Violetta Vane's Imaginarium

The Next Big Thing

2012-12-19T08:05:00.000-05:00

Josephine Myles tagged me for The Next Big Thing blog hop. Check out her Next Big Thing, Junk—as usual, her story ideas are fascinating. In turn, I'm tagging Heidi and Ruth Diaz.

I'm actually discussing two projects, fairly closely linked.

What is the working title of your book?

The first one is a shorter novel written with Heidi (writing as Molly Ian) called The Dom Project, and the other is a longer novel written solo called Love is a Stranger. They're both part of a series tentatively titled LA Doms.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I've wanted to write a non-m/m BDSM erotic romance for a while. I don't see myself writing m/m anymore, really, unless it's linked to The Druid Stone's Layers of the Otherworld series. It's time to move on. I'm not going to retire this pen name, although I'll be writing under a new linked one: Solace Ames. I love writing women again, and bisexual men being bisexual!

The Dom Project is a story idea that we worked out together. It's a simple story, but a very resonant one that drives some super-twisty relationship dynamics. We started off with a very realistic situation—a woman submissive getting into the BDSM scene keeps attracting asshole dominants—and then added a larger than life element: an old friend who is *gasp* secretly a dom. When he finds her anonymous blog complaining about all her terrible experiences (including dominants who think they're telepathic and can't spell orgasm correctly) he offers to help her out. They sign a one-month contract. With no sex. Will they make it to the end? Or will there be fucking? (yes)

Love is a Stranger is MMF and is a bit less light-hearted than The Dom Project, although it still has lots of wry humor. It's about a young free-spirited Mexican-American couple who had a great sex life, up until the husband gets a spinal injury in a car accident. He's recovering well when the book starts, but still in physical therapy. They decide to spend part of the personal injury lawsuit money on a high-end rent boy who specializes in sexual dominance... not for him, but for his hard-working wife, to fulfill a fantasy she'd always set aside. Life is wonderful for a while, but when the money runs out, hearts start breaking.

I started Love is a Stranger because I love MMF (especially the not-very-common submissive couple trope) and I love BDSM but find so much BDSM erotic romance terrible and predictable. I won't go on anti-FSoG rant here because I really can't be bothered. I haven't read it, and I know there's a lot worse out there. But here are some things I'm bored with:

- Fucked by the Millionaire type books. Ugh, millionaires and CEOs. As I've said before, I've been fucked over by them so much already, asking for more is the furthest thing from my mind. Also, I'm basically a Marxist. Also, I have an MBA and used to work in the corporate world, so I know in real life they are awful boring not very sexy people anyway. Fuck 'em. Except not really.

- "Authentic" BDSM books in which people spout FAQs about BDSM theory for the first two-thirds of the book in horrendously wooden dialogue. Booooring! I don't care if people have been in the life for decades if they can't write characters that aren't cardboard. I imagine this couple from The Onion whenever I start reading one of those books.

- Fantasy glitter kink books where every dom hero owns a club filled with nothing but super cool hot rich young perfect people. Some of these are very well written, and I don't have anything against them—hey, erotica and romance are all about being larger than life—I just prefer a slightly higher realism level.

- Subs that are "broken" and have to be "put back together" by the dominant. Healing-cock BDSM, basically. I greatly dislike hurt/comfort and I'll leave it at that.

- Books that say they're BDSM, but don't actually have any kinky sex whatsoever! Grrr.

- Racism. OMG SO MUCH RACISM. Both passive (all white characters, all white settings) and active (unexamined racial fetishism, slurs, racist stereotypes). Being an Asian woman and reading this stuff is like walking through a goddamn minefield.

So I started off Love is a Stranger to write a story with all the stuff I wanted to see, inspired by the books I like. There are continuing themes from the m/m I've done, especially sex work and the intersection of sexuality and disability, plus I get to do so much more in terms of gender. My goal is to create characters who are flawed, but not broken pain ciphers, who come from diverse racial and ethnic and class backgrounds, who live and love in ways that are exciting and new. And they have a lot of kinky sex, of course!

What genre does your book fall under?

The Dom Project is m/f BDSM contemporary erotic romance. Love is a Stranger is MMF BDSM contemporary erotic romance.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

This is the image that perfectly represents The Dom Project. It's from August Magazine featuring Daniel Henney. I would also accept Rick Yune. I wish I could figure out what the name of the other model is... she's also perfect!

Here is another inspiration pic, of a younger Aaron Kwok—our dude has tattoos.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

It's like Fifty Shades of Grey except the heroine works for Special Collections hunting down rare vintage porn and the hero is an A/V tech at her university so I guess it's actually not like Fifty Shades of Grey at all, and I suck at these synopses.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

We will be submitting it, but I don't want to go into more detail than that.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I started Love is a Stranger first, then paused it for The Dom Project. We're 43k out of 58k now... soooo close! For Love is a Stranger, I'm 33k out of an estimated 90k. It's got three POV characters after all *fans self*

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Books by Cara McKenna (I'm turning into a huge Cara McKenna fangirl), Charlotte Stein, Scarlett Parrish, Tiffany Reisz (very very different tone, but I admire how she's done innovative stuff), Varian Krylov's Hurt, Light Switch by Lauren Gallagher. Basically, complicated erotic romance that messes with tropes.

Who or What inspired you to write this book?

I think I answered that above... hmm.

For Love is a Stranger, this song and video.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

The Dom Project has an erotic candlestick polishing scene. And literal pearl clutching.

Here's an excerpt from one of the lighter parts. For a sexier one, check out Heidi's blog.

“So how do we handle the money?” Robin asked. She felt awkward bringing it up, but better a little awkwardness now than an embarrassing wallet-shuffle in front of a rack of dildos.

John stopped walking and put his arm around her shoulder. She leaned in closer, into his warmth. Even though it had gotten harder for them to talk, the language of touch always came through.

There was a cool breeze this evening, blowing in from the Pacific and sweeping the smog clouds away. A beautiful evening for a movie and a dinner date. Or a movie and a dinner and an expedition to a sex shop.

“I was thinking I could buy you something, and you could buy me something,” he said. “Of course, I already have the serious gear.”

“So I should get you something frivolous,” she mused. “A Hello Kitty cock sack? I wonder if they have those.”

“No thanks. But doesn’t she have a friend—the black penguin dude? He looks kind of domly. You could get me one with him.”

“Not if you ever want me to sleep with you again. ‘Domly’ or not, I don’t know if I can take a man seriously when he has a penguin on his junk.”

“And yet Hello Kitty is okay.”

She flashed him a coy look through her eyelashes, tucking her hands behind her back as she twisted on her heels. “I may or may not have had a very nice session with a dominatrix who had a Hello Kitty tattoo on her hip.”

John raised an eyebrow and grinned. She hadn’t told him everything about how she got started in the first place; it was too much fun teasing him with bits and pieces. “Did you pay for it?” he asked.

“No.” Robin walked onwards to where lewd mannequins beckoned behind glass. Hand on the door, she tossed him another piece of the puzzle. “I bartered for it.”

Here's an excerpt from Love is a Stranger showing a typical work day for one of our protagonists. It's a sex scene, but not one of the sexier ones.

Paul parked in the shadow of the glittering silver Escalade. He’d been to this Beverly Hills house several times before, enough to not really care that his own Camry didn’t fit in.

He texted the people inside. -At the door.

When he put his hand on the door and swung it open, that reliable magic struck.

He walked in like he owned the place, his latest review had said, and it wasn’t the first time someone had used those words. Knowing Jay and Adriana had written them made the reading of it more satisfying than usual, though.

He walked in like he owned the place.

“What the hell are you doing here?” CJ asked. He was a big man, built strong, a little more solid around the shoulders than Paul. He worked in sports but he’d never been a player, and Paul imagined he probably had a home gym and a personal trainer.

Paul brushed past him like he didn’t even exist.

“I called him over,” Mary said. She was naked, except for high heels, and carried a riding crop. “I wanted to show you how a real man fucks, you goddamn sissy bitch.”

“No,” CJ moaned. “Don’t do this to me.”

Paul had to fight to keep a straight face at this point. Once past the protestation stage, he enjoyed these sessions, but CJ’s love for melodramatic delivery was always dangerous.

The rope was on the hall end table. CJ struggled weakly. Paul held him down with the minimum of full body contact. CJ wasn’t really his type, but he was good-looking enough that Paul regretted not being able to stick something in him while he was down there. CJ didn’t go that way, unfortunately.

Paul tied the last knot and moved to let Mary have a go at her husband, her full breasts quivering magnificently as she struck with the crop.

When she was panting with exertion and nicely worked up, he had her against the wall, then on the floor, not two feet away from where CJ lay bound, his eyes wide and stricken.

He came inside her. Went to the spa-sized bathroom, threw away the condom and washed his hands. Waved goodbye on the way out. “I’ll lock the door behind me,” he told Mary. She was always nervous about that.

“Thanks,” Mary said. “See you next month.” She turned away and looked down on CJ with cool delight, very much like a cat, and nudged a pointed toe against his thigh. He moaned again, and this time it sounded entirely real.

When "Bullying" is not Bullying

2012-12-06T15:21:00.003-05:00

There's a fairly new clearinghouse site for information on the SGRB. It's called "stopthegrbullies.net"—please note the dot NET, not the dot com. I thought I'd go ahead and link to it and help it out in Google ratings.

We've had a run-in with the SGRB over a drive-by on The Druid Stone. Aside from personal antagonism (and the fact that the majority of the authors they defend are absolutely indefensible) here are some reasons why I'm against them.

I believe in honesty.

Being an author doesn't mean I stopped being a reader, and I'm also a reviewer. I'm very proud of my reviews, which are often unprofessional, eccentric, profanity-laced and long. I like honest reviews, so anything that encourages honest reviews, I also like. Enforcing arbitrary niceness rules via the threat of stalking—a SGRB tactic which has been well-documented at the above site—doesn't encourage honesty, to say the least.

Authors are not entitled to politeness and are never above judgement.

I usually believe in separating the book from the author. If I made a resolution to stop reading assholes, I'd probably have to throw away half my library, because being a good person only partially overlaps with being a good writer. This gets a little tricky in today's contact-rich social-media-driven environment, and although I try to separate the book, if someone really makes me angry, I don't feel like supporting them by giving them money, and my enjoyment of the book is going to be affected. So I see where other readers are coming from.

I cannot stand the "you're not allowed to judge!" mentality. My philosophy is judge away, and then prepare to be judged if your judgement is especially stupid or offensive. If someone says "I am not going to buy this book because the author is a sexual predator", that sounds fair to me. If you say, "I am not going to buy this book because the author is gay," well, I (and a lot of other people) are probably going to be judging you pretty badly for that.

Authors should not comment on reviews unless welcomed or invited.

I don't think this is some eternal moral principle, it's just good sense and good social skills. Reviews are primarily for other readers.

I read almost all my reviews. I'm thick-skinned about them, so I mostly enjoy the hell out of the process. I love reading reviews that really engage with the book and make connections that I hadn't even thought of myself.

I've had bad reviews, some that I considered well-reasoned, others that were a) factually inaccurate b) personally insulting c) racist. They don't bother me that much. C) comes with the territory for writers who take multicultural narratives seriously, like my cowriter and I do—not just giving lip service, that is. I'm a woman of color who's fairly open about talking about race so I've seen a lot worse on the internet. The more people that read my books (hopefully) the more of the objectionable stuff I'll get... but that's the inevitable price to pay for much more of the awesome fun ego-boosting stuff.

I don't believe that reviews are sacrosanct. I simply believe that the author of the book is the absolute last person in the world who should jump in and criticize them. And that includes whipping up fans or friends to come in and white-knight. Try to stay the hell out of it. Save the explanations of authorial intent for people who've made it clear they want to hear them. Otherwise, intent is basically irrelevant.

Complaining about bad reviews should be done privately. Or do it publicly, if you can make it entertaining and non-blaming. Here's a recent example from the author of a book called Throne of the Crescent Moon:

I suppose my first reaction to a negative review titled "Groan of the Crescent Moon" shouldn't be "Har! Good one!"
— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) December 5, 2012

But attacking people who give you bad reviews as a class is petty, vindictive and disrespectful to all readers.

Bad reviews do not constitute bullying or abusive behavior.

This is the most important point, and one that sends me into a soaring rage. I had to deal with racist abuse from the age of six on through fifteen. I had my peers physically attack me, throw rocks at me, try to poison me, tell me twenty times a day that everything about my body and face and voice was wrong. I had no choice in the matter. The idea that giving someone a one star for a book is ANYTHING compared to what I went through is disgusting, appropriative and morally bankrupt.

I take it very personally.

I'm giving five (public) stars to Readers have Rights.

Mark of the Gladiator Blog Tour Wrap-Up

2012-12-03T08:43:00.000-05:00

I love all the comments we've been getting this tour! Thanks, everyone, and thanks to all our hosts!

I have to brag a bit and say that we've gotten some awesome reviews. Here's a super passionate one and here's an impressively comprehensive one.

You still have time, up until Dec. 10th, to comment on any of these blog entries to win a threesome deal: The Druid Stone plus prequel "Cruce de Caminos" and sequel "Galway Bound" in the ebook format of your choice. And there's another Goodreads contest ending on the 10th to win a gorgeous print copy of Mark of the Gladiator.

Here's the blog tour wrap-up:

At You Gotta Read, we have a short excerpt that packs a powerful punch, as Anazâr prepares to perform special duties for his master. Consent is pretty damn dubious—although this master/slave dynamic isn't the core of the story, it's still there.

At Words of Wisdom from the Scarf Princess, I interview Heidi Belleau. We love this cross-interview format, by the way, because we can cut to the chase and ask the questions that matter. Heidi waxes eloquent on Spartacus and gives some insight into the structure and dark humor of Mark of the Gladiator.

At Well Read, it's my turn to be interviewed. I talk about my experiences with Latin, and how crucial I felt it was to show women with flaws and strengths who both suffer and survive in order to balance out the common issue of m/m manpain über alles. And what it might have been like for Marc Antony to give you a pep talk.

The Pen and the Muse has an entry with a lighter touch that explores the dynamic of the love triangle. By the way, this is a triangle that has the most definite of resolutions! However, we use this entry to play up a bit of uncertainty and suspense in the beginning.

Elisa Rolle puts up the most serious post, a discussion of Roman sexuality and masculinity. As I mention in the post, "The Romans had no conception of 'gay' or 'straight' as sexual identities." So what did they have? It's a fascinating subject.

Do you want to know more about ancient love poetry? How about hate poetry? Book Reviews and More by Kathy has a post where I discuss some very beautiful and nasty excerpts.

At Sinfully Sexy Book Reviews, we count down our top seven hot Roman warrior dudes. The list is pretty Spartacus heavy (including Tony Curtis). The blog did an awesome job with the images.

Bending the Bookshelf has another educational post, this one short, and um, blunt, about sex toys.

Thus ends the blog tour. Vale!

We also posted on our own blogs. Heidi has a Five Facts post where she mentions her dream casting for the movie. I go on a long, image-heavy rant about the difference between Nubians and Numidians and the failures of portraying ancient Africa in general.

I'd also like to mention our USA Today HEA Romance Blog post: "Women Who Love Men Who Love Men: The Appeal of M/M". This was a wonderful opportunity to represent m/m and recommend books for readers new to the genre. We kept it short due to length constraints and touched on lots of different areas.

We're happy to answer any questions about the book, the process, or the contests.

Mark of the Gladiator and Ancient Africa

2012-11-26T07:36:00.000-05:00

Buy it at Riptide Publishing,
Amazon or ARE
Add to Goodreads

Mark of the Gladiator releases on November 26th in ebook and December 3rd in print, and you can enter to win a free print copy here. I'm incredibly proud of this book on so many levels. This is the most tightly structured and suspenseful book we've ever done. I'm very happy with it, and I'm especially happy about the advance reviews that speak of rapidly alternating confusion and delight at the plot twists. As a reader, I love the moments where I yell WHAT! (in a good way) and look wildly around me.

This is also our book that has involved the most historical research, and that's saying a lot, since many of our books are research-heavy. As always, the research was quite enjoyable. I know a lot about the subject already—that doesn't mean I got everything right, just that I didn't start off with a blank slate—but I also learned some fascinating new material.

In one of the upcoming blog tour posts, I talk more about my background in classics and why I'm fascinated with ancient Rome (it starts with Asterix and travels through Catullus). But for this post, I'd like to zero in on one of my historical pet peeves. Have a historical rant!

In case you haven't heard of the term "potato rager" before, I learned it last year, and love it. It describes someone who RAGES when potatoes are mentioned in medieval Europe, since potatoes come from the Americas and are a fairly recent addition to European diets.

I'm not exactly a potato rager, if only because in my opinion USians know too much about Western European history. It's depressing as hell when my countryfolk know the difference between a Viscount and an Earl in 19th-century England but can't name a single President of Mexico. So I'm not a potato rager, but I am a little bit of a Rome rager. A stirrup-rager, if you will (Roman cavalry didn't have stirrups). And one thing that especially enrages me is how stupidly Africa is treated in popular media about ancient Rome.

Africa is not a country. It's a continent. It's not just any continent, it's a huge continent, many times bigger than Europe—and if there were any geographic justice, Europe wouldn't be a continent at all, it would simply be the Northwest Asian subcontinent.

In the ancient world, as today, there was a huge variety of ethnicities, languages, architectural styles, religions, etc. to be found in Africa. During the height of the Roman Empire, Egypt and vast sweeps of Northern Africa were under Roman control and influence. Roman Africa was integral to the empire in a way that, say, England was not.

One mark of sloppy history is throwing in an African character and randomly calling them a Numidian. I think colorblind casting can be awesome, but if the European characters aren't cast colorblind, then non-European characters shouldn't be, either. And people from Africa have very distinctive, different features depending on where they're from.

Numidians, for example. The old Numidian empire was based in Western North Africa, and the people were mainly ethnically Amazigh, commonly known in English as "Berber"—I put that in quote marks because many regard it as a pejorative name, since it shares the same etymology as "barbarian". The people themselves do not use it.

Here are some modern day Amazigh men.

Here's an ancient depiction of King Juba of Numidia, who reigned from 60 BCE to 46 BCE and was an ally of Pompey.

Here's an ancient depiction of Jugurtha, another famous Numidian king.

Ancient Nubia was south of Egypt and thousands of miles away. Here are some modern-day Nubians:

An ancient depiction of the wife of Pharoah Amenhotep, Queen Tiye (1398 BCE – 1338 BCE), who was Nubian:

An Egyptian depiction of a Nubian:

A modern-day depiction of one of the Nubian pharoahs—Nubians ruled Egypt during the 25th dynasty.

Weirdly, any time there's a black character in an ancient Roman movie or TV show, they're usually called a "Numidian": Noel Clarke in Centurion, Djimon Hounsou in Gladiator, Peter Mensah as Oenomaus in Spartacus.

The ancient Romans were much more familiar with the geography of Northern Africa. In their imagination, Northern Europe was a cold, mysterious place inhabited by savage, childlike people. The lands beside the Mediterranean sea, on the other hand, were long part of their recorded history. The people that lived there were often hated and warred against (such as Carthage) but they certainly weren't ignored.

To sum up: Numidia = North Africa, Mediterranean sea, horses, camels, mostly under Roman influence. Nubia = southern Egypt, Sudan, Nile river, pyramids, hippos, crocodiles, mostly not under Roman influence. Both with a high level of material culture and technology.

In Mark of the Gladiator, we wanted to take real advantage of Rome's status as an amazingly cosmopolitan city. There were slaves and free people from all over the Mediterranean region and beyond, mixing together. Our hero is a Numidian, from the fringes of the empire—he fought on the losing side in the Roman civil war, in the forces of Cleopatra and Marc Antony. His fellow slaves, the female gladiators, are from all over the empire. Two of them, The Sarmatian and The Aethiopian (she has a Nubian name, but claims to be from further east) become especially crucial to his survival, and are characters we absolutely fell in love with... and hope you will too!

The Actium connection is actually why we decided to make our gladiator hero Numidian. In the very first chapter, he has a dream of riding across the desert on horseback to join the auxiliary legions and fight in Greece, a continent's length away. His epic journey is one of the linchpins of his psyche, a defining experience.

Numidia, in Mark of the Gladiator, represents the past. It's a defeated empire, and a land to which our hero knows he can never return. One place in Africa, on the other hand—the evocative city of Adulis in Aksum—comes to represent the future for several characters, although I can't really give away more.

Mark of the Gladiator is at heart a romantic suspense book, full of intrigue and action and sex, not a history lesson. But I've greatly enjoyed reading advance reviews that say, "I learned a lot from this!" You can read up on some of our research in the back of the novel, where we have a glossary and an Authors' Note. In the future, I might do another photo post where I show some of the images that inspired us while writing.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Mark of the Gladiator

by Heidi Belleau

Giveaway ends December 10, 2012.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Back!

2012-11-12T11:52:00.001-05:00

I don't know what I would have done if November 6th had turned out differently, but I was fairly confident my side would win. And it did. Woohoo! I'm very heartened.

My family and I did a lot of work in the election. I went to North Carolina, the closest battleground state, several times for GOTV campaigns, and my oldest son, who is ten, helped out on the last trip. I called. I did data entry. After we won, I showed my son this video of Obama crying while he thanked campaigners.

There were some pretty big stakes for me. I don't have health insurance. My children both have special needs. Losing this election would have meant financial and medical disaster for our family.

We're also not white, and I was terrified by the naked racism I saw in so many parts of the other side.

In the 1996 presidential election, more Asian-Americans voted Republican than Democrat (we're a diverse group and some are very conservative). Since then, the Republicans have alienated us so much, and Asian-American Obama supporters have worked so hard, that Obama won us this year by 73%. 73%! That's more than Latinos at 71%. Suck it Latinos! Jejejeje. Just kidding, mis hermanos!

In other relevant political news, the first openly gay person of color has been elected to the House this year, and he's Japanese-American: Mark Takano.

I also found the message of this clip to be very inspiring. In two words? Hate lost.

I'm dipping my toes back into social media and looking forward to reconnecting. However, I'm scaling back in a lot of ways. There are certain values in the m/m writing community, certain directions things are going, that are just not healthy for me. This doesn't mean I'm necessarily going to stop reading or writing it, but I can't be any kind of insider anymore, if I ever was.

I've been writing this whole time. The project I started on is not the project I'm working on now, but I'm still excited about all of them.

I'm working on Mark of the Gladiator promo posts with Heidi now, and it's hard work but a lot of fun to delve back into Roman history. There's a lot of sex and violence in MotG, but it has a humanist core. I can't stress enough how much the Steven Saylor mysteries have influenced that approach for me. Although I won't have a full post on that, I just wanted to give a shout out to any other Roma Sub Rosa fans. Vale!

Best wishes to everyone and especially people who have lost something or someone in Sandy. My friends in NYC are OK but I still feel terrible about the situation. Please give here. I'm going to go donate blood as soon as I get better (I'm sick with a nasty head cold/ear infection).

Galway Bound

2012-10-08T09:30:00.000-04:00

Available from Amazon,
Smashwords and Kobo

Heidi and I have joined the ranks of indie authors! Well, sort of. We're happy to have books out with some awesome publishers that support their authors, but sometimes self-publishing makes sense, and it made a lot of sense in the case of "Galway Bound."

"Galway Bound" was written a while ago, actually, not long after we finished The Druid Stone. We envisioned one more sex scene in The Druid Stone, but what we had in mind was really too leisurely to fit the fast pace of the narrative. So we decided that this scene would take place much later, when their relationship was based less on adrenaline and desperation and blinding desire. They trust each other more now, but what they have together is still dynamic, evolving and not without risk. "Galway Bound" is a form of working out that evolution in a very hot way that involves power play and a form of pain... but is always consensual and loving.

"Galway Bound" sat in the trunk for a long time. It was too short to send to Carina, but too long and involved and tied into The Druid Stone to gift into the ether with our other freebies. So armed with experience from our edits of other books, we went back over it. The style held up surprisingly well. We edited it to remove some bad habits (never again the "Hi," he greeted times!), polished it up some more, then sent it to the amazing April, who gave it a rigorous professional edit.

We contracted a gorgeous cover from L.C. Chase and were good to go. There was a lot of work in terms of editing and formatting, but by the end, I'm confident we're putting out an erotic romance short that's up to the par of a large e-publisher. As a reader, I know the horrible pain of buying substandard stuff. Nothing kills a ladyboner like a misspelled genial. See what I did there ;-)

Anyway, I love writing BDSM, and since we didn't put any in The Druid Stone, we made up for it with "Galway Bound." It's got some intense stuff in terms of physicality and sensations. Reactions have already ranged: some readers will find it much lighter or heavier than others, but I think the quality of "sweet" will come through for everyone, even if you haven't read The Druid Stone yet. Check it out for yourself: it's only a dollar. Most erotica shorts are half the length and twice the price.

In terms of general updates, I don't have more to say. I'm still on a social media hiatus at the moment. I'm very concerned about the election and doing what I can to ensure Obama gets reelected. Given the fact that I'm uninsured (and uninsurable due to a genetic condition), I'm just hoping like hell I don't get really sick before I can get on Obamacare. Life isn't easy, but it could be worse. A lot of other people are in the same place. I'm hanging on and I'm writing.

Signing out for now, and I hope you enjoy "Galway Bound"!

Taking a Social Media Hiatus

2012-09-04T09:42:00.000-04:00

I'm incredibly happy about the reception for The Druid Stone. I do have one regret—well, actually two. Sidewalks and blocks. I can't blame our wonderful Irish beta for that, because she pointed them out, but we forgot to fix them in the final draft. I even remember skimming over those few instances at the very last revision, and thinking they weren't in an Irish POV when in fact they were. If there's a new edition, we'll do our best to fix those goddamn sidewalks *shakes fist at heaven and the Atlantic Ocean*

I've just spent the weekend at Dragon*Con, which was fantastic. I sat on a panel on LGBT paranormal fiction headed by our Loose Id editor, Venessa Giunta. The panel was diverse and far-ranging and we had some excellent discussion. Other highlights of Dragon*Con were an academic panel on China Miéville and metafiction that featured a Jack Half-A-Prayer cosplayer, getting my picture taken sandwiched in between John Barrowman and James Marsters, and hanging out with buddies from Torchwood fandom.

After an extremely social weekend, however, I'm facing some issues and realizing I'm overextended. In Jeff VanderMeer's great guide to writing, Booklife, he talks about these periods as part of the natural ebb and flow of creativity. So in order to de-stress and recharge, I'm going to take a hiatus from social media. I'm not sure how long. At least a month, probably. I'm going to keep up with most obligations, like my monthly post at LGBT Fantasy Fans and Writers and an exciting project related to The Druid Stone. But I won't be reviewing for More Than This during this time and I won't be on Twitter, Goodreads, Facebook, G+ or blogs.

If you want to get in touch you can email or comment here. See you on the other side.

The Druid Stone Blog Tour Wrap-Up

2012-08-27T20:57:00.001-04:00

Congratulations to the last two winners on our tour, Angela Campbell (who wins a lovely sterling silver triple spiral pendant) and Hell's Tales (who wins a free copy of The Druid Stone. And here's a list of all the blogs on our blog tour with a little summary of what we posted. Thanks so much everyone!

Pants Off Reviews—Excerpt
An excerpt from an early scene brimming with UST.

Wicked Lil Pixie Reviews—Three Faery Abduction Stories
Find out some of the frightening inspirations from our research: two legendary, and one terrifyingly real.

Carina Press Blog—Three Top Tips for Cowriting
Practical advice for cowriting. If you've wondered how we do it, find out here.

Romance Around the Corner—Quick and Dirty Writer's Guide to Ireland
Containing an interview with our Irish beta.

Chicks & Dicks—Crossing Over: Writing Urban Fantasy
Some interesting challenges we faced writing druids in urban fantasy.

Fiction Vixen Book Reviews—Exclusive Excerpt
This excerpt is a high octane one from early on in the book.

LGBT Fantasy Fans and Writers—Immortal Bisexuals in Fantasy Fiction
A piece on real and fictional bisexuality, containing Kinsey scores of the gods.

Joyfully Reviewed—Interview
More inspirations and influences.

Kool Queer Lit—Excerpt from "Out of the Tombs"
The beginning of our free prequel tie-in Halloween horror story.

Babes in Boyland—Excerpts from Three Deleted Scenes
Find out what didn't make the cut, and why.

Kerry Freeman—Excerpt
What happens when Cormac and Sean meet for the first time?

Bitch Factor 10—Interview
Emme asks us some fantastic questions.

Ruth Diaz Writes—Interview
Topics include urban fantasy and research sources, both good and terrible.

Cryselle's Craziness—Thousand Word Thursday: Triple Spiral
See a photo of an original triple spiral and find out what it means in the book.

Here Be Magic—Influences and Layers
A piece on C.J. Cherryh and her influence.

Interview with Ruth Diaz, author of The Superheroes Union: Dynama

2012-08-23T08:00:00.000-04:00

Do you like my sex scenes? If so, Ruth Diaz is one of the people you should thank for that! She's beta'ed my stories from early on, and her pre-submission editing on The Druid Stone was amazingly helpful for Heidi and me.

I'm excited to interview her about her Carina Press novella, The Superheroes Union: Dynama. The Superheroes Union series is going to be fantastic. It's a world with larger-than-life people in big bold stories. It's not dark and gritty, but it's not frilly and frothy, either; there's a lot of tricky, thoughtful stuff going on in the little details. And the very first story in this series, Dynama, is a lesbian romance. Check it out.

Superhero stories always struck me as an interesting blend of fantasy and science fiction. They’re incredibly popular in visual media, but not so much in books. Why do you think that is, and do you think it’s changing?

I think that, despite having dabbled in radio, superheroes are very much tied to comic books for most people who think about them. Even the people who didn't really read comic books but watched superheroes as part of their Saturday morning cartoons growing up most often think of the superhero genre as an inherently visual medium. The idea of taking the heroes and villains out of their ink and paint backgrounds and telling a story where the only visuals are in your imagination isn't bad, but it's entirely foreign to many readers.

I discovered, in the course of doing some marketing research for The Superheroes Union: Dynama, that at least a couple other people have written superhero books without artwork, though the one that sticks in my head takes the idea to a romantic comedy execution, as opposed to the more straight-up contemporary drama I've focused on. Is that changing? Maybe. I don't think we have a large enough sample yet to know.

- What’s the most exciting aspect of writing superhero stories?

Creating a scenario where the unfortunate little interpersonal details we might skim past in a superheroes setting become major plot arcs. Things like a custody battle between superhero parents, the complications of heroes and villains falling in love with each other, and what kind of tolerance there is for someone with all those special powers who isn't moved to save the world. Those are what fascinate me. For a lot of people, they're the "dull bits" that Alfred Hitchcock advised cutting out of life to create drama, but I find plenty of drama to work with right there.

- Superhero stories generally sexualize male power, with female power left totally marginalized. The Superheroes Union: Dynama is, of course, a happy exception! When you wrote this story, how did you conceptualize the relationship between power and sexuality?

Keep in mind that I haven't exactly done research... but it occurs to me that you might generalize a little further and say that almost all power is sexualized in Western cultures. That applies to the horrible stereotype of the "bitch in the board room" in her power suit which must nonetheless show cleavage (many women's business shirts don't even have the top two buttons you'd find on a men's business shirt, and there's a whole essay to be written about comparisons between boobs and missiles in that context) as much as to a man conveying power with a gun or a truck as a phallic symbol.

For Dynama, I never intended to build an explicit relationship between power and sexuality--I just get a kick out of turning stereotypes on their collective ear. I paired up some "traditionally" masculine attributes, like mechanical ability and strength, turned them into superpowers, and gave them to women. I also told a story in which the "traditionally" feminine stereotypes of the caregiver and invisible helpmeet took center stage as critically important. And with all that, as I wrote TJ's narrative, it became entirely clear that she was still fighting battles with some of the US cultural attitudes which are inherently paternalistic (thought good/emotion bad, etc.).

- Why do think people who love f/f stories and lesbian romance will love Dynama?

When I started outlining, before I ever started writing, I made decisions about the kind of story I wanted to tell. I wanted to tell a story about women who had the day-to-day concerns of jobs and grocery shopping and family. I wanted to address the ways in which they were marginalized just for being women without focusing on that. I did not want to tell a coming out story--there's nothing wrong with those, but they weren't the story I wanted to tell. Mostly, I wanted my main characters to be believable as women to other women. And I think that's what my readers will take away from The Superheroes Union: Dynama: it's not a straight man's fantasy of two women together in bed. It's a love story between two ordinary women in extraordinary circumstances.

- Why do you think people who’ve never thought of reading f/f would love Dynama?

For the story. I've written a story about common problems women encounter in US macroculture expressed in entirely uncommon ways having to do with superpowers. I've run a suspense plot arc that stands on its own alongside a love story I think anyone who likes love stories can appreciate. I've also thrown some gender roles in the blender to see what came out and written complex, relatable characters--even the villain.

And if that's not quite enough to get someone to take a chance on the story, they can always read it for the joy of watching the Invincible Woman bitch slap the supervillain. I know I'm biased, but that that makes me giggle every time I read it.

- How evil, really, is the “evil ex”?

Heehee. I love this question. When I was doing revisions based on my Carina Press editor's feedback, she actually had me make a change that toned down his evilness level a little bit. She was right, because in his own way, the evil ex still needed to be a sympathetic character, in that we have to have some understanding of how Dynama ever loved him in the first place. But he's pretty darn evil, and he's the scariest kind of evil I know: the kind that honestly believes it is doing good.

The trickiest piece of allowing him to be really evil was letting the reader see that he still loved his kids. That no matter how bad he might be, they remained his number one concern. But at the same time, it had to become obvious to the reader that no matter how much he loved them, being evil changed his focus so much, he would be as awful a parent as he would be a dictator--or maybe even worse.

But I'll tell you a little secret that never quite makes it onto the page in the story itself. Through the course of the story, he has one of those lightning bolt experiences that forces him to see his own actions in a different light. It doesn't magically make him less evil, but it sows the seed that may one day allow him to be redeemed. If I ever feel the need to write that story.

- If there was a porno version of Dynama, I think it should be called “Supermom Does Supernanny.” Of course, it’s not porn, and the heat level isn’t high. But it doesn’t fade to black at the bedroom door, either! How did you decide how much sex to include in Dynama?

I always try to write sex scenes in whatever vein feels appropriate to the story. Sometimes that's artistic, sometimes it's incredibly explicit, and sometimes it means a fade to black. When I was outlining the story, I expected one sex scene on the page and one fade to black, and that was very much in keeping with the pacing of the story and the need to let my readers see the emotion of my two heroines growing together in ways that had nothing to do with sex. But when my wonderful Carina Press editor, Mallory Braus, sent me the developmental editing laundry list for Dynama, she asked if I would be comfortable adding one more full sex scene.

I was hesitant when I read the request, because the fade to black scene had very much been a function of pacing. But by the time I had read through all her other suggestions, I realized that the best way to address them was to add an entire subplot to the story--I ended up adding almost 10,000 words. When you're only dealing with 25,000 words to start with, that really affects your pacing. So by the time I had added everything else, not only was it appropriate to expand that second sex scene into detail on the page, I had created an emotional interaction that really had to happen in the context of sex. And it turned out so well, I actually like that one better than the sex scene I had planned on in my outlining.

Thank you for stopping by, Ruth!

What if your evil ex really was evil?

TJ Gutierrez used to be a superhero. But after the birth of her twins seven years ago, she hung up the yellow spandex. Until the day her archenemy and ex-husband, Singularity, breaks out of prison. When it becomes clear he’s after the kids, she’s forced to call the nanny helpline—and once again become... Dynama!

Annmarie Smith doesn’t have a superpower. She saves the world by keeping kids safe while their parents fight evil. She temporarily moves in with TJ, and the way the magnetic mama puts family first captures Annmarie’s respect, and maybe her heart—even though she knows better than to fall for a superhero. Still, it’s hard to resist their wicked chemistry. Kapow!

But they can only hide from the world for so long. When Singularity’s quest for custody puts the kids’ lives in danger, can the two women conquer the evil villain and save TJ’s family—all before their first date?

The Superheroes Union: Dynama is available from Carina Press. You can read an excerpt here and enter a giveaway here.

Carina Press store | Amazon.com | BarnesandNoble.com

Ruth Diaz writes genre romances about non-mainstream relationships. She hides a number of publications in a different genre under another name, but The Superheroes Union: Dynama is her first romance publication. For more information, you can subscribe to her blog, like her on Facebook, or follow @RuthDiazWrites on Twitter (where she is most active and, well, opinionated).

The Druid Stone Releases Today

2012-08-06T13:37:00.000-04:00

It's out!

I'm too tired to post much of anything else. It's been like running a marathon. But here's a copy of our dedication:

We’d like to thank all of our friends and family who supported us on this creative journey. Especially epic praise and recognition should go to April L’Orange for her rigorous review, chapter by chapter, as we wrote. We also owe thanks to Lyryk in India and Emma in Ireland for their many helpful suggestions, and of course Lynne, our editor here with Carina, who took a chance on us. Lastly, this book is greatly inspired by immigrants and emigrants of all the races and nations. Safe travels.

I've got some initial review links up at the book website. The first giveaway on the blog tour has already started. And on Wednesday at the Carina Press blog, we'll be giving away a piece of themed jewelry.

I'll post again here at the end of the blog tour, maybe with a little video greeting and thank you to all the blogs that are hosting us on our tour.

ETA: For your chance to win the pendant, enter here!

Twitter Tips for Writers from a Non-Social Media Expert

2012-07-26T08:00:00.000-04:00

I love Twitter. I think of it as a public instant message system, where eavesdropping is not only allowable but welcome. I've made some fantastic creative and professional connections over Twitter. It's easy to get your feelings hurt on Twitter, though, or make other people angry, and it's hard to know how to balance its use as a promotional tool with the need for mutual, dialogic communication. So here are some intermediate to advanced Twitter tips that go far beyond "don't promo all the time." Although that really can't be said enough (don't promo all the time!). These are not tips at how to succeed on Twitter, or how to make friends and influence people... or even how to avoid making enemies. They're just guidelines I go by that make Twitter a more pleasant place to spend my time. Your mileage can and will vary.

• Don't tweet from a private account, unless you also have a public account. There's no point in tweeting promotional stuff from a private account, because people can't reweet you. You're defeating the purpose. If you do maintain two accounts, one private and one public, do not backbite your public friends on your private account. It'll get out, and you'll look like a dick. I've never done this myself, but I've seen it go down.

• Decide in advance how much you want to disclose, and stick to that. It's easy to move from more privacy to less privacy, but almost impossible to go the opposite direction. One privacy decision I've made is to never post pictures of my kids, or any identifying location information. I know lots of parents who post stuff about their kids—we're proud of them, it's natural—and I don't want to tell those parents what they're doing is wrong, per se. It's a different and very personal decision for each of us, and my decision is to keep this area of my life as private as I can.

• Please please please think twice about using Triberr, and then think again, and then DON'T USE IT PLEASE I'M BEGGING YOU. There are people I really like and respect that use Triberr, including excellent writers and bloggers I support in other media, but I cannot follow them on Twitter as long as they use Triberr heavily. I think it's spamming, and also disrespectful to followers. I won't go into detail, but here are some links that explain a few of my issues.

• Realize that different people are looking for different things. You cannot be all things to all people, so be your best self, and have fun. I'm a blunt person and I don't shy away from conflict. At times, I tweet a lot. I'm supportive when people ask for it, but I don't give or expect many backpats. I'm quite left-wing politically. I am known to participate in hashtag games like #nameyourvaginaafteramovie. All of these things will cause some people to follow me and others to unfollow me.

• Know what you're looking for on Twitter, and follow accordingly. Don't play the numbers game. When I follow people, I don't expect them to always follow back. Some of the people I follow are writing celebrities like Neil Gaiman, or news sources, or humorists with close to a million Twitter friends. Some of them are people with only twenty followers. I don't mind if they don't follow me back. I'll admit to a mild irritation if they follow me and then unfollow me, but I quell it. If their tweets were interesting before they followed me, they'll probably still be interesting after they unfollow me.

• Don't be a member of #teamfollowback. You'll end up following a lot of bots and spammers and cluttering up your stream. I will follow back, but only after applying a pretty daunting filter if I don't know them already. First, I check to see if they're in my genre (m/m romance). If they're an m/m writer or identify as a fan or a reviewer of m/m, I'll probably follow them… as long as their tweet stream is more than just promo and/or Triberr, that is.

The majority of other non-bots who follow me say they're writers in their profile. My interest in a writer who randomly follows me is usually in inverse proportion to their twitter stats. If they have more than a thousand friends, I'm suspicious, because they're probably playing the numbers game. And I'm proved correct when they unfollow after about a week. Why? Because they're using heavy automation. There is absolutely no point in engaging with any of these people. We'll never have a conversation; they're just looking to puff up their numbers. They follow, wait for someone to follow back, and if you don't follow back, they unfollow a week later. Or in an even more loutish effort to game the stats, after you follow them, they'll set their program to unfollow you a week later, hoping you won't notice, so that you'll continue to follow them. A lot of people think they'll "build a platform" for their book or product with this sort of black hat stuff. It doesn't work.

I don't follow the bots, obviously. I don't follow people whose tweet streams actively irritate me, either. Twitter is half work and half fun so I don't expect to like everyone I follow; I expect to be able to coexist well, that's all.

• If you make a mistake in whom you follow, unfollow immediately. If that friend of a friend starts asking probing questions about Obama's birth certificate, for example. Don't drag it out. Just do it. I think that's the most mature way to handle it. If they @ you plaintively afterward, ignore them. If they @ you angrily, block them.

• If somebody unfollows you, try not to take it personally. They could be trimming their stream and readjusting their Twitter focus. You could have made a joke about hot dogs and their mom choked to death on a hot dog yesterday. Or maybe they actually do hate you. It's more awkward to ask than to live in mystery. If the mystery gets too awkward, unfollow them back, but I usually don't bother to unfollow.

• Use helper apps and automation to keep track of your Twitter, but not in a jerky way. I like Socialbro and Hootsuite. Socialbro helps me keep track of who's following and unfollowing me, and who I should follow back. I use Twitter lists to have a "shortlist" of about twenty people, most of whom I work with creatively or financially. If I'm gone from Twitter for a while, there's no way I can catch up with what everyone is saying, but I can at least catch up with my shortlist. Some of these apps will help you clean out people who haven't tweeted in a long time. For example, if a review blog goes defunct and gets abandoned, and so does its Twitter account, you can prune that from your lists. But don't try to improve your influence stats by pruning beyond that. You're only harming your ability to have meaningful conversations in the future.

• Be aware of your peer group's Twitter protocol, but don't obsess over it. For example, when I do a blog post, I'll do 2-3 tweets about it spaced out over the course of one day. Any more would be spamming. Some people have very strong feelings about .@ tweets. I still use them, but sparingly. I will retweet positive blog reviews of my work, too, which some people hate. I think if I was a bigger name writer, that would be tacky, but since I'm a small fish, it seems to be accepted at our level. Don't worry about not always being the perfect, most polite Twitter user, however. You're a writer, not a "social media guru" (ewww).

• Realize that Twitter is not the best medium for heated debate. It's excellent for informing and linking and remarking and agreeing and disagreeing, but not arguing. I love a good debate, and I actually have held some good ones over Twitter, but it depends on you and the other person already trusting and being comfortable enough to argue and disagree meaningfully. If things are getting heated and you still value that Twitter relationship, it's best to back off, and if you feel like you need to clarify, move it to DM.

• Don't be mad or react badly when your Twitter friends are friends with people you really don't like. The only exception is if you know someone is being predatory and dishonest to your friend, and in that case, ONE POLITE DM (heads up, so-and-so isn't being honest with you) should be enough to handle the situation. Don't push it past that. Never attempt to control other people's communications.

• Realize that the majority of people who read and enjoy your books will not care enough about you personally to follow your Twitter account. Appreciate those readers who choose to follow you, but understand that your Twitter followers are not equivalent to your fanbase. Do you follow every author whose books you love? Some people might, but I don't.

• Working from the basis that your Twitter followers are not your fanbase—you might make friends with another writer over Twitter and read their books, and they'll do the same for you, but don't expect it. I'm Twitter friends with a lot of writers that I never expect to read. We're peers and buddies and share important professional information; we don't have to be mutual fans. It's not that I think they're bad, or they think I'm bad, it's that we're into different sorts of things, and we probably wouldn't appreciate each others' work, even in the same genre.

• Being a writer can be pretty depressing, and using Twitter is a great way to get moral support when you're going through difficult times. Just keep in mind that if you do this too much, or in the wrong way, you're opening yourself for even more difficult times. For example, you might be able to get away with complaining about negative reviews… if you do it in a neutral or entertaining way that doesn't blame individual reviewers. "Why don't more people like my tentacle porn? Suckers!". Otherwise, every rule about commenting on reviews in other venues holds true on Twitter. If people are having a conversation about your book, do not butt in. If people talk about not liking your book, and it makes you horribly depressed, SUCK IT UP. Unburden yourself in private. Get off Twitter for a while. Use a Twitter app that "mutes" people, if you need to. Do not unfollow over negative reviews.

• What it means to be professional in this era of constant contact and increased casualness is difficult to determine. We're writers, and being a writer is simply not a very respectable profession. Throughout millennia of recorded history, writing culture has involved huge amounts of clowning, raillery, mudslinging, grandstanding and just plain freaking out. I choose to interpret professionalism mainly in terms of integrity. I treat other people with integrity and expect them to do the same to me. If I hold someone to a standard, I will hold that standard to myself. I will never engage in manipulative behavior. I think if writers maintain a baseline of integrity, respect for readers and basic social skills, they will be forgiven for their eccentricities. And their vagina hashtag jokes. At least, I hope so.

Where is My Mind?

2012-07-08T10:13:00.001-04:00

Way out in the water, see it swimming...

Heidi and I are getting somewhat of a reputation for hallucinatory expeditions! I'm nervous, but mostly pleased. Having Hawaiian Gothic compared to one of my literary heroes (China Miéville) by Val Kovalin is a high that hasn't faded yet. Whenever I'm in a down mood about my writing, I remember it.

If you missed the Hawaiian Gothic blog tour, check it out here on its minisite. We touched on a lot of pretty heavy stuff this round. My favorite is the post I did on Wicked Little Pixie, where I'm looking at underused mythology in a frame that's totally different from the usual "cultural appropriation or shunning" binary. Hawaiian Gothic is also on sale at Fictionwise today only for $2.67 with special code 070712 (or maybe tomorrow as well, the code ends July 9th). If you use code 070712, you'll get 55% off on all titles (except Samhain)!

If you're a fan and have a few seconds to help us out with a few clicks, we've been nominated on Best M/M Published in 2012 and Best Gay Athletes. If anyone would like to vote for us on there, that would be awesome. Nominations for any list that fit the book either on Goodreads or Amazon would also help, as would clicking [Agree with these tags] or adding your own tags on Amazon.

Other places where my mind is... so many. So many. Our hallucinatory expedition to WWII Finland ended in an impossible love becoming real. "The War at the End of the World" is a long short story available for free on Goodreads, Smashwords and Storm Moon Press. And then some asshole uploaded it onto Amazon and tried to sell it for three bucks! I mean, it has a gorgeous cover, but it's also the most uncommercial Love is Always Write offering I can imagine. What a loser. It took Amazon forever to get around to removing the listing, even after multiple complaints by S.L. Armstrong at Storm Moon.

We're also editing Mark of the Gladiator for Riptide's Warriors of Rome line. I'm so excited about this book. There are no paranormal elements at all (although our MC does have a few trippy dreams). Instead, it's a very rigorous historical that incorporates a lot of my academic and casual research without being wonky about it. Sarah Frantz, our editor, is carefully shredding any remaining wonk! Seriously, there's nothing I hate more than historical fiction that turns into a textbook.

We've got a lot of time to explain Mark of the Gladiator, since it's not coming out until November, so I won't go into details now. I'll just say that it's heavily influenced by the Steven Saylor Gordianus the Finder books, and leave it at that.

And then, of course, our Carina novel, The Druid Stone, is coming in less than a month. Heidi wrote a post about that over here. I cannot stress enough that the The Druid Stone is an urban fantasy with room to breathe at more than 110k. It starts intense and then it lets up a bit and then BAM... actually, I'd better stop now, because if I keep describing it I'll end up punching my leg. People who have problems with our other work might enjoy this better, since the structure is fairly linear, except when it involves time travel. But it's unapologetically intense and uses the paranormal in a way that doesn't fit preconceived notions. I like magic realism and first-generation urban fantasy and the New Weird, and yes, that's going to show.

Lastly, I'm a very opinionated person and although I reserve this blog for longer posts, I'm spewing opinions around a fair bit. I've founded a menage review blog called More Than This, which I'm running along with some other awesome readers. I'll also be posting at the new blog LGBT Fantasy Fans and Writers. Check out the first post there by the brilliant Alex Beecroft. Lastly, I'm not promoting this yet, but I started up a very informal review blog to post my reviews of MC/IR romance, mainly so that when I get requests for recs I can point people there. I've decided I'm only going to read MC/IR romance for the rest of the year at least—that helped me cut down my TBR pile a bit, but it's still massive—and anything I review that I like, I'll put up there. I might do more with it later, but right now, considering Mark of the Gladiator edits and The Druid Stone promo, that's all I have time for.

Here's a mournful piano version of Where is My Mind...

And to close out on an energetic note, a catchy, filthy bisexual throwdown. I love Azealia Banks so much I could die. This is full of NSFW words and slurs but it's just so fucking positive.

Hawaiian Gothic FAQ

2012-06-25T10:27:00.000-04:00

I’m of the school that once the story goes out into the world, you have to let readers make their own meaning of it. Trying to totally control the interpretation is a bit like the proverbial animal that you let free into the wild, and then you wait for it to come back to you, but if it doesn’t come back, you hunt it down and kill it. Not going to do that! Different readers are going to bring different interpretations to our story. And some readers may dislike the idea of this FAQ list, some may love it, most will ignore it, and we’re not judging anyone either way; we’re just happy if you read the story. So take this FAQ as our interpretation, nothing less and nothing more.

NON-SPOILERY QUESTIONS

- Is Hawaiian Gothica romance?

Yes. There’s an HEA, and the romance arc is absolutely central. And like the title says, it has one foot in the tradition of gothic romance. Dark family secrets and the supernatural are crucial to the story. For a review that uncovers gothic connections that even we didn’t fully consciously realize, see this review.

- What’s this about MMF?

It’s in there. It’s not something that applies to the main relationship. In other words, Kalani and Ori only ever have sex with each other. Any more would be spoiling.

- Is the love interest actually in a coma the whole time?

For most of the book, yes, he is. But his spirit is almost fully corporeal, and he plays a very active role in both present and past events. We don’t treat coma and coma recovery frivolously, either. Like Heidi says in her Six Questions post, no fewer than three registered nurses were consulted on the medical details. That doesn’t excuse us from making mistakes, but it does show we spent some effort and thought before employing this often-abused trope.

- Are there a lot of flashbacks? Do they jump all over?

Yes, there’s a series of short flashbacks at the beginning of each chapter, but no, they don’t jump at all. They’re strictly linear; they’re just backwards. Each flashback is marked with the date that it occurs, starting in 2011 and moving backwards in strict progression. And every flashback takes place a year earlier. The last flashback shows the protagonists as boys meeting each other for the first time.

This progression/regression mirrors Ori’s journey into the past as he begins an investigation into Kalani’s family history. It allows the reader space to create poetic connections between intensely lyrical past moments and the events of the present—you, the reader, also dive into the past, parallel to Ori.

It’s entirely possible to read the entire book by skipping the short flashbacks at the beginning of the chapter, but the two stories are richer together. It’s like a string folded in half, and made stronger.

- How much Hawaiian mythology do I have to know to read this book?

None at all. As we explain in this guest blog post, Ori is a semi-outsider. He knows some of the more common supernatural legends, but he’s just as confused as most readers might be, so he learns along with everyone else. On the other hand, if you’re not unfamiliar, we hope it works for you as well. Our main source material was this book, which is available online in its entirety. We backed it up whenever possible with writings by contemporary Hawaiians. Also, when we use this mythology, we are not attempting to construct or endorse any kind of system or rules, or say anything about the religion to which the mythology is connected.

- What does MMA stand for? And how technical is this MMA stuff?

MMA = Mixed Martial Arts. It’s also known as UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) for the largest promoting organization of the sport. And no, the MMA in the book is not very technical. We did plenty of research about MMA, especially in the area of training and chokeholds. We hope the several scenes that incorporate MMA will ring true to the ardent fan, but we don’t have extended combat scenes that really go in-depth into the sport. And if you’re wondering “how gay is MMA?” we have a blog post on that!

- Are you Filipina?

No, I’m Japanese-American.

- Why did you decide to write about Hawai’i?

Heidi and I both love Hawai’i. My father lives there now, and I’ve visited him there several times. That’s on the Big Island. Heidi’s visited there once, when she was a teenager. We wanted to write a story that touched on the non-touristed part of Hawai’i, representing the people in as authentic a way as two outsiders can.

- Why do some secondary characters have Japanese last names if they’re not Japanese?

Hawai’i is a very multiracial and multiethnic society with many mixed marriages over the generations. Someone’s last name is not always a reliable indicator of their predominant heritage—this is true anywhere, but especially in Hawai’i. There are people who appear East Asian with Portuguese and Spanish surnames, people who appear Caucasian with Polynesian last names, and so on.

- Why is it Hawai’i but Hawaiian? Why not Hawai’ian?

The ‘ represents a glottal stop, called an ‘okina in the Hawaiian language. To hear the word being pronounced with the glottal stop, you can listen here. However, the word “Hawaiian” is not itself a word in the Hawaiian language! The word for Hawaiian language in Hawaiian is Ōlelo Hawaiʻi. So the word “Hawaiian” is usually spelled without the ‘okina. For more links to pronunciation, check out our glossary at the Hawaiian Gothic minisite.

- How do you co-write? Is it like roleplaying?

We don’t roleplay. For those curious about the nuts and bolts, we have a guest post at Romance Around the Corner where Heidi breaks down one of our cowritten scenes.

- What kind of content warnings would you give for Hawaiian Gothic?

We personally don’t believe in giving “warnings” for consensual sex. That’s something that should go under heat level, and we’d classify the story as a medium in that respect, with some explicit sex scenes, although most chapters don’t have a sex scene. As for materials that might disturb or shock people, we have depictions of

- death
- supernatural monsters in nightmarish settings
- serious injury
- coma, depiction of terminal illness wrt hospital setting and family dynamics
- abuse
- racism (not a major story element)
- homophobia (a major story element, but not the dominant one)
- rough sex and mild D/s roleplay (aggressive at times but explicitly consensual)

VERY SPOILERY QUESTIONS (highlight to read)

- When did Ori come out to Kalani?

He didn’t. And this isn’t in the book—it’s simply our conjecture as to what would most be in character—but we think Kalani figured it out anyway. After Ori enlisted and left Hawai’i, Kalani started putting two and two together. Ori never dated anyone and never talked about sex. There were other little clues, here and there. As Kalani began his coming-out-to-himself process, he realized that Ori must have already gone through the same thing, and began to deeply regret the wall that had come between them in the last years of their friendship.

- Why did Malia go back to Jonathan?

It’s possible to interpret this one of two ways: he’s an excellent manipulator on the psychological level, or he is actually employing some kind of magic, like the abusive husband in the legend that Yvelise recounts. And ultimately, the two ways aren’t incompatible. Sometimes, human actions that are extremely evil assume a crushing symbolic weight—we don’t want to understand them, so we push them off into the realm of the psychological unknown, where thoughts of magic also dwell.

In real life, abusers use many different tactics. One of the chief ones is guilt. Threats of suicide are common. “If you leave me, I’ll kill myself.” “If you really loved me, you would stay with me.” Wearing victims down through sheer fatigue and sleep deprivation is also common; this is a more powerful control tactic than most people understand, and a major way that cults recruit otherwise strong-minded, independent people.

We assume that after Malia went back to him, Jonathan controlled her using these tactics while keeping up a steady stream of low-level, non-public abuse.

- Who attacked Kalani?

We have some ideas, but we decided to leave this open. Their ending is beautiful and romantic, but we also wanted it to have a realistic lack of completeness, of totality. Not knowing who the attackers were (Kalani had serious brain trauma and lost almost all memory of that night) is one of several challenges that they’ll have to face together as a future couple. We don’t think Hawaiian Gothic needs a sequel, but we still wanted to leave some things open. When every single thread in a story is sewn together neatly, sometimes it’s a little too artificial and symmetrical for my taste.

- The caterpillar. WTF?

A much smaller version is native to Hawai’i. I found out about the carnivorous caterpillar via this clip from a BBC nature documentary. Please don’t hold us responsible for any resulting nightmares!

Thoughts on "Cruce de Caminos" and then a Giveaway

2012-05-31T11:20:00.000-04:00

The blog tour is over! Riptide did a fantastic job setting it all up.

In fact, I posted this message at the Riptide group on Goodreads:

Now that Cruce de Caminos has been released, I just want to thank everyone at Riptide. When Heidi and I wrote this, we thought it was some of our strongest writing ever, and a truly amazing story. But we wondered if it would ever find an audience. It's magical, but not in any escapist sense; sexual, but not designed to be sexually exciting; horrifying, but it has no gore.

Riptide decided to take a chance on us. And, in general, to take a chance on challenging stories.

We got excellent editing, an amazing cover, great exposure. And we're on a press that holds so many of the best writers in the genre. I'm feeling very emotional about it all right now, in the best way. THANKS EVERYONE!

It’s always a risk releasing a non-romance story to a primarily romance audience. It will, unavoidably, fail to “click” with some readers who have generously given it a chance. However, we’ve also had wonderful reactions where the story didn’t just click, it hit (in a good way). And so we’re very, very happy with it, and looking forward to the most fun stage of the blog tour: giving away stuff!

To recap the tour, here’s a list of all our stops. You might notice I wrote most of the posts, and that’s because Heidi was in Ireland for a while there, fighting off mad fairies (well, actually, visiting in-laws). I touched on some pretty heavy topics here and there, including racism, colonialism, religion, homophobia, boundaries in sex work, heroin addiction. I’ve included a snippet from each post below. If you’d like to go and comment and enter into the giveaway, you still have a week after the date of the last post—so until the end of Tuesday, June 5th—to do so. On June 6th, we’ll pick winners and contact.

~~~~~~

Words of Wisdom from the Scarf Princess - 5/21/2012
BOOK TOUR FOR CRUCE DE CAMINOS BY HEIDI BELLEAU & VIOLETTA VANE (GUEST POST & GIVEAWAY)

It's a natural location for our characters to use as a meeting place. Sean is a newcomer to New Orleans. He's wandered westwards from his abandoned, unhappy home in the suburbs of Florida, where nothing lasts, where everything is built out of stucco and rots away to be rebuilt next year even uglier than before. He's enchanted by New Orleans and its sense of history. It satisfies a desire deep inside him, a need he didn’t even know he had

Tracy’s Place - 5/22/2012
CHARACTER SKETCH: SEAN O’HARA WITH HEIDI BELLEAU

Our particular co-writing relationship is pretty much a 50/50 split in all respects, so we share equal responsibility in creating characters and following through on that characterization. (IE, our stories aren’t like roleplaying, where one person is responsible for one character and control of the narrative is handed back and forth on that basis.) To keep things consistent, we write detailed character bios during the planning stages on every single thing we write so that we have something to refer to.

Joyfully Jay - 5/22/2012
GUEST POST AND GIVEAWAY: HOW RELEVANT IS SEXUAL ORIENTATION IN SEX WORK BY VIOLETTA VANE

Getting to “gay for pay,” we have straight men who cross lines to have sex with gay men. This is, in itself, a fetish, in a way that “lesbians having sex with men” is not. Gay porn is full of this fetish. Certainly, in real life, straight men do have gay sex for money, but the fantasy is so overwhelmingly popular that much of it really is pure fantasy: gay porn stars pretending to be straight pretending to be gay for pay.

Pants Off Reviews - 5/23/2012
GUEST POST & GIVEAWAY WITH VIOLETTA VANE: SANTERIA

They’d grown up with the religion and continued practicing it wherever they lived (mainly, Miami). In the grocery stores, there are candles, but in the specialty shops—botánicas smelling of medicinal herbs and musky incense—you’ll find an amazing assortment of props, symbols, art... all the ritual implements of a living faith.

Top2Bottom - 5/24/2012
HEIDI BELLEAU AND VIOLETTA VANE INTERVIEW

Heidi: Our first book as co-authors is called “The Druid Stone”. We first discussed the possibility of co-writing in April 2011, and finished the novel (including rigorous edits thanks to the brilliant April L’Orange) in mid-August. Two days after submitting it, I had my baby, and just before Christmas we heard from Carina that they’d decided to publish it! To bring it all full circle, Carina is releasing it in August of this year and we couldn’t be happier.

Bookwenches - 5/25/2012
Cruce de Caminos by Heidi Belleau & Violetta Vane - Interview

Heidi: The very first scene of the story has him unarmed and facing down a gun, and that sets the tone for the entire story. He keeps facing these insurmountable odds, these life-threatening challenges where he’s constantly overpowered by his antagonists (be they human or otherwise), and all he has in his corner is his wit and his desperation and ultimately, his body

Amara’s Place - 5/29/2012
INTERVIEW & GIVEAWAY: HEIDI BELLEAU AND VIOLETTA VANE

Heidi: “Cruce de Caminos” is erotic horror. I’ve been calling it a spooky paranormal, since as far as horror goes it’s a very much psychological and atmospheric, although there is a character who is more than he appears. It’s also a bisexual story. All of the onscreen sex is gay-for-pay, but the main character is in a heterosexual relationship. How homosexual desire fits into that space is a strange thing...

All I Want and More... 5/30/2012
BLOG TOUR WIDE GIVEAWAY W/HEIDI BELLEAU & VIOLETTA VANE - HEROIN

He needed a meaning, a purpose, and found one in heroin. It satisfies him on a visceral level and an intellectual level. Like most of us, he has no blazing prodigal talent to provide an automatic answer to the question, “Why do I matter to the world?”. He was always an outsider—not as well-off, not as white as the people he grew up around—so he posed that question to himself more intensely than most.

~~~~~~

There will be three winners announced on June 6th! Each will receive:

- a free copy of “Cruce de Caminos” in their format of choosing
- “Cruce de Caminos” magnets, calendar magnets and multiple postcards mailed to them once I receive their address.

Of these three, one will also receive a special mystery New Orleans gift.

~~~~~~

If you’ve read “Cruce de Caminos,” you’ll have the opportunity to enter Heidi’s quiz contest to win a copy of the continuation of Sean’s story, The Druid Stone (coming from Carina in August).

Thank you for following the tour, for reading our story, for leaving your feedback, for hosting us, for everything!

Game Plan: "You're a Racist!"

2012-05-16T15:48:00.000-04:00

I believe in taking risks in writing. I don't restrict myself to writing what I know. I've written erotic non-consent scenes, torture scenes, heroin addiction. That's not all I write, by any means, but the extremes of human emotion—painful and pleasurable—are traditional lures for writers. We like them. Readers like them. It's always been this way.

I take a different kind of risk when it comes to fictionalizing the voice of any group that has historically been silenced.

I could just write white characters, and play it safe. Even though I'm not white, white characters are still the safest option. When racial minority writers write our own group, we're creating "ethnic literature". When we write white characters, we're telling "universal" stories. That's a quiet but powerful incentive to pick the choice that leads to the most attention and the largest market.

I'm not playing it safe. I rarely write from the perspective of my own very specific, small ethnic group, but I write lots of characters of color, most of whom have experiences and perspectives totally different from mine. I also write mostly gay and bisexual men, and I'm a straight woman. Writing outside my own identity is something I'm accustomed to.

Whenever white writers get nervous about writing characters of color, I tell them the same thing I tell myself. Buckle up and do your best! Research it, write it, take your lumps if you get it wrong. On a technical level, writing a different race is no different than writing, say, WWI aviation. You're probably not going to be perfect at it, but perfection in the realm of fiction is an elusive, subjective goal.

There's more of an ethical dimension to racial representation, however. Maybe that's why the risk is perceived as greater. It doesn't have to be that way! So taking a dizzying tonal shift into all infomercial peppiness, I'll share with you my AWESOME GAME PLAN for DEALING WITH ACCUSATIONS OF RACISM. Good for new writers! Experienced writers! White writers! Even polka-dotted purple people writers!

So let's start with a case scenario. In our debut novella, "The Saturnalia Effect," we decided that one of our characters should be Arab-American. I talk about a reason why in this blog post. He's in big trouble, and he goes through some pretty awful things during the course of the story. Including an episode of explicitly racialized violence. I'm not going to say what it is, but it's really awful and raw and hurtful and racist.

We believe it's justified, or we wouldn't have written it. But I won't go into those justifications in order to keep this post as focused as possible.

No one has called us out on the scene. But someone might in future. Here's a game plan of how I'd react. I'm sorry if "game plan" sounds cold, but there's a level of professionalism involved in all this, layered in with the ethics.

J'accuse: I heard about that scene. You're a racist. Your story sucks. Fuck you!

I wouldn't engage at all. There's nothing to be gained from engaging, and no possibility of dialogue. But you know what? I'm not going to invalidate their rage. Hate crimes against this group are common. Mainstream media is constantly insinuating they ought to be killed and deported and forcibly converted to Christianity (even though a lot of them are Christians already), and every time they respond with "Ahem, can I file a complaint?" it's seized on as further proof that they're about to OMG blow something up, so their anger is constantly invalidated.

On an individual level, yes, J'accuse is an asshole. But if I respond to them on that same personal, individual level, I might be contributing to a nasty oppressive social-informational dynamic.

Also, just because they're an asshole doesn't mean they might not have a good critique. The Venn diagram of "Assholism" and "Being Right" does have an overlap.

J'accuse2: I heard about that scene. It sounds really racist.

Alright, there's a possibility for dialogue here. I'm not going to jump into it, though—I'm going to test the waters to see if they want a response at all. They might just be getting some anger off their chest at social circumstances that neither of us have much control over.

Response: I agree it's awful. It was a risk we didn't take lightly. Sorry.

I'm not going to apologize for writing the story. I'm not going to make it a mealy-mouthed passive-aggressive "I'm sorry you chose to be offended" apology, either. It's the simple kind of apology that acknowledges that there is hurt in the world. It establishes a common ground of empathy, if the other person chooses to step onto that ground. And then maybe we can actually start talking (and listening—I have to be ready to listen) about the story. The dialogue might result in either one or both of us changing our opinions, deepening our perspectives, taking productive actions in the future.

But maybe that was all they really needed to hear.

I know, sometimes, when faced with egregious anti-Asian slurs and stereotypes and fetishism—what feels like a constant barrage of you are not a fully voiced human you do not exist in any meaningful way—all I want to hear is the tiniest scrap of proof to the contrary.

On the other hand, here are some things I am resolutely determined not to say.

"I have Arab-American friends."
True, but irrelevant.

"No one else complained about it."
True, but irrelevant.

"You never read the story!"
This closes off empathy and puts all the blame and burden on the other party. It's also unprofessional. The more people read your work, the more opinions you're going to get on your work from people who've never read your work. It comes with the territory (and the money). For example, I don't feel obligated to read that Fifty Shades book to have an opinion on it. Sometimes the context demands backed-up opinions, sure, but that's nothing near a universal rule of discourse.

"You didn't read the story closely enough!"
Same as above.

"I can't be racist, I'm Asian! Or I'm [gay/a woman/a chiropractor/travelled back in time and jumped in front of the bullet meant for Martin Luther King/choose from an absolutely infinite number of mind-boggling excuses]"
Racism is a pervasive force existing both psychologically and socioeconomically. You do not have to "be a racist" to unwittingly encourage racist dynamics.

"I'm not going to listen to you, you're too angry."
Dialogue isn't always advisable. But if you're not going to listen to them, don't say you're not going to listen to them. Just don't listen to them. The more you protest that you're not listening, the more you're proving to everyone involved in the conversation that you are listening.

"Well fuck you and the horse you rode in on!"

Sigh. Although I can't discount this response entirely. If you listen first, and think through it rationally, and determine the accusation is utterly baseless—"As a proud Vampire-American, I bristle at your racist pro-staking propaganda!"—then hey, bust it out.

Lastly, this game plan doesn't have to be only about race. I hope I can apply it to any "j'accuse" sort of situation that comes my way as a writer.

Authors and Reviewers

2012-05-08T10:50:00.002-04:00

Our spring of Everlasting Editing will soon become the Summer of a Ridiculous Number of Releases. We've got three intense, hard-to-categorize stories coming out within the next few months, plus the more traditional friends-to-lovers romance of Hawaiian Gothic, and then our epic urban fantasy, The Druid Stone. I'll have some links to blog tours and giveaways to post soon, so activity at this blog is going to pick up very shortly.

In the lull before the storm, I've been able to get a bit of reading and reviewing done. My latest m/m review is for Val Kovalin's Fall Into the Sun, which I can heartily recommend. And I've started a group review blog with some friends called More Than This. We're going to review ménage and polyamory stories, irrespective of gender and sexuality and genre. I think this is a niche that's just begging to be filled (and I'm begging no pardon for that entendre).

The nice thing about doing ménage reviews is that since I don't really write it (yet), I don't have much conflict of interest. It's tricky for me reviewing books in m/m. I feel like I'm being pressured in all sorts of directions. Review too negatively, and someone might retaliate. No, that hasn't happened to me in m/m, but it did happen to me in a totally different genre for a short story I reviewed as part of an anthology. This person was extremely thin-skinned (my review was only mildly negative), and I did my best to ignore their attacks... but it got ugly. And I also feel the opposing pressure to not be too positive. I wonder to myself, am I reviewing this too nicely because I know this writer on social media and think they're a nice person? I'm supposed to be reviewing the book, not the writer. Sigh.

I have a little more distance when it comes to ménage. For example, I'll be reviewing Hemingway's strange, unjustifiably obscure genderqueer MFF erotic novel, The Garden of Eden. Since Hemingway is quite dead I don't have to worry about hurting any feelings.

Authors are often excellent reviewers, because writing is our craft, after all. But reviewers who aren't writers, or who write in an entirely different genre, lack some of the tricky psychological stumbling blocks that affect writer-reviewers in the same genre. They're more free. I envy that sometimes!

And I can't wait to see what my coreviewers are cooking up at More Than This.

Fighting Stereotypes the Wrong Way and the Right Way

2012-04-03T16:39:00.000-04:00

I ran into a great discussion on gay stereotypes on this thread. It definitely got me thinking about the treatment of gay stereotypes in m/m romance. I encourage everyone to read the discussion; it's very valuable.

The critique of Brokeback Mountain as heteronormative can also be applied to most of m/m romance. Please note that the commenter didn't say Brokeback Mountain was bad, or that they disliked it. But the model of one true love, one only—HEA or tragedy—does present a popular normative ideal.

It's not a bad ideal! It's just not the only one out there.

M/m romance tends to concentrate on men who present as very masculine—lots of cops, firefighters, soldiers—with masculine physical characteristics, but with an approach to emotional commitment that's culturally coded as feminine. There are many exceptions to this, of course, because m/m is now such a sprawling genre—in some areas, it overlaps with realistic gay literature, and in others, overlaps with the farthest realms of fantasy. Some writers, probably influenced by yaoi, write extremely androgynous and submissive gay men. Others can and do write men who don't fit any moulds at all. I haven't read Fire Balls by Tara Lain, for example, but the description of the hero as small, flamboyant, a karate blackbelt and a top sounds like a radical departure from the typical heroes of m/m romance. And then there’s Aleksandr Voinov’s cross-dressing Mafia assassin...

I don't think m/m romance has an obligation to realistically present the gay experience; it's romance, not journalism. However, it does have the responsibility not to support stereotypes, and to not outright deny the lived reality of gay men. Writing stories where happily monogamous gay couples ride off into the sunset is awesome… as long as we don't, in the process, disparage the people who don't want that in their own lives.

Probably the most upsetting instance of people denying lived reality happened in my old fandom, Torchwood. When Russell T. Davies, a gay writer, killed off one half of the beloved gay pairing on Torchwood, he was accused of internalized homophobia… by a large group of people who were mostly straight. There were some LGBTQ people that also criticized him, but by and large their voices were more tempered: "I wish he hadn't done that, but it's his right."

Yes, there's a stereotype that gay couples are doomed to tragedy. But that doesn't mean that gay tragic loves should never appear in media, or that writers—especially those who are themselves gay—should be shamed out of writing them. People sometimes like doomed tragic love better than the happy kind—it's all over Asian cinema, for example—and if it's consistent with the genre (i.e. not marketed as an HEA romance) then I'm all for it, myself.

It's important that in reacting to stereotypes we don't reinforce other ones. The thread I talked about in the beginning has a few gay men who identify proudly as femme and promiscuous explaining that they don't like their very existence being treated as a stereotype.

Here’s a sad list of some common negative stereotypes of gay men in Anglophone media.

cowardly
deceptive
shallow
vain
weak
sinister

And here are some structural stereotypes.

doomed love
sassy sidekick
closeted suicide
self-hating homophobe

Everything on the list below, on the other hand, should not be a negative stereotype. Items are often treated this way, but they don't have to be. Anyone with one or more qualities from the incredibly varied list below can potentially be written as heroic, strong, central to the story and just plain awesome.

has some speech mannerisms and body language coded as feminine
sometimes uses feminine pronouns in self-reference
always uses feminine pronouns in self-reference
dresses in a flashy way, feminine colors and styles
works in a traditionally feminine profession
cross-dresses for performance
cross-dresses not for performance
dresses in a flashy way, non-feminine but non-heteronormative (e.g., leather)
enjoys sex with multiple partners, has open relationships
does not have a life goal of a monogamous relationship
enjoys and seeks out kinky sex
exclusively bottoms
exclusively submissive
is a sex worker

Again, there's absolutely nothing wrong, and very many things right, with burly firefighters who find true love (three cheers for Hot Head! Seriously, I freaking loved that book). But sometimes, I see people saying "such and such character isn't stereotypical because they're not [insert some attribute from the list above]." And I don't think that's helpful. It reinforces some very problematic boundaries and binaries. I especially cringe when I hear “so-and-so isn’t a whore.” I’m not a member of the LGBTQ community, but as a woman and a former sex worker, some of the items on the above list overlap with stuff that affects me.

And we also shouldn’t apply the standards of m/m romance to the wider world of media that represents gay men. That should be kind of obvious, but for some straight people whose only point of contact with gay life is through m/m romance, well, reminders are sometimes necessary.

M/m romance is increasing in diversity all the time. Books with strong, heroic, three-dimensional, non-traditionally masculine characters are increasingly visible and receiving acclaim. I really hope this trend continues. M/m romance should have room for everyone: the married suburban dads with the white picket fence, the kinky threesome, the couple that dresses in leather and glitter but is perfectly happy with their vanilla sex life. I love diversity in m/m romance, plain and simple, and I hope that reflects in my writing.

I’ll close out with a video from Big Freedia, a gay man who uses feminine pronouns. And she’s amazing. If you like popping, turn it up and check it out!

Releases and Faces and Places

2012-02-24T12:01:00.000-05:00

Everyone who writes romance or erotica will tell you they write character-centered fiction. It's what we as readers expect, and what we as writers are happy to give.

But let's tease that statement apart a little bit. What's a character, anyway? How do characters stand apart from each other to become unique and compelling?

I believe that much of what makes a character compelling comes from outside: from their context, from their relationship to setting. The process of creation is like a dynamic engine. Setting influences character psychology which produces action which changes settings which changes character which produces conflict, and so on, creating intricate little clockwork cycles until the character approaches an organic, fractal level of complexity. Without that complex relationship to setting, characters degrade and become cardboard puppets loosely glued to generic backdrops.

We've got a lot of releases coming up in the next few months. And in each one of them, we've worked hard to craft this elusive, quasi-mystical relationship.

"Harm Reduction" is a free short story available at Storm Moon Press and Smashwords. It's set in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and spans half a generation, the one that felt the full force of a devastating epidemic.

"Salting the Earth" will be in the Storm Moon Press compilation Like it Or Not and is scheduled for May release. Our character, a young Irishman born and raised in Dublin, goes to Chicago then to small-town Ireland then to the other world. Each place marks him painfully and forever.

"Cruce de Caminos", coming this summer from Riptide Press, is set in pre-Katrina New Orleans. Two men meet there and drift together through its age-crumbling streets. One of them is running away, even though no one is chasing him, and the other might not be a man at all.

Hawaiian Gothic is a novel coming in June from Loose Id. Gregorio "Ori" Reyes left Oahu, the island of his birth, because he couldn't reconcile his desperate love for his best friend, Kalani. Ori thinks he's afraid of very little—he's an MMA fighter and an ex-Army Ranger veteran of Iraq—but the oncoming battle across his homeland and into the realm of the dead will require every ounce of psychic strength he has.

I'm not from Hawaii, but I lived for a long time in another tropical place, and sometimes, for all the sun, the darkness is more intense. Oh, and everyone loves where you live, they want a piece of the magic, but they want to go home before the monsters come out to play.

Enjoy your tours!

A More Personal Take on Non-Consent in Erotic Fiction

2012-02-06T09:41:00.000-05:00

Heidi and I have a post up about consent issues in erotic fiction over at Storm Moon Press.

This is a very volatile, tricky subject. We do, indeed, want to promote our story in the upcoming non-consent anthology, Like it Or Not. We think it's a great story. Like the rest of our stuff, it's hot and it makes you think. But it's not for everyone, and we really don't want to promote it that way.

Our post takes a neutral view of non-consent in erotic fiction. It stays mostly on the fictional level, and we don't make any absolute equivalence with real-life rape, but we don't ignore it, either; we use the opportunity to clear up some myths about rape and provide some really comprehensive links for further reading.

We don't go very personal in the post. I'm going to get personal right now, though, and explain a little of my perspective on the issue. It's under the cut.

—With a very few exceptions, I don't read erotic non-con. I don't read slavefic. I will read books with rape and slavery as plot elements, but not if they're eroticized. I will read rape role-play fantasies and BDSM (play) slavery but don't particularly seek them out.

—I don't judge people that do greatly enjoy these narratives and I don't make any assumptions about their private life or sexual background.

—When I was young, presexual and at a formative age, I was exposed to eroticized rape in fiction, both visual and textual. I don't think it damaged me, but it did affect me. Main sources: hentai, European comics like Druuna, a mainstream bodice ripper called "The Wolf and the Dove," and one of those "Fill-in-the-Blank of Gor" books.

—I grew up dealing with rape culture as a woman, but I've never been raped. I have been frequently sexually harassed, had attempts made to manipulate me into sex, been groped in public places, and experienced a few close misses, one of which involved calling 911 and going to court. I know the statistics. I don't chalk this up to any special effort on my part, because all the precautions in the world won't stop it. I've looked for sex when I was falling down drunk or high when I was a teenager, I've been to dangerous places and assorted with "the wrong kinds of men." I've worked in the sex industry. Women I know who've never done any of these things have still been raped.

—I did, in the past, enjoy straight-up rape fantasies more than I do today. I changed. Sexual desire is not set in stone. It's influenced by our upbringing, by our peers, by our beliefs and ideals. I'm not talking about anything as drastic as a switch from straight to gay. I'm talking about a teenage straight man who says he's only truly excited by young white blonde women with large breasts and small asses broadening his categories. Or a teen girl who's saving herself for Justin Bieber, and him alone, maturing into a more realistic attitude about sex. A shoe fetish moving from black leather boots to high heels. Interests in certain unrealized sexual fantasies like rape fantasies can be even more volatile, waxing and waning with stages of life, real-life events and trends in erotic and non-erotic fictional narratives.

—I do enjoy reading rough sex and several different kinds of dub-con, both heterosexual and m/m. I'll watch gangbang porn for either.

—Rape fantasies are potentially very offensive and even traumatizing to some people. I believe rape survivors should have the priority in talking about rape, and if they're disgusted by the existence of these fantasies—some are, some are not—their feelings should be respected as much as possible. They should be free to express those feelings and not told to shut them down.

—Some of it makes me uncomfortable, but I'm not personally offended or traumatized by eroticized rape of women. I just stay away from it. But what does send me into uncontrollable waves of anger and disgust are certain stereotypes of Asian women (and sometimes gay Asian men) portrayed as sexually passive playthings. These stereotypes have affected me personally in a much more clearly negative way than rape fantasies. They don't even have to be explicitly sexual, or produced by and for men, to have this effect on me. Memoirs of a Geisha is a good example. Its very existence offends me. In majority-white environments, it's not really socially allowable to speak up about it. But I'll get rude and do it anyway… up to a certain point. I'd like to speak out more about Asian fetishizing in m/m, but I do find myself self-censoring more than I'm comfortable with.

—Ultimately, I'm in the middle when it comes to that scale we talk about at the end of the post. I'm an "Anything Goes" person when it comes to fantasies, especially fantasies that will never be realized. But the production and marketing of these fantasies can have some really bad real-world effects, and I want to be mindful of that. One person's happy sex feeling is another person's shaking vomiting feeling, and the first shouldn't have automatic priority over the second.

—I've never written an erotic narrative that someone has complained about (yet). I think erotic fiction categorizes itself in such a way that people don't have to read the stuff that offends them. However, I'm a bit concerned that there's no standardized warning system, like there is, by custom, in fanfiction.

We've written dub-con before. "Salting the Earth" is our first non-con. I doubt we'll make a practice of writing more, although I don't rule out the possibility. I hope you buy the anthology... if that's your sort of thing. And if you think you might like to read a highly sexual, compelling but disturbing genderbending fairy gangbang involving mind control. It's okay if it isn't, of course, and it's okay if it is.

I'll just sign off now, wafting away on a pleasant neutral breeze.

Five out of Five Socks Love Your Book! (Part I)

2012-01-27T12:36:00.000-05:00

January is named after Janus, the Roman double-headed god of doorways and time. One head looks to the future, the other to the past. The month of January is the perfect time for year-end reviews—to wrap up the old year and prepare for the new one. And in our wonderful and weird corner of the internet, this means communal effort to construct lots and lots of reading lists. These lists are invaluable for new readers to the genre. When we started reading m/m, Goodreads and Amazon lists were our diving board.

Lists are a fantastic service for readers. But for writers, they’re charged with extra meaning. We want number one spots while also reminding ourselves that popular acclaim isn’t the only measure of success. We look to see what’s popular and what’s not, we judge ourselves against our peers, and then we step back and remind ourselves not to judge too harshly. We calculate the effect of list popularity on sales figures and bank accounts. And a little less pragmatically, lists give you the warm fuzzy feeling of seeing the company you keep. Imagine being thought of side-by-side with genre stalwarts like Josh Lanyon or Jordan Castillo Price or runaway hits like Zero to the Bone! Your little book that could! For newbies like us, it’s a delirious daydream. By the people, for the people. You like us, you really like us!

The list system relies on goodwill, volunteerism and communal effort. There are no qualifications necessary to vote on lists. If a book has fans passionate enough to click that vote button, it’s got a platform. No elitism.

Unfortunately, this leaves also leaves the system open to manipulation via the puppetry arts.

We’re not talking marionettes a la Thunderbirds, here. No Muppet Show. Not even David Bowie as the Goblin King and his entourage (not that David Bowie is a puppet—the tights allow no doubt).

Anyone who’s spent a fair bit of time on the internet knows all about the term “sock puppet”: dummy accounts created by a single user to use as they will. Losing an argument about which Doctor (Who?) you like? Suddenly you’ve got five friends who like the 1998 tv movie just as much as you. Got a nasty review on your game-changing were-turkey novella? Now you’ve got a friend who’s a lawyer making sure everybody knows that criticizing your characterization counts as libel. Worried your self-pubbed book of poetry isn’t getting the love it deserves? Voilà, 50 glowing five-star reviews on amazon.com, plus a few four stars sprinkled in just for appearance's sake.

Famous journalists have succumbed to this lure. The most recent was Johann Hari, winner of the prestigious 2008 Orwell Prize, who was caught plagiarizing and puppeting by entering snarky, insulting additions to his competitors’ Wikipedia pages. If people with so very much to lose are willing to slap a sock on their fist, the temptation to new authors in a small genre like ours is all the higher by comparison.

Earlier this week, a horde of sock puppets descended like Wagnerian valkyries to lift a certain m/m romance to the top of multiple Goodreads lists. Accounts numbering in the triple digits, all with no friends, only one or two books added, and generic (and sometimes identical!) user icons, came out of the woodwork to lavish praise on a little-known book. Five- and four-star ratings without reviews crowded out genuine Goodread user reviews and shelves.

[continue reading this co-written piece at Heidi Below Zero to find out what happened]

The Saturnalia Effect News Round-Up II

2012-01-04T09:06:00.000-05:00

We broke ground yesterday on a new short story, and we're readying our short novel Hawaiian Gothic for submission. I'm very excited about Hawaiian Gothic, and we touch on it in several of our "The Saturnalia Effect" interviews. Although it's different in so many ways from TSE—it's a friends-to-lovers story, for one—it's also got a gripping plot and smoking hot sex (the fact that one of our MCs is a Filipino-American MMA fighter inspired me to post lots of ripped Pinoy dudes all over G+). Like TSE, it's dark, but it's dark in a different way, and the setting (very unlike Westgate) is gorgeous and expansive.

The many interviews we did for The Saturnalia Effect exhausted me, but on rereading, talking about our creative process turned out to be quite illuminating. I'm also happy that people seem to be really loving it. So far, there's not a single bad review I can use to test my thick skin as a fledgling published author.

1/3/2012

WE’RE TALKING HEIDI BELLEAU & VIOLETTA VANE AND THE SATURNALIA EFFECT – OH MY!
Top2Bottom Reviews
"For The Saturnalia Effect, when we were conceptualizing the failed robbery that got Troy Khoury sent to Westgate Prison, I thought about two experiences ducking semi-automatic gunfire – one in Mexico, one in a motel in Charlotte, North Carolina."

1/1/2012
INTERVIEW: BOBBY CHATS WITH HEIDI BELLEAU & VIOLETTA VANE, A STORM MOON PRESS WRITING TEAM
BookWenches Reviews
"A psychopathic Mafia boss gives him an ultimatum: seduce and kill an ex-enforcer or face rape and death at the hands of the current enforcer. He’s faced with a horrible decision that only gets worse when his assassination target becomes his lover and protector." Plus, the sordid story of how I lost my virginity ;)

1/1/2012
A COUPLE OF SHORTS TO START THE NEW YEAR
Jenre @ Well Read
The story isn't going to be to everyone's taste because there's a lot of rather graphic violence in the story, plus a hint of dub-con sex, but I thought it a unique twist on the usual romance stories out there. Grade: Excellent.

12/27/2011
THE SATURNALIA EFFECT – 4.5 STARS
Ruth Diaz
Troy and Daniel are people you really care about, and you care about them falling in love and about their ongoing welfare. Their difficult circumstances bring out qualities they didn’t know they had, in the way a good story should: Troy is braver than he thinks he can be, and Daniel cares more. The pacing is good, the details are fabulous, and the sex scenes are hotter than a hot thing.

12/23/2011
VIOLETTA VANE SPOTLIGHT!
Jeff @ 1PlaceforRomance
"And although it’s a short novella at around 20k words, it’s packed full of tension and dread and dangerous sex and strange magic. The title of the story is crucial, because Saturnalia is the ancient Roman holiday that happened around the same time as Christmas, when the story is set, and—no, I can’t give it away. Sorry. You’ll have to find out for yourself!"

12/22/2011
INTERVIEW: HEIDI BELLEAU & VIOLETTA VANE (AUTHORS OF SATURNALIA)
Sally Bibrary @Bibrary Book Lust
"For “The Saturnalia Effect,” one concern we had was not to diminish the very serious issue of prison rape. It’s a constant looming danger in the book and a major plot point. I often asked myself, “are we treating this in an exploitative manner?” To some degree, I think it’s inescapable, simply because as writers and readers we’re attracted to the extremes of human emotion and the extremes of suffering..."

New Year's Post

2011-12-31T14:37:00.000-05:00

This is my first year as a published writer (thanks to the wonderful Storm Moon Press). We've had other acceptances roll in, some of which we hope to announce early next year. I can tell everyone right now, though: we've had a story accepted by Riptide Publishing, and we're awfully excited about that.

2011 was a difficult year for me in many respects. My health plummeted when I ruptured a spinal disc. I was on and off painkillers, even using a cane for a short stretch; writing helped me maintain a positive outlook...

Well, I'd better keep this short before I start getting all soppy.

Thanks to my writing partner Heidi, thanks to everyone who ever encouraged me or inspired me and thanks to anyone who ever took the time to read my stories!

Hope you have a wonderful 2012.

The Saturnalia Effect News Round-Up

2011-12-22T10:02:00.000-05:00

To win a free copy of "The Saturnalia Effect", please go to Jessica Freely's Friskbiskit blog and comment to be entered. This contest is open to everyone and runs through Christmas, with the winner to be announced on Boxing Day. Thanks, Jessica!

It's out everywhere, including Amazon, although the best place to buy is directly from Storm Moon Press. You'll get a free bonus erotic short (the missing blowjob scene, basically) called "Pretty Things" (Ah, I do love my Bowie references), which is unavailable anywhere else.

Dec 22, 2011
Friskbiskit
Guest Post: Heidi Belleau and Violetta Vane
It's my pleasure to welcome authors Heidi Belleau and Violetta Vane to the blog today. They're here to share with us some of the prison slang they learned while researching The Saturnalia Effect...

Dec 20, 2011
SJD Peterson~*~It's all in the touch
Nice & Naughty ~ Heidi Belleau and Violetta Vane
What did you do this past year that might have your name showing up on the naughty list?

Dec 18, 2011
Between the Covers
The Saturnalia Effect by Heidi Belleau and Violetta Vane
Review. Stars: 4/5 Length: 23,000 words

Dec 17, 2011
PANTS OFF REVIEWS
The Saturnalia Effect
Review. Short Novella: 52 pages 4 out of 5

Dec 16, 2011
Ebook Addict Reviews
Interview with co-authors Heidi Belleau & Violetta Vane
What do you love about being authors? Heidi: My Richard Castle-esque lifestyle of high society parties and my fancy New York apartment, of course!

The Saturnalia Effect Influence Series: Oz

2011-12-19T13:18:00.000-05:00

Em City. Oz. A dark, gritty drama about life in a max-security prison shown on HBO from 1997-2003. Six seasons of uncensored shanking, assaults, brutality, soliloquies, race warfare, romance and even one mind-boggling musical episode. I was never able to watch all of Oz in order, but I watched them whenever I could. It was packed full of amazing actors, three of whom went on to Law & Order: SVU. Chris Meloni's psychotic Romeo became an upstanding Catholic detective, B.D. Wong's priest became another type of counsellor in a very lateral move and J.K. Simmons' stone-cold-evil Aryan gang patriarch flipped into a mild-mannered psychiatrist.

Oz was definitely gripping drama. I think it did an amazing job of showing the relationship between guards and inmates and peeling back the complicated layers of prison politics. For a show set in such a masculine environment, it even had a few wonderful and memorable female characters. I have some family that work in correctional facilities, and all of them loved the show, although they suspended their disbelief mightily on many, many occasions. The show got some things right, but many others wrong, and towards the end it approached the realm of pure fantasy with its tortuous soap-opera twists.

A romance between two prisoners threads its way between all the seasons. Chris Meloni plays Keller, a violent, brooding sociopath facing the death penalty for murder. Even the prison gangs give him space. He's dominating, manipulative and terrifyingly unpredictable. It emerges that two of his murder victims were gay men he seduced and killed as some kind of twisted way of denying his own sexuality. His only redeeming characteristic is that he's exactly aware of how evil he is, so he hates himself. Due to the strength of Meloni's acting, we can see how Keller still manages to attract people to him: he radiates a disturbing magnetism.

Tobias Beecher falls, unfortunately, into Keller's orbit. Beecher was a law-abiding professional on the outside, but ended up serving a harsh sentence for a drunk-driving homicide. He has many flaws, but he's not a sociopath, and he's not a violent man, although prison life forces him to become one. Immediately after entering prison he's raped, branded with a swastika and addicted to heroin. Keller seduces Beecher, then breaks his arms and his legs, then decides that he really loves him and wants to do everything he can to make up for it. That's how they get started as a couple. The course of their twisted relationship makes a lot of hurt/comfort fanfiction look like Strawberry Shortcake.

I'd be lying if I said Oz wasn't a huge influence on "The Saturnalia Effect". More than anything, Oz pushed the boundaries of what sort of dark things you can expect to find in a love story. I didn't want to push beyond the limits of Oz. In fact, we don't even push that close. Our characters, Troy and Daniel, are both flawed, but they're not sociopaths, and they don't torture each other. We also decided that our fictional prison, Westgate, would be modeled on old, traditional prisons like Attica, all dark corridors and metal bars, not the cleaner, glassier panopticon style of Oz.

Beecher and Keller's love story doesn't end well, although I won't give the details. But I think that was obvious from the very beginning. The couple in "The Saturnalia Effect" has an ending that's heavier on the redemption side. Yes, we're pushing the boundary for what you'd find in a Christmas story, and pushing it hard, but then we're falling back and coming out on the other side of suffering.

The Saturnalia Effect is out on sale tomorrow. Suffer and enjoy!

Violetta Vane's Imaginarium

The Next Big Thing

When "Bullying" is not Bullying

Mark of the Gladiator Blog Tour Wrap-Up

Mark of the Gladiator and Ancient Africa

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Mark of the Gladiator

by Heidi Belleau

Back!

Galway Bound

Taking a Social Media Hiatus

The Druid Stone Blog Tour Wrap-Up

Interview with Ruth Diaz, author of The Superheroes Union: Dynama

The Druid Stone Releases Today

Twitter Tips for Writers from a Non-Social Media Expert

Where is My Mind?

Hawaiian Gothic FAQ

Thoughts on "Cruce de Caminos" and then a Giveaway

Game Plan: "You're a Racist!"

Authors and Reviewers

Fighting Stereotypes the Wrong Way and the Right Way

Top Five Kinks and the Stories that Have Them

Releases and Faces and Places

A More Personal Take on Non-Consent in Erotic Fiction

Five out of Five Socks Love Your Book! (Part I)

The Saturnalia Effect News Round-Up II

New Year's Post

The Saturnalia Effect News Round-Up

The Saturnalia Effect Influence Series: Oz