Thursday, January 21, 2010

In the Whipped Cream Spotlight

In case you missed my mountain of tweets, this week I've been in the Author Spotlight at Whipped Cream!
Marianne and Judy, the wonderful women at the Long and Short Romance Reviews and Whipped Cream sites, asked me to send them a blog post for every day of the week. It wasn't hard to narrow in on a theme. I figured I could write a whole lot of fluff that would keep every sort of reader moderately entertained/unoffended OR I could send them posts that were off the beaten path. Emotional. Educational. Heartfelt. Close to home. The type of blog posts where some readers might take one look at the title and click away, totally put off.

Wanna guess what I did?

I went the activist route. How could I not?

Ultimately, I thought: I have a spotlight. What am I going to put centre stage--myself OR the interests of trans people here and everywhere? How could I choose my own small self or even my body of work over a marginalized, groundlessly feared, and hypersexualized segment of the population? Particularly when my partner is a member of that population?

I sent blog posts about why I write transgender fiction, definitions of transgender terms, and falling in love with my Sweet. I admit, I made a concentrated effort to be palatable. I understand that not everybody wants two scoops of activism with their morning coffee. That's why I drew largely from my personal life, hoping readers would embrace a love story. Yes, the personal is political! (says Giselle; Sweet and I disagree on this point but we all know she's wrong LOL) I think/hope coming at it from a story-telling perspective--especially since the stories are about my own life--got the message across effectively to an audience of readers.

Judging from the loving and supportive comments I've received, it was a good choice.
Thank you for reading,
Bright Blessings,
Giselle Renarde

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