5 Responses

  1. kathyg2016
    kathyg2016 at |

    Hallelujah! Thanks so much for this; I’ll be looking forward to your book. also The Rebuilding year series is one of my favorite rereads with one of the reasons being the excellent character crafting. I get so tired of bi people either being portrayed as sluts, whores of either sex, etc. or “Ya gotta put them in a threesome or else how will they know the character’s supposed to be bi!!”

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  2. SA 'Baz' Collins
    SA 'Baz' Collins at |

    Queer stories told in a queer manner … huh, who woulda thought? (smirk) In all serious to your point. I struggled with it, too. As a lover and reader of Gordon Merrick’s work in the 70s I remember the angst I felt when Charlie strayed into a relationship with a woman and brought Peter into it. Eventually a child was in the mix. But as an aspiring queer youth in that era I wanted solidly gay men – I needed that voice in my head to know I was going to be okay and that I would find someone to have a lasting, thriving relationship. When I wrote Angels of Mercy this reared its head again because one of my main characters in this queer romance saga started to push at my boundaries and had a very intimate sexual relationship with a girl because he wanted to see if he would go there. It wasn’t something forced on either the boy or the girl in that scenario. It was mutually consented. And that 16 year old teen boy in me started to rebel. I didn’t want to write him this way. Then I thought: Wait a minute, you’re better than this. You know that all sorts make up the rainbow. Let him be what he needs to be and maybe, just maybe you’ll get something even richer for the exploration. As I leaned into it – setting aside that queer youth angst I realized I’d been carrying all along – I discovered that my character, Marco Sforza, became unconcerned with the actual label. He bandied about bi, straight, gay, queer and finally settling on pan (which a number of queer kids today – my queer granddaughter’s generation that has taught me so much) because he came to the resolve within himself that it wasn’t the gender or sexual identity that inflamed him, but the person inside is what ignited. He discovered, along with me as his creator, that his sexuality was much broader and far more enriching by NOT creating boundaries that would snuff the adventure of life from him. I’ve enjoyed writing him once I got over my 16 year old angst and just let him be who he was – fully formed and exploring his own path to living out loud and proud – labels be damned.

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  3. Gay M/M News for July 2018 - Clare Solomon

    […] Kaje Harper has an article about Bi Characters and the Evolution of the Genre at Love Bytes […]

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