Recently I've been reading a lot of indie gay fiction on my nook. Why? Mostly because it's cheap (usually less than $3) to download the book.
Most of it is terrible. Some of it approaches good, but then slides back down into bad. I guess the price really reflects the quality of the writing?? Terrible. But I keep hoping that I'll hit on something good as I continue to search for a good gay romance.
I had a discussion with my friend J about why gay romances are so badly written. We've come to the conclusion that it is because gay romance is such an underground genre that there is a serious lack of quality writing because anyone who is good at writing is writing something else - because God forbid they publish gay romance.
There is a definite stigma attached to it for any respectable writer if they wrote a gay romance. Brokeback Mountain is an exception - but we all know why.
All I can say is that I hope one day American gay romances will someday be something like the yaoi romances of Japan. For anyone who has read yaoi manga or novels, they're rather sweet and do not focus solely on the sex - unlike American romances - but instead on the relationship between the two men. Well, most of the time. Of course there is the occasional shameless sex novel.
But there is definitely more plot building in yaoi romances, which is why I enjoy them so much. Unfortunately they're in Japanese and only so many are translated into English, so there are not that many books I can sqee over. But I definitely treasure the ones I do have - even if they are also shoddily translated sometimes.
I am such a desperate reader.
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