Lauren's Tales

Sometimes I spend years trying to communicate an idea to other people.  Other times I get lucky and someone hands me the words.

I got lucky this time.

And, of course, I’ll leave aside the strong tendency for the mimesis of so-called “m/m” stories…to replicate traditional heterosexist tropes. …”m/m” as a term is sufficiently co-morbid with perhaps I have a special anusism that I saw this controversy as ultimately a commercial one, not one primarily between the forces of repression and liberation. ANYWAY.

What he said, and more of it.

Sometimes I have an interesting thought about writing, and I think, I should write an article about that.

I’ve gotten paid for articles before.  And, like many authors, I’m happy to tell other writers what I think about writing.  After all, who else can understand these ideas.  Not my spouse who–however loving–has not a literary bone in his body.

I write slowly, though, and at the peak of SAD season I don’t have enough neurotransmitters to write even a blog post, usually.  But then I got this idea from conversations with a helpful beta reader.

Romance readers have a different ideas about monogamy than readers in other erotica genres.  Cecilia Tan wrote a really good article on the subject, but I can’t find it right now.  The point was that romance readers aren’t happy with fiction where the main character sleeps around on the person who is clearly their mate.  Cecilia wanted to write a romance series where the main character was not monogamous, and she made it work by having all of the main characters’ lovers be fully realized, sympathetic characters, which made her books end up longer than she expected.

The insight of my beta readers is that monogamy isn’t the key issue.  In fact, back before we could write about actual sex anywhere, let alone romances, sex wasn’t the barrier.  In fact, the difference between sex that is “allowed” can be almost anything, as long as you tell the reader what it is and stick to it.  One device I’ve seen before but detest is that the main character is allowed to have sex with people other than the true love, but only if he/she doesn’t enjoy it.  In gay romance, the character is often quick to offer oral sex, but saves his anal cherry for his true love.  BTW, I’m fairly certain that most actual gay men don’t fret over fidelity as much as female writers seem to think they do.  Feel free to let me know if you’re a counter-example.

This is a very liberating realization, because it gives me the opportunity to put all sorts of interesting things in the plot.  Of course, I can’t do much with the realization yet, but SAD season doesn’t last all that long these years.