Because this was my first try at writing erotic scenes, I had my friend, erotica writer Betty Blue, vet them and she had many helpful suggestions. Some guys even stay awake for more than five seconds afterward. But there is affection, love, cuddling, and tenderness, too, and that’s universal. Top? Bottom? Equal rights? And, if you go to what Charlie Cochrane calls “the final favors,” men are not self-lubricating. (Often desirable, for some characters.) And the power dynamic is different between men than it is between hetero couples in m/m sex everyone has the same parts, so who gets to do what to whom? It’s a negotiation, rather than a given. How do they get anything done?) Sex for sex’s sake is sometimes desirable. (I’ve seen claims that men think about sex every sixty seconds. They hate to cry, even though they sometimes still do. Men are not women, and vive la difference! Although I didn’t discover it until well after the story was in production, Josh Lanyon’s Man, Oh Man guide to writing m/m romance covers this in great detail. Some of the worst m/m fiction I’ve read features “women with penises.” That’s not good. Men are not complete aliens they can love, feel affection, be romantic and passionate, but with a slightly different spin. “Write what you know” goes out the window to some extent. Then there’s the issue of a woman writing about a man-or men-having sex. You have to reveal what you know, what you can imagine, what you fantasize about, perhaps even what you’d like to do. I’ve been pondering that a lot and have come up with the theory that, gay or straight, even though it’s the characters knocking boots, it’s the writer’s mind that is being exposed. Not because it contained gay sex-I’ve read plenty of that and never you mind why-but because putting the sex scenes into words made me feel so-naked. Back in June the “first time” story began to gel and I banged it out, so to speak, in a single day. Inquiring minds wanted to know, especially about Alec and Seregil’s first night of love making, once they became a couple at the end of the second Nightrunner book, Stalking Darkness.Īnyhow, a few years ago I jokingly threatened to write my own fan fiction, but people took me seriously and began to ask when I was going to get around to it. This led to a some frustration among a sizable portion of my readership, who are into that sort of thing.
When the first books were published back in the mid 90’s, graphic sex scenes were not encouraged for books intended for the mainstream, so I had to be coy, showing the kissy stuff, lead ups, and morning afters, but not the deed itself. And when you’re a woman writing gay sex? A challenge, to say the least, and one I tackle in my new Nightrunner short fiction collection, Glimpses.įor years now I’ve been tap dancing around sex scenes in my Nightrunner Series, and gay sex at that. OK, sex is pretty easy (and fun!) if you know what you’re doing, but writing about it? That’s a whole different kettle of naughty bits.
Thanks for having me back, Lucienne! I’m very excited about the release of my Nightrunner short fiction collection, Glimpses, which contains some erotica, the first I’ve written.