Real Men Do ... or Don't?

My book Forbidden Shores came out three weeks ago and there's quite a bit of buzz about it online. I'm very happy about that.

But a lot of the chat about it seems to be about the fact that the book has some m/m stuff. Nothing new, I'd have thought--except this book doesn't look like an erotic romance, it's cataloged as a historical romance, and the back cover blurb is, uh, discreet. Take this discussion at the All About Romance Reviews Board where the consensus seems to be that heroes do not take it up the ass.

The discussion of what they do do to each other was apparently continued via e-mail to protect the innocent. (Spoiler: Hand jobs, ladies! Hand jobs! Mostly.) This, plus the reaction at Dearauthor.com, where the book is the featured dueling review of the month (hooray! Although it seems to have turned into a Kinsale-fest, but that's okay), sent Erastes (a future guest here at the Spiced Tea Party) into a rant about whether romance readers are such delicate flowers as they appear to be. Plus Erastes has an additional bonus rant on the same post on the use/misuse of the term menage, something I have complained about too.

I spent some time, and had some ponderings with critique partners, about who would be top/bottom and couldn't reach a conclusion. There's one character, March, who's definitely bisexual and in a state of groveling horniness for Allen, the man he's in love with; Allen, meanwhile, will do just about anything to be with Clarissa, but out of innate decency doesn't want to lead March on, and is mostly heterosexual. So the characters defined the level of sexual activity, and I think it works. Just because it's erotic romance doesn't mean everyone has to do everything to everyone else; the characters determine their actions, not an editorial checklist.

And off-topic, Colette and I had a blast reading in NY last week. I made them laugh; Colette had them spellbound (she read the mirror scene in Unmasqued and I read the sex next to the chicken coop scene of Forbidden Shores).

So what's your definition of a real man in erotic romance?

Today's illustration is from Popular Science magazine, January 1964, in an article headlined: Automated Caveman Gets a Rear-End Drive: Despite his wide-open situation, the caveman on the preceding page is feeling no pain.

Three's a Crowd?

While feverishly googling myself today, I came across a discussion on Amazon (that naturally I didn't bookmark) where someone suggested Forbidden Shores (yes, me, my book, coming out in less than five weeks... oh, shoot me) was Signet Eclipse's first shy foray into the wonderful world of menage.

I'm not too keen on the term menage. Menage a trois, fine. But menage alone--well to me it has an aura of inappropriate domesticity. The heroine, with a complacent air, saunters through the marketplace, trailing her fingertips over the plump surface of an eggplant. Yes, that one. Mmmm. Very nice. Behind her traipse two men with shopping baskets, obedient and domesticated. You know they can't wait to get home, put on their aprons, and start slicing and dicing.

So I wonder about the mania for menage. And not stopping at three, but four, five... I read one with six last night. I think it was six; it could have been seven. Only one, the leader of the pack, actually got to do it with the lady (thank you, Monty Python). The others just helped out in a selfless sort of way, politely turning away when their corks were about to pop. The logistics and choreography impressed me; I have trouble if three or more characters are talking.

And I wonder if this is yet another instance of how erotic romance is becoming its own worst enemy--that if you have more than two people having sex there are specific ways to write it. I keep thinking of the 2006 Passionate Ink lunch in Atlanta where one of the speakers declared that we all wanted two gorgeous (alpha, of course) men with their two gorgeous eggplants and I was embarrassed for the waiters. Not apparently two women and one man--readers didn't want it, although I think it has far more interesting possibilities. My editor told me my threesome scenes should be all about the heroine's pleasure, even though we both knew in real life they'd be comparing scars and talking sports at worst or being obnoxiously, rampantly, competitive at best.

In Forbidden Shores, the menage is not a happy one. Without giving away too much of the plot, each of the three characters is in love with the one who doesn't love them back. Curiosity, lust, and a desperate need to do something--anything--to resolve the situation (and please the loved one) drive them into a rather clumsy experiment. They find themselves trapped by it (the original title of the book was Chained) and not much happier.

And it's the heroine who suggests it and gets the most out of it, the greedy girl.

So how do you approach your menage scenes?
And do you think a HEA with a menage in a historical is possible?

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