Hot Topic - When the Hero is really the Heroine

Today's topic: When the Hero is really the Heroine.


Sounds a little confusing, no?

One of the core dictates of the romance genre in general is that there is a Hero, and he 'saves' the Heroine, but what happens when this dictate gets tossed on it's ear and the Heroine is the one saving the day? She's the one seducing the Hero, and the one telling the Hero what's good for him -- and no, I'm not talking about the Heroine who blithely goes her own way while the Hero looks congenially on because he knows she's going to come a cropper and he will swoop in to save her from ruin. I'm talking about the Heroine who has the power, the will and the way to show the hero just what she wants, and demand he give it to her.

Now, I quite like reading these stories, find them empowering even, but I'm told they just don't sell. Apparently romance readers in general want the man in power and the woman subdued by him, the opposite just doesn't work. Why the hell not, is my question? Women want to let go, they say, want all their daily responsibilities taken off their shoulders as the man 'gives' them release. On a personal note, I've never felt so not in control of my life as when I was forced to become a SAHM -- then to let a man come in and tell me how it's going to be after all that? Oh hell no!

A big strong man at my beck and call - oh yes, that could work in my ideal world!

How say you all?

Author Interview: Eden Rivers

Author Name: Eden Rivers

Year started writing for LI: 2008

Titles: Nature’s Pentacle (March 25 ’08), Strange Sabbats (coming soon)

Web Page: http://www.edenrivers.com

What genre do you write in, and why? :

Erotic romance, mostly paranormal. I also write straight paranormal and urban fantasy under a different name. Why? Just what interests me, I guess.

How much time do you spend writing every week? :

Countless hours. I write full time.

What was the first story you ever wrote about? (not nec. first published story) :
Gosh, that would be back in grade school! It was about a flower goddess. Guess my pagan roots came out early…

How do you judge the effectiveness of the sensual scenes in your stories? :

When they make my husband blush!

Do you ever try out the sexual positions you write to make sure of accuracy? :

No comment.

Favorite candy while writing? :
Chocolate!

Where did your most unusual plot idea come from? :

A fantasy.

What inspires you to write? :

Everything! Dreams, thoughts, conversations, memories, books, music… The list is endless.

What music inspires your writing? :
Depends on my mood, anything from rock, to Celtic, to classical, to international…

Plotter or a Panster? :

I go both ways.

Does your cat insist on sitting on your keyboard like mine does? :

No cat. But my mini poodle begs to get in my lap when I write.

What is your most embarrassing moment as an erotic romance author? :
I guess just dealing with other writers who aren’t open to the genre, and fielding questions like, “But do your children know what you do?”

Most challenging place you've ever written a spicy scene? :
In my office, which opens onto the kitchen, while dinnertime chaos and homework chaos happens in the background. And I do it all the time. Sigh.

When you get stuck, how do you find your way back to the writing? :

Force myself to sit down and type till it starts flowing again. Pure determination!

Any outrageous liaisons in your past?

Caught “parking” off a deserted road by the police during high school, with my then boyfriend, who’s now husband. Most embarrassing moment in my life.

Where's the most unusual place you ever managed to have sex? :

Not telling, but it’s really, truly outrageous!

What was the most romantic meal you've eaten? :

Eggplant parmesan and red wine in a restaurant styled like an old fashioned private library, in Door County, WI, on my honeymoon.

What kind of books do you read for fun? :

Any great fiction!

Is your real life anything like your stories? What about your fantasies? :

My life couldn’t possibly be more different from my stories--well except that I’m pagan like many of my characters.

If you were to make a bumper sticker for your car that had to relate to erotic romance, what would it say? :
No idea.

Soulmates? Do you believe? :

Nope. Fun in fiction, but in real life marriage is about hard work, love, common interests, communication, compromises, and sticking out the tough times.

Sex with anyone famous? :
Nope.

Cake or Pie? Coke or Pepsi? Tea or Coffee? :

Cake. No soda. Herb tea.

It was a dark and stormy night

In the comic strip Peanuts, Snoopy works often on his great American novel. It always starts out with the title words to this post. (*trivia note* A very famous book does start out in just that way. Can anyone name it? For a prize of course :). )

First lines are vital to a story. After all, the reader makes a decision to either stop or keep going. If an author snags the reader’s interest in that first line, they might just have them for the whole book.

There are many ways to start a book from dialogue to action. What’s best? Depends on the story and the type of tale you’re telling.

One recent line that drew me in, “This month my name is Mary and, apparently, I'm as contrary as the nursery rhyme.” It's from Broken by Megan Hart. It drew me in immediately to this woman’s world. I hadn’t read the back blurb so made it that much more thrilling to figure out what was going on in those initial sentences.

Another good one: From Raine Weaver’s “Incubus,” “It was the kiss of the night wind through the open window that first attracted her."

So, what’s the best first line you’ve read of a book? Can be recent or in the past. I’m curious to see what’s grabbing interest.

Mechele Armstrong aka Lany of Melany Logen
http://www.mechelearmstrong.com/
http://www.melanylogen.com/

Them's Fightin' Words

On Monday MAN, OH MAN: Writing M/M Fiction for Kinks and Ca$h goes live at Fictionwise And while the book is not being published through Loose Id, I did interview Loose Id authors, editors and the amazing Treva Hart extensively, so I thought it might be all right to share a snippet.

When I was researching this book, one of the complaints I repeatedly heard from readers and reviewers had to do with the lack of believable and meaningful conflict in M/M fiction. So today I thought I'd give you all something to fight about.




Okay, you’ve got your characters. It’s time to think about how you’re going to tell their story. Story = Plot.

When we start talking about conflict and goals and motivation — the building blocks of plot — a lot of writers get that glazed look on their faces. So listen up. Next to character, the single most important element of your book is the plot.

A story is not made up of random things happening. That’s called real life; it doesn’t always make for good fiction. Let alone happy endings. No, the events or scenes of a story evolve naturally — organically — from earlier events or scenes. They have to make sense, they have to be there for a reason — you’re not just filling space between sex scenes. And in order for these events or scenes within your story to make sense, you have to plan them. (This is why an outline is such a good idea.)

The way it works is that each event or scene will complicate the situation between your protagonists a little more. The divide between them will seem to grow wider and wider with each scene or event. Conflict and problems and frustration will rise right along with sexual tension and attraction. Your characters are falling deeper in love — whether they like it or not — while the obstacles between them mount.

Now, you might be thinking that this is the opposite way it should work. There are plenty of obstacles to any two people building a life together, and you’ve got two great guys who, in theory, should be perfect for one another. Isn’t your job to swiftly move them around the potential roadblocks and get them together? Of course it is, but getting them together is called the ending. Your story is over at that point. So unlike real life, your job isn’t to smooth the course of true love starting on page one. Your job is to create enough problems and obstacles to make up a story about how these two met, fell in love, and finally worked out the differences between them so they could have a Happily Ever After. It’s called telling a story.

That said, plot is where storytelling gets tricky for a lot of M/M writers, even those currently selling stories. Conflict, in particular, is a weak point for most M/M writers. Yep, the majority of M/M writers do not understand the difference between genuine conflict and contrived bickering between characters. If you can master this concept, you’ll have an edge over your fellow writers.

There is no story without conflict.

Conflict is the clash of your characters opposing goals and motivations — their hopes, dreams, ambitions, and desires running headlong into someone else’s fears, insecurities, plans, and prejudices. So, yeah, your characters may squabble about a variety of things, but the squabbling needs to result from something more dramatic and fundamental than he’s a neatnik falling hard for a slob — not that the Odd Couple dynamic can’t work; it’s the stuff of romantic comedy, but at the heart of those differences should be something profound.

In far too many stories, the only conflict or obstacle to the lovers’ happy ending is the external conflict provided by the genre plot: amnesia, competing for the same job, marrying for money (or to hide sexuality), a tornado or a tidal wave. That’s fine as far as it goes — but it doesn’t go very far. Obstacles have to be complex enough to believably keep two smart, rational, well-suited men apart from each other — and this distance has to be emotional as well as physical.

A competently executed romance plot combines external (situational) and internal (personal) conflict.

An example of external conflict would be found in my novel Fatal Shadows when Homicide Detective Jake Riordan suspects bookseller Adrien English of murder. That’s an external conflict supplied by the plot. Jake’s suspicion is a barrier to his growing awareness of and attraction to Adrien. Another potentially final barrier is that Adrien in being stalked. An HEA is contingent on his survival. Both of these are external (situational) conflicts and complications.

External conflicts are relatively easy to resolve.

The real barrier to Adrien and Jake’s happiness is Jake’s conflicted feelings about his own sexuality. Jake is a closeted cop, and he has no intention of leaving the safety of that closet. That’s an enormous obstacle to finding an HEA with Adrien. It is an internal (personal) conflict driven by Jake’s personality and character, and it dogs their relationship throughout the course of the series.

Usually the most intense and dramatic conflicts will be the internal ones. But — please take note here —

You need both internal and external conflict in order to write a satisfying romance.



One detail: remember not to cook up conflict so destructive or insurmountable that you’re unable to resolve it believably within your allotted timeframe. The reader will work with you, but you’ve got to do the heavy lifting. Some of this has to do with pacing. If you throw a gigantic and disastrous point of contention between your characters in the final third of the book, you’re unlikely to be able to resolve this without rushing — something readers resent. The successful working out of problems and differences is part of what readers find so emotionally satisfying; if you cheat them on this, they won’t believe in your HEA – or even your HFN (Happy For Now).

Romance is character-driven. Romance is all about emotion. So the best conflicts are going to be emotional ones — character-driven ones. Typical issues driving internal conflict include trust, control, self-image, sexuality.

In itself, Gosh, he’s cute but he’s a vampire! is not enough conflict. Not for fiction, anyway. Real life, yeah, that could be complicated. Remember, fiction is not real life. Fiction is bigger — and better — than real life. The best fictional conflicts result in one protagonist fighting himself and his attraction to the other protagonist. So our plot becomes Gosh, he’s cute but he’s a vampire — and I’ve sworn my life to destroying all vampires. This time it’s personal.

It’s got to be personal, or else the conflict devolves into nothing more than heated intellectual debate, and your characters spend pages bickering. That gets old fast. We expect mature, intelligent, strong-willed people to disagree, and to work their differences out. Your challenge is to make it difficult for them to work those differences out. Take a subject like the outing of public figures. A lot of gay men disagree on whether it’s right to forcibly out public figures; that’s an intellectual disagreement. But suppose one of your protags is a reclusive, closeted actor, and the other is a crusading reporter for a gay magazine. Now they both have something to lose. Now it’s personal — and painful.

And the main reason it’s painful is because of a little something called sexual tension. Sexual tension is the physical desire characters feel for each other but are prevented from acting on because of all that external and internal conflict. The main ingredients are physical awareness — sexual attraction — and conflict.

Questions or comments?

On Writing Nature's Pentacle

Here I am, after months of hard work, release day! Nature’s Pentacle is a red hot paranormal erotic romance. When witches use sexual energy in a rite to mend the shattered environment, the forces set in motion carry them into a vortex of loss, a sizzling ménage, and finally, to the love they never imagined they’d find.

When beginning a manuscript, some authors develop their characters first. Others work out the plot, and character development follows. With Nature’s Pentacle, the entire book began as a vivid image of the sexual rite at the start of the story. I saw the pairs of witches coupling within the outline of the giant pentacle, felt the urgency of the rite, sensed their anxiety, saw the drought ravaged forest surrounding the clearing where the witches gathered.

From there, I went on to develop Lena and Matt’s characters. Next, I created Kenji, the third member of the ménage, and then I started crafting the plot. But all this began with a vivid image that popped into my head one night as I was trying to fall asleep. Here’s a summary of the story that image engendered:

When Lena and Matt join other witches in a forbidden rite to heal a shattered environment, Lena's roommate talks to the press, plunging their lives into chaos. Forced to flee vigilantes and a witch with a sinister agenda, they're drawn to each other despite Matt's ties to Kenji, the witch who rescued him from a troubled past.

Reluctant to accept Matt’s love, Lena fears her dark family secrets make her an unsuitable partner. When she's kidnapped following a rite to calm a hurricane, the ménage she's become entangled in is the least of her problems. Escaping danger is only the first step if Matt and Lena are going to pull themselves out of the freefall that follows losing everything they thought they wanted.

I sat down and wrote the first chapter, the rite of the pentacle, in under an hour. From there, the entire manuscript came tumbling out over the course of eight weeks, one scene after another. Some stories are so determined to tell themselves, my muse handcuffs me to the computer, stands behind me, whip in hand, and only lets me up for an occasional meal or a few hours of sleep. Nature’s Pentacle was one of those manuscripts.

I hope you enjoy reading the story, because I sure had fun writing it!

Eden Rivers
www.edenrivers.com

Hot Topic - Sex while in separate rooms

Phone sex.

And, of course, cybersex it's more technological sister in arms (or should that be spread legs?)

Is it cheating on your spouse? Or no different than taking yourself in hand in the shower if you're feeling the urge and no one else is around? You'll notice a lack of visual or 'porn' stimulus being mentioned -- that's a whole other topic for a different day -- but what makes many, if not most people take the leap that interaction with a living breathing person who's a room, a State, even half a world away is cheating or adultery in every sense of the word?

Is it purely that: Interaction with a living person versus the obvious flat celluloid imagery of 'porn'? I never been one to be down on a partner for watching 'teh pornz', it would be a lot like the pot calling the kettle black in my house, but I'd admit I'd feel disappointment if my partner took up calling phone sex lines or cybering with a stranger -- in good part because he can do that with me for free if only he'd asked *evil grin*.

Then of course if you run with the potential of phone or cyber sex in storyline, there is quite a reversal of how loving over the airwaves is seen. In fact I've read some amazing phone or cyber scenes that break open a character, potentially much in the same way BDSM can unlock the repressed emotions of either the submissive, or even the Master or Mistress. Although I do realise that comparision might be felt as a little of a stretch by many, I'm sure, and of course between people who are ultimately, single. Big difference that, being single and not.

So, what's your take on it?

AnneD

Do you time travel, too?

I've been time traveling this week, and it's been a hell of a ride! I blipped from 1910 to the end of the Universe with the Doctor and hung around the Regency with Miss Austen Regrets. Then I experienced the 21st century atop a time rift with Torchwood.

Most of my stories are contemporary with a paranormal element or two thrown in: werewolves, witches, telekinesis, telepathy. But I must admit I had fun writing The Men on Mars. It was completely out of my element--a futuristic set on Mars and the Moon. It took me back to the first time I saw Star Wars and to this paper I wrote in the second grade on flying cars and to my science fair project: The House of the Future. It's fun to think of new technology and new governments. Or blend in the old.

I actually started writing The Men on Mars after a Firefly marathon.

Another element of time travel, though, is the fish out of water. Whether you travel forward or back--what will be different? What will remain the same, timeless? And how would you cope with those differences? I was once working on a story where a Regency man comes to the present time. What would he make of TV? How would he rationalize it to himself? What would he make of our toilets and dish washers?

You can tell I'm a writer when I go off on a tangeant of What Ifs.

So tell me, do you time travel? Or do you like to keep your feet grounded in the 21st century? And if you do venture forth to other decades or centuries, which are your favorites?

Where do you get your ideas?

For a long time I would laugh whenever I heard a writer complain of a reader asking this question. I stopped laughing the day it happened to me. I was on holiday in Tuscany in a hotel largely taken over by British visitors. I avoided the conversations involving work and questions of what everyone did for a living as long as I could. After all, when on holiday why talk about work? I also strongly feel that a person isn’t necessarily shaped by what they do for a living. If a person is lucky enough to make their hobby their career, then perhaps there’s some truth to be found in how a person earns their income. However, many people work in jobs they detest. They do what they need to do to pay the bills, and have to regulate what they love to do to hours outside of the office. This applies to most writers, but that’s another subject.

So, when a woman asked me what I ‘do’, sheer devilment took hold of me and I said “I’m a writer.” This is the truth and it’s closer to who I am than anything I’ve had to do keep a roof over my head or put food on the table. Her eyes positively lit up.

“I’ve never met a writer before,” she said. “Where DO you get your ideas?”

And right there I found myself speechless. Totally unprepared, I had no idea how to answer her. In truth, there is no definitive answer to this question. The truth is that ideas come from anywhere and everywhere. You will get an idea from something someone said, something you read, or something you saw. You might file an event away and it won’t be until days, weeks, months, sometimes years later, when something else occurs, and then your mind makes a connection so that suddenly you have a story.

I don’t know if everyone has this ability to make seemingly random connections or if writers are simply people who are aware of this skill and choose to use it. In any case, writers appear to see the world a little differently. People often accuse writers of living in a fantasy world, and yet many writers appear to see the world as a stark reality. Writers see all the good and bad in the world for without conflict there is no story. They are always cataloging information in their minds or on paper to use at some undefined time. Writers also play the ‘What If’ game.

Perhaps the easiest way is to show by example. Take my m/m contemporary book “Snow Angel.” Check out this page at Loose-Id to read the prologue that the publisher chose as an excerpt. The prologue was primarily the whole basis of my story. I saw someone walking along a road and mistaking a person’s identity. I thought ‘what if’ I created a brother and sister with similar features and this guy grabbed the wrong person?

With “Uly’s Comet”, which was the start of my Swithin Chronicles trilogy -- the third book scheduled for the beginning of April -- I simply saw a man sitting on a bench in open parkland and a thief about to creep up on him. I had no idea as to the identity of these characters, or the thief’s sex, let alone their sexuality. Then a few weeks later, I was looking through a baby-naming book in search of a name for another completely unrelated project, and I came across a word: Shavar (meaning Comet). At once, I knew the identity of the man sitting on the bench as well as why he sat there. I then asked myself questions as to what could be different about his race. I created the Swithin who freely take lovers of either sex. That idea filled in the missing pieces. I would set a few rules that the Swithin prince had to live by then lay temptation in his path. One reader remarked that the comet books are a cross between Prince and the Pauper meets Arabian Nights. The comparison hadn’t occurred to me until someone brought it to my attention, but it makes me smile and laugh.

There’s a school of thought that you can write a story from someone just giving you a few unrelated words. Maybe even a single word. The flash fiction pieces the Loose-Id authors write here proves the theory. You can also write from a title only. My very first published short story came from a five-word title.

So, the simple answer to where writers get their ideas from is anywhere and everywhere. However, there’s nothing simple about it. There’s a reason they call life stranger than fiction. Ideas bombard us every day. A writer is someone with the ability to see where worlds collide and people or events connect in new, interesting, and unpredictable ways. Happy Reading!

Sharon Maria Bidwell
aonia - where the muses live
http://www.sharonbidwell.co.uk
http://www.myspace.com/aonia

Flash Fiction

Today's word is ERASE.

Hot Topic - Let's talk about hair

The long and short of it: today's topic is Hair.

Fabio - the historical romance writers ultimate cover hunk - he works the long mane and muscles like nobodies business. Thank God he never stooped to the mullet - the romantic kiss of death. But what about us girls (and guys) that like the idea of a man 'high and tight' - maybe just the tight factor. And then there are those men who are bald and proud of it (Bruce Willis and Jean-Luc, err... Patrick Stewart anyone?).

Then of course you move from the head to lower regions - Chests and underarms, then lower still with shaved genitalia. Shave or not to shave? Neatness versus looking prepubescent smooth? Ahhh... the options!