November 2000

It has been a while since I wrote this column. Since the last time, I have been to China, Mexico, and Japan. All that traveling must have scrambled my mind, for I lost first my umbrella, then my camera, and finally my purse with my wallet, passport, and train ticket in Kyoto. Thankfully, I got all of my stuff back, and I made it back to New York in one piece. ^^;;

You can read about my adventure with Susan in Kyoto in the photo journal below. It'll be up as soon as Susan develops some of her films.

I got back on the 26th, and with the jet-lag I was not up to putting out the November issue until this weekend. There will be a December issue, not to worry, and we'll try very hard to make sure it's actually released in December. ^_^;;

I promise a report on original June doujinshi and some interesting mangaka as soon as I go through my loot in Japan. I haven't read much yaoi recently. There are usually two kind of yaoi readers. The first group read mostly doujinshi based on their favorite series, and the second read mostly yaoi manga and original June. I belong to the second camp, and I simply haven't been able to find any new authors that I find interesting. Hopefully that's going to change now that I've raided Mandarake's manga and original June shelves.

In the mean time I've gone back to reading fantasy and historical novels by the dozens, as if to make up for all the time I spent reading manga in the past. Many of the popular novels with m/m themes are already listed in the English yaoi page, but it's missing quite a few of the older novels that I hesitated to recommend because they are hard to find. Now with Half.com and Alibris, you can find many out of print books easily. So below are some of my favorites.

If you like historical fiction, and Regency in particular, try "Edward, Edward" by Lolah Burford, a shocking little novel written during the 70's. It has a honest to goodness shota relationship between an English Duke and his lover's child. It was a incestuous and occasionally disturbing affair, yet the book still managed to keep that elegant and elegiac regency tone. How the author ever managed to get published by a mainstream publishing house is quite beyond me. It makes me look on the 70's with much kindlier eyes. If you like this novel, you may also enjoy "A Vision of Stephen" by the same author. Both of these novels can be found by the dozens on Alibris.com.

Continuing in the historical vein, there is Cecelia Holland's Jerusalem, which features "a torrid relationship between a Knight Templar and a son of Saladin". What more could one ask for? And don't miss the hilarious readers' reviews on Amazon. Buggery and sacrilege indeed.

When the topic of the couple people would like to see slashed most in a fantasy novel comes up, Gerald Tarrant and Damian from C.S. Friedman's Coldfire trilogy are always mentioned most often. But many of you probably haven't read the Naga Teot series by Heather Gladney. The relationship between Naga and his liege lord Tanman makes Gerald Tarrant and Damian's look positively anemic by comparison. The two books, "Teot's War", and "Blood Storm", turn up with regularity on many used book sites, and they'll be worth all the effort.

There are now many sites that recommend slashy novels. But the most complete resource remains M.A. Mahorajan's Alternative Sexualities in S.F. and Fantasy List. This list is not terribly informative, but used in conjunction with Amazon's terribly informative reader's reviews, it's invaluable. I know that when I'm at a loss for reading material I've always been able to turn up something on that list.

If you also spend hours searching for slashy novels, you may wish to join the slashy pronovels list on Egroups.

Now let me cover a bit of Chinese novels as well. I've talked about Chinese Boy's Love sites before, but this time I'll recommend some professional novel sites instead.

Jinjiang Literary City has the biggest collection of Taiwanese romance novels on-line, and scattered among them are quite a few of the more popular m/m romance novels. The author Maozi is good for light and clever comedy, and Lu Xichen is good for sappy romance. Xinyu is is one of the more established authors. New writers to look for include Shiya, Yuren.

If you prefer reading traditional Chinese, try the Taiwanese sites Dream Garden and Flying Elephant Publishing, both endorsed by the publishing companies. You can sign up for a membership and read novels for free. Even if you don't read Chinese, take a look at Flying Elephant. It has some lovely novel covers.

As you might expect, Chinese gay literature, (yes, it does exist), is different from Chinese BL, but to people brought up with a Western sensibility the stories will feel closer to yaoi than the gay literature in the West. Boy's Sky is the premier gay site. My favorite novels are Xinshungdiyinan (The freshmen year), a bittersweet story of coming of age, with one of the most endearing character I've come across in years, and Zhaoxiaomingtanlianai (Zhaoxiaoming in Love) is a hilarious comedy of manners in a New Jersey college campus, of all places.

Mimi