A man by any other name...

...would smell as sweaty, especially after mowing the lawn.

Huh?

Sorry. Sudafed onboard.

Over at Romancing the Blog, we're talking about M/M romance and how it may or may not differ with regular, run-of-the-mill het Romance, with a capital R, and that stands for rhubarb, and that gives me hives. If you've been paying attention, you know I just finished final edits on my own very first M/M romance, (HARDCORE, part of the PHAZE Fantasies III collection, out next month) so I'm particularly interested in the discussion.

My goal in writing HARDCORE was to see if I could combine a classic romance structure (meet cute...ish, mental lusting, external conflict, internal conflict, more external conflict, black moment, climax, tender-slash-steamy denouement, happily-ever-after) with characters that think, speak, and act like actual men. You know, as opposed to the pseudo-men we see all the time in both M/M and het romance who not only analyze every passing emotion in precious detail, but then TALK about those details with an ease and articulation that no man, in the history of EVER, has talked about his emotions. EVER. EVER.

And since I'm also wicked stoned at the moment and have NO shame (zip, zilch, nada, none, and I'll probably feel really, really bad about this later) I'm just gonna go ahead and pat myself on the back, because I think I met that goal. My protags in HARDCORE are true pains in the ass as only real guys can be. Seriously. They say the GROSSEST STUFF to each other, and then laugh like it's FUNNIEST THING THEY'VE EVER HEARD....just like every guy I've ever known.

Now comes the interesting part: Will the readership for M/M romance want to read about real guys having sex and being gross with other real guys, even if it includes a strong undercurrent of solid -- if unexpressed -- emotion and all the standard romance conceits? Or will they prefer the softer, more idealized versions of men loving men, as so many seem to do when it comes to men loving women?

And how many licks DOES it take to get to the center of a Tootsie-Pop? Magic 8 Ball says...

...ask again later.

*sigh*