New Other Sides Updates…

First let me apologize for not updating sooner. Loots of stuff has been going on with the other Other Sides authors, but I’ve been distracted by NaNoWriMo and haven’t put up a  proper list of links yet. To start off, there is a good review of Other Sides in Violin in a void. They mentioned my story as one they really liked, so woohoo, and I’m glad they enjoyed the collection.

Next, the ladies writing The Peacock King sat down to do an interview. Check out Charissa Cotrill and Erica Bercegeay on Gabriel Gadfly, talking about Other Sides and Peacock King. And then Erica has another interview on One Big Adventure.

Next is another interview, this time with Isa K. for Just Cassie. She talks about her story in Other Sides, and about her current work projects.

Next is an interview with the authors of Addegoole and Wild Ones’ Blood. Lyn Thorne-Alder & Chris Childs head over to Flashes in the Dark to talk about writing with Lori Titus.

And finally, MCM of 1889.ca has a slightly facetious explanation for the development of Other Sides in the guest post on Novelr.

And that’s the round-up of Other Sides news. Other Sides is of course still available for free from Ergofiction, and you can also find a print copy for $6, or you can buy and e-book copy for $0.99 cents if you’d like to lend your support to the WebLit cause. I’d like to thank those of you who’ve already read and reviewed the book. It looks like we’ve already made some converts of people who had never heard of WebLit, and are now getting into the medium after digging through our sampler. Eeeeexcellent! Soon, our plan to get enough readers to earn money and buy video games will be complete! (What? You didn’t think any of us were aiming for taking over the world, did you?)

The Pedophile book…

I should be in bed, but instead I’m wide awake and feeling extremely agitated. Why? The Pedophiles’ Guide to Sex and Pleasure, that’s why. I’m not upset so much about the book itself as I am by the reactions that all of kinds of intelligent, rational people made to it. I’m frustrated even more that I am writing a defense of discussions on this particular topic, mainly because the book is so shoddily written. Even reading the description and spotting the obvious typos, my first thought was, “That schmuck needs an editor in the worst way.” For the moment setting aside the actual content of the book, I want talk about how people reacted to this bombshell with the dreaded P word in the name. Bear in mind that I’m speaking as somebody who was a victim and a perpetrator of the cycle, and who is an author of fiction with controversial topics.

At the top of my list of objections to this moral outrage is for the blankets statement, “All child porn is illegal!” But if it was always a crime to depict minors having sex in text, Stephen King would not have IT on shelves. He would have gone to prison right after his publisher turned him in for writing the underground orgy. And yet, before the Internet boomed, I was able to obtain a copy of IT at twelve from a public library. (I mean I loaned it out directly too, so they knew who was going to read it.) Actually, you can even blame King for the same kind of controversial content in my stories. After I read IT, I said, “I want to write something just like that!” Even so, I never expected an apology from King for “enabling me.”

You can also add Anne Rice and Piers Anthony to the list of authors who have published stories with underage characters having sex. Piers has the record among the three for writing an explicit scene with a five-year-old girl and a child molester. Nobody is calling for Firefly to be pulled from Amazon, and no one is calling for Piers to be arrested. (Though I have heard and read some pretty dirty things said about the man in “polite company”) But people are calling for the arrest of this guy over his ill-formed abstract opinion because this time, “it’s a really, really bad book!” Trust me, Piers’ book was really, really bad. So if you’re going to ban one book, you might as well ban the other, and for the same reason that it might inspire a normal person to commit a crime.