Interest meme that requires interaction!

[altivo]

Borrowed from eclective, apparently a variation on a similar one involving drawing that I will also post shortly.

• Scan my interest list and pick out the one that seems the most odd/interesting to you.
• I’ll explain it.
• Then you post this in your journal so other people can ask you about your interests.

Comments

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

OK, I'll go first... "writing" -- what sorts of things do you write, or what interests you about it?

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

plushies :-) I don't think you've ever talked about that. Do you enjoy your plushies the same way that I do?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's such an easy one. I've been writing for as long as I can remember, literally. Poetry and stories started by the time I was in second or third grade. Occasional publications started when I was in college, with perhaps the earliest that could still be located anywhere a brief explanation on translating Elizabethan lute tablature to a modern guitar. (You can read it directly by retuning one string, though to reach the necessary frets for some selections you might need to capo up a bit to where things are closer together.) That appeared in Tournaments Illuminated, which was and may still be the official publication of the Society for Creative Anachronism. :)

While in grad school I wrote reviews and articles for various national gay publications, including the Gay Liberator out of Detroit and RFD, the quarterly for GLBT folks living in rural settings.

None of this was paid work, though. My first paid publications came in 1988, and were technical articles on various aspects of computer systems and hardware, an item in Teddy Bear and Friends on designing dresses for girl (or transvestite, I suppose, LOL) teddy bears, and an erotic short story (well, call it porn) for Guys magazine.

In 1989 I was hired full time as a technical writer, and for a couple of years wrote full length (book size) manuals for library catalog and circulation software. During that time, I finished my M.A.L.S. degree, and I have short publications that are indexed in Library Literature and even in OCLC. One received an award from the Society for Technical Communication, of which I was by then a "Senior Member" (are you impressed?)

After I moved to full time professional library work in 1994, I ran out of time for submitting items to journals and magazines. Instead I started writing grant proposals (boring, but they get you money) and grant reports (even more boring, but if you want another grant later on you'd best do them.) I have a drawer full of unpublished stories from about 1989 to 1997 or so.

And now I write in LJ, which I suppose one could define as sort of masturbatory writing (if you'll excuse the expression.)

More than you ever wanted to know, I imagine, but you did ask. :)
Questions?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I don't think I've seen you explain just how you enjoy your plushies. :) But I admit, I haven't read your whole journal yet...

I've been a collector of plush animals since I was a child. The oldest one still in my possession though is a very battered bear that I bought at a flea market in 1974 for 50 cents. That bear, eventually christened "Sam I. Bear" when he was a department mascot during my first tenure as a programmer at Time Inc., lived on or near my desk there for a couple of years, and attended a number of rather obnoxious meetings. That was the beginning of my adult collection, which is uncataloged and uncounted but must now exceed a hundred bears and other animals, most of them smallish but a few quite large.

When I was laid off by Time (they relocated all their operations and I declined to move) I spent a summer designing and making my own bears and rabbits. I sold these primarily at art fairs, but it's a very hard way to make money. Here's a sample of the one I named "Sandy MacBruin". And here is another, a big-footed bunny called "Hare Odotus."

I like plushie puppets too, and continue to be tempted to buy them when I see them. People often give me teddy bears as gifts, so the collection keeps growing. A handful of favorites, including a now well-worn wolf puppet, live on my bed and yes, I sleep with them.

The newest addition was a Christmas gift just last month, and is a plush bear with a robotic mechanism inside that performs various actions and sounds when properly stimulated. It's interesting, but rather strange, frankly.

Did I answer the question? Feel free to ask more if not. :)

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

I treat my plushies as if they have feelings. I can't do anything to a plushie that would harm a living creature. I can't even cut the washing instructions tags off. I'm discreet about some of the things I do with my plushies in private, but I will say that I find some to be sexy. I list both plushies and plushophilia as interests so as to leave a bit of a hint of that.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't go quite so far as that, but I certainly have been known to talk to them, even carrying on long conversations. My partner and I have occasionally roleplayed with them, in spite of our ages. Several of ours have very strong and distinct personalities. A few have tiny plushies of their own, including my partner's bear who wanted a lamb back when I was making plushies, so I made him one. Soon he acquired another (commercial) one and then a tiny bunny. Eventually he asked for a pony and got one. Now I chide him frequently for not taking better care of his pets...

This brings to mind a story I recently heard from a friend, who has a pony plushie the size of a miniature horse. I love it, but haven't found one similar yet. He sleeps with his pony, and consequently the day arrived when pony needed a bath. The tag said machine-washable, so he took it to the laundromat, where he carried on a conversation with it at great length, telling the pony not to be afraid and that everything would be all right, especially when he came out of the washer and needed a run through the centrifugal extractor. I guess some ladies who were present at the time were quite non-plused by all this. :)

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

Naw, the detail is cool. If I didn't want to know, I shouldn't have asked. :-) Congrats on the award from STC and the other professional lit. Being a borderline library geek, I am impressed.

Questions? I'm terrible at those, really... but I was wondering if you've thought to publish any of the unpublished stories in your drawer.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Most were written with publication in mind. I know the quality is good, but the genre is a difficult one for much of the stuff. At the time I was writing, Alyson Press was about the only publisher who might have taken them. Sasha Alyson sold out and I have no idea what their current status is.

Gay male romantic fiction is a good way to describe the stories. Not pornographic or, in most cases, even erotica. Some are science fiction or fantasy style, some are set in real life situations. I was sort of planning to submit a book-length manuscript of short stories to Alyson, but never got around to it.

Lately I've been thinking about "furry" fiction. There's almost no publishing market for it, but I could web publish it. There is an audience. :)

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

Alyson is still around, but yes Sasha Alyson sold them -- LPI Publications ended up with it, they who also publish The Advocate. They were pretty quiet for a while, at least it seems so to me. But in 2004 they started getting a higher profile again. The scope list seems about as it was before. So maybe it would work. Helfully enough, their website is www.alyson.com.

One area that mighe be a good possibility is contributing short pieces to anthologies -- seems like there are a lot of them these days. I've noticed that a couple of the compilers have websites where they advertise their upcoming projects, asking for submissions. I'll scrounge up a couple of names (they're not coming to me at the moment). Lambda Book Report runs a column of queries from publishers looking for new fiction for anthologies, too.

Furry fiction... yeah, not much commercial market for it, but you could get notoriety through self-publishing on the web. :-) Or, if you make it a fantasy-type story with a few beings who would pass for Furry along with a few humans, then maybe a mainstream SF/Fantasy publisher might look at it.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I've seen some of those anthology announcements. They usually seem to select things with more 'edge' though. Mine are traditional, usually with happy endings. The more erotic ones, some even with actual X rated scenes, have been rejected by LPI publications before for "taking too long to get to the sex" even though they liked the fact that the stories were romantic and were NOT set in California or New York. Heh. Take out the stuff they think is too long and it could be set anywhere.

I couldn't remember who bought Alyson out. But LPI is far from a favorite of mine. Despite their claims, I believe they have tried to keep the gay culture firmly planted in the 50s and 60s. Probably because they could make more money from it that way.

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

I'm not a fan of The Advocate these days. Used to buy it faithfully but then they had one make-over too many and it became pretty much hard to take for someone so midwestern as I am. I look at occasional issues now, but for the most part it's pretty irrelevant to life as I (we) know it.

Too bad they didn't see the whole story because they were too fixed on getting to the sex. Makes me wonder if the editors' job isn't just to homogenize everything.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, in a commercial magazine the editor's job is to sell magazines and to sell advertising. And the content must be selected to do exactly that. When I last rubbed shoulders with them, LPI seemed to feel that their audience was the punk kid type (I think they were wrong) and primarily California (that became more and more true, as you yourself just noted.) I kept reading RFD for much longer, but finally dropped my subscription a few years ago when it had obviously become just too extreme and pathologically antisocial.

Gay publishers are dedicated to perpetuating the "youth culture" and the idea that everyone over 30 is as good as dead. I suppose they still have a market in the over 30s and even over 40s among the ones who are either trying to be what they are not or else hating themselves for not being that. But I just find it tiresome. Even when I was a 20-something myself I wasn't interested in name dropping gossip about recording stars and movie actresses, nor in the "must visit" vacation spots or the "must wear" clothing.

Likewise I can't write fiction about drug-induced hazes and drunken stupors, nor about impersonal encounters in some back alley. The angst of HIV escapes me because it has never been part of my life or lifestyle. Jet-setting about the world while wearing the latest designer clothes has no appeal for me and I can't write about it. That stuff is for a Felice Picano or a Gordon Merrick to write. My material is more like Jan Karon or Louis L'Amour, fantasy with some heart and a sense of justice where the honest and deserving character does arrive at somewhere better at the end of the story. I'm sure it has an audience somewhere, but probably not among the kids who really don't read much anyway these days.

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

We're on the same page with this. I don't get most of gay lit especially from the "stars" of the genre. I bought RFD for years too, probably more years than I should've -- I just decided in 2004 to stop buying it because it was too out-there and not rural enough anymore. And I'm pretty unfashionable, as you can probably guess.