Lately, I’ve enjoyed reading a stack of habu’s books and wanted to find out a bit more about him and his writing. Here is his Goodreads bio:

habu, a bisexual former supersonic spy jet pilot, intelligence agent, academic, mainstream book editor, and diplomat, is a published mainstream novelist, short story writer, and essayist under other names and in another dimension of his life. He has lived extensively in East and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Europe as an embassy-based intelligence agent, which influences the settings and plots of many of his stories. He now lives in a picturesque and historical Midatlantic/Upper South state university town, with an accommodating spouse, where he writes, edits, teaches, and indulges himself.

Under the habu name he writes a full spectrum—and heat level—of M/M and bisexual works for the publishing houses of Excessica and BarbarianSpy. He also writes M/M historicals under the pen name Dirk Hessian, and M/M romance with coauthor Sabb under the pen name Shabbu.

For a loosely constructed travel through habu's professional life, read his “Flying High, Diving Deep”

I sent him a whole stack of questions and was overjoyed when he answered.

AB: First off, is there a need to be careful what you say or disclose because of your agency background?

H: There is a need to be “sort of” careful about my past. I was an overt employee of the Agency—had an overt job with them (with covert elements in it that just weren’t publicly acknowledged), but when I write, I use the essence of operations and relationships and settings—but not specific operations. Most are taken from open-source media coverage of events, though, and thus are free game. I have a whole series of spy novels in the mainstream that I passed through Agency clearance, so I know where the allowable edges are in publishing. Beyond that, there is the “NSA” syndrome working. Citizens are aghast at the revelation of the extent of NSA surveillance on them. It’s gone on for, like, forever, though, and folks who have been on the inside, as I have been, know that the collection effort and take are so huge that there’s nearly a zero possibility that the dots would be connected on me—or that anyone would see me as someone worth pursuing—I know I’m not doing anything actionable. And leading from that, what I write from in my spy writings isn’t activity the Agency wants publicly discussed anyway, so that’s insurance in itself. I can write a lot of truth that the general populace insists is fantasy.

AB: I gather members of the SAS never admit to being part of the regiment and always talk down what they do, even to family and friends. Is it the same in the agency, everyone is a data analyst never a field operative?

H: Most Agency—and other intelligence organizations—employees are actually overt employees. The covert ones won’t own up to covert work, no. But there’s a layer of overt employees who also do this and that on the covert side—not to the extent that Tom Clancy drew them in his novels, though. These employees use the overt work to cover anything else. In my case, when I worked overseas, there was veneer of “cultural affairs officer” that was spread over everything I did—and much of what I did (and used as an opening to do other things) was legitimately cultural affairs. (It just gave more meaning to the “affairs” word that most would assume.)

AB: Has agency work made you more cynical?

H: Yes, my work in intelligence did make me quite cynical—and jaded.

AB: Fetish Galore was the first of yours that I read. Was that just a compilation of kink stories you'd written at that time, or did you write them specifically?

H: Fetish Galore is a compendium of stories addressing the breadth of what I would put into GM fetish. Many of the stories existed before I put the anthology together. Others were written subsequently for this collection to add new fetishes.

AB: What aspect about BDSM appeals to you as a writer and/or as a participant? Physically and/or psychologically.

H: Dealing with the forbidden, in general, appeals to me as a writer. But while personally,  I have no problem with things like multiple partners in succession. I am not into full on BDSM.

Some mild bondage (where I could break free if/when I really wanted to) appealed to me as a participant, but I’m not really much into fear, delayed satisfaction, violence, or physical pain 

I don’t mind role playing of being incapacitated and taken, in a sense, against my will. But that isn’t a rape sensation for me—it’s one combining having no share of the guilt that it’s happening and the awe of having some hunk so out of control in wanting me that he’d do this. When it spills over into physical torture, it moves more into a hate category, and I don’t go there except in my writing to serve a particular audience.

Mind you, I can be aroused in doing so. 

AB: You mention trying the sounds so you would know what they were like but not liking that loss of control, yet, your characters are often depicted as having to submit to a stronger person, isn't that a form of losing control?

H: I was a spy. *smile* I see it as a form of controlling the “needy/almost out of control” taker in his actions. When one of my sub characters submits, it’s happening in my mind as a “Ha, now I’ve got you, you big, beautiful hunk.” This is bread and butter tradecraft. Give them what they want under the conditions where they think they are in control, and they’ll let their guard down and spill their guts, thinking they control and are safe. I pretty much establish in my stories that what the sub wants to come away with is a good fucking, so if he does, it wasn’t really a very good BDSM sub situation.

A fetish of mine is a smaller man (doesn’t have to be younger but he often is in my stories to reach that audience) being controlled and taken by a bigger man. I’m not a small man myself, but I did gravitate to men who were more muscular than I was and older (more experienced).

I write my sounding stories because I read more than once that there is a scarcity in the market for such works. I’m a writer; I go toward the underserved markets when I can do so and still enjoy the story weaving.

AB: Flying High is described as a semi-factual memoir. Do you or, did you, find writing these books cathartic?

H: Yes, the stories in Flying High (which is out in two editions from two different publishers and two similar but different titles) were cathartic. I had all of these memories bottled up inside me. In discussions with my cyber “other” (who is Sabb, also one of my publishers and a coauthor of GM erotica) experiences long dormant inside me were being pulled out and written up in story form, using the essence of real life in real life settings. These surfaced at various times and were assembled into Flying High. Since writing that, Sabb has “pulled” more from me which now appear as other stories that filled chronological holes. If I added these, the work would be twice as long.

When these get pulled out of me, I look back and think both that, god, I was having a good time in my sexually active life (which didn’t start until I was almost 30) and, god was I ever a slut. Both of those thoughts make me smile, though.

AB: Which do you think is your best book/anthology?

H: This is really hard to answer, as I don’t feel I’ve written too many duds (As any narcissistic writer would think.)—and I have well over 100 works of erotica in pen names in the market. I like my use of history and unnamed famous people, mostly ones I’ve had the privilege of meeting, in my novellas and novellas—such as Homeward Bound (paralleling Thomas Wolfe), The Handyman (a construct of gay male (GM) activity in a New England town over centuries), Brambleton (a takeoff on the relationships and emotions in Brideshead Revisited), Cairo Surrender (bringing up Cairo of the 20s and depicting bondage, seduction, and domination) and Home to Fire Island, are ones by habu that I consider to be literary and favorites of mine.

Dirk Hessian’s Constantinople was deeply researched and came out quite well, I thought. Luther uses perceptions of the weakness and vulnerability of mental disability to turn the concept on its head and, I hope, to amuse in a way that has the reader cheering for Luther. I’ll have to stop there, but I could go on—nearly every one of my books was written to explore some theme and is like a child to me.

Concerning anthologies, I write two different kinds (and I also write ongoing series, like my Clint Folsom detective series). One kind of anthology is truly standalone stories—and I write two varieties of that. The themed anthologies have an overarching concept to them: first time, fetishes, rough stories, romances, geographical regions, time periods, I even have one where each story features dogs, and so forth. 

I think Bitten Peach, all-oriental stories, many from ancient times, is a standout in this grouping—as is Man’s Man, the stories of an unabashed high-market male hooker. But I have to slap my hand not to pull out six or seven others I think are notable. Then there is my Grab Bag, eclectic collection anthologies, which are composed of loose stories dropping from my muse over a period of time. The fifth edition of this comes out soon, and the sixth one is already building.

AB: You've already mentioned that you've done a few versions of Tuscan Twilight. I can see how you could twist the end with various motives and changing the sexes of the participants. What does this spring from? Is it a fascination with motives? Is it a lag over from your days as an analyst?

H: As a writer, I like to recast the same scenario with a different theme or emphasis. With Tuscan Twilight—designed to show with separate chapters how the separate sexual preferences can travel through a coherent story line—I saw that one of these stories, extracted and recast, for the Fifty Seventy anthology could work with a skewed theme and setup. I was quite pleased with the original, and I could be quite pleased with a repurposing recast—and be quite pleased with both of them as well. The original wasn’t sacrosanct.

Might add, on my writing technique, that I don’t agonize on a draft. A write, a review, and off to the editor. When it comes back, unlike most people who are faced with trimming, I add detail. But, again, I don’t do a lot of rewrites. I lose my voice and the spontaneity of the storytelling when I do that.

AB: Another one along this line is the Egyptian Initiation/Indian Doctor/Witness for the Prosecution where the same scenario is used, but in the latter, the question of guilt and non-con vs dub-con comes in. First off, on a slightly different slant, if this happened in real life, have your feelings/attitude toward it changed and has this led to these variations?

H: The “Egyptian Initiation” version of this storyline—which, yes, comes out of my initial, surprised, and total deflowering in male-male sex uses an Egyptian because I wasn’t quite ready in the initial story to acknowledge that he was an Indian. At the time,  I wasn’t comfortable with my contact with Indians (Asian Indians) hence it was all the more mysterious that it was an Indian who seduced me—and not just in a fumbling one-time event, but in a progression of takings in nearly every way possible—that I kept coming back for.

I pretty quickly saw this as a release of the floodgates on what I wanted—and was too taken with myself to even realize that. I see it now as a welcome release too, so I guess my attitude hasn’t changed, no. But I was 28, married to a much more openly experienced woman, and had been so narcissistic that I hadn’t realized before then when I was being hit on by both women and men. So the change in attitude came at that point, I guess—being, essentially, seduced by my to-be wife.

AB: Do you enjoy stretching yourself as a writer, for example “New Man at the Village Café” from RoughRiders. How do you describe that? Second person POV? The narrator addresses the reader as if they are the other character?]

H: I approach every write from the aspect of “what new element/style/ technique/scenario/theme/ emotion/ atmosphere” can I bring to this. I think the “New Man” is probably my most hated work by most readers. But I think the emotions are as real as they are raw and that they expose an aspect of the actively cruising gay lifestyle.

Second person only works for me in highly charged, very short bursts of a story. I write in third person sometimes, but I find first person the most intimate and often find myself drifting into that even when I’m writing third person. I don’t sit down and think about what person to write in when I begin a story, though. I don’t think about any technical issue when I sit down and write a story. I just sit down and start writing and let it go its natural way.

AB: Do you get much direct feedback for your books. Another writer, Ryan Field, says he gets very little via Amazon and Goodreads, but he gets quite a few emails.

H: I get some feedback, the most interesting in e-mails. I don’t get nearly what I would like to get because so many of my stories have what I think are interesting tidbits of philosophy or fact behind them that I didn’t put in the story—I’m not an “everything and the kitchen sink” writer.

I am writing so much of the time that I don’t take time to go out and promote what I’ve already written, so sometimes it seems like I’m just dropping these into a void—until the royalties come in and I can see that they, in fact, are selling

AB: You mention in "Renewal of Passion" that you were floating on royalties from earlier novels. When was your first book (under any name) published?

H: My first book, in the mainstream, was published in 1996. The first erotica e-book was in 2002 (so I was on that bandwagon early, but I got off of it for a while because that was too early—e-readers were being obsoleted as quickly as they were introduced—and I was doing fine in the print market. I got back into the e-book erotica market in 2006, I think).

I don’t remember the “floating on royalties” mention and don’t want to suggest that I get rich on writing erotica alone. I write erotica primarily for artistic release (and personal arousal). Probably by “float” I meant that the income there is over and above what I need to live comfortably. I’m well fixed in annuities and personal resources, so the income from all of my writing, mainstream and erotica alike, is a free-use float on top of that. For a writer, this is a good thing. I don’t have to write to put food on the table. I write to keep cruise boats in the water.

AB: You also mention writing a novel about a famous naive artist. Did that actually happen?

H: Platres Conclave is my naïve artist novella (I prefer writing novellas. I can do so in three days and have thoroughly enjoyed writing it and am ready to go on to the next. Hallelujah to the e-book revolution for reviving the novella as a cost-effective writing project) Her fame is relative and pretty much confined to Europe. I changed the gender and personality of that character completely, so nothing in there rebounds on the real person (except for those who know her house). Whole bunches of the rest of the novella are five-o’clock shadow close to my RL experience, though. I went to Platres to write in the hotel room where Daphne Du Maurier wrote Rebecca, I got swept up in an artists’ conclave, I got gang fucked, I walked into an art opening months later to find myself staring back at myself from the walls, in provocative poses, and to my knowledge none of my colleagues recognized me in the art work.

AB: What is coming next? What sorts of areas have you still to explore?

H: Who knows what my muse will dump on me next. I am completely under her control.

My latest release is Eleven to the Dogs (that anthology where every story has dogs in it—not in a sexual sense, of course).  Harmony and Dissonance (a tale of bi seduction at the Thai royal summer palace) is now in edit, and in the queue at this point (I publish a new story about every two weeks) are Caribbean Cruise Top to Bottom (built from a glance at two men at a table near me on a recent Caribbean cruise), and Ravens Roost (a relaunch and recast of a book published by another publisher four years ago). In edit is War Is Hell and Heaven (loosely built on the shooting of my father in WWII and a GM fantasy building up to that). In final review by me is Grab Bag 5. In advanced building stage is Stallion Station (BDSM at a male bordello). 

I have several works published four years ago that I have pulled and am reworking and will be republished over the year. I also have a reader-requested expansion of the story “9:30 Bus from Abilene” in the works. Then, yes, there are entirely new works on the schedule beyond that. I publish more than 30 works to the erotica marketplace each year.

Even my historical novellas pen name Dirk Hessian is planning a short story compendium, Before All That, which will provide prequel stories to most of his eleven published novellas.

AB: Obviously this change of name is because they are aimed at different audiences, but are you "out" as a writer of gay erotica? How much does your family/colleagues know? Do they read your books?

H: My friends and family have no idea I write erotica. I write mainstream too and am prolific in both, so they only see the mainstream. The erotica is, like Graham Greene’s and Ian Fleming’s novels were for them, an entertainment and tension reliever for me. Only my wife knows I’m bi—she was before me. She doesn’t know I’m writing erotica now, though.

I like not being a notable author in public.

AB: In my review, I made a comment about you having the knack to sum up people and situations pretty succinctly. Was that a product of your agency days? Are you a people watcher even now?

H: Yes, the succinct style in both characterization and overall storytelling is from my analytical days. What I wrote went to top policy makers. The mantra was “give me your best and most comprehensive 300 words and put the very best on the top, because they are extremely busy and will stop reading into even 300 words at some point.” I don’t structure the stories as I would intel analysis, but I try not to include anything superfluous and I try to evoke a good enough image in the reader’s mind with as little description as possible. It’s a good thing if different readers latch onto different images of a character. This isn’t only from my analytical background, though. I paint Chinese-style abstract watercolors, where we are taught to render the essence of the subject in as few brush strokes as possible.

This is where my adding to rather than trimming from stories in the review rounds comes in, though.

I do observe people on occasion for use in stories. (For instance, the coming Caribbean Cruise Top to Bottom is built entirely from seeing a young man at a table during a recent cruise attending to an older man. What was assumed was a father-son relationship opened up in possibility when the young man took his foot out of his shoe and rubbed the ankle of the older man with it.) I can’t say that I write from observation as much as from experience, though. I’m now a recluse—holed up most of the time in my home office and pecking away at the computer. (When I’m not spending my royalties on foreign vacations, of course.)

AB: I gather with the diplomatic service there is a lot of kudos in getting certain postings. Did you have much choice about where they sent you?

H: I was trained for East, Southeast, and South Asia and the Middle East. That’s where I went, which was a miracle, because the joke in the service was that you studied one region in the university, got your government job on the basis of how well you studied that region, and then were sent to some other region.

Early in my career I was given some choice on postings. The system changed later in my career to where one had to bid on the post one wanted. Some folks were offered something other than they bid on if they couldn’t get their declared choices. With me it was somewhat different. The early tours built relationships and liaisons that were the basis of my assignments. Later in my career I was sent back to where I had earlier served to reopen those relationships.

AB: Tell me more about your Middle East days. Where were you based?  When was that? Was your family with you?

H: I lived in Cyprus, which is the safehaven of the Middle East. (I’d say “some Mediterranean island, but, since so many of my stories are set in Cyprus, that dog don’t bark anymore). My work took me throughout the region, though. My family was stationed there too.

AB: I'm going to list a few stories, do any of these have an underlying kernel of truth or did something prompt them (another writer's story perhaps)

Hidden Flute

H: No factual basis—only the theme of some of this work being noxious—and the one having to do the work not always carrying out the noxious part.

Staying Retired

H: No personal truth. A study in tradecraft—but pushing it to extremes. I’ve seen “I’ll grab intel and deny you intel to get ahead,” but not on this lethal level. But that’s the theme that prompted this.

Malta Intervention (this was probably the "gayest" of your stories I've read so far)

H: This was prompted by an artist friend of a friend being suborned by a little snit who then wanted to isolate him from his friends and control him to the point of damaging his art. No personal connections beyond that. Just capturing that it happens in the gay lifestyle. I like Malta, though, and I liked the scene setup. This was me standing off and looking at a RL situation—and then writing it up from just that nub in a fictional way.

Home to Fire Island

H: Memories of a “want to be carefree for this time” weekend on Fire Island. Beyond that, what the protagonist was struggling with was what was going through my mind when my muse decided to marry those concerns with that location.

AB: Talk about hardass bosses "fucking you over" I loved that last paragraph of Ethiopian Cabin Boy: "He probably will even tell me it's my reward for an assignment well done." Is Sam Winterberry based on the older version of you? 

H: Oh, no. I had Sam Winterberrys as bosses—we called them controllers or handlers (even to the extent of vetting me himself for assignments), and my treatment of his character is my one-finger salute to some bosses in the past, but I was never a boss in this particular area of assignment. I wanted to capture the nastiness and domination of some if the men in these positions, though. This character pops up from time to time in my “Candy Store” works. I’m having fun with him.

AB: Thank you so much,  for agreeing to be “grilled” Your insights into how you write and the backgrounds to your stories adds an even richer dimension to them.

After I posted my last blog, I remembered a blog that William Maltese did ages ago on Jessewave, exploring whether there were two types of m/m.

Even describing what the blog was about adds to the argument. He maintained that there are two types of m/m. A heated debate subsequently erupted about whether it was because one is written BY men and one BY women, or was it because one is written FOR men and the other FOR women.

The 158 comments discussed this topic at length, with people arguing you coudn't (shouldn't?) generalise. However, the fact that the debate is still around shows that there IS a difference if nothing else.

The books reviewed here are definitely written by a male. I categorise them as gay fiction. Some might call them gay erotica, but there are plots and the sex, while graphic, is not the most important part.

The question then arises: "Is it just males who will enjoy them?"  Why not read them and find out.

Non-Romances?
Gay Fiction?

Stories where gay love/sex can be present
but they don't fit into the romance box.


Recently, a couple of books prompted me to consider the fact that gay fiction (for want of a better word) needs a better outlet. Some of these stories have gay characters indulging in sex on page, off page, developing deep and long lasting affection and even possibly gaining happiness, but in no way can these stories be considered as “romances”. However they may be stories where love happens.

I'm not talking about where characters fall in love and one dies. I believe that is a separate category.

Sometimes those books get published by mainstream MM publishers, eg Edmond Mannings’s “Lost and Found” series with Dreamspinner but under the Bittersweet Dreams line which is marketed as: stories of M/M romance with nontraditional endings. It's an unfortunate truth: love doesn't always conquer all. Regardless of its strength, sometimes fate intervenes, tragedy strikes, or forces conspire against it. These stories of romance do not offer a traditional happy ending, but the strong and enduring love will still touch your heart and maybe move you to tears.

But what if the book has a happy ending but not a "traditional" way of getting there. Or what if there are no "romantic" elements present?

Maybe the ending is ambivalent like A.N. Bond’s “The Dangerous Seduction” ?

They may simply incorporate elements not popular in MM romances, because in many cases, these are stories about love rather than romance.

On some occasions, these books have been wildly popular, but often books like these get poorly rated, which may discourage other readers. Often, the problem has been more about expectations not being met rather than quality of story. Those readers expected a gooey romance and didn’t get it. However other readers might be out there, wanting something different and not knowing where to find it.

Authors do have the avenue of self-publishing, but because they lack access to a publishing houses's loyal databases of buyers, they’re relying on word-of-mouth to sell. 

My other concern is that authors who write these stories are being discouraged from doing so because there is no specific outlets for them.

While Cleis and Lethe Press have been publishing these stories for years, when did you last check them for something to buy?

I’m thinking more of current MM romance publishers starting up a separate imprint/genre, which suggests to the buyer: Hey, we think these books might interest you. Because each publisher has a pretty shrewd idea of what kind of books their regulars like. But now and then, a book must crop up on their radar that, if they had this imprint/genre, they could market it to those who want to read outside the traditional romance trope. The adventurous, the brave, the bored, the curious.

I don't think lumping them all under Bittersweet Dreams is enough. No one would classify Dangerous Seduction that way, however "Between Love and Honor" by E.E. Montgomery, fits that definition well.

So the question is:
"Would you buy non-romances/gay fiction from a "romance" publisher if they were clearly identified as such?" 

What is the best way to find out?

First up, I envisaged a poll to see what MM romance readers thought about the subject, so I flicked the concept past a few friends for their reactions.

One said: spinning off a new publishing entity makes no sense at all. It would be caught between the m/m publishers and the more literary houses like Lethe and go nowhere fast. But an existing one could a) provide a place for some alternative content and b) manage reader expectations. I think it's fair that they limit those books to stories that have an erotic component and maybe even require that they have some potential for romance within the story. These should be in keeping with their other book lines and not try to go too far away from their base business.”

Another questioned whether a poll was the right way to go, noting that people can, in theory, be right behind an issue but when it comes to the vote or their wallet, they may not follow through. The problem is that polls are always skewed because the people who might be interested are the ones most likely to want to participate.

And polls are difficult things to formulate. Making them meaningful based on what you want to know from the outcome plus, the question and the answers have to be carefully worded to be able to be interpreted without ambiguity.

More feedback to my initial question was: Contemporary drama? Sci-fi? Paranormal? Mystery? Chick lit? All of these genres can have non romance plot lines but if you put them on a romance publisher, yes people will expect romance to be the main theme and feel deceived when it isn't no matter how many disclaimers you put.

But until gay characters go mainstream, how do authors get these books out there? Perhaps a “No Gooey Romance Imprint” could/should contain indicators to show that there is some level of love/sex?

It is a difficult issue and one that Publishers have probably already considered.

Big publishing houses like Harlequin solve it by having a whole string of sub genres. http://www.harlequin.com/articlepage.html?articleId=538

As one person I contacted stated:  If you have a good brand that has a loyal following based on a certain expectation (romance/erotica), messing with it is a huge risk. Sometimes it turns out okay but most of the time, change is so hard for people that you end up with loyal people who become less loyal.

A couple of publishing houses have already started up specific YA imprints. Authors use different pseudonyms. So perhaps this is one way to go.

But first, is there a market? Would review sites cover it? Would book groups read them? Is it worth the set up and cost of new email/newsletter databases and forming new social networking groups?

Would it be just as simple to create a list of books on Goodreads?

“Gay Fiction that might appeal to MM Romance readers” or “Gay Fiction without Gooey Romance”

Because that’s the crux of the matter. Are there MM romance readers who might be interested in such books? What is your view on the issue?

I'm on a Scifi kink at the moment and really enjoying reading some old classics.

Julie Bozza has a new book out. Always grounds for celebration!
Butterfly Hunter was the first of her books that I read. By page 53 I was hooked, not only because of her great writing but because there were an incredible number of links between incidents described and places I’d been to. I wrote to Julie and mentioned these. She was nice enough to respond and since then I’ve added a few more questions.

First up was my response to Butterfly Hunter.

AB: Imagine the thrill I got when Dave and Nicholas walked through the Botanic Gardens and visited a few other haunts I used to frequent. Plus my father and sister were both entomologists and went on collecting trips like your characters did.  Are any of your other books set in Australia?

JB: None of my other titles currently published are set in Australia. I am currently writing the sequel to Butterfly Hunter, but most of it is set in England, I'm afraid! I do, however, have a couple of ideas for future projects set in Australia that I will probably get to at some point. Certainly the setting seemed to be a popular one, whether readers enjoyed seeing their home country depicted, or reading about somewhere a bit different and 'exotic'.

AB: Do you read reviews of your books?

JB: I read some, and I do think about what they have to say, whether positive or negative. Though only to an extent - I hardly read a review of Butterfly Hunter (except for yours) once I started writing the sequel, as I wanted to be as free as possible to write it 'my' way. Also, it's challenging enough to follow up a successful title, without adding anything to the pressure, or risking a complete collapse of confidence. :-)

It was very interesting to me that someone remarked how wrong I'd got the forensic or police procedures in The Definitive Albert Sterne. Obviously someone who has real experience in the field! All I can say to defend myself is that you won't find anything in there that you wouldn't see on any of the CSI or police procedural type of shows, so at least I'm amongst good company. But no, I can't compete with the thriller-writers who have direct experience. I did an awful lot of reading as research, but no 'field work' as it were. LOL! I certainly read enough to be able to spot where Silence of the Lambs got it wrong - which was both a surprise and a relief to me as a writer...

Anyway, yes. I guess I'm convinced that experts in any field will almost always be able to pick apart the fiction set in their area. Unfortunately that's mostly how it works.

AB: How do you handle negative comments? Does it affect what you write next? How you might handle a sequel?'

JB: As I've already hinted, if I feel there's something of substance in the criticism that I can learn from, then I take heed. However, over the years, I have also learned to have faith in my own instincts. I am not hard-nosed about 'doing it my way or not at all', but at a purely practical level the times where I've gone with my own instincts - whether or not my instincts are affected by external input - are the times when I've written best. Readers respond in deeper ways to writing which I have felt deeply myself. And sometimes that means trusting myself despite other people telling me to do something different. It's as you say yourself re the ending of 'Red and Blue': you see now that you should have listened to your own gut instinct. All I can add at this point is 'Amen to that!' So I don't suppose I have any answers to this that you haven't figured out for yourself.

AB: Do you read much M/M romance?

JB: A fair bit – though I'm afraid I don't read as much as I probably should within our genre - just so little time, and often reading for research rather than pleasure or interest. So I don't really have a feel for overall themes or styles. From the outside looking in, it seems quite a diverse range, though, especially given the 'rules' of the romance genre.

AB: Do you agree with my assessment that charm is of one of the main themes of The Definitive Albert Sterne? If so, was this in your mind when you developed the book or wrote it?

JB: Yes, I agree with all you say in your review about charm and how it works as a theme in the novel. But no, it wasn’t something I consciously had in mind. Which really interests me! As I was first reading your review, I was nodding along and thinking ‘Yes, absolutely!’ and yet I was also thinking ‘Gosh! I didn’t even know!’

It really interests me how the writing process – perhaps any creative process – draws on both the intellectual and the instinctual. I suppose the trick is to find a way of using both, to use the conscious mind but not let it get in the way of the subconscious. Some of the bits I’m proudest of in my novels and stories are things I wasn’t aware of at the time, but discovered later. Such things can really work well – and oddly I hardly feel I can take much credit for them!

One thing I definitely had in mind for Albert himself was the trope of ‘The Truth Teller’, the person who always says what he or she has on their mind, without filtering it in ways that society expects. I find such honesty charming and amusing – in fiction at least! Perhaps it’s about daring to shake off the shackles of politeness and tact. From there, it would have made instinctive sense to have Fletcher both charming and afraid of charm. And so on…

I love how you incisively pull this particular theme out of the novel and describe it so clearly. I hope you’re not too disappointed to find that I didn’t fully intend it!

AB: What are your own personal thoughts on charm?

JB: I agree with you that charm can be dangerous. It can certainly help you go a long way, and a lack of charm can really hold you back. I certainly don’t think that ‘nice guys finish last’, as most people enjoy having men and women around them who are cheerful, personable and friendly. But it has to be sincere, or come from a good heart. That’s the danger with charm, I suppose: it can be all flashy style with no real substance.

AB: Was there some reason that you chose the time period that your books cover? For starters, did you need to go back and check what Forensic procedures were carried out in those days for the Albert Sterne books? Did the fact that it was a fairly new science influence your decision?

JB: The very first ideas that eventually grew into the novel actually occurred to me way back in the early nineties, so as I started planning it out, I was setting it in the recent past. I am always uneasy about setting books in the future – even in the near future – and as you’re aware it would have been particularly foolish in this case, with the science evolving so rapidly. 

I wanted Albert’s parents to have been fleeing the Second World War in Europe when they came to America, so that helped tie the story to a particular period in the past. I recall there was some slight rejigging of the timelines so that Fletcher could be an impressionable mid–teen when Robert Kennedy was killed. Otherwise, it panned out as I’d initially planned.

Despite the fact that I didn’t seriously start writing the novel for some while, I never really considered bringing it forward in time. I enjoyed the fact that Fletch had to do a lot of (literal) legwork, and Mac’s data searches were so much clunkier in those pre–Google days. I also liked to frustrate poor Albert with the fact that DNA profiling had been invented but wasn’t yet widely available. I enjoy watching the hi–tech shows, even when they strain credibility, but there was something cool about setting the story in a world where Fletch couldn’t just call Albert on his cell, and Albert could gather a whole lot of trace evidence but not be able to work miracles with it.

AB: Would you consider Albert had a form of Asperger's? It wasn't widely diagnosed until the mid nineties, but that's what his behaviour reminded me of on many occasions.

JB: I can see why you wondered about that – and if he’d been born later he may well have been assessed for such a disorder. But in my opinion, he doesn’t have Asperger syndrome. I think he’s a result of his early circumstances acting on a very private person who is very intelligent but not so emotionally intelligent. For better or worse, I think it’s just his personality.

AB: Songs play an important part in Homosapien – a fantasy about pro wrestling. After I wrote my review which can be found here, Julie and I got into a discussion about the way men can write fantastic ballads where they pour out their feelings yet male authors often get criticised for not showing the emotions and not being romantic enough in their stories.

JB:  We are told that men aren't so great at expressing themselves and aren't as emotional as women, but how then do we explain all the centuries of novels, poetry, letters and so on that men have given us, right on through to the text messages my husband sends me when he's away? Not to mention the passionate 'real life' love affairs that have taken place in the public eye. I still don't go as far as I feel I legitimately could, in what I have my heroes say and do - but I feel there's far more room for manoeuvre than what is dictated by 'common wisdom'!

AB: As an aside, the one point that the two male authors at the OZmmMeet made in our panel about specifics relating to the genre was that men don’t think about their emotions. They don’t try to analyse them or express them. They admitted they have them though. Perhaps it is a case of not generalizing.

JB: The authors you mention have a point that I will have to ponder over for a while, absolutely. And yet… how could Pete Murray have written ‘Please’ or ‘Ten Ft. Tall’ without thinking about, analysing and expressing his own emotions and those of his friends…? And he is in all other ways such a bloke, bless him. I don’t know. Maybe I won’t ever know! But I’m sure I’ll be thinking about it for a long while to come.

AB: Once again that story is set in the past, but comments have been made about getting facts wrong.

JB: I dubbed this novel a ‘fantasy’ in the subtitle partly because I wanted to set it outside the existing world of pro wrestling, and explore various aspects of the situation without having to pay strict attention to actual timelines, and so on. (Also, I didn't want to risk incurring Vince McMahon's wrath over copyright issues!) However, I was very much drawing on things that were happening in the late 80s and 90s, a time of great transition for the pro wrestling world.

I know that someone asserted in response to your review that ALL pro wrestling fans are in on the whole thing and know that it's staged. I'm sure it's a much different proportion today than it was then, but surveys taken at the time indicated that around 75% of fans thought pro wrestling was real - in all senses. A real, competitive sport. And the surveys were constructed in such a way as to really explore that question. So that's a whole heap of people who either experienced it as real - or (like Fox Mulder) they very much wanted to believe.

The story I included in the novel about a man only realising it was staged when he happened to see an identical show staged in another town when he was away from home - that was real. My media studies teacher told me of this exact experience, and how disillusioned he'd felt!

The only other quibble I've come across is that it's unlikely David, as an American, would have ordered a 'doppio'. But that was pretty much my point, as he's a coffee snob as well as an intellectual snob.

So I very much appreciate you asking, but I'm still pretty happy with the novel and what it covers.

AB: When you re-released in The Valley of the Shadow of Death, did you make any changes to the original?

JB: Nothing very significant. It was an opportunity to polish it up and have a fresh pair of eyes look at it, but the substance of it is much the same.

AB: With your earlier publications, do you ever get the urge to revisit an rework them (one day) knowing what you know about writing now?

JB: As with Valley, the publishing or republishing of an older title is a chance to have another look at the manuscript. However, I rarely make significant changes to them. For better or worse, I feel the book is what it is, and there's an 'integrity' to it that might get lost if a rewrite isn't done thoroughly and well. In any case, I am the kind of person who tends to look forwards rather than back, so I'm far more interested in the current or next project...

AB: I gather the sequel to the Butterfly Hunter is about the transition to living in England and the challenges. Would you like to tell us about that?

JB: Thank you, I’d love to! LOL! The sequel is called Of Dreams and Ceremonies, and is indeed set mostly in England. Dave and Nicholas both want to settle in Australia, but that can’t happen immediately, so this time Dave is the ‘fish out of water’. He’s coping with a very different lifestyle to what he’s used to – and of course the relationship is still fairly new so they are not only learning more about each other, but they’re also having to make some mutual decisions about things they’re coming to with very different assumptions. I enjoyed writing that feeling of them both being very sure this relationship is what they want, but still trying to figure out how that will actually work.

AB: Do you know when this will be available through Allromance ebooks?

JB: The Press's general practice is to make titles available on AllRomance and via other distributors two months after initial publication, though that can vary depending on how things pan out.

AB: You mentioned at one point that there would be a third book in the Butterfly Hunter series. Are there other themes you want to explore in that?

JB: The third one will be set back in Australia, probably about seven years into their relationship. I want to explore who they are by then, of course, and how they work together. But I also want to explore some more about Dave’s relationship to the Dreamtime site at the waterhole they (re)discovered. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of Charlie, and Denise and her family. I think I’ll have Nicholas’s nephew Robin pay them an extended visit as well, so we can find out a little more about who he’s growing into.

AB: What else is on the horizon?

JB: At the moment I’m about halfway into writing a novel about three young men who, much to their own surprise, start up a long-term threesome relationship. It’s set in contemporary London, and takes place over about a year. They’re all actors, so part of the fun is making up or borrowing the stories they’re working with over the year. It’s an interesting challenge, as while the characters have different backgrounds, they are each coming to this with fairly conventional ideas about love involving two people in a monogamous relationship and so on. But they decide, bit by bit over time, that the unconventional threesome is well worth making some adjustments for.

Can I finish by thanking you, AB, for some very interesting questions and conversations? It’s been really great to engage with you at such a thoughtful level.

Buy link: http://www.manifoldpress.co.uk/2013/10/of-dreams-and-ceremonies/

Blurb: It seemed like a great idea at the time… Aussie Dave Taylor has followed Nicholas Goring to England, and the lovers have become engaged. But now Dave has to cope with living in a mansion full of family and servants, making wedding plans, getting his head around visa applications, and wondering why on earth he’d ever want to wear a ‘mourning suit’. He’s not sure if it will prove any easier, but right now Dave would love to just skip ahead to the honeymoon…

Click here for author’s blog

Follow Julie Bozza on Twitter and on Facebook

Unfortunately, fellow Aussie, Lisa Henry, couldn't make it to the recent OZmmMeet, but we chatted online and she agreed to an interview.
 
AB: Loved your blog on the first time you became aware of the fact that men can fall in love. How long have you been reading mm?

LH: Probably only a few months before I started writing it, to be honest. I read an m/f/m book that I quite liked, and then it occurred to me that it would have been better without the heroine. I picked up a few m/m titles and never looked back.

AB: You seem to have suddenly burst onto the scene back in February 2011 with Tribute. Had you been writing anything else before that? Fan fiction?

LH: I’ve written for as long as I can remember. Every notebook I have from school turned into a creative writing book, with stories sandwiched in between whatever the subject was supposed to be. My geography workbook was at least 95% epic high fantasy novel. I failed geography that year. The high fantasy novel was pretty bad too. When I was a teenager I wrote a bit of fan fiction, but never put any of it online.

In another life I’m an aspiring non-romance novelist. I actually wrote Tribute after getting a rejection on a historical mystery from a fantastic agent, and I decided then and there that why the hell not try erotic romance? I was reading enough of it. So I wrote Tribute to make myself feel better about that rejection, and sent it away with absolutely no expectations, and it was the best decision I ever made. 

AB: What writer was most influential on you when you first started?

LH: I remember reading J.P. Barnaby’s The Forbidden Room, and staying up way too late at night to finish it. I was just enthralled by the journey of Jayden, who starts off as Ethan’s roommate and becomes his sub. It was a fascinating insight into the needs and the mindset of a sub. I particularly loved it because Ethan wasn’t a magic mind-reading Dom. He made mistakes, and he made some big ones.

AB: What prompted you to join forces with J.A. Rock?

LH: She did. I’d been thinking about co-writing for a while, and J.A. and I had sent each other a few emails since we both had books released at the same time from LooseId, and both liked the other’s books. Then, out of the blue, she sent an email asking if I’d be interest in co-writing. Hell yes. And it turned out we worked really well together.

I think I was worried that our styles wouldn’t gel, or that we wouldn’t even get that far and the whole thing would fall apart before we started. But the best thing about working with someone you don’t really know, is that you kind of have to stay polite and professional.

We fight a lot more now we know each other better. Mostly about American spelling. Which, as you know, is plain wrong.

AB: Are there aspects of writing you find difficult which are easier with a co-writer?

JH: Having a co-writer forces me not to give up when I hit a roadblock. Which is what I constantly do, and probably explains why my single author stuff takes so much longer to write. Also, a co-writer might take things in a direction you never even saw coming, which is fantastic. There is some negotiation involved, like if I suggest a plot point that she might not like, so we sometimes have to look for a third way of doing things. And usually that third way is something I’d never even considered, and it turns out to be better than what I originally had in mind.

Also, enthusiasm. It’s fun to write with someone, and get immediate feedback on what you’ve written, even if it’s just a smiley face or a “LOL” in the comments. I’m all about the instant gratification. 

AB: Some pairings take a character each and basically role play. How do you handle it?

LH: J.A. and I discussed this when we started The Good Boy. Neither of us had co-written before, and had no idea how to approach it. So we winged it, like with everything. We’re both very laid back. I started in Lane’s POV, she started in Derek’s, but we never wanted to “own” a character each. And we sort of tag teamed after that. If I ran out of steam in the middle of a scene (sometimes in the middle of a sentence) she’d pick it up from there, and vice versa.

 
AB: What strengths do you feel you bring to the co-writing table?

AB: J.A. says I’m the organised one. Which only shows how disorganised she must be. I think she’s better at sex scenes than I am: I tend to retreat inside a character’s head a lot and rely on what they’re feeling rather than what they’re doing, whereas she choreographs scenes beautifully. And spankings. She is the queen of spankings.   
AB: You’ve explored a few different avenues so far, contemporary BDSM, slave fiction, historical fiction, science fiction and military fiction. Do you have a preference?

LH: This is actually what I love about writing romance. It’s a massive umbrella, and as long as the focus is on the relationship, you can set it absolutely anywhere. I have no preference at all, really. I’ll just give my characters whatever setting I think works best for them. I like sci fi a lot because that lets me do my own world building. On the other hand, I love history, so even though historicals take longer because of all the research involved, I really enjoy writing them. 

AB: Can you see yourself writing any books without that dominant/submissive relationship?

LH: That’s a tricky question! I think every relationship has aspects of power exchange, whether we acknowledge them or not. And I love to explore them. Probably the most vanilla relationship I’ve written so far would be Brady and Cam from Dark Space. I don’t think that Brady is a sub, but he definitely needs Cam in the same way that a sub might need a Dom — to keep him grounded.

Mark and Deacon in Mark Cooper Versus America are both new to BDSM, and although we establish that Deacon prefers spanking to being spanked, he’s not a Dom. And Mark would make a terrible sub. He doesn’t take direction very well. At all.

AB: Which of you is most interested in BDSM and D/s relationships?

LH: J.A. definitely has more formal experience, but we both love exploring the power dynamic of a D/s relationship. I think that in every new relationship there is always this fear of revealing yourself to your partner, and this is magnified in a D/s situation. At the end of the day, it’s not the kink that counts; it’s the trust.

AB: What is it about BDSM that attracts you to write about it?

LH: The power dynamic, definitely, and the amount of trust it takes to reveal your needs to your partner. Sexuality is a fascinating subject. It’s such a basic human need, in all its wonderful variations, and yet most of us are conditioned from a very young age to think of kink, especially, as wrong or weird. I think J.A. and I explored this most in The Good Boy where Lane literally can’t tell Derek what he needs, which is where non-verbal puppy play became so important for them.

AB: Have you ever been tempted to get involved in real life?

LH: I live in a smallish provincial city, and while we have a thriving LGBT scene, we don’t have any BDSM clubs that I’m aware of. So my experimentation has been very much in private, and not at all in formal scenes. 

AB: What do you read when you write or don’t you?

LH: While I’m writing, I tend not to read much because I’ll either get depressed if I read something fantastic (Why can’t I write like that?) or I’ll worry that I’m being influenced too much by someone else’s writing.

AB: Which of your current stories are you considering writing sequels to?

LH: Dark Space. Mostly because I loved Brady’s voice. He was so much fun to write. He’s wonderfully volatile and vulnerable at the same time.

AB: Tell us about The Boy Who Belonged, with J.A. Rock - coming soon from Loose Id.

LH: The Boy Who Belonged is a Christmas-themed sequel to The Good Boy. Here’s the blurb:

Twenty-year-old Lane Moredock finally has a normal life. Six months after he was wrongly made a suspect in his parents’ ponzi scheme, he’s settled down with his older boyfriend, Derek, and is working and attending school. But his happiness is threatened when his mother launches a Christmastime PR campaign to help appeal her prison sentence, and asks introverted Lane to be part of it.

 Derek Fields has his hands full taking Santa photos, bird-sitting his sister’s foul-mouthed macaw, and helping Lane prepare for a television interview neither of them wants him to do. As he eases Lane through his anxiety, he worries that Lane sees him as a caretaker rather than a boyfriend, and that their age difference really does matter. He and Lane compensate for the stress in their lives by taking their D/s relationship to new levels--a relationship that Lane’s mother insists he should be ashamed of.

As Christmas draws nearer, the pressure builds. Pushy elves. Snarky subs. A bad fight. A parrot in peril. How the hell is Derek going to give Lane a perfect Christmas when the Moredock legacy threatens to pull them apart before the new year?

It was a lot of fun to revisit Derek and Lane, and throw some more angst at them. It also contains more Mr. Zimmerman, the obnoxious macaw.

AB: Tell us about Mark Cooper Versus America, with J.A. Rock - coming soon from Loose Id.

LH: On face value, this is a book about Mark Cooper, an Aussie boy whose mother marries an American. Mark moves to America, starts college, and starts a relationship with a hot guy from a rival frat. It’s full of cultural misunderstandings, an Aussie boy who is fluent in sarcasm, and cross-dressing.  

Underneath that, it was an excuse for J.A. and I to hash out all our old arguments about American spelling (It’s wrong, J.A.), cultural differences, and which are scarier: sharks or bears.

The whole idea of it started during The Good Boy when Derek arrived at Lane’s hotel with a flat white, and J.A. asked me why he’d brought paint. No, I told her, a flat white is a coffee. Americans are weird.

She’s in NZ at the moment, discovering the wonders of flat whites. I got an email the other day about her trip to see where they filmed Lord of the Rings: I didn't die. But they almost didn't let me go because the forecast was 70 K winds on the mountain. Which means nothing to me because I don't know what that is in mph.

And that’s pretty much what inspired Mark Cooper. That, and a long email exchange about alternate meanings of the word “root”. 

AB: I loved The Island, do you have any single authored titles under contract or plotted out?

LH: I have one under submission at the moment, and another few plotted out. By plotted out, I mean I have things scrawled on Post-It notes. I am not a plotter. I think that probably shows in the number of WIPs I have on the go at the same time. I have ADHD when it comes to writing.

AB: I see you have a book The King of Dublin, written with Heidi Belleau under contract. What prompted you to team up with another author?

LH: A Twitter conversation. She asked, and I said yes. I’ll say yes to anything, really. J It’s why so much of my solo stuff is on the backburner at the moment. Also, I’d been a fan of Heidi’s for a while before we started writing together.

AB: Are you finding the writing process very different with Heidi?

LH: Very different. J.A. and I tag team, which means that I’ll go to bed one night, and in the morning there might be a whole new scene waiting for me. It’s like magic!

Heidi and I literally write together. We have a Google doc open, and work on it at the same time. At first it was weird to see writing appearing on the page, but I’m getting used to it now! Heidi is also more of a planner than J.A. or me, so that’s been a learning curve for me.

It’s also a slower process, since we have to wait for our timetables to sync up. Luckily I work odd hours, so I’m often up in the middle of the night my time, which is morning Heidi’s time.

AB: Did J.A. give you permission? (Lol)

LH: She’s not the boss of me! 

AB: So far you’ve written for Riptide and LooseId what made you select these particular publishers?

LH: I chose LooseId when I was submitting Tribute because they published my favourite m/m titles. And then I became aware of Riptide, which is a lot more dub-con friendly, and open to much darker stuff. When they were after submissions for their Warriors of Rome collection, I couldn’t resist. Dub-con and Ancient Rome — two of my favourite things!

Speaking of Riptide, J.A. and I have another coming out with them in March 2014 entitled When all the World Sleeps. It’s available for pre-order now and who knows, if you do, you may win free books for a year.

AB: Are there any other publishers you’d be interested in writing for?

LH: I’ve heard only good things about Samhain, so I might consider submitting to them one day. But at the moment I’m happy with both my publishers, so I’m in no rush to spread myself around too much.

AB: What happened to these books mentioned in your blogs? “There is 1920's England. I love the societal conventions, the fashions, plus this has the added bonus of séances and Spiritualism!

LH: I got totally sidetracked into research about Spiritualism. This one has sort of ground to a halt, sadly, because I do this thing where I have an idea, run with it, then get distracted by a newer, shinier idea. So instead of finishing one project, I dabble in at least six or seven at once.

AB:...There is 1880's England. And I have had so much fun researching this one! Opium dens and gaslights and the Limehouse... the only downside is those walrus moustaches. Not a great look.

LH: This is my attempt at a paranormal. I love Victorian England, and magic, but at the same time as I was starting this, another book came out set in that period with an MC who stammers, and recently another one has been released with the whole magic thing happening. So I’ve put this one on the backburner for a while. 

AB: And this one: Meanwhile, there's an Australian-Samoan police officer living in the back of my head who I've been neglecting lately. That one's light on the kink but heavy on the angst, and I think it will be the next cab off the rank. (I’ll be interested in how you go with that as I have a Tongan/Australian SAS guy in a book started but not finished)

LH: This one is still being written. It’s my go-to project when all the others are hurting my head. So it’s getting there, in fits and starts. I also now want to visit Samoa, for research purposes. Until then, I guess I’ll have to rely on my Samoan mates to make sure I don’t stuff up the cultural details.

And what is it about those big South Pacific guys? Yes, please! (Gratuitous picture of Dwayne Johnson included just because he's purty)

AB: And another WIP mentioned in your blog: I want to write a series of novels set in the one universe, full of political machinations that would make the Borgias proud. At the moment I’m leaning towards space opera rather than historical, because that way I can do all the world building myself, and fit all the pieces together without having to worry about historical accuracy. 

AB: I’ve got about half of the first book finished, and then I got distracted by something else. But it’s still there, and still waiting! 

AB: And yet another WIP you've mentioned: another historical, set in Wyoming in 1870, with the working title Sweetwater. My MC, Elijah, is partially deaf thanks to Scarlet Fever, and finds himself having to choose between two very different men with two very different agendas.

LH: This is the one that’s currently under submission! 

See? I do get things finished occasionally!

AB: Gee, I thought I was bad…How many WIPs do you have out there?

LH: Way, way, way too many.

AB: Do you feel pressured/guilty that you start books and don’t finish them?

LH: I work on the theory that I’ll eventually get everything finished. This theory can’t be proved false until I die, right?  

AB: Do you prefer working under contract and having a deadline?

LH: Deadlines are my friend. I work best under pressure. If you give me a deadline, I’ll make it. If you ask me to set my own, it means nothing to me. I think this dates back to my university days, where I was the queen of “The exam isn’t until tomorrow. I can totally study tonight.” Somehow I got a degree.

AB: You state in one of your blogs: “Love is the thing that makes you stick together when you've told him a hundred times to put his fucking socks in the laundry basket, not the floor, and you pick them up anyway. And when he's told you a hundred times how to refill that thing in your car where the water goes for the windscreen wipers, and then does it for you anyway. It's sleeping in when his alarm goes off and copping a goodbye kiss to whatever part of your head that isn't shoved under the pillow. It's leaving sticky notes on the fridge to maintain some sort of human contact when you don't cross paths for days.” Beautifully put BTW. Do you ever feel constrained by the demands of writing mm romance?

LH: Sometimes. I think there’s pressure to always end with a declaration of love and a HEA, which is not really my style at all. Because real love stories don’t end there. That’s where they start. And I always have more faith in a realistic ending, in a couple that I can see are still working on things, rather than with fireworks and a grand gesture of love. That’s how love stories are packaged in movies all the time, but it’s not how things are in real life. It reminds me a little of those wedding shows you see, where it’s all about spending a gazillion dollars on looking gorgeous for your photographs…but that’s a stage production, not a journey. I’m much more interested in how people will travel together.

That might seem a bit weird coming from someone who writes romance, since I’m marketing that fantasy as well, but I’ve never liked the fairytale “and they all lived happily ever after”. That’s not what life is, and it’s not what love is either. Life and love are infinitely more complicated than that, and infinitely more interesting. I prefer to leave my characters’ relationship as a work in progress. 

I love this quote by Stephen King:  "And will I tell you that these three lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness. And they did live."

How is that not perfect?

AB: I ask this because I was criticized by one reviewer about Don my hero in Leather+Lace because he never said “I Love you” in so many words to Steve. Yet if you read my book, I believe you can see it in what he does…

LH: I love Leather+Lace! Too often drag queens are portrayed as the comic relief, which is fine as that’s very much the theatrical public persona, but you can’t be on stage twenty-four hours a day. I love seeing the men behind the makeup.

And I liked that Don never said “I love you”. He showed his love in his actions, rather than his words. And to me, that means more than any declaration could. It is much more abiding.

AB: Thank you so much for giving your time. Whoever Tom is that commented on your blog, I thoroughly agree with every word he says. It’s rare to find a writer who can pull me into so many different sub-genres and keep my respect at the end of the story. Every story you have written is different and in a age where a lot of writers are churning out books with strikingly similar setups, that is a breath of fresh air.

For those who haven't read it yet, here is my review/essay based on Lisa's free short story: The Last Rebellion here.

You can find more about Lisa from her website  here

And follow her blog here
Twitter: @lisahenryonline
Goodreads: goodreads.com/LisaHenry

(Click on the covers above to access the buy links)