Roulette.
It’s been called sharp and biting, filled with crude language, and so manly—even Carl Horn of Dark Horse would read it. It’s also known as being in ‘Dramaqueen’s RUSH’. I’m here to say that It still is. No matter how many times I say this at GGY, it seems people still keep inquiring after that fact. I’m under contract with DQ, a contract that gives Dramaqueen the exclusive right to publish Roulette, in English; I honor my contracts. Those of you who know me know that when negotiating a contract [in my native English], I make every effort to retain the right to shop my work to non-English language publishers. I’m weird like that…I tend to enjoy having control like this, over a story I’ve busted my ass to write; it’s one of this weird little egotistical quirks of mine that will forever keep me from scoring a gig with the ‘pubs that rule the market’. (^_^)
Roulette was licensed recently to The Wild Side, in Germany, thus prompting some serious email inquiries about my relationship with DQ, and the future of Roulette [mainly RUSH] in English. I can’t comment on RUSH, or the other stories in RUSH, I can only talk about my own. Basically, Laura and I wanted to finish the title and still get paid for it, and see it in print. Our English contract only pays us when Roulette is printed and sold—with this not taking place, we had to look elsewhere for publication. Roulette is a labor of love for us; it was our chance to create some gay content that incorporated themes we loved in movies like Scarface and Donnie Brasco—and because we were tailoring it for Dramaqueen’s market, our editor made sure we remained on the ‘BL path’, as much as possible. I confess that without our editor and left to our own devices, we’d probably had made something no ‘BL’ fan would’ve enjoyed (^_^). We wanted the middle and ending to be printed and read, in order to show how many interesting changes play out and stray from the themes presented in the first chapter. Riley and Colletti aren’t just two adversaries who’re hot for each other; the plot twists, the characters change in appearence, and the relationship dynamic isn’t as conventional as most ‘yaoi’ fans are used to—but then again, Roulette never did quite fit in with what most ‘yaoi fans’ swooned over.
I fondly recall my original ending for the story being quite tragic; and my editor felt that this wasn’t going to fit in with the overall story [or rather--the concept of RUSH] and asked me to write another ending. It wasn’t easy and I resisted at first. I felt my original ending was the ‘greatest thing eva’ for these two men, but even Laura disliked it: she didn’t want a HEA [happily ever after] typical BL closer, but she also didn’t want anyone to die. My editor at DQ, a master at working around my ego, finally said, ‘Rewrite it, for Laura…’ (=_=); If you’ve never met Laura Carboni, let me tell you about her—I equate knowing her to being friends with a smurf. She’s ‘Italy Smurf’; extremely optimistic and always upbeat; with an intense love of all things slash and yaoi. Having her plead with me in broken English is enough to make me give her anything she’s asking for. So I caved and ‘did it for Laura’ The way I ended it worked out perfectly—IMHO; but never take my opinion on my work as gospel, to me—it’s all good, unless more than three people tell me otherwise.
I’m rambling… Yesterday I contacted Laura about updates, and as we both spent time mooning over Riley’s changes in the last chapter, we decided to plan a new cover for the German release—just in case Dramaqueen gets around to releasing new issues of RUSH [and eventually using our English covers]. We wanted something different; something our German and Austrian readers could call their own, and something our publisher could take to conventions and show off without a plain brown wrapper. (^_^) So far, the new cover is in the planning stages—it’ll likely be on the publisher’s web site around the time of its projected release [I think our pub anticipated autumn, but Laura needs till November to finish thanks to her schedule with Winx] so I would suspect around Christmas? When the cover posts, I’ll link to it here. So that’s what’s up with Roulette.
It’s being drawn, it’s being printed, it’s not swimmin’ wit da fishes.
