Interview With an Agenda

[gehayi]

Yesterday I read an interview in Out Magazine with alex_beecroft and erastes--and a commentary on the interview here.

I'm afraid that the interview and the commentary are not very accurate and are, in some ways, rather offensive. The Gawker article starts off this way:

It's a bit of a joke that straight guys are into "hot girl-on-girl action," but what's new is the

Comments

[lls_mutant]

I know! I wouldn't want to live half the stuff I write. What makes good TV/literature often isn't fun to go through.

And robots and political intrigue sound exciting :)

What amazes me is how much the interviewer missed. I haven't read Alex's or Erastes' books, but I've read other books with gay heroes and I write a LOT of slash. And my frustration with that interview is that there's so much about being gay in terms of historical context and how you relate to society. For me, that's what actually makes the whole story interesting. Sure, sex can be hot and I'm not going to deny I enjoy reading it. But sex doesn't make a character, and the sex becomes hot because you care about these characters and their stories and their lives.

I also got the impression that the interviewer was really trying to shoehorn all M/M writers into one sexuality, and that sexuality was... I don't want to say "wrong," because I don't want to imply that I'm saying a sexuality is wrong. But the two women interviewed seemed to have similar approaches to sex in real life, and the interviewer seemed to make the assumption that because these two authors approach sex a certain way, ALL M/M authors approach sex that same way.

I don't get why people think that writing and a person's real life are so intimately connected. Writing is an intimate thing, and yes, there's a piece of me in everything I write. But at the same time, it should be dead obvious that not every character reflects the author, or why readers only want to read characters that they can identify with. I mean, my husband likes novels about seriel killers, and he's the most gentle, non-violent guy I know.