Archive for category navel gazing

International Day Against Homophobia

May 17

Posted by kate in navel gazing | 2 Comments

It occurred to me that probably most people reading my blog are probably on the same page with me. Which gave me pause when I started trying to think of what to write here. I could tell the story I’m sure I’ve told before about how one of my best friends was afraid to come out to me because of some bone-headed thing I’d said without thinking when we were sixteen—if anything that story shows the power of words.

But then I started thinking about my dad.

On paper, he’s accepting of everyone. He was something of a civil rights activist in his youth, kept a poster of Martin Luther King in his office, didn’t tolerate prejudice in the house. One of his retirement hobbies is teaching leadership classes to Boy Scouts (he and my youngest brother were both Eagle Scouts) and he’s made some noise about the ban on gay scouts (he’s vehemently against it). He’s religious but attends a church that welcomes gay members.

In practice, though, he used to say off-hand things that showed he wasn’t really comfortable with gay people. When my youngest brother was in high school, his best friend was a lesbian. I think it’s a credit to how my parents raised us that this never fazed my brother at all. But my dad told me later that he was surprised to find himself so uncomfortable with this girl. Still he, at least, was aware that this was his problem, not the girl’s. He told me that it took some effort, but he got over himself and was careful to never say anything to the girl that might imply he was anything but totally supportive. But I think it took him some soul-searching to work out why this girl bothered him.

So maybe it does sometimes take knowing an LGBT person to recognize our own biases and confront them.

And I could tell you about my friend who is half of a binational couple exiled from the US because of the Defense of Marriage Act. I could tell you about my cousin who died of AIDS in the early 90s. I could tell you about a teacher I had who was run out of the school shortly after the GSA he tried to create was shut down by the school board. I could tell you about my lesbian friend who has to lie to her grandparents about why she doesn’t have a boyfriend. There are examples of homophobia everywhere. But I don’t have to tell you that.

I think the best thing we can do is to keep the conversation going. So I’m talking.

updates! roundups! things! exclamation points!

May 11

Posted by kate in navel gazing, out in the field, reviews, vanity | No Comments

First, here’s where I’ve been on the webz this week:

I was interviewed by Joyfully Jay (and she gave Out in the Field 4.5 stars).

I helped Kerry Freeman celebrate baseball week on her blog with an excerpt.

Second, the rambly part!

Things have been a little crazy at the House McMurray over the last couple of weeks.

To start with, friends of mine got married last weekend. It was a gorgeous wedding, right here in Brooklyn, and I could not be happier for the couple, who a) I had a hand in getting together (in that I organized and ran the event at which they met, so I take credit) and b) are so clearly completely in love with each other, I cried like a baby during the ceremony. So that’s my little secret, I guess. I cry at weddings. I’m not ashamed! (This is probably not a very big surprise, since I write romance novels. Obviously some part of me likes this sort of thing.)

Anyway, I hosted some out-of-town friends who came to the wedding, so my apartment got a little crowded for a couple of days there—not that I minded one bit, and I like having people around, but entertaining guests is not conducive to other kinds of work.

And work, I has it. My non-writing work, especially the stuff I do freelance, has exploded lately. Which is great! I like the work and I like the extra income! But between the extra work and pimping out Matt and Iggy promoting Out in the Field, I’ve had zero time for my own writing. It’s frustrating. I want to write so badly I’m itchy.

I sometimes think it’s hokey when writers say they need to write, but it’s totally true. Writing has become one of my main emotional outlets, and not even in a “I write my feeeelings” kind of way (although I also do that sometimes) but more because it’s such an escape for me, a way to spend time in someone else’s universe or do something else with my surplus anxiety or emotion. So not having time for writing over the last week or so has been rough. It got to the point where I opened a Word doc on my lunch break yesterday and just started typing. So we’ll see how that goes.

Some of my surplus anxiety has gone into keeping an eye on how Out in the Field is being received. Really well, for the most part! Much better than I expected! I was thinking the book would land and the five people I knew who were both baseball and m/m romance fans would read it, and I’d bide my time until the contemporary romance I have coming out this fall is published. But then suddenly lots of people were talking about it! The reception to Out in the Field has been fantastic and humbling.

And, yeah, I totally saw that review on the big famous website, and it’s okay. If nothing else, there was a little bump in my Amazon rankings for a couple of days. Which is to say, I totally support the right of anyone to say things about books on the Internet, even if those things are not glowing praise of things I have written. Actually, it’s probably good to have a balance of opinions; readers seem to be skeptical when everything is all five stars and glitter. (I don’t really review on the Internet, unless you count my silly “I liked this book!” posts on Goodreads. But I do have opinions!)

(See, this is what happens when I can’t write otherwise. I vomit up everything on my blog.)

I’ve got a couple of things lined up for the summer, but otherwise, this is basically the end of the Out in the Field blog tour. Sad! You still have about 36 hours to enter to win a copy!

RWA and discrimination

Feb 4

Posted by kate in genre, m/m, navel gazing | No Comments

If you haven’t heard yet, there’s a lot of discussion happening right now about Romance Writers Ink, a Tulsa-based chapter of RWA, which runs a contest called More than Magic. Among the guidelines for the contest is one disturbing note: “Note: MTM will no longer accept same-sex entries in any category.” (Here are the rules.) This, despite the fact that an LGBT book (More by Sloan Parker) won first place in the First Book category last year.

Heidi Cullinan’s post on the issue is great and you should read it: RWA Shouldn’t Be in the Business of Discrimination.

I joined RWA about a year ago. I know some of the members of my local chapter through my participation in National Novel Writing Month and they’d been bugging me to join for a long time. I’ll be honest; it wasn’t clear to me at first what my dues money was going to. I wound up not being able to attend most of last year’s convention, even though it was right here in New York last year, but I thought, if anything, it was a way to connect to other romance writers. The New York City chapter has been very supportive of me when I ask for it, and I’ve written articles for their newsletter and guest posts on their blog. One thing I like about them is that they are totally open to all kinds of romance writers: erotica, LGBT, Christian, contemporary, paranormal, you name it, it’s all represented.

At the beginning of this year, I joined Rainbow Romance Writers, the LGBT romance special interest chapter of RWA. I feel like I’ve found my people. This is such a fantastic group of writers. They’ve been a real force behind making it known that RWA’s wishy-washy response to discrimination is unacceptable and spreading the word about the situation. One of the missions of the chapter is to bring more attention to LGBT romance and advocate for it. “Take it mainstream,” is how Damon Suede put it when we had dinner together last fall. These are writers who take their craft seriously, who care about the genre, who want to put out good books. (Writers, please consider joining! It’s a great group!)

On a personal note, it’s been an interesting journey into the land of romance writing. I held off on joining RWA because, when I first found out about it, I was still writing overwrought “literary” fiction, which is what too many creative writing classes will do to you, I guess. But then, maybe five years ago, I listened to an episode of This American Life about RWA, and that somehow was the push I needed to give romance writing a try (or to admit that most of what I was writing was pretty much romance anyway). It took me a while to accept that romance was my calling (and I’ve loved genre fiction, romance and mysteries especially, since I was a kid, so I don’t know why I held out so long). And I love m/m, I still really enjoy writing (and reading!) it, so there’s that, too. It’s been a real joy for me to connect with other writers and readers over the last year, because I love to talk about books and writing and I WILL talk at length if you let me.

So it’s a shame that RWA, which has the potential to do so much good for a genre that—let’s face it—is often maligned, can’t see the forest for the trees.

Edited to add: Best course of action for now seems to be to email RWA National to let them know we won’t tolerate discrimination, and also to spread the word. Maybe a critical mass of people will persuade RWA to change their policy. See also Kari Gregg.

labor day weekend

Sep 1

Posted by kate in across the east river bridge, navel gazing, promo events | No Comments

First, announcement: I’m going to be participating in the Literary Nymphs m/m chat going on all this weekend. It’ll be at their Yahoo group. Lots of great authors are participating, so it’s worth stopping by.

And to any of you going to Dragon*Con in Atlanta this weekend, I have sent a proxy! Or, a few close friends of mine are attending, and I sent them with a stack of postcards advertising my books. If you see a very tall woman dressed as a cyberwoman (basically, a sexy robot from the Dr. Who spin-off Torchwood) handing out Kate McMurray postcards, say hi!

I have a book being published by Loose Id in October that I’m pretty psyched about. The protagonists are rival historians who run afoul of a pair of ghosts. It’s my first attempt at dipping my toe in paranormal waters, but it was fun to write—I adore these characters. I’m a little bit of a history nerd myself. I’m particularly interested in 19th Century America. Which maybe explains why my new obsession this summer has been watching what I think of as junk shows, those shows where people find old junk and get it appraised for fun and profit. Like “Antiques Roadshow” on on crack. “Pawn Stars” is my favorite, but I’ve also seen a lot of “American Pickers” and “Storage Wars” (the latter mostly fun because the cast is entertaining). I love those quirky bits of history, the documents and books and ephemera that get passed down.

Here’s a tiny preview. There are two scenes in the new novel (called Across the East River Bridge) that take place in the Rose Reading Room at the New York Public Library. I found these photos last week. Check ‘em out.

I plan to spend a big chunk of this weekend getting stuff together for GayRomLit in October. So excited!

a little damp, but fine otherwise

Aug 28

Posted by kate in navel gazing, new york | 1 Comment

I live a little less than 4 miles, give or take, from Coney Island, where Hurricane Irene made landfall at 9am this morning. But I’m at the top of a hill, so I made it through the storm unscathed. I stayed inside, there was lots of rain and wind, but no flooding or leaks or power loss. It was a good excuse to buckle down and get some writing (and revising!) done this weekend, and to eat a big home-cooked meal Saturday night, and obsessively watch the cable news. I was actually expecting the storm itself to be scarier than it was. Which of course doesn’t diminish the impact the storm did have on many people up and down the east coast. (A tree fell on my father’s house in Connecticut, in fact, but he doesn’t think there was any significant structural damage to the house—he sounded more upset about the loss of the tree when I talked to him, actually). New York City did see some pretty significant flooding and the subway won’t be back up until sometime tomorrow, so it could be a few days before things are back to “normal.” I have to say, it’s been a pretty interesting couple of days, what with the mayor’s office doing a ton of work to make sure the city got through the storm as best as possible and tons of information flying fast and furious over social networks.

I hope any of you in the hurricane’s path came through it well, and that the rest of you had a great weekend. :-)

what makes a romance novel

Jan 20

Posted by kate in navel gazing, the boy next door | No Comments

It’s funny. I made a resolution-y commitment to blog and twitter and all that this year, and then I got slammed by a project at my day job that has zapped all my time and energy. In an effort to at least hold up my commitment to blog once a week, here are some disconnected thoughts:

I’ve been thinking some about what constitutes a romance novel. Given what a wide range of stories fall under the umbrella “romance,” I think the only connecting thread is the focus on the development of a romantic relationship culminates in a happy ending. Other than that, I think all bets are off. Now, I love romance and I love mysteries and suspense thrillers, so it’s probably not at all a surprise that romantic suspense is my favorite romance sub-genre (to read), and in those novels, the couple usually meets under trying circumstances and spends the novel not only falling in love by trying to stay out of danger.

Maybe this is only on the brain because my younger brother is getting married this summer, so he and his fiancée get asked the “Oh, how did you meet?” question a lot, and the answer is pretty mundane (college) and I imagine that’s pretty true for most couples? A lot of my coupled friends have similar stories; a mutual friend introduced them or they met at a concert or they both participated in the same after-work activity. It’s pretty rare for a romance novel to feature a couple who just, like, meet and go on dates. At least in the books I’m reading. I think if someone wrote the story of a typical couple, readers would complain that there wasn’t enough conflict. (And they’d probably be right.)

Which begs the question, how much should romance novels resemble real life? People cite fantasy escapism as a reason to like romance novels. I like books that deal with hard truths, gritty settings, difficult circumstances, those sorts of things—corrupt cops, reformed criminals, heroes with troubled pasts, yes, yes, yes—but at the end of the day, no matter how “true to life” those stories are, they aren’t really true to my life, so I can get absorbed in the story of someone who overcame incredible adversity but then put the book down and be back sitting in my nice warm bed in my cozy apartment.

I was the kid who always had a book in her hand. (This hasn’t really changed; my shopping weakness is handbags, and my main criteria for evaluating them is whether they are big enough to hold a book or two, or at least my Kindle.) I went through phases (see my note on binge reading); I liked adventure stories as a tween, for example, I think because they were the sort of books you could get pulled into enough to block out the world. I read a lot of historical fiction in high school. Perhaps the cliché about a book taking you places you couldn’t go otherwise applies.

There’s still something of that in me as a reader. I’m not a big fantasy reader in the high genre fantasy sense, but I like the “fantasy” element of romances—they exist in a world where big things happen and everything works out. Maybe the two main characters meet in college, like my brother and his fiancée did, but they meet under unusual circumstances or there’s a huge roadblock or one of them has to overcome some deep secret from his past, etc. etc.

It’s sort of like how, if all of your knowledge of New York City came from watching police procedural television series’, you might think the city was still a violent cesspool, which it really isn’t. Fiction is so often more extreme than real life, or different enough from our lives that we feel safe observing it.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. A lot of my characters are ordinary folks who get caught up in extraordinary circumstances. In my latest (out next Tuesday!) we have Lowell, who until recently lived in a studio apartment in NYC and worked as a graphic designer. His new next-door neighbor is Jase has a mundane office job. Ordinary guys who are connected by a shared past. Lots of extraordinary things happen in the novel—without giving much away, I can tell you that Lowell and Jase both have plenty of baggage, with plenty of roadblocks in their way. Because these guys can’t just be neighbors… what kind of romance novel would that be? ;)

if nothing else, I am a huge dork

Aug 16

Posted by kate in media, navel gazing, vanity, writing | No Comments

Elisa posted an interview with Ryan Field that I thought was kind of interesting (and a good test of my Italian skills; that is one of my secret talents). Here, I will translate for you (this is the second question):

What kind of readers are you addressing? Those who believe that sex and love are inseparable. And I think that readers are always looking for this union. I also consider that readers are looking for novels with a happy ending that raises them from the stress of real life. Reading a novel, regardless of genre, must help them escape their problems. And from the letters I get, it seems to me that readers are eager to escape reality.

(Italian is not my first language, obviously, so apologies if I goofed anywhere.)

I’ve been thinking a lot the last few days about my own expectations as a reader and why I like romance novels and what I want out of them and so on. I do like realistic, slice-of-life sorts of novels. I like fantasy, too. For example, I just read Jungle Heat by Bonnie Dee. I had some niggles in terms of things I didn’t think were quite realistic, but I really enjoyed the book as a fantasy, insofar as my thinking was, “I’m not sure this could have happened, but wouldn’t it have been cool if it did?” That’s maybe the crux of historical or speculative fiction. I’ve been thinking about that a lot in the stuff I’ve been writing lately, which has definitely been more on the fantastical end of the spectrum. I don’t really know if ghosts exist, but what if they did? How cool would it be if someone had lived through hundreds of years of human history? If someone from 1850 were plunked into 2010, what would they think of all this? Pros, cons, bad, good, what would happen? These are things I think about when contemplating what worlds and ideas I could explore as a writer.

Romance is a different kind of fantasy, though, often “realistic” in that there are characters who live in our world, characters that make mistakes and have mundane jobs and are mostly like us. But romances also take us to world where everyone has a true love and lives happily ever after. Where we get into the heads of characters who lead different lives than we do, characters for whom good things happen. And maybe, as Ryan Field says in the article, part of the fantasy of erotic romance is that sex and love are the same, that one is borne of the other or is an expression of the other or both. Maybe part of the fantasy of romance is that we read these novels and think, “Life could be this way.”

I’ll tell you what my fantasy is: for the sun to break through the thunderstorm currently raging outside my window, and for a good night’s sleep after almost two weeks of travel (I spent the weekend traveling around New England with my family). Actually, if the orange glow on the buildings across the street from my living room window means anything, it’s that my first wish is coming true. Sleep next!