Yaoi on Amazon.com
Is it just me, or is there a huge difference between yaoi fanfic and the yaoi you find cheap at amazon.com for your kindle? And I'm not saying the published stuff is better. At. All. Yes, I realize it's harder in a lot of ways to create your own universe and populate it with interesting characters that people are going to want to (pay to) read about. But that's not the root of my complaint. When I first got my Kindle, I thought, "holy crap, look at all these cheap supernatural / fantasy -themed yaoi 'novels' I can download off Amazon!!!" Then I started reading the previews. That narrowed it down a LOT. I'd say 80% of what I read was choppy juvenile prose that made me grit my teeth and hit the back button on my browser. Then there were the ones I bought.
Don't get me wrong, I did find a handful of stories that I found reasonably enjoyable. But most couldn't hold a candle to my favorite yaoi fanfics. And the latest one I've downloaded is an excellent reason why. I'm currently reading a historical romance between a samurai and a male courtesan. Which *should* be right up my alley. But I keep running into these ultra flowery sugary gawd-awful dime-store romance from the 80's dialogues where it's raining kittens and unicorns and rainbows are shining out of his @ss and it just.. kills it for me. Men can be sweet with men. They can *talk* sweet to men. They can even cuddle when the deed is done. But one of the things that my favorite fanfic authors get right is that men aren't women. They're sensual. They like to see it and touch it and smell it. Sometimes it's dirty, and sometimes it gets creative. But fluffy kittens and unicorns and @ss-rainbows just aren't sexy to me. So the moral of the story is, fanfic authors get it right, and I can think of dozens of them who should be posting stuff on Amazon rather than the authors who post male/male stories but don't even know how it *works* in the bedroom.
And now, I shall get off my soap box. ^_^;
Don't get me wrong, I did find a handful of stories that I found reasonably enjoyable. But most couldn't hold a candle to my favorite yaoi fanfics. And the latest one I've downloaded is an excellent reason why. I'm currently reading a historical romance between a samurai and a male courtesan. Which *should* be right up my alley. But I keep running into these ultra flowery sugary gawd-awful dime-store romance from the 80's dialogues where it's raining kittens and unicorns and rainbows are shining out of his @ss and it just.. kills it for me. Men can be sweet with men. They can *talk* sweet to men. They can even cuddle when the deed is done. But one of the things that my favorite fanfic authors get right is that men aren't women. They're sensual. They like to see it and touch it and smell it. Sometimes it's dirty, and sometimes it gets creative. But fluffy kittens and unicorns and @ss-rainbows just aren't sexy to me. So the moral of the story is, fanfic authors get it right, and I can think of dozens of them who should be posting stuff on Amazon rather than the authors who post male/male stories but don't even know how it *works* in the bedroom.
And now, I shall get off my soap box. ^_^;