In January of 2013, I wrote this post about J.R. Ward’s then-upcoming paranormal book Lover At Last, and the new opportunities for M/M romance to reach mainstream audiences. I was hopeful but nervous.
The jury of public opinion has since spoken about Ward’s experiment, and as usual, fans had mixed feelings. Die-hard fans gave it rave reviews. Others questioned Ward’s expansion of what should maybe have been a M/M novella into a vast multi-plot book. Readers called Ward out on awkward, unrealistic sex scenes that appeared to be included just for the M/M readership, without understanding that market or delving into the nuances of the actual relationship. Readers accustomed only to M/F elements were horrified and outraged by the explicit M/M sex scenes (even though such content was widely known and even advertised). There were the usual trolls.
Have I read it? To be honest, no. I’m a bit bored by vampires in fiction right now, and I’m not willing to invest the reading time into an epic that doesn’t grab me from its Wiki entries. There have been a couple of other M/M storylines introduced by other M/F paranormal romance authors; as I haven’t read them yet, I can’t comment.
Throughout 2013 I still heard rumors of new M/M and alternative romance imprints coming up from some of the Big Five publishing companies, or solidly-respectable midrange publishers. The M/M erotic romance market was growing even more, in the small-press digital publishing markets. It also showed strongly in self-published digital works.
So, where is the market really going? Here are some more hopeful signs:
M/M romance author extraordinaire Heidi Cullinan was interviewed by an Iowa newspaper about her work and life. A M/M author, with explicit sex in some admittedly-great books. Living and working in Iowa. This is such a milestone on so many social levels that I can’t begin to analyze it. Just go read the interview.
Publishers Weekly had a Fall 2012 article on the M/M romance phenomenon well worth reading even now – especially with its conclusion that many M/M and mainstream readers were more willing to read ‘sweet romance’ rather than grittier explicit content. Possibly a backlash over the highly-sexualized content in pop culture icons like ‘Game of Thrones’ and Fifty Shades of Grey?
Even more important than Ward’s fumbled attempt at a M/M storyline, M/M readers and writers should take note about recent news from self-published author C.S Pacat, whose ‘Captive Prince‘ M/M series has been a Goodreads favorite for several years. I have read the first of these. It was astonishingly well-written: a solid, deviously-intelligent plot, strong emotional content, and a believable romance. The better news? The series has been picked up by Penguin Berkley.
Penguin-F*****g-Berkley.
This is one of the real watershed moments, I think.
We can still have any number of M/M/M shifter menages with simple plots, cardboard characters, and formulaic sex scenes, written in two weeks as wank-fodder for readers not looking for anything harder to process. Am I being insulting? I’m being realistic. Please, I read fan fiction for the same reasons. But understand where this stuff really sits, on the literary scale. Hugo and Nebula Award-worthy it is not, even though the authors are making money, well, hand over fist.
We can have coy M/M moments and romances from great fantasy authors who are still shackled by older mainstream rules (No dicks! You can’t show any dicks! Well, you can show dicks if he’s screwing a woman! Can you make the main villain gay, too?)
But when a series like ‘Captive Prince’ is backed by a strong mainstream publisher, we may see some real changes in how M/M romance is viewed, marketed, and read in the wider world.
It’s a long way from 1999, when a well-meaning publishing professional told me: ‘Oh, don’t write anything explicitly homo in your fantasy novels, it’s the kiss of death to any fantasy career.’
Here’s to 2014, and whatever it may bring us.