pameladean | One step forward, six steps back (Say Yes to Gay YA)

rachelmanija have an essay up on Genreville (a site well worth the attention of readers of sf and fantasy in general) about sending a collaborative YA fantasy novel to an agent and being told that the agent would represent and expect to sell it if they would just remove a gay viewpoint character, or make the character, at least apparently, heterosexual -- one suggestion was that, should the series the book is part of be a huge hit, the character could be revealed to be gay later on. Ugh.
I am frankly astonished that anybody should have such an experience in 2011, but that just shows my naivete, and my enormous good luck in having an editor who told me that the same-sex relationship in my forthcoming novel was one of the things she liked.
The article is set up so that other authors who have had similar experiences can comment pseudonymously if they like. I am curious but alarmed to see how many more writers have had this happen to them.
Pamela

ETA: The agent not named in the original Genreville post has responded:

http://theswivet.blogspot.com/2011/09/guest-blogger-joanna-stampfel-volpe.html

sartorias and

rachelmanija have responded in turn:

http://rachelmanija.livejournal.com/969918.html

And Malinda Lo, who has published YA novels with gay characters, produces some statistics, which demonstrates that really, there is a serious problem here:

http://www.malindalo.com/2011/09/i-have-numbers-stats-on-lgbt-young-adult-books-published-in-the-u-s/

Having known

sartorias for the better part of 25 years, and having known

rachelmanija for a much shorter but non inconsiderable amount of time, I am inclined to look askance at the agent's version of events.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Are we talking more than one agent or editor here? Because if there's a publishing house to be blamed, it seems to me it should be. A whisper campaign helps no one, imho.

And I hope someone's compiling the list of gay YA fantasy that's been successful. Diane Duane preceded modern YA fantasy, but she ought to be on the list. Doesn't Francesca Lia Block count? If this is a problem, the way to change it is with examples that have worked.

I quote from the original article: "This isn’t about that specific agent; we’d gotten other rewrite requests before this one. Previous agents had also offered to take a second look if we did rewrites… including cutting the viewpoint of Yuki, the gay character."

Further, this presumably cannot be about only one publishing house, as a problem with only one publishing house would not really make a significant difference to an agent's chances of selling the story, would it?

The claim -- which I don't have the evidence to support or deny, but I think regardless we need to accept it as the thing being claimed -- is that this is a common thing and that narrowing it to only one or two agents or editors misrepresents it as a problem with specific people rather than a broad systemic problem.

I don't think that has anything to do with what I would call a "whisper campaign".

If there are more, name them all. It should be easy enough to look at publisher's lists and see who has gay protagonists and who doesn't.

http://tanuki-green.livejournal.com/329393.html

Excellent!

A different list compiled from a hashtag started by Elizabeth Bear: http://megwrites.dreamwidth.org/210641.html

One step forward, six steps back (Say Yes to Gay YA)

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