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Boogieman in Lavender

Spellcheck – Boogieman In Lavender

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If I Ran the World… Well, first I’d get rid of war and poverty and injustice and crime and hatred and all those awful “Children of the Corn” sequel movies that even Stephen King wants nothing to do with. Then I’d get down to the really important stuff. There are words I just can’t spell worth a crap! I’m a writer, I’m supposed to be able to do this. I do use spellcheck but it’s so damn frustrating that after decades there are words I continue to spell the same way, and that way is WRONG! For openers, let’s check … Read more

Jeff Baker, Boogieman in Lavender: “Extra Innings.”

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Mike & Darryl

Extra Innings by Jeff Baker I’m a writer. It’s who I am. It’s who I think I always wanted to be, even during Grade School and Jnr. High when I wasn’t sure “what you want to be when you grow up.” I always liked doing something creative, even if it was just drawing parodies of comic books in a notebook during class. Being a writer permeates my being, even more than my sexual orientation. I didn’t realize I was Bisexual until I was about twenty years old. But that isn’t as important as the writing. I lucked out in 2008 … Read more

Initially Yours, On Beyond Cisgender VI Jeff Baker, Boogieman in Lavender

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Initially Yours: On Beyond Cisgender VI by Jeff Baker NOTE: This occasional series was inspired in 2019 by suggestion from A. M. Leibowitz about a reading list for High School beyond the straight, male paradigm. —jsb I am writing this during March 2023, which is Woman’s History Month. So here (a month or so late!) is a short overview of some (not all!) of the women who wrote sci-fi for the pulps and a little later. I fits in well with this ongoing series “On Beyond Cisgender” which started as recommendations for High School reading but these books are fine … Read more

Two Briggon Snow Podcasts – Boogieman in Lavender

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Look Up & Roommates – Two Briggon Snow Podcasts Radio drama, the “theater of the mind” is alive and well, in podcast form anyway. Back in the days of “The Shadow” or even the later “Radio Mystery Theater,” there would not have even been a mention of any LGBT people or issues. Not so with modern-day podcasts. Two in particular are produced by actor/director Briggon Snow. “Look Up,” a 2020-21 podcast series from Atypical Artists and created by Snow involves Emmet (Evan Bittencourt) and Lincoln (Snow) in a sci-fi drama. They are two teenagers who encounter each other on the … Read more

“We’re Here” For a Best of the Year. New Yearly Anthology Series – Boogieman in Lavender

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What would you have for your last meal? In Ann LeBlanc’s story “Twenty Thousand Last Meals on an Exploding Station,” an engineer on a doomed space station finds herself in a time loop and just has time to eat at a different one of the station’s thousands of restaurants before the end, an end which keeps repeating itself. This imaginative delicacy is just one of the delights in the 2021 edition of the new yearly anthology of Best Queer Speculative Fiction of the Year “We’re Here,” published by Neon Hemlock Press. The series stands as a fine replacement for Lethe … Read more

New Year’s 2023: Jeff Baker, Boogieman in Lavender

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This Is Myyyyy New Years Resolution by Jeff Baker (title from Spike Jones) So here we are in Two-Thousand-Twenty-Three. As a guy who was watching reruns of “The Jetsons” back in 1969 I find that amazing. There are plenty of reasons for hope about 2023, if only from naive optimism. At the very least, Civil War did not break out in 2022 and the partisan hacks who thought they wanted civil war were shocked, shocked at any violence seemingly directed at them. And the possibility of turning back rights for LGBT people in the U.S. was squelched at least for … Read more

A Truman Memory – Boogieman In Lavender

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AI Christmas Carol

AUTHOR’S NOTE: We last encountered Truman Capote’s short stories in this column this past February. https://www.queerscifi.com/truman-capotes-queer-tales-of-fantasy-jeff-baker-boogieman-in-lavender/ We close out the year with a look at his most famous short tale and another story for Christmas. A good many readers first encounter Truman Capote’s story “A Christmas Memory” in school, in their textbooks or possibly in one of the many fine recordings of the story by Geraldine Paige or others. A bittersweet recollection of several incidents in the narrator’s childhood, probably based on the Gay author’s own youth as well as on Miss Sook Faulk, Capote’s cousin who seems to have … Read more

Bewitched, Bewitched, You’ve Got Me In Your Spell—Jeff Baker, Boogieman in Lavender

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Bewitched

Bewitched, Bewitched, You’ve Got Me In Your Spell by Jeff Baker AUTHOR’S NOTE: As I mentioned last month, this column was intended for October and Halloween but maybe it fits for the Thanksgiving season too! ——jeff If there’s one fantasy sitcom that is perfect viewing for LGBT viewers year-round, especially during the Halloween season it’s probably “Bewitched,” the magical comedy that starred Elizabeth Montgomery as a witch happily married to a mere mortal. Not only does the series feature several LGBT performers but its themes of accepting “the other” are something an audience doesn’t have to be Gay to understand … Read more

Boogieman In Lavender: Ban This Book!!!!! (Now That I Have Your Attention…)

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AUTHOR’S NOTE: I had planned on running something for Halloween (in fact had it already been written.) But disturbing trends call for something else for this, the October of our discontent. October is in the air. Halloween, falling leaves, football. And book bans and challenges are roaring into high gear. A decade or so ago, Conservative talk radio would grumble about “The American Library Association and their Banned Book Week,” claiming that “no books are being banned” even as they slyly attempted to remove books from libraries and bookstores. Now, with more conservative-friendly judges and organizations energized we see supposed … Read more

George Cecil Ives – Boogieman in Lavender

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George Cecil Ives was gay before it was cool and openly gay before that was accepted. He was British and founded a secret society for “Homosexuals” called “The Order of Chaeronea” named after a battle where male lovers of the Theban Band had been slaughtered nearly 1500 years before. Ives co-founded what became the British Sexological Society, one of the first groups to take the study of human sexuality seriously. He knew Oscar Wilde personally and knew Lord Alfred Douglas intimately. And he was a writer. He wrote poetry, one novel and plenty of non-fiction. We know all this, because … Read more