Tristram La Roche

Some years fade away with a quiet whimper. Others go out with a bang. Despite the general decline and atrocities that plagued the world, 2011 for me held some good moments – like breaking out as an author, to name but one. So I felt that 2011 chez Tris should hurtle into history with a resounding bang and a fanfare. Metaphorically speaking, that is. And what better way to create a buzz than to invite the inimitable Erastes round for a little celebratory drinkie?

In case there is one of you out there who doesn’t know, Erastes is a highly accomplished author of historical gay fiction. Since she started writing in 2003 she has had no fewer than four novels published, four novellas and umpteen short stories. Her latest novel, Junction X, had me glued to my Kindle, so I can’t wait to get inside her (and it’s a long time since I said that about a woman).

Erastes. Maybe shopping for a new camera would be permissible?

Tris: Welcome, Erastes. I appreciate you accepting the invitation. I imagine you are very busy preparing for 2012.

Erastes: Thank you my dear – it’s good to be here. Pass the mince pies please. And don’t be stingy with the sherry!

Tris: Ah, just as well I got the litre bottle. Now, having just read Junction X, your name becomes more relevant than ever. In the book you raise the highly charged issue of pederasty, in the modern sense of sexual abuse of a minor. Yet, as we know, the ancient Greeks had no such qualms, no laws about age of consent and so on. You deal with the issue in such a caring way as part of a genuine love story that, if you didn’t point it out, some readers might miss it. Did you find it difficult to get Junction X published, and have you had any backlash?

Erastes: Yes, I found it difficult to get it published. I’ve been touting it around half–heartedly, really, for about three years or so. It spurred me on to get an agent, who signed me up on the strength of the book, but although we had several nibbles from good mainstream publishers, it was more the fact that it was “tragic gay love story and we’re past all that, surely?” that they cited as an excuse not to publish it—they all said it was beautifully written, which was encouraging.  In the end, I sold it to Cheyenne Publishing and ironically I could have sold it to them without an agent. But having an agent is a step forward, so that’s not all bad.

No backlash, no, which I was expecting, but was relieved not to get (so far). Don’t forget that this whole “under 18 is child abuse” only applies in a minority of states in the USA – most are 16 and 17 these days.  But when you are dealing with pre-Stonewall/pre-Wolfenden it’s a moot point anyway, as back in 1962 it was illegal even if Alex had been 21.

Tris: *sighs* It is astonishing what reasons some  publishers give to turn down bloody good books, isn’t it? And at the same time the book clubs and stores are crammed with celeb tripe that I wouldn’t use to prop up a broken table. Personally, I like tragic and even outright depressing. As you mention, Junction X is set in the period before the legalisation of homosexuality in Britain. Poor Edward was criminalised simply by his nature. How conscious were you at the outset of this dual conflict?

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Erastes: When you write gay historical fiction you are (or, at least, you should be) always aware of this. As a gay person you are aware of who you are every moment of the day—because it’s who you are of course—and before legalisation (in the countries where it is legalised) knowing that what you were was illegal and considered immoral, an abomination and could ruin not only yourself but everyone around you must have been truly dreadful. I imagine what it must be like to be suddenly transported to a country where it’s dangerous to admit to be gay today, and that helps with the process.

Diana Gabaldon does it well in the Lord John novels – even though I find him a cold fish and he truly needs shagging and often, and by someone who knows how – as everything he does, every conversation he has, is tainted with his “unnatural desires” – he’s always on guard, worrying that people will guess his nature – which probably helps add to the cold fish effect, I guess.

Tris: As you know, I just had my first historical gay novella published, and I enjoyed writing it tremendously. I’m hooked and am definitely going to write more. Why did you decide to concentrate on the historical?

Erastes: Well, I’m not a fan of contemporary fiction. I don’t live much in the real world—I don’t go shopping, wander around the high street, don’t have a circle of real life friends, so reading chick-lit and that kind of thing baffles me a little because it’s rather alien to me.  I’d wanted to write for many, many years and had tried once or twice before, but had never found my niche—so once I’d decided to write gay romance/fiction it was as natural as breathing to begin in my comfort zone of the Regency. I read Austen and Thackeray and Elliot a lot, so it was like coming home. I didn’t stop to think until I was about half way through Standish that perhaps no-one else was writing it and getting published might be an issue…

Tris: Oh, I’m with you on that. I loathe shopping, am not at all into consumerism and quite often wonder what the hell I’m doing in this world. So, would I be right in saying no science fiction or shape shifters for you then?

Erastes:  Oh, I’ve written both. I started in fanfic (Harry Potter fanfic) after all, so supernatural creatures were second nature at the beginning. My first fanfic novella was about Remus Lupin – a werewolf.  But when I wanted to write something original, I found I couldn’t convert the two or three novellas that I’d written without still leaving it obvious that they were converted fanfic, so I did an original Regency instead.

I’ve written two sci-fi short stories (only one of which is published at the moment, in Queer Dimensions) which are about a couple of space cowboy/smugglers/traders. It’s very Space Opera (although started BEFORE I ever saw or heard of Firefly I hasten to add). One day I’d like to do a volume of short stories about these two, each one a standalone, but with an over-arching plot throughout.  I don’t care much about the sci, though. I’m like the person who replied to a Star Trek fan when he was asked how the artificial gravity worked with “Quite well, thank you.”

My latest novella, coming out in March with Carina is also paranormal. It’s a vampire novel, (I know, I know) but there’s (hopefully) not too much cliché in it. It’s more an exploration of good and evil and who is doing bad things to whom and why. I promise you no-one says “mine!” in the entire book. And I can assure you that although light is important, no one actually twinkles.

Tris: Can we now turn to the old debate about M/M versus gay fiction? Is there a difference? If so, what is it and, perhaps more important, does it matter?

Erastes: I don’t think it matters in the grand scheme of things and if you were to have a discussion with someone on the Costa Coffee or the Man Booker panel, I don’t suppose they’d know or care, but yes, there is becoming a marked difference and I think some authors are a bit confused where their work falls. Most people are happy, and know their place, but the m/m market is so new it is evolving all the time; people are writing it who are supremely talented and more and more people are trying the genre each year so that is bound to happen.

What I dislike about the term m/m myself is that it predisposes a taint of “oh, that rubbish” in the same way that category het romance does for some more snobby readers, and that probably says more about them than the category. And to be brutally honest, there is a proportion of crap being written in m/m—and that’s what draws the scorn, because one person has read an amateurish girlie-men story and hated it and blogs about it. But no one seems to stop and think that there’s a proportion of crap in every single genre being written.

At the moment, I believe that readers expect m/m to have a happy ending, but even that is drifting away and the edges are blurring. Books like my Junction X are puzzling both the gay literati and the m/m cadre because they can’t put it in either “gay fiction” or “m/m” – and that’s how it should be. I’m not a great pigeon-hole believer. It’s perfectly fine of course if you are happy to write HEA but I can’t help it, I’m always picking away at the edges of a thing until the boundaries break!

It is an interesting time, and frankly I’m glad that I’m around to see this genesis.

Tris: Yes, that strikes a chord with me. I’m not naturally disposed to HEA, though some of my stories are, or at least HFN. The Hun and The General caused a few sweats when I started to work with my editor on it but I think we got the right balance in the end. Erm, slight change of tack; in your opinion, is there a difference between erotica and porn?

Erastes: Ah, well, you’re asking probably the wrong person there. I don’t really know and, like the question above, I think there’s been so much of a shift in the last decade or so that the boundaries are again blurry.

Once it used to be said that porn was about sensation and erotica was about feelings, and that men liked one and women liked another but you simply can’t use such generalisations any more. I don’t think you ever could but women were not so open as to admit that they would read graphically described sex, and publishers didn’t publish it on the open market. It existed, but it was passed around from schoolgirl to schoolgirl, we didn’t go into shops for it. With the internet, we are much more able to buy whatever level of description we like without having to be embarrassed and this lack of embarrassment often spills over into our homes. We might be more likely to hide the lurid copy of a Mills and Boon than the book with the cover of the two naked man-titty hunks on the cover.

Books have become more explicit, both mainstream and romance. Once upon a time Mills and Boon would firmly close the bedroom door on you, and any “inappropriate” bodily reactions were dealt with in very flowery euphemism, but now we can read everything that the Virgin Billionaire’s Secret Bride did and, ahem, felt – if we so wish.

I have quite a lot of gay so-called “porn” books which I bought, and received as presents from friends when I first started writing, and some are admittedly little more than one-handed reads, but many others are stories in their own right, with gay sex described in better terms than “nuts like hairy lemons”. So I think that – no, there’s very little distinction between porn and erotica these days. I think both are usually written to titillate and arouse, after all.

Tris: *makes a note to buy new razor blades* What do you say to those who argue women have no business writing about gay men’s sex lives?

Erastes: Lemon-size? Truly! *impressed* I’d say that what people write is nobody’s business, so keep their beaks out of it. That’s the short answer. My longer answer would be “why the hell not?”

It’s not a good enough riposte to simply say “men have been writing about women’s sex lives for a lot longer” but it’s a good place to start. Surely if we write a heterosexual novel, we are writing about men’s sex lives as well as women? I’ve always considered myself at an advantage to write about gay sex – I actually know what it’s like to make love to a man.  I do consider that women who have never made love to a man might pause and reflect whether they are writing anything real, and I particularly object to these 14 year old fangirls in slash writing who simply copy the ideas from everyone else and have never had sex with anyone.  Like all writing, if you can’t write exactly what you know, then you should at least have had sufficient life experience to be able to carry it off.

People can, do and should be able to write about any damned thing they please, and come the day when someone says to me “you can’t write that” I’ll be thinking about getting on that spaceship.

Tris: Does a romance have to have a happy ending?

Erastes: Category romance, yes. It is too deeply entrenched now for anyone to change the publishers’ and the readers’ minds about that. If it’s got “Romance” on the cover then the reader is going to expect at least a Happy for Now (HFN.)

It’s one of the reasons I don’t like to read a book with the Romance label, because I actually like the journey in a book. I might hope and pray that my protagonists are going to end up together and that they will live as happy as anyone can—let’s face it, no-one really ever has a HEA!—but I don’t want to know. I remember reading Ruth Sims’s book “The Phoenix” which she originally self-published, and it didn’t have the Romance label, so I was on the edge of my seat all the way towards the end. It’s a much more fun journey for me to read like that.  Romance can bore me because no matter how the blurb tries to instil a sense of danger for me “Will our plucky heroes be able to fight time, giant snakes, the world ending and overwhelming evil and find each other before their universe collapses?” All I do is roll my eyes and say “Well, der, of COURSE they will, it’s got Romance on the cover.”

However, I believe most readers would disagree with me.  They like to know it will end well, they like to know the ending. I know several people who don’t trust me as a writer (although they buy my books, LOL) and they will immediately skip to the end to make sure that I’m giving them a happy ending before they start reading. That’s like ripping a bit of the wrapping paper off a present in my mind. I like the surprise.

Tris: Since you started writing in 2003, how has the business changed?

Erastes: Well, the digital age has well and truly come for a start. When I started out, there were only a few e-publishers. My only claim to fame was that Ellora’s Cave wanted to publish Standish, and it was going to be their inaugural gay romance title. At the time they only published in digital form and I wanted print or print/ebook so I turned them down. I believe they wanted the ending altered too, but I can’t be sure about that it was a while ago. Perhaps that was the biggest mistake of my career, too. But we’ll never know!

Before I sold Standish to PD Publishing in 2005, I concentrated on selling short stories, and Torquere was one of my first publishers. Back then they published their anthologies on disc, and I had visions of all the anthologies I owned, framed and on the walls like gold records. Sadly that didn’t last long and they don’t use discs any more.

Overall, gay fiction seems to be creeping into the mainstream. Not as fast as I thought it might, but gradually. The door is open and we are sneaking in. Ann Herendeen went from self-published to being picked up by Harper, the Lord John novels are very popular, Harlequin (under their Carina flag) are publishing gay books and they are doing very well, and Lambda are now accepting LGBTQ novels for their awards written by anyone, not only gay people. So things are improving.

Tris: E-books. Are you a convert?

Erastes: Hmm. Not exactly a convert. I have a Kindle, because the lovely and very generous Aleksandr Voinov bought me one because I hate reading on my PC—and all the PDFs I get for Speak Its Name were being read on the PC—so I do use the Kindle a lot. But I like print books. I’ll never get rid of them. Any book that I know is going to be a keeper, such as The Dresden Files, or a Pratchett, or (until the last book) the Ice and Fire series by George RR Martin, and any classic novel – I will always seek out a hard copy.

I know it’s the future, but I hope to goodness that paper books don’t disappear. I was around when vinyl was king in the music business – I’ve re-bought David Bowie’s Space Oddity in more formats than I like to recall, spent probably upwards of fifty quid on one album—and I worry that books are going the same way. This year it will be one format, in another couple of years we’ll all have to replace our libraries with another format—and so on. I can’t see that being good for the longevity of books in general. Whereas with music, I’ll only upgrade my “keeper” albums, many albums languish in the attic never to be upgraded—and it may be the same with books. I don’t like that future.

But for convenience—like when I’d forgotten that Pratchett’s “Snuff” was released and I could just buy it from my bed, instantly on the Kindle without having to worry about ordering it or driving to the shops–then yes, ebooks are a great boon. I just don’t want my house to have one small shelf with my Kindle on it, instead of rooms of shelves, and piles of books—my friends—everywhere.

Tris: Tell me about Speak Its Name?

Erastes: When I first started getting published and wanted to send my book out to review sites, there were a lot lot fewer that accepted LGBTQ in 2006 than there are today. I noticed too that there were literally no sites specifically for gay historical fiction. Unsurprising I suppose as the genre wasn’t recognised. So I decided, at first, just to make a list—I used Switchknife’s list as a core, and then started adding to it, surprised both that there was so little of the genre, but a lot, lot more than I was first aware of. Since then I’ve been adding to it when I find new titles, and they are now coming out faster than I can keep up with, faster than I can review or find reviewers for, which is marvellous. I like to think that Speak Its Name has helped to promote the genre, to push it into the public consciousness a little quicker than it would have happened naturally, that it has encouraged writers to give the genre a go, and perhaps discouraged some other writers too!!!

Our four, four and a half, and five star reviews are rare beasties. We are tough. I make no excuse or apology for that. I started that as an idea and I’ve kept to it. If you are writing an historical novel, then it needs to be an historical novel and the history referred to needs to be as accurate as it possibly can be.  We won’t point out every single anachronism in a book—because I don’t believe in piss-take reviews, or hatchet jobs, but we will mention if we think it’s obvious that the author hasn’t even searched on Google for their facts, let alone done any decent research. Our readers deserve that information—if I go round giving every single book 3 stars and up, then how are they going to trust me when I say a book is actually good? Readers aren’t stupid. Some readers are willing to overlook anachronisms (especially, LOL if they don’t spot them themselves) and that’s fine, but most readers of the genre aren’t so forgiving. And they can tell the difference between an author who has made one or two silly errors of mis-research (and I’ve done this, several times) and an author who hasn’t bothered to check anything at all, and just wants “Pretty men in historical costumes.”

Tris: You’ve mentioned your vampire novel. What else can we expect from Erastes in the coming year?

Erastes: Writing of some sort, I hope. I’ve had the worst 12 months of my life writing-wise in 2011. (That is, since I began writing earnest in 2003.)  I’ve written very, very little. I haven’t even finished the novel I started in 2010, even though it only needs about five more chapters. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, and that’s the truth. I need to roll up my sleeves and stop whining and get on with it. I’d like to get the Work In Progress published in 2012—because I like to have 2 books published if at all possible, but it might be too late now (It’s set in 1921, and is very, very loosely based on Hamlet) but I have plans for perhaps a 1950’s show-jumping novella which could be a lot of fun. My last few books have been unremittingly gloomy in many ways, so it would be good to do something lighter.

Tris: Thanks very much for coming in, Erastes. Now, while I screw the lid back on this bottle of sherry, can you tell my readers where to find you – and your books, of course!

Erastes: Might as well put it in the recycling, dear – it’s empty! Get two next time! *hic*:D

My website and blog is at www.erastes.com – I have a livejournal and a dreamwidth account only they – whilst mirroring the writing blog – tend to include more chatty and personal posts, they are both under Erastes too. You should be able to get all the links you need there, I have lots of excerpts, and links to the publishers’ sites, buy links, review links etc.

Don’t forget, if you are a fan of gay historical fiction, or you don’t know if you are or not, to check out Speak Its Name (www.speakitsname.com) use the cloud on the left and seek out the higher starred reviews – you are bound to find something nice.

(Tris: Erm, yes, and you could also buy ‘The Hun and The General’ by a certain Tristram La Roche! I wait with baited breath to see what Erastes makes of it.)

Happy New Year Everyone!