Category Archives: GQ babble

GQ babble, GQ research

Men’s clothing circa 1900

With all the dressing and undressing that Martin helps Henry with, I thought it might be helpful to provide some visuals of just what sort of costume he’s wearing.

Everyday menswear:

edwardian young man in bowler

When you stopped wearing short pants, this is the outfit you put on, regardless of social class. The fellow in this picture probably isn’t poor, but without detailed images it’s difficult to tell much about his standing in the world because that’s what every other man wore, too. He’s neat and clean, at any rate, and he has a spiffy walking stick!

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GQ babble

5 stars for APL from Boy Meets Boy :)

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APL500

 

5-star review of APL by Optimist King’s Wench:

“The writing is as superb, evocative and delectable as A Most Personal Property.”

and

“Ms. Glass and I need to come to an understanding. A quartet is no longer sufficient. I’d like something in the twenty book range so I can see these two as adults because Henry is going to be an outstanding adult. Outstanding, I say! So, name your price Glass. Let’s get this thing done. “

I’ll see what I can do :)

Full review @ Boy Meets Boy

GQ babble, GQ research

Henry’s Museum Day

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Henry and his Algonquin classmates are taken to the museum for an edifying cultural experience just before Thanksgiving, and they’re about as appreciative as you might expect a group of restless young men to be.

There’s a shoving match over the prime viewing space in front of a painting of Ariadne. It’s an actual painting that would have been on view in 1900, and it was painted by Asher Brown Durand.

Ariadne_Asher Brown Durand_ca 1831-35_acc 1897

Ariadne @ Metropolitan Museum of Art

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GQ babble

GQ slave beliefs & Hetaeria

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GFbee small
vintage bee from thegraphicsfairy.com

The slaves in Ganymede Quartet have a belief system that’s very important to them and this is introduced in A Proper Lover (GQ Book 2). Hetaeria, Latin for “fellowship,” is one of the names this belief system goes by. It is not a religion, per se, but a system of interdependency and symbolism. The slaves are raised up in the Houses understanding the importance of cooperation, of being supportive of one another, and of getting along. In many ways, their lives depend on it. In addition to their actual behavior, they demonstrate their support of one another and their friendships through the exchange of handmade talismans. Continue reading GQ slave beliefs & Hetaeria →

GQ babble

where’s the Martin story?

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Because the Martin story, A Master’s Fidelity (GQ Book 2.5) takes place concurrent with the very end scenes of A Proper Lover (GQ Book 2), I had originally planned to release the books a week apart, giving people a chance to read APL first if that was something they were going to do. Unlike the first Martin story, A Superior Slave (GQ Book 0.5), which stood on its own fairly well, making its own context, I really feel like AMF should be read after APL. I’m going to be offering AMF for free, and I know that huge numbers of people will download it simply because it’s free, but it’s really intended for readers of the series, as a bonus that hopefully enriches the experience of reading the main books. I don’t know what someone who hasn’t read APL would make of it, frankly :D

Anyway, I released APL on the 17th, and if I stuck to my original plan, that would mean releasing AMF on Christmas Eve, and that just seems like a terrible idea. So, I finished my uploads tonight, and hopefully it will be available everywhere within the next 12 hours or so.  I will be making a post with links when they go live.

 

GQ babble, GQ updates

holiday stories & upcoming releases

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(image from themarysue.com)
(image found at themarysue.com)

They’re not a holiday books, per se, but the second Ganymede Quartet book, A Proper Lover (GQ Book 2), and the accompanying Martin POV short story, A Master’s Fidelity (GQ Book 2.5), do cover the fall and winter holidays quite thoroughly.

A Proper Lover begins just before a Halloween party at Henry’s friend Louis Briggs’ house. Following that, Henry and Martin share a special Thanksgiving, and then there’s a Wilton family Christmas that introduces two of my favorite side characters. This second installment in Henry and Martin’s story closes on New Year’s Eve. The accompanying short story, A Master’s Fidelity, also takes place on New Year’s Eve and runs parallel to the events of APL. For that reason, it’s recommended that you read APL first, though of course you can do whatever you want :P

I still don’t have firm release dates for either book. However, when they do go on sale, A Proper Lover will list for $4.99 and A Master’s Fidelity will be be FREE at all the retailers who allow it and $0.99 elsewhere. As before, I’m going to be asking for help reporting lower competitor’s prices in order to get Amazon to offer AMF for free.

I’ll be posting covers and blurbs shortly :)

 

GQ babble, GQ updates

my writing year

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worst thing best thing
A little over a year ago, I asked my best friend which of my long-dormant ideas I should work on. I wanted her input because at that point in time it seemed quite likely that she’d be the only person who’d ever read whatever I wrote, so it had to be something she was interested in. I had been seemingly incapable of writing more than a few lines at a time for a very long eight years or so, but for some reason I felt hopeful I might be able to accomplish something if I would only try again.

For all these ideas, I had at least a few notes, some lines of dialogue, truncated character descriptions. For some very old ideas, I also had notebooks full of handwritten scenes, but even these were nowhere near complete stories. For reasons that escape me now, neither of us were in favor of my working on the most likely candidate, a contemporary romance for which I had written about 30K already. I don’t actually think I even offered her my paranormal idea simply because the scope is so big and it seemed especially daunting at the time. We both liked the cross-dressing “princess” story, which had been at various times medieval, then futuristic, and finally set in an alternate 1930s, and that one will definitely be written one day, but the one she asked for was the bossy slave/shy master. I had about 15 pages of notes and scraps, but nothing was set in stone except Henry and Martin’s names.

Continue reading my writing year →

GQ babble, squee

AMPP review at Boy Meets Boy Reviews

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Lovely review of A Most Personal Property at Boy Meets Boy Reviews!

AMPP 500

I’m thrilled with the whole thing, but was especially pleased that I passed muster on these fronts:

Two things stood out as outstanding were the level of research that clearly was put into bringing 1900 NYC to life i.e. the language, the clothing, the class distinctions, the rituals. I appreciate research and Ms. Glass obviously did hers and I applaud her for it. The second was the character development. Henry and even his friends were so real I felt as though I were tagging along with them on their trips to the park and cycling and going to the arcade. Everything about Henry felt so authentic and genuine that I was honestly surprised to discover that this author was female. Bravo.

 

AMPP review @ Boy Meets Boy

 

GQ babble, not writing

finding an audience

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audience 500

Be forewarned, this isn’t instructional about finding an audience, because I don’t actually know how to do that. Rather, I’m going to be asking for help. This is perhaps a cautionary tale about writing a book that doesn’t fit any particular genre when you already know less than nothing about marketing.

I didn’t set out to create something problematic, yet somehow I ended up with a very long story (divided into four books) with teenage main characters who have lots of graphic sex in a historical setting featuring a non-historical version of slavery as a prominent fantasy element.

Despite their ages, it’s definitely not  a YA book. Despite the detailed 1900 setting, it’s not entirely historical because, hello, there are slaves. Because there are slaves, it’s a fantasy, but it’s certainly not classical fantasy with magic or dragons.  And despite the presence of slaves, it’s not a BDSM story.  All of these things are marketing problems.

Of course, none of this seemed like it would be an issue while I was writing the books.

I don’t know much about the lovely people who have already read A Superior Slave and A Most Personal Property. I don’t know their reading habits or their other interests. I have to wonder if they are people who also like yaoi manga (as I do), because I think that some portion of that audience would like these books despite the lack of  illustrations. It even occurs to me that people who like ball-jointed dolls (as I do) would like these books because, obviously, the entire cast of young masters and slaves as BJDs would be an absolutely magnificent thing.  (I would kill for Henry and Martin dolls.) But these are mere notions and definitely do not constitute a marketing plan.

I am very pleased that most of the people who read the books like them. If you’re one of those people, perhaps you’d be willing to tell me how you heard about the books or what about them appealed to you, as that information might be helpful in promoting additional books in the series as they’re released. Also, I’d love to hear from other authors who’ve written books that don’t easily fit into existing categories. Were you able to find a way to introduce your story to people who’d be especially interested in it? How did you find your niche?