First, I’d like to thank everyone at Scorching Book Reviews for organizing this hop, and everyone who’s participating to make it fun!

Everyone on the list will be hosting their own giveaway, so be sure you hop around to them all and enter!

Don’t forget to enter the Rafflecopter for the grand prize of a $25 gift card to the online bookseller of your choice!

My prize is a $5 gift card to Amazon or Barnes & Noble (winner’s choice).  Answer my question at the end of this post to enter.

For some reason WordPress doesn’t like linky lists so the pic above will take you back to Scorching Book Reviews and the complete list of sites.  (If you’re a minor please click the pic now.  My blog contains adult content.)  I’ll add another link at the end to make it easier on everyone.

I love books.  Have all my life.  I also love to volunteer, which is cool because it’s not hard to find volunteer opportunities that involve books in some way.  Not long ago (in OPT/old person time), I spent a day helping the local LGBTQ center log and organize books for their (then) fledgling lending library.  One of the other volunteers was a nice young gal and something she said stuck with me:  Most of the books I pick up turn out to be gay.

She, like many other young women I’ve met, had no idea how lucky she was if that was true.  She didn’t understand that so many of us spent half our lives looking for those books, hoping the next book we picked up would have even one single character we could identify with, only to be disappointed time after time.

Almost twenty years ago I started writing with the goal of being published (after a lifetime of doing so just for my own pleasure).  The only stories that were picked up by publishers were the ones without any gay characters.  It took a while to realize this, so I tried an experiment.  One of my short stories was about a woman whose son had committed suicide because his father didn’t accept him after he came out.  After I removed the single sentence making it clear how the woman ended up alone in a cheap apartment, the next editor I submitted it to accepted it for her anthology.  That very easily could’ve been a coincidence, but it happened to my alter-ego and it left a mark.

(Long, boring story full of writer-angst deleted.)  (Along with an extended paragraph about the lack of bisexual fiction that doesn’t feed into biphobic stereotypes.)

It’s amazing and cool that now libraries and book stores have “Queer Pride” endcaps (I just saw one at Powell’s but their YA section is always too busy to get a good picture of it), and rainbow flags on the shelves near certain authors’ books.  But there’s still a long way to go before we reach literary equality, so please join me in supporting authors of LGBTQ fiction.  Whether they’re queer or straight, they’re writing the books I want to read and the books that kids of all ages should be able to walk in (or log on) and find anytime they want to.  The only way to ensure they’ll still be available a week from now or a year from now is to buy them.

So take the book $$$ I’m giving away and buy some LGBTQ fiction!  Buy my M/M Erotic Romance or some sweet YA, it doesn’t matter—your support will be noticed and appreciated.  If you’re looking for more ideas, I suggest Lambda Literary; they have many lists of cool books to try out.

For an entry to my giveaway just answer this question:  where did you find your last great LGBT read?  If it’s an award site or a list, please include a link.  I’m not the only one who’s always looking for the next great read!  😀

If you’d like more than one entry to my giveaway, do any of these things and let me know in your comment!

• Follow my blog
• Follow me on Twitter
• Tweet about the blog hop
• Like/Follow my author page on FB

Grand Prize  >>>>  a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks for stopping by, now hop on!

photo credit: shilly shally via photopin cc