Hello, All! Welcome to my writer’s cave! Sometimes I wish I had an actual cave to retreat to, far away from the realities of life in the United States since the November election. And sometimes I wish I could still write contemporary LGBTQ romances that carry no mention of the steady assaults on the freedoms and dignities of anyone in our country not happening to be a wealthy white male who is also cisgender and heterosexual.
The times in my country are decidedly not “normal.” I don’t even want to get started about the person that currently inhabits the White House. He cares nothing about human dignity and he and his cronies are busy pushing policies that are racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and xenophobic. All of us who are not “like him” have to find a way to live in this environment. And to resist and push back against this administration. Here is the word RESIST in ASL:
[I don’t know the original source for this gif. I found it on Twitter and love it.]
So how do I write contemporary LGBTQ romances now? This is a dilemma. We read (and write) romance to escape life’s harshness, to get the happy endings that make us feel better. Why mix “politics” into romance? For me, writing queer romance has always felt like a political act—an act of taking a stand about the legitimacy of love being love, in whatever form it takes. And because I write contemporaries, my stories necessarily reflect the climate of the times.
I’ve found that since November 2016, I can’t NOT make some mention of what’s happening in our country. My upcoming novel, In Over Our Heads, references the election and the impact on transgender youth. And a holiday story I’ve submitted for the Dreamspinner Anthology goes even further, with one of the MCs and his housemates attending resistance rallies, and the other MC going to work for the ACLU. I made a great happy ending epilogue in which the Democrats win back both the U.S. House and the Senate in 2018!
GIVEAWAY
I’d love to hear your thoughts. As a reader (and/or writer) of romance, what do you think about romance that includes social issues, particularly in the turbulent times of 2017? Would you rather have romances that are pure escapism (like maybe the characters live on a desert island)? I will give a copy of my latest ebook, All the Way to Shore, to one commenter.
Speaking of All the Way to Shore, here is a wonderful review it recently received.
Thanks, all, and I’ll see you next month with more tales from the writing cave.
CJane
After years of hearing characters chatting away in her head, CJane Elliott finally decided to put them on paper and hasn’t looked back since. A psychotherapist by training, CJane enjoys writing sexy, passionate stories that also explore the human psyche. CJane has traveled all over North America for work and her characters are travelers, too, traveling down into their own depths to find what they need to get to the happy ending.
CJane is an ardent supporter of LGBTQ equality and is particularly fond of coming out stories.
CJane is the author of the award-winning Serpentine Series, New Adult contemporary novels set at the University of Virginia. Serpentine Walls was a 2014 Rainbow Awards finalist, Aidan’s Journey was a 2015 EPIC Awards finalist, and Sex, Love, and Videogames won first place in the New Adult category in the 2016 Swirl Awards and first place in Contemporary Fiction in the 2017 EPIC eBook Awards.
Although I like romance a lot, I must recognise I enjoy a book more if it includes other topics, specially social issues or things related to the world and its problems at the time the story is set. So the answer is yes, I like my romance with a pinch of reality to the side… 😉
Beautiful post. 🌹
I like when current topics are part of a book. I do read as a form of escape but I can do both.
I agree with Susan. I like books to contain other topics, issues etc along with the romance. I often learn things or think about something in a new way.
P.S. I definitely want to read your holiday story so I can pretend for a bit that the epilogue is true.
I love reading romance that include social issues. It seems to give me another point of view on things even if I don’t agree.
I like other social topics along with romance.
If I were reading a contemporary with gay MCs written in the late 80s and there were no mention of the HIV/AIDS crisis I would wonder why it wasn’t mentioned since it was such a huge issue at that point in time. So yes, having the issues of the time in a contemporary story is important for me. Thanks for the post.
Thank you for the post. When reading i don’t really want to hear or see any current events presented. i don’t mind if it’s several years down the line but I just can’t do it when it’s happening at present. I read to escape real life social topics.
Reading contemporary romances, which realistically include references to the politics and current events, is a natural part of living. If you’ve set a story in Florida during the time frame of attack on the club how can you not have characters touched in one way or another? Just as you wouldn’t write a story set in Alabama during the 60’s with black characters and not mention the riots, marches and inequalities. Escape is one thing. Burying your head in the sand, not so much…