Got It for a Song

I did lower body weights at the gym this morning.

Usually when I weight-lift, I don't listen to music. The treadmill absolutely requires my aerobic track to keep me distracted. For weight-lifting, though, I'm counting and not fighting the certain despair that I'll never catch my breath again.

Today though, Air Force Guy had the TV up really loud with awful news about Libya. Since I have a strict policy about not depressing myself with news about events I can't affect, I jumped up from the adductor machine and grabbed the headphones.

Since I was mid-count, rather than searching out my weights playlist (why do I have one if I never use it? Hmm) I just clicked play. This one song that my long-time friend, Kev, sent me came on.

Because I could, I played that one song over and over. I love to do this. I can listen to the same song probably 50 times in a row. Something, I've discovered, the people around me don't enjoy so much.

Go figure.

Its an emotional song that strikes me on many levels. As some songs do, this one makes me want to write a story about it. I've never actually written a story from a song, but I think I might this time. As I kept clicking the back button to hear it just one more time (there's a way to put it on repeat, right? one day I should learn to maximize my iPod use), the story played out in my head, snippets of conversation. I could see the opening line, the penultimate scene.

It could be a great book.

Yesterday, I worked on two projects. If you follow this blog, you'll know I've been musing over whether I can move two writing projects forward at the same time. I'm a monogamous gal by nature, mainly because I'm simply not inclined to cheat. The thing I'm in love with is fine by me. It occurs to me now that this is the same aspect of my character that likes to listen to the same song over and over and over. Apple pie for the rest of my life? Sure! Still, with writing, I'd like to get more going.

So, yesterday, I clocked off the Internet for my usual two hours. (Yes, I'm weak and cannot stop myself from clicking if it's there to be clicked.) I wrote my 1K on the new novel, The Middle Princess. For the remaining 45 minutes, I worked on Sapphire revisions, from the editorial notes that came in this weekend.

And it worked!

Normally I'm not allowed to deviate from a current project, but since that experiment worked, I might try writing up a little of this morning's story - just enough to keep it alive and kicking.

Boy on Boy

I'm just about out of Tucson photos. I need to get busy around here again.

I'd hoped to be taking a lot of nifty pics in Boston this weekend, but alas we've canceled our trip. Ironically, I also finished my revision of The Body Gift, which had been consuming my thoughts and energy. So I don't even relish my suddenly free weekend to work on it.

I am, however, going back to the novel I started before Christmas, which I think I'll call The Middle Princess for the time being. No, I don't always do three-word titles. Sometimes I do one-word titles or, in a salient example, an eight-word title.

At any rate, I've been thinking about male/male romance.

What - you didn't follow that transition? Keep up!

For those of you living under a rock, m/m romance is a huge trend these days. These are essentially traditional romance novels, except that the hero and heroine are a hero and hero. The novels are largely written by women and read by women. There's all kinds of debate about whether or not the stories are accurate depictions of male homosexuality, and if they should be. Every once in a while someone will produce an article where gay men make scathing comments about the romance/sex/level of realism. And they speculate about why women want to write and read this stuff.

The astute women ask why hetero men like to watch girl on girl so much and leave it at that.

It would be kind of amusing to see an article about girl on girl porn scenes, asking lesbians about the level of realism and whether these scenes accurately portray a lesbian love-affair.

So, I read one of these books a bit ago, partly to broaden my horizons and partly because the book received such a good review. I enjoyed it, too. One of the characters was more dominant, a business-man who wasn't openly out of the closet. The other, flamboyantly gay, "never topped." The dynamic felt familiar. One man was more ambitious, busy and closed off, the other more emotional, who loved to cook and read.

Some conflict revolved around being out together in public, with the one being so flamboyant, dealing with family and similar issues that this less-acceptable sexuality brings. But the main conflict came from the balance of power in the relationship, vulnerability and intimacy. As the more flamboyant man sulked, threw fits and struggled emotionally, I realized that a lot of that behavior would have annoyed me in a female character. It was as if, by being male, he had license to behave as outrageously as he wished. In some ways, his emotions were more valid to me, than they would have been in a female character.

So, this is one book and I'm not a sociologist. Still, I've grown up in a culture where women's emotionality is considered boggy ground. As professionals, we're expected to behave more like men emotionally. In relationships, being too emotional is considered cheating. I wonder if the m/m romance gives more room to explore the love relationship without bringing up those damming triggers.

When I brought this up with a group of writer friends, though, the ever-saucy Darynda Jones blinked at me and said, "I just think they're hot."

There you are then.