Current available works and free reads on the web at:
http://www.jrocci.com
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http://j-rocci.livejournal.com/
http://jrocci.blogspot.com/
Torquere Books
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Check out my blog for reviews of books and movies!

Doing a major flist reduction and general spring cleaning around here.

Allergies are still kicking my tail. House is semi-orderly and not hermetically sealed yet, but I'm getting there. Other than that, working on writing. Yay.

ETA: I should add, writerly-related people, please feel free to friend me on my j_rocci account, if you have not already done so. I'm mostly clearing out LJ accounts where people only cross-post from Dreamwidth rather than LJ. I'm on Dreamwidth at http://j-rocci.dreamwidth.org/

I hadn't heard of Jim Hines (author) before, but after reading his blog entry about Striking a Pose (Women and Fantasy Covers), where he attempts to pose the same as a sampling of women on urban fantasy book covers all to illustrate how impractical and uncomfortable the poses are, I think I'll be checking his books out...

Also, some random links from the internet, while I keep plugging away on my hockey novel:

Sherlock meets Sidney Paget. The rest of robinade's tumblr is entertaining as well...

And Miss Representation, an 8 minute trailer for a documentary (that has some NSFW images). If you have a young woman in your life, you need to watch this. If you have a young man in your life, you need to watch this. We all just need to watch this.

I'm posting this on the personal journal, because I like to keep my professional one fluffy and positive. These are my rambling thoughts on the issue, tangential and removed and trying to parse what's going on.

First, I don't abide by lying. There are so many truths you can say without being dishonest to manage the image you want to present, that to outright lie indicates fear, anxiety and discomfort with one's own identity to me. Nor do I support cultural appropriation, which I define as writing a cultural perspective that is not your own and presenting it as an authentic text of that culture. That goes under lying. As a white female I can write a character who is a black male, but that is not my personal perspective, as empathetic or well-researched as it may be, and I don't claim it to be an authentic black male cultural text. Caveats are your friends. Failing to announce them as an author leads to the angry outcries of readers who have identified with the culture you appropriated, or have identified you with it. Do you have to bend over backwards to announce yourself? No. But don't say you're something you're not when asked.

However, I also do not support publicly exposing an author who has stated that, while he is biologically female, he identifies himself as a man. That gets into sticky transgender issues to me, not to mention evidence of a violation of trust and privacy that I find appalling. I've heard some claims about a non-fiction "coming out as a gay man" story, which I hope aren't true, because re: appropriation above. But the author in question has also admitted to having a male friend appear in public in his place and being fired from a day job for writing erotica -- which reads to me as a person going to great lengths to protect themselves / their identity out of fear.

Would it have been better for the author to be up front about being transgender from the beginning? Definitely. Honesty really is the best policy. Should we condemn someone who is obviously not comfortable with their own body and gender identity because they're not conforming to the traditional definition of male, who may still be defining their gender identity to themselves? Definitely not. There's a "T" in that GLBT, and there's room for all of us.

I can see why a gay male would be upset about someone claiming to be a gay male in a safe space without the physical threats of the off-line world. Privilege is a construct of perceived power; appropriation is claiming that power through manipulations of perception. By stating that you are a gay male in a space where you cannot be physically harmed for doing so allows you the privileges of the gay male world without the threat of repercussion gay men (and lesbians, of course) live with every time they hold someone else's hand in public. It is a different dialogue than the physical world presents.

But can we all have the strength to be honest and open about flouting society's conventions, whether it's in the real world or online? That's something to think on. I think we'd all like to think so -- look at the emphasis on "coming out," pride, allies, family, etc. As part of the GLBT community -- allies / advocates included -- we all push for a more positive environment, with positive dialogue and strength of character and convictions. You don't have to be gay to march in a GLBT rights parade. You also don't take only the positive of the GLBT community without acknowledging it's negatives. Activism is striving for change where something is in need of fixing. But we can't all be activists. Activists can't be activists all the time.

Then something like this happens, and it really is disappointing on all sides. Life is shades of gray, not black and white, cliche as that is, and the tar and feathers stick to everyone in the splash zone. But I think this issue has tapped into an underlying tension in the M/M professional writing community -- one between those who write M/M romance as themselves, straight or gay, male or female, woman or man, and those who feel that straight women writing in the M/M romance genre are appropriating gay culture, no matter how they identify themselves in their author bio. It's a tension and anxiety that I think we all experience at some point in the genre, even as readers. For a subculture considered as going against societal "norms," those norms are a large part of its identity formation and disambiguation.

I also have to wonder how this all relates to the anonymity of the internet. Old school erotica authors often used pseudonyms, but were bound by hardcover distribution and brick-and-mortar stores peddling their stories. These days, all I need is a PDF maker (heck, a .txt file saved as an .html) and I can "publish" whatever I want. Crafting an online identity and persona is how we connect to people in a forum where we really are just text on a screen. Call it what you like, be as honest as you like, and there is still that uncertainty under every online interaction. Is the person I'm conversing with really who I think they are?

Hypothetical: Is it your best friend IMing you, or their little sibling offering a convincing doppleganger on your best friend's account? How do you find out when the replies start to feel hinky? By physically calling the best friend and getting auditory confirmation. Can you do that with everyone on the internet? No, of course not. It's an uncertainty we've internalized, because what do you do when none of the supposedly authentic replies feel hinky? You will never know unless someone else confirms it for you.

And I think a lot of this issue comes down to an uncertainty of intent -- Was this an incident of appropriation and profiteering? Was this someone using the internet to sculpt their identity in a way they feel unable to do in the physical world? Are people angry because the author has challenged their perception of him, checking off boxes in the male cultural norms list we all have running in the back of our minds? Or are they angry because that perception was cultivated through deliberate decisions to deceive, through the use of a stand in and his pictures? Why did the author feel the need to use such tactics in the first place?

We build so much of ourselves through the perceptions of others. When do we take the time to listen to ourselves? Where is the Zen?

And how marginalized do lesbians and bisexuals feel in the ongoing dialogue right now?

If you live in Virginia, please visit the Virginia Regulatory Town Hall and support non-discrimination in child placement agency standards [foster care and adoption]. The pink box at the top has links to PDFs of the regulations. The current regulations protect against discrimination based on race, color, or national origin. The new language would protect against discrimination based on race, color, gender, national origin, age, religion, political beliefs, sexual orientation, disability, or family status. This would apply to all adoption agencies -- not just religious ones.

Basically, I'd like to have the option of adopting kids one day, thanks, Commonwealth of Virginia. We may not take it, but I'd like to know I have the right if we so choose, and the fact that someone could deny us because I'm an atheist or liberal or whatever kind of makes me want to march on Richmond.

Town Hall comments are open through October 11. Please boost the signal on this.

In previous years, I've dwelled on my own experiences, but today I want to focus on hope. It's a simple, elusive little thing that is so hard to cultivate and so easy to snuff out.

Today is a day of remembrance, a time to do a self-check of the nation's health, to look at where we are and how far we've come and where we're still lagging behind. It's a day of community and sharing our burdens, of offering comfort and trying to ease each other's load in difficult times.

We came together as a country and a world after 9/11, and though that spirit sometimes flickers, like a flame caught in the drafts of petty politics, that light has never gone out. Today is a day to feed that flame, nurture it and stoke it back to its full potential.

It's a day to remember that, though nearly 3,000 people died in the terrorist attacks and thousands more in the ensuing wars, America's spirit did not die and there are still brave men and women out there that serve their country daily. You don't have to wear a uniform to guard that which you hold dear, and for all these defenders, 9/11 is not one day out of the year to reflect. It is a reminder with every breath, every action, that failure is not an option. Never again. We are stronger together than we are divided, and we will not falter. We will remain vigilant and protect those that cannot protect themselves, so that they may know the freedoms afforded to all citizens as a right, not a privilege.

Because when you let that light gutter out, with hateful smoke twisting in its absence -- That is when we have lost.

So I remind myself every year around this time, when radio stations start playing their tribute programs and the news is full of reflection weeks in advance, that for 300 million Americans, they were not here and they do not know, but they are trying to understand. Every year, we search for understanding because how could this have happened?

How do we ensure it never happens again?

I'm dropping in on the Torquere Blog, Romance for the Rest of Us, today to share my feelings on steampunk and ask far too many questions to ever truly answer.

Come play in the sandbox:
http://glbtromance.blogspot.com/2011/09/j-rocci-bloggin-today.html

I have today off because I worked my 40 already and looked a little crazy around the eyes! Have some humor!

Project Valour-IT, in memory of SFC William V. Ziegenfuss, helps provide voice-controlled/adaptive laptop computers and other technology to support Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines recovering from hand wounds and other severe injuries. Items supplied include:

• Voice-controlled Laptops - Operated by speaking into a microphone or using other adaptive technologies, they allow the wounded to maintain connections with the rest of the world during recovery.



• Personal GPS - Handheld GPS devices build self-confidence and independence by compensating for short-term memory loss and organizational challenges related to severe TBI and severe PTS/PTSD.



• Wii Video Game Systems - Whole-body game systems increase motivation and speed recovery when used under the guidance of physical therapists in therapy sessions (donated only to medical facilities)

http://soldiersangels.org/project-valour-it.html