Mark C. Wade's Blog, page 4

Mistakes Were Made

Book 2 of Merlin's Grove is up for pre-order on June 1. Here's the cover reveal:I thought I'd do a brief discussion on what I thought my mistakes in Book 1 were and how I went about fixing them for Book 2. Don't get me wrong, though. I still think Book 1 was the best thing I'd written to that point. It's not as serious as some of my earlier stuff, but it had my best prose style, characterization, and plotting.The main mistake I made in The Overlook was to write a full M/M romance in the quirky town of Merlin's Grove before doing anything else. I used a classic romance plot, and I think that turned out excellent. I had produced a solid contemporary, small town romance.But then I wanted to layer in some fantasy elements. This worked okay, but I have to agree with some of my less than stellar reviews that the end product is a bit mismatched. The magical elements don't come in until very far into the book, and then it all happens very fast and they're gone again. Those elements aren't even central to the plot. This disappoints people thinking it's going to be more of a fantasy, and it disappoints people thinking it's going to be small-town M/M. The book ends up being something almost no one wants.For Book 2 (which happens to be a standalone, so no need to read Book 1 first), I took a much more holistic approach. I made the magical elements a core part of the plot. I made sure the book felt like a coherent whole instead of two separate ideas pushed together. I wrote both aspects at the same time during my outlining phase.The magical elements are still fairly minor compared to the M/M romance part, but I think readers of both genres will feel a bit more satisfied with the final result. And, for the record, I'm not just trying to satisfy others by doing this. This is the book I wanted to write. I stayed true to the vision of Merlin's Grove. I was just honest about some mistakes I made in Book 1.Happy reading!

Merlin's Grove, Book 2

I've been working hard on Book 2 of Merlin's Grove. I'm pretty excited about how it's shaping up. I'm currently about 75% of the way through the first draft. If I keep up this pace, my goal is to release it around June 1. I don't even have a working title yet.It won't have as many of the surprises of Book 1, because those have already been revealed. One of the interesting things I've never had to work through in other things I've written is how to make a completely standalone novel that takes place in the same town as the first book.It's tricky to strike a balance of not re-explaining things to people who know the world and getting enough information across so people new to the series aren't confused.I'm far enough along that I feel comfortable revealing some teasers for the plot. There will still be the quirky, weird small-town characters and festivals. But this time we have an outsider come to Merlin's Grove for the first time. He's nerdy and shy.Meanwhile, the Merlin's Grove local, who is friends with Ben from Book 1, is a muscular, cocky jock. Ben bets him he can't lay the nerdy guy within three dates. This sets up the classic "bet" trope. But this is Merlin's Grove, where nothing goes according to plan without some magical interference.The jock accidentally summons a dryad (a type of faerie) to help him, and it ends up mucking the whole situation up. This adds a layer of the "be careful what you wish for" trope. It should be a funny and fun ride as secrets between the characters and about the town keep getting unintentionally revealed.The sex scenes are a bit more intense than my previous books, too. In the past, withUniform FantasiesandThe Overlook, I've relied a bit on fetishes for the sex scenes. In Merlin's Grove Book 2, I'm relying on raw passion for the sex scenes.I'll try to touch base in a few weeks to let everyone know how it's going.

The Evolving Structure of MM Romance

I know I'll probably get a lot of flak for this, but I'm kind of obsessed with story structure. I've seen a trend in MM romance that is troubling to me. It's a rejection of the standard romance structure for something, well, much worse.I can think of a few reasons why this has happened. The first is that there's a lot of conflict and struggle and stress in the world already. So the natural reaction is to create romances that avoid all of this. It's an escape from reality.Traditionally, gay characters bring a lot of drama and angst. Many people might avoid story structure that creates drama and angst for fear of seeming stereotypical. This comes from a good place, but I think it's important to separate the stereotype from a story structure involving conflict.The other reason is that many mm writers just don't put a lot of thought into this. It's something they got into almost by accident, writing fan-fiction or whatnot. I know it's not very PC to say it, but many mm writers got success without studying the craft of writing much. No matter the case, the current trend of happy-all-the-way romances is bad for the genre. A story without any conflict is no story at all. And here's the post to explain why.The Romance as a genre has a fairly standard form. Obviously, innovation and reversing expectation and originality and creativity are all greatly welcomed. But as they say, if you don't know what is normal, how can you innovate on it? If you don't understand the "why" of each piece of the structure, how do you know the way you circumvent these standards is good?Every great romance of the past three decades (and longer) follows the same basic structure. If you've ever cried while watching a romantic movie, the crying happened because of this structure. Each piece exists for a reason, and no piece can be skipped if you wish to get the proper emotional reaction out of the watcher/reader. Think to you're favorite romance. I guarantee you'll find this structure.The quintessential example isPride and Prejudice.But the formula has been streamlined a bit since then, and the extraneous society bits have been removed. Upon first meeting, the two love interests hate each other (or at the very least have some source of conflict like boss/employee ethical dilemma). The whole beginning sets up the chemistry and the conflict. But in addition, something extremely important to the main character must be revealed tangentially as well as a vice of the love interest.The middle builds the relationship. One or both of the characters falls in love with the other. It's the courting phase. At the climax of this a major crises must occur. The two main characters encounter what seems to be an insurmountable problem. It seems impossible for them to be together anymore. Usually, the main character will reject the love interest due to some indiscretion.In10 Things I Hate About Youit was a lie about why the relationship started. InYou've Got Mail, it's because Meg Ryan finds out the online person is the giant corporate person trying to put her out of business. This is a desperate "all is lost" moment in the story.Ah. But remember that extremely important thing to the main character mentioned in the beginning that most people have forgotten about at this point? Well, the love interest remembers this thing, and performs a true sacrifice of their vice to uphold this thing. This is often called the "proof of love" moment. This is where everyone cries.And none of this works without all of the pieces in place. This structure is flexible but not super flexible. If you haven't set up that thing important to the main character or the vice of the love interest, the love interest can't redeem themselves with it. If you haven't created a crisis in the relationship, the love interest can't prove their love through some personal sacrifice.I know. A lot of you might be thinking, yeah, but I don't need my character to prove their love. The whole story will justbeabout their love. It will be obvious. No need for the theatrics and drama and conflict. Sure. I get that.Your story might be cute. It might have humor. You can make people swoon at the lovey-dovey stuff. But you'll never get that profound and lasting impression from every single romance you remember without this basic structure.To be blunt, this evolved structure that avoids conflict is nothing but forgettable. These elements of story aren't "drama" as some critics would suggest. They are the building blocks of story structure. They set up a premise and deliver a payoff. The true nature of your characters is only revealed through action, and if you don't give them a reason to act, you'll reveal nothing.For this reason, I think mm romance has gone in a troubling direction. Readers and writers alike have decided this type of conflict is unwanted "drama." Half the stuff I read these days consists of two guys getting along perfectly until the book ends, and I'm left wondering what the point was.

Merlin's Grove: Book 1 Releases Today!

I won't spend a lot of time talking about the book. I've already done several posts on it:hereandhere.This is for anyone who gets their updates from the blog alone.Buy it now!Ancient magic, a quirky and intrusive small town, a mysterious stranger.​Welcome to Merlin's Grove, CT, where not everything is as it seems.Ben must fight the town board to make his dream of opening a small-town gay bar a reality, but everything begins to fall apart, including his romance with a dreamy doctor, when a mysterious stranger comes to town and sets the ancient magic in motion."It's likeGilmore GirlsmeetsThe Librarianswith a gay romance." - Beta Reader

Quick Update

I realized it has been quite some time since I posted anything here. I'm still alive and kicking, though the kicking part is a recent improvement. My broken ankle is pretty much completely healed, and thanks to Physical Therapy, I've gotten back to running with the dog.Last week I wrapped up the Merlin's Grove novel, and it's still tentatively titledThe Overlook(though, if the publisher comes up with something better, I wouldn't hesitate to change it). I'm really happy with how it came out, and I think it's the best thing I've done so far. It wasn't as emotionally exhausting asStand in Need of Comfort, but it still has a lot of subtle writing in it.I had to weave together a love triangle, interesting and quirky little things around the small town, a man vs society subplot, and a whole hidden fantasy subplot having to do with ancient magic and Merlin without any one of the elements fully dominating. It was a lot of fun but also much harder than anything I've done before.I shipped it off to a publisher. Who knows when I'll hear back. If I get a rejection, I may end up self-publishing it. As someone that's gone through a publisher several times now, I think I'm interested in having more control over the process. It would be more expensive to not get the "free" labor (cover design, editing, etc), but for marketing purposes it would be nice to do something like make one of the books free for Valentine's weekend or something. And I don't have that type of control. It's also frustrating to have to wait 8 months or so for them to find an "appropriate" place to slot the release.I've also been tossing around the idea of publishing a serialized novella where a chapter would come out every other week or so. This way I don't just get a burst of interest in my writing once or twice a year when a new book comes out. I'm not sure where or how to make that work. I could do it through this blog or another one linked from my site, but I'm not sure if that would feel "professional" enough to get interest. I'd put a lot more effort into it than one of these blog posts.Anyway, if anyone has tried something like that, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Updates on Merlin's Grove

I finished a rough draft of my next novel a few weeks ago. I'd been tentatively calling itMerlin's Grove,since that's the name of the small town it takes place in. The idea was to make a something similar toGilmore Girls, quirky town stuff, witty characters, etc, but with gay main characters. The first draft worked that way, and I renamed itThe Overlook, which would make more sense if you read it.The town was still called Merlin's Grove, and I thought on my first pass through the rough draft that I'd layer in some light fantasy elements to go with the name. I put in a backstory about where the name came from, and it gave a reason for the random magical stuff that happens.But then I got carried away, and I essentially turned the whole thing into a fantasy with a neat small-town setting. I keep joking that I've invented a new genre. Urban fantasy is fantasy in an urban setting. My setting is small town, so I wrote a "rural fantasy." (My husband said this isn't new, because all classic fantasy is rural. But mine takes place in a quirky small Connecticut town, not some Middle Earth prairie).It got me thinking a bunch about genre and how important it is. Genre gives you conventions and even the form of the story. On the one hand, it's easy to say sticking to a genre is boring and easy. Some may think following genre is only for non-creative writers. But that's not true. You can be wildly creative within a genre.Genre gives a novel a cohesiveness. Someone who tries to defy genre by making something a romance here, a drama there, a comedy over here, fantasy elements over there, and so on is engaging in just plain bad writing. It's confusing to the reader and stylistically choppy.New writers want to throw everything into a book. Restraint and cohesiveness is a sign of mature writing. The fact that I've only come to understand this over many years of writing made me nervous that I backslid into this hodge-podge writing style.This means that on subsequent revisions, I'm going to have to be very careful to make sure I've set up the right expectations from the start and then stay consistent. I had expected to submit this manuscript by the end of January, but it might be a touch longer now that I've given myself this added task of smoothing out this new rural fantasy M/M romance genre.Oh. And also, I like this setting and the people so much that I plan to make this a series (at least 3 books, probably new characters each time). I'm quite excited about what I've come up with, but I may have dug myself into a hole that could take some time to climb out of.

Book Release: Stand in Need of Comfort

My latest book,Stand in Need of Comfort, comes out this Friday, November 25, 2016. It was quite an emotionally draining experience to write, and I thought I'd share part of it here.What if the one you desired most was dedicated to controlling that desire?Nathan, a lifelong and committed Mormon, is the only unmarried member of his same-sex attraction support group. As his feelings for one of the married men grows stronger, it gets harder to keep his commitment to live in an opposite-sex relationship.I already know what you're thinking. Another one of those? The gay Mormon thing has been done quite a few times fromLatter DaystoThe Falls.But these stories tend to be of a certain type that I wanted to avoid (I love those, by the way, so I'm definitely not knocking them). I didn't want to do the missionary who doesn't know he's gay, gets seduced, and kicked out; or he falls in love with his companion and has a sexual awakening; or the highly secretive Mormon ceremonies involving strange sex acts nonsense.I have a very long and complicated history with the LDS church. I won't go into it, but let's just say I really understand the inner workings of their culture and thought process and their art (yes, Mormons have a slew of books and movieseveryonehas read and seen). As someone familiar with all this, I wanted to produce a truer take on how a gay Mormon story would unfold.My starting point wasn't the iconic naive missionary. I start with a man of around 30 who has fully embraced the fact that he has same-sex attraction. In order to reconcile this with his faith, he is a part of a same-sex attraction support group. This makes the book pretty controversial (recall all those angry letters calling to cancel the TLC programMy Husband's Not Gay).As Nathan embraces his true self more and more, everything about his world starts collapsing around him. This is a story that should be universally recognizable to anyone who has tried to reconcile their faith and their sexuality in a faith tradition that sees homosexuality as an abomination.The fact that this experience happens to so many people, some of whom I know, made the book hard to write at times. I often found myself emotionally drained as I put myself in the place of someone losing everything and desperately trying to hold on. I was inspired by Paul Russel, and I strove to create a poetic and internal character study.A lot of the details of the book will probably go over the heads of most people unfamiliar with certain aspects of Mormon culture. This is fine, because I hoped to use these to subconsciously build the realism and not necessarily to be understood. If an actual Mormon were to read this (I doubt it will happen), they'd probably be surprised by how easily they identified with the characters.I hope people get to read this and aren't turned off by the subject matter. In a sense it is a novel that had to come out of me one way or another. It had been building inside me for many, many years.I won't be writing something so draining anytime soon. I often say my next novel isGilmore Girlswith gay main characters. It's light and fun and a much needed break.

On the Evolution of the Romance Genre

I read my first romance novel in 2000. That was 16 years ago. I was a closeted gay male, a freshmen in high school, book nerd, and all my closest friends were female. Even back then I was a bit snobby about the books I read. I had tried to seek out gay literature, but I found almost none.One of my friends absolutely devoured romance novels: on the order of several a week. One day, she saw my skeptical look when she pulled one out of her locker. She said, "You have to try one before you make fun of it. I'll bring one in tomorrow for you. It will take you two days, and then you'll be back to your normal reading."She brought inThe Wyndham Legacyby Catherine Coulter. In retrospect, I think she tricked me. She gave me a suspense trilogy. She knew I'd need the next one to see how it ended. Also, the sex was ... quite arousing. I couldn't believe these things were written in books they had at the library. And that's how it all started.I spent the next year reading Nora Roberts, LaVyrle Spencer, Catherine Coulter, and yes, even Danielle Steel. When I got to college, my reading for pleasure greatly decreased, and I pretty much stopped reading romance altogether. I only came back to it with the genesis of the M/M romance e-book.I've always had a nostalgia for these 90's romance writers, but I've never gone back to see if they hold up. The most obvious way that newer books have evolved is length. The books by the authors I mentioned above are 350-page paperbacks. This means 60,000-word full novels or longer. More often M/M e-books fit into the novella length of 30,000-50,000.I've fallen into the trap of thinking in terms of these shorter lengths. I really want the novel I'm working on to be a full-length novel, so I decided to take a look into the past and see how these earlier books differed. I grabbed a Nora Roberts I always wanted to read:Jewels of the Sun.The first chapter surprised me. It was quite long, and pretty much nothing happened. Much of the prose described the internal state of the main character and the setting. She didn't meet the love interest at all (or even in Chapter 2).This told me a few things. First, I think readers were a bit more trusting back before the instant gratification of smart phones and Amazon previews existed. The opening was much more patient than we've become accustomed to. It didn't need to hook a potential reader in the first 500 words for fear of the Amazon customer deciding not to buy it.The more I read, the clearer the evolution became. Older romance was all about transporting the reader to a romantic place: a small town, the beautiful Irish countryside, the Regency, etc. A lot more words were devoted to these setting descriptions.This was my nostalgia. Our e-book age forces books to be focused on fast plots and quickly establishing character. The setting used tobeone of the main characters.Nowadays, at least in contemporary M/M, the setting tends to be a known place like NYC. It's a place everyone can visualize easily without many words. This probably isn't fully intentional or conscious. I'm sure it naturally evolved this way out of the need to have a believable thriving gay culture and the need to quickly get into the story.There are definitely parts of my nostalgia I wish I didn't expose in this exercise. It might only have been this particular choice, but I think the line-by-line prose style has improved in general. I don't want to trash a book's writing that I generally enjoyed, but there were a lot of "mistakes" I don't think modern editors would let through based on my own experience. One example was an excessive amount of alliteration. But the further I got into the story, the less I noticed it.Anyway, I've made a firm decision to return to this style that brought me into the genre. It probably means my newest book will be a huge flop. I'm going to spend a great deal of time transporting the reader to my fictional small Connecticut town of Merlin's Grove. The town itself will be a living, quirky character.I say forget all those people who don't have the attention span to enjoy this. It's what I want to read, so it's what I'm going to write.

Illness, Cover Art, and Otherwise

Old News:I've been a bit quiet lately in internet land. I've been recovering from a bad case of laryngitis for about a week and a half. I've almost completely lost my voice. I was supposed to run a half-marathon this weekend, but I was still to sick to do it. That was unfortunate since I had been training for 3-4 months leading up to it. I had a good time visiting my family, and my brother did the full marathon.The new book was put on hold briefly as I dealt with alpha reader comments for a fantasy novel I wrote under my real name. This week I return to getting that first draft done. I still have no title for it, but I usually don't until something jumps out as truly significant in revisions.New News:The cover art and line edits are done forStand in Need of Comfort:I haven't gotten galleys or a set release date, but I expect it will come out in the next few weeks. So that's exciting! Although I'm consciously moving away from this style in tone to something a bit lighter, I'm still really proud of this one.There are a few gay Mormon movies and books such asThe FallsandLatter Days. I love these but felt there was something missing in this very niche subgenre. These are classic sexual awakening stories. The naive and innocent missionary, who maybe doesn't know he's gay, is seduced by the gay guy.My story starts in a very different place. Two Mormon men fully understand and accept that they're gay, but they've decided not to act on it. I did a ton of research for the book and use real justification for this. The conflict comes when the main character starts to fall for another member of the support group who has vowed to help not act on it.Unlike other works with similar sounding premises, this book attempts to really get inside the mind of the main character in a realistic way. The concept of reconciling faith and sexuality is probably familiar to most of us gay men. This book allowed me to explore this idea in a unique way.Anyway, I might post more on this as the release approaches.

What Makes Damon Suede's Hot Head Work?

Damon Suede'sHot Headremains one of those books I think about a lot, even though I read it a long time ago. It does many things right, but I want to get to the point that I think makes the whole thing work so well from a structural standpoint. This isn't meant to be a review but an analysis on how to write a compelling middle build.Novels all have roughly the same form, a three-act structure, a beginning/middle/end. The middle is the longest part, and it is the hardest part to get right. Many people call it the "soggy middle," because inexperienced writers tend to use filler to get from the beginning hook to the exciting conclusion.The story ofHot Headstarts with two firefighter friends. The main character develops feelings for the friend. The friend has bankruptcy issues and does some solo work for a uniform gay porn site. The main character is invited to join him to make a lot of extra money.The way to make a middle build work is to use a cycle of the main character getting closer to the goal followed by failing to get there. It is a sequence of ups and downs where the stakes get raised each cycle. This keeps a steady progression. Soggy middles come from the stakes remaining constant, where the book feels like it is meandering.Romance novels have obligatory sex scenes.Hot Headcombines these try/fail cycles with these sex scenes. This is a clever way to take obligatory scenes and turn them in a unique way. The scenes also have a freshness, because there is an interplay between the main character not wanting the friend to realize how much he enjoys it. He doesn't want the friend to learn that he has fallen for him.So what makes this middle section work? Well, Damon Suede makes sure the reader understands how the stakes keep rising after each sex scene. The porn director tells the two characters what increasingly intimate activity they will have to do next to get even more money.Not only do we get tantalized by thinking about the two actually performing the act, we have conflicting emotions about the whole thing. We want the main character to get the satisfaction of doing it, because he really wants to. But we worry if this will be the time he gets caught enjoying it too much. We worry he's developing too one-sided an intimacy.The stakes raise in such a clear way after each try/fail cycle. This pushes the middle section along at great speed and is what makes the novel work as a whole. Of course, a lot of smaller details bring the characters to life and give the novel much more depth than a mere page-turning excuse for sex. But that wasn't the point of this post.