Fish in a Barrel

 Okay--true story-I forget a lot about my blog. I think my last post was a month ago--all those things I used to need to shout from the mountaintops are perfectly content fermenting in my twisted little heart, silent as the grave.

But I DO need to remember to post about new releases.

I did a HUGE breakdown of the Fishiverse HERE, back when Constantly Cotton was released, and people really seemed to enjoy being walked through the connections and byways of the evolution of Fish. Fish in a Barrel has some of those byways cooked in--Henry (of Fish on a Bicycle and Shades of Henry) has become a steady fixture, as have the Flophouse boys and Henry's boss (and Ellery's best friend) Galen. Ace, Sonny, and Burton didn't get any play in this one, although they do show up in the backmatter because I wrote a lot of ficlets in the last two years. 

And I really love the idea of Ace, Sonny, Burton, Jason, Jai, Ernie, and George all hanging out in the desert and keeping the peace. Just a little gay coalition for peace--nothing to see here folks, make sure you check your antifreeze before you drive your car through the desert.

But Fish in a Barrel is Jackson and Ellery at their most pure--pursuing a case for the greater good and applying compassion and common sense to a justice system badly in need of both. We get so used to reading about injustice, vanity, stupidity and cruelty masquerading as politics--writing these stories is my way of fixing at least a tiny bit of what's wrong with the world.

So I hope you enjoy the Fishiverse--and I especially hope you love Fish in a Barrel. 

If I'm lucky, I'll get to write these guys for the rest of my career. If I'm not lucky, I'll keep writing them for myself. 

Jackson and Ellery face their toughest case yet—against the criminal justice system itself.

Jackson Rivers and Ellery Cramer have worked difficult jobs before, but usually it’s getting the facts that’s the problem. For their newest client, the trouble isn’t finding the truth—it’s corruption at the highest levels of the justice system. It isn’t enough to find the actual perpetrator and unveil a heartless plot—not when the DA is the bad guy and he’s using cops as his goons. Keeping their vulnerable client alive and out of jail takes blood, sweat, and tears.

When one of their major antagonists is killed and the DA tries to pin the death on Jackson, he’ll need every ounce of luck and all his resources to clear his name—and to find the perpetrator before the DA can use the murder to further his own agenda. They soon find that it’s easier to spot an honest man in a field of thieves than it is to shoot fish in a barrel—and both the man and the fish will be lucky to survive….

BUY HERE 

I Can't Believe I Have to Say This But...

 Oh my God. We'd made such strides. When I first started writing in this genre, there was an assumption that gay sex was somehow more taboo, dirtier, because it was between two people of the same gender. We worked--and we worked hard--to change that perception. I realize that a lot of M/M and F/F writers out there are new, and they still think, (teehee!) they write same sex couples, and isn't that titivating but they weren't there for the wars. They weren't there when the generation before mine was being JAILED for writing this genre. They weren't there when my wave of writers was losing our jobs, losing their children in custody disputes, losing their spouses and their relationships, because this was the genre they chose to write in, for whatever reason it appealed to them.

Many of the new generation weren't alive for the AIDs crisis--but I was.

And I had no idea how vast and how awful it was. I had to make Mate watch And the Band Played On because I was curious about it, and as the terribleness struck me, I was heartbroken for being late to the realization that this should never have happened. 

When you're late to realizations like that, you can do so much harm.

So I'm going to say this, for the new people, for the people watching that bullshit take about Monkeypox take over Twitter, and for the new people who might say, "I'm an ally because fuck the Trumpers!" but who don't realize how long this fight has gone on, and how sometimes, when you hear insanity often enough, you have to shout out what's real to stay sane.

The LGBTQ community is NOT into pedophilia--the odds of a gay man being a sex offender are SIGNIFICANTLY LESS than the odds of a straight cis pastor, priest, or Boy Scout leader being a sex offender. Gay people DON'T GROOM children to be gay. Straight people have gay children all the time. Gay people have straight children. Kids hit puberty, shit gets real, and they realize who they're attracted to, what their sexuality REALLY is, and whether or not the standard cis heterosexual mode is THEIR life or just the life their parents thought they should live. Does it happen before that? Hell yes. If I could have a crush on Speed Racer or Randolph Mantooth when I was five, then a little boy could have a crush on Captain America or Iron Man and a little girl could have a crush on Wonder Woman today, and it will seem perfectly normal to them, right up until their parents beat them for being queer.

And Monkeypox is NOT AN STD. Good God. The World Health Organization should be BEATEN for the way they presented that information. Just saying.

When I wrote Crafting Category, I wrote a section about "nope tropes"-- tropes that had started out as something necessary in society but had become harmful in recent years. One of these is Gay For You. In the book I said that if people who don't know better READ this trope, they will believe that being gay is a matter of choice. If the characters in the book are ONLY IN LOVE with that ONE GUY, they could choose to be in love with a woman and being gay is a choice. 

IT'S. NOT. And in the increasingly toxic post Trump world in which many states are going after LGBTQ rights like it's squirrel season and they got a new pellet gun, writing books that slant that way, and BELIEVING that way can be dangerous for people who are born to be who they're born to be. If sexuality and gender are a "choice" and not a bone-deep reality, then politicians willingly sacrifice rights, dignity, and humanity on the altar of their vanity, and the LGBTQ community is being pursued by pitchforks once again.

Allies are not immune. WRITERS are not immune--but more importantly, if allies or writers posit that being LGBTQ is a choice, they are doing harm to the community that is feeding them. 

This is the nature of exploitation--no matter how unwitting. 

So I can't believe I have to say this, but LGBTQ people have one agenda: to be treated like people. That needs to be the ally's agenda too.