S.B. Barnes's Blog, page 2

What actually is a character trait?

On my other blog I'm having a fun time live-ranting about Bridgerton while I watch (summary: I really enjoy Bridgerton the show, I really do not enjoy Bridgerton the books, and there are a lot of moments when the source material makes the show do dumb things). But it's brought to mind something I have noticed both about romance novels and about children's/young adult literature. I call this phenomenon "what actually is a character trait?"

In Bridgerton, the one that's getting to me is that in the books, prior to becoming a main character for book for and/or season 3, Colin's main trait is that he likes to eat. In the world of the m/f 90s romance novel, this is only an acceptable trait in a man, or a thin woman, and it's quite jarring in Colin especially because in the books, Penelope has to lose weight before he finds her attractive.

Also, in my opinion, it's not really a character trait. Not an interesting one at any rate. It's very flat. If Colin liked to eat because he was sublimating some other feeling, like being looked over in his big family (a feeling he does canonically have), that would be something. But that's not the story that's there.

Another big one I recently read in an M/M romance novel is clumsiness. And...I don't know, that doesn't strike me as a real character trait either. How many people view being clumsy as a real, big part of their character? I've only known people to mention it when we're sharing meal and they spill something, or from elderly people who are struggling with a loss of motor control.

Again, this could become a compelling trait when given more depth. Like, this character is clumsy when people are watching because it makes them nervous to be observed, or around a family that treats them poorly, and overcoming the nerves or the family situation solves the clumsiness. This isn't super deep and I have seen it done before! It's not hard to make this kind of trait compelling!

In my opinion, these not-really-character-traits make sense in books for very young readers who are just learning what it means to have character traits, but at the latest by adolescence, books become a lot more interesting when characters are given more depth by grounding superficial traits in something that tells you more about the person.

From the vaults: Stephen King, Death of the Author and Twitter

This is an older blog post I'm importing from my ~author tumblr~.

So Stephen King went on twitter and compared criticism of cultural appropriation in literature to book banning. Oh boy.

I've known for a long time that if I am serious about getting my work published, establishing some sort of online presence on social media is an unavoidable evil. Not only am I ambivalent at best about the role social media plays in the world these days, I'm also deeply lazy about maintaining it. However, here I am, giving it by best effort.

Further than that, though, every time some new wave of discourse about a media creator breaks into my relatively small corner of the internet, my first thought is always "why did they have to share this opinion with the world?". Genuinely, sincerely, this post notwithstanding, even if my little cozy mystery about an academic and an auto mechanic finding love in the Hudson Valley does reach anyone someday, I would love if my opinions continue to interest no one at all.

Not that I don't think I have good opinions! They're mine, I'm partial, and I post them online more than is good for me or anyone else. And I'm not here to talk about cancel culture, smarter and more eloquent people have done that to little to no effect. I'm talking more about two things: Death of the Author and the twitter word limit and how they do not mix well.

Personally, I think this is a very bad take on King's part. Criticism is not the same thing as banning; people should be allowed to express when they think someone's ideas are bad or harmful. It's not the same as wanting to ban a book, not least because criticism lacks the authority to ban. Especially because book banning is often used to silence minority voices, and criticism of cultural appropriation in books is pointing out that the publishing industry these days elevates white voices and appropriation and thereby also silences minority voices. The comparison criticism and banning not only misses the differing intent behind the two things, it cuts out the structural elements of the industry being criticized and turns it into a "bad people want to ban books" discussion rather than "the system is discriminatory towards minority voices" discussion.

This kind of take has an origin, though. King is from a different generation than a lot of people reacting to his post, and his generation was deeply influenced by the first cultural backlashes to the horrors of Nazism. It created this very single-minded "all book banning is bad because the Nazis did it" type of discourse at the time, which perseveres in a lot of people. I see this a lot in my day job, where I interact with a lot of Germans in King's age group who were socialized to intensely reject anything perpetuated by the Nazis. Which is obviously a good impulse!

But it leads straight into the tolerance paradox where I then find myself explaining that it's not at all the same thing for young people of color to not accept being forced into reading literature in a school setting that uses racist language uncritically, or literature that uses racist language if that racist language isn't contextualized in class. This is a very different starting point for editing a curriculum - it's starting at a point of wanting to protect young, vulnerable people and to educate about and contextualize older texts that reproduce a colonial mindset. And because via repetition the "all book banning is bad" take has become oversimplified to the point of being an absolute, a lot of people aren't prepared to discuss it with nuance at all.

I have no idea where King stands on all these things, because he posted one tweet on the matter, which is a space that just utterly disallows for the nuance of the topic. And that one two-sentence tweet already has several thousand replies and far more people talking about it, to the point where any agent would probably recommend King say nothing more on the subject, because it will just create more discourse. Let's be real, King's career will not be affected, especially if he just ignores it for now.

But what I wonder is why he had to weigh in at all and why people had to engage and respond. Twitter killing death of the author is not news, but incidents like these are so starkly representative of how much easier it was to be a reader when you didn't have access to author's thoughts on everything.

The book review industry is broken

I'm not really here; I gave myself maternity leave from being an author online for a little while (last night I slept for one whole hour! The joys of parenthood!). But despite the no new content happening on my social media, the army of instagram-based book reviewers knows no rest and I continue to get message requests from people asking me to pay them to promote my book.

This one is especially good. I love how they just throw it in there in the third paragraph. "Interestingly, this is my job and not a casual request".

Not to sound super bitter (again, one hour of sleep), but part of me always wants to answer as if I don't understand the subtext that this is a service I would pay for, like "great I'm so glad you're interested! Go ahead and promote my book!" It makes me appreciate the few people who actually put their prices in the message. At the same time, though, it's just kind of a sad reflection on where we are in the publishing industry. Most publishers don't/can't afford to promote most books, with the big ones being the exception, and even then it's mostly established authors or authors who already have a big following online. So this whole market of promotion has sprung up, because authors are not actually advertisers (see my social media for further evidence). But for some reason, people don't just say that's what's going on, they couch it in flattery/interest that comes off as fake, and it leaves me with the weird feeling that a) I'm being hoodwinked, and b) I am part of the product being sold.

Top Reads from January

Something I learned about myself this month is that my preferences trend towards books that have a solid supporting cast and are surrounded by a world that interests me. This is something that absolutely drives my interests—I read a lot of books where I really enjoyed the characterization or the chemistry between the leads, but find myself wishing for more worldbuilding or more detail on a throwaway line about a character's background.

With that in mind, here are my top reads from this month, with links to more in-depth reviews on Goodreads!

The Secret by May Archer

The Secret is the third installment in Archer's "Love in O'Leary" series, and it really filled several niches for me: my perpetual longing for secret relationship/relationship reveal stories and my love of more in-depth worldbuilding. The interlinked community with multiple couples who each get a book is a staple in the romance genre, and in this series I really liked how the timelines overlap so you get a sense of what the supporting cast of each story is thinking about what happens in the other stories. It really matches the small-town setting and the cozy vibes of the series. Still, this one was my favorite for the relationship dynamic and the way family dynamics tied into that.

Season's Change by Cait Nary

Season's Change follows two hockey players on the same team who begin as reluctant roommates, then friends, and then become more in a bi awakening story. This is another one that really felt anchored in the world it was set in. Both main characters go through struggles with their families and their pasts, and while they provide each other comfort, they also have things they need to overcome individually. The rest of the team they were on also felt like real characters who were part of the story. There was a lot of angst and pining, and I could have done with a slightly longer end to bask in the resolution, but it was overall a great read and the relationship between Olly and Benji was wonderful to read about, both as a friendship and then later as more.

Big Bad Wolf Series by Charlie Adhara

The link leads to the first book in the series, but I loved the whole thing. This is a five-part series with a second series following a different character that has just begun, and the first five books all follow the same characters: Cooper and Park. Cooper is an FBI agent working on werewolf-related cases, Park is a werewolf with insight into the community. They meet solving a missing person's case and become partners. What I really love about this series is...well, a lot of things. The later parts really explore Cooper and Park in an established relationship and how they work at it to stay a solid couple and cross different milestones as a couple, which I adore. Romance often only covers the get-together, not the being together, and this has some great sections especially about Cooper learning what it means to be open with someone. The mysteries are all really interesting and well-done, and the werewolf aspects are uncovered slowly since we read through Cooper's eyes as an outsider who is slowly learning more. Sometimes I did wish Park would tell him more, but on the whole, I highly recommend this entire series.

Scoreless Game by Anna Zabo and L.A. Witt

I feel like I have already talked about this one WAY too much, but I did read it in January and it has stuck with me so much. Strong worldbuilding, great characters, heavy angst leading to a wonderful resolution. Something I really like is that the book isn't just over the second the two leads reconcile but rather it follows their relationship rebuild and also them both tackling the outside issues that led to them falling apart. Interesting and well-done ace representation...I could go on. This one is just really good.

Honorable mentions to:

Best Served Cold by Willow Dixon

If you're reading for an ace awakening and a strong couple, I highly recommend - this was one where the only thing missing for me was more about the world around them and the couple's family background, which as I said above is a personal preference.

Master of Mayhem by Saxon James

This entire series is very low angst, high hijinks. It's cute and sexy and a lot of fun to read. This was my favorite (to be fair I think the third one has the strongest story, but the relationship dynamic of himbo 4 himbo really captured me.

Playing for Keeps by Jax Calder

Jax Calder's Sporting Series is about rugby players falling in love. It's set in New Zealand, which is great—I love getting settings that aren't American. All three books in the series are highly enjoyable and feature some of the following: good minor characters, sweet portrayals of single parents, great chemistry between leads. This was my favorite because I love a good pining story.

#FriendsToLovers: Tropes and Identity as Marketing Tools

These are two promo images I made for Heart First. Both of them are accurate in that they note things that are in the book and both of them are advertisement in that they are supposed to be things that might draw readers in to find out more, or to hopefully read the book.

Making them was very awkward for me.

Not to be all “oh woe is me, I got to publish a book and now I have to promote it”, I know I got very lucky and I’m thrilled by the chance to publish anything. I’m not a natural fit for the kind of self-promotion authors are expected to do these days for a lot of reasons (posting these kinds of images makes me feel like a self-aggrandizing jerk, I get burned out on most social media after a couple days of regular use, etc. etc.) but I accept it as part of the deal. I’m also currently lucky enough to have time to do this, a situation which will change in the imminent future.

But it’s also this kind of image specifically. I see them for a lot of books and I would term it the hashtagification of genre fiction. Or, if you’re cool like me, the ao3-tagification. The point is to outline tropes that come up in the work in a shorthand familiar to audiences of the genre. Things like “spicy” or “steamy” indicate that there’s on-page sexual content. Phrases like “detecting couple” or “murder” clue in the reader that it’s a mystery and a romance.  “Found family” indicates that the non-romantic relationships of the characters are also important to the book. It’s a way of enticing a reader without even the effort of having to read the blurb; it’s also indicative of how books are sold.

Most sites where you can buy books operate on a keyword system. Amazon does; Smashwords does; cataloguing sites like Goodreads, Storygraph and romance.io rely on readers to provide keywords. And those keywords are most often tropes and content found within the book. You get this on social media sites as well, when readers ask for book recommendations. A lot of the time, the request will be for a trope, like “friends to lovers” or “second chance romance”. Sometimes the requester will mention specific books within that trope they particularly liked as a starting point, too, but often it’s all keyword-based.

This isn’t a criticism of that trend; it’s an easy way to catalogue in an incredibly expansive literary market. The more digital reading gets, the more the work of cataloguing becomes a communal project taken on by authors and readers. Authors want readers to find their work based on content; readers want to organize their libraries for themselves and others to make similar works findable. Speaking for myself, it’s more intuitive than the Dewey Decimal System at least.

At the same time, there are drawbacks to it. Chief among them being, it can reduce a work down to tropes. And a trope is not the sum of a book! A book can have the keywords “friends to lovers” but that doesn’t tell us how close the friendship is, how long the characters have been friends, how laden with backstory their friendship might be. It also doesn’t tell us what kind of book this is. Is it a light and fluffy romance novel? Is it a serious, angsty romance novel? Both of these things exist, and both could be marketed using “friends to lovers” and “mutual pining”. A graphic like the ones above can’t really get away with using a phrase like “in-depth characterization” or “this is a serious book”, not least because it implies something negative about other books.

Furthermore, these are not the images I had to make. I could have made this image.

For the record, this is also an accurate image. Daniel is Jewish, albeit non-practicing. He’s also very anxious, although he doesn’t have a clinical diagnosis. As for “demi awakening”, well, that’s Tony’s story and he’ll get to tell it in the second book (which is why it isn’t something I’ve mentioned at all about Heart First, because Heart First is Daniel’s book and he doesn’t know that about Tony).

I’ve seen a lot of these, and I have really split opinions about them. On the one hand, #ownvoices is a really important movement because the publishing industry is incredibly stacked against writers of color and writers in the lgbtq+ community. One would think it would be better in a field like M/M romance, but it isn’t always, especially with big publishers, and that’s to say nothing of the drastic comparison between the numbers M/M romance does versus F/F romance. Using advertising like this to draw attention to authors writing intersectionally and authentically is incredibly important both for readers within those communities to find authors they want to read, and for readers outside those communities to become sensitized to the issues at stake.

Of course, it’s not just writers who belong to these groups who write about these characters, and a lot of writers use this type of template regardless of whether or not they belong to the group. And on the one hand, they absolutely should. No writer owes their readers full disclosure about their identity (there’s a reason my profile pic is the back of my head), and pressure on authors to be a certain identity in order to write about it is nothing but harmful.

On the other hand, a similar problem presents itself as with tropes in general. Had I used this image instead of the ones I did use, would “Jewish MC” have been misleading? As said, Daniel is Jewish and he struggles with his identity, but he doesn’t practice and it’s not in the foreground of the book. I’m also not Jewish and didn’t really feel like it was my place to use identity as advertisement. Instead, I used much vaguer and less catchy descriptors that I thought were more accurate, at the potential cost of losing readers who were looking specifically for that identifier. And this is coming at the issue with a non-cynical approach; a more hardened look might tell you that often, racial, cultural or sexual identity is used as advertisement for books where that factor plays little to no part.

So in summary, this kind of image: perfect social media fodder because it’s eye-catching and tells you a lot about the book in a short time? Or are we authors reducing a book to tropes when that threatens to flatten the book’s best qualities? And is it really okay to use identity as advertisement or does it always depend on who is doing it?

Heart First is nominated for the Queer Indie Awards!

In super thrilling news, Heart First is nominated for a few Queer Indie Awards: Best Overall Mystery/Thriller, Best Lead Character for Daniel, Best Romantic Relationship for Daniel and Tony and Best Debut. You can vote here until February 2nd (voting has been prolonged). The easiest way to find it is to search for "Barnes" in the poll, since the poll is pretty long to scroll through.

That said, I highly recommend taking a look at everything else being voted for - I know it's added to my to be read list for 2024! There are so many interesting books, novellas, graphic novels and so many beautiful covers to check out!

Huge thanks to anyone and everyone who nominated Heart First, voted for it, and everyone who took the time to leave a review on Goodreads or elsewhere!

It's hard to put into words how it makes you feel, as a writer, to read a review of your work that really gets what you were going for. It's motivated me to dive into the editing of book 2 (the contract for which I officially signed this week! Daniel and Tony will be back!) I'm so thankful to everyone who took the time to leave a review on Goodreads!

I'd like to also explicitly include everyone in that who had criticisms or didn't enjoy Heart First in those thanks. Not only is it instructive for me to learn how it comes across to different people, the book reviewing/publishing industry can be kind of weird about people having the audacity to not like everything they read. No book will be universally acclaimed and that's fine, and Goodreads/Storygraph are resources for readers to share their thoughts, not for authors to market themselves.

I know it doesn't always work like that in practice, but we live in a weird time in which readers and authors have direct access to each other via social media, and I've seen a lot of weird situations including authors going after reviewers for bad reviews or reviewers specifically @-ing authors whose books they didn't like. For me personally, reviews are a space for readers to reflect on their experience of reading the book, they aren't a space for me to question or comment. (This is also why I'm so allergic to the ~15-20 message requests in my Instagram inbox asking me to pay someone in exchange for reviewing the book on different sites).

If someone has questions or wants to reach me directly to talk about the book or anything else, that's something you can absolutely do via my socials; I view that as separate from the act of reviewing. Unless it's outright defamatory, it's definitely not my place to interact with reviews. Imagine me reading them from my cave underground hoarding them like a very weird dragon who never goes outside but appreciates every review that floats in through the cave entrance.

You can check out the goodreads page here, order on amazon or smashwords, and vote for Heart First in the Queer Indie awards until Feb 2nd!

Friends to lovers meets bi awakening: an M/M subgenre

The subject of today’s blog post is pretty specific. Like, so specific, you’d think there would only be a handful of books that fit it. You’d be wrong. Friends to lovers, specifically the pining best friend story meeting the bi awakening story (and I’m using bi for brevity’s sake here, it’s often demi or pan) combines a classic romance trope with a classic M/M trope. The “best friend you wish could be more but you can’t say anything for fear of ruining the friendship” has been a romance staple for decades, at least since When Harry Met Sally and probably earlier. Meanwhile, bi (or other) awakening is utterly classic in M/M: the previously assumed straight guy, often someone in a hypermasculine field like sports, realizing and coming to terms with same-sex attraction and the joys of gay sex.

First, let’s examine what makes these two tropes so appealing.

The pining best friend

Something that can be tricky to establish in a romance is emotional intimacy. A lot of romances involve characters making big decisions based on their love lives, and a lot of the time, a sane person watching will think “Wait, what? You’re turning your whole life around for a guy you’ve known for like two weeks?”

Just think of those Hallmark Christmas movies where the lead leaves her high-pressure big city job for Farmhand McSmallBusiness from her hometown. It’s no coincidence a lot of the love interests in those stories are long-lost childhood friends – the pace of the story would otherwise make you think that the lead is utterly insane.

With the pining best friend trope, you start off with emotional intimacy. The leads are close, they’ve been close, they know each other well and in some ways have already passed relationship milestones, only, well, in a friend way. That’s a great, solid start for a romantic couple, and it’s also a great way for an author to build dramatic irony, i.e. have the audience totally aware of the pining, but one of the characters is totally oblivious. That makes us as an audience invested and frustrated and desperate for the resolution. It’s also not hard to understand the impediments – most people can empathize with not wanting to rock the boat or risk what you have with someone who’s important to you.

The bi awakening

Bi/pan/demi awakening is really popular beyond just this iteration; it also happens in a lot of rivals/enemies to lovers stories or with a plain old meet-cute. I would argue that the popularity stems from how easily it ties into a very classic romance trope: the love interest is different from everyone else who came before. They affect the person having the awakening in a way they weren’t expecting and no one else ever has. It’s very classically romantic. You get this in F/M romance, too, although there it’s often compounded with virginity kink (aka “I’ve been waiting for the right person”).

It can also be kind of problematic when looking at something like demisexuality, where a storyline like this leading to the conclusion that no one makes the character feel the way the love interest does automatically resolves all their complex feelings around sexuality; a person’s sexuality usually isn’t entirely dependent on one other person even if that sounds romantic in theory. (For reading recs specifically featuring acespec characters, check below)

A lot of bi awakening stories are set with a younger age group, around 20-25 (possibly also younger, but I don’t read stories set in high school for reasons of being a high school teacher). I think this makes sense, given that’s a pretty reasonable time of life for someone to be questioning their sexuality. A lot of them also feature very stereotypically masculine men becoming interested in other men, which…maybe says some things about gender norms. It’s also a classic romance trope, though: the alpha male softening and showing his romantic side.

Combining the two

A few different things affect how this trope combination plays out. One is the duration of the friendship. That directly affects the level of pining going on. Usually, the character who is pining has a lot of moments of thinking “this is a really bad idea for me” when it comes to the other character experimenting with them; if the friendship has lasted upwards of five years, this is even more compounded. Depending on your tolerance for angst, this can be really gut-wrenching, or it can be mostly light.

Another factor is how big a deal the change in sexuality is for the other character. A lot of stories actually play this out pretty low-key, with the character mostly going “huh, I guess I’ll roll with this then” but not communicating that well, leading to a more drawn-out resolution. Some go much more in-depth with it and tell more heart-wrenching stories about internalized homophobia; it’s really a matter of personal preference.

Finally, one of the big awkward landmarks of the pining best friends trope is of course the question posed by When Harry Met Sally: Can men and women be friends without sex getting in the way? It was awkward when When Harry Met Sally kind of ended that one on a stilted “no, not really”; it’s also kind of awkward when the same is true of same-sex couples. Most stories don’t really go there, but it’s something worth thinking about in my opinion!

Now for some recs! A side note on star ratings: If you’re interested in this trope, any of these books will fulfill it. My star ratings are my subjective take on the book, which will reflect my preferences more than anything. Follow the links for full reviews to see why I gave it that rating, and take a look at the other goodreads reviews to get a more general picture!

Chai Love You A Latte by F. A. Ray (Boyfriend Café #3)

Trent and Gabe have been friends since they were kids. Now they’re in college together, living in the same dorm and working in the same café, and they see no reason to change that. They might be a little closer than most best friends, but what’s the harm? Gabe’s only torturing himself a little bit. Until Trent turns his head and a platonic cheek kiss goodnight becomes something more.

Especially notable: Trent, the character who has the bi awakening, is genuinely confused and struggling, and it’s given time and space as a central theme. It’s nice to see in comparison to stories where characters adjust very fast!

Dirty Forty by Mia Monroe (Friendship and Desire #1)

Zach and Dominic have been best friends forever. They live together and run a landscaping business together, and if they reach forty with no partners in sight, they'll get married. Platonically. Except now Dominic has told their parents they're in love and getting married, and Zach is in hot water because he is in love and doesn't want to get married for show.

Especially notable: Romance between characters in their late thirties, very long scale for the pining character.

The Gift by May Archer (Love in O’Leary #2)

Daniel goes to the woods to live deliberately away from everyone he knows and lick his wounds after flaming out professionally and personally. There, he meets Julian, the local vet who helps him take care of strays and awakens some feelings in him that Daniel was not expecting.

Especially notable: Shorter scale for the pining friendship angle; we witness the entire friendship on the page. Great dialogue and well-rounded setting!

Just Friends by Saxon James (Never Just Friends #1)

Tanner is the all-around smalltown hero, he works for the fire department and serves as a weekend bouncer for the bar and spends all his free time helping people out. There's just two problems: his dyslexia stopping him from passing the exams he needs to become a full member of the fire department, and his best friend Royce who left for Australia five years ago. Except then Royce comes back, having gotten surgery for his epilepsy and ready to get closure from his long-time crush on Tanner.

Especially notable: I would call this one the blueprint for this trope. A very straightforward example.

Finally, some recs if you're interested specifically in sexuality awakening and pining in stories about acespec romance!

Friendly Fire by Saxon James (Never Just Friends #4)

3.5 stars. Rafe has been with Laura for years. So many years that he doesn't know how to get out of it anymore, even though both of them want to. When his ex-best-friend Cam moves in next door and starts trying to annoy him to death, it becomes clear that it's time for him to find a way out.

Especially notable: This isn’t so much a bi awakening as an ace awakening, and Cam’s feelings for Rafe drove the friendship apart – kind of a subversion there!

Scoreless Game by Anna Zabo and L.A. Witt (On the Board #2)

Scoreless Game follows Elias and Nisha, captain and assistant captain, respectively, of the same hockey team. They've been best friends for years despite harboring intense feelings for each other. These have gone unacknowledged because of a sort of mistaken mismatch situation: Elias is asexual, though sex positive, and Nisha doesn't think he's interested at all. Meanwhile, Nisha's parade of hook-ups has lead Elias to believe he's only interested in casual sex.

Especially notable: I wouldn’t necessarily call this one “ace awakening” in that Elias knows he’s ace at the start of the novel, it’s more of a mutual pining situation. It is one of my favorites out there, though, and it really explores how Elias’s asexuality affects his life.

Goal Lines & First Times by Eden Finley and Saxon James (CU Hockey #3)

Cohen has been told by pretty much everyone in his life that no, not everyone experiments with their high school best friend. It’s made him consider that he might not actually be as straight as he thought. Meanwhile, Seth is tired of trying to make it work with dates who want too much too fast, chasing a spark he just can’t find. Thinking he might be demisexual, he goes online, where he meets Cohen.

Especially notable: This is a mutual awakening, if you will, where the sexuality awakening isn’t brought out by the other person, but rather through self-reflection after which they go looking for answers and find each other and support each other through it. Slow build, which I appreciate in a story about demisexuality.

Practicing pornography part 2: Writing sex scenes

So you’ve got your anticipation going. You’ve explored the physical chemistry, the internal and external impediments, and now it’s finally happening: Your characters are doing the do.

Now, a thing that frustrates me a little about romance novels is that the ratings are a little…hard to understand. There’s a lot of talk about “heat level” or “spice level” which is helpful, I guess, but sometimes misleading. I would feel weird about calling the sex scenes in my book “spicy” given that there’s generally an emotional core to them, but I still do it because that’s the language we have. Romance.io, a cataloguing site for romance novels, has a “steam rating guide”, which I find significantly more helpful in figuring out what a book actually provides. In general though, in the book market, you’re not going to get anything as clear as, say, AO3’s rating and tagging system. This is not least because of the way books are marketed and tagged on social networks and with major retailers. Authors tend to compensate by marketing using taglines or graphics that indicate what tropes a book contains, which can read like AO3 tags. I have mixed feelings about all of this, but I digress.

This is your first choice as a reader and writer, though. What kind of heat level are you looking for? Do you want something with frequent sex scenes? Do you want something with kink? Do you want something with romantic sex scenes?

It is, imo, an unfortunate side effect that the more focus there is on the romance, the less there is on sex and vice versa. In a book with a high heat level, there are generally a lot of sex scenes and they frequently come at the expense of the emotional build. Plot elements are glossed over and I’ve read more than one romance novel where a pivotal scene for the resolution of the impediments just kind of happens off screen. Vice versa, something I’ve noticed about more overtly romantic stories is that a) if there is a sexual relationship before there is a romantic one, once the romantic relationship comes to fruition, the sex scenes drop off, and b) kink becomes less likely. This is not to say this is true of all romance novels! These are just some trends I’ve noticed, especially in the popular/well-marketed stuff.

The next question is: how do you write sex? Literally, in the sense of how do you put the words on the page.

1.       Choreography

Back when I was mostly writing 2-5K oneshots, writing sex scenes was mostly about the individual acts being done. In that case, it’s a pretty straightforward process. How do your characters start, what do they do, write the orgasms, finished. There’s a context, a build-up, but it’s mostly implied and not the core focus. Depending on the romance novel, early sex scenes that are mostly about exploring a dynamic or about physical attraction can be like that.

In that case, choreography is one of the biggest concerns. Nothing pulls a reader out of a sex scene like having to pause and reconfigure the mental image of whose limbs are where; your job as a writer is to make sure that changes in position reach the page. This sounds like an easy task but it gets a lot harder when you start writing. For one thing, writing is always a translation effort between reader and writer, what you see in your head while writing will never be exactly what readers see. Sometimes you’ll get caught up describing one physical aspect (usually something to do with the genitals) and forget something basic, like that the characters turned around, or someone hitched a leg over someone else’s shoulder to make this work. It also really depends on your style as a writer how you do this; I’m not a very visual thinker, so I’m usually caught up in the internal aspects or the feelings and have to remind myself that I need to add on whether one character is on his knees or on all fours.

Then there’s the neverending issue of “I already used the word “cock” twenty times on this page”. For what it’s worth, my stance on this is that I’d rather read “cock” and “dick” twenty times than a zillion awful synonyms. I already have a hard time with historical fiction that uses words like “cockstand” or “manhood”. (For your reading pleasure: list of horrifying synonyms used for genitalia from fanfiction). Another way to avoid the parade of synonyms is to treat the genitals as an extension of self, no matter how weird that sounds, and use phrasing like “he can feel himself leaking”.

Basically, describing the physical mechanics of sex is important so that your readers can imagine what’s actually going on beyond the abstract if you’re going for an explicit scene. If you want to keep it deliberately vague, that’s cool too, but you’re then writing what I would call a fade-to-black, or a mature instead of an explicit sex scene.

The thing about getting the physical mechanics down is that in a vacuum, it’s a lot like writing an instruction manual for flatpack furniture.

2.       But how does that make you feel?

Making sex less clinical is mostly about getting really into the headspace of the character who describes it. Part of this is the larger context; I like to outline my stuff these days, and that involves considering the emotional stakes of each sex scene. What’s going on between the characters? What’s going on in the larger world outside them? Classics here include the uptight character who needs to get taken out of their head via sex, the bi/gay awakening plotline where “it’s never felt like this before” or the couple who are allegedly having no-strings-attached sex but who can’t help feeling all these things about it.

This can be matched up with the sex acts you choose; especially in terms of the whole “who’s on top” thing with MM fiction it’s easy to match up emotional vulnerability. This brings a whole host of other issues about how anal sex is mapped onto gender roles, but that’s a whole different thing. Very frequently, trust is also expressed through protection and whether or not it’s used. It’s also maybe worth considering how this differs from FM fiction; my experience is that when it’s not subsumed in a story about virginity etc., first-time vaginal sex between a couple is treated far less as if it were about deep-seated trust than first-time anal sex between two male characters. Which is maybe worth considering. What’s also worth considering is how anal sex is often treated as the pinnacle of pleasure between two men even though a) people of all genders can enjoy anal sex and b) plenty of men who have sex with other men don’t enjoy anal sex at all.

Anyway, part of the “but how does that make you feel” question is about that—bringing the emotional stakes of the story into the sex scene. If you don’t, it frequently feels like the story grinds to a halt for every sex scene, or even like there is no real story, just a bunch of interconnected sex scenes between two characters culminating in an unwarranted “I love you”.

The other part is remembering that describing emotions and describing body parts isn’t enough; you should also be talking about what feels good how! I’ve read sex scenes where you’re given a physical description of what body is where but at no point does the author describe how it feels for either character and it’s just…weird. To me, at least, it’s barely even hot, it’s just a series of actions on the page. I said above I’m not much of a visual thinker, and maybe if you are a visual thinker this works better for you; for me, I need what’s going on inside the characters to really get into it.

In one of the sex scenes I wrote for the sequel to Heart First, it’s very much about Tony’s perspective of something he’s doing to Daniel, and that’s where his attention is. But about halfway through, I realized I had barely described how Tony was feeling, what sensations he was getting out of it, what it was doing for him even though he was the POV character. So I went back and edited to explain why it feels so good to him to do something to someone else, and I think the scene is much stronger for it because it conveys a sense of urgency on Tony’s part and also shows how much it affects him that he can make Daniel feel this way.

Finally, I would like to petition that writing orgasms is important. You’d think this would be obvious, but a lot of sex scenes kind of just have one line. I think it’s worth lingering! Worth describing the physical sensations as well as you can (describing orgasms is hard, especially without lapsing into clichés or awful metaphors), and worth describing how it makes the characters feel. Especially if you’ve been building to this scene for a long time, it is literally an anticlimax for it to end with “then I came. Hard.”

3.       Realism?

Do sex scenes need to be realistic? No, absolutely not. We’re all reading and writing for escapism. And as I’ve mentioned above, a lot of tried and true tropes of explicit fiction aren’t all that realistic at all, especially when it comes to the emotional weight some sex acts are given. Sometimes they even play into uncomfortable gender norms, or racial stereotyping, or society’s general obsession with the concept of virginity, and it’s very worth examining that in depth.

But depending on what you’re writing, you might want to have sex scenes that feel a little more like something that would happen in real life. It’s not suited to every book in the genre obviously (more obviously, omegaverse and anything featuring monsters comes to mind), and most readers and authors alike want to read about steamy sex that is a lot easier than it is in real life. Sometimes, though, it can be nice to read about something a little more real, especially if the tone of the book is more serious in general.

So, what’s the line of writing something without it getting too real? Probably most readers don’t want to read about the realities of prepping for anal sex. Like, if you’re having anal sex and you’re scared of accidents happening and you or your partner not being perfectly clean ~in there~ then you should definitely not ditch the condoms because MM fiction taught you that was fine. Equally, a lot of readers probably don’t want to read an in-depth anal douching scene prior to an anal sex scene – not that anal douching is always necessary or even good, there are some health questions about it —  but the truth is that jumping into super spontaneous anal like people do in MM fiction with no regard to whether someone has showered in the last day or so, or has used the bathroom recently, is not super realistic. Personally, I appreciate when this kind of thing is mentioned, I find it more believable and in that way, it pulls me into the story more.

There’s a fandom classic set of articles here (careful, nfsw images included) about the realities of gay sex which goes through a few things like how in real life, what MM fiction has canonized as the right way to prep someone else isn’t the only way to go, how topping and bottoming don’t mean the same thing in real life as in fiction etc. which is well worth reading when you’re writing about gay culture. Statistics tell us that most writers of romance, both het and M/M, are white women who are attracted to men; like any other time you’re writing about a culture not your own, research is important.

Something I personally also like doing, which I think lends at least a little realism to fictional sex scenes, is to include the stuff that doesn’t work. Like when someone’s leg gets pushed up too far and their hamstrings can’t take the stretch, or when a cramp happens, or when the characters’ skin sticks together and it hurts when they pull apart. Little things, not enough to take you out of the scene, but enough to ground the reader in the idea that these are real bodies doing a real thing that isn’t always super easy or dignified.

As a last note though: you don’t owe your readers realism. Much like people shouldn’t go to porn for sex ed, they also shouldn’t go to erotica for it. Some of us enjoy realism, some don’t. We read and write about sex for pleasure, not for education. For me, knowing enough about the realities of sex means that something very unrealistic or something I think is a bad idea in real life will pull me out. This is especially true of rimming scenes for me, I always feel kind of relieved when those are set during or directly after a shower. (There is a non-zero number of sports romances that include rimming scenes directly after a game or an intense work-out and describing someone’s ass as “musky and smelling like them” is nice and all but I am here to tell you that a sweaty butt smells the way you think a sweaty butt will smell. Some people are into that, that’s cool! I would still recommend showering prior to mouth-to-anus contact for hygiene reasons. Similarly, any time a toy, a dick or a finger moves seamlessly between ass, mouth and vagina I cringe internally.) But that’s just me as a reader, and for plenty of readers, the sense of urgency overriding what would be safe sexual practices is a lot hotter—and that’s just fine. It’s erotica, not a how-to guide.

Hockey Romances. Why?

(At time of writing, I hadn't read all of these yet - I have now, for long-form thoughts on the individual books check out my goodreads page)

So I was taken out of work a couple weeks ago due to ~pregnancy stuff~ (mostly just stress, the baby and I are fine) which has left me with a lot of spare time on my hands. And as one does, I have been filling my time reading lgbtq+ romance novels. Because I can.

In this time, I have fallen headfirst into the hockey romance novel subgenre, and I ask myself, as I have done every time I see these books advertised, why? I am not a sports fan. One time, my husband was watching football (European), and a team in red kits was playing against yellow kits, and I started laughing because "it looks like ketchup is playing against mustard". His expression was great, but he hasn't taken me seriously since.

So why is hockey of all things such a draw for the mlm romance subgenre? Especially given the NHL's apparent fear of rainbow tape? Why do I now know what the word "celly" refers to and what an "enforcer" is? Why why why?

Here are my answers:

Extremely organic way to set up some of the most classic romance tropes. Forced proximity? Being on the same team takes care of that. There was only one bed? Shared hotel rooms during away games. Enemies to lovers? Rival teams. Lots of potential for drama given that players lead very transient lives in terms of the constant possibility of trades. In mlm love stories, even more so given that the NHL is so blatantly homophobic. Perfect level of fame. Fame and wealth as a draw for a love interest are kind of staples of the genre, and NHL players are famous, sure, but not all of them, and they aren't as famous as football stars (either kind of football). They are still filthy rich, which makes great wish fulfillment. You can have the sexy penthouse and the anonymity.

I would go on to talk about how different roles on the team lend themselves to different tropes (goalie = tightly controlled dude who needs someone to help him cut loose; enforcer = misunderstood fighter with a heart of gold; coach for all your forbidden love/sleeping with the boss desires) but that would very quickly reveal my utter lack of hockey knowledge, so let's not. Instead, here's a quick reclist.

Rachel Reid's Game Changers series. It's a classic in the genre for a reason and it has everything. Forbidden love? Got that, maybe the definitive example. Redemption arc? Got that. Misunderstood bruiser with a heart of gold? Got that. Age difference? Got that. Also really excellent sex scenes, not gonna lie, and satisfying endings throughout - sometimes a happy end will come a little suddenly for me, but these books really delivered, and the nice thing about how romance series are structured is that you get a little peek at what comes after for the couples in the other books. Him, Us and Epic by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy. This one surprised me, I don't generally go for first person POVs, but I did enjoy this! Coming-of-age story turned coming out story featuring a budding hockey star and his best friend. Lots of fun. Scoring Chances series by Avon Gale. This series is fun in that it doesn't focus on the NHL, it actually focuses on the minor leagues in the southeast of the US, a place almost no one associates with ice hockey. As such, there's a chance to tell different stories about professional athletes who aren't super rich and famous, which I appreciate a lot. TBH the first pairing wasn't entirely my cup of tea, but I'm glad I kept going because I especially enjoyed the later books, which tackle tough topics (including eating disorders, abuse etc., so content warning for that). These are still romance novels though, so rest assured that there's a light at the end of the tunnel. What I especially appreciate is that these books don't have relationship drama, in that the main couples communicate and work together instead of a third act break-up-make-up! Hockey Ever After series by Ashlyn Kane and Morgan James. These are just great. Lots of fun to read, lots of cameos from character in later books, just excellent mood all around. Also features my favorite ever trope (secret relationship, sorry, anyone who knows me knows I am a sucker for it I just can't help myself) heavily, which is a win in my book. I especially enjoyed book two, "Scoring Position". Is that because Nico is German and I loved him? Is that because Ryan is my new blorbo? We may never know.

Happy reading and please give me recommendations for more books like these, I'm lowkey obsessed.

Practicing pornography part 1b: Emotional anticipation

Let’s say the following action beat is given:

Character A is fucking character B in the missionary position. Partway through, A grabs B’s hand and holds it above their head.

Depending on where you’re at in the resolution of the emotional stakes, the action can mean entirely different things to both characters. Which would you most like to read?

Full emotional resolution, it’s a romantic gesture No emotional potential acknowledged, it’s a precursor to bondage Character B wants it to be a romantic gesture but thinks it's about bondage Character A intends it romantically but pretends it's about bondage

Sexual and emotional anticipation are not at all two separate things. They’re interwoven and in a lot of stories they culminate at the same time. On the other hand, there are a lot of tropes specific to romance that intentionally misalign sexual and emotional anticipation purposely. Any variation of the “it’s just sex until we catch feelings” storyline does this. Any story that has the leads on a different timeline to realizing their feelings does this. In a lot of romance novels, and in some movies and TV shows, physical attraction and sex happen early on whereas emotional attraction and romance are later.

This may be a reading bias of mine, I love a good “friends who hook up to lovers”, but my impression is that queer stories especially frequently contain this. From the ever beloved gay/bi awakening stories that often fall back on “just an experiment” to “friends to lovers” to “we can keep our feelings out of it”, there’s…a lot. And that does throw up some questions to me, because het romance tends to talk about casual sex between two people who will clearly end up not being casual in a very different way. For example, in M/M fiction there’s a frequent focus on men having high sex drives and it being “normal” between male friends to have some level of sexual contact; there’s also more often a higher level of secrecy and drama surrounding a queer couple than a het couple. Erections also tend to happen with little to no stimulation.

I don’t know that it necessarily says a lot about cultural stances towards the LGBTQ+ community or individual author’s preconceptions, but I think it is definitely worth exploring why so many M/M romance novels especially veer towards the following: a) men having a higher sex drive, b) men maintaining sexual contact with each other while not acknowledging it to be in any way non-heterosexual and c) “coming out” stories as a romantic trope rather than a question of personal identities. Not all of them, of course, and none of these things are bad in and of themselves but it is worth questioning why men (especially men in a traditionally masculine setting like frat romances or sports romances) are portrayed as being less in touch with their feelings, more sex-driven and bad at communication. It seems to me to reinforce some stereotypes, especially when you bring in the way sexual position is often used to gender-roles-reinforce.

So what does the addition of emotional anticipation change?

On the one hand, attraction becomes rooted in more than just the physical. The physicality is still there if the attraction hasn’t been consummated, but the POV character begins to imbue it with emotional meaning. This is often where people start being really attracted to features we connotate with someone’s inner world, like their eyes or hands in the context of hands doing/creating/caring. This is also often where acts of service start cropping up, especially if the emotions behind them are still unstated. Think cooking for someone, or taking care of some mundane practical aspect of life for them.

If this is a story where sex happens before emotional resolution, it also ramps up the sexual aspects because the sex becomes imbued with the potential for meaning. It’s not only that the characters are having sex—they’re emotionally conflicted about it because they want it to mean emotional intimacy, but at this stage of the story it doesn’t. Unless of course they interpret physical actions emotionally.

So you have all this attraction and all these actions steadily ramping up the heat and the emotional weight—what’s the reason it doesn’t culminate? In other words, what’s the plot?

3. Impediment(s)

I would separate this into two distinct categories: internal and external impediments. Most stories have both.

Internal impediments can range from personal insecurity to internalized prejudice. In my opinion, internal impediments are very hard to get right. There’s so much that fits in there: Body image issues. Sexual hangups. Sexuality confusion. Tragic backstory. Anthony Bridgerton’s inability to commit emotionally in case his future wife is unknowingly allergic to bee stings. The usual.

The thing about an internal impediment is that it very often manifests as “the other person can’t possibly want me/want to be in a relationship with me because X” past all reasonable doubt and it can get a little trying. Eventually as a reader you reach a point where you’re frustrated with the couple and unclear as to why they won’t talk already.

The same can be true for external impediments—troublesome families, social context (think historical fiction with a big class divide, homophobia, sports romances…), the good old interrupted kiss.

This is not to say internal and external impediments are mutually exclusive—they can and do mirror each other a lot, like with something like internalized homophobia or a character’s sense of responsibility or duty. Think of Henry in Red, White and Royal Blue, who has internalized a sense of responsibility towards the crown despite being treated terribly by it.

When you’re writing about sex, the big question is, how do you keep it sexy with all this emotional stuff going on? Trauma isn’t sexy (look I know there are books that Go There, for the sake of my sanity I’m just going to say that everyone needs to watch Dan Olson’s videos on 50 Shades of Grey to parse why “I like kink because of my tragic backstory” is troubling). Poor communication skills are also not sexy (fight me). But we need to build anticipation somehow—either for that first sex scene or for the emotional resolution. Because we all know there will be a happy ever after, some romance presses even guarantee it. It just has to feel earned.

In cases where emotional and sexual chemistry resolve simultaneously, like in many movies or TV shows, this issue is somewhat circumvented. Physical attraction can build at the same time as emotional intimacy and your impediments are generally clear hindrances to both. When the dam breaks, it breaks on both fronts. In the romance novel format, you get that frequent mismatch between when sexual chemistry and emotional chemistry resolves, and that can lead to some very interesting places in the ensuing sex scenes. There’s a big difference between writing a sex scene where everyone’s emotions are on the table and one where there are a lot of things going unsaid – see the poll above! It is entirely in the author’s hands to walk the fine line between what is believably romantic, believably sexy and has just enough angst to keep you hooked on the will they/won’t they.