We are excited to have author Damon Suede joining us here today at Love Bytes !
Damon stops by for an interview, shares an excerpt of his new release and brought along a giveaway that you can enter.
Welcome Damon 🙂
Greetings Damon!
Thank you for joining us today as part of your Pent Up release tour. It sounds like you’ve had a whirlwind fall: a new novel out, a nonfiction book in edits, and a board appointment.
No kidding. The past six months have been mindboggling. In a great way, but definitely nothing I could’ve expected.
LGBT romance has made some amazing strides in recent years in the publishing industry. We heard you just got appointed as a Director-at-large to the RWA Board. How did that happen? How has it been so far?
Amazing. Exhausting. Exhilarating.
When RWA President Diane Kelly first called to ask me to take the appointment, I turned her down. I’d just cleared the decks, and I had a full writing slate that deserved my full attention. I had zero interest in being distracted.
What changed my mind was the work we’ve been doing in the LGBT romance community for the past four years. Diane made me see that in essence, we’d teed up the ball and this was the moment to make some systemic changes to the way RWA handles diversity and the evolution of publishing. That’s tremendous, and I wanted to be a part of it. Likewise, naysayers had sworn that RWA had no interest in having LGBT romance at the table, and I wanted to find out. RWA occupies a unique space in pop culture and I wanted to see it take that step.
As with any organization, you get out what you put in and taking this on has already taught me so much in a few weeks. I understand the industry in a completely different way.
How did that go? Have you started your official RWA duties?
Two weeks ago. For my first board meeting, I arrived anxious and skeptical. I had a lot of friends on this board (another mitigating inducement), but bureaucracy makes me bananas. And yet, on the first day of meetings we spent over half the time discussing the centrality of diversity and the need for RWA to evolve so that it reflects all its members and the new century.
Every one of the three days, diversity became the central focus of our discussions: honoring difference, making a space for people who’ve felt excluded, and helping romance publishing as a whole grow the hell up.
Already RWA has made changes that are going to transform the experience of romance authors of all stripes. In that first meeting the board tackled some incredibly thorny, critical topics that will impact so many people who don’t fit the (largely imaginary) mold. I showed up to that meeting skeptical and wary…and left feeling so grateful and honored to be a part of this organization and to serve on its board.
Love Bytes celebrates diversity. We’re so excited to see the romance genre embrace the full spectrum. Why do you think so much of LGBT romance focuses on white middleclass people?
Well I’d say there are a couple things at play.
Now, I believe that the stock in trade of most popular romance is male emotional vulnerability. Further, I’d argue that one of the primary appeals of gay romance is erosion of gender assumptions and the way it forces characters to navigate a culture that may (or may not) want to see them reach that happy ending. That’s a LOT to unpack in a piece of genre fiction and modern western culture has been largely dictated by white males because it’s a patriarchy. Then consider that average romance readers are overwhelmingly heterosexual women.
In a sense, a white, bourgeois protagonist often serves as a kind of neutral piece for the 20th century narrative game board. For this reason, movies, TV, and games generally default to young white males because pop culture views young white males as the primary consumers. Since the romance audience has been trained for over a hundred years to see athletic white males as heroic, the market supplied exactly that…as it does in sitcoms, movies, and more. That’s changing (slowly!), but we’ve got a ways to go because on top of everything else publishing is still dominated by middle-class white people and people tend to be blind to their own privilege.
On top of that, eye candy sells and for a long time the average romance reader was seen as a straight white female. People like to look at attractive people doing stuff together and so those straight ladies wanted to read about emotional vulnerability of attractive dudes. (A larger subtopic there about the struggle for lesbian romances to break out, but too complex to cover in this interview.) That doesn’t make them callow; it makes them market-conscious.
So you believe that the reign of the comfortable lily-white hero will pass.
Yes and no. I think books are growing more diverse because that’s what readers want. Homogeny and boredom go hand in hand, yo. Isn’t that the whole point of genre fiction: unexpected twists on old tropes?
Pent Up’s POV protagonist is Colombian, but that wasn’t because I wanted to write a “diverse” hero or a sultry “Latin lover.” I knew from the get-go that Ruben Oso was the son of immigrants with a specific take on the American Dream. His culture and history formed much of the story’s bedrock.
Ironically, I think that readers are WAY more open to diverse heroes than publishing is…in much the same way moviegoers can totally get behind diverse heroes (Crouching Tiger, Independence Day, Slumdog Millionaire), even if Hollywood is slow as hell to get that memo. Hell, I remember Whoopi Goldberg’s 1980s movies getting recut so she wouldn’t kiss a white man for fear the red states would wig out and boycott them. Look at the recent Idris Elba/James Bond flap or the whitewashing of Last Airbender and Exodus and Stonewall. You’ve got a bunch of old white folks that just can’t get with the century. Will that change? Obviously, but only when the market forces the entertainment industries to get with it.
We’ve seen a recent kerfuffle about objectification of gay men in the genre. Do you feel like some authors “use” gay experience?
Bad ones or lazy ones, maybe, but tarring an entire population with one brush is the way cowards and nitwits work best. Appropriation becomes an issue in every minority culture, but so is intolerance and kneejerk outrage.
No one person owns the LGBT identity. No monolithic command center can dictate universal agreement on what LGBT identity even means. To suggest otherwise is silly. And though romances tackle serious issues at times, genre fiction is popular entertainment.
For anyone who hasn’t been paying attention, plenty of gay people objectify gay people. Anything involving gender or sexuality gets into murky territory with subjects and objects. And entertainment objectifies everyone if we let it.
This is why I tend to stay out of internecine scuffling. Outrage addicts bore me silly. If any author (male or female) treats serious issues irresponsibly that’s related to being a shameless hack, not to chromosomal structure. In theory, LGBT romance should be inclusive and diverse. In practice, every pocket of showbusiness comes with silliness, brangles, and indignations that suckle trolls.
Reality check: moralistic sniping and fingerwagging serves no one. Either solve problems positively and specifically, or else you’re PART of the problem.
More than anything I believe that romance is the literature of hope. See, I remember being a gay kid in a red state who read EVERYTHING in a desperate attempt to find the happy endings he wanted. Today, we’re spoiled for choice and I write the stories I wanted to read back then. In real, tangible ways, LGBT romance has changed the world for people across all kinds of spectrums…by pointing people towards possibility and challenging the status quo. That’s where I choose to invest my energy and time. And to everyone occupied less positively, I can but toss what may sound like a kiss.
My gratitude is oceanic. I feel so blessed to tell stories I think are worth reading and to share them with people who believe that love matters, that lives differ, and that hope changes people. We are writing the future.
Hear, hear! Thank you again for stopping by Damon and congratulations on the release of Pent Up.
Thanks to y’all for having me! Y’all are terrific and I always have a blast gabbing with you.
BLURB
Pent Up: mix business with pleasure and take cover.
Ruben Oso moves to Manhattan to start his life over as a low-rent bodyguard and stumbles into a gig in a swanky Park Avenue penthouse. What begins as executive protection turns personal working for a debonair zillionaire who makes Ruben question everything about himself.
Watching over financial hotshot Andy Bauer puts Ruben in an impossible position. He knows zero about shady trading and his cocky boss lives barricaded in a glass tower with wall-to-wall secrets and hot-and-cold running paranoia. Can the danger be real? Is Andy for real?
What’s a bulletcatcher to do? Ruben knows his emotions are out of control even as he races to untangle a high-priced conspiracy and his crazy feelings before somebody gets dead. If his suspicions are right, Andy will pay a price neither can afford and Ruben may discover there’s no way to guard a heart.
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This excerpt from Chapter 5 of Pent Up comes after a museum fundraiser where Ruben Oso’s worked as a bodyguard for financier Andy Bauer. Ruben has been sober almost a year, and now he’s squiring his drunk boss back to the Park Avenue penthouse.
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Ruben laced his fingers together in his lap, conscious of Andy’s splayed legs bumping against his as the car curved through the dark trees.
How could it only have been a week? Joking and bickering like this, smiling and snapping at each other, they sounded like… something else.
I like this guy way too much.
Central Park watched them through the tinted glass.
“Suit looks great, Señor Oso.” Andy coughed. “Me parece increíblemente guapo.”
Whatever that meant, it sounded positive. Ruben blinked and turned, drunk on the attention. Greedy for it. “Yeah, okay. I don’t habla español.”
Andy checked out Ruben’s shoulder, the legs, the glossy loosened tie. “Means handsome.” It came out a whisper and Andy looked away out the windows.
Uh. “Thanks.” His heart thumped blindly in his chest. Any second it would stumble and knock something breakable over and smash it to pieces. “You got good taste, Bauer.” Too fast, too fast.
Andy closed his eyes. The rhythm of the car rocked his skull against the leather upholstery. “You ought to learn, one of these days.”
“To dress?”
“Spanish. Might come in handsome.” He snorted in slow motion and looked back. “Handy. That is.”
“Sure. Right after I finish medical school and my MBA, before I start my talk show on the space station.”
Andy smiled and sighed, square jaw clamped. “It’s not that hard. Beautiful language besides. Claro.”
Clearly. He’s teaching me.
The town car veered to the left and Ruben had to grip the door to keep from being shifted against his boss’s strong legs. They passed under some kind of bridge and then slowed to a stop. They inched along in the Park’s crosstown traffic.
He could imagine himself on Andy’s terrace staring down at Central Park. He looked out the window at the passing trees: nature boxed in so a few penthouses had something to look at.
Andy rolled his head to watch Ruben watching him.
Buddies. Yeah, right.
Andy pushed himself back, shifting his weight. His hand scraped Ruben’s and… remained on the seat, separated by a millimeter or two. The light hair on his wrist brush-brushed the wisps on Ruben’s, rocked by the car’s motion.
Ruben swallowed. He wanted to slide the hand away from the delicious feathery scrape, and at the same time wondered how long Andy would leave it there. He wondered what would happen if he closed his dark square paw over Andy’s, laced their fingers and squeezed. He could imagine the way their knuckles would intersect and the exact pressure of Andy’s smooth palm against his. That skin.
Occasionally the car jostled them as it navigated potholes and pedestrians, gently rocking their shoulders, but their two hands stayed nailed to the firm, soft leather, barely touching, but touching nonetheless. That warm strip of Andy’s hand made it hard to breathe.
Why didn’t Andy move his arm back? Then again, why wouldn’t he? As the car glided under the black trees, Ruben’s whole being, all his attention, tightened around the half-inch of faint contact between their skin. Ruben imagined he could feel Andy’s pulse, then realized he was hearing his own as it jarred his skull.
If the brushing contact wasn’t an accident, removing his hand first would send a clear message. Easier to leave it there in case.
In case of what?
In case he was a queer? In case his boss was another? In case they needed to go out together to spend another fifty thousand American dollars to buy nothing in particular in a room full of strangers? The money and the man had gotten all jumbled in his head.
Maybe that was it. Ruben had gotten sucked in by all the sloppy luxury and forgotten whose it was. He wasn’t gay, just broke, sober, and lonely. Even if Andy was some kind of closeted homo, he had no interest in playing house with some middle-aged macho he’d known for a few days and rescued from a couch. Ruben had clocked the predator in him. If Andy wanted a dude, he’d lease some Calvin Klein model with a trust fund and a degree in corporate espionage.
And still, and still…. The butterfly stroke of Andy’s wrist hairs dried his mouth and pricked his eyes, and Andy had no clue. I want him.
All too suddenly, the car sliced out of the trees across Fifth, headed east.
I’ll quit in the morning.
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Excerpted from Pent Up by Damon Suede
published by Dreamspinner Press
Copyright 2015. Damon Suede. All Rights Reserved
Damon Suede grew up out-n-proud deep in the anus of right-wing America, and escaped as soon as it was legal. Though new to romance fiction, Damon has been writing for print, stage, and screen for two decades. He’s won some awards, but counts his blessings more often: his amazing friends, his demented family, his beautiful husband, his loyal fans, and his silly, stern, seductive Muse who keeps whispering in his ear, year after year. Get in touch with him at DamonSuede.com.
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This is a wonderful interview! Thanks for your great courage in taking on this task on “the board”. I am a straight white woman who loves good fiction be it “gay” or not. This genre needs to be in the mainstream and hopefully RWA will be fully influenced by your efforts toward more diversity.
Thanks, Marilyn! The board is SERIOUSLY committed to all kinds of diversity, and has mapped out a hefty plan of action. I’m very hopeful about the future of the organization and the industry at large. 🙂
Congratulations on the RWA position…it’s long overdue to see m/m acknowledged!
Enjoyed reading this interview. Congratulations!