THE LATEST...7-24-08

TONS of News!

First, read my latest book review, Rambunctious Liaisons, published in the Gay and Lesbian Review. It's my first article for them (and I hope the first of many!).

Then check out my latest article posted on Suite101.com, "Anthony Comstock, Moral Crusader."

Finally, don't miss my contributions to GO Magazine's annual list of 100 Women We Love. I covered ladies as diverse as Lily Tomlin, Beth Ditto, and Fox Business News reporter Elizabeth MacDonald.

Now I'm polishing up the last rough edges of The Forbidden Apple--I assume this is the pulling-teeth stage, which precedes the accolade-receiving stage. I'm also working on several profiles of female entrepreneurs for GO Magazine. I thought the mid-summer months were for laying around and drinking mint juleps!

5-27-08

I moved apartments at the beginning of the month, and I'm still unpacking boxes. Somehow I found time to write GO Get Hitched, a Gay Wedding Guide for GO Magazine. Now I'm working on a portion of GO's annual list of 100 Women We Love, profiling lesbian role models in politics, sports, the arts and business. Look for it in the Pride Issue in June 2008!

3-20-08

MY BOOK JACKET!!

3-13-08

FIND ME ON THE WEB! I have collected my scattered presence on the Internet into a handy link list:

www.suite101.com/profile.cfm/katlong : my Suite101 profile, containing an up-to-date bio and portfolio of my recently-posted articles

www.myspace.com/kat_long : my myspace page, with embarassing photos from my goth past

www.flickr.com/photos/kat_long : a selection of my photos I've taken on a recent vacation to Southeastern Arizona (and if you want to know more about my trip, read my articles on Suite101 here and here!)

3-7-08

My exhaustive gay wedding guide "GO Get Hitched" was just published in GO Magazine! I'll be adding the text to my "Articles" page shortly. Please note: if you've ever wondered where to find rainbow cummerbunds, you won't find them here. I had to draw the line somewhere.

1-16-08

As you can see from the above widget, I'm now a Contributing Writer to the content provider Suite101.com! I'll be writing articles on a variety of subjects, concentrating in the areas of my expertise--sexuality, american history and LGBT issues. Why don't you check them out by searching in that box up there?

11-9-07

My first-ever op-ed was published in the New York Blade! Read it here!

10-30-07

Ladies and gentlemen, my new blog: The Forbidden Apple! Read my book-related updates and vignettes about New York's erotic core at katlong.wordpress.com .

10-17-07

I've finally emerged from the stacks of the NYPL Humanities library, with my fingers covered in tiny bits of crumbling paper and dust. Such is the glamorous life of an Independent Scholar.

I received some very positive feedback from Ig on the overhauls of chapters 4 through 8, as well as their estimate for when the book will actually come out. We're planning on JANUARY 2009: mark your calendars, set your cellphone alarms, schedule your wake-up calls...THIS IS IT!!

Currently, I've gone back to filling in the gaps in the scholarship that the publishers have pointed out. For chapter 1, a little more info on a wave of evangelistic revivals, circa 1894, that swept New York. Chapters 2 and 3 were solid, so I didn't rewrite much except for expanding the conclusions to each so I develop my arguments more completely and set up the next chapter of events.

Chapter 4--covering the World War II era and the beginning of the 1950s--needs more details. I've been poring over New York State-issued pamphlets for dealing with the menace of juvenile delinquency in the '50s in the NYPL, as well as U.S. Census records from 1940, 1950, and 1960 to determine the population fluctuations in the city that might have led to a perception that the city was "ungovernable," or at least getting out of hand, by the 60's. I also discovered two Census reports on "Puerto Ricans in the Continental United States" from 1950 and 1960, which should provide some insight. Onward and upward, as they say.

7-7-07

Since December of last year, I've been hard at work on a total revision of the Book (the title is still TBD, but I have a new idea that I think is perfect...stay tuned for approval!). As of July 7, I'm 99% finished with revising Chapter 6: the ugly decade from 1969 to 1980, where we meet Linda Lovelace, in her signature film Deep Throat, as it premiers at the New World Mature Theater at Broadway and 49th Street (the film is later found guilty of obscenity in a notorious New York City trial). We see the transformation of pornography from a working-class, below-the-radar form of entertainment to a pop culture juggernaut, packaged and mass-marketed to suburban consumers. We take a trip through the Continental Baths and Plato's Retreat, the go-to places for anonymous gay and straight, respectively, sexual hijinks. Finally, we can't help but sympathize with the ineffectual mayor Abe Beame and his failed plans to zone the sex shops in Times Square out of business, and the feminist anti-pornography movement taking up the mantle.

I'll be moving quickly on to Chapter 7, 1980-1990, which is a comparatively depressing decade. We'll be discussing topics like AIDS, the end of the bathhouse era, the Catholic Church's vehement distaste for homosexuality and the public actions of ACT-UP that hit Wall Street and the Church where it hurt. Vive Larry Kramer!