The Difficulties of Consent

So today I got to thinking about non-con and dub-con, which I love to read and to write. And guess what? I'm not going to apologise for that. I like exploring the blurry lines and the grey areas and all the nasty dark little corners in the human psyche. Just because. 

But if you don't like to read non-con or dub-con, I have no desire to change your mind. Each to their own. 

The problem I'm having lately with non-con and dub-con is one that I've sort of touched on before. You write a story, and then it is edited, and changed, and sometimes it's different to what you intended. 

My first draft of Tribute was way harsher than the final draft. Some nasty shit went down. And I was advised by my editor and publisher, who obviously know more about this sort of thing, that I needed to strengthen the romance side of things. Stockholm syndrome is apparently not a happy ending. Who knew? 

Disclaimer: I am in no way complaining about my editor and publisher, because guess what? They know what sells, and I wanted to sell this book. 

But the issue I had, I think, in the end, was that you have this bastard of a character who basically imprisons the young prince, has his evil way with him in lots of varied and interesting ways, and then you have redeem him sufficiently that not only will readers buy the fact that the prince falls in love with him, but also that he's worthy of that love. I think we'll all agree that the HEA in Tribute was on shaky ground. 

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the next issue: that of non-con and dub-con and the Amazon crackdown on books featuring them. 

The recent publicity surrounding the pulling of self-published erotica with non-con and dub-con was a vast overreaction to the issue, but it's been coming for a while. Those of us who aren't self-published knew, because whenever we wrote non-con or dub-con our editors would tell us that it would be difficult to get the third party vendors (aka Amazon) to put it up for sale. 

In The Good Boy, J.A. Rock and I culled the absolute shit out of a scene between Lane and Acton, because our editor felt it would be too graphic for third party vendors. 

In Tribute, Kynon, despite being in chains, verbally consents to being made Brasius's. That was put in because my editor felt it was important. Surely the fact he's in chains and has his kingdom to save negated whatever choice he ever had in the matter? It wasn't true consent, and I think we all knew it. And I was totally okay with that. 

Because there is a place for the rape fantasy. It is a healthy and normal part of human sexuality, and, I think, allows people -- although the rape fantasy seems to be more popular in women -- to indulge in the fantasy of being "forced" to engage in sexual acts without taking responsibility for initiating them. At its most basic level, I think the rape fantasy is all about "Well, you can't do anything about it, so you might as well enjoy it." 

And I can't emphasise enough that there is a world of difference between the fantasy of rape and a real rape. 

The main issue I have with the guidelines from Amazon is that there is no acknowledgement of this difference. As though somehow the rape depicted in Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and the rape depicted in The Virginal Nun meets the Rampaging Viking (not a real title, I hope) are in any way comparable. 

Rape is rape. And rape fantasy is rape fantasy. 

So this is where writers get creative. We dilute our non-con into dub-con, and then we soften the blow of that dub-con by making it all okay in the end. Is this disingenuous? Hell, yes. But we do it because these are the rules we have to play by. In an attempt not to have their books pulled, authors are writing what any court of law would consider non-con, and twisting it ever so slightly into dub-con. Because that way your book has a better chance of escaping the cull. And to me, disguising non-con as dub-con seems a lot less honest than saying, "Yep, it's total non-con. Enjoy." 

Which is why, BTW, I never even tried to put The Last Rebellion up on Amazon. 

They don't like that sort of story over there. Meanwhile, go and order a copy of GTA V. There's this awesome part where this woman is getting raped on the side of the road and you can see the guy's dick and everything...

Nah, it's okay. It's not written in a book, so it's totally fine. 

Free Read! The Last Rebellion

God, I hope I've done this right. Because I am about as computer savvy as those apes at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey, where they throw the stick up, and it spins, and then it's a spaceship, and I really can't remember anything that happened after that. But I'll bet it was just full of metaphors. 

Anyway, I wrote a thing. 

And did I mention that it's a free thing? This is for two reasons. 

Firstly, it's because it's got non-con and violence in it, and Amazon gets snarky about that. And I don't really know how to upload stuff to Smashwords.

Secondly, and most importantly, if I give it to you guys for free, I don't need to write a blurb. 

I hate writing blurbs. But you get what you pay for, right? So here it is, my free, almost completely blurbless story, The Last Rebellion: 

Rho is a prisoner of war. Miller is the man who intends to break him. 

Warnings: contains scenes of violence, torture, and non-consensual m/m sex.

***

And hopefully, if this actually worked, you can read it or download the PDF here. And the mobi here. And the epub here. 

Oh, and also via the FREE READS tab at the top of this page and on my webpage. 

Menages were my gateway drug...

Why m/m? Well, why not? 

When my co-workers first found out I was writing smut, sorry, erotica, the assumption was that it would be boy/girl stuff. And I let them keep that assumption for a while, until the sneaky bastards tracked down my books online. *Waves to cheeky bastards* 

Well, needless to say the list of co-workers wanting to read my books diminished quite quickly. Apparently the straight guys just really aren't too keen to read about what publishers and sellers refer to as "male/male sexual practices" and I refer to as "fucking awesome". On the plus side, I've picked up some very keen fans in the workplace, both guys and girls, who love a bit of boy-on-boy action. And who wouldn't? 

To honest, I haven't been writing m/m romance for long. 

The first romance I attempted was way back in high school. It was terrible. It was also m/f. It's probably still lying at the bottom of a cupboard somewhere. Hopefully not still at my mum's house, because we've had enough awkward talks, thanks. 

I don't remember the first m/m book I read. 

The first m/m scene I read was in a book with an m/m/f menage. And m/m/f menages are like a gateway drug. Pretty soon I was like, "You know what would make this scene even hotter? If they got that girl out of the middle." 

So I read one without the girl. Boom. I was hooked. 

I like reading and writing m/m because I am a fundamentally shallow person who can only do basic mathematics. Here is an example of my basic mathematics: 

1 x hot guy = hot. 

2 x hot guys = double hot. 

This doesn't work ad infinitum, of course. I tend to get lost on who is who and what's being put where once the number of participants get past about three. Which is why I've never written a threesome. Dammit, Jim, I'm a writer, not a choreographer!

So that's the why of why I chose m/m. 

If we want to get into why I'm such a fan of dub-con, non-con, more angst that you could throw at a French philosopher, emotional baggage that would sink the Bismarck, and just good old-fashioned fucked-up characters, I think we're gonna need a longer post. 

Much longer. 

What's on your m/m wishlist for 2013?

So here's a sort of a wishlist for 2013, things I'd like to see more of in m/m, and things I'd like to see a lot less of as well. 

Dub-con. I do love me some dub-con. Blackmail stories are really doing it for me at the moment. I love the power games at play there, but I've yet to find one I really love-love. Any recommendations are welcome! 

Puppy play. Hot, cute, and at the same time weirdly humiliating...or so I thought. So often puppy play involves the big nasty Dom getting his rocks off by humiliating his sub, the the puppy play becomes -- and this may be the point, I guess -- dehumanising. The problem with dehumanising a character though, is that pretty soon I stop giving a damn about him. M/m needs more sweet puppy play...but J.A. Rock and I have got some of that covered... :) 

Humiliation. No apologies, I love it. But, like with the puppy play, it's a fine line. Cross it into dehumanisation, and you've lost me. 

Age play. Sometimes creepy, sometimes awesome. I want to read more of the awesome, please. 

More drag queens! But only if we also get to see what happens once the make-up comes off. 

Frat boys. Because they're young, cute, and a completely foreign species to me. We don't have frats in Australia, so all my working knowledges comes from movies and TV. So I basically know nothing. 

ANGST! MORE ANGST! I do love a book that puts me through emotional hell. As a writer, I'm a sadist. As a reader, I'm a total masochist. But it's totally subjective. A book that makes you cry might just make me roll my eyes and wish every character hurried up and died. And vice versa. Everyone's taste is different, which is what makes comparing opinions so much fun. 

And now for the things I'd like to see less of. 

I'd like to see less insta-love, but that's always been a pet peeve of mine. 

I'd also like to see less of what's become a staple in m/m -- the solo shower jerk-off. Now admittedly I have one of these in one of my WIPs, but ever since it was brought to my attention how common it is (thanks, Ami!) it's going to go. 

And while we're on cliches, why are so many Doms multimillionaires who do nothing else but hang out in mysterious sex clubs? Seriously guys, you don't get to be a multimillionaire without at least occasionally going to work. This year, I'd like to see more Doms with real jobs and mortgages, who have to stop off on the way home from the mysterious sex club to buy milk. 

And I hate -- and will always hate -- when a Dom is a Dom because he was abused, abandoned or unloved as a child. Or, worse, when a sub is a sub because he was abused, abandoned, or unloved as a child. Not every kink needs a nasty psychological trigger, and not every scene is a therapy session. Sometimes you just need what you need. It really can be as simple as that. 

What would you like to see more of in m/m? And what really annoys the hell out of you? 

Happy Kissy Glittery Love. And then what I wrote.

After Tribute and The Island, my third book wasn’t going to be dub-con or non-con. I can write happy kissy glittery love, I promise I can! I just…um…I just haven’t yet. And given that my third book turned out to be set in Ancient Rome, well hell, there was just no chance, was there?

Source

Because there is one rule in Ancient Rome: might is right.

Life in antiquity was hard. Hell, life is still hard in a lot of places. You don’t have to look too far back (or too far away) to see that.

Slavery is a fact of life in the ancient world. Fortuna is a bitch, right? And a slave is a tool, or a possession. A truly valuable slave, one who can read and write or calculate, might be treated with dignity and respect, but for the most part a slave's fortunes depended on the temperament of his master. 

In He is Worthy, Aenor's master is a man called Tigellinus. Tigellinus is from history. He was an important man in his day, but very little is known about him today. One thing that has survived is his reputation for cruelty and depravity. And given his competition in those stakes -- the emperor Nero -- that's saying something. 

And hell, once you put Nero in the mix, consent flies right out the window. So there was no escaping the non-con in He Is Worthy. But, I swear, I have a reserve of happy kissy glittery love inside me, and one day I'll let out! 

Just not this time. Um. Or the next time. But after that (*hastily rearranging projects in my head*)...er... maybe there will be some light at the end of the angst-tunnel after that. 

Maybe.