In preparation for a lot of scholarly writing about romance novels I’m doing this summer, I’m reading many variations on the definition of popular romance fiction. Janice Radway, in her very out-of-date Reading the Romance, defines popular romance fiction as a story with a “slowly but consistently developing love between hero and heroine” that culminates in a “happy ending” (67). Deborah Chappel, in her important dissertation, defines the romance as a novel in which “the central conflict is always about the love relationship between the hero and heroine and the hero and heroine always end up together” (7-8). Pamela Regis, in her brilliant A Natural History of the Romance Novel, defines romance as “a work of prose fiction that tells the story of the courtship and betrothal of one or more heroines” (22).
While we can quibble with Chappel’s definition (what about romantic suspense in which a conflict about terrorists or murderers is as important to the story as character conflict?) and with Radway’s (what about short stories? or those that take place in a week?), the issue that concerns me this morning is the other common thread in these definitions: hero and heroine, hero and heroine, and for Regis, just heroine, heroine, heroine.
Two of the most emotionally satisfying romances I’ve read recently (and by recently, I mean in the last year or two) are compelling precisely because they represent the best of what it means to be a romance. They focus exclusively on the conflicts between two brilliantly-drawn characters who have faults and make mistakes — large ones — in their progress to mutual love and understanding. The characters are brilliantly rendered, the conflict is internal to the characters and exquisitely tense. The themes encompass friendship, betrayal, forgiveness, and ruthless ambition. The characters mature emotionally and learn that what is most important to them is the other person. The writing is layered and artful. The sex is hot.
And in Matthew Haldeman-Time’s Off the Record and Chris Owen’s short story, “Carbon and Ash”, both protagonists are male.
You saw that one coming, right? 
Gay male romance comes to the romance scene from slash and fan fiction which is written and read almost exclusively by heterosexual women. Gay male romance for women is published almost exclusively by e-publishers (Torquere Press especially, but Ellora’s Cave, Samhain, Amber Quill, Liquid Silver, Loose Id and others have all jumped on the very profitable bandwagon). And while there are certainly gay male romances written by and for men (the Romentics immediately spring to mind, but there are others), they are not specifically marketed to women like those of the e-presses we know and love.
Popular romance fiction is rightly portrayed as a source of power for its female readers. That power, however, is more often than not located by critics and by readers in the heroine. This might represent a reclaiming by romance-positive critics of what has been most derided. Early romance critics claimed that popular romance fiction “extinguishes its own heroine” and “binds readers in their marriages or encourages them to get married” (Regis 10). Pamela Regis counters these arguments by claiming that the power of romance is located in the fact that the “heroine is freed and the reader rejoices” (15).
How then do I explain my own obsession with the romance hero, let alone my emotional reaction to Haldeman-Time’s and Owen’s stories, which I believe perfectly depict the struggle, freedom, and power of a close, sexual, trusting romantic relationship, just as Austen’s Pride and Prejudice does, or Laura Kinsale’s For My Lady’s Heart? More broadly, if the power of romance is located in our reaction to the heroine and her journey, whence our apparently widespread obsession with heroes (J.R. Ward’s Brotherhood, Suzanne Brockmann’s SEALs, Stephanie Lauren’s Cynster series to name but a few)?
In gay male romances, there are no heroines. There are just men, struggling through their own preconceptions and flaws to find a rare and beautiful love that just happens to be with another man. Does the fact that a heroine need not apply make these romances any less romantic? Some would argue “Absolutely!” on what they deem to be “moral” grounds, but I (obviously) don’t agree — I think love is love, no matter how the individuals choose to express it and a well-written story is a well-written story (Joey Hill’s exquisitely-written BDSM romances also come to mind here). But is the feminine power we find in romances as readers (and I assume as writers) diminished because there is no heroine?
I argue that the power is in fact increased. The heroine “wins” in romance precisely because the hero learns to accept the necessity of love as a governing force in his life. The heroine’s triumph is located in teaching the hero to love. So when two men have to learn that, without the help of a woman, that’s double the power. The man and all he represents is vanquished by love – twice!
One last definition might help clear some of this up. The RWA defines popular romance fiction as a containing a “central love story” and an “emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending.” Nowhere in the extended definition is the gender of characters mentioned and that is, for me, as it should be. Love is love and its power doesn’t require a certain combination of twiddly bits to satisfy my needs as a romance reader.
Hi Sarah,
I agree that love is love is love.
But I either don’t understand or do understand and just don’t agree with this:
“The heroine “wins” in romance precisely because the hero learns to accept the necessity of love as a governing force in his life.”
…as an indication of the hero’s mindset. Obviously we’ll be talking in generalisations here because every romance book is different (whole ‘nother topic) but I’ve read many a romance - and particularly with respect to recent contemporaries and historicals - where it’s either both protagonists denying the need for love in general or with that specific person; or the woman fighting the need for love in general or with that specific man. I don’t read about many clueless men.
In addition:
“The heroine’s triumph is located in teaching the hero to love. So when two men have to learn that, without the help of a woman, that’s double the power.”
…makes men sound like hopeless love-stunted cases, with character growth only relevant to the male and the female as all-wise with respect to matters of the heart.
I just don’t come across books like that…anymore
Because of the above, I’m finding it hard to accept the link between increased feminine power and all-male romances. Men in romance seem to be capable of recognising love’s importance regardless of whether the significant other is male or female!
by Dalia June 5th, 2007 at 7:36 amDalia, yes, I left out that the heroine learns and grows and matures, too. In fact, the best (heterosexual) romances have the hero and heroine learning from and in conjunction with each other. But I think we must read different books otherwise. Generally, the books I seek out (and I read the ending before I buy them!) are those in which the emotional culmination of the entire novel rests on the hero’s realization that he loves the heroine and can’t do without her. This does not preclude the heroine’s similar realization, but in the narratives I enjoy, the hero’s realization is more important. Susan Elizabeth Phillips does this well: the heroine always realizes that she loves the her but can survive (although unhappily) without him because she is whole in and of herself, while the hero realizes he is unable to live without the heroine and struggles for a way to keep her in his life as the love of his life. I think one of the most compelling images I’ve ever read is Heath Champion from Match Me If You Can on the pier at the end of the book, completely dejected, with his balloons flying away from him, broken and unfulfilled until the heroine learns she can trust him (see, heroine learning too, but emotional connection with hero).
So, heroines by no means all-wise, but I think heroes and heroines learn different things in romances.
by Sarah S. G. Frantz June 5th, 2007 at 8:21 amAh, *light bulb*
Heroes and heroines do learn different things in romances, I agree. Though my romances of late do fall more on the chick-litty/women-fictiony side of the scale (wrt heroine mindset), I haven’t read many scenes where it’s the woman grovelling for the man’s forgiveness but there have been a lot of woebegone men crying into their whisky.
But not to deviate from your original topic point: love is love is love for sure.
by Dalia June 5th, 2007 at 8:45 amMs. Franz said- *The heroine “wins” in romance precisely because the hero learns to accept the necessity of love as a governing force in his life. The heroine’s triumph is located in teaching the hero to love.*
The above sentences are all that I take issue with. I taught my man *nothing* about governing his life by love. He *already* knew that. I couldn’t respect a man who needed to be taught about love, and I couldn’t fall in love with a man I didn’t respect.
Sure, I’ve started romance novels with the kind of relationship with the man needing to learn how to love, but I’ve never finished them. To me, romance is forming a mutual partnership of the heart and making it work.
by Anonymous June 5th, 2007 at 9:53 amBack in the sixties and seventies when it seemed all of the Star Trek fanfic (and one major novel from Pocket complete with embossed cover) was Kirk/Spock slash a lot of us guys were trying to figure out why heterosexual women were enthralled by male/male romance.
The model we came up with — and by “we” I mean an intensely dedicated adolescent researchers closely observing females with whom we couldn’t get to first base being driven steamy by Kirk and Spock gazing longingly into each other’s eyes — was that it was like pictures with two girls for us. Everything you want with no competition. Pretty simplistic, but this theory was developed around the time we were working on earning our learner’s permit.
However, I gotta say that theory still stands up. I’ve commented before that the men in romances do not behave like men, they behave the way women wished men would behave. However, as a male reader of romances, I can get past that by accepting the unbelievable concept of guys discussing their feelings honestly is one of the conventions of the genre. The story usually carries me through the wistful reminiscence of the beloved’s spunky spirit and quirky smile while reloading to meet the next wave of rabid drug cartel gunmen. Partly because, though I would never talk about it, ferchrisakes, I can understand feeling that way.
Which may speak to why male/male romances don’t work for me as a reader. Not only are the guys talking like no human male I know, I can’t understand the feelings involved. I’m unable to separate the physicality from the emotional, I guess. No criticism of the subgenre — I’m just not the target market for gay male/male romances aimed at heterosexual women. (But it’s useful to know there are some good titles/writers out there. Now I can name-drop them and sound like I know what I’m talking about.)
by KeVin Killiany June 5th, 2007 at 9:56 amI’m still mulling this over, but I think in general I choose different romances from the ones you choose, Sarah. In quite a lot of the romances I read both hero and heroine are wary of falling in love precisely because both of them are aware of its power, often because both have been hurt by it in the past. I also quite like romances where the hero falls in love first and the heroine’s the one who seems more resistant/takes longer to realise what she’s feeling. Austen’s Emma’s an example of that type of situation.
I’m also wondering how you get from ‘the feminine power we find in romances’ to ‘Love is love and its power doesn’t require a certain combination of twiddly bits’ without dropping the ‘feminine’ from the power. In other words, I’m wondering if you’re thinking of the power of love as somehow essentially feminine, because otherwise, although a male/male romance written by a male author may show the power of love doubled, there’s nothing in there that’s particularly about feminine power.
by Laura Vivanco June 5th, 2007 at 11:08 amAnonymous, I didn’t teach my partner anything about the necessity of love, either, but that’s what I look for in my romances. I did teach him HOW to love, though, and he me: how to love in this particular relationship. But if you look at the success of Feehan’s Carpathian series, for instance, where the men just don’t feel until they meet their One True Mate, or J.R. Ward’s Blackdagger Brotherhood, where the men are afraid to feel for anyone, or any of the other series that focus on the male characters and communities, rather than the female connections (Jennifer Crusie, Eloisa James, Jayne Ann Krentz), most of them are big, bad alpha males who have to be taught to feel and then to enjoy their feelings and then the necessity of their feelings for their continued survival as the person they want to be. Romance is a fantasy, remember!
by Sarah S. G. Frantz June 5th, 2007 at 11:14 amLaura, your final paragraph is exactly it, really. That’s the question I’m trying to figure out. I’ve read some gay male “romance” novels, written by and for gay men, shelved in General Fiction and not marketed for women at all, and I haven’t enjoyed any of them yet. Mostly the writing is pretty bad (as can be found in hetero-romances, as we all know), but something’s missing for me emotionally that I get from the gay male romances marketed for women. But what is it that I’m getting or not getting? That’s the question I thought I’d throw out there.
by Sarah S. G. Frantz June 5th, 2007 at 11:17 amSo is it that the ‘gay male “romance” novels shelved in General Fiction aren’t really romance? Maybe they’re really a different genre, e.g. erotica or literary fiction?
I don’t think it’s that men can’t write romance, because some do, and the two examples you give here seem to be men, at least judging by the names (though I know that could be misleading, as people do sometimes write using pen names). And it’s not as though there aren’t men who read romance so I don’t think there’s some intrinsic link between the modern romance genre and women, it’s just that it’s predominantly been a genre written for and by women.
by Laura Vivanco June 5th, 2007 at 11:33 amI wouldn’t say they aren’t romance, I’d just say that they’re not romance specifically for women and I’d love to figure out the difference.
I’m pretty sure Chris Owen is female, and pretty sure MHT is male, FWIW. But not 100% on either.
by Sarah S. G. Frantz June 5th, 2007 at 11:40 amThere’s a lot to disagree with here, and I’m a writer of gay romance and have been for years. I also wrote fanfic once but I have to heartily disagree that gay romance has come from slash and fanfic.
Gay romance has been around for thousands of years, and I could give you a list should you so require. The fact that it was illegal since the medieval era didn’t mean that people stopped writing it either, they just wrote it so as to be more circumspect. But even when it was still very much illegal it was gaining popularity in the mainstream (The Charioteer for example was written in the 1950’s)
I utterly refute the generalisation that it’s written by women for women. My writing (and particularly my novel) is being read by many many gay men and I get emails from them from all over the world. Even straight men have read it and enjoyed it.
I’ve read hard core gay porn written by gay men and straight women, and I’ve read “chicks with dicks” style romance written by straight men, straight women, lesbians and gay men. There is no “one group” of people writing this, take that from me, and they aren’t writing for any particular group, as I’m sure my peers will attest to.
You just can’t generalise.
As to this “power” - I don’t understand the concept. What is it? What does it mean? Why is it in the woman? Why are you asking whether the feminine is lost if you agree that love is love no matter what the gender? Why do men need “teaching” about love? Why would they need a woman to do that, and why would they find it harder without one?
I write historical gay romance in the main, and the joy in it for me is to deal with the problems that it produces, illegality and scandal being the tip of the iceberg. Even hetero men have (since Grecian times at least and probably long before that) always been aware that a purely male relationship is something unique and brings something to it that a heterosexual relationship cannot.
Sarah S. G. Frantz: What books have you tried? I highly recommend “Gaywyck” by Vincent Virga, or “Master of Seacliff” by Max Pierce. Both written by men and very beautiful.
Of course the pinnacle of gay love is represented (imho) by “At Swim Two Boys” by O’Neill, which should be the first book that anyone dabbling in gay love should read.
by Erastes June 5th, 2007 at 11:42 amErastes, sorry if I came off glib. I tried to avoid it, but I guess I didn’t succeed.
First of all, I said “Gay male romance came to the romance scene…” That probably should have read romance-for-women scene. I’m certainly not trying to claim that gay literature and/or gay romance is new.
As a scholar of 18thC lit who is interested in the construction of gender, I am fully aware of the long history of gay literature and I’ve read some of what’s probably on your list.
But here I am discussing (or at least trying to) gay male romance written by and marketed specifically for women, written specifically within the conventions of popular romance fiction, which is written almost exclusively by and for women, which I think is a slightly different beast.
I am also fully aware of the male authors of some of the stories I read that are published by the e-publishers I frequent (Josh Lanyon, James Buchanan, Sean Michaels, etc., many of them to be found here”), but I think they’re aware of the romance conventions and write with them in mind. I’ll bet their audience is at least 50/50 hetero-women and gay-men, maybe even leaning more toward the hetero-women end of the scale.
I think part of the issue here is that some gay male romances follow the romance genre conventions and some just don’t. As a reader, whatever the twiddly bits, I expect the conventions, and if I don’t get them, I’m not emotionally satisfied by the stories.
FWIW, as a reader and a scholar, I’m much more interested in the depiction of the hero than the heroine. I think all the power of the romance, for me, and for many more readers, is located in the hero coming to love. So I’m arguing precisely that, in a specific and large sub-set of romance novels, the power of romance is NOT located in the heroine, not located in the feminine, but in the way the masculine must mature to accept love as a primary necessity in life. Many other readers I know (Laura above, for example, and Eric Selinger, our colleague) read romances for the heroines. I don’t–I read for the heroes, which I think is why gay male romances (marketed for women, with a strong understanding of the romance conventions that WERE created by and for women) appeal to me so much.
I’ve tried to read Master of Seacliff. I was intrigued by the storyline and was very much looking forward to the gothic intertextuality I was promised, but I found the writing so trite and overblown, and the characters so stereotypical and overdrawn that I couldn’t manage to do more than read the first few chapters and flip through the rest. Strong plot, but the writing, characters, and, I think, the romance were weak. I’ll have to look for Gaywyck, although I’ve certainly heard of it. Thank you for the recommendation.
by Sarah S. G. Frantz June 5th, 2007 at 12:14 pmAargh! What a time not to be able to post. Let’s try this again….
Erastes, sorry if I came off glib. I tried to avoid it, but I guess I didn’t succeed.
First of all, I said “Gay male romance came to the romance scene…” That probably should have read romance-for-women scene. I’m certainly not trying to claim that gay literature and/or gay romance is new.
As a scholar of 18thC lit who is interested in the construction of gender, I am fully aware of the long history of gay literature and I’ve read some of what’s probably on your list.
But here I am discussing (or at least trying to) gay male romance written by and marketed specifically for women, written specifically within the conventions of popular romance fiction, which is written almost exclusively by and for women, which I think is a slightly different beast.
I am also fully aware of the male authors of some of the stories I read that are published by the e-publishers I frequent (Josh Lanyon, James Buchanan, Sean Michaels, etc., many of them to be found here”), but I think they’re aware of the romance conventions and write with them in mind. I’ll bet their audience is at least 50/50 hetero-women and gay-men, maybe even leaning more toward the hetero-women end of the scale.
I think part of the issue here is that some gay male romances follow the romance genre conventions and some just don’t. As a reader, whatever the twiddly bits, I expect the conventions, and if I don’t get them, I’m not emotionally satisfied by the stories.
FWIW, as a reader and a scholar, I’m much more interested in the depiction of the hero than the heroine. I think all the power of the romance, for me, and for many more readers, is located in the hero coming to love. So I’m arguing precisely that, in a specific and large sub-set of romance novels, the power of romance is NOT located in the heroine, not located in the feminine, but in the way the masculine must mature to accept love as a primary necessity in life. Many other readers I know (Laura above, for example, and Eric Selinger, our colleague) read romances for the heroines. I don’t–I read for the heroes, which I think is why gay male romances (marketed for women, with a strong understanding of the romance conventions that WERE created by and for women) appeal to me so much.
I’ve tried to read Master of Seacliff. I was intrigued by the storyline and was very much looking forward to the gothic intertextuality I was promised, but I found the writing so trite and overblown, and the characters so stereotypical and overdrawn that I couldn’t manage to do more than read the first few chapters and flip through the rest. Strong plot, but the writing, characters, and, I think, the romance were weak. I’ll have to look for Gaywyck, although I’ve certainly heard of it. Thank you for the recommendation.
by Sarah S. G. Frantz June 5th, 2007 at 12:16 pmI’m still pondering this, but here are my latest thoughts.
It seems to me, Sarah, that when you describe your m/f romance reading, you’re choosing a specific kind of romance, one which shows the hero being ‘tamed’ by love. And because it’s a man being ‘tamed’, that’s traditionally been interpreted as being a triumph of the feminine. I’m thinking now of the ‘taming’ as triumph of the heroine as outlined in a number of the essays in Dangerous Men, Adventurous Women.
So, when you find a similar ‘taming’ of two heroes in m/m, it feels similar to you, even though the taming isn’t happening through the person of a heroine.
What I’m wondering about, from what you said about the marketing to women, is that maybe in general, it’s women who more likely to enjoy seeing men ‘tamed’, perhaps as a response to patriarchal oppression (that’s what the authors in DMAV seemed to suggest). But clearly not all women enjoy this scenario (it’s not something I particularly look for when I’m choosing romances to read, for example) and there may be some men who do.
It could be argued, though, that even in the stories about a hero who’s ‘tamed’ by the heroine, it’s really the power of love which tames him, not the heroine. So love works through her, rather than her being the personification of a female force. And if that sounds all very religious, you can blame it on the fact that I spent some time looking for pictures of Venus for the TMT blog - but Cupid and Eros are male Love Gods, so it’s not as though historically Love is solely associated with the feminine.
As an aside, I find E. M. Forster’s Maurice very romantic, though it’s not precisely a romance because a lot of it is about the hero’s life before he meets his hero.
by Laura Vivanco June 5th, 2007 at 12:17 pmWhat Laura said.
I’ve posted a long response to Erastes, but it got eaten by spam-blockers and I’m not sure what to do about it.
FWIW, non-hero-centric romances are also about the triumph of the heroine, but there it’s a different type of triumph. I’d certainly say Jenny Crusie’s books are triumphant, but not the same way as a novel by a JR Ward or Suzanne Brockmann.
by Sarah S. G. Frantz June 5th, 2007 at 12:23 pmErastes, your peers do not necessarily agree with you.
Look at what Sarah actually said:
“Gay male romance comes to the *romance* scene”
i.e. to a specific marketing genre. (Though I’d take issue with the idea that slash is written and read almost exclusively by heterosexual women, because a lot of the women concerned are bi or lesbian.) There’s a long history of gay romance, and much of it was written by men for men, yes. But there’s also been a recent upsurge of m/m romance written for women and marketed within romance-as-a-marketing-genre, and a lot of it is written by people who were active in slash. Less so now as other writers see it as a profitable niche and try it out, but most of the original wave that I personally know came out of slash.
I want my romances to appeal to gay men, and I’m very glad that they’re read and enjoyed by gay men, but my primary audience is other women. Note — “primary”. Not “only”. That’s the sort of material that’s now showing up in romance considered as a marketing genre with a female primary audience.
I also write material for publishers who are specifically catering to a gay male audience, but it tends not to be romance. A lot of those publishers don’t want romance, because they don’t see it as something their audience wants. My fan mail and the discussion I see online says there’s more of a market than they think.
by Jules Jones June 5th, 2007 at 12:30 pmHope I get my italics right this time…
FWIW, non-hero-centric romances are also about the triumph of the heroine, but there it’s a different type of triumph. I’d certainly say Jenny Crusie’s books are triumphant, but not the same way as a novel by a JR Ward or Suzanne Brockmann.
I think you’re right about Crusie. In Bet Me, for example, you’ve got two protagonists, one male and one female, both of whom almost literally have to get beaten over the head by Fate before they’ll admit that they love each other. Neither of the protagonists tames the other (though possibly Fate/Love tames both of them :wink:) but both Cal and Min end up triumphant because each helps the other to overcome past trauma/fears related to their family history.
My feeling (and I haven’t read any Ward or Brockmann yet) is that in stories about the alpha hero who is tamed, the hero is usually arrogant/over-confident and so a bit of taming/humbling is an essential part of his character arc. But where the hero isn’t this sort of alpha (and I know we always get tangled up in definitions of ‘alpha’, so I’m a bit wary of using the term) then there’s no need for him to be humbled so the heroine’s ‘triumph’ take a different form e.g. Min defies her mother by eating carbs, accepts her bodyshape as it is and learns that she can be sexy.
by Laura Vivanco June 5th, 2007 at 12:35 pmOkay, so now I’m wondering:
by KeVin Killiany June 5th, 2007 at 12:54 pmAre there differences in structure, conventions or tropes between male/male romances written for women and male/male romances written for men?
I guess I was guilty of generalising too.
But gay romance doesn’t come to the *romance* scene from fan ficcers, it was on the scene, even the romance scene long before slash etc. There are many many people writing it but they ain’t all ficcers. Some, yes, I’ll admit that - and there will be many many more because I’m trying to winkle them out of fandom on a daily basis, my point was that the gay romance (using the RWAs own definition, even if there weren’t actual books with “this is gay romance” stamped on the back) was alive and well long before fanfic came along. I can’t speak for the epubs, though, as I don’t have much knowledge of who is in there, so in that respect, I dare say you are right.
Jules, as with anything, I think it depends on the publisher - when I was pitching Standish I had quite a few publishers who wanted me to change the books in several ways, make the ending more obvious, heat up the sex, tone down the sex, whatever.
I agree with you that the publishers are rather short sighted in not thinking that men want romance - the reason The Scotts started up was the fact that they coudn’t find the stories they wanted to read anywhere - quite the best way to start, CS Lewis used the same reasoning for writing Narnia.
I don’t know a single gay man who doesn’t enjoy reading romance - they - as a man - have told me many times that they don’t like the fact that people will lump them into only being interested in buying gay porn as opposed to romance.
I’ve noticed a swing in the pornier side of the market too, when I first started writing short stories the language was much coarser, the euphenisms rather… icky - but over the last 4 years I’ve noticed that plot and romance in a short story is often more noticable than wham bam thank you Stan.
by Erastes June 5th, 2007 at 1:11 pmI don’t know about tropes, but I bought several m/m romances and gave them to some of my gay buddies and let me tell you that much laughter ensued. It was like Mystery Science Theatre with cocktails. The end result was a general consensus that the protagonists were NOT men. They were chicks with dicks (much like most of us think that Sex in the City does not portray women, but gay men). The main bits that got riffed with the dialogue (“Men don’t talk like that, even sensitive gay ones.”) and the sex scenes (“My god, if that’s what an orgasm was like, who would bother” and “Has this woman every given a blow job?”). Let me just add that they weren’t any kinder about the het sex scenes in my book (“This is soooooooooo why I gave up sleeping with girls” *insert sniggering here*).
I’m guessing that m/m romances written by men for men might be very different creatures indeed . . .
by Kalen Hughes June 5th, 2007 at 1:25 pmThe gay men I know like reading romance, and some of them were reading slash fanfic because it was the only place they could find it if they wanted to read gay rather than het (and a lot of them were reading het romance as a substitute). I’ve had my share of the fan mail saying “thank god I’ve found some gay *romance*, I love your publisher forever”. But I do see men online saying “ew, take this mushy stuff out of my gay porn/literature”, and that seems to be the faction that the explicitly gay publishers are aiming at.
And now for a serious dose of sugar… one of those gay friends said last night that he was going to read Spindrift to his boyfriend. Now there’s a man who knows how to flatter a writer.
by Jules Jones June 5th, 2007 at 1:25 pmI seem unable to post long messages. So I’m going to try to do this in bits.
Erastes, sorry if I came off glib. I tried to avoid it, but I guess I didn’t succeed.
First of all, I said “Gay male romance came to the romance scene…” That probably should have read romance-for-women scene. I’m certainly not trying to claim that gay literature and/or gay romance is new.
by Sarah S. G. Frantz June 5th, 2007 at 1:56 pmAs a scholar of 18thC lit who is interested in the construction of gender, I am fully aware of the long history of gay literature and I’ve read some of what’s probably on your list.
But here I am discussing (or at least trying to) gay male romance written by and marketed specifically for women, written specifically within the conventions of popular romance fiction, which is written almost exclusively by and for women, which I think is a slightly different beast.
I am also fully aware of the male authors of some of the stories I read that are published by the e-publishers I frequent (Josh Lanyon, James Buchanan, Sean Michaels, etc., many of them to be found here”), but I think they’re aware of the romance conventions and write with them in mind. I’ll bet their audience is at least 50/50 hetero-women and gay-men, maybe even leaning more toward the hetero-women end of the scale.
I think part of the issue here is that some gay male romances follow the romance genre conventions and some just don’t. As a reader, whatever the twiddly bits, I expect the conventions, and if I don’t get them, I’m not emotionally satisfied by the stories.
by Sarah S. G. Frantz June 5th, 2007 at 1:58 pmBut here I am discussing (or at least trying to) gay male romance written by and marketed specifically for women, written specifically within the conventions of popular romance fiction, which is written almost exclusively by and for women, which I think is a slightly different beast.
I am also fully aware of the male authors of some of the stories I read that are published by the e-publishers I frequent (Josh Lanyon, James Buchanan, Sean Michaels, etc., many of them to be found here”), but I think they’re aware of the romance conventions and write with them in mind. I’ll bet their audience is at least 50/50 hetero-women and gay-men, maybe even leaning more toward the hetero-women end of the scale.
by Sarah S. G. Frantz June 5th, 2007 at 1:58 pmFWIW, as a reader and a scholar, I’m much more interested in the depiction of the hero than the heroine. I think all the power of the romance, for me, and for many more readers, is located in the hero coming to love. So I’m arguing precisely that, in a specific and large sub-set of romance novels, the power of romance is NOT located in the heroine, not located in the feminine, but in the way the masculine must mature to accept love as a primary necessity in life. Many other readers I know (Laura above, for example, and Eric Selinger, our colleague) read romances for the heroines. I don’t–I read for the heroes, which I think is why gay male romances (marketed for women, with a strong understanding of the romance conventions that WERE created by and for women) appeal to me so much.
by Sarah S. G. Frantz June 5th, 2007 at 1:59 pmI’ve tried to read Master of Seacliff. I was intrigued by the storyline and was very much looking forward to the gothic intertextuality I was promised, but I found the writing so trite and overblown, and the characters so stereotypical and overdrawn that I couldn’t manage to do more than read the first few chapters and flip through the rest. Strong plot, but the writing, characters, and, I think, the romance were weak. I’ll have to look for Gaywyck, although I’ve certainly heard of it. Thank you for the recommendation.
by Sarah S. G. Frantz June 5th, 2007 at 1:59 pmBut here I am discussing (or at least trying to) gay male romance written by and marketed specifically for women, written specifically within the conventions of popular romance fiction, which is written almost exclusively by and for women, which I think is a slightly different beast.
I think part of the issue here is that some gay male romances follow the romance genre conventions and some just don’t. As a reader, whatever the twiddly bits, I expect the conventions, and if I don’t get them, I’m not emotionally satisfied by the stories.
by Sarah S. G. Frantz June 5th, 2007 at 2:01 pmErastes, I think it’s fascinating that you perceive the language of gay male porn/romance to be toned down over the past few years. One trend in hetero-romance publishing that they’ve inherited/stolen from the erotic e-pubs is to sex up the language and to get much more explicit with the sex in mainstream books. Lots more “cocks” and “dicks” and even “pussies” and the other word (which I don’t have a problem with at all, but I know other people do) running around mainstream romances now than there were five years ago.
by Sarah S. G. Frantz June 5th, 2007 at 2:04 pmSarah - Your comments were caught in the spam filter. They’ve been released, apologies.
by Editor June 5th, 2007 at 3:15 pmLots more “cocks” and “dicks” and even “pussies” and the other word running around mainstream romances now than there were five years ago.
Thank god. If I read one more book with “man parts” (as in: She brushed against his man parts) I might have to stop reading romance entirely. That kind of namby-pamby language drives me batty.
by Kalen Hughes June 5th, 2007 at 3:18 pmIn my experience, love is love is, indeed, love, and men are men are men, whomever they choose to sleep with. Even the most effeminate gay man still isn’t a woman. He doesn’t think like a woman, and his emotional responses are not the responses of a woman. While some things are universal — love being one of them — the way male and female humans think about and express emotion tend to be distinct (with some overlaps, of course).
I’ve read my share of epubbed m/m romance, and the romance “tropes” seem to be there in spades — the meet cute, the mental lusting, the internal and external conflicts, the black moment, etc. However, the characterization often leaves me cold. Many (most?) of these protags aren’t any more true-to-life in terms of being “men” than many of the heroes in het romance. As