Ok Bookworms today I have a special guest who stopped by the blog to introduce his self to you all. Her is his Bio and guest post enjoy!
A Southern transplant who has retained none of his accent but all of his charm,
DC Juris is an out and proud transgender bisexual living in Upstate New York
with his husband, four dogs, three cats, and a menagerie of Halloween props just
creepy enough to keep people guessing about his sanity. He's still hopelessly
single when it comes to the woman in his life, and he'll gladly entertain offers
or applications for the position! In the rare event that he's not writing, DC
can be found surfing the internet for random research, killing things on his
Xbox, reading, taking pictures of the world around him, or playing Farmville, to
which he admits a complete and totally blissful addiction.
Hi folks! I'm DC Juris, and I'll be
your guest blogger today. For those of you who don't know me, I'm a
transgender guy who writes GLBTQ and heterosexual romance - typically
fantasy or contemporary.
Typically, my stories are full of hot,
steamy sex. Some of them, I've been told, are "more sex than
story." While a lot of authors would take that as an insult, I'm
fine with it. You see, I like sex. I like to read it and I like to
write it.
So why, you ask, did I write "Who
Better Than Canyon?" without any sex?
The answer is because that's how the
characters dictated it would go. I've been frequently told that a
romance without sex wouldn’t sell. Based on that notion, I'd always
had it in the back of my mind to do one - but not this one. I was
thinking in a couple years. But as I kept writing, I realized these
guys just weren't getting in bed with each other - at least not in
the carnal sense. Because there wasn't any sex involved, I made sure
to have the cover artist do a rather "tame" cover - no half
naked men, nothing sexual or erotic. And I'm really glad I did.
I've gotten a lot of good feedback.
Reviewers have said things like "unexpected" and
"refreshing" and "nice change of pace." That's
all well and good, but what's really important to me is the reader
response - which has been wonderful as well. I've been inundated with
e-mails thanking me for writing something without "all the
embarrassing extra stuff." One woman appreciated the lack of sex
because she felt she could share the book with her teenage son, who
is gay. She said she knew "he is eventually going to have sex"
but she'd "rather not think about it…not because he's gay but
because he's my baby. At least he can read this story, see a positive
gay relationship, and realize he's worth more than his penis."
It never occurred to me that someone
might share one of my stories with their kids. Let's face it, as an
erotic romance writer, I don't have that opportunity. They can't even
visit my website, since it contains graphic content and is strictly
age eighteen and over. It was nice to think that maybe my work might
reach the next generation. Not that I think they can learn from it or
anything like that. I'm a firm believer that if you want sex advice
or instruction, you don't pick up a romance novel, whether you're
male or female. I can remember reading bodice ripper type stories
when I was a teenager, and the only information I walked away with
was that a woman wasn't anything without a man, sex was always either
excruciatingly painful or amazingly wonderful with no middle ground,
and that every man came complete with hands calloused in "all
the right places" and a huge, throbbing rod. Definitely nothing
they covered in Sex-Ed.
Which is not to say that, nowadays,
some authors don't strive for as much reality as possible. But,
really - it's a fictional story. It's not an instruction manual. A
lot of today's m/m romance contains gay men who fall head-over-heels
in love at first sight (some without even speaking to the other man
first), who are unable to keep their hands off the object of their
obsession (even at the risk of losing their jobs), and who frequently
engage in beyond-human acrobatic sexual acts and anal sex without
lube. Clearly, we're not writing Sex 101 here.
No, the reason I'm touched about her
son being able to read my work is that he had characters to identify
with. Growing up, none of the romances contained any characters I
understood. I had a female body, but I didn't feel like a female. I
didn't swoon, I didn't need to be rescued. I wasn't hard headed to a
fault, or ditzy and stupid. I felt like a man - but not the men in
those books. I wasn't overbearing and powerful, or rude and aloof. I
longed for pages that contained people I could relate to. Why were
there no gay characters? Where were the characters who questioned
their gender - surely I couldn't be the only person in the world
doing that? And surely, I wasn't the only person like me who read
stories?
I'm thrilled to have found a genre
where I can write about characters I like - characters like me.
Flawed and real, with "alternative" views and lifestyles
(at least "alternative" according to society.) If they're
having raging hot sex (therein lies the fantasy LOL) then that's even
better.
But I'm glad that young man got a
glimpse of romance outside the cookie cutter norm. I'm glad he got to
have his happily ever after fantasy in the pages of my work. After
all, that's all any young person wants - the illusion of the happily
ever after.
www.dcjuris.com www.facebook.com/dcjuris www.twitter.com/dcjuris http://dcjuris.blogspot.com
