A while back, I came across a blog I keep a little eye on and had commented just to clarify a point. Yesterday I noticed that “Anonymous” had chastised me for acknowledging that my book is filthy (it is) and for dropping the F-bomb in the first line of the story. The chastisement was something along the lines of, “You call that quality Mormon fiction”?

::gallic shrug::

Well, A) “quality” was used in terms of how well the book is designed by the publisher and how well it is constructed by Lightning Source and B) I don’t consider it Mormon fiction.

People have different tastes. Nice, sweet, nearly conflict-less LDS fiction wasn’t cutting the mustard for me with regard to sparkle and (dare I say it?) lust (which doesn’t have to be consummated, but could we acknowledge its existence?). Fiction by Mormon authors out in the wild might be my brand of wild but it’s short on philosophy and faith. Genre romance of any stripe, inspirational to erotica, suffers the same lack of one for the other, so it’s not us. It’s a general lack of crossover between faith and sex.

Slot B47c&&2kd existed, but there was no correlating Tab A47c&&2kd to put in it.

I, Random Reader, wanted my slot filled. I’ve been wanting it filled for a long time. And it remained empty, growing cobwebs. I wasn’t writing it, either, because I wanted to “get” published and you don’t “get” published with a mixture like that.

So I said, “Fuck it. I’ll write what I want.”

As far as I know, I only have 1 (count ’em, ONE) LDS reader who’s managed to get past the first page. That’s okay, too. I probably made a mistake in vaguely hoping I could find a small audience amongst my own who, like me, wanted something titillating and faith-affirming (er, maybe) at the same time. Or, at the very least, not anti.

What I didn’t expect was the positive reaction from non-members who found my portrayal of us as human and extremely fallible, struggling with matters of faith and sexuality, as sympathetic and relatable—and who found the addition of faith to these people’s lives just another layer of their personalities.

Eh, don’t get me wrong. Plenty of people haven’t liked it also, for various reasons including the politics and my prose style and the fact that my characters aren’t, well, very likable at times. But…I don’t like everybody else’s books, either, so no harm, no foul. Regardless of all that, though, who liked it, who didn’t, why or whatever, the fact of the matter was that for this consumer, the market had an empty slot. So I carved out my own tab. And lo and behold! I’m not the only one who liked the shape and size of that tab.

All the foregoing is to say that this past weekend, I was blessed to brainstorm projects with two religious types (one protestant, one Catholic and independent of each other) who also like the s(t)eamier side of genre romance. It doesn’t hurt that I love these two writers’ work already, but these two projects are so outside their creators’ norms AND they are outside of, well, everybody’s norms. And I love them for it. I would never have thought of these two ideas, but these ladies did and their tab fit my slot.

Now, ladies, hurry up and finish those things. I know this publisher, see…

Almost A Gentleman

The Bookseller’s Daughter

The Slightest Provocation

Then there are the ones on the sidebar to the right, some of which are romance.
Under My Skin by Jenny Gilliam, which I liked enough that I only stopped reading when I had to tend to various obligations, like Tax Deductions 1 and 2. And congrats to her for its sale to Amira! (A little late on that congrats, Jenny. Mea culpa.)

Catch Of The Day by Kristan Higgins, which made me bawl and laugh and cringe in vicarious embarrassment, which was only cute/sweet because it wasn’t happening to me. Also, her Just One Of The Guys, which was good but not as heartwrenching as Catch of the Day. Her first effort, Fools Rush In (which I actually read in 2009, sorry!), I found at a thrift store for a quarter and damme if that wasn’t a bargain! All 3 books are written in first person, though Catch of the Day and Just One of the Guys are in present tense (I like!) and Fools Rush In was in past tense. (I crack myself up.) You must have a box of Kleenex for these books. I remember this author’s name. For me, that’s like saying her books are auto-buy and lo and behold! She’s got a new title, Too Good To Be True. Honestly, I think she’s more what people call “women’s fiction” because she seems to focus more on the heroine’s journey than the romance. Word of warning: Don’t glom this author.

Eva Gale’s short stories “Desperate Measures” and “Scorpion’s Orchid” (post-apoc/steampunk). Loved both, though not crazy about short story format (that’s my own failing); the short form worked better in “Scorpion’s Orchid.” And, oh, you must, must, must, must, MUST go catch Eva’s free reads. “The Seduction of Gabriel Stewart” was wonderful and part of what I want to read, as both a spiritual and sexual woman: a smooth meld of the erotic and the faithful.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s Natural Born Charmer. Of course I read it straight through, but SEP’s losing her grip on me, I think. Not sure why because she’s got a book on my keeper shelf and in this one, though the heroine was an artist, she wasn’t flighty and she was quick to catch on to what was going on around her, so I was good with that.

Patti Shenberger’s The Captain’s Wench. I’m a sucker for seamen (heh) stories, but this story suffered from some logical fallacies like the fact that the heroine just accepted the strange man in her house was a ghost and bantered with him as if he were an old friend. Like there’s really nothing strange about that situation at all. It was a short story/novella, so it could’ve been a word length requirement problem.

I read The Dragon Earl, which I really enjoyed. The first chapter on the author’s website got me enough that I remembered it when I saw it at Wal-Mart.

Forbidden Shores didn’t impress me. I never felt like any of the characters actually loved each other and that the HEA (happily ever after) was forced.

The following has spoilers. Highlight the blank spaces to read.

Last but not least, this: A Mermaid’s Kiss by Joey W. Hill. I don’t know what to say about this because I’m conflicted in so many directions, yet it’s stuck with me ever since I read it. I hesitate to do a review on it, but here I am 3 months later, still thinking about it. It’s supposed to be erotic. It’s not. The reasoning for the sex between the hero and heroine is flimsy at best, though I wasn’t any more put off by the more, ah, unusual aspects of it than I was by any of the other sex scenes, none of which were necessary to the story. (The hero and heroine have sex with her in mermaid form and her in pixie form.) I also didn’t like the fact that the heroine had so many configurations (mermaid, pixie, human). The sex just…annoyed me. Why? Because I thought this was a terribly spiritual book with underpinnings of faith (some amalgam of Christianity and goddess mythos) and a keen insight on human behavior. In a lot of ways, its underlying theme reminded me of Dogma, although in a gut-wrenching way and not a satiric way. The sex got in the way of the character development (and worldbuilding) and pulled me out the story every single time. And it wasn’t even good sex.

It took me a while to write this post and 2008 was a busy year, but the ones I forgot must not have made an impact on me.

Just wrapped up final edits, moving on to typesetting, then final proof.

Yeah. I’m skeert.
.

Yes, I have one of those, albeit from home and entrepreneurial in nature. Actually, I have 2 money-making gigs. I also have 2 non money-making gigs: the Tax Deductions’ mother and this here book thing I hope will start paying for itself in a little while.

I have a DDJ for the usual reason: Books. Oh, uhm, roof and food. Right. And clothing. For the Tax Deductions. Dude and I go au naturel.

Now, between the Tax Deductions, the DDJs, and the fact that my editor just bled all over my imaginary friends (thank you, Lorna!), I will be busy with scissors and cheap tape for the next little while. Office Depot is my home away from home.

In the meantime, please visit Thmazing’s Thmusings where you will find installment number 2 of The Erotic in LDS Lit. I’m finding the development of this series very profound and I’m still unpacking it.

Little lion face
I stopped to pick
among the mass of thick
succulent blooms, the twice

streaked flanges of your silk
sunwheel relaxed in wide
dilation, I brought inside,
placed in a vase.Milk

of your shaggy stem
sticky on my fingers, and
your barbs hooked to my hand,
sudden stings from them

were sweet.Now I’m bold
to touch your swollen neck,
put careful lips to slick
petals, snuff up gold

pollen in your navel cup.
Still fresh before night
I leave you, dawn’s appetite
to renew our glide and suck.

An hour ahead of sun
I come to find you.You’re
twisted shut as a burr,
neck drooped unconscious,

an inert, limp bundle,
a furled cocoon, your
sun-streaked aureole
eclipsed and dun.

Strange feral flower asleep
with flame-ruff wilted,
all magic halted,
a drink I pour, steep

in the glass for your
undulant stem to suck.
Oh, lift your young neck,
open and expand to your

lover, hot light.
Gold corona, widen to sky.
I hold you lion in my eye
sunup until night.

Anyhoo, I would like to direct your attention to today’s Thmazing’s Thmusings post by Eric Jepson on “The Erotic in LDS Lit, Part I: Why?” Very thoughtful piece. Tyler of Chasing the Long White Cloud appears on the verge of addressing the subject himself. Then there’s The Visitors’ Center, which is a blog “celebrating Mormon sexuality,” and I’m wondering…

Is this serendipity that a whole bunch of us are coming up with this just in the last couple of years or so or has it been simmering on the back of the stove for a while and is now gathering steam and getting ready to blow?

I don’t believe I’ve ever read a contemporary romance (other than an inspirational or sweet) that used religious beliefs as a solid, if not defiant, reason for the heroine’s virginity. And in any case, religious or not, if the heroine does lose her virginity before she marries the hero, she still marries (or commits to) the hero, so it’s all good.

For Mormons, the matter of celibacy until marriage is an expectation, a requirement. You don’t have sex with your one and only twu wuv before the vows are said no matter the commitment level. This also means you can’t have sex with yourself since, well, you aren’t married to yourself. Masturbation’s a no-no, folks.

Oh, yes, I just now heard all 4 of you non-Mormon readers gasp in shock and dismay. I know. Me, too. Think about being 29, 37, 46 and still a virgin. It’s a bitch. You think I’m kidding or talking about a very small minority of single women in the church who had no plans for default nunnery? I assure you, I am not. There’s a lot of ’em. I will never find a non-Mormon romance with a Virgin Heroine who’s 29, 37, 46 without some trauma or serious psychological issues that requires therapy. Nobody’d believe it.

So. For the more adventurous of LDS women who read genre romance of the steamier variety, I have written the unapologetic 37-year-old Virgin Heroine as a tribute to you (and when she finds her one and only twu wuv, she takes one for the team so you don’t have to); if you’re older than that and still can’t relate to Giselle’s celibate angst, I apologize from the bottom of my heart (although if you disagree with her choices, well, not apologizing for that).

For the non-LDS women who can’t relate to such a thing at all, I hope I’ve written for you a decent reason she is the way she is and a realistic picture of the way she deals with it. If you still can’t believe it, my only defense is that I know these women–a lot of them.

I could crack on Meyer for a couple of different things, but when the religion gets broken out as a generic weapon to say “You can’t write that because you’re a Mormon,” I’m on Meyer’s side. Period.

I don’t mind walking around with the mantle of a religious culture that screams “squeaky clean” to the world. It’s useful. I don’t have to explain why I’d rather not do a lot of things. I don’t even mind walking around with the cloud of a religious culture dubbed “cult” by a vast majority of the people who live around me. That has its uses, too, and when some preacher gets up on his pulpit to excoriate us on Sundays for existing, I just have to chuckle and shake my head, wondering why he doesn’t have something better to talk about. Like, oh, the Beatitudes?

But the “squeaky clean” thing has its downsides, one of which is: “You’re Mormon. You can’t do that.”

Oh, really?

Newsflash: We can. We do.

Those of us who are lawyerly, bankerly, doctorly, accountantly types don’t have to struggle with portraying human emotions and appetites in artistic works. But then there are those of us who do.

I know one LDS artist who sculpts nudes. I know of other LDS sculptors and painters who sculpt and paint nudes. I don’t have a good handle on Orson Scott Card’s backlist, but I’m told he’s written a few things that have raised hackles amongst the membership. There are a slew of LDS writers who don’t venture to allow their characters to kiss in any way but a chaste peck on the lips, if at all–which is perfectly fine.

All the time, LDS writers/artists come under scrutiny by our own people and get stung by the judgments and disapproval, but at least you have a common background and you know exactly where they’re coming from. You know it’s coming, you brace yourself for it, you acknowledge it and take the consequences and move on.

I think what I’m having trouble with is the expectation that people of faith shouldn’t write sex scenes or use bad language. They can refer to it maybe, under certain proscribed circumstances known only to the reader, and oh, hey, some violence is fine, but to write sex scenes and have bad language? No. And if they do, keep the faith hidden.

LDS authors who write secular genre romance with the attendant sex, language, and violence don’t make it widely known they’re LDS and they don’t put LDS characters in the roles where they’d be required to be sexxoring or languaging or violencing.

LDS authors who write LDS romance don’t allow their characters to sexxor or language or violence at all and if they do, it’s briefly (barely) mentioned in passing or implied–and the person doing the sexxoring, languaging, and violencing is probably the villain.

(I’m going to go ahead and assume this is true for Christian/evangelical authors, too. If I’m wrong, please kick my butt in comments, kthxbai.)

I read genre romance for the story first (HEA YAY!), then the sexual expression within that story. If it doesn’t have any and it suits the story, that’s hunky dory. I read LDS romance for the story first and to read some representation of LDS people doing LDS things. I can pretty much expect no sexual expression, which usually fits the story because it is what it is and I know that going in.

But I’m LDS and sexual, so that leaves me out in the cold one way or another.

There’s this great chasm between sexual expression and religiousness/ spirituality. Why?

Neither side wants it bridged because it hasn’t been (or at least, I haven’t seen it). Why?

I need to know that spiritual people are sexual and that sexual people are spiritual, that the two can coexist–and I don’t think I’m alone in this need.

Anybody? Point me to the bridge from EroticLand to PiousTowne.

It also trashes things I believe in. Does it bother me? On some visceral level, yes, but that doesn’t make it difficult for me to listen to it and it certainly doesn’t keep me from listening. I’d miss a whole lot of good music (and that voice!) if I took umbrage at other people’s opinions and the way they state them (usually the way they state them is more off-putting than what they say).

So it started me thinking about how I read fiction,
what fiction I read, and how I deal with ideas and philosophies, opinions and teachings in fiction that either I don’t hold, don’t like, or despise for any number of reasons. I surprised me. I don’t care as long as the story’s good.

At some point, I must have gotten over my instinctive outrage when, in the middle of a good story, I got plopped down into philosophical wanderings that were either not my own or insulted mine. I know it wasn’t one piece that did it. It was bits and bites of stories throughout the years that let me know that A) I wasn’t alone in the world and B) other people had different opinions from mine and C) they were no less valid and D) informed their worldview the same way my opinions inform my worldview and E) it didn’t make them wrong and didn’t make me right. The only caveat to that is that the story be engaging enough for me to swim upstream.

I can actually pinpoint the one book that started me down this path, but I have only recently thought about re-reading it as an adult with vastly different tastes than I had when I was 15 and completely repulsed by the heroine. Who, in case you would be wondering, was Scarlett O’Hara.

I also became a more discerning reader, understanding that sometimes, ideas that were neutral or positive for me did inflame others. Example (because I can’t remember the last book I read that I thought was that didactic, which only speaks to my current tolerance level): Dogma is one of my favorite movies of all time. It’s irreverent and profane (well, naturally, because Jay and Silent Bob are in it) and, most would say, blasphemous. Protests were organized over this movie (although I think protesting something you haven’t seen is disingenuous).

Don’t get me wrong; it is irreverent and profane. Deliciously, devilishly so. But it is not blasphemous. Through all the muck and mire, the four-letter words, the irreverence, Kevin Smith gave me something uplifting and positive. Trevor, over at Toward an LDS Cinema, had an intriguing post why Mormons would do well to take some lessons from Fight Club for many of the same reasons I like Dogma.

Another reason? I tired of one-dimensional characters long ago. I remember distinctly a Harlequin Presents I read when I was a teenager (I think a Janet Dailey, but don’t quote me) wherein the hero is a pastor of a church whose denomination is not specified who sets out with great determination to seduce the heroine. I was shocked and outraged all the way down to my 15-year-old good-Mormon-girl toes. When she questions him of this dichotomy, he quotes the Song of Solomon and gives her some bullshit meant to fuzz the issue of what is and what isn’t fornication and besides, it’s not really bad.

Please. Anybody with a contact high off any one of the Abrahamic religions knows that fornication’s not on the kosher side of the Chinese menu. I kept reading in spite of my outrage, but over the years, that’s morphed into a different take-home message:

People aren’t one-dimensional. I don’t know if he was attempting to justify it to himself as much as or more than to the heroine, but even now as an adult, I still don’t think it was honorable for him to twist the concept of fornication inside out to get to his goal without owning up to it eventually. It would have been more interesting for him to have owned his weakness, but it was interesting enough that an author put religion and sex together in a book. Lookit, here I am 25 years later still remembering and being influenced by that concept.

In Dogma, Kevin Smith gave me a cast of characters with depth. I mean, really, a descendant of Jesus who works in an abortion clinic? Christ’s 13th apostle who’s pissed he got written out of the New Testament because he’s black? A muse-turned-stripper because she lost her touch? George Carlin as a Catholic priest? Alanis Morissette as God? Priceless!

(‘Scuse me while I go put it on the DVD and watch it again.)

So that brings me to The Proviso, in which I will have managed to offend most everybody with the language, the sex, the politics, the religion, the money, and, most likely, the reading preferences of its characters. It’s my Dogma. I thought a lot about what a reader would bring to the table while reading this book, but at the end of the day, I had to write the story Knox, Sebastian, Giselle, Bryce, Eilis, and Justice gave me whether it offended anyone or not.

Likewise, my antagonist, Fen, is as morally ambiguous as the protagonists. One-dimensional villains don’t interest me anymore, either, and I wanted a villain who was likable, to show him on his downward spiral, wherein he owned what he did and actively engaged protagonists he knows and (in the case of two of them), loves.

This is who these people are and to mitigate them in some way would be to cheat them. Some of them believe the doctrine they’re attached to by birth and some of them don’t. They are flawed, deeply so, and they have questionable motives for what they do, but they do them and own them and take the consequences for it. I think that makes them interesting.

I finally came to the conclusion that if my storytelling is engaging enough for a reader to keep reading in spite of his umbrage or discomfort or disapproval, then I will have done my job.

Mormon romance novels seduce book buyers

Germane point:

“I realized that there was a big hole in the LDS market for women’s fiction and I felt like I could do better,” [author Anita] Stansfield said. “I couldn’t find anything to read that satisfied me.”

Several years ago Stansfield wrote about a woman recovering from breast cancer. An important part of the book was the woman’s relationship with her husband, which included their relations in the bedroom, Stansfield said.

The novel’s bedroom scene dealt sensitively and obscurely with the topic of sex, referring more to the woman’s feelings than the couple’s activities. And yet Stansfield doesn’t believe those scenes would make it through the editing process today.

“I know I couldn’t write that now. They have cracked down,” she said.

WTF?

I haven’t read Anita Stansfield because I never heard of her. This is easily explained: I’m east of the Rockies and there is a great divide amongst the cultural habitus of Mormons west and east of the Rocky Mountains. But you know, I feel for her.

I don’t know when the idea of sex became anathema to Mormons, but it drives me up a wall. We’re fairly notorious for having large families and yet…all those kids musta been brung by the stork, cause you know, nobody had sex once that bedroom door closed. We won’t even go into polygamy (apparently they didn’t have sex, either).

I just…don’t get it. Mormons are human, too. We a) make mistakes, b) have pain and temptation, and c) develop coping mechanisms for said pain and temptation. Culturally, we dance around the subject of sex, and I think that it’s neither appropriate nor helpful.

So, like Stansfield, I couldn’t find anything to read that satisfied me, either, so I wrote it. Oh, I expect it’ll piss a few people off, namely members for daring to juxtapose the church against sex, and nonmembers disappointed I didn’t trash the church.

The Proviso isn’t about Mormons having sex or turning the air blue. It’s about people who live their lives and happen to be Mormons or ex-Mormons steeped in its culture. It is graphic, though. I wish that, as a culture, we could find some happy medium between the two ends of the spectrum of sacred to profane.

I wrote people with a unique set of problems informed by their unique culture. I believe there are more people like me out there who want something more, something different, something less sanitized lest some poor soul be led astray (too late for me, I’m afraid).

Do I think there’s a market for this? Yes, I do.

Where is it? Don’t have a clue.