Q&A with Josh Lanyon discussion
note: This topic has been closed to new comments.
ARCHIVE (General Topics)
>
Writing Questions for Josh
Mod
I started reading the..."
I love Mertz. Everything she wrote as Peters. And nearly everything she wrote as Michaels.
She finally finished the Bliss series a year or two back. I have that book here but am ashamed to say I still haven't got around to reading it!
Mod
..."
Ha! Now isn't that fascinating? Why do you suppose that is?
Assuming we all read within this genre, at least to some extent, don't we all read m/m erotic romance? Or is there a distinction between that and m/m erotica? (For me James Lear comes to mind.)
K.Z. wrote: "Assuming we all read within this genre, at least to some extent, don't we all read m/m erotic romance? Or is there a distinction between that and m/m erotica? (For me James Lear comes to mind.)"My point was that while I will read and enjoy m/m erotica, I don't like or enjoy reading the hetero-equivalent. I've been pondering the question all day, but have yet come up with an adequate explanation for why this is so.
Some of it has to do with descriptions, I think. Most of what I've come across in hetero works just makes me very uncomfortable and a lot of it makes me want to gag (such a mature response, I know ;0) ). If I'm reading, or, more likely, listening to "straight" romances in the car, I tend to fast forward through those intimate scenes. In a lot of ways, there's something to be said about fading to black or having such scenes occur behind closed doors. Plus, there are the times when I've come across words that really raise my hackles and make me want to strangle the author in question (i.e. (view spoiler)).
Mod
I'm not sure why I find this so interesting, but I do. It seems like it should all be the same, right? If we're uncomfortable reading X erotica, we should be uncomfortable reading Y. And yet I know that's not the case.
I can tell you one thing though, one of the most excruciating things on the planet is being the writer and listening to an erotic scene read aloud.
I can tell you one thing though, one of the most excruciating things on the planet is being the writer and listening to an erotic scene read aloud. +1
Josh wrote: If we're uncomfortable reading X erotica, we should be uncomfortable reading Y. And yet I know that's not the case....Along the same idea, but kind of different, before I discovered the wonderful world of m/m I use to read m/f romance all the time. I still have a few series I keep up with and are release day buys for me, but my desire to read new m/f series just isn't there anymore. Other than those select few my preference is m/m now.
Even stranger, when I read another genre, doesn't really matter what it is...I end up thinking ok this is great but it would be even better if this guy hooked up with this guy instead :) I'm turning all straight guys gay in my head now...it is a crazy addiction!!
Lori wrote: "K.Z. wrote: "Assuming we all read within this genre, at least to some extent, don't we all read m/m erotic romance? Or is there a distinction between that and m/m erotica? (For me James Lear comes ..."I don't mind reading m/f erotica, I just don't seek it out. There are far too many m/m stories out there that I haven't read yet. :D
Lou wrote: "Carey wrote: "Even stranger, when I read another genre, doesn't really matter what it is...I end up thinking ok this is great but it would be even better if this guy hooked up with this guy instead..."Phew. Not just me then!
Hambel wrote: "Lou wrote: "Carey wrote: "Even stranger, when I read another genre, doesn't really matter what it is...I end up thinking ok this is great but it would be even better if this guy hooked up with this...guy instead..."Phew. Not just me then!"
Oh, no. I've found in the past year or so that I have the same problem too. It's weird how it works.
Carey wrote: "Even stranger, when I read another genre, doesn't really matter what it is...I end up thinking ok this is great but it would be even better if this guy hooked up with this guy instead :) I'm turning all straight guys gay in my head now...it is a crazy addiction!!"LOL. I didn't even realize that Ivan Vorpatril and Byerly Vorrutyer were a OTP for me until I saw that Lois McMaster Bujold had written a love story for Ivan with some woman. I'm like "nooo!" I haven't even read it yet, and I always grab those books right away.
Mod
Oh yes, this happens to me also in real life all the time. I've started to pair up men I see around me... the weird thing is that if the guy has a uniform (any kind), that is a sure sign for me to start matching him with another guy in my mind. I don't know if I should blame Village People or my favorite authors for this... ;)
Johanna wrote: "Carey wrote: "Even stranger, when I read another genre, doesn't really matter what it is...I end up thinking ok this is great but it would be even better if this guy hooked up with this guy instead..."OMG, Johanna, yes! I work in a wine shop and I'm always pairing up guys that come in together. It doesn't help when they're working out who's paying for what and one says to the other, "you've got £3 in your back pocket, you could use that," and when I ask how he knows that, he says that he put it there.
They're just encouraging me.
Mod
LOL! :) And damn them for encouraging you so openly. *grin* Why can't they behave like... like regular, ordinary women customers... ;)
There's a provocative opinion piece posted at Reviews by Jessewave -- http://www.reviewsbyjessewave.com/201.... I'd love to hear what Josh and the rest of you think about it.
K.Z. wrote: "There's a provocative opinion piece posted at Reviews by Jessewave -- http://www.reviewsbyjessewave.com/201.... I'd love to hear what Josh and the r..."Very interesting post, and it touches on many of the items we have discussed around here at times.. It is also interesting to read the comments. In my rather simple head it most often comes down to whether the author is able to create believable carachters with lives and experiences I can relate to or not, in other words, is it well done or not. And whether the author respects her creation or not. I sometimes cringe at how a female is described in a m/f book and sometimes I also cringe and feel it is offensive the way a gay male is described in a m/m story. In both cases I consider this to be a bad book by a bad author. It is maybe too simplistic.
K.Z. wrote: "There's a provocative opinion piece posted at Reviews by Jessewave -- http://www.reviewsbyjessewave.com/201.... I'd love to hear what Josh and the r..."Well I said what I thought over there. :-) These discussions always go off track for me when being "like a woman" is seen as a bad thing. What is it about how women think or feel or behave that is so very divorced from the male experience? I don't see it.
I thought the most interesting and worthwhile issue Stuart brought up was what teenaged boys are likely to be getting from reading M/M. But I didn't find it very convincing or well developed. He did talk about his own experience, but that was a lot of years ago. Any kid now is going to see a lot more examples of being gay (for better or for worse) than kids of Stuart's generation. Is a trashy novel really going to undo him that much?
But at least no one felt the need to explain how they can tell whether a woman or a man wrote a book because women can't write men convincingly. So that's progress!
Let me guess - trans people are not mentioned?
Aleksandr wrote: "Let me guess - trans people are not mentioned?"They are, but very cursorily.
*sits on own hands to not go to that website* It's just healthier for me if I stay out of any gender-related debates happening on JW.
Charming wrote: "K.Z. wrote: "There's a provocative opinion piece posted at Reviews by Jessewave -- http://www.reviewsbyjessewave.com/201.... I'd love to hear what J..."I noticed your comment and found it very well put.
An interesting article with plenty of good points and a nice real-world view point. It's good to be reminded that fiction doesn't reflect reality.
Anne wrote: "Charming wrote: "K.Z. wrote: "There's a provocative opinion piece posted at Reviews by Jessewave -- http://www.reviewsbyjessewave.com/201.... I'd lo..."Thanks!
Mod
Thanks for sharing this, K.Z. The post and all the comments sure gave food for thought. And I did like yours and Charming's comments. :)
And I admire Aleksandr's attitude too:
Aleksandr wrote: "*sits on own hands to not go to that website*
It's just healthier for me if I stay out of any gender-related debates happening on JW."
LOL. Sitting on one's hands might really turn out to be very healthy at times... ;)
Johanna - It's the reason why I avoid that website like the proverbial.
RE: m/f and m/m erotica and gender roles in generalThe allure of m/m erotica is that the whore/virgin paradigm is absent. Sure there are some books that I've read where one of the males assumes what is traditionally assigned as a feminine role, but in general there is less hang ups about promiscuity/celibacy.
As far as gender roles go, breaking several thousand years of social hierarchy is difficult--blurring and allowing for fluidity is much more realistic in the short term. And I'm not just discussing things like breadwinners, child rearing, and who does the dishes/laundry, there are hormonal implications to being human.
Anne wrote: "K.Z. wrote: "There's a provocative opinion piece posted at Reviews by Jessewave -- http://www.reviewsbyjessewave.com/201.... I'd love to hear what J..."I'm with you, Anne. When I read really stereotypical stories or CWD or cardboard whatever, I figure it's simply badly written. And those books tend to be internally consistent in their badness - what I mean is that I have yet to read something with luscious prose, a fascinating plot and an intriguing premise that's only marred by the terrible, horrible, very flat characters. Most of the CWD books I've read weren't very good to begin with and the characters simply weren't interesting enough to save them.
Lou wrote: "Vivian wrote: "The allure of m/m erotica is that the whore/virgin paradigm is absent. Sure there are some books that I've read where one of the males assumes what is traditionally assigned as a fem..."That's always a problem for me - my characters start out much more promiscuous and relationship challenged than they end up on the page and people still have problems with their flawed bits. It probably says something about me and the way I see the world (too many serious relationships and far too many frivolous ones). But it seems to me that lots of gay men (and straight men and women and lesbians and transgendered folk) have far more complex relationship lives than many readers in the genre feel comfortable with.
Lou wrote: "Many m/m readers make a huge deal about "cheating." Open relationships, consensual threesomes, etc. get a lot of flack. "
Yes, many people still try to pair things off like were heading into the freakin' Ark. That said, cheating is way different than open or poly relationships. Cheating involves lying while the other two are a discussed issue--whether or not the pair is open to other bonds is something everyone needs to decide for themselves. Now, does one party feel compelled to agree to something to please/keep the other--of course, these compromises happen all the time even in non-sexual aspects of our lives.
What irks me the most when such discussions arise (the ones that center on what constitutes realistic gay characters) is that loathsome pejorative phrase, chicks with dicks. God, it gets me riled! Not only is the expression inherently insulting to women, it implies that an enormous segment of the gay population doesn't qualify as "genuine" somehow: trans men, effeminate men, drag queens, guys who cry or have phobias or breakdowns, who nurture children or pets, who love fashion, cooking, ballet -- in short, men who are anything but stoically, and stereotypically, manly.
To say that attitude is exclusionary is an understatement.
Aleksandr wrote: "Oh god, yes."And once more with feeling, Aleks!
K.Z. wrote: "What irks me the most when such discussions arise (the ones that center on what constitutes realistic gay characters) is that loathsome pejorative phrase, chicks with dicks. God, it gets me riled! ..."And that's one of the reason I refuse to get into debate on this issue.
Btw, some of the "effeminate" gay men I've read are written by guess who? Gay men themselves!
I love Ethan Day to death and I love all his work I've read so far, but if he were a woman, he'd be lynched for writing the characters the way they are.
Like Lou said, bad writing is just bad writing. Badly written M/M are no different than traditional romance that is simply awful and painful to read. (And guess what, some of them are written by men using female pen names!)
I don't think there are any wrong characters. I think the characters I don't connect with are those whose motivations are either unexplained or contradictoryI guess I've known a lot of different kinds of people from a very young age so I don't think males and females have set behaviors. I don't see anything inappropriate in "effeminate" males. I remember them from childhood, but they scare me in that I worry about them because I know the world is not kind.
K.Z. wrote: "Lou, Cleon, and Vivian -- yes!"Many gay men also dislike and complain about Glee (directed & written by a gay man, Ryan Murphy) because Kurt is too "effeminate" and too stereotypical. Perhaps it's the same type of anti-feminine thinking.
Cleon wrote: "Many gay men also dislike and complain about Glee (directed & written by a gay man, Ryan Murphy) because Kurt is too "effeminate" and too stereotypical. Perhaps it's the same type of anti-feminine thinking."From a media standpoint, I'd like to see other representations of gay males just because the happy, flamboyant comedic character is too comfortable and I think we can move beyond it as a culture. That does NOT mean I think there's anything wrong with this person--I had classmates like this and I can't imagine them being anyone else.
Personally, I'm really pleased with Neil Patrick Harris calm presentation in the media and the fact that he's transcended the casting cage to playing a whoring heterosexual as Barney Stinson on "How I Met Your Mother".
See, one of the things I love about m/m fiction is the diversity of characters. I've seen a wide variety of ethnicities, nationalities, religions, ages, temperaments, physical traits, sexual practices, etc. This is how it should be. After all, gay men aren't a separate species. I just don't get the bitching about deviation from norms that don't, in reality, exist.
Lou wrote: "PS. I remember, when I was about five or six years old I had a huge crush on Zorro. I also wanted to be him. Because being the damsel in distress, waiting to be rescues is just plain lame."Waiting is always lamer. Of course, I'm known to be impetuous with more luck and guts than common sense.
Vivian wrote: "RE: m/f and m/m erotica and gender roles in generalThe allure of m/m erotica is that the whore/virgin paradigm is absent..."
I think this is why I stopped reading m/f romance in my late teens. I still enjoy mysteries and thrillers written with female characters as leads, but that paradigm is usually missing.
Rereading the original post, it occurs to me that some of what he is talking about, is badly written romance, cliche-filled language and stereotyping. As a hetero woman I feel offended or at least exasperated at how females often are desribed in badly written, cliche-filled m/f stories. It would be natural if a gay man would feel the same about badly written stereotyping m/m stories. The same goes for transgendered or Native American or Chinese, or Norwegians for that matter. If someone is writing about someone like me, also in a romance, I would like to at least on some level be able to relate, even in the fantasy world of romance. And I want well written stories.
Mod
I see what you mean and I agree. This whole discussion made me go back to Josh's Not Your Usual Suspects blog posts. And re-reading those made me really hope that as many authors (ETA: especially starting writers) as possible have read them and learned something from them — whether they write M/M mystery or not.
For example these posts fit perfectly to this discussion:
Characterization: http://notyourusualsuspects.blogspot....
Dialog: http://notyourusualsuspects.blogspot....
Sex: http://notyourusualsuspects.blogspot....
Vivian wrote: "I don't think there are any wrong characters. I agree...
I personally like ALL types of m/m characters, I don't of course like every character I've read but I enjoy reading about Alpha personalities, and effiminate characters and everyone in between. Cross dressers, paranormal, average working man, upper class, lower class, rent boys, porn stars, fireman, detectives...you get the point. I also like a variety of stories, contemporary, paranormal, etc... as long as the story and characters are written well I can get into it. My problem is with a story that doesn't grab me, or characters that are not well developed. Then I end up not caring if they get together or what happens next.
Just like real life, people are different, and I like that.
I know I'm weighing in late on this - but I wonder if rather than chick with a dick, a better term for that particular kind of offensive character would be heroine with a dick (HWD anyone?), because that's what they are - those characters resemble neither actual women nor flamboyant gay men. Real people don't usually swoon or languish or get carried around by other real people (maybe this last one is a personal bias since I've never dated anyone who could carry me up to bed like Scarlet O'Hara, at least not without serious back trouble afterwards). The only people who do all those things are heroines of romance novels and I find them offensive without the dicks and doubly so when they show up in a story I where I thought they'd be disallowed. My WIP has a very flashy gay man as one of the protags and I can't imagine him swooning or getting carried to bed. He does dress well, though.
Mod
I know. I have the same problem. Most movies become pretty disappointing.
I was reading this last night and ready to chime in along with all of the others in agreement, but our internet service inexplicably went AWOL. So late to thread...
I'd done this for so much of my life that I can't say what a relief it was to find slash, m/m romance, (even) yaoi. I thought I was out there pretty much on my own — loving Anne Rice's male pairings (bored with her m/f), collecting Jean Cocteau, Derek Jarman, and Almodovar (check out The Law of Desire with a very young Antonio Banderas) videos, finding so-called homoerotic subtexts (there or not).
I was a literature snob. I read literature, often with romantic and/or fantastic elements, and genre fiction — mysteries, espionage, paranormal, traditional gothics (Jane Eyre, Rebecca). I didn't read romance per se. I read a lot of mysteries written by women, many with strong female protagonists, but also Reginald Hill, etc.
My more recent preference was for urban fantasy that included m/f (not Anita Blake). I came to m/f romance via ebooks — sampling m/f erotica and realizing I liked those implausible happy endings. Like Lori, I generally detest the p-word. But once I found m/m romance books, I completely lost interest in the m/f version. I still purchase a lot of urban fantasy with m/f pairings (and some graphic sex), but these have slid further back on my TBR list as so many books by favorite m/m authors take precedence.
OK, that was long! And I didn't really respond to why m/f romance doesn't interest me, except to say that something in me has been wired to m/m for years and years. I don't usually hear this response to those "why straight women..." queries, but maybe it's included in that new book. Has anyone here read it?
Dev wrote: "I know I'm weighing in late on this - but I wonder if rather than chick with a dick, a better term for that particular kind of offensive character would be heroine with a dick (HWD anyone?), becaus..."I love that. Do you mind if I use that phrase now? I think you are spot on, using a word to seperate the phrase from RL. Thanks 8)
Dev wrote: "I've never dated anyone who could carry me up to bed like Scarlet O'Hara, at least not without serious back trouble afterwards . . ."So these types of heroines would be paired with Heroes with Hernias, right? ;-)
Reggie wrote: "I love that. Do you mind if I use that phrase now? I think you are spot on, using a word to seperate the phrase from RL. Thanks 8)"Absolutely!
And yes, KZ - Heroes with Hernias (or in some of my past relationships perhaps Damsels with Disc problems might be more appropriate).
Where I live there's a wife-carrying race (really, there is - it gets kind of boring here in the winter). The winner gets the wife's weight in beer. Clearly in those kinds of contests, size differentials between the partners are a plus.
The wife's weight in beer? Off to find my fake mustache so I can enter!
This topic has been frozen by the moderator. No new comments can be posted.
Q&A with Josh Lanyon
Books mentioned in this topic
Alphabears: An ABC Book (other topics)Rag and Bone (other topics)
As Meat Loves Salt (other topics)
The Well of Loneliness (other topics)
The Selfish Gene (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Julie Smith (other topics)Bernard Cornwell (other topics)
Robin McKinley (other topics)
Tove Jansson (other topics)
Astrid Lindgren (other topics)
More...
I started reading the Amelia Peabody series in the 1980s, then read them pretty much as they came out. They became a shared passion between my sister, mother, and later, a niece. There was something delicious about these historical, action-adventure mysteries with strong, smart MCs. I like how they slyly/awarely reference Indiana Jones and the bodice-ripper tropes. Of course what made it even more tasty was that it was Emerson's buttons that were repeatedly lost ("another shirt ruined").
I never finished the Vicky Bliss series. Perhaps I found the historicals to be more amusing. Now the Bliss books are practically historicals as well. Anyway, thinking about this nudged me to read an excerpt and the purchase the ebook version of VB1, Borrower of the Night. I'll see what I think re-reading it a few decades later.