Three books written about Mike, Ross, Raith and Phil, a north east England quad, and a fourth story on the way… but why should someone who is hetero, monogamous and asexual write about four gay, polyamorous guys?

I can deal with the poly side of things quite quickly. It’s a lifestyle choice that’s very different from my own, which is why it intrigued me. I could see that being poly had advantages, but I could see some downsides too, and I wanted to explore both—just to satisfy my curiosity. There’s little serious exploration in the recently published Ace in the Picture—it’s more of a theme in Polyamory on Trial, the series’ Book 2—but the trivial issues (Who’ll do the washing up? Whose turn is it to dig the garden?) interest me just as much as the major ones do. I have a lot of fun dealing with what I’d describe as ‘poly-domesticity’! But, of course, my polyamorists are exclusively gay men. That wasn’t a choice. That was necessity.

Being asexual doesn’t mean I don’t fantasise about sex, or that I can’t imagine sassy scenarios. In her 2014 study of the sexual fantasies of over five hundred women, Morag Yule and her colleagues from the University of British Columbia found that 32% of sexual women and 32% of aces fantasised about BDSM. Orientation was irrelevant. Here’s another of the research results: many females fantasised about homosexuality—and, this time, aces were slightly in the majority (16.39 c.f. 14.29%). I assume that  those women were doing exactly what I always do—disassociating themselves from the content of the fantasy. They were women. They thought about men who fucked men.

There’s a word for this disassociation, this non-participation. It’s anegosexual. (No ego involved. No self.) I’ve seen it spelt without the ‘n’, as in aegosexual, and I’ve seen it referred to as ‘autochorissexual’ too, from the Greek word for ‘apart’. I don’t much like the autochori reference, though. It’s linked to voyeurism, and I’m not a peeping Tom. (Hopefully, not just a UK idiom) Indeed, I’m not ‘there’ or present at all.

I’ve two grown up children. I’ve clearly experienced sex, but I draw a complete blank if I try to picture myself indulging in sexual activities. I can’t role play. I can’t imagine any woman being intimate with another person. It would be too much like being involved myself. I can’t even picture myself or other women as a story’s protagonists. Women don’t drive any of the action in my head. By default, therefore, I imagine plots that solely feature men. And I think that my four men, Mike, Ross, Raith and Phil, are lovely.

Writing Nick, the eponymous ace in the new story’s picture, was somewhat different. There’s a lot of me in him. I wasn’t so much imagining a character as voicing some of my own thoughts and feelings—in a very asexual way! It’s not a story that’s hot, hot, hot! (Low flame level, I’m afraid.) Nick isn’t me, but I didn’t really have to ‘create’ him. Not in the way I created the quad.

I know that many female writers feel that their gay protagonists provide them with opportunities to break away from hetero-norms, and I feel this too, but, in my case, I really don’t have any choice. If I want to write, and I do, then I have to write about men. Exclusively.

Thank you for reading. I recognise that the focus above is narrowly binary. Be glad to continue the conversation via my blog or here at Love Bytes.

Background:- The new story, Ace in the Picture, was published at the end of March. Love Bytes will feature it, the third of the County Durham Quad tales, during May. Like the previous stories, Badge of Loyalty and Polyamory on Trial, there’s a crime to be solved (an art fraud in this one and, hence, the pun on ‘picture’) but this is the first of the series to include an asexual character. Nick is in the picture, though—he doesn’t drive the plot—and his presence is greater in the story’s second half.

I blog at polyallsorts. There are spin-offs from the books. Several posts discuss aspects of asexuality, and one or two have captioned photographs of Weardale in County Durham, the setting of the tales. (See below.) It’s a beautiful and relatively unvisited part of northern England. Both my husband and I were born and brought up in northern England, although for several years we’ve lived in the south. Our children have grown up and flown.  I have time, now, to write, and I’m making the most of the opportunities to do so. I hope you enjoyed my post, and thank you to Dani for letting me share my thoughts with you.

Links:

https://www.polyallsorts.wordpress.com

https://polyallsorts.wordpress.com/2018/05/16/county-durham-photos-and-fiction

Polyamory and asexuality meet in this third tale about the North East England quad.

The police suspect Raith Balan of faking a painting. So do money launderers who sink profits into art.

Mike, Ross and Phil, the three men in Raith’s life, must prove his innocence. They’re hampered by their certainty that a member of the Fraud Squad is corrupt.

The senior investigating officer is Detective Sergeant Nick Seabrooke. He knows he is asexual, but is he aromantic too?

As Raith’s lovers struggle to keep Raith safe and find the fraudster, the sergeant struggles to understand why the quad is often in his thoughts.

Amazon link for Ace in the Picture

Jude Tresswell was born and brought up in the north of England. Northern England features strongly in her books, and there are photographs of the stories’ setting on her blog at https://www.polyallsorts.wordpress.com
She is married, has grown-up children and identifies as asexual and anegosexual.
She sings (she says ‘poorly’), plays guitar (even ‘poorlier’) and dances (‘not bad’).