Celebrating GLBT Literature – Part Three
We’ll be continuing our series of celebrating the GLBT genre on Friday posts until all of the wonderful submissions we’ve gotten are shared. Some weeks we’ll offer more than one answer. This series has sparked a lot of interest and some great discussion already. Past weeks have reader Tam offered insight into m/m romance, and author Jules Aedin wanting to see more diversity. This week we have a new author and long time reader to share their thoughts in the dual role of reader and new writer in this genre.
What do you love about GLBT literature?
I’m so glad you clarified “GLBT literature” because that phrase brings to mind classic works like the ones on jessewave’s list, most of which I’ve not read. Hey, no one has ever accused me of having class. Also, while I appreciate what all the letters in GLBT stand for, I can only speak to the “G” element (the m/m).
In some ways, what I love about this literature is what I love about any literature: a good story and well-drawn characters.
I’ve been giving this a lot of thought (which is why it’s taken so long for me to respond), and I think what it comes down to is that I just enjoy two men together. That’s not terribly deep, and I wish I could respond with something brilliant and more meaningful. But I read for pleasure, and reading about men pleases me greatly.
I’ve grown disenchanted with the female protagonist over the years, with a few notable exceptions. I do like that strong, ass-kicking woman you find in urban fantasy and while she’s become her own stereotype, it’s quite different from the norm. She’s a bit more manly, yes? This probably goes hand in hand with my own journey of self-discovery, as I realize that even though I am definitely a woman, I’m not very feminine.
I love that you can find m/m in every genre, sci-fi, mystery, romance, etc. I’ve read a greater variety of story types since discovering m/m than I ever would have otherwise, and mostly I’ve been pleasantly surprised.
I love the process of discovery between two men. This happens whether the characters are virginal or experienced, coming out of the closet or dancing in the streets, alphas or twinks.
There is an element of surrender in m/m lit that I find really attractive. This can be completely sexual, of course, but it is also emotional and mental, and it can happen to one or both protagonists. I don’t like this aspect of het romance, maybe that’s the feminist in me. But with two men? It’s touching, engaging, and hot.
What would you like to see more of?
At the risk of sounding like a bad punster, I’d like to see longer and meatier books. So many are in that 7k – 25k word range and while I enjoy those at times, I really like to get involved in what I read. Those are over before they begin.
In e-books, in particular, I’d like to see better editing. I don’t mean to suggest that all, or even the majority, of these books are badly edited,
but enough of them are to make it noticeable. This runs the gamut from basic grammar and punctuation errors, to consistency and story structure.
Finally, I’d like to see gay characters in mainstream fiction. I would love to see gay main characters (not just secondary ones) in the urban fantasies I read. Wouldn’t it be nice if the things we love about GLBT literature were not hidden away from the general reading public?
Wren @ http://wrenboudreau.blogspot.com/
We got back several responses and some we’re still waiting on. However we didn’t have email addresses for everyone so if you’d like to participate – which we’d love to be able to share different opinions from all kinds of readers, including authors who are readers too -please feel free to write up your own answers and contact us at threedollarbillreviews@gmail.com.
Posted in Ramblings
Great answers Wren. I too have read more genres while reading m/m than I did for years. I haven’t read a story set in outer space in …. ever? Sci-Fi is not my thing but I have read some I’ve really enjoyed and stretched my brain.
Editing is a big thing and as you said, not just grammar. If the guy is at the bus station and you’ve used the phrase bus station 5 or 6 times, don’t have him suddenly phone you from the train station. Someone should catch that if not the author. It’s annoying and looks like someone (the author or publisher) just don’t care.
Thanks for sharing.
Hi Tam! Mysteries, Crime Procedurals and Action-type books are the ones I never got into until m/m. I do enjoy them quite a bit, but I’m still not likely to pick one up that isn’t also m/m romance.
I recently read a book where one character put on nice black dress pants, and his partner thought they were really sexy, etc. Then later when they’re undressing, the guy is taking off jeans. I stopped reading to go back and find the first description of his pants, just to be sure I wasn’t losing my mind (that’s a discussion for another time). So it took me completely out of the story.
I read one where the guy purposely went commando because he hoped to get lucky and the next morning put his underwear on. Huh? Did you have it teleport there? LOL It does make you do a double take because you think you must have misread which is not a good thing when you are reading.
Great post, Wren! Lots of food for thought here. I’m with you on that element of surrender, including finding it a little irritating in het romances. You get that across perfectly — I’d never been able to phrase it that well, but as soon as I read your explanation, I had to agree in total recognition.
The new genres that you’ve been introduced to — how interesting! I’d never really considered that before that m/m romance does offer stories in all these other genres like SF, F, horror, contemporary, etc. I know I read a lot of SFF and mysteries, so I think the genres that m/m opened up for me were contemporary romance for sure and also western / historical.
The editing? Good point. Our genre seems so amateur in this way. Sometimes the slight roughness to the writing comes across as really fresh and energetic to me, and I value our genre for not sort of homogenizing everybody’s style into the same Iowa-Writers-Workshop feel that’s the only thing we readers can get out of the big NYC publishers. But careless mistakes in editing is just not good — especially if there are a lot of them (a few I can forgive as a reader because a few are going to sneak in there no matter what).
The length of stories? I go back and forth on that because I can’t help liking the novella length for speed in reviewing, but mostly I agree with you. I’ve read a lot of good m/m e-books that would have been even better if longer and more developed. Great post, Wren!
Great post Wren and thanks for taking the time to articulate your thoughts. Although a lot of the responses we’ve gotten center on m/m genre specifically, they really expose some great ideas and points.
I love that you talk about the different genres because it’s so true. Usually with “mainstream fiction” though I don’t particularly like the designation, you go to the mystery section or fantasy or literature. In m/m you just go to gay and there is everything! Historicals, urban fantasy, mystery, space opera, contemporary. You tend to read more variety that way, which I love.
I do agree with the editing. One of the great things about epublishing is the quick turn around and instant gratification but I think we sacrifice quality in some ways and the editing is just one. The noticeable mistakes are something I mention since it’s bothersome.
Thank you again for taking the time and mentioning some really great arguments.
Val – Thanks for commenting! Yes, that moment of surrender is so exciting! And westerns – I’d forgotten about those. I know that I absolutely never read a western before m/m. You’re right about accepting a few small mistakes in books. Humans do write and edit them, after all
. It’s when there are a number of them, or they are the sort that make you stop and say ‘huh?’ that it bugs me.
Hi Kassa, thanks for inviting me to post! “Mainstream Fiction” – I’m not fond of that designation either, but what else can we call it? I wasn’t sure if urban fantasy or paranormal romance or westerns fall under the ‘Mainstream’ umbrella!
“In m/m you just go to gay and there is everything!” – I love it
Really well thought-out answers, Wren. I agree with most of what you said, especially this: “I read for pleasure, and reading about men pleases me greatly.” Bingo.
I’m not overly fond of kick-ass heroines, though, and I’ll blame Anita “Swooshes” Blake for that. As much as I admire the writing of, say, Ann Aguirre, I invariably start grimacing when I see any resemblance to Hamiltonian stereotypes. Ugh. Male urban fantasy heroes seem more complex and rougher around the edges. I like that; just wish there were more of them.
Thanks KZ! I feel fortunate in that I only ever read one of those Anita books all the way through. My fav heroines are Kate Daniels and Mercy Thompson. The guys: Harry Dresden and Cal and Niko Leandros. In m/m, there’s this wizard I’ve read about. He has an ex-vampire lover…
I just read the recent paranormal from Cooper Davis, in which the guy put his glasses on… didn’t take them off… then picked his glasses up from the nightstand and put them on. Whoops! And especially whoops because these were a single paragraph apart.
This is definitely not limited to m/m ebooks – the few m/f ebooks I read before I started reading m/m had similar issues. *sigh*
FYI, Jackson could so kick Harry Dresden’s be-hind.
I wish Frank Tuttle would write gay. I love his characters, especially Markhat. (If you like UF, do check out his stuff.)
But John Taylor (from Simon R. Green’s Nightside series) could take out both Jackson and Harry Dresden without breaking a sweat, so…
Uh-oh. Them’s fightin’ words.
I only read one Nightside book, so I can’t remember John Taylor’s talents.
I reluctantly concede that Jackson could kick Harry’s butt, but only because he’s quite a lot sexier than Harry
I’ll have to look into the Frank Tuttle books!
Great comments, Wren. I’ve often tried to express the main points of why I love to read and write m/m, without being either patronising or coy. Well said, for the integration of gay characters into all genres of fiction – it’s a particular wish of mine, that m/m should be categorised first by its main theme e.g. romance / SF / crime etc, not its m/m-ness. Plus I like a wide range of characters in a book, not always just one section of society.
I liked especially your comment about ’surrender’ – for me, m/m fiction is attractive for very different reasons from m/f and that’s because of the dynamics between men. The main place that m/m fiction ‘fails’ for me is where the author doesn’t recognise or express that well enough for me.
Hello Clare!
Thanks for stopping by! I agree with you that having a wide range of characters in a book is enjoyable. Many times the “other” characters are the ones that give the most insight into the main ones.
Yes – the dynamics between men are most interesting! There’s a lot of room for variety.
I’ve enjoyed reading what everybody had to say about why they like GLBT lit. Hope it’s okay if I chime in with some of why I like it.
1. It is a kind of outsider lit, queer culture being something outside of the mainstream in some ways and yet very much part of the larger culture. (Some of the m/m romances I read these days are set in a world where same sex pairings are unremarkable — even firemen and cops having virtually no issues about gay coworkers. I don’t know that world, but it’s lovely that so many writers seem to, and maybe over time writing about that world may usher it into being.) I always feel myself to be a non-mainstream, more fringe person, and I like books that cover the gamut of life, but from a sort of sideways, semi-outsider perspective, which is something I especially like about GLBT literature.
2. How I found it. (Not that anyone asked.) I first fell into m/m books back in the early 1970s, when Mary Renault’s books were coming out in paperback and I was in high school probably. (So long ago, it’s all a bit misty and vague.) I loved Renault’s classical world themes, Ancient Greece and Alexander the Great, and they had these amazing romances between men. Did I know of such a thing before reading them? Well, I remember my best friend telling me he’d happened upon his brother and a male friend in the shower together, and I did know what that meant, even in junior high. In the classical world Mary Renault depicted, m/m pairings were mainstream, but in her contemporary or near-contemporary novels like The Charioteer, what a contrast — the ostracism of the m/m pairings. That’s what got me going on m/m from my high school days: gay friends and Mary Renault. (I didn’t know my best guy friends in high school were gay until later years, but that we all loved The Persian Boy was a big clue.) Have to admit that I thought the m/m pairings in Renault’s book were HOT, but I also thought back then that it was not okay to think that. (Transgressive.
) In late 70s/ early 80s, I was hanging out with lesbians in law school (talking about women’s issues, naturally, in those days) and read some lesbian authors (for the sexual politics 
). Ten years ago or so, I started actively seeking out GLBT books again and found myself just really drawn to stories of gay life in particular. Ethan Mordden, Paul Russell, Christopher Bram, Mark Merlis, Patricia Nell Warren, Christopher Isherwood, John Preston, Allan Hollinghurst, Pat Barker, David Leavitt, Jim Grimsley, Jay Quinn, Michael Thomas Ford and so many others that just took me places I’d never been but that spoke to me and fascinated me. Mystery writers like George Baxt, Richard Stevenson, Joseph Hanson, Gregory Nava and Johnathan Morgan Wilson. Impractical to try to name all the many, many other writers I came to know and admire (and my apologies if I’ve messed up any of the names). With the rise of e-books (and the way my home is just too full of print books and that I’ve exhausted my local library’s supply of GLBT books), I’ve been more on the light reading than the literature side lately and finding many new authors to enjoy.
3. It’s that never quite fitting in like you’re “supposed to” thing that I identify with very strongly in GLBT books. For romance in particular, I enjoy the m/m, because I don’t compare myself (as a woman) to the men in the romances, while in a m/f or f/f romance, I always feel a need to compare and I just don’t identify well with most of those heroines. When I was younger, I liked the m/f romances, but I just can hardly read them any more. And I always have liked the GLBT books for the alternate views of society and the courage of the characters and the authors.
4. And you never know what strangely transgressive things you may run into in GLBT writing. It makes me chuckle still how shocking I found George Baxt’s first Phoenix Love mystery. A Queer Kind of Death, I think it is. That book ran me into boundaries and expectations I didn’t even know I had. I won’t spoil it for anyone who might decide to seek it out. It was published maybe in the 1960s. It’s actually clever and delightful — and transgressive. I like to know that authors are capable of true originality that can still be accessible story telling.
So, this has been a bit of a ramble, but there it is.
This is really such a great comment, would you mind if I copied into it’s own post? It has so many good insights and an incredible list of authors that no doubt are new and remembered to many.
Sure, if you want to put it in a separate post. I just came by to correct “Gregory Nava” to the author’s actual name, which is Michael Nava, who wrote the Henry Rios mystery series. And also to correct “Johnathan Morgan Wilson” to John Morgan Wilson. Please put those corrections in if you repost. (And I’ll just groan about the mistakes that I haven’t realized yet.) Oh, and maybe add Jamie O’Neil’s “At Swim Two Boys,” which was stunningly wonderful I thought. Sigh. There are so many….
On second thought, errp. I could write something with a little less bio info for a more general posting. I’m kind of feeling like this is over sharing.