Oh my

Puppets and Neil Patrick Harris, what's not to love...

I'm just a fangirl at heart

& this... this makes me really happy.



Can't wait 'til Easter Saturday.

Nuff said.

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe

Today is Fiction Friday and I'm blogging about a series of books that I read recently.

Men of Smithfield by LB Gregg

Four books make up this series, all based around the fictional town of Smithfield. Totally unconnected in story arc--Tony is the only character who appears in all four--each book deals with a different couple, easily identifiable since their names are in the title (the revised versions published by Carina), and the path they take to get to a relationship. Those roads are rocky, believe me.

The books as a series have made it into my re-read folder, no mean feat I can tell you. However, I got to thinking the other day, if I could only read one which would it be? Which couple is my favourite?

That is possibly on par with asking a parent to pick their favourite child.

I know which is my least favourite. Couple, not child! That dubious honour goes to Seth & David. Not to say I didn’t enjoy their story, I did, the book is safely nestled in my re-read folder with the rest of the series. However something about both Seth and David made it difficult for me to connect with the characters straight away. The main problem had to be placed firmly at Seth’s feet. Closed off and almost impossible to warm to; intentionally or not, he treats David like crap for a fair portion of the book. Seth has ISSUES, but I don’t think they necessarily justify his behaviour.

However, at some point in the story my opinion must have changed because I found myself rooting for them to work things out. Yes, I still wanted to give Seth a swift kick up the arse on occasions but by the end I was adamant they were meant to be together.

There is another reason which might have sub-consciously dragged this one to the bottom of the list for me, and it’s purely a personal one. The book has kids in it. I see kids in m/m and big flashing warning lights go off in my head. Don’t get me wrong, I love kids—I used to be one. But the sort of kids that regularly pop up in m/m are normally pre-school, precocious and wise beyond their years and the men are often perfect parents. Believe me no-one is a perfect parent; whether you’ve got a dick or not, we all make a complete hash of it at some point. Thankfully, here the kids feel real, and Seth is an awful parent. No, he’s not but he thinks he is, constantly questioning whether he is doing the right thing. In the end I think that uncertainty was his saving grace for me.

Okay, I know the last sentence of that paragraph completely contradicts the first but then a good book is like that, turns your opinions on their head and makes you think. Anyway let’s get away from Seth and David before I dig myself into an even deeper hole.

So we’ve dealt with my least favourite book the couple I had the most issues with. But my original question was which couple were my favourite.

Let’s go to the very beginning because everyone knows sequels are inferior, right? Raiders of the Lost Ark. Awesome. IJ and the Last Crusade. Er…Sean Connery. OMG. Even better. Okay so that wasn’t the best film to pick as a comparison. Police Academy compared to Police Academy V. Better example? Right. Back to the books.

Mark & Tony. The first book. This has everything I need to be my favourite without a doubt. Friends to Lovers. Tony’s a cop, which feeds my uniform kink. And they are closest in age out of all the couples. Favourite, then. Er, no. There were too many occasions when I’d have gladly given David a slap, and one where Tony deserved one too.

I toyed with giving Adam and Holden the top spot, even though the age gap, at 16 years, is greater than I would normally enjoy. I loved how Adam appeared older than his years, yet had the occasional flash of youthful exuberance, how broken Holden was and how patiently Adam helped put him back together.

So in the end, having said choosing my favourite would be impossible, it appears I’ve not only found my favourite couple but my order of preference for the series.

4^th Seth & David

3^rd Mark & Tony

2^nd Adam & Holden

Which means my favourite couple are Max & Finn.

Max & Finn. What can I say about Max & Finn?

Max is an ex-Marine. Hey, there’s that uniform kink thing again; although Max is long out of uniform, the attitude is still there. Strong, silent, hiding a tragic secret. The book starts with hot sex that quickly dissolves into awkwardness leading to an embarrassing and uneasy enforced non-relationship. So bloody good, almost enemies to lovers in its style.

Finn is a teacher. One of the cool teachers you love having as a teenager. The development of their relationship was perfect. The mystery is good, ramping up the action to something more serious than it first appeared.

Yes, Max and Finn are most definitely my favourites.

Reading this post I’m sure you might wonder why these books make it into my re-read file. I appear to have done nothing but pick up on character flaws.

Because they are bloody wonderful, that’s why. The flaws I’ve described aren’t with the books, they are purposely and intrinsically tied to the characters. It is why they act the way they do, the sole reasons why their stories follow the paths they take. Without those flaws these stories wouldn’t be half of what they are. They wouldn’t have grabbed me. Forced me to read one after the other. Without them they wouldn’t have made it into my re-read file at all.

  

Just a quickie

I know this video has been all over Goodreads and other feeds in the last week but I'm offering it up here as my Tuesday Tangent for anyone who hasn't seen it.

This Troublemaking Kid Is Reason Enough To Support Gay Marriage

Seriously it is so cute. Even watching with the sound off is worth it. Then scroll down the page for stills that will give you that mushy feeling all over again and a smile that won't quit.

Lillian Francis – Dealer in decadence

Seller of Smut? Purveyor of Porn? Writer of wantonness?

Anyone who’s ever read anything I’ve written, be it published or not, knows none if the above labels apply to me. Romance with several angsty chasms to negotiate before the happy ending, and the very occasional, often oblique, coming together of my (hopefully soon to be a) couple. That is what I write and I see that very clearly in my head. The sub-genres vary; historical, contemporary, paranormal, but I think my readers know what to expect from me in style.

However since both my lead characters are men it appears the rest of the world can only see with tunnel vision. To the world outside our circle—small it’s true, but definitely growing—gay romance equals erotica. If I write about the developing relationship between two guys, then that’s smut, right? No. Wrong, with a big fat capital W.

To the world at large there are no shades of grey; gay romance doesn’t exist, only hot sweaty, hard bodies, writhing against each other. People with artfully crafted matt-black reading material tucked under their arms in the most public of places—the beach, a train, their kids school playground!—will look at me as if I’ve grown two heads when I declare that I write gay romance. What makes my sweet sexy exploration of love worse than the 300 pages currently nestling against their sweaty armpit? Oh yeah, two guys bumping uglies—or not, as the case may be.

This is an issue that seems to have caught the imagination of writers of the sweet ‘n’ sexy variety over the last few weeks. I have been involved in several discussions on this very subject, and people, we are revolting. By which I mean we’ve decided to speak out and make our discomfort known, in the most genteel way possible. A blog post here, a new group there. Alex Beecroft wrote an eloquent and impassioned post here. I strongly urge you to read it.

Elin Gregory, another gentle soul—as I’ve taken to referring to us in my head—also blogged on this subject recently and in the time it has taken for me to gather my thoughts a Goodreads group has been formed. Join us if you’d like.

As you can see from my covers I am currently published with Ellora’s Cave. They publish work under different ‘lines’, distinguished by the amount and type of sexual content included in the book.

Romantica: follows most of the conventions of the romance genre, focusing on the development of a central love story culminating in an emotionally satisfying, happy ending. The difference lies in the erotic component of Romantica stories. Romantica books contain frequent sex scenes, described explicitly using frank language rather than flowery euphemisms.

Exotika: focus is on the sexual journey or adventures. Although they might or might not include a romance and do not typically end in a committed relationship, Exotika books do not generally adhere to the traditional romance book formula.

Blush®: Sometimes you want a little more romance, a little less sex. The Blush line is more traditional romance. There might still be some sex scenes in Blush books, but they are less numerous and less graphically described.

Guess which ‘line’ I write under. Yep, I’m a Blush writer. However, until EC agreed to publish my debut novel, Lesson Learned, they had no authors writing m/m in Blush. I was the first writer of gay romance to be published in their traditional romance range. To say I was amazed was an understatement. Gobsmacked would be a better description, worried would have summed up my feelings at the time. Did I really write so little sex into my stories in comparison to all the other m/m writers out there? Would anyone want to read a story that so obviously went against what EC as a brand normally published?

(I have to confess I had read very little published m/m at that point, romance or otherwise—an error I’m fast putting right.)

The answer of course was yes, people are reading Lesson Learned. EC were happy to publish Lovers Entwined under the same Blush imprint. They have never pressed me to add extra sex scenes in the name of titillation. So, yes there is a market for less explicit stories. I’m not the only one who would happily only read a sex scene if it moves the plot forward or adds to our awareness of the character of the persons involved.

The more m/m I read, the more I realised that there were other authors out there who like me kept the sex scenes to a minimum. Authors whose work could be described as sweet and sexy, and no more erotica than many who write mainstream romantic fiction.

Why should the mainstream of our profession lump me and mine in with erotica when authors such as Judith Krantz and Jackie Collins (I realise picking these authors ages me somewhat but I last read het romance in my teens and never of the Mills & Boon/Harlequin style) are considered general romantic fiction? The fact that both the characters in my stories have a penis. Shocker!

Maybe I’m really a frustrated (failed?) erotica writer, but I don’t think so. I find writing scenes of an erotic nature exhausting. They take days, valuable hours when I could be writing plot or relationship angst, so each scene has to say something about the characters or move the story forward. The last thing I want is for any sex scene that I write to become an automatic exercise, otherwise you run the risk of what should be emotionally charged scenes of connection becoming a ‘tab A into slot B’ situation. I never want to read in a review that someone has skimmed (or heaven forbid, skipped) the sex scenes in one of my stories. Unfortunately, this is a comment I see far too often on Goodreads, strengthening my resolve not to write gratuitous smut.

As readers we know there are writers of erotica, while other author’s works are more plotty and character driven. Some even drive the plot and character motivation forward using sex. You read and you learn who will provide you with which type of story. If I pick up something by Alex Beecroft or Josh Lanyon I’m fairly certain I’m going to get something with a solid plot and I’m not going to get sideswiped by too many sex scenes, unnecessary or otherwise.

The problem as I see it isn’t how we perceive ourselves as a genre but more as the outside world sees us.

Gay=niche.

Niche=different.

Invariably niche scares people, they don’t know how to bracket us within the mainstream, or if we should even be allowed within the mainstream. We are different, afterall.  Aren’t we?

No. I sat in a room of gay romance writers last September and I can honestly say that you wouldn’t pick most of us out of a lineup. A more unassuming bunch of people you’re unlikely to meet, until one of us starts to speak or you hear the topics of conversation over lunch. Lube over spit. Knotting. Cowboys. GFY. Condoms. Tentacle sex, anyone?

And that maybe is our downfall. Our sense of humour. We are happy not to take ourselves too seriously. We can joke about tentacle sex without batting an eyelid. Many of us have come from fanfic of some kind or another where, whether you like it or not, you can be exposed to the strangest things imaginable and still find some redeeming feature in the writing.

Being different is not so bad.

Looking at Word’s Thesaurus ‘different’ can be ‘unusual, special, singular, distinctive, out of the ordinary, uncommon, unique.’ I can live with all and any of those labels. Claim them even.

I can even cope with being labelled different. I’d just like people to understand how I’m different.

And that will never happen while the only label the mainstream are willing to give me is Erotica Writer.

My plans to bore you shitless & an update

Earlier in the week, I hinted that I intended to blog more. That is my plan, whether I will manage to stick to it is another matter. My idea is to blog once a week, either on a Friday, cleverly titled Fiction Friday--and shamelessly stolen from my best friend, Katherine Halle--or on a Tuesday, Tangent Tuesday to be precise.

Pretty self explanatory titles. Fiction Friday will be about books and writing, m/m naturally, but I'm going to try not to focus on my own work and what's happening, or not (I write very slowly) with me. Instead I plan to talk about other fiction based things. And Tangent Tuesday, well, that could be about anything, even a rant about pancakes.

I'm impressed that I have 'a plan' but how long I'll manage to keep to it for is anyone's guess. Right now, between projects, I'm eager to do this and do it well, but I have a tendancy to get buried in a new book and forget about life outside the page I'm writing on.

We'll see.

So, today is Friday, which means I'm talking about Fiction. Having said earlier that I'm not going to talk about my own work too often I'm going to break that rule straight away and today's post will be a quick update.

Having been working on it for months--seriously, I not kidding. The short story this novel developed from was written back in April last year--I have finally finished Theory Unproven. It's been read, pre-read, corrected, re-written, re-read, summarised for the synopsis, bundled up in a tidy bow and sent out to publishers. One publisher actually, set my sights high and if they fail, then flood the market at a later date. There is another publisher I'm considering sending it to as well, but it's finding the time to change the formating.

Next I intend to return to the WW2 story I had proposed to submit for Riptide's submission call but epically failed in reading the submission dates correctly. *facepalm* Probably start working on that again sometime next week.

I'll leave you with the tag line for Theory Unproven. (I'd give you a blurb but I haven't got that far!)

Unless you give it a chance, love will always be a theory unproven.

 

A little rant

Today I'm blogging over at RJ Scott's blog.

Well, blogging might be a generous description of the mini tirade that I ended up writing.

Go, read. See what got me all riled up.

In other news, I plan to blog more. Yes I know I've said this before but I this time I really intend to carry out my threat to bore you all silly.