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Tag: Slash

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

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“.

Making men pregnant(MPREG) – good fiction, funny or just twisted revenge?

Okay let’s weigh in on this one. It seems in fanfiction and slash, making a male character get pregnant is a common occurance (if not, then why is there a category for it and whole communities devoted to it, hmmm?). It’s so prevalent, I’ve even seen an episode of Grey’s Anatomy where a guy came into the hospital because he was “pregnant”. I have to admit, it was hilarious. But did you know that there is actually a procedure for making a man pregnant with In Vitro Fertilization and  a man named Lee Mingwei did become pregnant? There’s even a website for it: www.malepregnancy.com.  Unfortunately for Lee, the chances of him surviving birth with all his abdominal organs intact are pretty low (if he doesn’t hemorrhage to death).

Enough with the gory details of reality and on to why in the world we want to make our male characters pregnant. Is it because we have some revenge vendetta against men and want to make them experience the pains of pregnancy? I have been pregnant and have kids, so I know all about the poking, prodding, testing and pains that go along with pregnancy. Okay, and the wonderful little moments like the first ultra sound where you get to see your baby inside you and the first time you actually feel them move. It’s pretty cool, all in all. But men…pregnant? The concept lends itself to a host of hilarious situations. So do we enjoy this facet of the M/M genre because of its comedic value? Or how about this, maybe we have a need for our male heroes to have all that hetero couples have – marriage and children. So we let one of them somehow get pregnant and off they go into the world of raising kids and living a “normal” life.

Now I’ve read a few of these mpreg fanfictions and I must say, overall I’m not impressed. And now I’ll admit that I find the concept ridiculous and somewhat retarded, but that’s just me. So in my quest to find out what this is all about, I did do some more reading and I actually found a story that I must say, was believable, had a good plot, was handled very well and had some hilarious moments in it. It was an FMA story on www.fanfiction.net and Roy Mustang, as a result of an alchemy experiment gone awry, ended up pregnant. I wish I could find it again so I could share, but alas, I can’t >.<  What was so great about this story, is the situation of a man being pregnant and also being an officer in the military was handled realistically. And when Roy had to tell Edward his predicament, comedy ensues;)

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I couldn’t find much with Roy getting pregnant, but OMG, Naraku and Sesshoumoru with Sesshy getting pregnant? Priceless:) And it looks like they already have one baby.

So maybe the bottom line here is, it’s all of the above. We like to see men “tortured” in the way women have over the eons of time, we like to read about funny situations and let’s face it, men dealing with pregnancy is funny and some of these stories, when handled properly, are really good fiction. It’s a difficult thing to write properly, which is why I think there are so many stinkers out there story-wise and why it sometimes gets a bad rap. What do you think?