Women Bullying Other Women In the Work Force: The Mean Girls, Ryan Field Books

 Women Bullying Other Women In the Work Force: The Mean Girls 

The other day on Twitter I saw a woman author bullying another woman author and I put out my own Tweet stating that there was nothing sadder then seeing a woman author bullying someone. I didn't give names. I didn't go into detail. But I got a few nasty replies from women who proved that some women are mean and they bully each other, and sometimes they even bully men. Of course, I blocked them because I have no patience for bullies. I've seen it all before and I'm not taking the bait. 

With that said, it's a proven fact that women often bully other women from all walks of life. 

In fact, a recent survey found that over two-thirds of women feel they’ve been bullied at work by female colleagues. It’s known as “Queen Bee Syndrome,” and it is a result of women treating other women in a “demoralizing, undermining or bullying” manner. 

Here's more.  Let's stop the bullying and be more supportive. I also know a lot of women who are not bullies and they do offer support to one another. So if you see a bully, call them out. Don't let them bully you. 

Once Upon a Castle by Ryan Field

A Different Kind of Southern Love Story

What readers are saying about “Uncertainty”

Amazon

“A wonderful story that I loved. The characters were well developed and strong. Gus: A sweet young man. Doing something for all the wrong reasons. Craig: his boyfriend, he’ll go along with anything Gus say. Henry: Gus father a no-nonsense man, who’s husband died last year. I enjoyed this story.”



What readers said about “Altered Parts”
“Best Gay Novel In Years. This story will stay with you and you will feel you know every character and the beauty of their home in the mountains of North Carolina.”
In paperback or e-book. #gayromance #Wednesday

Altered Parts

The Wizard of Pride

The Straight Pride Parade

Mean Girls Gay; US Anti-Sodomy Laws

Mean Girls Gay

The actor who played a gay part in the classic Mean Girls film, Daniel Franzese,  recently came out in real life. Mean Girls is having a tenth anniversary this year and he wrote an open letter to his character. I kind of like that. Not the mean girls. The movie was great, but mean girls suck. I like that he came out in his own way, on his own terms, and in a way in which he felt comfortable.

He wrote in a letter published by IndieWire: 'You were proud of who you were; I was an insecure actor. You became an iconic character that people looked up to; I wished I’d had you as a role model when I was younger. I might've been easier to be gay growing up.'

That's powerful. Most gay men can identify with that. I recently was informed by a middle aged gay man still in the closet (married with kids) that he can't e-mail me for a while because he's afraid someone might find out he's gay through e-mails. The paranoia and denial always sets in sooner or later. He contacted me as a reader about two years ago and ever since then we've shared harmless e-mails about life, family, gardening, weather, and all kinds of things. I get e-mails from a lot of closeted gay men who aren't sure what to do, but I don't always get friendly with them. I'll miss this guy's e-mails. But I can't push him to come out and I can't fault him for not coming out. The best I can do is offer support.

You can read more here.

US Anti-Sodomy Laws

I would think most people are like me and they didn't know this. It's been 10 years since SCOTUS ruled that anti-sodomy laws are unconstitutional, and yet 12 states still have them. I sincerely hope this does NOT portend the future of gay marriage in some states. Tony and I have talked about it at length and if PA doesn't legalize gay marriage within the next year or two we're listing the house and moving one mile away to New Jersey where it is legal.

Of 14 states that had anti-sodomy laws, only Montana and Virginia have repealed theirs since the Supreme Court ruling, said Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights organization.

Warbelow says that in addition to Louisiana, anti-sodomy laws remain on the books in Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Utah.

I hope all my gay friends down in gay mecca Wilton Manors have heard about this. I would hate to think anyone I know is breaking the law :)

On a more serious note, the article discusses sodomy and homophobia in a few sections. But I can't help wondering about all those straight couples who use the back door, too. Seriously.

You can read more here.

She Fingered Her Pearls; Snark on Erotica

She Fingered Her Pearls; Snark on Erotica

I really don't think this post needs to be long. It's about writing erotica, and how different people write erotica. And it's not always simple to do because there are words that can either make or break a scene...and in many cases this all depends on the context of the scene.

Yesterday I saw a published author I follow on Twitter making fun of a new self-published author's erotica, and the way this self-published author wrote a few scenes. The published author I follow on Twitter was taking direct quotes from the self-published author's book, tweeting them, and making a joke out of them for the sake of pure snark. In other words, the published author is an asshat in the first degree.

Although no names were mentioned, I thought it was interesting that one author would actually do this mean girl thing to another, so I went over to Amazon and checked out free samples of the published author who was making fun of the new self-published author. I was certain the published author's work would be absolutely perfect. After all, only the most perfect criticize others that way.

And sure enough, this is what I found on the first page in one of her books on Amazon:

"She fingered her pearls..."

This was not erotica, or an erotic scene.

That's not a sentence I would ever use in a book...or anywhere. I would have written, "She touched her pearls," and kept it simple. I'm not a huge fan of words that have some very exact meanings. And when I think of something being "fingered," my mind tends to wander in one naughty, amusing direction. And when a female character is fingering something, I zoom in on one particular part of the female anatomy.

My point is that anyone can take an erotic scene out of context and laugh at it. That's called putting the spin on it. But to take this a step even further, anyone can take any scene (or word within a scene) in any book and laugh at that as well if he or she spins it the right way.

Maybe this is an August thing, because I actually wrote a long post about this almost a year ago, here, after a group of bloggers decided to laugh at erotica. And I gave a few of my own detailed examples of how anyone can put the spin on non-erotic romance, too.  The unfortunate thing is that most who write erotica are not in a position to fight back because it's such a discreet genre. So they let things like this go and the mean authors get away with whatever they want.

I've stopped following the published author who laughed at, and tweeted about, the new self-published author.