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An interview with Kate Sherwood

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  Posted by Christoarpher , 18 December 2013 · 1,276 views

Dreamspinner released (at least) two books on Monday, December 16, my own Settling the Score and Kate Sherwood’s The Fall. Personally I’m a bit tired of Settling the Score after writing it and all those rounds of editing. The Fall’s what I can’t wait to read, which is why I’m so pleased to offer an interview with Ms. Sherwood today.

Blurb

Every relationship leaves something behind. Dumped by his sugar daddy, part-

Posted Image
Cover, Kate Sherwood’s, The Fall
time model Scott Mackenzie somehow ends up owning an abandoned church in rural Ontario. He dreams of using it for gay weddings, even if he’ll never have one of his own.

Joe Sutton is trying to keep his family together after his parents’ deaths. Between the family ranch, his brother’s construction company, and commitments around town, he doesn’t have time for a relationship. But Mackenzie is hard to ignore.

As both men fight their growing attraction, challenges to Mackenzie’s business threaten their relationship. If he can’t make it work, he’ll have to crawl back to the city in defeat. But the only solution involves risking the ranch Joe loves, and each man has to decide how much he’ll sacrifice for the other.

Interview

Tell us a little about your story. Did you something specific inspire you to write it?

My current release is The Fall, the story of  a pampered city boy coming to live in the country and the taciturn cowboy he grows to love. The city boy ends up in the country because he and his ex-sugar-daddy bought an abandoned church in the area with the plan of using it for gay weddings (“A traditional venue to celebrate your non-traditional love”). And that idea was inspired by a real-life abandoned church that was down the street from where I used to live. The whole community, actually, was loosely based on my former home, but the church was definitely the part that stood out for me.

In real life the church got converted into a house and lost all of its original charm. I wanted something better for it, so I gave it an imaginary life in my book!

How did you get started writing m/m romance? Did you always want to be a writer?

When I was in university, I read a few romances and figured writing one would be an easy way to make some money. I think I got the first… chapter, maybe? Then I realized that it wasn’t so easy after all.

Later, I stumbled into fandom and was amazed by the quality of some of the writing. I mean, yeah, there was a lot of crap, but if you knew where to look?  There was some great stuff. I lurked and read for a while, then finally did a bit of writing. And it was the immediate feedback I got from fandom that made me able to keep writing. Write a chapter, post a chapter, get feedback on the chapter. It took writing from being a solitary pursuit to a social one, and even though I’m about as introverted as a person can get, I needed that social element. Even after I started ‘pro’ writing I still had a small group of people who read my books chapter by chapter as I wrote them. Just a few words of feedback from them was enough to keep me going. I write full books without feedback, now, but I still miss the excitement of the early days, posting a chapter and getting to find out what people thought moments after they read it.

Do you have any writing or reading squicks? Things you don’t like to read and can’t see yourself ever writing?

I keep trying to read more het romance. I love the m/m, but I do wonder why I’m so intrigued by it when I don’t generally enjoy more traditional romances. And I think the problem with too much of the het romance I read is the alpha-hole heroes. I just… yeah. Major squick. It’s hard to get into a romance when you want the heroine to punch the hero in the face and then run as far away as she can get.

That said, there’s some het romance out there without alpha-holes, and I’m getting better at finding (and enjoying) it. I’ve got two published het romances and one more with my agent, so it’s not like I hate the whole sub-genre. Just that one trope.

What’s next on your plate? What are you working on?

I just wrote the last sentence of a novel-length version of a short story I wrote for the Goodreads m/m group a couple years ago. The short story was called In Over His Head and I think the novel will be called In Too Deep. It was interesting to do the conversion, because I’d originally thought I’d more-or-less lift the entire short story and plop it down in the middle of my novel, but it turned out I didn’t do that at all. Elements that made sense in a short story seemed over-the-top in a novel.

There are elements of the short story that I love that I couldn’t make fit in the novel, and elements of the novel that might have enriched the short story if I’d been able to make them work, but overall – two surprisingly different stories.

As an M/M writer, do you feel that the trend is changing where it is becoming more mainstream?

I hope so! I’ve never felt the need for an agent when writing m/m, but I recently wrote a YA novel and found an agent to represent that, and since I’m working with her anyway I asked her about the m/m. She was cautious, but willing to give it a try (selling it to one of the big publishing houses).

I feel like sooner or later, one of the big houses is going to give m/m a chance, and wouldn’t it be fun to be in the first wave of that? It’s hard to strategize, though… my stuff tends to be pretty conservative, in terms of heat levels. Not quite ‘sweet’, but not really racy, either. So maybe that’ll be a disadvantage, if the big houses see m/m as a type of erotica rather than a type of romance. Or maybe it’ll be an advantage, because it won’t be quite as risqué for them… Who knows! But it’s fun to experiment.

I read a blog about M/M writers losing their imagination because they are writing the same subjects repeatedly, what are your thoughts?

http://www.reviewsby...ve.com/?p=42883
(readers: please note that Jessiewave will be closing at the end of 2013 and the question of archives hasn’t been answered.)

I don’t know. I think there are original books in every genre, and derivative books in every genre. How many fantasy books feature epic quests and wise elves? How many mystery/suspense books have a hard-bitten rebel detective bucking the system in the name of justice? Tropes can be done well or they can be done poorly.

In my opinion, m/m has a lot more flexibility than het romance. Maybe because we’re mostly with smaller publishers, I don’t think we’re pushed to be nearly as formulaic, and I think there’s a lot more variation within the character types.

And often tropes become tropes because people like them.

One insoluble debate in the m/m romance world is whether women have any business writing it, that women authors appropriating the lives and experiences of gay men for their own ends or profit. What are your thoughts on this subject?

I’m genuinely torn about it. I’m a straight woman. I think two men together is hot. Am I fetishizing them? Othering them by seeing them only as sexual creatures?

I guess I don’t think so, or I wouldn’t still be writing m/m. I think I’m okay partly because I don’t fetishize actual gay men. I mean, I do not want to know about the sex lives of my gay friends, just like I don’t want to know about the sex lives of my straight friends. I don’t haunt gay villages and hope to see men making out. I think fictional gay men are hot. Real gay men? They’d better have good personalities, or I’m not too interested.

The other reason I think I’m okay is because my characters aren’t just sexual creatures. It’s an aspect of their personalities, sure, but they’re more than just that. In The Fall, (coming December 16 from Dreamspinner Press!) Mackenzie has been objectified – he works as a model and his sugar-daddy wants him to look good and be available at all times. But his character arc through the story allows him to become a much more rounded person as he gains his independence from his ex and learns to stand on his own two feet. Sure, he finds romance with a new guy, but romance isn’t just about sex, right? And the new guy, Joe, is barely sexual at all at the start of the book. His whole family is after him to start dating again, but he’s too busy (and too chicken) to actually do much. In this exchange, his twin brother Will is bugging him about it after their first encounter with Mackenzie:

Will sighed and finally turned to look out the windshield. “He seemed okay,” he offered.

But Joe wasn’t playing that game. “He seemed like a complete pain in the ass. I bet those jeans cost two hundred dollars and came prefaded.”

“But his ass looked good in them.”

“Are you sure you’re straight? They say it’s pretty likely for twins to have the same sexual preference.”

“Are you sure you’re gay? Or maybe you’re… what’s it called? Asexual.”

“Yeah. I think maybe I am. So you should respect that and back the fuck off.”

“When’s the last time you got laid, Joe? Just how long’s it been?”

Jesus, this conversation was getting annoying.

Excerpt

Lorraine snorted. “He didn’t seem too friendly? I’m not surprised.” She shrugged philosophically. “It’s probably the gay thing.”

It hit Mackenzie almost like a slap. He’d thought he was prepared for small-town attitudes toward his sexuality and had absolutely considered homophobia as a possible barrier to setting up his wedding chapel somewhere like Falls Creek. But he couldn’t believe it was being treated so casually. “You’re saying he was rude to me because I’m gay?”

Lorraine looked startled. “No. I’m not sure I’d call it rude, but the way he acts? Distant, kind of? I always figured it was because he’s gay. You know, he’s always been a bit different, so he’s never really tried too hard to fit in. He just hangs out on his ranch, being a lonely cowboy….” She trailed off and fixed her gaze on Mackenzie. “But you say you’re gay as well? I mean, I can’t say it didn’t cross my mind. But it seemed rude to ask….”

“Joe Sutton is gay.” Mackenzie had always prided himself on being able to read people and certainly on being able to pick up on that little spark from a man who was noticing Mackenzie’s undeniable charms. But he’d gotten none of that from the cowboy brother. “That’s confirmed? Or you’re just guessing?”

“Well, I haven’t been there in the room with him and another fella,” Lorraine said with an arched brow, “but it’s general knowledge. He’s never tried to hide it, not that I ever heard of.”

“Maybe he just couldn’t be bothered to speak in order to deny it. He doesn’t seem like someone who cares a whole lot what other people think about him.” Mackenzie was trying to figure it all out. He wanted to find a mirror and make sure he still looked like himself. First Nathan had dumped him for that twenty-year-old, and now a man living in what must surely be a gay desert had crawled right past Mackenzie’s bountiful oasis?

“You could ask Nancy Yeats’s nephew, if you wanted. Trevor something or other. He lives over in Darton, and I guess the two of them were seeing each other for quite a while.” Lorraine’s grin was a mix of curiosity and mischief. “If you’re interested, I can find out if he’s seeing anyone right now. I haven’t heard of it, and usually that’d be a good sign that it isn’t happening, but like I said, Joe’s a bit different. A bit more private than most folks.”

Private was not a good enough excuse for failing to pay attention to his surroundings or, more importantly, failing to pay attention to Mackenzie. But none of that needed to be shared with a woman who clearly gossiped as a way of life. He smiled brightly. “Oh, no, I’m not interested. You know, not like that. I was just curious. I wanted to know what kind of people I’d be doing business with if I had the Suttons do the work on the church.”

“The best kind,” Lorraine said firmly. “You couldn’t do better.”

Lorraine started telling a story about the Suttons helping out some poor family that had lost everything in a house fire—well, of course the whole community had chipped in, but the Suttons had done the biggest part—and some people might say that’s because they’re blood, but really, they’d be third cousins at best—because it was Susan Sutton’s grandmother? Yes, grandmother, Maggie Johnson—she was from out in Newfoundland, back before it was even part of Canada, and she’d carried that accent with her for her whole life…. Mackenzie tuned out. Joe Sutton was openly gay. And Mackenzie was a model, for Christ’s sake. Maybe his career hadn’t quite taken off, but that was because Nathan hadn’t really liked it. He hadn’t been rude enough to try to forbid it, but he’d be grumpy for days before and after Mackenzie went out of town for even a couple days, and there just weren’t enough shoots in Toronto to propel someone into the modeling elite. The first time Mackenzie turned down a New York job, Nathan had leased him a silver Mini convertible as a reward. Mackenzie had been thrilled by the symbol of Nathan’s affection and by the adorable new wheels. But being a good boyfriend had made it a bit difficult to be a good model. So, no, it wasn’t as if Mackenzie had set the world on fire as a model. Still, he must be a tastier piece of ass than Nancy Whoever’s nephew!

Mackenzie forced himself to pay a bit more attention to Lorraine’s chatter, but the biggest part of his brain was still focused elsewhere. He was not going to be ignored by some desperate hick pretending to be a damn cowboy. No. Joe Sutton was about to get his world rocked. “Nobody puts Baby in a corner,” he muttered to himself, and then he smiled when Lorraine shot him a quizzical glance. “I’ve got to go,” he said without trying to explain. “But thanks so much for catching me up on all this. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

He beat a hasty retreat inside and went to sit in the sanctuary of the church. A lot to think about. And a lot of things to do, things actually based around the important points of building a successful business and keeping himself out of the poorhouse. But his mind kept drifting back to the tall cowboy who’d told him he had bats in his belfry. And then ignored him. What the hell was Joe Sutton’s problem?

Bio

Hot men. Horses. Canada. Angst. Millionaires. Hot male millionaires riding horses in Canada while dealing with all their angst! Hell, yeah. No, not all my books are the same, and not all of them deal with every one of those ideas, but there are definitely some common themes!

I ride horses in Canada. I like hot men. But I’m not a millionaire, and I’m not especially angsty. So, I’ve combined the ‘write what you know’ rule with ‘write what you like’, and I’m enjoying it.

My first novel was published in June of 2010, and I’ve been pretty busy since then. I stuck with m/m romance for quite a while, but I’ve also got a couple m/f romances, and I’m exploring other genres as well. Basically, I love writing, and I’ll do it in any genre that I can!

You can find more information at my blog or my website, http://www.katesherwoodbooks.com/, and I’m on Goodreads, Twitter, Facebook – everywhere, it seems. Come say hi!


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