… or, How I Started
Writing Gay Romance.
October is Queer
Romance Month. Which is a wondrous thing. A lovely thing. A thing about love
even. It's great to see something celebrating the things that are important to
me, that have changed me and, hell, quite frankly that I love - queer love,
romance and taking your time getting there (a whole month to celebrate
something? That's the longest fangasm ever, surely).
Quick note: The
title uses Queer quite deliberately. To me this is the 1990's version of Queer,
when it meant something that was open, welcoming, edgy and non-conforming . It
does so because of the huge diversity of people involved in Queer Romance, a very
broad community that is entirely enriched by that diversity.
But I'm going to
talk from a personal perspective here, so I mostly refer to gay and male,
because that is who I am and this is quite a personal post.
There are phases in
our lives that are transformative. We don't know it at the time, we don't
always want it or expect it, but it happens anyway. These changes occur and we
have to deal with them. It's how we deal with them that helps shape who we
become. I had one of those about seven years ago - it was all very dramatic,
including hospital treatment, near death experiences, relationship break-up,
yadda-yadda, you get the picture - and I'm happy to have been changed by it.
The process of dealing with it led me to some strange and unexpected places.
Here is that part of the story …
I've spent the last
five years looking out for queer-romance representation in various forms of
culture. Do you know how difficult it is to see a gay person get romantically
involved in any form of modern culture? It's still the exception rather than
the norm to see/hear about gay men and the reality of dealing with a love life
that includes a sex life.
It all started
innocently enough. There I was, one Saturday night well after X-Factor was
finished, rooting through my DVD collection to find a movie to watch. An idea
hit me that I wanted to watch a gay film. You know, a film about gay people.
Their lives, their relationships, their fun times, without it being all
coming-out stories, AIDS drama or family rejection (I'm old enough to have
lived through all those 'periods' of gay culture). When I realised that I
didn't own such a thing I was a bit dumbstruck. How could I be so lax? How
could I not have what I wanted?
Well this is the age
of the instant fix. So I fixed it. Kinda.
I Googled, I
researched, I spent my evening looking for films that I wanted to watch that
said something about my life. Specifically about the gay part of my life. I
wanted a rom-com, a thriller, a drama, hell I even wanted a horror should the
mood take me. By the end of the evening I had found all those things. It was
too late to actually watch one, but I had found enough weekend entertainment to
keep me going for months. And months. And then some more. I stumbled across
movies based on books (so I bought the books, but more of that later), I found
movies that would make great books. I also found movies with great
soundtracks.*
The soundtracks
though. That brought me into another area that I love - music. I looked through
my music collection and was slightly appalled to see that the limit of gay
artists stopped somewhere in the 1990s. Why? I have bought new music almost
every month for about twenty years. Yet why was my collection so deficient?
Where had all the gay musicians gone? Why wasn't I hearing about them?
Probably because by
that point I had stopped buying any of the gay lifestyle magazines (because
they didn't really speak to me about my life). So off I went again, to search
out the music. Again I was astounded. There they all were, the men and women
proudly singing their hearts out about queer love, of romance and relationships
good and bad. From folk to pop, jazz and blues, and pop to rock they are all
out there. Yet we rarely hear of them. Certainly not on the radio, and only
occasionally do the gay media cover the gay artists making music about gay
life. It's ridiculous, but it's true.**
So of course I went
next to books. I blame the love songs.
I love to read. I
have done all my life. As a secret wannabe writer it's the best camouflage you
can find - hide yourself in someone else's writing and hope no one notices that
you are drinking in every line, each character and every last nuanced detail that
the writer has created. Books are bliss in a way that's different to music and
film. Also, I've had some fairly hefty commutes and travelling the country with
work over the last few years. So a book is a constant companion like no other
on a train. A good book helps you cut out the whirl and noise, or downright
tedium, of travelling. Books transport you to another place, occasionally
another time, and definitely to other people who aren't fellow travellers
eating strange smelling food or having obnoxiously loud phone conversations
that always include "Yeah, I'm on the train …. Shit, you there? … You got
cut off."
The best bit though?
I discovered gay romance. Or Queer Romance, also M/M romance.
At first I read some
of the more mainstream gay novels that I'd been meaning to read for a while.
But they left me a bit unsatisfied, even after I'd read the books that some of
the movies were based on. After the music and the movies that really touched the
heart of gay relationships these books seemed to be missing something. They
were about the modern gay experience, sure. They were about things that we all
have to deal with - you know the stuff,
work, family, finding a partner, losing a partner, moving on, more work, more
family, that sort of stuff. But still something was missing.
The mainstream gay
books, the stuff you'd find in Waterstones if you asked quietly, in a corner so
as not to cause a fuss or upset someone eavesdropping, they all miss out a key
part of life. They missed out on the real intimacy of gay life. Which is kind
of bizarre when you think about it. The whole, wide, straight world generally
defines us gay folk by who we have sex with.
Not who we love, not who is significant and important to us. And we as
gay men are fixated on all the phone apps that'll help us hook up, find a date,
maybe bump into that someone special. Maybe one day find love. Yet it's never
in any of the books. How did that happen? Where'd the sex go? The intimacy that
rocks your world so much that you spend your walk of shame grinning from ear to
ear. The crazy thought that runs through
your mind after a hook up that he might want to do it again, only this time
without the haze of booze, or with the lights on so you can find the way to
pull off his pants without nearly circumcising him. All that stuff. The sexy
stuff, that's connected to the romantic stuff, that's part of what our hearts
desire.
It was out there. Oh
yes. Only it wasn't where I expected it to be. It's there mostly in e-book
format. It's there on romantic-fiction sites. We're not talking Mills &
Boon here. We're talking romantic-fiction for sure, but generally with the heat
turned up, sometimes to pornographic levels, usually to erotic, and sometimes
not at all. But all are good in their own way. And like the films and the music
you can have any kind of romance you like. You can have Sci-Fi, Westerns,
Detective stories in all flavours (noir, contemporary, historical, etc) all the
way through the genres to general contemporary. There really is something for
everyone.
These books
contained the things that my heart really did yearn for. Not just the sex, but
the intimacy, the forming of a relationship, the trials of working through
whether this person you've met is the person for you. It's not always a 'happy
ever after', sometimes it's good enough to find a 'happy for now', you know
just like real life. And in amongst all of those romantic things are well
crafted stories, with characters you can love (or loathe, or fear, or laugh
with) and places that are so well written that you want to visit them. Even the
places that aren't real, but hey, life's always a little disappointing.
This five year
journey has changed me. Quite significantly too. By experiencing the lives of
so many other gay men, through film, music and in books, I've discovered quite
a few things about myself. Most of them I wont reveal here (there is such a
thing as over-sharing). But I'm glad for all the influences that these things
have given me. I welcome them with open arms and continue to seek out new
film-makers, musicians and writers who take the time to create things that
reflect aspects of my life. Because mainstream media isn't doing it, not in the
ways, or the depth, that I'm looking for.
Alongside the books
themselves you can also find a small but thriving online community of writers,
readers, cover artists and publishers (and a massive thank you to
@catherinedair the cover artist for creating the Queer Romance Month logo at
the top of this post). Interacting with all these people stoked in me a lurking
desire to write. I've been experimenting on and off for over twenty years.
Never with a view to publishing, never with the idea that anyone else would
ever read anything written by me. Just, you know, doing it for the hell of it.
But all those people have encouraged me, supported me and nudged me in the
right direction. They continue to do that, day by day.
I know quite clearly
that I'm a novice at this. That despite having a couple of short stories
published that it'll take me some time before I get to the point of being good
enough to have a novel published. That it'll take a lot of work, and re-writes,
and all sorts of other efforts. But because of these people I'll get there.
I'll be a writer. Something I've wanted to be for almost thirty years.
Something that my transformative experience made me decide I should do before
it got too late.
So from that one
evening a few years back I have discovered a whole new set of film makers,
actors, musicians, writers, characters, and worlds that I never knew existed.
And I love them.
I totally love to
love you all, baby.
Go show them some
love over at http://www.queerromancemonth.comand @queerromance
*A word of warning
though, there's also a fair bit of dross out there too. You can find a good selection of movie
recommendations at http://www.pinterest.com/suebrownstories/my-queer-cinema/and http://gay-themed-films.com . You
could even have a look on Netflix, they have a fairly decent selection.
** If you want to
discover music made about LGBT people by LGBT people then I can recommend you
listen to this monthly online radio programme (and have a listen through the
archive) Like the movies, you won't like everything but you should find a few
artists that you'll like. http://queermusicheritage.com/out2014.html
