It’s my delight to welcome my friend, Scarlett Parrish, to the blog. Scarlett and i met when we realized we were both releasing our first books with Loose Id on the same day, Jan 4.She tweeted me and christened us the “cool kids”. Of course, Scarlett is new to LI, but otherwise an established author, while i’m a newbie. Scarlett lives in England, although i still don’t know where. I’m posting on her blog today and tomorrow with some thoughts in honor of 12th Night on what i’ve learned writing my books , and she’s visiting me with … well, look below. Welcome Cool Kid, Scarlett.
It made me giggle to hear Tara talk about celebrating our ‘mutual releases’ from Loose Id – my mind is just as dirty as hers, which is why I’m glad (and grateful) to be taking over her blog for the day!
Writers are often asked where they get their ideas from and for me, one of the most unusual ‘inciting incidents’ ended in By the Book being written and published.
Around a year and a half ago, I was in my city’s Central Library – nothing unusual in that, given that libraries and bookshops are my spiritual homes. I’d just returned a pile of books and was wandering around the stacks looking for more when there was a voice behind me. “Did you enjoy the Nin?”
“Excuse me?”
“You just brought an Anais Nin book back – I wondered if you enjoyed it.”
Of course it helped that the librarian was so handsome, but his opener led to a conversation about erotica and what it should do to the reader. I happened to have a copy of Nin’s Delta of Venus in my handbag and I read to him from Nin’s letter to the Collector, which I blogged about last August.
The conversation petered out and I lugged my laptop to the study tables at the back of the room and tried to get some work done, but the seeds were sewn…
…which is why I ended up writing a book about a writer and a librarian getting together. With one major difference to reality.
I started writing By the Book from Georgia, the girlfriend’s, point of view, but ran up against a major problem. It didn’t feel right. I knew I wanted the novel to be about the dangers of bringing in a third to an established relationship, but if Georgia was the point-of-view character, who had a boyfriend, and got involved with a male third…wouldn’t it look like cheating? Of course there are M/F/M triples out there which work quite well, but those usually happen when both men agree at the same time to partner up with the one woman. Bringing in another man to an already-established pairing? Hmm, dicey.
It took someone else pointing out, “It’s a man. Your POV character is a man!” for it all to drop into place. The librarian was the point of view character, sure enough, and he should be…well, a ‘he’, but the writer should be a man as well, so I scrapped the first couple of chapters and By the Book became less about the change in a relationship dynamic when you bring in a third party, and more about the point-of-view character, Reece Hutton, coming to terms with a part of his sexuality he’d never previously acknowledged.
I often wonder what became of the librarian I spoke to that day – I never see him any more so I assume he’s transferred to another branch – but it might tickle him to know he kicked off my braingears and got me thinking about a book that became my first foray into M/M erotica. Strictly speaking it’s a bit of a free-for-all, with all combinations of couplings and threesomes in it, but if you want to find out where the romance truly is and who gets their happily-ever-after, or at least happy-for-now…you’ll have to read it!
But it would be fascinating to hear where other writers have found their inspiration – can any of you beat a conversation with a librarian about the works of Anais Nin?
Tomorrow, i’ll be posting a yummy excerpt from Scarlett’s novel, By the Book. Be sure to check back. Here’s a little teaser:
Two’s company; three’s allowed.
Reece Hutton conducts his life between the covers — of books and beds. A librarian by day, in the evenings he’s a man whose tastes are anything but vanilla. So when local writer Daniel Cross appears in the library one afternoon with the aim of doing some research, Reece has a hard time not noticing how attractive he is, or what feels like chemistry between them. They exchange a few words and Daniel’s business card, an interlude which Reece puts down to networking rather than flirtation.
After all, he has his girlfriend Georgia to go home to and her best friend: a threesome to help his birthday go literally with a bang. Reece, being a gentleman (most of the time), has no objection to returning the favor, especially as his new friend Daniel seems all too willing to be their third for an evening. Georgia sees their triangle as nothing more than a temporary bit of fun but Reece…? He’ll eventually have to own up to breaking the unwritten rules of their relationship or close the book on a growing attraction to Daniel.
Sound yummy?
You can buy it here: http://www.loose-id.com/By-the-Book.aspx
And reach Scarlett here (and, of course, see my blog post) http://scarlettparrish.blogspot.com/
or follow her on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/scarlettparrish