Missing is helping...

Seems Missing's series of sketches is helping bring viewers to my very-MM-adult bdsmlr blog and getting more attention for my books. Things had grown pretty quiet in sales, but they've perked up some since I began this. Never figured it would be a tool for advertising my work.

I also belong to a couple of  groups on FB that cater to adult MM literature, both romance and dark. Ain't much in the way of romance in my books, but there's plenty of darkness. But I feel my version of darkness is less compelling that other writers'. I may say I write my books to keep from becoming what they are about, and vent my quiet screams into them, but I'm told by reviewers that my focus is not the kind they're used to.

Most people are into stories that are more like role-playing. Comic-con style. Father-son stuff. Twincest. Bondage and punishment. Slave-training. M-preg. Werewolves and fairies. All of which I've read but doesn't really resonate with me. I can't say they aren't real enough or grounded in everyday truth, not when mine can be just as fantastic. The Beast in the Nothing Room is Sci-Fi/Horror using time travel for sexual assault, so hardly something that happens every day.

It's just, it seems like they aren't being honest with their characters, or their characters' emotional needs. I guess. Hunter, for example, is a wild take about kidnapping young men to sell into sexual slavery. And the MC, Hunter, is totally focused on the money and making sure the law doesn't bother him. So he connects with a sheriff, supplies only Latino studs (since no one in the US really cares about them), and doesn't even think about the consequences or what it means to the men he's kidnapped until he's almost tricked into helping kill the son of an important Brazilian.

Initially, it's his survival instincts that kick in, but then he's confronted with the reality of what he's done and determines to end the whole setup. He very nearly gets killed, doing so, and has to go into hiding to protect himself from the remnants of that sex-slave group. A bit on the James Bond side, really, but throughout the story is pushed by Hunter's emotional needs and development.

I don't see that in many of the MM stories I read. Even the romantic ones, like Boyfriend Material or Red, White and Royal Blue. They seem perfunctory and Hollywoodish, in a way. I think that's why I so liked Anna Karenina and East of Eden. They were grounded in human emotion, to me.

I dunno. Maybe I'm just full of shit and didn't like their style of writing because mine's so much better, to me. HA! That'll be the day I think that.

Jeez, at the rate I'm going I won't figure myself out till after I'm dead.