Hi gang! I don’t usually do live post while I am away at conferences, but I had a really great panel experience today at Romantic Times that I wanted to share. I moderated a panel called Crossing Over: Writing Straight and LGBTQ Romance with authors Amy Jo Cousins, Megan Mulry, Megan Erickson, Roni Loren, and Karen Stivali. We had an amazing discussion (people told me later it was their favorite panel at RT) and there was lots of interest on social media about the topic, so I thought I’d take a few minutes just to share some of the things we discussed.
We started off with all the panelists introducing themselves. All of the authors write both straight and LGBTQ romance in a variety of combinations. One of the first topics we talked about was whether authors found their publishers giving pushback about shifting from gay to straight romance (or vice versa) or with them writing various combinations across series. With the exception of a publisher that produces exclusively gay romance, everyone reported getting a lot of positive response from their publishers about the idea of branching out into different pairings and even combining them into one series. Roni noted that there has been a recent shift and that this wasn’t always the case, but now it seems that most publishers are open to at least considering crossover, even publishers who do primary straight romance.
One caveat to this was that often certain combinations don’t sell as well and several authors noted being warned by publishers that not everything is as marketable. It was specifically noted that lesbian romance is still a tough sell. Several of the authors noted trying to find a balance between writing the stories that they wanted to tell with the reality of needing to sell books, and that sometimes it is matter of thinking through scheduling to pace out the more commercial releases.
We also talked about branding and pen names, and whether the panelists used different pen names for different types of books. All of the authors on this panel use one pen name for all their work regardless of the romantic combinations, for a variety of reasons. The two biggest were the complication of keeping track of multiple pen names on social media and other communication outlets, as well as generally not wanting to divide up their books by orientation, but instead to have it all living together. However, Amy Jo noted that there are also good reasons why people might want to separate their pen names, particularly to have more focused branding and to help readers find the specific books they want to read. Megan Erickson noted it is important to think about whether you brand is going to be the genre or type of book you write, or if your brand is your author voice, because that may help determine whether you want separate branding/pen names.
Another big topic was writing series/books that combine both gay and straight stories. I was particularly interested in this topic as Joyfully Jay reviews primarily gay romance, but we do review straight romance when it is part of a larger series. Again the authors said that most of their publishers were really open to this and that it was important to them to be able to tell the stories that spoke to them without having to keep them separated into different books/series. I found it interesting that almost universally the authors reported that their readers who started with reading their straight romance were much more likely to follow them to gay romance than the reverse. Amy Jo noted that in part this may be due to some gay romance readers having the same misperceptions about straight romance as many readers have about romance books in general. Authors also noted that gay readers of gay romance are often more willing to cross over to straight romance than other groups.
For me the takeaway here was that authors should write the stories that they want to tell. There may be factors to consider, like marketability and reader interest/expectations. But ultimately it seems that both the publishing world and the readers are increasingly open to crossover stories. Personally I think that in the future the lines will continue to blur and there will be less focus on just gay romance or straight romance, and that all romance will be much more mixed together.
It was a super exciting panel and we had such a great discussion and a really engaged audience. I know that there are lots of things I missed here or issues that I may not have fully captured correctly, so please feel free to share your thoughts if you attended the panel (especially any mistakes I may have made recapping things here). And I would also love to hear thoughts from readers about this topic, so please feel free to comment here.
Thanks! And much love from RT!
This was really interesting! I primarily read m/m but I would love to read more f/f and m/f by m/m authors. If more of my fave authors had these books coming out I would jump on them straight away. I’m currently reading Megan’s m/f books, after loving her m/m ones. I kind of have my fingers crossed now that Megan and Santino Hassell will write a m/f story together!
Thanks for the awesome post 🙂
Thanks for sharing details about the panel that you moderated; it sounds like a wonderful discussion. I’m certainly one who follows favorite authors wherever they might go whether it’s from historical to contemporary, or from male/female romance to male/male romance, or …. I also follow authors who use one or more than one pseudonym. Thanks for this post.
What a wonderful discussion and thank you so much for reporting on it. I write both m/m and m/f romance and have found readers are much more likely to follow my m/f into the m/m books in my crossover series. Some of my m/m readers test the waters with the m/m books of the series, but generally pass on the m/f ones. When it came to publishing the crossover book series, I first approached my exclusively m/m publisher; it was an absolute no. No straight, not ever. But the books were joined at the hip, so I took them to another publisher that has never given me any pushback at all about it. I pondered whether to use a pseudonym for those books, but decided to simply own them under the same umbrella as my m/m. I’m going to share this post with a group for readers and writers of crossover romances. Thanks!
Thanks Tali! And yes, it sounds like your experiences mirrored a lot of what the panelists had to say as well.
Thanks for posting while you’re there! I write as-yet unpublished books. A big reason I haven’t published yet? My stories and characters do not “fit” into the standard genre classifications. I have gay and bisexual characters in my stories right beside straight characters. One thing that bugs me about M/M romance is that it seems that EVERYBODY has to be gay. Every single character.That’s as unrealistic as EVERYBODY having to be straight in hetero or M/F romance. Everyone is different as far as sexual orientation and that fact is reflected in my stories. I’m glad that some publishers are willing to blur the lines a little. Now on to the reader’s acceptance, because isn’t that what it’s all about?
Yes, it was really interesting to see where the lines are currently and talk about where they may be moving. Honestly, I think the lines will continue to blur. Just looking at the way gay romance has been integrated into RT over the past few years shows how we are no longer a separate genre, but part of the romance world. And the more that happens, the less I think there will be the need for such rigid lines in our books.
Seems like a few interesting things were touched upon in the panel. I mainly read m/m now but had I been reading a m/f author and she/he decided to start writing m/m I would follow them and purchase whatever books they wrote. Well at least I like to think. When I use to read Mercedes Lackey books I did anyway.
Interestingly most authors said their m/f readers followed them to gay romance but not vice versa. We speculated a bit as to why but there doesn’t seem to be a clear answer.
“For me the takeaway here was that authors should write the stories that they want to tell.” This. Oddly enough as I was watching old episodes of Criminal Minds last night on NetFlix a quote was referenced that made me think of this issue – “Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self.” ~ Cyril Connolly
Yes, very true
I’m so glad you blogged this! This session was right when my Club RT slot was and I couldn’t move it and I was searching to see if anyone had livetweeted it but I didn’t find anything. This is awesome! Such a talented group of writers and it is so good to hear some of the things they said.
No problem, glad you enjoyed the post!