Babes in Boyland Interview
(on Grown Men, Alpha Males, & More)
This interview was originally posted at a blog called BABES IN BOYLAND which has gone away...so it's included here for archival purposes.
Tell us a little bit about Grown
Men. (I'm sure) there are a lot of sci-fi fans out there who'd love
to hear a little bit about the world that you've created.
Grown Men
is the first “transmission” from the HardCell
Universe. The HardCell Company exists in a paranoid future in which
massive corporations own and govern galaxies, advertising has
replaced myth, art, or religion…and employees dread early
“retirement” by commercial assassins.
In simplest terms
Grown Men
is about two offworld farmers trying to survive in
a rugged tropical environment. And there’s a strong satirical
element because it’s inspired by modern consumer culture and the
things that keep us from connecting to each other. Rachel
[Haimowitz, Riptide owner] kept send me these cackling tweets when
she first read it because a lot of humor thrums between the two
heroes.
I
love angsty romance, and
so I’m always looking for ways to give my heroes fascinating
struggles that push their worst buttons. Happy Endings need to feel
earned to feel satisfying.
I inevitably want a story to take me somewhere I couldn’t go on my
won, and so building a three-dimensional world is always the first
step.
So science fiction buffs should expect
a fully imagined universe with regard to technology, culture, and
social structure…but it is NOT “hard” sci-fi.
Grown Men
is first and foremost a romance set in a primal environment. Readers
who steer clear of sci-fi, can rest assured that there are no
aliens, or robots, or spaceships. If you’re even slightly curious,
check it out; you may be surprised at what it isn’t and what it is.
J Rugged men, rugged environment, and rugged loving! LOL
People want to know what specific projects they
can expect from you in the near future other than Grown Men so talk
about one or two upcoming books that you're working on.
At present, I’m chippin' away at
Spring Eternal, which is a
steampunk zipper-ripper set in 19th century Manhattan.
The story is a big sweeping adventure fantasy about dark intentions
and wild inventions and a dastardly abduction that brings down an
entire city. I spent about 3 months doing the prep and research for
it, building out the slang and the city’s alternate history. Now the
story is flooding out of me…and it’s this big florid seductive
puzzlebox. VERY different in tone than
Hot Head,
Grown Men,
or
Seedy
Business. I’m taking some risks in
it, but I have a feeling that folks will be pleased.
Then immediately following that,people
have demanded more Head!
And so I’m giving ‘em more
Head. :P Fans of
Hot Head
have been clamoring for the sequel,
Hard Head. Tommy has been
increasingly aggressive and demonstrative. Even when I’m
not supposed to be working
on his story, he sometimes sneaks onto the page. He’s VERY different
from Griff as a main character and damaged in ways that make him
thrilling/tough to write. And of course, Griff and Dante will be
back along with other folks from the first book; their relationship
has shaken up the Red Hook community and may tear it apart. I can’t
wait to visit the guys again and see where things have taken them.
You wrote that so far all of your characters have lived in
very macho worlds. Sometimes M/M readers prefer macho alphas, but
anyone who falls elsewhere on the gay spectrum gets relegated to
supporting cast. As a male author writing in the genre, can you see yourself ever
featuring less traditionally macho characters as a main character?
Funny thing: my first two books have
featured very butch, alpha characters: men’s men in every sense of
the word. I know why readers love those characters because as a
reader I love them as well, but I also think there’s a trap to
dwelling on a single archetype relentlessly: it erodes the power of
the fantasy. The alpha additiciton of romance dates back to the days
of bodice-ripping when most heroes were animals and many heroines
wed their rapists. Gack. The world has cooled since then. Do alphas
appeal? Yeah. Sure. Who doesn’t love a man who acts like a man?
But being a dude is so much more than grunting and penetrating
anything doesn’t penetrate you first.
I have written a lot of aggressively
male characters up till now, but I didn’t plan that. Do I only want
to write alphas? Not even slightly! My next novel,
Spring Eternal, doesn’t
feature “rugged” characters at all. LOL Both of my steampunk heroes
have a fairytale politesse and a certain androgyny because of the
period of the story and the kind of men they are. Not feminine per
se, but definitely more restrained and refined. But they ARE men. In
my eyes, the trick is to make sure that the inherent maleness
of the character connects to the reader and drives the characters
actions.
On that tip, I get very impatient with
men not being written AS men (whether they’re written my men or
women, btw). Even the most fragile, winsome cross-dressing male IS a
man. And even the most gruff, barbaric meathead has tenderness
and delicacy in him. That isn’t a function of what KIND of man, but
a measure of the author’s skill, craft, and talent. The familiar
made new again. I believe that the paradoxes and refreshing
surprises draw us in as readers. I could never ONLY write alpha
characters because for me
character and plot are the same thing. A story like
Hot Head
demands a stoic, heroic character; a fragile boy-man couldn’t have
existed as Griff, a passive androgyne would never have acted as
Dante did. Griff and Dante were the plot and vice versa. The minute
I have a plot/character that falls outside of alpha territory (like
Spring Eternal) I trust my characters to lead me the right way.
The thing is, I don’t believe that
readers NEED an alpha hero to connect. Any more than every meal
needs to be your “favorite” food. Eating your favorite meal every
day kills your taste buds and your appetite. That’s how children
think of food: “Give me what I want in the ways with which I’m
familiar.” I believe that what readers really want is a feeling of
powerful authenticity. Darcy in
Pride & Prejudice is
arguably the greatest romantic hero of all time, and he isn’t
“macho” in the least. However, he is supremely appealing, gifted,
and potent in his own context. Context and specificity are
the rubric.
So it’s not that all romance readers
need grunting knuckle-draggers with cocks the size of waste-baskets.
To my mind, what they truly want is any character that feels
authentic. Authenticity and believability are thin on the ground
these days, and triply so in romance fiction. In gay romance especially we
hear all the time about people who got tired of feeble, unbelievable
female characters who drove them into the welcoming arms of
homoerotic romance. It makes sense,
what does gender matter
if the character connects to us and we empathize in turn?
So for my part: I’ll write any story
and the plot/character at the core of a story determines the course.
Are alphas popular? Sure. But then so is
Baywatch. LOL Every moment
of entertainment doesn’t have to be Pamela Anderson running in slow
motion. And every romantic hero doesn’t need to be a shaved ape.
Are there any sub-genres or story
themes that you’re most interested in?
Worlds that are fresh, characters that
are singular. Lateral recycling is one of the things that frustrates
me most in genre fiction. I love almost every subgenre when they’re
fresh and specific. My favorite books remain the ones that reinvent
the rules and honor the form without resorting to formula.
As I get older, my pickiness deepens.
If I can identify the DNA of your story, I’m going to spend half of
my time comparing it to every other story in the breed, for good or
ill. It stands to reason that in fictions that fall along a spectrum
of tastes and tropes, certain things will rise to the surface:
vampires will brood, shifters will mate, angsty cops will rush into
certain danger to save what they love most. I get that! But that
challenge makes for the best and worst of genre writing as readers
and writers get stick in endless grooves that railroad narratives
towards a destination with all the excitement of a golf cart
marathon.
So as a reader and a writer, I’m
endlessly searching-searching-searching for distinct voices and
reinventions. Clichés are death, but reinvented clichés can push the
world in startling directions. Whether you like them or loathe them,
you can trace the chromosomal similarities that link
Twilight to
Underworld to
Lestat to Dracula in all
its reinventions. The strongest mutations are the ones that adapted
to their environment, reflecting the space and the time of their
creation. M/M has evolved drastically in the past 5 years, and (like
any healthy species) will continue to do so to survive. :)
How did you get into writing LGBT
romance? What drew you to the genre?
I came to fiction by way of theatre
and film, and I’ve written for as long as I have known what stories
were. I love entertaining people and I grew up in showbusiness. I
want to build worlds that people want to visit, and spend most of my
life doing exactly that.
I came to gay romance almost
backwards. I’ve been reading gay lit and by extension gay romance
since the early 1980s (cf my demented
Gordon Merrick paean at my website), but even
as LGBT romance grew as a discreet entity, I enjoyed it as a fan.
Then in Fall 2010 I was helping a friend break down the beats in an
erotic romance she’d started and after about three days or
conversations she pinned me with a glare and told me if I didn’t
write a romance novel myself that I was (and I quote) “a lazy
asshole.” At the time my boyfriend, who’s a forensic investigator,
was out of town on a big case and I just plunked down and started
writing what would become
Hot Head.
And that was that.
Writing romance fiction turned out to
be enormously liberating. Once I’d had a chance to explore and play
I literally built it into my other writing work. In theatre and
film, the structures and oversight can get a little stifling, but
gay romance gave me a chance to take all these weird experimental
risks. Even better, lessons I learned in the romance writing leaked
over into my “dayjob” scripts. Win-win!
What is your favorite archetypal
character type to write? What types of characters interest you as
both reader and writer?
Characters that go against the grain,
people that defy expectations…
I always want to know what makes the
big, butch Alpha whimper like a puppy and when the most fragile
twink becomes an aggressive, sadistic top. I’m always looking for
the friction between what we expect and what we find. That endless
rub (for me) generates every degree of the heat we seek in stories.
As a consequence, my characters (and their emotions) tend to be
larger than life. I can’t abide mushy, beige folks in my
day-to-dy life so I’m
certainly not going to go out of my way to eulogize them in print!
LOL
Now, that habit of mine can get me
into trouble, because television has bred unbelievably boring,
homogenous ideas about human capacity into us. I refuse to
capitulate to the prejudices of a bunch of suits in Burbank, dammit!
Human relationships fascinate us because they are subtle,
complicated, and distinct. Romance fiction (thank all the gods)
gives authors a chance to play out big emotions and big ideas in
ways that buck the status quo. Like opera and poetry, and modern
dance, romance pushes the limits of human expression; it doesn’t
“give us unrealistic expectations,” but rather teaches its
readers to ask for MORE from the world around them. So mote it be!
What are your hopes/expectations for
the growth for your work in the romance industry? Would you like to
keep it small to moderate sized or work with larger publishers?
Dreamspinner published my first novel
Hot Head
and they were and are
wonderful to work with. At every step of the process, they bent over
backwards to bring the book to market the right way. Elizabeth
(North) has been amazing through all our work together. At the same
time, as I started thinking about my next book, some of my upcoming
projects didn’t “feel” like Dreamspinner books. Dunno. That was
instinctive more than anything. As the romance genre has evolved the
various houses have developed a kind of house flavor (and rightly
so).
Bottom line: LGBT fiction continues to
evolve at breakneck speed, and I think the readers' vision of the
possibilities opens up all kinds of new terrain. The collective
experience and intelligence stack the odds greatly in indie
publisher's favor. I’m very much looking forward to seeing the
genre community diversify…
Have you co-authored anything? What
do you think are the pros and cons of that scenario? Are you looking
to co-author in the future?
I’ve co-written things in my other
life as a screenwriter and playwright. And since
Hot Head
came out, I’ve had a few people approach me about co-writing
projects and I’m sure I’ll wind up collaborating at some point. But
on the whole, I think the process might prove difficult mainly
because of my pace and my work style. I’ve always had a strong
authorial voice and a very weird approach to artistic problems.
One of the things I love about fiction
is the autonomy. Working at your desk gives you latitude for
invention and rapid strategizing without having to consult
producers, directors, etc. On the other hand, I LOVE collaborating
with people on creative projects because of the unexpected insights
and cross-pollination. SO call it a definite maybe… I’m curious to
see how splitting a romance novel would affect the final outcome and
it would depend on the project. As I say, several people have opened
the door and I’m sure some of those will go somewhere.
The spark of minds rubbing together
can change the world. That’s a lesson I’ve learned from the
entertainment business: creative partnerships keep writers sane and
solvent; like all partnerships, the longer they last and grow the
greater the benefit to everyone.
Cover design is one of the big
issues for many ebook publishers/authors. What direction are you
going as far as cover design? Are there any major dos and don’ts?
Gay romance publishers have definitely
begun to respect “branding” elements that identify a book as an LGBT
love story but raising the bar on what covers need to be and how
they operate in the marketplace. “Incredibly smart,” says me.
What’s impressed me most about the
industry's approach is the goal of identifying fresh, fierce artists
that will bring something new to the genre table. Very much in
keeping with their ethos and mission statement… and I applaud their
tenacity and vision. Gay romance covers have improved so
dramatically in the past three years. That increased sophistication
(and the simultaneous saturation) means the genre MUST keep pushing
the envelope as far as artwork.
What constitutes a “good” or even
“great” novel for you. What are you looking for in a story?
Specificity.
The single most important factor that elevates a novel from a B to
an A+ is the attention and effort required to invest a world with
believable detail.
When readers complain about
“cookie-cutter” romances, when critics bitch about formula and
familiarity, when editors gripe about sloppy, underimagined prose…
what they’re all lamenting is a lack of specificity in a story. As a
reader or a reviewer, I can usually tell within a page if the author
paid attention… Frankly THEY know it just as well. No one
accidentally forgets to do
substantive research or to eliminate clichés from their dialogue.
Sloppiness is as much a choice as anything else but people don’t
bother because they figure it doesn’t matter. That makes me nuts:
EVERYTHING MATTERS! As my agent always says, “Good enough isn’t.”
Gay romance continues to battle a
tricky situation at present. Since it grew out of yaoi, and slash
and other fanfictions, LGBT romance has friendly populist roots
which are more forgiving about things like editorial scrutiny and
fact checking. At the same time, LGBT romance has finally begun to
inch towards the possibility of “mass-market” presence. I think
that’s probably a couple decades out, but evolution doesn’t happen
in an afternoon. In order to survive and thrive as a business rather
than a hobby, gay romance has pulled on its big-boy pants and ACTED
like a business. But in 2011, we exist in an odd Wild West mindset
where fresh incursions from both sides of the conflict (passionate
fandom vs. corporate competition) rock the boat often.
As far as heat levels what can the
readers expect from your novels? Will there be less erotic/non
erotic romances or should a certain level of explicitness be
expected?
I pretty frank about things, sexuality
especially. I like heat in my romance, but I also know the
difference between erotic romance and flat-out erotica. Having said
that, I also believe that some of the sexiest things you can write
have nothing to do with tab-A, slot-B permutations. Sexiness and
emotion can coexist and sometimes they even should. LOL In romance,
the ways people connect, whether by genital or
gentler intimacies present
the greatest appeal of the genre. The old myth that men write sex
and women write emotion is stereotyping hogwash.
Case in point: with
Hot Head,
I get almost as much turned-on fan-mail about the heroes’ first
kiss as I do about the
more overt boning, of which there is plenty though not how you might
expect. Oddly enough, before the book even came out I got a couple
very odd “pre-reviews” which described how prurient and detached the
book was bound to be since I was *cue
ominous chord* a MAN writing about PORN. (gasp!
shock! horror!) And of course when the book released, it
was none of those things… though almost every reader commented on
the “maleness” of the writing. Then again,
Hot Head
inhabits a very macho, blue-collar world…
Grown Men
has a similar testosteronal quality, but its diction differs like
you wouldn’t believe because the men demanded it. The book I’m
finishing now is wildly different tone and the sex likewise.
As in life, the world and the lovers
dictate the shape of the lovemaking. What do they say about the way
lions and rabbits mate? The predator pressure sets the pace.
I’m sure my “maleness” factors in because that’s part of my voice,
but in a different way than it did with
Hot Head’s
inarticulate firefighters or the brooding, paranoid terraformers in
Grown Men.
Sexiness will always
inform any romance I’m writing, although the amount of literal
sex will vary story to
story, character to character.
For the future, will you be
exclusively an M/M romance author, or are you planning on moving
into either M/F, F/F, or even non-romance genres?
At the moment I’m all about the gay
romance. The truth is, in the rest of my work life I write so much
and at such lengths, that gay romance is a perfect creative escape.
It stands to reason, I am a gay man! I love romances! The funny
thing is that I read straight and lesbian romance for pleasure, but since I haven’t met
any of my own characters that need to tell a story in those genre
frameworks I’ll say No…
for now, with the
caveat that all it would take would be a story to which I couldn’t
say no. I have had a couple publishers approach me about it and if
the right story appeared I’d happily go there…
When talking about explicit love
scenes, what makes a love scene ‘bad’ in your opinion? What makes it
great?
Ummm, you know what I’m gonna say
right? :) Specificity great! Generality awful!
Bad love scenes fail because they rely
on cliché or banality to convey the “sense” that something like love
or sex is transpiring, when we know full well it ain’t. By
definition, a cliché (and generality) is antithetical to
friction. These
sinkholes exist in language to elide and lubricate so that
everything can go down easy, so no one gets ruffled, so nothing is
too hard or to interesting.
Sentimental platitudes and porno dialogue are EASY, and therefore
they don’t produce imaginal friction for the reader, so in turn they
don’t generate any heat either as literature or as titillation.
Clichés sound silly and boring for a reason. Hell, even PORN sucks
when it relies on clichés (“oh yeah…that’s hot… harder…pound me...”
snore). Everything in life
is improved by singular specificity. This is where
bourgie television has
mutilated our diction and crappy porn has bludgeoned our erotic
selves into zombiehood.
You know what excites people, what
readers remember, what gets people’s attention?
Specifics. The easiest way to guarantee a great love scene is to
find the friction between two people who are strong and singular who
relate to each other in ways that only THEY can specifically.
Friction is the source of all
energy whether it’s in the powerplant or the bedroom. Which is why
no one remembers anything from a crappy love scene, but the entire
world can identify the source of “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a
damn,” or the refrigerator scene from
9½ Weeks. Specificity.
Is there any one specific thing you
want the readers to expect from romance publishers?
MORE! And also better. LOL
Too often in our genre, I hear people
make excuses for shoddy work and half-assed solutions for whatever
reason.
Writers deserve wider audiences. Readers deserve better books. Books deserve mindful handling. Publishers deserve success when they eschew following the trends to set them. We all should expect more from each other, readers, writers, publishers and the world beyond. Become the change! etc. etc. Good enough isn’t. The Wild West melee of e-publishing has begun to wane. Actually, publishing at large (and literacy besides) is molting and mutating as I type this.
Our offerings will only survive and thrive by adapting to the environment and getting better every day in every way we can possibly manage. Mind the current and keep your eyes on the horizon… :)
Copyright 2011. Damon Suede. All Rights Reserved
If you wish to republish this interview, just drop me a line.
