Bianca Reagan: Where the Action Is! Now available!

BIANCA REAGAN: WHERE THE ACTION IS, the sequel to STEVE THE PENGUIN, has been published! It's now available in paperback on Amazon.

For autographed copies, please send requests to mrjmedia [at] gmail [dot] com.

The eBook format is coming soon. More details to come.

I'm so excited and proud! Hooray!


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Celebrating books by certain successful people

I attended the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this weekend. Hooray for books! I got to meet Lela Lee of Angry Little Girls fame, and I had her sign my copy of her new book. Hooray for me!

At the panels I went to, most of the audience was older and white. Unfortunately, most of the panelists were, too. Except for the Jada Pinkett Smith/Sistah Souljah stage, and the Writing between Races panel (which was the best! Click these words to learn about the five fabulous panelists), almost all of the people on the panels I attended were white. Most of them were male, more of them were affluent or comfortable, most of them were over 40. All of them were over 30. At least two of the panels had only white male speakers.

No, I did no select the panels I attended based on their abundance of old, rich white men. I chose topics that interested me, like authors who also write for TV, and novelists for young adults. Seeing the panelists magnified an pernicious problem of publishing: the vicious circle of who is allowed to speak in our society. To speak on a panel at the festival, you must have published a successful book. The people who have books published are usually white and mostly male, especially in nonfiction, even if the topics of their books are not other white people. Which leaves a bunch of people, like me, discouraged and dissatisfied, about the types of stories that being told, or more precisely, the types of stories that are not being told.

Outside of the panels, the crowd of thousands milling about the booths and stages was more diverse. Thought at the Patton Oswalt stage, the audience was more diverse in age and possibly in economic background than it was in color. Mostly different sizes and shades of white people. But I did stand next to one of the other two black ladies in the audience. Progress!

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"Do you think this is a teachable fart?"

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - He Who Smelt It, Dealt It
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Tasers

Yes I do, Stephen.


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"I can never go to the library and take out books again. No longer. Because they banned me from the library."

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Nailed 'Em - Library Crime
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Tasers

Reading is fundamental. As long as you pay your taxes in the correct district. Don't give me any excuses about being "a 7-year-old child." Books aren't free!


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"You can't take 'fathers' out of 'founding fathers'. There's nothing more fatherly than wigs and capri pants."

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Tip/Wag - Man-Words & Movits!
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Tasers

Hee hee, Tucker Carlson. He never gets better.

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What is that supposed to mean?

Hello, Mr. Heartache, by Jincy Willett, New York Times via Jennifer Weiner´s blog.

Holly Frick, the writer at the heart of Sarah Dunn’s new novel, hates the term “chick lit.” Since we never actually get to read her own novel, “Hello, Mr. Heartache” — whose horrible title was imposed by her publisher’s marketing department — we can’t be certain that she hasn’t actually written “fiction by and for women,” the generally agreed-­upon definition of that loathsome term. But the novel in which Holly herself appears was definitely not written just for women, no matter how it’s packaged. True, the protagonist is female, the setting is Manhattan, and the focus is on relationships — and there’s a big shopping scene. True, mostly women will read it. But then women are the ones mostly reading every­thing. Besides, it’s not about shoes. And the shopping is for books, at the Strand. Also, unlike chick lit, chick TV and chick movies, “Secrets to Happiness” is actually funny.

Way to self-hate, Ms. Willett.

bt-dubs, New York Times: aren´t you up for sale?

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AmazonFail, or, Dirty!

[Yes, that is Tom Everett Scott, best known as Zack Morris's sidekick in Dead Man on Campus. And that movie where he played a young Tom Hanks.]

Amazon Follies, by Mark R. Probst.

Amazon under fire for perceived anti-gay policy, by Andrea James, Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

AmazonFail: A Twitter movement in action, by C. A. Bridges, Daytona Beach News-Journal Online.

Online censorship? Amazon strips ranking of Gay and Lesbian books, by Mari Kurisato, Denver Internet Examiner. Emphases mine.

One of the most powerful indicators of how a book is doing sales wise and can be a leading factor for generating or killing interest in a book. Though many factors go into the sales ranking system, the primary driving factor has been sales-number of books sold. Using that method, a shopper could look at similar titles within a genre and see which books were generating sales. The method however, now seems altered, in a manner that feels similar to the unsavory practice of banning books.

Amazon isn't actually no longer selling the books, of course, but it is delisting “adult” titles from the sales ranking system. Which would seem like a fine policy, if it were applied equally. But as an online petition points out the following publications remain on the sales ranking system:

-Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds by Chronicle Books (pictures of over 600 naked women)
--Rosemary Rogers' Sweet Savage Love" (explicit heterosexual romance);
--Kathleen Woodiwiss' The Wolf and the Dove (explicit heterosexual romance);
--Bertrice Smal's Skye o'Malley which are all explicit heterosexual romances
--and Alan Moore's Lost Girls (which is a very explicit sexual graphic novel)

while the following LGBT books have been removed:

--Radclyffe Hill's classic novel about lesbians in Victorian times, The Well of Loneliness, and which contains not one sentence of sexual description;
--Mark R Probst's YA novel The Filly about a young man in the wild West discovering that he's gay (gay romance, no sex);
--Charlie Cochrane's Lessons in Love (gay romance with no sex);
--The Dictionary of Homophobia: A Global History of Gay & Lesbian Experience, edited by Louis-George Tin (non-fiction, history and social issues);
--and Homophobia: A History by Bryan Fone (non-fiction, focus on history and the forms prejudice against homosexuality has taken over the years).

Overall, the sales rank delisting may seem like a minor issue, but it can have a very serious impact for publishers and authors of lesser known works which depend on the sales ranking to get noticed and help spread the word. Amazon pulls unranked books from search results.

Do not worry, hetero Amazon users: 9 1/2 Weeks, Wild Orchid, SuicideGirls: Beauty Redefined, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale and XXX: 30 Porn-Star Portraits are still available on Amazon for purchase and rating.

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