Marie Sinclair is a queer writer who lives in San Francisco. Though she’s been a writer all her life, it wasn’t until she stumbled upon MM romance that she knew she’d found a home for herself and all the characters in her head.
Her focus is on contemporary romance, usually on the steamy side. While HEAs are guaranteed, it will always take some work for the couples to get there, and it might not look the way they expected at the beginning. As a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, Marie believes in rooting her stories in the real world of queer culture and showing how love can survive even in challenging times.
Marie’s Sin Bin Facebook group
Instagram: marie.sinbooks
Twitter: @marie_sinbooks
Website: www.sinbinbooks.com
Newsletter: https://BookHip.com/FLBBQXH
I don’t think I had much of a choice about being a writer because I’ve been a storyteller all my life. I narrated my toys through their adventures and wrote my first story when I was six, my first novel when I was thirteen. It took me three years to write and revise that novel, and I still have both handwritten drafts of that novel (I am a complete pack rat, and it’s very difficult for me to throw away any of my writing or notes).
Becoming a writer was easy. Becoming an author was a lot harder.
As a hard-core SF/F fan, that’s what I initially wanted to write, but, when I went to college, my first creative writing professor laid down the law: no genre fiction AT ALL. By the time I graduated, I was focused on literary writing and spent the next several decades in pursuit of the goal of being a serious literary novelist.
Up until 2019, that’s what I wrote, and then I had the incredibly good fortune of being asked to take part in an erotic fiction reading series. I’d discovered MM romance a few years before and instantly fallen in love, devouring around five hundred books in a little over a year, so it was an easy decision to write a scene with two male characters. Those characters – Cart and Ry – became the MCs for my first romance book and launched my career as a romance writer.
I’ve written three novels, two novellas, and several short stories in the past two years, which is extraordinary considering I spent over a decade working on a single literary novel before that.
Most of my books are based on what I’ve experienced and observed as a member of the queer community (I’m pan and agender) in San Francisco. Many of my friends have been active in queer rights – some since before Stonewall. Even though I’m writing romance, it’s important that my books reflect the reality of queer lives. One of the things I know from my own experience is how fluid ideas of sexuality, gender, attraction, relationships, and physical expression are, and I want to write stories and create characters that reflect that.
I use my own experiences in my books, and I think every writer does to some extent. Though none of them are truly autobiographical, there’s one that’s closely based on a relationship I have in real life, and the older couple in Forever After was an homage to a couple of high school friends. They both had very common last names, so I can’t look them up, but they’ve been on my mind for a couple of years because I worry they didn’t survive the AIDS crisis. The unresolved ending to Drew and Erica’s relationship in that book is my way of leaving space for a happy ending but fearing it didn’t happen.
Even when I start out with a situation or character that’s based on something or someone I know, the story changes as I write and find unexpected connections or discover something interesting in my research. I love learning new things, so research is often a big part of early development. Even for a short story like “Man Down,” I want to make sure my details are as accurate as possible. The white-water rafting details were based on my own experience of a rafting trip plus research to fill in what I couldn’t remember.
When the details I’ve learned and the ideas I started out with start creating patterns and connections I didn’t expect, I know a story is alive. It’s one of the most exciting parts of the writing process for me. Sometimes it happens early, and sometimes it takes a while, but that alchemy is where the magic lives for me.
The other part of the process I adore is when my MCs get together for the first time. That initial physical interaction has been unique for each of my couples, and it definitely comes out of who the characters are.
Ry and Cart (A Kind of Forever) were very tender and caring, their love making a reflection of how damaged each of them are by their pasts. Jake and Micah (Nothing Like Forever), on the other hand, were off-the-charts physical from the very beginning. I actually had to talk to those two after Amazon put their prequel novella in the erotica dungeon (I was going to protest, but a page count revealed that the novella is about 40% sex scenes – honestly, I had no idea it was that much despite one of my beta readers telling me I melted her Kindle). They sulked for a couple of chapters and refused to do anything, but then gave me this amazing, almost Tantric scene that marked a turning point in their relationship. Alex and Diego (Forever After) were a lot of fun to write because they started out hating each other and their early interactions grew out of that attract/repel energy. Diego is also so uninhibited about his sexuality, and he loves to poke at Alex’s more rigid boundaries, but once Alex relaxes, these two were fire. I absolutely LOVED writing the scenes where Alex discovers Diego jerking off to porn starring two guys who could be their twins, and the biscuit dough battle.
My current book (due for a late September/early October release) is a MMM romance that starts out with a V relationship between husbands Elliott and Luc, and Luc’s boyfriend/Dom, Leo. The book is about how they become a triad after Leo is diagnosed with cancer, but I’m also exploring ideas about D/s relationships with a Dom who has limited mobility, polyamory, and BDSM that focuses more on sensation play, sensory deprivation, and predicament bondage.
After that, I’ve got a new series featuring Micah’s flight attendant friends and a holiday book with the Finding Forever guys.
Marie Sinclair
Boy meets boy… and nature takes its course!
Book Title: Naughty by Nature: A Gay Erotica Anthology
Cover Artist: Samantha Santana, Amai Designs
Release Date: July 1, 2022
Genre: M/M erotica short stories
Trope: Outdoor sex
Themes: Coming out, forgiveness
Length: 75 000 words/314 pages
Buy Links
Universal Link | Amazon US | Amazon UK
Blurb
From strangers in the night to happy couples looking for a little spice, Naughty by Nature has the story for you. Each short story features steamy adult encounters in the great outdoors, not to mention a delicious variety of kinks. After all, roughing it shouldn’t have to mean giving up all our creature comforts that bring… pleasure.
So grab your sleeping bag and get back to nature in all the best ways. With a total of eleven stories by some of your favorite MM Romance authors, you’re sure to find something to have you howling at the moon in no time!
Featuring stories by:
Abigail Kade
Charity Parkerson
C.J. Vincent
Elizabeth Silver
Evie Hampton
Gia Reaves
Julia Talbot
Lynn Van Dorn
Marie Sinclair
Pandora Pine
Shane K. Morton
All author links
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