{"id":1098,"date":"2009-04-08T09:00:35","date_gmt":"2009-04-08T14:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=1098"},"modified":"2025-07-31T14:41:38","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T19:41:38","slug":"tab-a-slot-b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/tab-a-slot-b\/","title":{"rendered":"Tab A, slot B"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you remember, about 100 years ago in blog time, Eugene got lambasted all over the bloggernacle<\/a> for his book, Angel Falling Softly<\/em><\/a>, for various crimes from \u201cnot very spiritual\u201d to \u201csacrilege\u201d to calls for his excommunication or at the very least, pulling his temple recommend. Eugene\u2019s tab did not fit into the proper slot.<\/p>\n

A while back, I came across a blog I keep a little eye on and had commented just to clarify a point. Yesterday I noticed that \u201cAnonymous\u201d had chastised me for acknowledging that my book is filthy (it is) and for dropping the F-bomb in the first line of the story. The chastisement was something along the lines of, \u201cYou call that quality Mormon fiction?\u201d<\/p>\n

::gallic shrug::<\/p>\n

Well, A) \u201cquality\u201d was used in terms of how well the book is designed by the publisher and how well it is constructed by Lightning Source and B) I don\u2019t consider it Mormon fiction.<\/p>\n

People have different tastes. Nice, sweet, nearly conflict-less LDS fiction wasn\u2019t cutting the mustard for me with regard to sparkle and (dare I say it?) lust (which doesn\u2019t have to be consummated, but could we acknowledge its existence?). Fiction by Mormon authors out in the wild might be my brand of wild<\/strong><\/em> but it\u2019s short on philosophy and faith. Genre romance of any stripe, inspirational to erotica, suffers the same lack of one for the other, so it\u2019s not us. It\u2019s a general lack of crossover between faith and sex.<\/p>\n

Slot B47c&&2kd existed, but there was no correlating Tab A47c&&2kd to put in it.<\/p>\n

I, Random Reader, wanted my slot filled. I\u2019ve been wanting it filled for a long time. And it remained empty, growing cobwebs. I wasn\u2019t writing it, either, because I wanted to \u201cget\u201d published and you don\u2019t \u201cget\u201d published with a mixture like that.<\/p>\n

So I said, \u201cFuck it. I\u2019ll write what I want.\u201d<\/p>\n

As far as I know, I only have 1 (count \u2019em, ONE) LDS reader who\u2019s managed to get past the first page. That\u2019s okay, too. I probably made a mistake in vaguely hoping I could find a small audience amongst my own who, like me, wanted something titillating and faith-affirming (er, maybe) at the same time. Or, at the very least, not anti.<\/p>\n

What I didn\u2019t expect was the positive reaction from non-members who found my portrayal of us as human and extremely fallible, struggling with matters of faith and sexuality, as sympathetic and relatable\u2014and who found the addition of faith to these people\u2019s lives just another layer of their personalities.<\/p>\n

Eh, don\u2019t get me wrong. Plenty of people haven\u2019t liked it also, for various reasons including the politics and my prose style and the fact that my characters aren\u2019t, well, very likable at times. But \u2026 I don\u2019t like everybody else\u2019s books, either, so no harm, no foul. Regardless of all that, though, who liked it, who didn\u2019t, why or whatever, the fact of the matter was that for this consumer, the market had an empty slot. So I carved out my own tab. And lo and behold! I\u2019m not the only one who liked the shape and size of that tab.<\/p>\n

All the foregoing is to say that this past weekend, I was blessed to brainstorm projects with two religious types (one protestant, one Catholic and independent of each other) who also like the s(t)eamier side of genre romance. It doesn\u2019t hurt that I love these two writers\u2019 work already, but these two projects are so outside their creators\u2019 norms AND they are outside of, well, everybody\u2019s norms. And I love them for it. I would never have thought of these two ideas, but these ladies did and their tab fit my slot.<\/p>\n

Now, ladies, hurry up and finish those things. I know this publisher, see \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you remember, about 100 years ago in blog time, Eugene got lambasted all over the bloggernacle for his book, Angel Falling Softly, for various crimes from \u201cnot very spiritual\u201d to \u201csacrilege\u201d to calls for his excommunication or at the very least, pulling his temple recommend. Eugene\u2019s tab did not fit into the proper slot. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[543,94,540,81,424],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-molit","category-religion","category-romance","category-the-proviso","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1098"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16946,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1098\/revisions\/16946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}