So The Marketing Whore has come up with a meme to help give kudos to websites that should be passed around, because they are interesting, educational, or just plain odd. Way it work is you write a post giving “high-fives to 5 people, posts, blogs and/or websites you’ve admired during the week.” Then, as with any other meme, you go to the High-Five-Fridays site, leave a comment with a link to your post, and if you feel so inclined, check out some of the sites that other commenters have high-fived. Got it? Good! Here we go.

1.) Joe.My.God Damn this man can write. Start out the with “The Readers’ Favorites” on the left hand side of the page. Those stories have both brought me to tears and dropped me to my knees laughing more than once. He also keeps a very steady finger on the pulse of GLBT rights, the state of the country, travels around NYC, and his shelter kitty, Shelley. EDITED TO ADD (because someone pointed it out LOL) The reader’s favorites that stick with me involve life, and many of them from the point of a gay man who lived through the AIDS crisis of the 80’s on. Start from the bottom and read up. There are a few though that are very funny, but do involve sexual situations. If you want to avoid those kinds of stories, skip Worst.Sex.Ever., The East Bay Mind Fuck, Tripping Over The Tubs and Gay Gayer Gayest. Couple of the others are a little raunchy but nothing major. Some of them though should be required for anyone who didn’t live through the AIDS crisis, and thinks it wasn’t a big deal, and anyone who did, he writes so sweetly about it that it will make you cry. But whatever you do, you have to read:

• Ricky Loved Madonna
• The Guy With The Bike
• Clouds and Miss America
• Sentences
• The Goodbye Song
• Membership
• Departure
• The Dance of the Sugar Plum Lesbians
• The Step Not Taken
• The Day I Helped Kill A Baby
• Little Man & The Mayor
• Diner Life -
• Guilty/Runner And Crier
• We Met On The Dance Floor

Have.To.Read.

2.) Duotrope’s Digest. I wrote about this site once before, but to sum it up it is an amazing resource for all fiction, poetry and novel writers. Up to date information on over two thousand markets, and a free submission tracker. They are amazing.

3.) The Smart Bitches, Trashy Books folk’s investigation into Cassie Edwards’s plagiarism. Start with this post and the links to the rest of the story is all right there. They did an amazing job with their research, and even though I’m not a romance reader, I feel this is an important story for all writers.

4.) Improv Everywhere’s No Pants 2k8.Almost 2000 people rode the subway pants-less. What’s not to love? Rocking photographs, videos and commentary. And no pants.

5.) WOWIO. I’m a big web comic fan, and I kept hearing about this site. I finally checked it out, and it is a great concept. You download books for free, up to three a day, (they have a whole selection of books, not just comics and graphic novels,) and the authors get paid for every download. It’s not a lot, but hey, every penny is something.

Who are YOUR High-Fives? Go give them love.