@ Fabulosa Books
Happy Pride Month! I know it's a bit late and it's almost over, but it's been a busy month. Who decided to make it a whole month, anyway? Remember when it was just a day or a week? It's kind of exhausting when you think about it.
This month, not only did I publish my novella, Lessons in Teenage Biology, I also arranged a reading at Fabulosa Books in San Francisco with two of my pal authors, Trebor Healey and Gar McVey-Russell. That was June 24.
And only days before that, I completed my 40-page portion of the Bay Area Reporter's annual Pride issue. I edited 12 articles and wrote two on my own. I'll get to those in a bit.
But the big news for me was publishing Lessons in Teenage Biology. I had a good time putting it together because it's short and sweet. It's based on a short story I wrote way back in 1986 and cleaned it up and made some artistic changes but basically tried to keep the same adolescent voice going for the story which expanded to 24,000 words.
That's a bit too much for a short story. So that's why I didn't submit it to any anthologies, because I just wanted to do it myself and experiment with some marketing techniques.
If you heard about the book, then it may have succeeded, but I actually found that several types of recommended promotions don't exactly work right, specifically the practice of giving away your book as an advance reader copy (ARC). Two different services mostly resulted in people who didn't read it, looked at it, or gave a negative review. So enough with that.
What's really surprising as a success are Ingram's promotions that go directly to libraries and bookstores for only $150. That was the real bargain. It saved me having to buy email lists, purchase them, do a mass mailing etc.
I had a bit of a flop with MailChimp. I sent out press release to about 200 verified press email addresses and only got about three responses for any kind of coverage.
But moving forward, I set up reading event at the local bookstore Fabulosa Books, which is the location of the late great A Different Light bookstore. In its heyday before the Internet, the staff would hand sell-books by local offers like me. And going to see an author was a big big deal.
This time around we had about 20 people show up, including some known literary authors, which was great. Three people inquired on social media if there would be a live feed. We didn't set that up and that would not have been a hassle, but it's not the point. People have come to expect that kind of convenience since the pandemic and I've done quite a few since 2020 (including one at Fabulosa with Baruch Porras-Hernandez), but not this time around.
For my day job as the Arts Editor of the Bay Area Reporter, the entire month was full of hundreds of emails. I had to sort articles, assign writers, collect photos to crop and edit, etc. It was a lot of work, and of course our big Pride issue came out today. You can read the PDF version or all the articles on the web of course. In San Francisco, you can get a print copy. It's quite a collectible.
One of those articles that I wrote was a review of the biography of Richard Hunt, the gay Muppet performer of who died of AIDS in 1992. Jessica Max Stein's biography is a very special and touching story about the affable and funny guy who played many characters on The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, and some of Jim Hanson's films.
You can read my review here. I'll probably post that on Goodreads and Amazon later on.
So, when the actual Pride day comes, I'm so exhausted all the rainbow stuff that I've had to process and produce and publish, that I haven't even gone to Civic Center in a few years, even though it's only a few blocks away from my home.
It's just a big crowd of young kids, which is great, but it's just not to my taste to be enveloped by clouds of cooked meat, loud music, and drunk people. In fact, most of my friends don't even go anymore.
We went during the earlier days in the '80s and '90s when it was a radical thing to march in the Pride parade. Specifically, my New York days where I was just coming out were pivotal.
Well, I had been out, but I was officially out and marching up (or down) Fifth Avenue to/from the West Village and Central Park. It was quite a revolutionary exciting wonderful time. Now it's more about consumerism and an overload of drag brunches.
Not that there's anything wrong with drag brunches! There's just so much going on now in terms of the entire month being full of LGBTQ events. It's hard to keep up. But that's my job.
I hope you're going to have some fun with your friends at Pride in your city, whether watching or marching in a parade; something I did many many times with sports groups and Mikes on Bikes in years past.
It's always fun to participate and I've done my share to participate, and encourage other people to do so.
Happy June, happy LGBTQIAetc. Happy Pride.