Hello, Cole, and thank you so much for hosting us today.
Thanks to both of you! I found this post really interesting (especially from an author’s view) so I’ll be adding my thoughts to the comments 🙂 But I’ll leave this part open, so everyone can get to the post!
Just a Note: Elin’s comments are in Blue and Alex’s are in Green, though their names are also marked.
This post is an attempt to express a little of the frustration experienced when writing one thing but finding that it is being marketed, and therefore judged, as something else.
In February the Library Journal posted an article about the sudden popularity of erotica, inspired by the success of Fifty Shades of Gray. The author of the article also devoted a couple of paragraphs to M/M:
“Another growing subgenre in erotica to watch is that of M/M fiction, … Particularly popular authors are Josh Lanyon, K.A. Mitchell, Alex Beecroft, and Heidi Cullinan.”
Katie Dunneback, Feb 11th 2013 http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/2013/02/books/genre-fiction/erotica-full-frontal-shelving-genre-spotlight/
Elin: There’s no such thing as bad publicity but surely it’s even better if it is accurate. True, the heat levels in most of K A Mitchell and Heidi Cullinan’s excellent and entertaining work are scorching but I wouldn’t have described any of Alex Beecroft’s work as erotica, nor those titles of Josh Lanyon’s that I have had the pleasure of reading.
Alex: I know that I was at first very pleased just to be mentioned in as august a publication as Library Journal. But at the same time, I feel like I’ve been fighting all my writing career against the presumption that what I write is erotica. When Captain’s Surrender came out in 2008, it was automatically listed by various sites as erotica, and I had to write to them all to say “look, there are three sex scenes in 200 pages, and each scene takes less than a page. That is not erotica by anyone’s standards.” So to find that five years later, after constantly saying “please don’t be misled by the labelling, what I write is pretty mild,” I was still being (mis)listed as an erotica writer… it was very grieving.
Elin: So, why are you described as erotica writers? Could it be because you write LGBT characters in relationships? Is it simply that any book with, say, two men in a relationship must be classed as erotica just because they are two men rather than one man and one woman, even if the sexual content is limited, discreet, or not actually on page at all? It seems to be the case at Fictionwise where all books featuring same sex relationships are filed under erotica no matter the level of sexual content. This strikes me as being both extremely unfair and homophobic.
Alex: I agree. I can’t think of an innocent reason why the heat level of an m/m or f/f book should be treated as different from that in an m/f book, based on number and explicitness of sex scenes. Either there’s some kind of underlying assumption that they’re more transgressive in some way – more shocking, something that OMG we must keep away from the children. Or there’s an assumption that their readers couldn’t possibly be reading them for the plot, because who would ever care about or believe in a same sex romance from the perspective of the love story? Neither of which are good assumptions.
To be fair, I suppose they could be saying that same sex sex is automatically better than straight sex. If so (and to be frank, I think it’s unlikely) I’m not sure what they base that assumption on either.
Elin: It’s also poor marketing to label a book as erotica when it only has one or two sex scenes, there because they are vital to the plot rather than to titillate the reader. Readers who have bought a book because they expect it to be erotica will be disappointed when they don’t find what they want. Readers who prefer less sex with their plot will see the erotica tag and won’t buy.
Alex: Well, that’s right. You disappoint everyone, you drive away readers who are looking for sweet m/m romance (because they can’t face wading through all the sex to get to what they want to read) and you get disgruntled erotica readers who wonder who thought they would find hundreds of pages of battles and sailing at all stimulating.
Elin: At this point I should make it clear that erotica is a fine thing and I enjoy reading some of it, but I am absolutely rubbish at writing it myself. Since there is nothing much worse to read than badly written sex I’d sooner fade to black but that’s just personal preference. Well written erotica is something to be celebrated and that certainly shows in the sales figures.
Jessewave quoted some figures in a post about readers’ buying habits according to “heat rating”.
Heat level 1- .73%
Heat level 2- 1.9%
Heat level 3- 10.3%
Heat level 4- 32.61%
Heat level 5- 50.57%
http://www.reviewsbyjessewave.com/2012/08/17/readers-how-do-you-like-your-mm-romances/
Apparently fiction with heat ratings of 4 or five account for 83% of sales. This seems to be bourn out by the results of her reader preference poll where only 11% of voters said they were as happy to read low heat ratings as high. For many readers, it seems that M/M is ALL about the sex and any book without/with less is viewed as short-changing them.
Alex: I’m not a big fan of erotica myself. For a start, I’m asexual (but not aromantic) so to me the sex part is pretty uninteresting unless it’s doing something necessary for the plot. In erotica the plot exists to further the sex, so that’s not really for me. I respect erotica as sometimes a beautiful and certainly a highly skilled thing to write. But in general erotica only points up to me how profoundly I’m not like normal people.
When I started in the genre, I thought you had to write sex scenes, and they had to be explicit, so my earlier books – though still mild by the standards of the genre – are more sexy than my more recent ones. I knew, in deciding to write sweet romances nevertheless, that I was probably going to sell a lot less than I would if I went hotter. But there’s a point where you’ve got to be true to yourself or everything you write starts to be fake. That’s why I decided to go sweeter regardless.
Elin: Yet in comments to Wave’s post, many readers said that they frequently skip sex scenes unless they are particularly well written or relevant.
I decided to do a little survey of my own by trawling around the net for quotes from blogs and requesting opinions from other authors:
“I want to know what the heroes of a book are up to, either mine or when I am sitting back, reading a good M/M romance. I want to know what they like, what their preferences are, what turns them on and if they are vanilla or run to kink. Why? Because I think it tells us more about the characters.”
And re: Jessewave’s survey:
“53% wanted a balance in their books, a good story but liked hot sex as well. 37% said they think they should advance the plot, but otherwise it’s just porn. I was relieved. I was afraid the poll would fall under the fade-to-waterfall side, or the plot-what-plot side. By at least one poll, me and the readers see eye to eye. It was a good guide on what to write.” B G Thomas
“Romance is not, as a genre, defined by erotic content. It is defined by emotional content and the focus on meaningful relationships. Male male romance is simply romance featuring two male protagonists. To classify all m/m romance as erotic is as ridiculous as claiming all contemporary romance must contain erotic content or that all erotic romance must contain elements of BDSM. Or, to follow this to its logical conclusion, that all historicals must contain swords fights and all Amish romance must feature a bake sale. One possible element does not define a sub-genre — any more than it defines a real life romance.” Josh Lanyon
“When I started writing m/m a couple years ago, I was thrilled to be able to include graphic sex because, up until then, as far as I knew, no one was doing it. Of course, I was wrong. Authors had been breaking this ground long before I discovered the genre.
My first releases included graphic sex, and at that time, it was fun to write. Hot, sexy, the edgier the better. But not every story had sex scenes in it. I remember being extremely nervous the first time I submitted a story that had no sex in it at all. I thought the publisher would reject it instantly; that’s how ingrained it had become by that point to include sex in a story. But it was accepted and went on to earn me a nice little sum, proving that m/m didn’t have to offer graphic sex to sell.
It’s still the norm today, however, to include graphic sex in a m/m book. Some authors write it very well, but after reading many, such many scenes, I’m bored with it. There are only so many ways one can write sex, and now I find myself skimming those scenes, anxious to get back to the story. It must also be noted that few authors write sex well. Those that can’t do it, but include it anyway because they think it’s expected, even required, simply make reading it painful.
Readers do equate m/m with graphic sex. That will only change when authors stop force-feeding it to them.
Sex is part of life, I’m glad we can include it in our stories, but I no longer want the blow by blow action. If it doesn’t further the story, why is it in there? And where is it written it has to be presented graphically?” Theo Fenraven
“What I’ve never liked about the “romance” tag is that by simply putting romance (and now, m/m or so it seems) it already TELLS me how the book is going to end and I hate that. I like a satisfying ending along with most people but for me it’s the journey – I don’t want to KNOW how the book is going to end before I’ve even started it.
I’m not against sex scenes, but there are so many other rules that go along with the tags. The protags should meet straight away, there should be some conflict keeping them apart – there must be no infidelity and so on and so on. I love a book that chucks all that in the bin and does its own thing. If there is sex, it needs to be integral to the plot and not just shoehorned in – which is still the case in so so so so so many m/m books.
And it feeds itself. If all m/m books are about sex, then people expect that – some joyfully and others “oh – that’s gay fiction – that’s only about sex.” Erastes
“I get frustrated as both writer and reader when same sex stories (particularly in e-book) are labelled as badly written, badly edited porn. There is no doubt that those exist (and I know of one reader whose first experience of m/m was just that and it put her off reading any more). But I want to spread the word about all the stories where plot and quality are more important than “yet another sex scene”. And I want to discover more of those to read.” Charlie Cochrane
Elin: I get very frustrated too. If one writes romance one can label ones book ‘sweet romance’ and that will be understood, but what about the authors who aren’t writing romance? Science Fiction, Fantasy, Crime, Historical Drama, Thriller, Horror are all legitimate genres in the mainstream and may or may not have sexual encounters between protagonists. In LGBTTQ fiction, of the authors writing in a similar vein, some are just so good that they are regular bestsellers while others write terrific stories but become discouraged by bad reviews from disappointed erotica readers and comparatively poor sales. The 11% of potential readers who might be interested in their work are very hard to reach.
At the beginning of March we set up a couple of groups, LGBTTQ Fiction: Passionate About Plot, on Facebook and Goodreads in the hope of reaching those potential readers. A good number of authors have joined both groups and a few readers and reviewers have joined on Goodreads. The general consensus seems to be:
“I think you really need to have as many types of literature as possible, so it’s fantastic to have a group that reads/writes LGBTQ fiction and doesn’t necessarily need to have romance or sex included.” Anne Brooke
Elin: To wrap it all up, I think more choice, more variety, more accessibility, reaching a greater audience, has to be a good thing.
Alex: I’d second that! I can’t see how having more accurate labelling, and the separating out of sweet from hot GBLT romance, just as it’s done in m/f romance, can possibly do any harm.
(Just to sidetrack for a moment ‘sweet’ only refers to the amount of sexual content. It doesn’t refer to other things like violence. I would say that Captain’s Surrender was a ‘sweet’ romance despite the fact that someone gets his head blown off with a cannon-ball in it.)
But certainly, if the people who wanted to read less sexually graphic romance could easily find it, and the people who wanted more graphic romance could more easily avoid it, both sets of people would be happier. And a more visible presence of plot-heavy/sex-light books in the genre would (I fervently hope) go some way towards dispelling the idea that it’s all so much more scandalous than the straight equivalent.
~~~
Follow Alex Beecroft here and Elin Gregory here.
The Armchair Reader 
charliecochrane
Excellent post, gals.
*But certainly, if the people who wanted to read less sexually graphic romance could easily find it, and the people who wanted more graphic romance could more easily avoid it, both sets of people would be happier.*
Yes! Indeed.
Alex Beecroft
*g* So easy to say and so apparently impossible to do 🙂
Elin Gregory
Thanks for commenting, sweetie.
Making readers happy is what we all want to do, isn’t it.
Steve Emmett
I completely agree with the sentiments here. The problem really stems from the damned genre label itself – M/M. I have always hated it from the first time I saw it. It seems to me that it aims at a very low level. What is wrong with the words gay or homosexual? What is wrong with gay characters in mainstream literature? The answer is, nothing. They have been there forever (well, nearly). They are in all kinds of fiction from The Bible to Brideshead Revisited. In this day and age, when same sex marriage is legal in many civilised countries, we do not need segregating. Horror, my genre, is horror – whether it has sex or not, and whether that sex is between same sex characters or not. Even if there is no sex, the human relationships can be gay or straight and it most certainly does not make it M/M! My latest novel (agents please note, querying now) is a dark horror which combines ancient Roman history with the modern day, and the main ‘relationship’ is gay – with very little sex but a lot of poetic sensuality. It is not M/M. Can you imagine the DNFs on Goodreads?
Alex Beecroft
If we’re talking about Romance, and we know we’re all talking about romance, then saying m/m as opposed to m/f or f/f or m/m/f or m/f/m or f/m/f etc makes for an easy shorthand that helps people look for what they want to read. But it’s only useful if you’re already talking about Romance. If you’re talking about a mystery in which a gay sleuth investigates crime and talks it over with his husband in the evenings, then saying m/m makes no sense at all, because it’s a Mystery, it’s not a romance.
On the other hand, I started in my genre of gay romance before the m/m label really took hold, and we still had the problem that our ‘gay romance’ was thought of as erotica regardless of actual content.
Elin Gregory
Avoiding those disappointed DNFs is the thing to aim for. Getting book blurbs right is a help too – my latest looks like a romance from the blurb but it’s actually about honour, saiiling ships, stealing stuff and Stockholm Syndrome, with a little bit of romance to give it a lift. No wonder it’s hard to place.
susanroebuck
Excellent, clear post. You are both so right that gay fiction is so often mis-labeled and, as Steve said, if his horror book involves a relationship between two men that doesn’t mean it should be labeled m/m. It really is time to get this writing genre sorted out.
Alex Beecroft
Thank you, and I agree, it shouldn’t be. But quite how we go about sorting it out is another matter. I don’t know what to do about it, do you?
Elin Gregory
Thanks Sue. I’m certainly no wiser than Alex. But I think it might be worth mentioning that “Yes there’s lots of lovely erotica but there’s this too and you can find it here” otherwise how will people know?
jessielansdel
I agree absolutely. If its horror, Sc/Fi, romance or spy or murder stories they should be classed as such regardless of whether the characters are gay or straight. Definately time this was sorted. But even my own family members believe that….if I’m writing M/M it follows it must be erotica. No! No! No! It isn’t. But they will not read any of my stories or those of any other author to rid themselves of this belief. It’s so frustrating and annoying. Great post and thank you. 👍
Alex Beecroft
I must say, I don’t think the naked torso covers really help 😉 I’m glad that they aren’t quite so prevalent nowadays as they used to be.
Tam
“someone gets his head blown off with a cannon-ball”
Definitely not sweet. LOL
I’ve heard complaints both ways. Some people say “too much sex, I hated it” and on the other hand “WTF? They didn’t even “do it” on page. What’s up with that?” So I think authors can’t win, but they shouldn’t have to. There is a market for both and I’ve enjoyed both. Sometimes I’m in the mood for scorching heat and sometimes I really couldn’t care less if that’s part of the story.
I know some people hate labels on books. But I think as noted, nothing is more annoying than thinking you are buying X and finding out you got Y. However I find with GR, there is almost no need to make a mistake these days. Just check out a few reviews and you’ll soon figure out what’s up.
I also find it annoying that all m/m or f/f or probably menages of all varieties are lumped as erotica. It may well be the idea that it’s titillating therefore by default must be sexy. GLBT couples are often defined by their sexuality and the mechanics thereof, that seems to be the focus of many nay-sayers to marriage equality (two men don’t have the equipment to have sex http://steppenwolf24.tumblr.com/post/47283214646). They figure any story involving two people of the same gender must be about sex (and kinky, naughty taboo sex too), not love, not attraction, not romance. Frustrating.
Alex Beecroft
*G* I remember someone who reviewed Captain’s Surrender called it ‘fluffy’. I was amused but slightly boggled, what with the hanging and flogging and battles etc.
They figure any story involving two people of the same gender must be about sex (and kinky, naughty taboo sex too), not love, not attraction, not romance. Frustrating.
It really is. And how it can still be like that in our own genre, where you’d have thought we’d all know better, I don’t know. But I suppose it is better inside, because the moment the mainstream society becomes aware of us, they deal with it even worse. It’s depressing.
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Lisa
There seems to be an epidemic of pornographic expectation in gay romance, though I’m not sure why the term “romance” automatically predisposes readers to expect sex in any way, shape, or form, regardless of whether the main characters are a man and a woman, two men, or two women. And I certainly think it’s unfair for an author’s work to be graded, either positively or negatively, based on a reader’s expectation of and satisfaction with the sexual content of a book. I’ve had Young Adult authors tell me their books have been dismissed by readers and rated poorly for little more than the lack of sexual content, which, to me, is jaw-dropping. Although I suppose sexual content in YA is an entirely different topic entirely.
I’ve had this discussion many times with friends and completely agree with you both; it’s beyond time for a specific line to be drawn between romance and erotica, in all sub-genres, and I’d suppose this needs to fall upon the shoulders of the publishers that don’t currently disclose the amount of sexual content contained in their offerings. I know some already do publish “heat ratings” along with the books’ blurbs, and I don’t know how well it helps readers to vet their reading choices, but it certainly couldn’t hurt.
I honestly am not particular, one way or the other. I love books that’re plot heavy and contain sexual content; I love books that are plot heavy and sex light; I’ve read books that have no sex at all and books that are all sex. All I truly demand are characters I can fall head over heels for and who’ll tell me a story I can get lost in.
Alex Beecroft
To me, the quintessential romance is Pride and Prejudice, which as far as I remember doesn’t even contain an on-page kiss, so I’m with you in wishing that ‘Romance’ and ‘Sexy’ weren’t so firmly welded together in all sorts of romance, not just m/m. I’m sure that the assumption of lots of sex is one of the reasons why Romance is held in such low esteem as a genre as a whole. Which I don’t actually think is a good thing, because good erotica is very hard to write and ought to be respected for what it is. But what it is, as you say, is different from romance.
But yes, it’s even worse in the LGBT part of the genre, and I don’t know what the writers can do about it, other than be honest about what they think they’ve written.
Elin Gregory
Reblogged this on Elin Gregory and commented:
Taking this opportunity to reblog the post Cole riann so kindly hosted on Armchair Reader, regarding marketing problems for authors writing LGBT fiction that isn’t erotic.
Admin
Reblogged this on Steve Emmett and commented:
Reblogging this as it’s very relevant to publishing today
jessielansdel
Reblogged this on Defying Leviticus..
Carole Cummings
First off–Hi, Cole!! ❤
Second–what a great post, Elin and Alex. I feel your pain.
I get very frustrated too. If one writes romance one can label ones book ‘sweet romance’ and that will be understood, but what about the authors who aren’t writing romance? Science Fiction, Fantasy, Crime, Historical Drama, Thriller, Horror are all legitimate genres in the mainstream and may or may not have sexual encounters between protagonists. In LGBTTQ fiction, of the authors writing in a similar vein, some are just so good that they are regular bestsellers while others write terrific stories but become discouraged by bad reviews from disappointed erotica readers…
THANK YOU. I write character-driven fantasy, and even though the protagonists are male and they do get together in the course of the story, I have yet to write erotica or romance. Now, admittedly, some of the backlash I get from readers who were expecting either of those things when they pick up my books is partially my own fault–I publish through small presses that identify as m/m romance presses–but it does get frustrating to have one’s work judged by a template it wasn’t claiming in the first place.
I got knocked around badly for including points of view other than the two protagonists’ in my last series. Which kind of boggled me–it’s kind of a staple of fantasy world-building–until I realized it was because readers were expecting a romance with fantasy elements, rather than a fantasy with a few romantic elements. I’m learning to live with it.
As far as labeling all lit. that includes unconventional pairings as ‘erotica’ or even ‘m/m–f/f–etc’, I don’t think that’s going to go away until ‘unconventional’ is no longer a factor; until the rainbow is part of the norm and no one even blinks anymore at a pairing that’s not m/f. We’re not there yet. Even people who have no problem whatsoever with homosexuality, who you couldn’t in good conscience call bigots, still haven’t broken the habit of separating ‘normal’ relationships from ‘gay’ relationships, even if it’s only in their heads.
While I think the tide is turning and the majority see no reason to make a distinction, the distinction will exist as long as it takes people to stop seeing a person’s sexuality as their most important identifying factor. We as a culture need to go from labeling someone a ‘gay man’, move on through labeling him ‘a man who is gay, and reach the point where we simply label him ‘a man’ before the other labels will drop into irrelevance. While those labels still exist, I think the ‘erotica’ label will always be attached to anything viewed as the smallest bit titillating, and right now, a chaste kiss between two people of the same sex is still considered titillating by some. We need to get past the bigger prejudices before these smaller ones will go away.
In the meantime, thanks for a great post and here’s to a future where this sort of thing doesn’t matter anymore.
Carole
Lisa
Carole wrote: “I got knocked around badly for including points of view other than the two protagonists’ in my last series. Which kind of boggled me–it’s kind of a staple of fantasy world-building–until I realized it was because readers were expecting a romance with fantasy elements, rather than a fantasy with a few romantic elements. I’m learning to live with it.”
::waves:: Hi, Carole! ^_^
So, how do you think readers became groomed to these expectations? Is it because erotica was the staple food for so long, or is it because those readers were unfamiliar with fantasy and picked up your books thinking that simply because Mal and Fen are both men, they’d be served the status quo?
Carole Cummings
Hiya, Lisa! 🙂
I tend to think that in most cases it’s the latter, at least from some of the thrashing I saw going on when the books came out. Readers didn’t want to hear anyone’s POV but Mal’s and Fen’s. They skipped whole segments and then got angry because they didn’t understand the plot. I don’t think it was because they were expecting wall-to-wall erotica, really–I think it was because they were expecting it to follow the tropes and formulae of Romance and didn’t understand why it didn’t.
Like I said, some of that comes from the fact that it’s published through a press that identifies as a M/M Romance publisher, so I can’t get too pissy about it. I can and do get fristrated, though. 😉
onlyfragments
Carole, since you posted here and now I have a chance to say this to you directly, I LOOOOVED your Aisling series. Absolutely adored it. It’s a hidden gem in this genre and whenever I can I direct like-minded readers to it. I think you handled the romance side of things extremely well in the series; the slow build up is far more realistic than the usual “immediate romance, lots of sex” I see so often.
Carole Cummings
Oh, wow, thanks so much! I’m so glad you enjoyed it and you’re really sweet to tell me so. I just got the warm-fuzzies. 🙂
Erastes
Great reply, Carole, makes a lot of sense.
What makes me laugh is that now “The Sword Itself” is getting more exposure as it filters from fantasy to readers of “m/m” is that people are saying that there’s too much sex in it. I’m assuming that the people who ARE saying that are the fantasy readers. What I liked about that book was that although the protag was gay it didn’t put off the stride of the fantasy plot, except that every aspect of the protag’s life was coloured by his sexualtiy in a fantasy world which wasn’t particularly kind to homosexuals. Great book which gets the balance right. I’ll have to track your work down, as I’m a bit of a closet fantasy-phile!
Carole Cummings
Hi, Erastes, and thanks. 🙂
See, those kinds of blanket ‘too much of this, not enough of that’ statements rather annoy me. If the story is dealing with a very sexual character or is set in a world that’s somewhat less parochial than ours, or where sex is given a different overall dynamic–to me, that’s part of the world-building. Maybe lots and lots of sex would be ‘too much’ in our world, but that’s part of the point of fantasy–it’s not our world. It’s like complaining about anachronisms in fantasy; I always want to tell people there’s no such thing. It’s absolutely possible for a world to develop , say, a working hovercraft before it develops indoor plumbing, just like it’s possible that another world might develop as a matriarchal society, rather than the patriarchal one we’ve got, or maybe an encompassing sexual attitude that’s never even considered the idea that sexual encounters should be held behind closed doors and with only one certain kind of partner. Just because our world developed with a certain chronology and certain mores doesn’t mean another world would follow the same pattern, and especially when you throw magic into the equation like a lot of fantasy (including mine) does. And I certainly hope other worlds would not invent the same sexual prejudices we’ve got going.
I think it goes back to labels, like Alex and Elin were saying, but it’s also got a lot to do with expectations on the parts of the readers. And I think that walking into a story with any other expectation besides hoping for a good tale told well is self-defeating and robs readers of what could have been a good experience for them, had they dropped the expectations and just followed where the characters led them. If a reader walks into a SF story expecting page after page of space battles and freaky aliens and is instead given a character drama of two people trying to cope on a stranded shuttle, I don’t think it’s the story’s fault for being what it is–I think it’s the reader’s loss for expecting it to be what they wanted it to be and not opening their mind enough to appreciate what it is.
Wow, I got ranty and a little off the point. Er, sorry. I kind of took the long way around to saying yes, I agree with you, and if people in general would pause to consider subtext and nuance more, they might figure out what they’d missed in their reading experiences of some pretty excellent books they didn’t like for what, in the scheme of things, seem to be some pretty narrow-minded reasons. ‘I didn’t like this 500 page epic fantasy with a unique world and interesting characters because there was too much sex’ is, to me, a statement that says a lot more about the reader than it does about the book.
I’m shutting up now before I get myself into trouble. 😉
Alex Beecroft
*g* I’m also mainly interested in writing gay characters who do interesting things while also falling in love, rather than writing Romance with a capital R, so I know where you’re coming from there. My ‘Under the Hill’ books were released under Samhain’s “romantic elements” label which says plainly that what you’re getting is a fantasy with some elements of romance rather than the other way around. And in a mainstream fantasy, the level of romance would be fairly standard for a romantic subplot, but as you say, the fact that it’s a gay relationship rather than a straight one immediately marks it out as a much bigger deal than it would be if it was a straight one.
I’m not sure whether it might have been a better idea to either try to get it into mainstream Fantasy (which has done pretty well with Mercedes Lackey’s gay heroes) or to self publish it and then promote it as plain old Fantasy. Except that then, of course, people who were looking for fantasies with gay characters might not have found it.
It’s all a bit of a dilemma. But certainly, it seems to me that we can’t really hope to change the outside world’s perception if we don’t start off by changing our own – and making sure that in our own part of the romance community we don’t kowtow to the idea that there’s anything odd or extra-titilating about same sex relationships over opposite sex ones.
Carole Cummings
*makes note to go check out ‘Under the Hill’ books*
I’m not sure whether it might have been a better idea to either try to get it into mainstream Fantasy (which has done pretty well with Mercedes Lackey’s gay heroes) or to self publish it and then promote it as plain old Fantasy. Except that then, of course, people who were looking for fantasies with gay characters might not have found it.
Yeah, I’ve often wondered the same thing myself. I have no idea what the right way to go would be. I don’t generally look for ‘gay’ fantasy or ‘straight’ fantasy–I just look for fantasy, you know? And if the characters can sell the story and the relationship (if there is one) to me, I don’t really care what it’s labeled. But most people seem to. I think, either way, it would be next to impossible to reach all the readers who would enjoy a story, just because labels in general are so misleading–and yet there’s no getting away from labels, alas.
It’s all a bit of a dilemma. But certainly, it seems to me that we can’t really hope to change the outside world’s perception if we don’t start off by changing our own – and making sure that in our own part of the romance community we don’t kowtow to the idea that there’s anything odd or extra-titilating about same sex relationships over opposite sex ones.
Er. Yeah. I see now that I was communicating a somewhat defeatist attitude. I didn’t mean to. I guess I was going more for realistic, but you’re right–it’s not going to get better if we don’t continue to work at it. I’m toeing my part of the line, I promise. 😉
Thanks again for a great post. The discussion is fascinating.
Cole
Hi Carole! I’m so glad to see you here and talk to you again 🙂 It has been a while.
And while I’m here, I just want to say that I think your series (both) along with a few other authors who have written similar fantasy-first/romance-second series actually does put forth more change in the m/m romance community than you might think. Maybe it is because you get on the ground feedback that you see more negative short-term responses, but I think that those types of stories also fill a need that we might not entirely know we’re missing 🙂
Carole Cummings
Aw, Cole, you say the best things. I love coming to play in your sandbox.
It would be nice to think I’m making some kind of lasting contribution. I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out if my books are still floating around out there in twenty years. I know my stories fill my need, and if they can give a few others some satisfaction by their existence and availability, then that’s enough to keep me from becoming a permanent cave-dweller. Though I’ll still visit often and stay too long. 😉
*hugs*
Carole
Alex Beecroft
*g* As a career pessimist I don’t believe that realism is a problem at all – it certainly didn’t come across as defeatist to me. I think it’s good to have a clear view of what we’ve got to counter, if only so that we can counter it clearly. When I look at this genre I think we’re probably five years ahead of mainstream society in terms of beginning to understand all the different issues involved, but we ourselves haven’t got to any kind of consensus yet on some questions, so it’s going to be a long slog to take what we’ve learned to everyone else – if they’ll even listen.
But yes, maybe we should try both – try publishing gay fantasy as mainstream fantasy, and try publishing it as ‘romantic elements’ fantasy in the m/m genre and see what happens. I’m going to try mainstream fantasy publishers first for The Glass Floor (which has two of its main heroes in a relationship with each other), and see how it goes. Then I can work out what to do next after that. Ideally, I think I’d end up doing both 🙂
Thank you! And thanks for coming and commenting.
E.E. Ottoman
I wonder if this is a problem heterosexual romance runs into or not? I feel as if there is a feeling in society as a whole that the only reason someone would read a romance novel would be for the sex or to become sexually aroused. I think this stems from a lot of things one of which being that romance is supposed to be poorly written and lacking the substantial plot and world building which other genre novels have. I think that GLBTQ romance is particularly targeted as being only erotica though and I can’t imagine this coming from any other place besides a discomfort with the GLBTQ community and sexuality in general.
I think we as a writing community may have exacerbated this though. As someone pointed out above calling it m/m romance instead of gay romance or lesbian romance may seem from the outside to divorce it from more serious topics which in fact the genre addresses often. There is also the whole “I find men hot so two men together is doubly hot” narrative from writers/readers, which I’ve run across a million times at this point. I have to say if this was the only narrative I heard I too would assume that sex was the only reason to read/write m/m romance. I’m not saying we should stop telling this narrative if it’s true for the individual but become as a community more proactive about making sure other narratives are heard.
Finally I tend to be cautious with the whole romance vs. erotica thing because I feel like there is enough shaming of people who write/read erotica (especially straight women) out there and I don’t want to add to it. I appreciated that you all couched the difference between romance and erotica in heat levels. Where romance is a more overarching genre that includes a lot of heat levels but the plot revolves around the emotional relationship and erotica is a story which revolves around the physical relationship between the two characters but often also includes an emotional aspect as well.
Too often during these conversations I see romance being defined as being all about love and thus erotica as being defines as loveless. Or worse erotica being define as a story about sex which is somehow societally unacceptable (there is a lot of equating it to porn with the inherent assumption that all porn is bad) and romance as an acceptable story about sex. We need to respect and take care of your erotica writers too.
But yeah bottom line, this trend is a problem which does no one any favors.
Alex Beecroft
It is complicated, because there are lots of people in the genre who really like a lot of sex in their romance, and there’s nothing wrong with that either. So as you say, we’ve got to be careful to somehow say “m/m romance is not always all about the sex” without appearing to say “so we wish there was no sex in it at all.” I sometimes think that people aren’t really set up to deal with questions where the answer isn’t an either/or thing. If you say “it’s not always about the sex” they will hear “sex is bad,” and if you say “I like a bit of sex in my romances” they will hear “more sex is better.” What to do about any of this, I’m not sure. But I do feel it’s up to me to at least be honest about what I think I’m writing (even if other people don’t agree with me.)
onlyfragments
Amazon’s recommendation page is TERRIBLE about this. I’ve read some LGBT historical fiction (I’m talking stuff like The Absolutist and The German, neither of which counts AT ALL as romance!) and now everything LGBT related Amazon recommends to me is werewolf BDSM and books with naked men on the covers. I’m asexual as well and have returned a number of books after getting to a five or six page long sex scene I have no interest in reading. Unfortunately there seems to be no way on Amazon to distinguish between a book with gay characters and a gay novel, let alone search for such a book and find one with any amount of luck.
Alex Beecroft
Yes, I think this was one of the reasons why the “m/m romance” label came about – so that people looking for romance could find it, and people looking for LGBT fiction (however you define that – whether it’s fiction by LGBT authors, or (non romance) fiction containing LGBT characters or both) could look in a different section. Which was a sensible idea, I think, if it had only worked that way.
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Megan Derr
Less Than Three Press was founded on the idea that not all stories have to contain loads of sex. Anyone who frequents are site knows that the majority of our books are not going to have a lot of sex. It’s one of the reasons we’ve never bothered with heat ratings, though we’re finally going to implement that soon.
We also seem to have become a press for mostly fantasy/sci-fi/etc. That is what the vast majority of our readers wants — LGBTQ fantasy. The fact we’re going four years strong and only goes stronger proves pretty clearly, I think, that the genre is far more than erotica and people want more than that. We’ll never sell as well as contemporary or books heavier on porn, but we definitely have a fanbase.
On a more personal note, as I said to friends on twitter a couple weeks ago, I’ve always considered myself equal parts romance writer and fantasy writer. But I’m too heavy on the fantasy to ever be huge as a romance writer, and too heavy on the romance (and gay, I feel, to some degree, though that has definitely changed the last few years) to be a ‘real’ fantasy writer. Most days I just don’t care, but there are still times it stings.
Alex Beecroft
I’ve always considered myself equal parts romance writer and fantasy writer. But I’m too heavy on the fantasy to ever be huge as a romance writer, and too heavy on the romance (and gay, I feel, to some degree, though that has definitely changed the last few years) to be a ‘real’ fantasy writer. Most days I just don’t care, but there are still times it stings.
I know exactly how you feel. That’s very much where I am too. Which makes me fascinated to hear what you say about ❤ Press. I didn't know that, and now I must check you all out 🙂 Thanks!
Cole
I love LT3 🙂 They’re one of my favorite publishers and I read just about everything they publish!
Stevie Carroll
Great post there. I just had a beta reader, who tends more to high fantasy and historical settings tell me my novel was racier than she expected, although I still have concerns that others may come back to me saying that there’s not enough ‘romance novel’ style sex. I have warned two out of three people that some of the language may be earthier than they’re used to (the other I hope kows me well enough to expect my characters to occasionally use language in private that they wouldn’t use over the tea cups).
Mostly, though, I want plot, and have written a fair few LGBTQ short stories with no sex in them at all. Plus some of my favourite reads are very much ‘sweet’ in terms of the sex content, regardless of how many deeaths occur on the page.
Alex Beecroft
Yes, the only thing that gives me pause is the thought that 50 Shades of Gray is supposedly erotica, and what I’ve read of it is not sexy at all… So maybe by mainstream standards, if that’s erotica then I might be writing erotica too, without even realising it. We do get a bit isolated here in our genre and forget what things look like in the larger world. (Largely a good thing, I think.)
Stevie Carroll
I’ve read nothing of ’50 shades…’ so I have no idea what counts as erotica these days. I wrote one short story with zombie sex that was supposed to be squciky, but who knows, someone out there mighht call that erotica too.
Alex Beecroft
How can zombies ever be sexy? I do not understand! (But then I feel the same way about vampires, and clearly I’m wrong about that.)
Steve Emmett
Oh, Alex! The vampire is all about sex and sensuality, ever since Dracula. That is a book filled with it.
Alex Beecroft
The vampire is a dead corpse which is using your sex drive as a lure to pull you in so that it can kill you with less struggle. How can that be other than horrifying?
(Or am I missing the point because as an asexual I don’t really understand why that lure works, when you really ought to be running away asap.)
Julia Kavan
Speaking as a horror writer who has written erotic horror… I think vampires are the embodiment of fear, life, death, darkness, power. The pull of something that is dark, forbidden, dangerous…even ‘evil’… can be very strong. Fear *can* produce the same responses in the body as arousal – also some find fear itself arousing. The modern vampire is a sensual creature – he is dangerous (to put it mildly) but knows how to seduce,so…fear and arousal combined – a pretty intoxicating mix.
Alex Beecroft
I do get it on an intellectual level. It’s just that on an emotional level all I feel is “ew, that’s horrible.” But I know that the fault here is in me, because I can’t possibly believe that everyone else is seeing something that’s not there. It’s much more logical to believe that I’m not seeing something that is.
Steve Emmett
Well put, Julia. There is of course the issue of penetration and the sharing of body fluids, and the notion of that act creating a new life.
Alex Beecroft
Which to me would be the tragic misapplication of a metaphor. I’m actually fairly interested in them as monsters. I loved the TV series “Ultraviolet” with Jack Davenport as a reluctant vampire hunter, where they are leeches on people’s hopes as well as their blood. But for me the sexual attraction part is just not there at all. (And the idea of sharing bodily fluids is kind of ick without it.)
Kirby Crow (@kirby_crow)
One of the most frequent comments I receive on my “Scarlet and the White Wolf” series is “I was so happy to find out this wasn’t all about sex.” Several years after publication, the series is still popular. Book 1 is very tame. Only a kiss. Books 2 and 3 have a little more, and because those do contain brief sex scenes, they were ALL initially labeled “erotica” in every venue, which was nonsense. They’re no more erotica than I am a fishbowl. 5 pages of sex out of 750 does not erotica make.
Fortunately, bookstores have changed a lot through the years, and the tags associated with the Scarlet books are much more accurate now.
Not everyone is into reading LGBT novels for the sexual component. A significant percentage of readers want the budding intimacy, the emotional risks, the slow building of a meaningful relationship. But I have zilch against hot sex in a book. My first published m/m novella contained non-stop Viking smut, and that was fun, but it isn’t what I want to write as a steady job. Nor, I imagine, is it what all readers want out of m/m all the time.
I’m not an erotica writer, even though I’ve written erotica. I make my own lunch every day, but that doesn’t make me a chef, either. What I am is a writer of genre novels featuring gay *characters*. That doesn’t automatically equal erotica and it doesn’t guarantee there will be sex at all in the story. But, like many other LGBT authors, I do sometimes feel pressured to include sex that isn’t pertinent to the storyline and doesn’t further the plot.
LGBT Romance is a big, big playground. There’s room enough here for every type of author and every type of reader, so it’s seems silly for any of us to feel that we have to conform to arbitrary expectations, whether we’re the writers OR the audience. 🙂
Alex Beecroft
LGBT Romance is a big, big playground. There’s room enough here for every type of author and every type of reader, so it’s seems silly for any of us to feel that we have to conform to arbitrary expectations, whether we’re the writers OR the audience. 🙂
I’d agree with that. I’m all for people reading and writing whatever they prefer. I just think it would be easier to find what you prefer and avoid what you dislike, if there was a bit more accurate labeling. Currently we have to rely on knowing the author by reputation, or hoping there’s a review which will mention the heat level. And if there isn’t a review yet, and we don’t know the author, it’s a bit of a lottery whether we’ll get something we would never have dreamed of buying or not.
Cole
I thought I’d wait a bit to see what the responses are before I put in my bit — and I’m glad! So many great responses!
From a reader/reviewer standpoint, I see it somewhat differently. I made a very definite choice when I started my own blog to list my interpretation of not only the Heat Level in each book I review, but also the Sex Frequency. I could have just done the Heat Level, but then that’s not very accurate without the other, I didn’t think, and those two things are one of the biggest factors to me in what I decide to read at any given time. I don’t really have a major preference one way or the other. I tend to go through 3 or 4 month cycles where I prefer either very sexual books or not sexual at all, or epic fantasies that I can disappear into or short contemporaries that don’t require much of my time or energy (though, I admit, less of those in the last few years).
Thanks for the wonderful, fascinating post ladies! And thanks to all the commenters as usual 🙂
Alex Beecroft
That sounds very useful. Once in a blue moon I quite like to read a hot sex scene, but I find that if there’s a high frequency of them I will page through them looking for the story, so in general I avoid those as not giving me enough narrative bang for my buck. (Or at least, I would avoid them if I had a guide like yours to tell me that was what I was looking at before I bought.) I’ve added your feed to my reader, as I see that coming in very handy. Thank you!
Finn Marlowe
I seem to have the opposite problem…I write erotica/erotic romance and paste that tag everywhere I can, yet people still say, “I didn’t know there’d be so much sex!” or similar comments. If I could, I’d staple a big “XXX” sign on my stuff, but staples don’t work on ebooks. So how do I let people know they’re in for sexy times if they read my stuff? I want to be fair to readers, to make sure they know what they’re buying, not get a big surprise if they’re trying me out for the first time (FYI – I didn’t know I wrote erotica when I started out, I thought most of m/m was like that…)
I think the mislabeling of m/m books that aren’t erotic/erotica as such is a real disservice to the genre, because when people do come across the real thing, they’re surprised (and occasionally shocked). Sometimes disappointed. And that’s a shame.
Alex Beecroft
I hadn’t thought of it this way around, but yes, the vagueness of the categories really does disadvantage everyone, doesn’t it? Readers need to be able to find the stuff they like, so that they’re not put off and lost because of the stuff they don’t.
Julia Alaric
This is a fantastic post, and heartening to read. As I mentioned on twitter a while back, there is no faster way to guarantee I won’t read a book than to market it as “hot!” or something synonymous. What that says to me is, “the best thing about this book is the frequency/length/intensity of sexy times!”, and to me, that’s boring. Sex in books is sometimes awesome, hot, and totally necessary for characterization, plot advancement, etc. but it’s not WHY I pick up the book in the first place. I think I can honestly say the only times I’ve ever wanted sex to appear in a book where it didn’t resulted from an ending that somehow felt unresolved without the sex, and it’s been a very, very rare thing in my experience. On the flip side, I can think of countless times I’ve been reading along, thinking, “Sex, more sex, blah blah blah. Can we get on with the story, please? They just did this ten pages ago.” (Or “You’ve got to be kidding me. There’s no way either of them got it up again this fast. They just did this ten pages ago!”) Erotica has its place, but only, as you say, when the reader is actually looking for erotica. And most authors in the genre aren’t really writing erotica.
I’m likewise puzzled by the assumption that all homosexual love affairs are somehow erotic or pornographic in a way heterosexual love affairs are not, or that the purpose of reading about them is solely for titillation. But I do see it all over reviews, especially on GR–the “eww, girly bits!” complaints and the “it was pretty good, even though there wasn’t much/any sex” remarks. Both as an author and as a potential reader, those sentiments drive me crazy. What are the implications? Females, and people with female genitalia who identify as male, don’t belong in a world with gay men? Only books with tons of sex are worth reading? The only reason we support or show interest in gay men is because they’re sexy (female-bodied, less attractive, or celibate gay men, you can just sit this one out with the rest of the rainbow)? But that’s a rant for another day. I just wanted to say I really enjoyed this post, I’m glad you brought it up, and I hope that there will someday be a better system in place for marketing books that represents their actual content and intent. I think it would make a lot of authors AND readers happier.
Alex Beecroft
Thank you! Your first paragraph is almost exactly how I feel. While I sometimes enjoy a good sex scene, I would far rather have no sex at all and a satisfying story, than have the story sacrificed to fit the sex in. And I’m often afraid to pick up a new (unknown to me) m/m author because of the many times I’ve read a book blurb, thought ‘oh, that sounds interesting’ and then discovered it was just a parade of sex scenes and the interesting thing never got properly explored at all.
On the flip side, I’ve had disappointed reviews of my books going “this wasn’t hot at all! Where was the sex?” And I think ‘if only this book had been marketed right, this reader would have known what they were getting (or not getting) beforehand, and would probably not now be spreading the word that my books are rubbish. It can be only a good thing for everyone to allow people to find the kind of book that they want, whether that’s super sexy or super plotty or what.
I sympathise with your rant for another day too. There are so many ways in this genre that we can hurt each other. So many ways in which we can be anti-women or anti-gay or both at once, and it’s made nastier by the fact that this is a place where that shouldn’t happen. I live in fear of the day that the m/m genre becomes the equivalent of lesbian porn for straight men. But I also live in fear of the day when women are shut down from talking about their own sexuality in their own words. So yes, we could do this very badly indeed, or we could do this in a way that helps us all to challenge the perceptions of mainstream society, and at the moment it could go either way.
E.E. Ottoman (@acosmistmachine)
“The only reason we support or show interest in gay men is because they’re sexy (female-bodied, less attractive, or celibate gay men, you can just sit this one out with the rest of the rainbow)?”
Oh my God! Forget about quoting you on this, I’m going to get this tattooed somewhere now I think.
clarelondon
This was a great post, much enjoyed. I’m only sorry it took me so long to get around to commenting – though of course it means most of my points have been raised, and much more eloquently, by others 🙂 Here come a few disjointed points that the discussion prompts in me.
So much of the problem is that (if I may say it) our fiction is not seen as “fiction” per se but as a category in itself. Note the way that Amazon pushes a “lgbt” category on a book listing before its “romance” or whatever else. I’ve always disliked the “m/m” or “gay” categorisation as the 1st, umbrella listing.
But then, I know I can be naive. The gay/mm tag serves its purpose while M/m fiction is still on its upward curve – it brings attention to one place where it can be found. And whatever surveys may say, it seems sex still sells enough to be encouraged, both by some (many? who really knows) readers and authors. On one side, it’s empowering, to be able to write sex in one’s book, and to have it accepted as saleable :). And on the other, booksellers’ and (some) publishers’ take advantage of titillation to sell books.
And Alex’s point is so right – “I would far rather have no sex at all and a satisfying story, than have the story sacrificed to fit the sex in.” Any dedicated reader of non-erotica would say so. But so often IMO the problem is the writing. The sex is bolted on / inserted / other embarrassingly-punny description, JUST to take advantage of a perceived market. For me, that’s when it feels the story has been sacrificed, and there’s a chunk of wordage that adds nothing to the story or my enjoyment as a reader, and can actually turn me off. Jordan Castillo Price (and many others, probably) says that any sex scene should enhance the story. It should add development / progress / characterisation etc. It’s not a trope in itself LOL.
But OMG yes, it’s all about the marketing. There has to be some way to steer between the prescriptive spoilers of fanfic tags, yet allow the readers to navigate to the books they want to read.
/end of my age of sail analogies :D.
Thanks again for LOTS of stimulating discussion on this end of the internet 🙂
Alex Beecroft
I think it’s fine to categorize a romance with two male participants as a m/m romance, as long as you also categorize a romance with one male, one female participant as a f/m romance (as opposed to just ‘a romance’). It’s useful to be able to say “this is a romance, and the relationship is m/m, or f/f or f/m/m” or whatever. The problem comes when people try to recategorize non-romances under that romance label. A mystery with a gay sleuth is a mystery, or perhaps a gay mystery (if you want to be able to find only the mysteries with gay sleuths). It’s not a m/m mystery unless there’s a strong element of romance in it (IMO).
I guess a lot of the problem comes down to the fact that authors can’t categorize their own books, and the people who do categorize them are often not the people who know best what they’re about.
I think there’s no doubt that sex sells – and why not, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to read sexy books. But I think that sweet might sell better too, if the readers who wanted it could find it more easily. I’m all for a safe harbour for all of us 😉
clarelondon
Well said 🙂
Steve Emmett
It’s not a m/m mystery unless there’s a strong element of romance in it (IMO).
So, what is a murder mystery where the DCI is in a civil partnership with a…vet/painter/another copper…and we see them together in standard domestic situations but there is no or little romance?
Alex Beecroft
I’d call it a murder mystery, if it was up to me – Mystery as the primary category, and maybe Mystery (GBLT fiction) as a secondary category if you wanted people who were looking for GBLT characters to be able to find it.
barbaraelsborg
Very interesting discussion that I come to late – as usual. One issue I see is that it’s impossible to give any degree of accuracy as to the sexual content of a book. Most of what I’ve written is called erotic romance BUT it’s nothing like the very hot erotic romances where the plots are sensual and the sex comes non stop. I’ve read many mainstream romances where the sex is just as graphic, if not more so than many erotic romances and yet the book, on the surface, appears to be tame.
Same issue with MM – apart from calling the book ‘sweet’ – how could you label the amount of sex? All the publishers have heat ratings but they’re individual to that publisher.
Bottom line – readers like different things and if they buy you and don’t like the lack of sex or too much sex – they won’t buy you again. It’s shame they waste their money and a shame if you get a bad review but readers are getting pickier and pickier and therefore harder to please.
I do think it’s a pity that MM has come to be totally associated with an erotic story but unless a different label can be invented – it’s going to continue. I’ve just read two mysteries by Christopher Rice that have gay elements. I didn’t know when I bought. It was a bonus for me – but if I’d gone looking for gay mysteries – would I have found them? I don’t know.
Alex Beecroft
Bottom line – readers like different things and if they buy you and don’t like the lack of sex or too much sex – they won’t buy you again. It’s shame they waste their money and a shame if you get a bad review but readers are getting pickier and pickier and therefore harder to please.
I suppose I think that part of the reason why readers are getting pickier and harder to please is that it’s hard at present for readers to find the stuff they want to read. As a reader myself, I find that the inability to identify the long, plotty, mildish stories has put me off buying any stories, because I don’t want to buy something only to discover I’ve got 100 pages of sex scenes. Which means that someone who is absolutely committed to this genre now very rarely buys any books in it which aren’t written by authors I already know. If my example is typical, and many people are being driven away by an inability to find the books they want to find, then that can’t be a good thing for the genre as a whole.
Maybe it is the case that the readers who would look for ‘sweet’ romance are too few to be worth catering for. I don’t know because as far as I know nobody has yet tried.
I do think it’s a pity that MM has come to be totally associated with an erotic story but unless a different label can be invented – it’s going to continue.
Exactly. That’s another good reason for making the non-erotic stuff easier to find. If it’s there, and obvious to a casual browser, the casual browser will immediately be made aware that m/m comes in all varieties, and it will be much harder to make the perception that it’s all erotica stick.
As for how you could label the amount of sex, I agree it’s always going to be a slightly subjective thing, but as Cole was saying above, frequency is a very good measure. If a book has 300 pages and one sex scene lasting 1.5 pages, I would be happy to bet on it being ‘sweet’, whereas if it has 300 pages and 50 sex scenes each lasting 5 pages, I would definitely assume it was erotica.
Erastes
Been thinking about this for a few days and I suppose that I have to say that until the “big boys” start taking gay fiction of all kinds seriously then we are always going to have this problem. It starts there because they take gay fiction TOO seriously i.e. only consider that gay fiction is worthwhile unless it’s concentrating on DOOM and MISERY and AIDS and suffering. Now, Of course I am not saying that these issues should ever be forgotten–in the same light that I agree that no unhappy issues should ever be forgotten, but as well as gay (and I encompass the entire QUILTBAG when I say “gay”) romance not being seen as always being erotic, people need to see that there can be stories about gay people which aren’t drowning in misery, too. We all get up, go to work, travel, solve mysteries, stab vampires, well, you get the gist.
somehow “Mainstream” has come to mean “white middle class stories about nothing terribly much” or “worthy ethnic stories including a lot of SUFFERING”
ok – i’ll slink out now.
Steve Emmett
And once again, what about things like Brideshead? Surely that is mainstream with gay characters.
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