Lands Beyond

“To be fair, the internet is silent because that is a tacit endorsement of this development. Not everyone is interested in LGBT stories, but they’ll be damned if anyone is allowed to discriminate against literary achievements due to content. Too much mindless praise for this anthology just because it includes LBGT content would make it look like the only reason they liked it was because of the subject matter and not the quality of the works themselves.” - aggiepunbot

I think I rest my case. Things get forwarded on the internet, incomplete, and well-meaning people respond to incomplete information in inaccurate ways.

Thing 1: This is not an LGBT anthology. It has several LGBT stories, but mine, as well as ones written by Carrie Ryan, Carrie Vaughn, Jeanne DuPrau, Kiera Cass, John Shirley, Jesse Karp, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, etc., are not. It does not say anywhere on the anthology that it is an anthology of LGBT stories. It is described, everywhere, as an anthology of dystopian YA stories. Naturally, not everyone is interested in dystopian YA, either — but lots of people are. Judging from the current market, an enormous amount of people are, which is why an antho of this nature was conceived in the first place.

Thing 2: At no point did I or anyone else I know ask for mindless praise. Or praise at all. In fact, I expected this book to receive a fair bit of criticism, given the black cloud it was born under, and the fact that it’s an anthology, and by its very nature, it receives a wide readership who prefer the styles to one contributor over another.

But in this world where every reader has a blog and a goodreads account and a waiting on wednesday and a #fridayreads and a huge pile of free books they snagged at ALA Midwinter, it is notable that (as of yesterday morning, when I posted my original blog post) this volume had no reviews, and only a few (overseas) mentions of its existence. The last volume I did of this nature had many reviews in trade journals, a big giveaway at BEA, and lots and lots of blogger reviews.

This could be due to several factors. Perhaps the publisher was negligent in sending out review copies. (They don’t even have the listing of the anthology correct on Amazon.) Perhaps, due to the trouble putting this collection on the shelves, they decided to just cut their losses and throw it out there. (I know there were review copies though, as I saw them in bloggers’ ALA Midwinter piles.)

Perhaps it’s because the constant switching of release dates. It was coming out in March. No February. No, January 19. Trade journals can hardly review a book with that sort of scheduling variation. The bloggers could, but they did not, again, perhaps because of a lack of review copies.

Thing 3: While it’s great that one quote from my original blog post is being tumblred around, it should be noted that the main thrust of said post is a) there are some inaccurate things being proclaimed about a situation regarding one of my professional organizations, and I want to clarify a few things since people have been asking me privately, and b) I’m giving away a book.