Monday, November 19, 2007

Love stories

In case it wasn't obvious, Pepper and I write a lot. My solo stuff has slowed down considerably because of it, unfortunately, but I'm not complaining. I love what we do, and I would be hard pressed to find a story I couldn't sit and re-read over and over again. Ultimately, this is what writing does for me. I write stories I want to read, and if others like them, too, all the better.

Occasionally, characters become more than just people we love. Some characters find root in our lives stronger than we expect. Gideon, Jesse, and Emma from The Master Chronicles. Josh, Cam, and Sara from Trinity Broken. Remy, Nathan, Isaac, and Olivia in the Silver books (first book comes out in print in 2 weeks!!!!).

And now we have Micah and Jefferson.

Who are they? They are our poets in our current WIP, A Hidden Beauty. Our first historical. We started it 8 days ago, and as of right now, we have just over 38k. Saturday we wrote 8748 words. Yesterday, 9420. It's almost frightening how quickly it's flowing out of us, but what's even more frightening is that in that 38k, we've only had one kiss. Who knew we'd be writing an erotic romance where we actually get to the I love you's before sex? But that's appropriate for the period, especially with romantic gay men and one of them is only learning he's gay. It's 1840 after all. It was a lot harder for men to love each other then, especially in prim social circles.

But Pepper and I are finding it very difficult to step away from these two when bedtime comes around and I haven't had been to bed before 1am in a couple nights. We've already submitted the partial to our editor at Samhain for consideration, but at the rate we're going, we're going to have it done before she gets the opportunity to read it. These two speak to us in ways not every character does. Perhaps it's because we get to indulge in old-fashioned love letters. Perhaps it's because we have two very lonely souls calling out for someone to love them. Most likely, it's a combination of those and more, because these two are currently consuming our every thought.

I've seen a few notes online that call our Jamie Craig persona a "gay author." Meaning we write gay romance. I don't think that's accurate, because we have het titles that actually surpass our gay titles in sales. But Pepper and I aren't interested in labels. We write what we love, what characters we love.

Ultimately, we write love stories, whether it's two men, a man and a woman, or a threesome. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

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