Indentured Bride (7 page)

Now I have to talk about gay stuff.
  I know a lot of readers like bisexual stories, but I also know that those who don't like them REALLY DON'T LIKE THEM.  That's why I kept things hetero for
Bride of the Keil Warrors
.  If you like the gay stuff I hope you'll check out
my library
. 

In the male/male romance books I like for characters to have to do things that make their souls ache, but where they have so much incentive that they just have to force themselves to do it.  That was the prevalent theme of
Hostile Taking
, a story where a politically powerful  alien takes over the business, and body of Merrick Connor.

In
The Eidolon's Conquest
, my sci-fi gay romance novel before
Hostile Taking
, Rand is sick over the idea of surrendering to an enemy who he not only pissed off, but who is going to do sexual things to him.  I worked the situation to make sure my character was trapped.  He had to give in—to sink into absolute submission. 

I explored this same theme in
The Demon and the Emperor
.  Dianese must have the demon Rodukjo's help, no matter what the cost.  The cost ends up being his body, something abhorrent to him, and yet he has to consent.  (Don't worry, it's all consensual and they fall in love in a major way.)

In all these books the rest of the story becomes how to make the consent truly willing.  I've read many stories where the uke (bottom) is getting raped from the beginning and his 'consent' comes about once he's thoroughly broken.  You can't convince me that he will willingly come to love his abuser by the end.  Maybe some people like and expect those types of stories, but I just can't go there.  A little piece of my heart is in each one of characters.  I want them to love their semes (tops) without it being Stockholm Syndrome.  In this regard you kind of know what you're going to get with me every time. 

I pushed this in
Vanquished Knight
, where the knight was getting stripped naked, spanked, and swallowing cum within minutes of meeting the demon king.  I still say that Jonah genuinely came to love his demon captors.  I made him the sort of character who could not be broken by abuse, and who could see the love of his masters even through their apparent cruelty.  If you read
Vanquished Knight
you'll see it truly is consensual sex that leads to love. 

Computer overlords screwing things up is another motif I've been exploring in my work.  The computer C-Raptin in
The Android's Bride
controls the main android character, and we don't know if he's evil or not until the end. 

For sci-fi gay romance
Maelstrom
is the most prominent and popular series.  This sci-fi serial has gotten me several devoted fans, and I'm working on creating a webcomic out of it when my
Patreon
receives enough funding.  It's already made its way out as an
audio book
!   Another sci-fi male/male romance,
Zolabarth Bi
, will be coming out as a full-cast audio book.  I'm excited for both of these projects.  It seems like sci-fi m/m is where I really resonate with fans. 

Getting back to the 'About the Author' stuff, I believe that writing is a role, not a job.  This was a calling for me from before I was out of diapers.  I had to tell stories, and then I had to write stories.  I started going into trances when I wrote at a very young age.  It's kind of like taking Quaaludes.  There's time distortion where I think an hour has passed when it's actually been 12 hours.  I also talk in my characters voices without being aware of it.  If this sounds crazy to you, it's really not.  Other prominent writers have admitted to 'writing trances.'  Every fiction writer has to get into their 'zone' to write.  For some it just gets creepy.  I'm fine with this phenomenon.  It's how I make my living, after all.

I started out getting published in small literary journals when I was out of college.  I won contests here and there, and I always seemed to be working on my next submission for publication.  In 1999 I discovered yaoi (Japanese gay romance for women) and it was an epiphany for me since I'd been writing yaoi for decades but never had a label for it.  In 2004 I started my own publishing company, Yaoi Press, and put out
yaoi graphic novels
.  I got out 50 or so before Borders Books closed and the bottom fell out of the market.  The last book Yaoi Press published was in 2012, and I'm pretty sure that's the end of ink and paper books for me. 

Ebooks have given me a wonderful and viable career.  I started out with
Incubus Master
, a serial where I was testing out my prose skills for the first time.  The premise and characters are solid, but it's not as strong prose-wise as my current books.  Still, my imagination uncorked with this series and it led to the sequel,
Captured
, and then
Scor's Story
. 

These early series proved to me that I could still live off my writing, even if Yaoi Press is mostly shut down.  I've been pumping out work at a fast clip ever since.  Sometimes new fans discover me and my work resonates with them.  They want to read everything I've put out, but it's daunting.  I have 144 titles on Amazon right now.  If you want to get all my past works I recommend starting with
The Big Yaoi Bundle
and then continuing with
The Huge Yaoi Bundle
.  This gives you the bulk of my library in two heavily-discounted purchases.  After that is
The Maelstrom Compilation
—which is really one of my best works, I highly recommend it, and then
Incubus Master Complete
and
Incubus Master Captured Complete
.