Unfiltered

I totally used this pic yesterday. Oh well...

Last year, I mentioned on FB that my dad is reading my Sons of Rome series. 

Cue the anxiety. 

It always weirds me out when people I know in real life read my books. I always worry that they'll judge me, and not my work. But there's an extra level of squirminess to letting your dad read something laced at every turn with erotic overtones. Just...yikes. 

Prior to White Wolf, he'd never read any of my books, and I was perfectly okay with that. Still, he's been really complimentary of the series so far, and says he loves it. I even ordered him his very own proof copy of Dragon Slayer, so he didn't have to wait for the official release. And when he says something like, "That scene was really racy!" I just stick my fingers in my ears and sing loudly to myself. 

This weekend, he brought it up in a more serious way. He asked if I thought it was a good idea to include graphic sex scenes in this series since I'm billing it as a fantasy series. His concern was that, in the fantasy novels he's read in years past, the sex is muted, or outright excluded, and he worried I might be, in his words, "alienating the typical fantasy audience." Please note that he wasn't being critical, and I didn't take it as such. He's trying to learn more about the publishing business, and I thought it was a fair question. I answered him then, but I decided to write out a more coherent, concrete answer today, and share it here. 

(I wouldn't be me if it wasn't a long answer)

I've talked at length before about how important it is that I write mindfully. I think it's the reader's job to sit back, read, and just enjoy the overall experience of the story. That it's the author's burden to paint a vivid story that delivers on every level. With that in mind, I sit down every day to write purposefully. Each sentence is carefully constructed to offer something: be it a sensory detail that places you in the story, a useful bit of plot information, or an important piece of character information. Did a sentence frighten you? Anger you? Make you smile? Make you fan your face in sympathetic heat? It was designed to. 

So the first part of my answer to him was that the explicit passages are meant to be inciting: in good and bad ways. The elements of Val's captivity that made him uncomfortable are written to do just that; just like, later, when we see consensual, loving sex, it's meant to be scintillating, and even heart-warming. I don't believe in lazy writing; I don't want to tell the audience Val had a rough time, and now he has issues, and use it as a cheap plot device. The abuse in this book, as in the books I've written on the topic in the past, is a part of his growth as a human (well, vampire). It's an important piece of the puzzle that is Val: it explains the way  he thinks, and feels, and reacts to stimuli around him. Showing the audience instead of telling them in a vague, hand-wavy way puts the reader in the story, physically, and I think that's important.

The next point is this: I write books for adults. Sex is a part of adult life, and, since I'm not writing for children, I don't feel required to offer up lessons about morality or warn against "problematic" behavior. That's a whole other conversation. In this particular book, I stuck as closely as possible to the true life events of the real Prince Radu Dracula. My thought is: he lived this, we can at least read about it; and my intent is never to linger overlong on unpleasantness such as to fetishize it. 

That's the practical aspect of my answer. But there's a more personal, artistic aspect to it as well. Take the abusive scenes out of the equation and just look at the purely romantic ones. The series interlude, "The Stalker," opens with an explicitly romantic scene between two long-married werewolves in the forest. And they're role-playing, no less. You gotta spice up a century-long marriage somehow, you know? 

I've hesitated to call this series a romance, because we have plenty of scenes and storylines that are driving forward an overarching storyline that isn't romantic. But we do have romance; we have love, and sex; we've had a fair bit, and the romance is only going to increase as the series goes on. The love stories between all the various couples are, truly, the beating heart of the series, even if the action and adventure get plenty of page time. I've called this series "fantasy," and "urban fantasy," and "paranormal," and "paranormal fantasy." The truth is, it's all of those. And it's also historical fiction, and a police procedural, and it's romance, and it's...

Well. This is why being an indie author works so well for me. Because I want it to be everything. I don't want to trim away half of a book just to be able to more easily label it as one thing. And looking at it as a fangirl myself, I see this series as an opportunity to - potentially - offer readers everything they want in one package. 

For example: I love the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So much. Those movies have the most amazing casts, and they manage to accomplish so much in just a few hours. But, as happens often with big action/adventure/sci-fi/fantasy projects, the romance gets short shrift. Sometimes they leave you wanting more development, and sometimes they leave you wanting any development at all, aside from a couple of glances and one rushed kiss. 

Sometimes, in the plot-heavy whirlwind of defeating a villain, those of us who are there mainly for the character development will feel little pangs of hollow disappointment. Yes, Steve and Bucky finally got to hug, but I could watch a whole series about all the things that need exploring there. Thor and Loki's brother issues can't be explored enough for my liking; literally my favorite aspect of the MCU. 

And how many times have you read a kickass fantasy novel, or series, and thought, But I wish this author was less awkward about writing kisses...

Okay, that's not a dig at anyone. But I think there's a gap there. And it might be a tiny gap, and I might be the only one who falls into it. But I think there's room for a big, epic, action-heavy story that appeals to adults; that takes plenty of time to develop not just friendships and teams, but romantic relationships as well. In a steamy, adult way, even. I love fantasy, and paranormal, but I love them mainly for the characters. Sons of Rome is my humble answer to that want; it's character-focused, completely. Which means that there are moments that might feel slower than others, but which are all the time building the bonds between our characters. Whether it's two best friends realizing that they're pining is mutual, and their love very much reciprocated; or feelings evolving over time, complicated by one party's magic - the love is there. In SoR, most of our characters start out alone, but as we move through books three, and four, and onward, it becomes apparent that the series is actually built around a connected group of romantic partners. Love saves the day, you know? 

So I told my dad that I wanted to leave in the explicit sex, even if a more traditional fantasy reader was turned off by it. Because there are tons of traditional fantasy novels out there, and I have, instead, a chance to do something a little bit different. Something that, perhaps stupidly, perhaps stubbornly, resists easy classification. Something more like Outlander, that doesn't shy away from all the messy parts of life, whether it's good-messy or bad-messy. 

That's kind of my jam, after all. 

The half-dozen WIPs I have chilling in my docs are much more streamlined, and fall much more neatly into genres. But this series...this series is my chance to throw the whole kitchen sink at a project. These characters might have some special powers, and some long lifespans, but they're people, in the end. People with tough pasts, and hard choices to make. People with grudges, and with friendships, and with blisteringly hot love stories that play out on the page in vivid detail. I wanted the meticulous pacing of an epic fantasy; the carefully interwoven eroticism of the best dark vampire stories; the pageantry of historical, and the snappy humor of contemporary. And I want the romances to feel like real, proper genre romances, and not lame afterthoughts that got squeezed out by the big action sequences. 

This is a series unfiltered. Purposeful, and thoughtful, and lovingly hand-crafted, fueled by a lifetime's worth of fictional love and frustration. If you're still on the fence, if you're worried there's not enough romance, or that the paranormal aspects might be too much...I urge you to give it a chance. I think you might just be very pleasantly surprised. 

And if you're already reading, and you're waiting on Dragon Slayer, it's coming, promise! Gosh, this book is big 😄

Happy Monday! I'm going back to my editing cave.