I’d been born and raised in New Orleans and never thought I’d live anywhere else—and hadn’t until I’d gone to grad school at the University of Virginia. I’d been shocked to discover that Mardi Gras wasn’t a holiday outside of Louisiana, that bars and liquor stores actually closed, and that other cities’ parades kind of sucked. I’d longed to go back, managing to finish my master’s and PhD in record time—and getting a tenure-track position at Tulane made it seem like coming home was destiny.
And while I may have fled from New Orleans ten years ago, I was still in Louisiana.
But I hadn’t realized until that very morning, walking down Bienville Street toward the river, how much I’d missed New Orleans. Rouen was a charming little college town—I liked that it was so quiet, I liked the little subdivision I lived in, and my house was gorgeous, a safe haven where I could relax, write my books, and recharge my batteries. But New Orleans was home, really, and no matter how long I lived in Rouen I’d never feel as connected to it the way I did with this crazy, sleepy, and maddening yet lovable city nestled in a crook of the Mississippi River.
Not for the first time, I wondered if I’d been too hasty in giving up my tenured position at Tulane and moving across the lake.
But on a morning like this, it was easy to believe it had all been a mistake. It wasn’t yet hot, my sinuses weren’t screaming yet from the thick humidity, and there’s nothing as charming as the Quarter in the morning—as long as you stayed away from Bourbon Street. You didn’t make the decision lightly, either, I reminded myself as I stopped at the corner at Chartres and waited for the line of cars to pass. You made the best possible decision you could at the time. And you’re sane now, aren’t you? You would have gone right out of your mind if you’d not left.
But was that a cop-out?
I couldn’t help but wonder about that as I crossed the street and made my way down to Decatur Street. I could smell the river—I’d always loved the river and found some peace by just sitting on the levee and watching the wide expanse of brown water swirling and rushing by the way it had for thousands and thousands of years. It always made me calm and serene, made my problems seem tiny and insignificant.
I decided to take a walk along the levee every morning I was in town.
I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that there wasn’t a line at the CC’s—apparently I’d missed the on-my-way-to-work morning rush. The place was practically empty, other than a couple of loners reading the newspaper at some tables, and a group farther in the back. I ordered a large cup of house dark roast and an “everything” bagel. I put the bagel through the toaster at the condiment station, and once it was hot and toasted, slathered cream cheese and chives liberally on both halves. I found a small table in the back, near where the small group was having their breakfast, and sighed happily as I sat down. I pulled out my notes as I started eating the bagel. My workshop on The Romantic Hero / Heroine wasn’t until one, and even though I knew my material inside and out (I had condensed a week’s worth of lectures from my writing class into an hour and fifteen minutes), I preferred to always go over my notes beforehand. I didn’t ever want to be one of those tedious instructors who clearly have the lecture memorized and speak in a monotone, boring everyone to tears. I have found that refreshing my memory a few hours ahead of time always seemed to result in a friendly lecture that was not only lively but also encouraged audience participation.
I’d just finished eating my bagel and was quite happily immersed in my notes when someone at the next table said Antinous. My concentration destroyed, I couldn’t help but look over at their table.
The group consisted of two men and two women eating some kind of egg and cheese and bagel sandwiches. Each also had an enormous cup of steaming coffee in front of them. It was one of the women who’d said the name, and I noticed they all had lanyards around their necks with name badges dangling at the bottom—clearly they were in town for Angels and Demons.
I decided it wouldn’t hurt anyone if I eavesdropped a bit.
“Well,” the woman who was speaking continued, “she was such a horrible fucking bitch to so many people, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was murder after all. It couldn’t have happened to a better person. I don’t care if she is dead, I hated her and don’t mind saying so. When she posted that horrible review of my book, I would have gladly killed her if I had the chance.” She had close-cropped red hair gathered into a short ponytail at the base of her neck. I didn’t recognize her. Her round face was flushed—whether from the heat or from her own emotional state, I couldn’t tell. She was sitting so that she was facing me, and she was smearing butter angrily on the top half of her bagel before replacing it so firmly on top of the sandwich some of the scrambled eggs squirted out on each side. She was a little heavyset, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. A barbed-wire tattoo circled her wrist and a rhinestone stud sparkled in her nose. She was wearing one of those ridiculous Midnight -T-shirts reading Team Rolf, and gold wire-rimmed glasses rested at the end of her nose. “Talk about reaping what you sow. She was always horrible, frankly, even back when she just wrote Twelver fanfic.” She sniffed disdainfully. “She was never any good, and she didn’t get better when she started writing original fiction.” She made air quotes as she said the last two words.
“That’s right, I always forget you knew her from back then,” the other woman said.
The original speaker started shoving the eggs back into her sandwich. “I wish I’d never known she existed. She was just as horrible on the fan boards as she was on her website. And the fanfic she used to write was disturbing. Not to mention her plagiarism.” She compressed her lips together. “Disgusting stuff, really.”
“Oh, come on, Pat, the plagiarism charge was never proved,” one of the men interrupted. He was balding and heavyset and also wore glasses. The armpits of his black T-shirt were wet, and his reddened forehead was covered with sweat. His voice was deep and booming. “And all of that shit is disturbing. Teachers with underage students—way to play into the stereotype that all gay men are really just pedophiles waiting to get our perverted hands on children.” He took another drink of his coffee. “And all that preaching about the cause and everything she’d done for gay equality—when she attacked any and every gay man who dared to write a gay romance. Fucking bitch. I hope she’s roasting on a spit in hell.”
“Don’t be an asshole, Travis.” The other woman, a large-breasted brunette with her hair in pigtails on either side of her face, interrupted him. “Just because you don’t approve of fanfic doesn’t mean it’s all bad, or wrong. Some really good writers have come out of fanfic.”
“Besides, we’re not talking about fanfic, we’re talking about Antinous,” the redheaded woman, Pat, continued. “I’m not ashamed of my fanfic background. A lot of lesbian romance writers came out of Xena fanfic, for example, and look at them now.”
“If you mean Aphrodite Longwell, you can just stop right now,” Travis responded. “Her stuff is practically a war crime. I’ve heard she can’t go to Europe because she’s afraid she’ll get dragged before the International Court in the Hague—but no matter what they could do to her, it wouldn’t be punishment enough.”
That did it. I couldn’t help myself. I laughed, and they all turned to look at me.
My laugh is loud and raucous—Jerry swears it can rattle windows—and I gave them an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing, and that was rather funny. But you’re wrong, you know—Aphrodite didn’t start with Xena fanfic—she started publishing in the eighties, long before Xena came along.” I didn’t add that I also thought her fiction was a war crime.
I try to keep my opinions of my colleagues to myself. I don’t always succeed, but I do make the effort. I may not respect the final product, but I can respect the amount of work it takes to produce it.
“Oh my God, you’re Tracy Norris, aren’t you?” Pat’s eyes bugged out, and her eyes practically popped out of her round face. She elbowed
Travis in the side hard enough for him to grunt. She added smugly, “I told you Winter Lovelace and Tracy Norris were the same person, but you never believe anything I say.”
“Yes, you’re absolutely right.” I gave them a slight nod. “Guilty as charged. I am both Tracy Norris and Winter Lovelace.”
“You saw her fall, didn’t you?” The brunette woman’s eyes narrowed as she turned around farther in her chair. “Please tell me she suffered.”
“Demi!” Pat shushed her, but the woman was having none of it.
“I’m not going to be a hypocrite and act like I’m sorry she’s dead,” she insisted. “She was a horrible person and the world is better off without her, you said so yourself.” She shrugged. “My name is Demi Filipiak, and this is Pat Greenleaf.” She gestured with her head at Travis. “Travis Atkins, and this other fool’s name is Mike Burton.”
“Nice to meet you all,” I replied, smiling. “And no, Demi, I didn’t actually see her fall. I just saw her land.” I shuddered, hearing it again in my head. “It was kind of unpleasant, actually.”
“We’re actually all going to be in your workshop this afternoon.” Pat’s smile didn’t waver a bit—and I recognized the look in her eyes. She was starstruck, which always makes me uncomfortable because I hardly consider myself to be a star. I’m not Sue Grafton or Sara Paretsky, for God’s sake. “And I’m really looking forward to it. I mean, I’m a big fan of your work as Winter Lovelace, but I really love, love, love the Laura Lassitter series. I wish I’d been sure you were the same person because I’d have brought my copies to have them signed.” She blinked at me a few times, and her smile was getting so big it had to hurt. “It’s amazing how different the lesbian romances are from the mysteries! You’d never know the same person wrote both. You really are a master at writing.”
“Thank you—I tried to make sure they’re very different.” I was pleased. It’s always lovely to meet someone who reads your work when you’re in a non-embarrassing environment. There’s nothing worse than having someone approach you when you’re somewhere like a public restroom, or when you’re buying tampons at the drugstore and the cashier recognizes you. “I hope you enjoy the workshop. Are you all romance writers?”
“I’m not,” Mike Burton said while the others nodded. He had mousy brown hair and was really slender—his arms were covered with colorful tattoos. He was wearing a Metallica T-shirt, which kind of took me aback. Get over yourself—gay men can like heavy metal, they don’t all like Lady Gaga and Madonna. “I write mysteries, but I figured there’s a lot of similarities between romances and mysteries, and character is character.” He shrugged. “Writing’s writing, right?”
Before I could answer him, Pat quickly asked, “When is the next Laura Lassiter coming out?”
I have to finish writing it first. “Not until next February, I’m afraid.”
“That long?” Pat’s face fell. She blew out her breath in disappointment.
I steered the conversation back around to Antinous. “I was rather curious about Antinous,” I said slowly. “You say she came out of fanfic?”
Demi nodded. “Yes, that’s where Pat and I met her. She wrote primarily the creepy stuff—you know, like the werewolf brothers having three-ways with the master mage, that kind of stuff. That’s the problem with fandom, if you ask me. People will write this really revolting stuff but you can’t really kick them out of the groups, you know? I mean, we’re all really just fans, and who’s to say whose fiction is okay and whose isn’t? I started reading it all because, you know, I devoured the books and just couldn’t wait for the next one to come out—”
“Like your Laura books,” Pat interrupted.
“There’s not Laura fanfic, is there?” I asked, frowning a little bit. It had never occurred to me that some of my readers might want to create their own Laura adventures, and now that it had occurred to me, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, to be honest.
My gut feeling was that I didn’t like it one bit.
Laura was my character, damn it!
“There might be.” Demi shrugged. “I’ve never looked for it.”
Ouch.
“Antinous was one of those people who try to take over everything, you know, like they appoint themselves as arbiters of what’s good and what’s not, and God fucking forbid you disagree with anything she says.” Travis made a face. “I wrote some fanfic, yes, but mine wasn’t erotic.”
“Erotic?” The werewolf brothers having three-ways with the master mage. I felt a little nauseous. “So what you’re saying is there’s Midnight porn? She wrote Midnight Twelver porn?”
“Not all of it is erotic,” Travis insisted, turning a little red. “I just wrote, you know, adventures in addition to what was already in the canon—adventures some of the lesser characters had while the main ones were having their big adventures that, you know, the minor characters weren’t involved in. It was good practice for writing my own fiction. I wrote a couple of those, and then people liked them and I thought maybe I should try my hand at original stuff.” He smiled proudly. “I sold my very first non-fanfic short story, and I’ve been writing ever since.”
“That’s terrific!” I beamed at him, thinking it might be an interesting exercise for one of my writing classes when I was back at ULR in the fall. It could actually be an excellent exercise for character building—dissect an actual character from published fiction, write a little scene for them.
“Antinous, of course, trashed my first novel.” He scowled. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a book, which he passed over to me.
I looked at it and fought not to smile. It was the typical gay male book cover—a muscular headless man with no shirt or body hair, the top button of his jeans undone so the waistband of his underwear was exposed. Behind him was a bed with the figure of another man facedown on it, the sheet down so far I could see the crack of his ass. In flowing script were the words To Love Again and across the bottom was the name Travis Atkins. Under the name were the words Best-selling author of “Love Is a Rose.” I turned it over and read the brief description on the back:
After Roman’s first love was killed in a tragic accident, he never dreamed he would ever find love again. Shutting himself off from his friends and family, Roman throws himself into his work to forget his grief. Until the handyman he hires to do some repair work on his house shows up one day, and Roman starts having those feelings again…
Will Roman take a chance on having his heart broken again?
It sounded like the set-up of a gay porn movie—and not one of the good ones.
Oh, because the plot of your latest romance novel is groundbreaking? Stop being such a bitch.
I passed it back to Travis with a smile. “It sounds wonderful. Congratulations.”
He practically simpered. “Oh,” he pushed it back into my hands, “you can keep it. I’d consider it an honor.” Then he grabbed it back and pulled a Sharpie out of his pocket. “I’ll sign it for you.” He opened it up, scribbled something on the title page, and shoved it back at me with a huge smile on his face.
I didn’t want it, but I also didn’t want to be rude, so I slipped it into my bag. “Thank you.”
“Please let me know what you think of it,” he went on. “My website’s in my bio on the back cover, and you can email me there.”
“Like she doesn’t have anything better to do than read your book and give you a critique,” Pat responded with a rather snarky laugh.
Travis looked stricken, and I could have slapped her. Instead, I just gave her a little frown and said, “You said Antinous was problematic in fandom, didn’t you?”
“Oh, she was horrible.” Demi shook her head. “Absolutely horrible. Mean and nasty like you wouldn’t believe, always complaining about how this story or that story wasn’t ‘authentic.’ That was her big thing, you know—saying books and stories weren’t ‘authentic.’” She smirked. “And all that time she was pretending to be a man. And even after she started writing origi
nal fiction, she was always dinging other writers for not writing ‘authentic’ stories about gay men. Like somehow she was the authority on being authentic.” She rolled her eyes theatrically. “Because of course the biggest authority on gay authenticity is a woman pretending she’s a man.”
“And she was misogynist enough to be convincing—I really thought she was a man.” Pat picked up the story from there. “I mean, some of the stuff she would say about other authors—and readers—was just unbelievably horrible. And then she decided to write her own books, and then she’d come on the boards and mock us for writing our fanfic while he, she, whatever, you know, was really doing amazing original work and getting these huge advances for her historical romances. Bragging and taunting us. And if anyone struck back at her, she’d get all hurt and offended and weepy about how mean people were being to her.” She snapped her fingers. “She could dish it out in spades but she couldn’t take it.”
“She actually talked about how much money she made?” I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. No authors I knew would ever talk about money except in the most broad and general ways. I was also raised to believe that talking about money was something you just didn’t do, ever.
“Bitch, please—everything she said was a lie.” Mike leaned forward in his chair. “The publisher she was working with didn’t pay advances—well, neither publisher she worked with. Kyle Bennett and Asgard certainly don’t. They don’t do any editing, either, or copy-editing. Pretty much the way you turned in the book was how it went to print. I mean, the press I’m with might not pay advances, but at least I have an editor and the books get copy-edited.”
“And her first publisher went out of business—went bankrupt.” Demi laughed nastily. “I mean, she was always bragging on her blog and everywhere about her enormous sales and how much money she was making and all the fan email she got, but if that was the case, why did her publisher go bankrupt? And if he was bankrupt, how was she getting paid her enormous royalties? And of course when she signed up with Asgard, she started posting nasty stuff about her old publisher.”
Slash and Burn Page 5
