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Crossing the Street by Belinda McBride

Courtesy of www.homotography.com

Most readers who are familiar with me are aware that I like to cross genre. Gleefully, I hop from sci fi to fantasy to paranormal. I’ve done bisexual ménage, interracial, multi-cultural and BDSM as well. So it’s not surprising that I finally ended up writing (and loving) m/m romance…except that I never really wanted or intended to write m/m. I was pretty happy with my straight and bi romances. This genre is so jam packed with new and established talent, there just didn’t seem to be a point. But then, I also vowed never to write werewolves…

There’s always been m/m content in my romances. There’s something so wonderful and winsome about men in love. Many women love that fantasy, especially if they happen to be in the middle of the mix.  In my father’s side of the family, polyamory popped up more than once…(my female relations do love their men!) so I’m comfortable with that concept. I love my heroines and take pride in writing amazing, complex women. I was really quite content with the variety in my writing.

That first m/m story came about pretty much by accident. I was doing a little writing exercise on first person POV and the male character that I was writing really had nothing to say. So I switched to the heroine, who was a bit of a disreputable princess. She kept spouting this line over and over…. ”A whore is a whore…” Beyond that, she didn’t have much to say. So I’m left sitting there with a first person POV exercise where neither character was talking. When that happens, you either scrap the project or turn their world upside-down.

So I made the princess a man.

Suddenly, Hela, who was now Helios, had a lot to say. And my reluctant hero pricked up his ears, got a gleam in his eye and told me that his name was Griffin. The story picked up speed and was suddenly in the hands of my Loose Id editor with a release date. An Uncommon Whore was surprisingly successful.

So my thought was that it was a fluke…right? I really didn’t want to go down that road too far. But when the Coming Out series was proposed at Loose Id, another character that had been languishing in my files came forward with a purpose. His name was Oliver Bleu and he wanted a man of his own. I finally understand the reason some of my characters and stories didn’t fly…they didn’t have chemistry with their heroine!

Have I crossed the road completely? Well, no. I still love my heroines. I love my ménages. But writing m/m romance was such a delightful shake-up in my routine that I certainly won’t be leaving it behind. I like playing off alpha against alpha and pulling little surprises in the balance of dominance. I enjoy letting tough men show their vulnerability to another man. In a good romance, I expect some element of sacrifice, and having a character risk his self image and his machismo is such a sacrifice.

So how did you cross the street? Did you download a m/m romance to see what all the fuss was about? Did you stumble across a manga, only to discover that the pretty girl was really a boy? Tell me about how you came to read or write in the m/m side of the spectrum. I’ll randomly choose a comment and the winner can choose an e-book from my backlist.

Belinda McBride lives in far northern California with her family, which mostly consists of an unruly group of Siberian Huskies. She writes for Loose Id, Changeling Press, Dreamspinner Press and Passion in Print Publishing.

Please visit her website at http://www.belindamcbride.com

Or her blog at http://www.belindam.blogspot.com

More information on her latest release:

LAST CALL EUROPE: BLACK WOLF
M/M Paranormal/Shifter Romance

Blurb:
Siberians live for the thrill of the chase; wolves exist for the joy of the capture. On a foolish dare, Jasper O’Shea takes a gamble at the Last Call, letting fate chose his lover for the night.

Detective Brutus “Brutal” Ballantine came to the Last Call looking for something far different than a sly, clever Siberian Husky. Yet when the call comes over the sound system, he finds himself unable to resist the lure of laughing blue eyes and a happy tail.

The chase is on, but who is the hunter, and who is the prey?

(Author’s note: While this story stands alone, it features characters introduced in Last Call Europe: Devil’s Advocate.)

Read an excerpt at: Changeling Press

Purple Prose – Arch Villain Strikes Again by ZA Maxfield

Oh, how mighty is my sorrow when I think of the books I’ve slain… My bosom heaves, my brow furrows. Tears drip like rain. Blood runs in rivers like thick, dark wine. Meaty manflesh rises at my bidding, plunging like sausages into tight, tender rosebuds of fluttering anal muscles that grip like pythons and clench and milk stuff. (They MILK STUFF?) Women’s parts weep like honey and flow like sap and glisten and goodness only knows what the hell else.

I am Purple Prose. I am a gate-crasher. I am a line-crosser.  And I will eat your lunch. (Then sometimes, I’ll make you throw it up after, just for giggles.)

I’m not going to single anyone out here, and seriously, man. I’m not casting that first stone. We all try shit that doesn’t work. I’ve HEARD my editors clear their throats from several states away. Thank heavens God made editors. They provide that much needed reality-check for aspiring authors everywhere.

To see what I mean, it only takes a little trip to our beloved “weepingcock” community at live journal HERE: weepingcock

Let us refer to the text shall we? There’s an abundance of You Might Be A…(Fill in the Blank) self-help books out there. To that I’d add:

You might be a friend of Purple Prose if you’ve ever written…

Anyone’s anus itched to have someone inside it.

This isn’t prose. It’s an STD.

eloquent phallic erection

Okay, hello. Talking dick?

The ultimate male explosion

To be fair this came from a vitamin supplement add. But it made me wonder about the penultimate male explosion and from exactly where on a man’s body that might come.

And for the ladies…

hot slimy fluids into her sexually ravaged swampy depths

There are no lengths to which some women’s swampy depths won’t go to build up a good head of SLIME.

bathed him in her cherry-red smile (Credit belongs to Jonathon Franzen for this one.)

Jonathon, I know you can take criticism from me all the way to the bank, laughing. But seriously. Dude. I liked the “jismic, grunting butt-oink”. But the cherry red smile? No can do, man. Purple Prose has flown over your WIP once too often and left a surprise you forgot to wipe off.

ZA Maxfield is a romantic, erotic writer. You can find out more about her at her site: http://zamaxfield.com/

Here is some information on her latest release:

Stirring Up Trouble
ZA Maxfield
Manlove Romance Press
Available in Ebook & Print
LGBT Contemporary Romance
Buy at:
Amazon
MLR Press

Blurb:
Toby Andrews is cooking up more than a little trouble for Evan Blankenship. Because of pranks, indiscretions, and plain bad timing, his ability to work in New York’s temples of haute cuisine is a thing of the past. When Toby’s sister tells him he should look up an acquaintance whose restaurant — Le Potiron –is failing, he doesn’t have much choice.

Pretty soon he’s in bed, literally, with a cook who hates people, trying to save a restaurant that only the neighborhood mothers seem to love, and on the verge of another –possibly painful — lesson or two about what it means to be successful.

Evan hates everyone but Toby. Toby likes to stir things up. See what’s on the menu at Le Potiron, in Stirring Up Trouble.

For more information about her latest release, Stirring up Trouble, please click on the cover.

Call for M/M Romance and Yaoi Bloggers

Picture from www.homotography.com

As most of you may have heard, I put out a call last week for authors and readers of M/M Romance and Yaoi to be guest bloggers right here. There was a really great response and I’m pleased to say that for the next few months, there should be some fun discussion from avid readers and authors alike about the subject. I’ve asked the bloggers to talk about things like:

  • Why they write M/M Romance or Yaoi
  • What funny or interesting things they have come across in the M/M Romance and Yaoi genres
  • Purple Prose (you know, those wacky ways us authors like to describe sex)
  • Why do they think women like M/M Romance and Yaoi
  • Any funny quirks of the genre and so on.

Some of the authors I’ve already booked are (in order of appearance):

  • ZA Maxfield
  • Amber Kell
  • Belinda McBride
  • Louisa Brown
  • Julie Hayes
  • Laura Tolemei

Plus I’ve got a few readers to blog as well. If anyone reading this wants to join in and guest blog, please contact me at: Contact

All in all, it should be a fun couple of months here, so please check by often to see what’s up. Of course, I’ll be announcing the guest bloggers at all my usual places, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace (Links and follow info to the right there).

And that picture at the top, holy cow – I swear that is exactly what I picture Logan to look like in my next full-length novel, “Secrets“.