross-posted to a bunch of glbt book groups. The mea culpa includes this line
Oh yes, I believe that it wasn't meant to be posted at the carefully unspecified "this site". However, for some reason I'm not *quite* convinced by the sincerity of the belief that it's a wonderful group filled with great writers.
"Entries that include m/m, f/f, bondage, rape, or bestiality will not be considered and will be returned to the author. All genres of romance will be accepted." (Emphasis theirs.)
Now, I don't have a problem with publishers not wanting to handle m/m and f/f romance. But there are ways of saying they don't want it that don't involve equating it with rape and bestiality, and don't involve denying that it can be romance. I'm not too impressed with the equating all bondage with rape, either. It didn't really help that their promo company accidentally posted this ad to homopromo, which as you can probably tell from the name is a discussion group for m/m and f/f romance. But I'd have been pretty unimpressed by this ad even if I'd seen it first on one of the m/f romance discussion groups. I may write mainly m/m, but my reading ranges somewhat further. I won't be buying my m/f from Whispers at scarletpublishing.com/whispers
(You'll probably see more of this around the original slash writers' LJs today, because there was an apology on homopromo this morning that basically insisted that not only was there no intent to offend, the ad wasn't offensive anyway.)
ETA: Someone's confirmed that both the original ad and the mea culpa from the promo company were cross-posted to a bunch of glbt book groups. The mea culpa includes this line
"This contest promo was not meant to be posted at this
site. This is a wonderful group filled with great writers and I would
never purposly send out anything that upset anyone. "
Oh yes, I believe that it wasn't meant to be posted at the carefully unspecified "this site". However, for some reason I'm not *quite* convinced by the sincerity of the belief that it's a wonderful group filled with great writers.