The Gay Male Romance Genre

I’ve been intrigued by the whole phenomenon of women both writing and reading gay male romance novels. I started out reading this genre when I started writing my new detective thriller called ‘Born Human’. One of the characters in this story is a bisexual serial killer, a man who uses whoever he can to achieve his goals. So, if I needed to write sex scenes between two men,  I needed to know how it was all done. That might sound a little disingenuous but honestly? I know the basics of gay man sex but in order to do the best I could in making my two men enjoy themselves, I needed to know a little more than the basics.

So I researched the topic. My web browser has never seen such action, I can promise you. It certainly saw more than I ever have . Gay chat sites, gay sex education sites, ‘How To’  YouTube videos, medical sites that dealt with the subject and of course, the occasional soft gay porn site. It started out, I promise you, all in the name of research. I bought books by well know authors already established in the genre, like Kindle Alexander, Josh Lanyon, Con Riley, L A Witt, Sue Brown, Liz Lister to name but a few. And the more I read, the more I wanted to read. Reading a smoking hot, sexy romance story between two men was becoming an obsession. I kid you not.

If you look at my Goodreads profile, you’ll see I currently have read 79 books of this genre in the last few months alone. I honestly cannot get enough. This genre, with all its different facets of BDSM, romanticism, involving macho professions like cops and fireman and others less so, such as authors and professors, are still stories of just plain honest to goodness men dealing with everyday life. It’s addictive.

I asked bestselling author Liz Lister what she thought earlier today, what the fascination is with women wanting to both read and write these type of books. She said, and I quote:

I think that if you really like men and enjoy their bodies, there’s nothing like seeing them get it on together. And the tenderness that two men can show each other in this circumstance is so different from the macho posturing of straight guys that we usually see.

I can relate to this, to the extent that I had to try my hand at writing my own story of two men falling in love. I’m glad to say it’s complete and I should have the contract in my hand for my new book, ‘Loving Matthew’  with lead heroes Matthew Langer and Shane Templar, any day soon.

I intend writing more in this genre as I so enjoyed writing the story of Matthew and Shane.  I’m musing over exactly what it will be about but I have no doubt inspiration will strike soon. I’ve made a promise to my publisher to try and take a little more time with this one so they can catch up on my backlog of produced works, having five full length novels with them awaiting publication dates. 🙂

I will be posting more updates on the development of this genre and its impact, and anything else interesting that crosses my Google Alerts service. So watch this space for more scintillating posts on reading and writing gay male romance.

And of course I’ll keep you posted on the development of ‘Loving Matthew’ and its publication date. Then perhaps once you’ve read it, you can tell me whether I succeeded at writing a love story about men in love with each other.