Welcome to author RJ Scott, joining us today to help celebrate the Freedom to Read (and write) what we love!
How often have I been asked this question?
“When will you write something normal. Something I can read?”
When I was first asked this question, way back in 2010 when I first started writing for being published, it seemed like everyone outside the genre wanted to know why I decided to write MM, or why didn’t I write a normal book, with a woman and a man.
Oh, and hell, why did I write romance. I mean, who the hell even reads romance.
This reminds me of a time when I was pregnant with my oldest (who is now 20) and I had pre-eclampsia, and so towards the end of the pregnancy I had a lot of lying around, and my love then, as it still is now, is the world of romance. I would, each month, buy 12 books from Silhouette Romance, and I would devour them in days. But no one ever knew that (hubby did though and he never judged me, teased me maybe, but never judged me). So, anyway, there I am sitting in bed, on a super hot day, and I’m reading a romance book, and my Brother-in-law came up to say goodbye after he’d visited.
I hid the book under the covers. Because, what would he think? Would he think less of me for reading a romance book? Would he look at me as someone who wasn’t intellectual, or some kind of stereotypical woman who read books he would never read? I wont know to this day, because he left and never saw the book.
I was hiding a very big part of me, because of what people thought. Move on to finding MM fan fiction, and then on to my career writing MM, and abruptly I was reading and writing words that people questioned.
“How do you research what goes on in the bedroom?”
“Why not write MF?”
“What makes you want to write about two men,” followed by, “I’m not judging, I just don’t get it.”
And to start, I was defensive. I mean, I loved what I read, and wrote, it was me, it was my life, but I don’t want to appear less in their eyes, any more than I did in my brother-in-laws eyes.
Then, somehow, when I began to sell books, and when I made more and more friends in ‘MM-land’ I became more comfortable in my own skin.
So now, I answer…
“How do you research what goes on in the bedroom?” is answered with, I read every day, I read, research, and, actually, my books are romance. They are love between two men, and it isn’t always about the sex.
“Why not write MF?” is answered with, I will do one day, alongside MM, but my first love is MM, and I can’t see why you’d even ask me that. You never asked me why I wanted to write Vampires, or Fireman…
“What makes you want to write about two men,” followed by, “I’m not judging, I just don’t get it.”, is answered with, you are judging really (always said in a nice way – I am english after all), but I love two men together. I love the challenges of being out and gay, and the acceptance of being gay, and two strong men in bed, and yes, I own that.
So, I know that a lot of people judge my writing, and what I read, and hell, Amazon have even tried in subtle ways to ban certain MM books, judging that MM is SEX!PORN!WRONG!
But I love what I do, I love what I read, and basically, at the end of the day, love is love, and that is all there should be.
About the Author
RJ’s goal is to write stories with a heart of romance, a troubled road to reach happiness, and most importantly, that hint of a happily ever after.
RJ Scott is the bestselling gay romance author of over ninety MM romance books. She writes emotional stories of complicated characters, cowboys, millionaire, princes, and the men who get mixed up in their lives. RJ is known for writing books that always end with a happy ever after. She lives just outside London and spends every waking minute she isn’t with family either reading or writing.
RJ also writes MF romance under the name Rozenn Scott.
The last time she had a week’s break from writing she didn’t like it one little bit, and she has yet to meet a bottle of wine she couldn’t defeat.
Find RJ at: Website || Goodreads || Facebook || Author Page || Twitter || Pinterest || Tumblr
Awesome post! As a reader of m/m romance, I have had similar feelings/questions.
Great post! I wonder if there is a single writer of (MM) Romance who hasn’t been asked that ‘when will you write a ‘real’ book’ question. I know my manager (in a library of all places) feels like that about my books, and she isn’t shy about sharing that thought with me as well as others, either. I’ve decided it’s their loss if they want to just disregard a whole genre. I’ll just continue to read and write the stories I enjoy.