Once when I was discussing my book, The Secret Year, with a book group, a reader asked me why one of the secondary characters had to be gay.

As it happens, that character’s coming out was the perfect subplot for a book about secrecy. Coming out is a move from secrecy to openness, from isolation to community. Secrecy doesn’t ever seem to have made anyone straight, but it’s made a lot of people suffer. In The Secret Year, coming out is ultimately a move toward honesty, self-confidence, and happiness. The main character’s secrecy isn’t about sexual orientation, but when he finally faces the limits of his own secret world, he already has a model before him of a more honest way to live.

It’s an interesting question, though: Why does a given character have to be gay? In one sense, a writer knows that every detail we reveal about a character should be both true to the character and relevant to the story. But another natural answer to that question is, “Why not?” YA GLBTQ literature is moving out of the “coming-out” phase, and into the phase of the “incidentally gay” character. While coming out will continue to be an important theme, it is, after all, only one part of a life story. Why can’t the characters—whom we’re following around because they’re solving mysteries or training for the big race or just coming of age with witty observations—also just happen to be GLBTQ?

In books like Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You (Peter Cameron) and Hero (Perry Moore), the characters’ sexual orientation is part of who they are, but the plots are about something more, or something other, than coming out. Gradually, our literature is coming to resemble more closely the real world in which we live.

Jennifer R. Hubbard is the author of The Secret Year (YA novel, 2010), the story “Confessions and Chocolate Brains” (in the YA anthology Truth and Dare, 2011), and the upcoming Try Not to Breathe (YA novel, 2012). She blogs at http://jenniferrhubbard.blogspot.com/ and is @JennRHubbard on Twitter.

We were both really pleased to be asked to write a blog post for Gay in YA and we decided that what we most wanted to talk about were our favorite books.  There are many wonderful novels for teens and adolescents with GLBT characters, but if you are a fan of fantasy and the paranormal — as we are — the pickings are slightly more limited.  With every year, there are more offerings, but there are also older titles that we come back to again and again.

We selected mostly books published as YA to discuss, along with a few adult books that we feel have crossover appeal.  And, although we tried to concentrate on books with GLBT protagonists, we did sneak in two books with secondary GLBT characters that we couldn’t not mention.

1) SWORDSPOINT by Ellen Kushner

Cassie says: I like this book because the relationship between Alec and Richard is complicated and dynamic and interesting and messed-up, but messed up in the way that all human relationships are messed up sometimes. Despite the fact that both of them are flawed characters, you root for them and you want them to be together. Neither is a stereotype — Alec is a dashing student with a death wish, and Richard is the best swordsman in the city. Their relationship is treated with absolute matter-of-factness in a society where everyone’s sexuality is fluid

Holly says: To me, Swordspoint remains one of the few perfect novels I’ve ever read.  Beautiful language, wit, and a majestic sense of place sweep you along into the tale.  Plus the book features two of my favorite characters ever, ever, ever — the half-mad scholar, Alec, and lethal swordsman, Richard.  Alec and Richard begin the book living together, and all the complications of the story impact their existing relationship, which makes for a very different tension from the more familiar tension of a couple just beginning to fall in love.  I love this book beyond all reason.

2) ASH by Malinda Lo

Holly says: I have long been a fan of fairy tale retellings and this one manages to both use the original Cinderalla story as it’s spine and still leaves the reader guessing at what will happen next.  Lo’s beautiful prose perfectly sketches out the story of a girl coming to discover who she really is, of daring to dream of a different life, and of finding true love with a woman as enigmatic and fascinating as herself.

Cassie says: I adore Ash. I also have to throw out a recommendation for Huntress by the same author, which is just as good, and the perfect blend of magic/adventure and romance between two extremely likeable female characters

3)  GREAT AND TERRIBLE BEAUTY by Libba Bray/HEX HALL by Rachel  Hawkins

Holly says: The Gemma Doyle series, which includes Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, and The Sweet Far Thing, features four Victorian girls discovering their own power and chafing against the limitations imposed on them.  We see different sides of Felicity over the course of series as she becomes someone with whom we sympathize intensely.  Her love for her best friend Pippa is not her most dangerous secret, but it’s certainly up there.

Cassie says: Hex Hall is a lot of fun and one of the great additions to the cast is the main character’s roommate, Jenna, who is a vampire, and a lesbian. That she is a lesbian is incidental — it’s a part of her, but not the whole part. She’s a great, well-rounded character, and her love life is given the same treatment as all the other characters’: no less important or nuanced.

4) KISSING THE WITCH by Emma Donoghue

Holly says: Told in a series of thirteen linked fairy tales about girls and women that meld into one another, Donoghue takes old tropes and remakes them into lyrical, feminist stories.  Not all of the characters are queer, but many are, and all the stories are both lush and stunning.

5) CYCLER by Lauren McLaughlin

Cassie says: Lauren Mc Laughlin’s Cycler is a tale that seems screwball on the face of it, but explores interesting issues of sex and gender underneath. The main character “cycles” back and forth between being male and female, Jill and Jack — the same person, but distinctly differently personalities. Add in Jill’s bisexual boyfriend, one of the few bisexual male characters I’ve encountered in YA fiction, and Jack’s attraction to Jill’s female best friend, and you have rich territory to mine.

Holly says: Cycler is such an interesting book, doing what the best fantasy is able to do — take something like gender, which we often discuss in certain ways and along familiar lines and tell the story of gender, but tell it slant, so that we see it with new eyes.

6) BABY BE-BOP by Francesca Lia Block

Cassie says: Francesca Lia Block’s Weetzie Bat cycle, of which this is a part, can best be described as magical realism. Baby Be Bop explores the origin story of Dirk, a character we first meet in the book Weetzie Bat, and his origin story: from first realizing he’s gay, to dealing with homophobia and finding love, all told in a dreamlike and beautiful manner.

Holly says: Block brings Los Angeles to life in a fever dream as she tells the story of Dirk coming to terms with a broken heart, his own anger and fear, and being badly hurt.  His Grandma Fifi, family stories of self-acceptance and the promise of future love get him through, so he can become the Dirk we know from Weetzie Bat and the other books in the series.  No one uses language like Block and here she crafts a slender jewel of a book.

7) VINTAGE: A GHOST STORY by Steve Berman

Cassie says: A shivery ghost story in which the main character, never named, happens to be gay. He falls in love with the ghost of a boy he meets walking along a lonely road in New Jersey late one night. The romantic outcome may not be what you think, but it is satisfying.

Holly says: Written by my long-time critique partner, Vintage is always going to have a special place in my heart, but it’s also a fantastic book.  The narrator and his best friend, Trace, visit cemeteries, watching funeral after funeral, waiting for something to happen.  But when the narrator stumbles on a real ghost and that ghost follows him home, he discovers that romanticizing death has a price.  A deceptively sweet ghost story told with realism, humor, and haunting beauty.

8) THE LAST HERALD MAGE TRILOGY by Mercedes Lackey

Holly: This is a series that readers either love or hate.  Like Cassie, I read this when I was pretty young, and I loved it.  Rich and haughty Vanyel comes to be tutored by his aunt in a high fantasy world where Heralds have magical powers and bond to intelligent steeds called Companions.  Vanyel starts out miserable and somewhat obnoxious, but gradually lets down his guard as he falls in love with shay’a’chern Herald trainee Tylendel.  The first book is Magic’s Pawn, followed by Magic’s Promise and Magic’s Price.

Cassie: I read these books when I was really young, but I remember they made an impression on me as they were literally the first fantasy with a gay main character I’d ever come across. I think that’s the case for a lot of people.

9) TRIPPING TO SOMEWHERE by Kristopher Reisz

Holly says: When Gilly and Sam run away to the Witches’ Carnival, they only know that they have to leave everything behind.  That seems like it’s going to be easy for them, since there’s nothing in their Alabama town that they think they’ll miss.  But as they go on this adventure together, it becomes more clear that leaving everything is harder than it seems.  This is a beautifully written, incredibly honest book, with magic that seems numinous and real.  And the relationship between the two girls is just as honest, sometimes painfully so.  A truly magnificent contemporary fantasy.

Cassie says: I love a road-trip book, and this one is rich with the elements of fantasy America, especially the legendary Witches’ Carnival. The relationship between Gilly and Sam isn’t like anything else I’ve read in YA. A dark and sometimes brutal book, with flashes of beauty.

10) BOY MEETS BOY by David Levithan

Cassie says: I would call this magical realism, like Baby Be-Bop. It paints an achingly lovely picture of a world we all wish we could live in, where tolerance is the rule of the day, and the high school’s homecoming queen is the cross-dressing Infinite Darlene. The passages where main character Paul proves his love to Noah, the object of his affections, by spending seven days making seven romantic gestures, like decorating his locker with flowers, are adorable.

Holly says: Set in a small New Jersey town that’s just on the border of the world we know, in a place where Paul’s high school homecoming queen is also be the football quarterback, this novel defies categorization.  Paul is absolutely comfortable with his sexuality — and has been supported by teachers and parents his whole life — but still struggles with changing friendships, maturity and first love.  Fantastical worldbuilding creeps in at the edges, as in a scene in a graveyard where instead of flowers, this town attaches books to headstones, so that visitors can write to the deceased.

We interrupt this program to bring you… a chance to add your voice to the conversation!

I hope you have been enjoying our fabulous bloggers thus far. We have been honored and astounded by the outpouring of support from authors and readers alike. Thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Our “Gay in YA” blogathon will be wrapping up at the end of the week. We are thrilled to say that we will be able to continue featuring some incredible authors and bloggers throughout the next several weeks, and we have decided that it’s time to take the next step. We’d like to open up this blog to submissions from you. The LGBTQ story includes everyone & touches everyone, and it’s going to require everyone to get where we’re trying to go.

So straight, gay, lesbian, or questioning*: wherever you are on your journey, we invite you to add your unique voice to the conversation and join the outcry for acceptance of Gay in YA.

We will accept whatever’s on your mind, so if you already have an idea skip the rest and email maria@gayYA.org with a little bit about yourself, a link to your blog (if you don’t have one, a writing sample will also suffice) and the topic you’d like to write about. If not, we have our handy dandy….

List of Specific Things We’re Looking For:

Tell Your Story: Creative Nonfiction Submissions

Multimedia – We strongly believe it’s important for people from diverse subcultures to support each other in the fight. We are open to featuring film, music, comics, and visual art provided it relates to the topic at hand.

Note to Authors: If you have an LGBTQ book you are interested in promoting, we don’t take ads but we would be happy to consider publishing a guest blog. Please contact maria@gayya.org for details.

If you have questions, leave them in the comments!

Tomorrow we will return to your regularly scheduled programming with a visit from the lovely ladies Cassandra Clare and Holly Black.

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* or bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer…. you get the idea. 😉

Scott Tracey is the author of WITCH EYES, a modern, gay Romeo & Juliet with witches, coming in September.  He can be found on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/#!/scott_tracey and his blog at http://www.scott-tracey.com.

When I started fleshing out the idea behind WITCH EYES – back when it was just a concept rather than a story, I knew I wanted it to be different.  I read a lot of urban fantasy/paranormal, so I knew that’s what I wanted to write.  As a reader, there were a lot of great books, but there weren’t a lot of books that would speak to ME.  Me as I am now, or even the me from high school.

So I decided I’d write what I’d want to read.  Something that hit all the key elements that would have made a teenage me pick up that book without hesitation.

It had to include:

• magic and/or witches
• manipulation and game-playing (think Cruel Intentions)
• sarcasm
• characters who happened to be gay, who were not defined by their sexuality

People have said to me “Oh, I didn’t know this was a gay novel.”  And my response is always some form of “That’s because it isn’t.  Well it IS, but it isn’t.”   The main character is gay, unapologetically,  and a relationship starts to form over the course of the book.  But at the same time it isn’t, because it’s a book about a feud, and a town full of secrets, and near death experiences, wayward spells, and demons.

One of the most important parts of that, for me, was having the story be about the story, rather than devolve into the character’s angst about their sexuality.   There’s this belief that novels about gay characters fall into two categories: the coming out story, or the tragic story.  And don’t get me wrong, both of those kinds of stories are incredibly important – if you’re struggling with coming out, reading a book with characters who are going through the same thing can help you.  It gives you someone to relate to, when you might not have someone in your real life who can do so.  Same with the tragic story – sometimes we want to watch a movie like Brokeback Mountain.   Sometimes that’s something that we need.

But what about the rest of the time?  One of the things I really wanted, but couldn’t find enough of, was novels that were identical to their straight counterparts – novels featuring gay characters where their sexuality was inconsequential, where the emphasis was still on the story.  In the majority of YA that’s out there, straight characters don’t have to struggle to accept their sexuality, and I thought it would be nice to read somewhere where the gay characters didn’t, either.

So where are the books like that for gay kids?  If you look at YA as a whole, there is a LOT of representation.  Gay characters appear in many bestselling series, or as side characters in beloved books.  But there’s a lot fewer novels that focus specifically on the gay characters, in which it’s there story being told.

Especially in the genre of paranormal/urban fantasy, where most gay characters are still on the sidelines.  Side characters, rather than the leads.  But I think that’s changing.  Even in just the past couple of years, we’ve gotten Ash and Huntress by Malinda Lo, Shadow Walkers by Brent Hartinger, and Hero by the late Perry Moore.

It’s becoming more normal to read about gay characters in novels.  They’re everywhere from Cassie Clare’s Mortal Instrument series, to Sarah Rees Brennan’s Demon Lexicon series; many people even talk about how Alec or Jamie are their favorite characters.

I think we’re coming to a point where we’ll start to see more and more novels that push “gay YA” novels from being “issue oriented” to becoming much like everything else: plot and story focused.  Where the character could be straight or gay, and the story would be exactly the same.  Because at the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter.

Speaking of Malinda Lo, she wrote this fantastic piece on her blog entitled, “How hard is it to sell an LGBT YA novel?”  I think it’s still tough, to a certain extent, but getting a book published, period, is tough.  This may just be a little more tough, but when you get into this business you know that the odds are against you.

The reason?  Publishing is a business.  If you go out and buy books featuring LGBT characters (whether they are the focus of the story, or simply part of it), more books like that will get published.

Gay characters in YA are only as normal as we make them.  That’s why I think it’s important to HAVE gay characters in novels, but it’s the same issue with not falling into character clichés, whitewashing characters, etc.  It’s important to have all kinds of representation, but the trick is to not give in to tokenism.

It’s one of the reasons I think we’ll start seeing more and more novels come out where sexual identity is inconsequential.  Because at the end of the day it doesn’t matter, it’s all about the story.

Catherine Ryan Hyde is the author of numerous books including Pay it Forward and the upcoming Don’t Let Me Go. She can be found at her website or tweeting under @cryanhyde.

As recently as the 90s, when my first novel saw print, things were different in LGBT publishing. Authors worried about the positioning of books that contained LGBT characters. No one wanted publishers to perceive their books as being only for the niche “gay market” instead of the wider mainstream one. Authors always felt their work had that indefinable “broader appeal,” and didn’t want to be put into a smaller gay publishing box.

Which, if you think about it, contains the inherent silliness of assuming a straight person can’t or won’t read about a gay one. Well, they can. But, I guess the question is, would they?

Now, at least in YA fiction, I think we have our answer.

Suddenly LGBT YA is a phenomenon. A force to reckon with. And, more and more, I pick up (on Twitter and in the blogosphere) that lots of straight readers enjoy the genre.

This little post by no means claims to sum up how and why this sea change happened. It’s just a reflection on one aspect that resonates most with me.

For the purpose of illustration, I call it The Brent Effect.

It was only a little more than a year ago that a gay teen named Brent started the book blog Naughty Book Kitties. Fairly soon after, he emailed me, interested in an ARC of Jumpstart the World. I poked around on his blog, as I always do in cases like that. Not because there’s some special blog standard required before I’ll submit a book for review. More because I’m always curious about why someone wants to read something of mine. I also love discovering new blogs. We emailed a couple of times, and I asked Knopf to send him an ARC.

Just a couple of days later a Facebook friend posted a link to my wall. It was a post by a gay 15-year-old who publicly blasted his school librarian for refusing to stock LGBT books, which she said were “inappropriate.” Brent went viral, because, in my opinion, he was spot on. Here was a kid who needed to read about people like him, and was told that people like him were inappropriate reading for people his age. Suddenly “age appropriate” was called out on the carpet and boldly labeled discrimination. Which, of course, it was. Had been all along. Somebody just had to say it. Eloquently. Loudly.

Maybe Brent wasn’t the first to say it, and I’m sure he wasn’t the only one. But he was the first to break into my awareness with this message. He was my first exposure to the new breed of out gay teens.

I think it affected me so deeply because I wasn’t that brave when I was Brent’s age. I was not an out gay teen. In my defense, it was 1970. A number of factors had to fall into place to make that kind of honesty possible. The more honesty is shouted out, the more factors fall into place to allow even more honesty. Then, with any luck, you have a full-on revolution. Or, as they call it on Fox “News,” the Gay Agenda. And we all know what the gay agenda is, right? To be seen as human and treated with respect. To be ourselves and pursue our own happiness. Oh, wait, that’s everybody’s agenda, isn’t it?

Let me not get too far off track.

After meeting Brent (we’ve been friends ever since), I’ve also met John of Dreaming in Books. A very different, but also very out, young gay book blogger. I’ve met Craig of Craig’s Gay Word, a teen athlete who helps teach his entire school how to treat LGBT students. I even got a great review of Jumpstart the World from a young woman named Maggie who essentially came out as “closer to bi” or “at the very least questioning” during the review. I told her I thought that was important and good, because every person who does so makes it easier for the next. She told me she had wrestled with it and come to the exact same conclusion.

The more people speak up, the more people speak up.

Say what you will about social change, but you cannot, in my view, devalue these contributions. Sure, you have to multiply it by all the Brents and Johns and Craigs and Maggies, including scores I don’t know about. But coming out in itself is a force to be reckoned with. And blogs have embraced outness (as Brent would say, pretend that’s a word) in a way that’s changing the landscape.

When I was young, people actually made the ridiculous statement that they didn’t know, that they’d never known, someone who’s gay. The joke was on them, of course. Sure they had. They just didn’t know it. I believe intolerance finds its roots in fear. Humans are (like?) animals, wired for survival. Our brains tell us to fear the unfamiliar, and, when few dared come out, gay remained unfamiliar.

Now we have the beginning of a trend: straight teens who are perfectly happy to read a gay love story, if it’s a good story. So as an author of (among other things) LGBT YA lit, my hat is off to the new out gay teens.

Expect a snowballing of the Brent Effect. And celebrate it with me. It’s long overdue.