What genre do I write in? You tell me and we'll all know!!!

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What do I write? You tell me and then we’ll all know!  I’d love to know people’s opinions on this. Feel free to comment and I’ll pick a winner at the end of the 4^th of July weekend. I’ll send you out a copy of Dark War, my short story that’s a…um…romance erotica, women’s fiction, soul connection relationship, deeply emotional steamy love story?  

 

I have no idea how to classify myself.   

Looking at various things this last couple of weeks, where I took a sabbatical from my ever exploding life, working sometimes what felt like 16 hours a day. I began to wonder if I knew what I was doing? I began to have doubts about my writing or being A writer. Given the chance to stand back and assess things, I wonder about the genre I write in. Do I love it? Well…yes…I do actually. So, what’s my problem? 

I was recently interviewed by the Good Men Project on whether we women erotica writers thought it was true that women wouldn’t read erotica written by men. Surmising that if it was written by a male, we’d automatically dismiss the story. But that’s not true. It more comes down to the splits and layers I see as I involve myself in this industry and specifically the genre I write in.  

 

 

Most women, but not all, want to read romance erotica and not stroke, if they’re going to pick up a story in this genre. So, do we automatically dismiss the male writers? No, we don’t. But my personal experience is that male writers generally write stroke. Stroke is a nice way of saying porn. And all of us in the Lush and Blush Club are ‘hot’ writers. We all say clearly, we write romance erotica and NOT porn. Two of our writers pen BDSM books, but they still say, it’s romance erotica we write.  

And NEVER say to me I write stroke. I will take umbrage with you.  

It’s not because I don’t want people to say I write porn. It’s because I really do want to convey the love and connection, all the lovely emotions that go with a relationship when I write a story. And you rarely get any of that in stroke. Mostly it’s sex and that’s it.  

 

 

Then I realized too, I’m caught in a conundrum. A couple of people have also told me I don’t really quite write romance erotica. And I thought I did. But the truth is, I write about soul deep relationships. Yes, they are romances, but more deeply, they’re relationships. But am I mainstream? Noooooo…I’m not.  

Because…I have explicit sex scenes in my work. Am I just trying to wrap a romance story around some sex scenes to flesh it out a bit. Again, no. If it didn’t annoy me so much to not have the explicit sex scenes in a book, I’d take them out and just have the connected relationship interplay between my characters. But I can’t separate the sex part of their relationship like it doesn’t happen or happens between closed doors. Because for me, good soul connected deep sex is very much a part of a relationship.  

Then on top of that… I also apparently…have paranormal ‘elements’ in my work.  

But I don’t write about werewolves, vampires, shape shifters or anything like that. 

 

 

I write about something that is quite every day to me. I was quite startled when a writer friend came back and said, ‘and with the paranormal aspects.’ I thought, what paranormal aspects? I suddenly realized they meant the past lives and perhaps the telepathy at times between the main characters. The stuff that’s picked up intuitively between them. The flashes of insight that happen. To me…this is pretty everyday stuff and doesn’t come under paranormal. Charlie’s a good clairaudient and can speak clearly with the Guides. Again, an every day thing for me. So, do I write paranormal romance erotica? I don’t feel I do…but I could be classified that way. As soon as someone says that, I go directly to vampires and werewolves. This could be just my perception.  

Well, okay, moving past that confusing part. I then come to the next classification.  

I recently took part in a Pride Chat Month. Again, I was a wee bit startled to find myself included in this. I don’t consider what I writer as gay or bisexual, but I suppose it is. I consider my m/m/f relationship to simply be the result of three souls who deeply love each other and ‘just happen’ to find themselves in a committed loving relationship with each other.  

 

 

What I also didn’t realize was that there were the ‘straight’ writers who wrote about LGBQT relationships. But then there were the LGBQT writers who wrote about LGBQT relationships. And that seemed like another separation on some level of genre or what we write. Again, it may not be. But I did feel a bit of a fraud in some ways, writing about bisexual experiences when I’m not bisexual myself. But then my stories don’t have a bisexual female, just bisexual men. So, am I okay in this category? 

Yesssssssssssssss… 

That’s what happened to my brain too. It sort of exploded on me. So what the hell do I write? I was talking to a girlfriend about this and she said, I ultimately write about deep relationships. And I do. But they don’t have that classification on Amazon or anywhere else. It’s SO annoying!  

I’m also ‘classified’ as a ‘vanilla’ writer. I was hoping for strawberry, but no, apparently I write vanilla sex. Which sounds incredibly boring. But what it means is there’s no kink or fetish, BDSM or anything like that in my work. But hang on…does having a m/m/f relationship come under kink for some people? It’s not everyday, no. But I don’t find it ‘kinky’ as such. I’m probably more along the lines of ‘pony play’ is kinky. Go and look it up…  

 

 

So do I write Paranormal Vanilla Romance Erotica? Or Bi-racial? My main characters are Creoles and a New Zealand woman. Why? I don’t know. That’s who turned up. And I like brown skin, it’s lovely.  

All I know is that I write about deep relationships between people. If you took out the explicit sex scenes, it would be a mainstream relationship women’s fiction story. There’s no werewolves, vampires, zombies… Just people who still know how to use their other senses we’re all born with. I think I write steamy romances with deep soul connections. Lots of love and emotions. And a really good sexual connection is part of a fabulous relationship.  

So this is what my good friend Tina Kavanagh and I came up with in the end: J

Women's fiction. Modern romantic soul connection relationship stories that focus on love and emotions.

Steamy romantic fiction for open minded, emotionally intelligent women

What do you think? Please comment and I’ll pick a winner at the end of the weekend. Thanks and aloha Meg J