All Americans should congratulate our new President-elect Barack Obama. While it is no secret that I was not a supporter, I can certainly appreciate the enormous historic nature of having the first African-American elected as President of the United States. Obama's victory speech was eloquent and soaring, filled with both hubris and magnanimity in just the right doses.

Hey guys!

by Pat Nelson Childs

As we progress into a new millenium, I sometimes reflect sadly on how little has been done to "normalize" gayness in our society. Of course, I mean American society, because Europe and even our neighbors to the north are light years ahead of us in this respect. To be fair, our government doesn't execute gays (if you ever saw the video of the two gay Iranian teens being executed, you might think twice about how bad things are for us here), and we've reached a point where even most conservative pundits support legal rights for gays, though generally more in theory than in practice (and no, Ann Coulter doesn't count. The only "value" she represents is the size of her royalty checks). Even President Bush has come out (sorry poor choice of words) in favor of civil unions. I point this out simply to illustrate how far we've actually managed to come in the past 20 years in some respects. A sitting Republican president (and staunch Christian Conservative) publicly expressing support for civil unions? If that isn't progress, I don't know what is.

But these things are more in the nature of political progress. What I've always been more interested in (and think is far more important) is achieving the "normalization" of alternative sexualities, a state in which the sight of two men sharing a kiss on a bus or in a TV commercial doesn't immediately produce waves of indignant outrage and endless punditry about the decline of Western civilization. Does it strike anyone else as odd that gays can adopt children in most states with the blessing of the majority, but that same majority goes absolutely ape shit if two girls hold hands on the bus? Gays can adopt children as long as they don't show any love for one another? Isn't that going to produce a way more fucked-up kid than one who just happens to have two mommies?

Hi guys!

Just wanted to share the cover of Numen's Trust, Book Three of The Chronicles of Firma, with you:

Hi Guys!

I got this email today and thought I'd share it, and my response, with all of you. I blanked out the sender's email address as a kindness to him/her. I guess I must be doing something right if I'm getting hate mail from religious fanatics, huh?

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From: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I started a discussion on the Amazon.com Fantasy Forum about bisexual heroes in Fantasy novels. It has gotten pretty interesting, so I thought I'd pass the link on to you guys.

http://www.amazon.com/tag/fantasy/forum?%5Fencoding=UTF8&cdForum=FxRHP2K...

Feel free to participate if you want, either on Amazon or here.

I chose my new publicity photo. What do you think? Not too goofy I hope.

Hey everyone,

My editor flipped over the OQ trailer and instructed me to get busy and do one for Scion's Blood ASAP. Well, here it is:

Hey guys!

Check out the trailer I did for Orphan's Quest!

Hi Everyone!

So many of you took advantage of my offer to download the e-book of my first novel, Orphan's Quest, for free that I decided to go one better this time and give Oasis members the chance to download book two, Scion's Blood, before it even comes out!

by underdarkness

When I first picked up Orphan's Quest, it was out of sheer interest to find out whether a novel deemed a "gay fantasy" could possibly be a good read. Most novels I've come by that specify the main characters as gay often times end up being preachy and tedious to get through without snoring or yelling at the pages, though I figured I'd give Orphan's Quest a chance.

The story starts off with a young man, Rokey, going through his studies at a sort of boarding school called the Noble Contemplative. The hierarchy of faculty at the school is vaguely reminiscent of a Catholic institution, minus the religious rule. From the start, we see that Rokey is attracted to other young men.

We also come to find that the world in which Rokey lives is incredibly tolerant of gays (or Samers, as they're called in the story). Through an accident that Rokey is ultimately blamed for, he is sent away from the confines of the school and is told never to return. The night following, Rokey is attacked and is saved by a young elf named Flaskamper (or Flash). From there, Rokey is introduced to Flash's fellow misfits who make their way from town to town to get by.

Hi Guys!

So I have a new marketing team helping me to make the most of my meager advertising budget. One of them told me I should be as controversial as possible in my press releases because that would attract more free publicity. So I'm thinking - geez, I'm just a gay HIV+ athiest Republican who writes gay books marketed at teenagers. What is there about me that could possibly be controversial?