There’s a weird dichotomy in the romance genre. On one hand, readers (and yes, I count myself in this category) want believable stories, or at least stories that make sense in the context of the world or time in which they’re set. We want people who act like people, not cardboard cut-out sex toys that move from one erotic encounter to the next with nary a thought in their heads except “Nookie!”
On the other hand, there’s a school of thought that if you get too many things happening at one time in a romance novel, you risk losing the reader. I’ve never had this problem, because I grew up reading sweeping epics with casts of thousands (Lord of the Rings, Sword of Truth, etc.) and learned to appreciate how the people in these stories helped shape their world, for good or ill. I know a lot of other people who feel the same way.
Being an aficionado of the epic, I like the idea of people from different worlds coming together and/or working against one another. Take Dusk, for example. The default setting is “erotic romance,” because…well, because there’s an MFM menage relationship. No big mystery there. But filing it in that pigeonhole ignores so much about this series and what it brings to the table. So let’s look at what Dusk has to offer other readers, readers who may not necessarily like romance but who have other things they groove on.
- It’s sci-fi. Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, H.G. Wells, Diane Duane, D.C. Fontana, Star Wars, and the authors of the old-school Star Trek novels informed my reading sensibilities from the time I was old enough to understand that spaceships and aliens had their own genre. So I understand the theoretical concepts behind faster-than-light travel, the notional concepts of how a particle-beam weapon might work, the problems of containing plasma in a shaped field, and the issues of interstellar navigation.
- It’s a military story. David Drake (yes, I know he’s sci-fi and fantasy, too), W.E.B. Griffin, Tim O’Brien, Stephen Coonts, and too many others to recall, coupled with my own service experience and opinions about combat and war, helped shape my ideas about what a good and honorable soldier of any stripe looks like, and how the powers that be may try to corrupt such a person to their own ends.
- It’s a suspense novel. Tom Clancy, Dean Koontz, John Sanford, et al taught me the psychology of a novel and how to hold off for the “big reveal” until the right moment. Thus there is political intrigue, murder, and an attempted assassination.
- It’s a fantasy novel. J.R.R. Tolkien, Terry Goodkind, George R.R. Martin, Mercedes Lackey…I could go on for days in this category. Magick and science are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and so the challenge of incorporating real, functioning magick into a sci-fi novel isn’t quite as ludicrous as it might first sound. I just had to give it a scientific underpinning, which worked out better than one might think.
- It’s a story about human beings. No matter where you go, even on another planet, people are people are people. Jim Butcher, Nora Ephron, Alice Munro, Alice Walker, Anton Chekhov and Toni Collette are just a few authors I can name who wrote excellent stories and prose pieces about human interactions. Understanding how people think, act, and work for or against a common goal is important to creating characters that seem real to the reader, and so I drew heavily on these authors for inspiration and to make sure I was on the right track with their conversations, interactions, and (when appropriate) intercourse.
- It’s an erotic story, yes. I could give you a whole laundry list of authors, many of whom have graced this very blog with their presence in the past, who showed me how to write sex better and more believably. Of course, science being what it is, it was inevitable that some sci-fi would make its way into the characters’ desire for one another, but I think that just makes the story a little richer and more enjoyable. (Imagine having a condom that works from the inside and you’ve got the basic idea.)
The trouble with aliens is that it’s hard to come up with something that hasn’t been done in some form before. They have to be able to get around on their own, breathe some form of an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, and subsist on the things available in a carbon-based biosphere, which really limited how cute I could get with them. Unfortunately for me, God already took the duck-billed platypus as a fuck-you to Darwin, so that shot that idea all to hell. (I was thinking about including tentacles in a nod to Zenobia Renquist, but given this story largely occurs on dry land, that would have been a stone bitch to get to fly.) Even so, I like the two species of aliens involved in this story. I’ll be curious to see if anyone can guess what inspired the T’riskin and the Raebteews…
So, yeah, there’s a LOT happening in Dusk. I wanted to make it romantic enough for the softies to enjoy (yeah, I’m one too), but exciting enough for the bloodthirsty, hot enough for the pervs (again, I’m one too), and science-y enough for the geeks to appreciate (and we’re four for four). If I say so myself, I think I did a pretty damn good job…but you tell me, hmm?
So my question for this Release Day is:
Do you like a big cast of characters with different shadings of “humanity” and lots of chances for misunderstanding, confusion, and mayhem, or do you favor a more limited and controlled story arc? I’m always curious to see what people think about this, and I anticipate a rather lively debate on the topic!
Be sure to follow my author page on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/JSWayneRomanceNovelist for more Release Day goodies, special extras, and maybe even some cool prizes. I look forward to seeing you there!
Until next time,
Best,
J.S. Wayne
