By Way of Pain
Criminal Delights Series, Book 11
J.M. Dabney
M/M Dark Romance
Release Date: 05.20.19
Blurb
Double lives were just the way it was for a man like me. By day I was a man with a reputation above reproach. Even assassins needed backup plans. For fifteen years, life was going without a hitch until I had to take out a witness. When it was time to kill him, beautiful eyes filled with fear urged me to do something else. Yet, in order to do that, I had to break him, and by way of pain, my captive would experience pleasure he’d never dreamed.
This book is part of CRIMINAL DELIGHTS. Each novel can be read as a standalone and contains a dark M/M romance.
Warning: These books are for adult readers who enjoy stories where lines between right and wrong get blurry. High heat, twisted and tantalizing, these are not for the fainthearted.
Trigger Warnings: Title contains the following possible triggers. Humiliation, Violence, Master/slave elements, Male Chastity, Murder, Imprisonment, Dub-Con, and Brief Torture.
Why I Loathe Trigger Warnings and their Necessity
First let me thank Love Bytes for allowing me have a guest post, and by the title I may need to add trigger warnings to my guest post.
As I stated, I loathe trigger warnings, and in writing By Way of Pain I understood why they were necessary. I’ve been informed that Pain was way darker than my usual fare. I’ll admit I let my characters have free rein to do as they wished. I typically write some darker subject matter. Most of my characters deal with trauma and mental illness, suicidal ideation or attempts, and self-harm. I warn about these things because I know they can be triggering because contrary to the theme of this post I have triggers myself, but in some cases I find them overused.
Case in point, books in the M/M Romance genre and Gay Fiction, the warning of consensual acts between adults with the same parts. I don’t see why parts are considered triggering. Although, in the M/M Romance genre we have a huge problem with bi-erasure. A bisexual male isn’t supposed to act on, reminisce or in any other way show their love of the female anatomy. It should be all Gay all the time. As a Gender Nonconforming Lady Parts lover, I find it offensive, but it’s also the nature of the beast. Readers purchase said book for the MM lovings and don’t want to be assaulted by the evilness of the Ew-inspiring lady bits.
Most of the people reading this post, probably feel attacked and have stopped reading. Now that PSA is out of the way.
We label books dark romance which typically means you’re in taboo territory or skirting the town line of taboo. I have had books of mine called disturbing and disgusting – abusive. But I write about real people in real life who deal with these issues every day. Some people read darker romance in order to face their limits. To see someone like themselves overcome – survive. Maybe to experience the trauma again as a form of behavioral exercise.
Then on the other hand, we have readers who don’t want to touch certain subject matters without the warning. Understandable, but as I stated sometimes we overuse the feature of trigger warning. And people are probably going to hate my opinion on it, but when do we go too far? That consensual acts between adults is in some way seen as horrifying.
Rough sex? Trigger warning. Spankings? Trigger warning. Fisting? Trigger warning. I can continue on all day, but in the end I respect the need. Someone doesn’t want to relive their rape in a book when they’re still healing from their traumatic loss of power. An abusive survivor doesn’t want to see their first hits or verbal abuse played out in black and white. These are the appropriate times for warnings, when someone could possibly be sent back to a past they escaped.
I’ve been incredibly open with my co-dependency on my mental illness. I’ve written many blog posts about it. Some call me brave and others say I overshare. But we still live under the burden of a stigma. So I won’t label a book that deals with honest mental health struggles. Mental illness isn’t a trigger, it’s way of life for far too many who feel ignored. We deserve just as much of a HEA as the next person.
As in the case of By Way of Pain. I wrote a book about a man who was unapologetically himself. He didn’t sugar coat his lack of humanity. Immorality wasn’t a shame he suffocated under. Yes, the book has warnings and I listed them all, but I could only list the ones I felt would be considered a deterrent to read. What about the micro triggers that seem so small? A fear of the dark. The fear of dying alone. Of being unremembered.
The main character of my book is a man who has never experienced empathy. He has no moral compass. Killing for him is as natural as breathing. His study of humanity holds more interest to him than existing within the societal decorum of our world based on morality that is malleable based on life experience. Nature versus nurture. The story is about man’s fragile hold on good and evil, and there the gray matter exists. I wrote By Way of Pain with the inspiration of one quote:
It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure. —Marquis De Sade (1740 – 1840)
We live in a world that is imploding in on itself every day. Embracing the darkness and understanding of why is important. Immersing ourselves in the horror is where we truly discover who we are. I think that’s the pull of Dark Romance or Taboo Erotica. We discover pieces of ourselves that are intrigued by the dichotomy of it. We view aspects of personality and desires that could be considered depraved, but we all have a dark side – something that may cause us shame.
Sometimes I feel the use of trigger warnings are a shaming technique. Those warnings set us up as targets. Our books for banning due to some puritanical censorship rules. One person’s depraved fantasy is someone else’s Vanilla missionary position. Someone’s suffering is another person’s pleasure. And while these little blurbs of objectionable content help others stay away from books it also helps readers find the stories for them. That is a double edged sword though, in our culture everyone is allowed to be offended and protest what they get to read, see, or hear. And in doing so they report said content for no more than a few lines of words strung together that says this book may offend.
Authors of dark romance or taboo romance are at the forefront of the battle of morality. We write words that may cause revulsion from a simple mention of content. That in no way deems the content as inherently evil. It’s a livelihood ruined. A writer with no recourse but to conform.
In closing, I loathe trigger warnings, but in all respect I understand them. I just wish people would say that offends me but I’m going to move on. There’s plenty of content out there that is light and fluffy, beautiful stories of easy love and gorgeously composed HEAs. But for the rest of us, one person’s pain is another person’s pleasure.
Thank you for reading until the end.
J.M. Dabney is a multi-genre author who writes mainly LGBT romance and fiction. They live with a constant diverse cast of characters in their head. No matter their size, shape, race, etc. J.M. lives for one purpose alone, and that’s to make sure they do them justice and give them the happily ever after they deserve. J.M. is dysfunction at its finest and they makes sure their characters are a beautiful kaleidoscope of crazy. There is nothing more they want from telling their stories than to show that no matter the package the characters come in or the damage their pasts have done, that love is love. That normal is never normal and sometimes the so-called broken can still be amazing.
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