Anything Goes

I write romance.

There, I said it.

There are a lot of people who look down on romance – and on the people who read it and the people who write it – because there’s this weird idea still hanging on that not only is romance “genre fiction”, it’s somehow the lowest kind of genre fiction.

It’s kind of like those people who say sarcasm is the lowest form of humour. Not if you’re doing it right.

The fact that some people look down on romance doesn’t really bother me. Mostly I’m amused, because I think these people imagine that romance is still this:

Look out, Nurse Saxon! That amnesiac patient (I'm guessing) is actually a millionaire rake (I'm also guessing).

The above cover is a very outdated and narrow view of the genre. Because it can actually be this:

Or this: 

Or this: 

Or this: 

Anything goes! 

And that’s the most fun thing about this genre. I can write a spy story, or a funny story, or a horror story, or any story that I want, and as long as it’s still about people making a connection it still counts. You won’t find that kind of latitude in other genres. 

And that’s why I love it. I love reading it, and I love writing it, and screw what anyone else thinks. We’re having fun over here.

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. 

It's almost Valentines Day. I don't care.

I was going to write a post about Valentine's Day -- that's just around the corner, right? -- but then I realised I don't actually like Valentine's Day. That might sound like a strange confession from someone who writes romances, but it's true. I've blogged before about my inability to produce happy, glittery kissy love, and you know what? I'm okay with it. 

I don't really do hearts and flowers and stuffed animals. Buy me books instead. 

I'd much rather get a takeaway and watch a movie than go to a fancy restaurant and be intimidated by waiters who, just by looking at me, know that I'm more used to wine in a box than whatever's on their list. And I'm okay with that as well. Wine in a box is highly underrated, for the record. 

Candles and rose petals in the bedroom? That's a massive fire hazard for starters. And while rose petals are pretty and smell nice, I don't imagine they're anywhere near as beautiful the next morning when you're trying to pick them out of the carpet. 

Love, to me, isn't a romantic gesture. It's not something you can buy from Hallmark. Love is the ability to look at another person, warts and all, and say to yourself, "You know what? I want to keep doing this with you." 

Love is the thing that makes you stick together when you've told him a hundred times to put his fucking socks in the laundry basket, not the floor, and you pick them up anyway. And when he's told you a hundred times how to refill that thing in your car where the water goes for the windscreen wipers, and then does it for you anyway. It's sleeping in when his alarm goes off and copping a goodbye kiss to whatever part of your head that isn't shoved under the pillow. It's leaving sticky notes on the fridge to maintain some sort of human contact when you don't cross paths for days. 

It's not gifts and flowers and love songs, and one gesture made on one arbitrary day. And I'm okay with that as well.  

Do you read Historicals?

I was having an interesting conversation the other day about historical fiction, and I was genuinely surprised when I was told by a friend that she didn't read it. 

As a history nerd, I was SHOCKED. I blame my love of history on not have a television for a period as a child, which led to looking to alternate sources for stories. That, and a mother who loved history even though she failed it miserably at school. (Hi, Mum!) Because it occurred to me at a very early age that history, literally, is EVERY STORY IN THE WORLD EVER. And how is that not awesome? 

But my friend told me that she finds it difficult to invest emotionally in historical fiction, since the protagonists -- had they lived -- would already be dead now. Which I can kind of understand, but also I can't. Because If I only stuck to stories that might be real and happening now, wouldn't that restrict me to contemporary, realistic fiction? And if I did that, wouldn't I be missing out on a lot of great fiction? 

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I love history, so I'm completely biased on the subject. I"m also currently writing another historical, so yeah, I've got a horse in this race.

I love when the world-building in historical fiction is vivid, and I love when the writer gets the details right. On the flip side, I HATE it when they get it wrong. I read an m/m historical recently where there was a very big Public Display of Affection, and it threw me out of the story straight away. Because no way, just no fucking way, would two men kiss and grope each other in public in the middle of the day in Victorian London. Just no. 

You're writing history, not rewriting it. Just...just don't. 

Of course if happened. The proof is all over Victorian Gentlemen in Love. But it happened in private, it happened underground, and these men must have lived in constant fear of discovery. Let's not diminish that by jemmying in PDAs that couldn't have happened. 

Wow. That turned into a slight rant, didn't it? So let's get back to the point: Do you read historical fiction, or does it just not work for you? Whatever your answer, I'd love to know your reasons. 

Gay For You?

Some of my favourite stories are Gay For You. I like the idea that friendship (or, even better, total animosity) can be so intense that it might take you in an unexpected direction. I like the angst of a good Gay For You, in that a character is usually totally blindsided by his or her own desires. 

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But here's what I don't like: the crazy idea that another person can somehow make you gay. 

That's crap. What another person can do is give you the courage to explore a part of yourself you might have had on lockdown most of your life, but you cannot catch Teh Gay. 

Sexuality, gender and identity are weird, slippery fishes. Tricky to catch, impossible to pin down, always on the move. (Okay, now I'm thinking I could have picked a better analogy than fish, but it's late and I'm tired. And earlier I watched a program that had fish in it.) The point I'm making -- I think -- is that Gay For You is only half the story. And if you read a lot of romance, it's usually the only half of the story you get to see because a big Happily Ever After descends and there are rainbows and unicorns and puppies and bubbles. 

(I mentioned it was late and I'm tired, didn't I?) 

Okay, so here's an example. 

Once upon a time, there was a boy called Max. And he had a best friend called Paul. And one day Max looked at Paul and thought things that he'd never thought before. These new, unsettling thoughts began with kisses, and ended somewhere Max had never imagined he'd go. 

But he did, and it was good, and it was Love. 

The End. 

That's where romance drops the curtain. Except what if five years down the track Max finds out that Paul screwed around? Or what if Paul gets a job on the other side of the country? Or what if Paul is killed in a car accident? What if, for whatever reason, the man that Max was gay for is no longer in his life? 

Does Gay For You still hold? Does Max magically no longer enjoy sleeping with men? Suddenly he's straight again? Of course he's not. 

I don't believe there is such a thing as Gay For You in real life. I believe there is Out For You, it's just that in romance it's difficult to spot hidden under all those happy endings. 

Happily Ever After?

This might seem like a weird confession for a writer of romance to make, but here it goes: 

I don't believe in Happily Ever Afters. 

Please disregard what it says in my little blurby thing. I was probably drunk or delusional when I wrote it. Not to say that I'm always drunk, and not to say that delusional always picks up the slack when I'm not... Let's just say that life is more interesting when you have no idea what's going to happen next, and get to the point. Which was that I don't believe in Happily Ever Afters.

There is an implication, at least I think there is, that living happily ever after is boring. It implies a life free of conflict and strife, and who the hell wants one of those? Conflict and strife define us. They make us stronger. They teach us important things about ourselves. They make real life interesting, and they're absolutely essential in fiction. 

I also think relationships are more complicated and interesting than Happily Ever Afters. At least, they should be. 

I first had a problem with HEAs when I was a child. 

"And they all lived happily ever after," my mother said, and closed the book. 

"But what happens next?" 

"They all lived happily ever after." 

"But what did they do?" 

"It doesn't say. It can be whatever you want." 

But surely if it was as exciting as what had come before, someone would have written it down? 

But you know the thing I hate most about Happily Ever Afters? The next words are always The End. Close the book, go to sleep, the story's done. And that's just not good enough. I don't want to leave a stagnant world when I close a book. I want to leave it changing, vibrant, alive.  

Maybe I just hate to reach the end of a story. Maybe that's the real reason I choose to write Happily For Nows. Leave that door open just a bit, so there's always a way to go back. 

As a reader, I like that. As a writer, I love it. That's my happily ever after right there. 

Do you prefer an HEA or a HFN?

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?

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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. 

Why I love writing romance

People are fascinating. I love the way we interact. I love the way we move into each other's spaces, the way we sometimes jostle, the way we bounce off each other. 


A relationship is made up of a million interactions, each one with a different nuance. 


In relationships, the unspoken words are just as loud as the spoken. 

Together, forever
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I think people are amazing, and I think the most amazing thing any person can ever do is reach out to another human being. 


We don't always know what we want or who we are, but sometimes we know what we can't afford to lose. 


I love exploring that. 

I saw a fairytale kiss

When I was a young girl, probably about ten or eleven, I was on a train going through the rainforest to Kuranda, in tropical North Queensland. The journey was wonderful and magical, and I was spellbound. 

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There were two young men in the same carriage. I was eleven -- young enough to imagine they were fairytale princes, and old enough to feel awkwardly shy because they were so good looking and I had braces and puppy fat. And then -- I remember it just as the train passed the waterfall -- those two young men kissed. One of the other passengers swore and left the carriage. 

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I asked my mother later what was wrong with what those boys had done. 

"Nothing," she told me. "Loving someone else isn't wrong." 

And how could it be? We were in an enchanted forest, they were handsome fairytale princes, and I was the plain little girl who had glimpsed something magical. 

If I grew up to write m/m erotica, maybe I can trace it all back to those boys on the train. When I was eleven they were beautiful. Now they would be hot. But underneath all of that there has to be a love story. There always is, otherwise it isn't magic. 

And what I saw was magic.