Who do you want to be today?

By Kim Dare.

The advice every new writer is given is to write what you know – to stay inside your own skin.

If I followed that advice…

I would never have written The Gift. Strangely enough, I don’t actually have any personal experience of Spirit’s of Christmas past visiting me on Christmas Eve. I’ve never indulged in time travel. I’ve never spent years trying to convince someone I loved to believe in Christmas, or had someone else spend the same amount of time trying to teach me what the spirit of Christmas really is.

I couldn’t have written Secret Service either. I’ve never believed there is anything the least bit wrong with being kinky. I’ve never fallen in love with anyone who believed there was either. I’ve never acted as a service submissive in the club the way Sheridan does – and seriously, me and body paint hearts – it’s not going to happen.

Likewise, while I’m not particularly squeamish about blood, I’ve never submitted to a vampire, as Charlotte does in Whispers. I’ve never read anyone’s thoughts the way Zachariah can. I’m probably not going to learn how to do that any time soon either.

I couldn’t have written Turquoise and Leather if I was trying to “write what I know”. I’ve never been a geologist or a property developer. You won’t find me dancing on top of a table. Eric’s kinks are a lot of fun to write about, but they don’t match mine.

I’m generally a pretty good judge of people – so I obviously have no business writing Matt’s story in Gaydar. And I’ve never worked behind a bar – so Flynn’s out of my experience too. And even if I could get behind a bar – I never have been able to do a passable Irish accent.

I’ve never suffered from the same problem as Luke does in You First. I’ve never hooked up with the same person every Wednesday and Saturday for months. I’ve never fallen in love with that person and panicked when I realised that I’d fallen damn hard. I’ve never practiced law. I’ve never taken a shower while wearing most of my clothes either.

I am (I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear this) neither a werewolf nor a vampire. So obviously I’m not going to be either Hayden or Stafford when I grow up. Since I’ve never been involved in a threesome with those species either, I probably shouldn’t be writing about Jasmine either. Come to that, what makes me think I can write about an older woman getting together with two younger men? All in all, I'm never going to live what I write about in Between Tooth and Paw.

As for Hannah in Silent Night. Silence has never been my strongest point. And I certainly can’t claim to be tall, blonde and muscular as Vincent is.

I suppose my point at the end of it all is this – if all you write is what you know then all you’ll ever write is your own biography over and over again.

Fiction is all about writing things that aren’t true for you – a lot of the time it’s about writing things that you haven’t/wouldn’t/couldn’t/have no inclination to do in the real world. It’s about writing someone else’s story – about letting that character have their say without you interrupting and telling them they should share your ideals, your aspirations.

It’s about slipping into someone else’s point of view and lingering there until the end of the book. My characters don’t agree with my own take on a lot of things. They don’t agree with each other either. If you put two dominants from different books in a room together they’d be far more inclined to want to throttle each other than become best friends, simply because they won't find they have much in common.

Everyone always seems to focus on “big” things like women writing about gay men. (Although, strangely enough, far fewer people seem to object about women writing characters who are straight men – that doesn’t require an equivalent imaginative leap?) But that’s not the whole story.

Every time one of my characters drink of cup of coffee, they are doing something I wouldn’t do. Every time they drive a car, or speak a foreign language or go to work doing a job I’ve never done, I have to step outside my own skin to write it. I’m using my imagination for pretty much everything – regardless of if I’m writing a character who is male or female, straight or gay. I have to do my research for any particular character regardless of all those same issues.

My characters aren’t me – I am not my characters. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

As far as I’m concerned whoever writes a book, or a particular character, they fall into one of two camps. They are either a good writer or a bad writer – they either do a good job portraying the character or a bad job portraying a character.

I don’t write vanilla because I’m bad at it. Simple as that. It’s the one imaginative leap that I can’t – or possibly more accurately, that I have no interest in, making. If I could do it convincingly, I see no reason why I shouldn’t do that just because it doesn’t reflect my own view of the world.

Just as I don’t limit myself to characters who are like me in other ways. If I think I can write them, and I enjoy writing them. I’m going to keep on doing that.

You’ll often hear openly gay actors saying they don’t want to be treated like a gay actor – they want to be treated like an actor who happens to be gay.

I’d like that sort of ideology to be extended to writers. Does it really matter if the person who’s sitting behind a desk two continents away from you is a man or a woman? Does it matter if they are black or white? Gay or straight?

Seriously? Does it make the slightest difference to your ability to enjoy the book?

For my money – the people who wave the “write what you know” flag are sort of missing the point, and certainly missing a hell of a lot of the fun!

What do you think? Do you like being someone else for a while? Tell me, who do you want to be today?

Kim Dare.
Kink, love and a happy ending. Do you dare?

Under my skin... and yours... and his... and theirs

by Jude Mason

After Jamie's horrendous post and the upheaval it's had in her life, both online and off, the post I had planned seems so trivial. Yes, we as authors of fantasy strive to immerse ourselves into our characters. Yes, we spend hours finding just the right words to take you, our readers, into the story. We're like any other fiction authors. We do our research, spend hours even days finding out all the details of how to become a cop, what it's like to drink the blood of a mortal, how the body would move as it became the cougar/wolf/animal changeling, or a thousand other things. Languages, customs, slang, terminology for a dozen, or more, scenarios our stories need.

Yes, we love our jobs. To me, sinking into what I call my writing mode, is so much a part of me I can't honestly imaging what it would be not to do it. It's work, sometimes damn hard work, but I adore it all. Submerging the ordinary Jude into, Johan, a raunchy, bisexual vampire in Night Games who's on the hunt for his female lover's kidnapper is one hell of a high. Of course, the girl has a job, so that took a little checking on. The vamps male lover, he needed to be completely in the picture, his story merged with the main character's... and he needed his backstory as well. It's not just a simple task of sitting down and off you go. If it were that simple, anyone could do this job.

The difficult ones are often the most rewarding. Awhile ago, I did a story called, Roses Have Thorns. Here's the blurb I use:

Roses Have Thorns - What happens when a hooker picks the wrong john? What happens when, a few months later, it happens again, but with a difference? The whores body becomes a vessel for revenge. Their names were Rose. And Rose is angry.

Warning: This book is classed as Erotic Horror, not for the faint of heart

Now, Rose is actually two 'women' and both of them are killed by the same man. The first ghostly Rose takes over the second woman's just as #2 is dying. Simply getting that little bit right was a challenge. About the only easy part was I'm female and so are my Rose's. The horror aspect was such an intense thing it took me weeks to get the work done. A story that would normally take me a few days to put together actually took much, much longer. Oh, by the way, this one is definitely not for the faint of heart, really! It's erotic horror at it's darkest.

Going from that to and creating something soft and sensual was a huge leap. Yet, it's what we all live for. We people our stories with characters who may be close to ourselves in some ways, but that's not what our readers want. They want fantasy and excitement, escapism and that's what we strive to give them.

There's Ambassador Sloan, the man chosen to meet the alien menace and save the known universe. The Shoon, not what the bureaucracy had thought of when they thought at all. Shoon Joining, could take humanity into completely uncharted territory, if only they're brave enough. Oh and the sex...that's where we all seem to get into trouble, isn't it?

It seems we're all fine as long as we close those damn bedroom doors. Once they're open though, we're targets for pretty much everyone. As a romance and erotic romance author, hell might as well stick in simple erotica author, I've been asked by dozens, if not hundreds of people, why I don't step into mainstream, do some real writing. There are dozens of answers, I suppose. But the real reason for me is, I adore my work. Sinking into a character and not closing those bedroom doors, allows me to share all of them with you, the readers.

Would you dream of asking Stephan King why he doesn't go into some other genre? I mean horror is just so, well horrible. He's got to be some kind of perverted serial killer to have written all those nasty books. Right?

Probably not. He's got one hell of an imagination, sort of like me, only his gets more attention and he's paid much much better. He researches his subjects. He makes notes and creates his characters the same as I do. He makes plot lines, rough drafts, re-writes and all the same things I do. But, as Stephan King, he closes the bedroom door.

I sneak in and tell it all. Jamie did the same thing and unfortunately paid a price - a price that I doubt I'll ever be able to fully comprehend. And all because of that damn bedroom door. It's all right to take your readers into the depths of some psycho's dreams of carnage, but, don't you dare delve into the loving, sexual side of a couple's relationship. Yes, some of these 'couples' have unusual relationships, but that very difference is what makes the world go around.

Perhaps one day, the people who can't abide our chosen genres will be brave enough to admit we're not as different as they are. A little empathy, a lot of imagination, some great people and voila, you have the makings for some hot reading. Sex, we all do it. Let's allow those who desire to read it the opportunity to do so, in peace. And, let's also encourage those who write it, to do so to the best of their abilities.

Hugs