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lestat2007

Christie Gordon - M/M Romance
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Hi Everyone,

Just a quick note to let you all know that I've released a Yaoi, M/M short story over at Amazon that is FREE until Tuesday. The name of the book is, Night Swimming. Here's the link: www.amazon.com/dp/B00JKKPHFE

Hope you all enjoy it:)
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I’m on a roll! I’ve got some new stories planned and one is inspired by the dude I drew on the left there. That’s the main character for my next full-length novel, Finding Human and his name is Lucian. I’ve also added him to my art page. The next one, Night Swimming is a short story I plan on doing for a fun free read. And the last one, The Bonds of Family, will be my third and last book in my In Life and Blood trilogy. I just hope I can hold myself to these dates…

Title: Finding Human

Genre: Yaoi Infused M/M Romance – Fantasy

Length: 90,000 Words

Release Date: Late Fall, 2014

Blurb: Mankind has stretched beyond Earth to form colonies on other planets, but has forgotten from where it came. Genetically modified humans, or Alts, were cultivated to ensure survival. Alts are feared and persecuted by humans.

Lucian is an Alt and he is in love. With a human. And this is forbidden.

Ezra is the human son of the Regulator of Strata. He is charismatic, loyal to his father’s cause and wholly unattainable. Lucian is obsessed with Ezra. The obstacles are great, but with courage and hearts that won’t be restrained, there is hope. Not just for Lucian and Ezra, but for both their peoples to find harmony.

Title: Night Swimming

Genre: Yaoi Infused M/M Romance – Contemporary

Length: 6,000 Words

Release Date: Estimated May 1, 2014 – FREE READ

Blurb: Alex and Jayden work as waiters in their Midwest town while on summer break from college. Alex’s infatuation with Jayden started the instant Jayden strolled through the restaurant doors. One sizzling summer night, the restaurant’s air conditioning breaks down and they are left to close-up alone. When Jayden suggests they drive to a nearby lake for a refreshing dip, Alex jumps at the chance. The night swimming adventure turns Alex’s life upside down.

Title: In Life and Blood Book 3: The Bonds of Family

Genre: Yaoi Infused M/M Romance – Vampire

Length: 40,000 Words

Release Date: Late Summer, 2014

Blurb: Julian finds the family he was kidnapped from is opening a hardware store not far from where he and Sebastian live. The Templars and Sabbatarians forbid it, as Julian’s brother is his twin. Exposing himself as a vampire to his family means certain death to them. His compulsion to see them wins and in the process he must deceive his One, his Sebastian. Will he have to kill his family in order to keep the vampires he loves safe?

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So this blog post was inspired by this funny Yaoi motivational poster I found on DeviantArt: Yaoi Motivational Poster by SpirosDyingWish00

The poster made me think about all the standard, somewhat cliche first encounters we see in Yaoi - yes, the tripping into someone, the getting drunk, the angry slap followed by kiss, the OMG, you kissed me now I'm going to rape you. Most of which involve the two heros in a compromising close proximity to each other and the "aha!" moment. Oh, how we love these scenes, wait in high anticipation of them and squee with joy when they finally happen, LOL.

I suppose these things happen in a good het romance as well. So we're following along on the same themes again as in het romances. I also suppose this begs the question -we're all really pretty much the same when it comes to love then, no matter the gender, right?  And it's always the discovery that the one dude loves the other dude and low and behold, the other one loves him back. If he didn't, where would our love story be?

The build up to the love discovery is what's most important for our first encounter. If we've seen a fair amount of each character sighing over the other one, arguing, denying any attraction, then wow, that first kiss is a doozy:) That's called building the tension. It's always hard as a writer to know when to let loose of the tension and have that first encounter. You don't want to do it too soon before there's a proper build up or that first kiss will hardly be noticed. On the other hand, I've read books where I'm more than half way through the book and the characters still haven't had their first kiss. That makes me wonder if the story arc is only going to be about their first kiss and I get frustrated. And what I really hate? A story line that has the first encounter half way into the book and then, wham, some force takes them apart for a good portion of the book. When I read a romance, I want to read about a romance, dang it. I know each person has their own opinion on this depending on what gets them going. What do you like? What frustrates you in a Yaoi or M/M Romance story line?
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Wow, this is a tough topic these days. I just found out about AJ Llewellyn being a woman. Yes, a woman, not the gay man she pretended to be.

We both started out at eXtasy Books writing M/M Romance, though I prefer to write more of the Yaoi variety:) I've had plenty of banter back and forth with AJ about writing, the M/M genre and the like and I must say I feel a bit... shocked. I know that women have taken male pen names in times past in order to get published and all that. And I know that some female M/M Romance authors have male pen names currently and keep hush about their true identity. I suppose it is no one's business but their own. Or is it?

Here's the deal. If I read a M/M Romance book by a particular author with a male pen name, I assume certain things. The first being, that they have first-hand knowledge of what it's like to be a gay man and maybe I'll learn a few things. Of course, that's the author in me. And if and when I encounter this author in a chat or on some social media site, I speak to them as if they're the gender of their pen name. I take into account their opinions on writing and other topics based on what I think their gender is, right or wrong. I can't help it. We've all been programmed to think a certain way based on our upbringing as a particular gender and have preconceived notions about the opposite gender. I hope that makes sense:)

As far as author gender and writing M/M Romance or even Yaoi for that matter, my question is this: Should authors be straight up about their genders? I mean, we're writing about gay men for a predominantly straight female audience. M/M Romance is not the same (at least in my eyes) as gay romance - presumably written by gay men with a target audience of gay men. So it seems to me that author gender might matter. Women in general put more emotion into their romances, especially if we're targeting a female audience. Again, my freakin' opinion;) But women are emotional creatures. Emotion is what we crave, right?

I'm also wondering if the female authors writing under a male pen name are doing the rest of us authors a disservice. It's hard to go about telling people who aren't familiar with this genre that you're a straight woman writing gay romance. I've blogged about my follies with that a few times. You need a thick skin and a hardy sense of humor. Maybe if more of these women writing gay romance for other women were more up front about it, it would normalize the situation a bit more and make it easier for all of us. Stand proud that you're a straight woman writing about gay men, damn it:)

So now that I've said my piece - chime in here. What do you all think?
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I've always been a bit bothered by another M/M Romance author's bit of advice that given to me during a chat. The advice was basically this: Don't tell anyone you wrote fanfiction.

Now, as an M/M Romance author who got started in this business by writing Fullmetal Alchemist  fanfiction and has used this fact as much as possible to let my fanfiction readers know that - hey, I have some original published stories, too, and  they're a lot better than the fanfiction stories - I can't let myself really believe this is good advice. It seems to me if someone likes your fanfiction stories, then they'd probably like your original published stories, which are quite often a hell of a lot more polished and professionally edited. For me, I look at the fanfiction as fun free reads. And I loved writing them. I got to have fun with someone else's characters and quite frankly, the whole episode taught me a ton about how to write and what readers wanted to read.

And to tell you the truth? I'm proud of my fanfiction stories. Sure, there was a lot of head hopping, typos and the like. But people expect that sort of thing in fanfiction. Sometimes, I almost feel as if there's a lot more freedom in fanfiction. I can test a few things out and see if I'm wacked for writing something like that or maybe it's the best idea ever. (I'm liking that term, best XXX ever lately, LOL).

We as published writers need to promote about as much as we need to write good stories and to think we shouldn't use that avenue of ourselves to promote our work just seems... wrong. I know I've read some pretty damn good fiction on fanfiction.net and adultfanfiction.net. So to think that all that literature out there on those sites is bad writing, well, I don't subscribe to that view. And if you're a published author and want to write a bit of it for fun, why not? And why not promote it as yours?

What do you think? How do you other authors feel about this issue? And yep, if you look to the right there in my links, you'll find my fanfiction.net site and can read all my fanfiction stories if you're so inclined:)
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