Please Welcome Jaye Edgerton
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Christoarpher
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25 April 2014
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Please Welcome Jaye Edgerton
Thank you for having me, Christopher! This is my first big publication and I’m thrilled to death to be a part of this big community of readers and writers! Yesterday I was over at M. A. Church’s Decadent Delights, and tomorrow I’ll be back home at JayeEdgerton.com for my release day! I’m also running a giveaway that you can enter on my blog.
How did you get started writing m/m romance? Did you always want to be a writer?
I was definitely a born writer. When I was in high school the last subject of every notebook was devoted to writing elaborate space operas instead of taking notes. But I never imagined I’d end up with something like The Winter Lord as my first published fiction.
Writing M/M Romance grew out of writing gay characters in general. I’ve always been a very emotion-focused writer, very into the angst, and I’m also the sort who writes sex scenes for her characters whether they actually happen or not! I have some bigger, more mainstream projects I’m working on, and (probably because I’m a lesbian myself) the gay relationships just clicked better for me than the straight ones. So I spun that feeling off into some new characters and new settings, and surprise! That’s getting published before any of my non-romance work! Because, being a novella, it was a small enough project to actually finish.
Tell us a little about your story. Did you something specific inspire you to write it?
The Winter Lord is about a man named Erik who travels to the realm of the elves and the fey looking for a way to bring spring back to his home. He’s rescued from freezing to death by a mercurial winter fey who decides to keep him.
I hate to be that person in M/M who says, “I wrote this as fanfic but then I changed all the names!” but it did start out as the backstory for a Dungeons & Dragons character. I took the original idea and went back to the roots, since so much in D&D comes from actual folklore, and gave it a much more Norse flavor. And then I gave it an actual ending, since the entire point of a D&D backstory is to be open-ended.
What’s next on your plate? What are you working on?
Apart from my generally not very romantic, more mainstream fantasy, I’m gearing up another M/M novella called His Dark Knight. It’s about a prince whose longtime best friend-slash-secret crush-slash personal guard escapes from a horrible magical experiment being carried out by the king’s wizard to create a force of knights powered by dark magic. The pair of them join up with a rebellion trying to depose the war-mongering monarch and set the prince on the throne in his place. His friend has to master his new magical powers as they finally face their long-denied feelings for each other.
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 think generalizations are terrible. There may be a few women out there who write insensitively, but it’s like saying no men should ever be able to write about women. Some do it well, some do it less well. And it sure seems like a lot of men get away with writing women badly without repercussions! I’ve tossed away my share of male-penned mainstream fantasy novels when I discovered a rape-as-romance subplot or noticed the author’s Madonna-whore complex was showing. Part of why I find M/M so comfortable is because of all the bad writing of women that’s out there, some even by other women. Believe me, women know what it’s like to be objectified! We understand!
The funny thing for me is, as I said, I’m a lesbian. I’m not even interested in those bits! But I’m attracted to romance, and I’m attracted to people enjoying each other’s company physically without the disturbing baggage of misogyny and patriarch. It’s about the characters for me, and I have the imagination to empathize with them. It should be able the characters for any good writer, male, female, or otherwise. If you have an issue with an individual writer, take it up on Goodreads. Don’t generalize.
Blurb:
When Erik, a human scholar and amateur mage, sets out to find Alfheim, the legendary home of the light-elves, he has nothing to lose. His village suffers under a mysterious Unending Winter, and his lover died in a hunting accident while trying to find food. Erik wants to find a way to end the cold, but he doesn’t expect a beautiful but Winter-cursed fey lord who wants him for his champion—and his bedmate.
Lord Therial is an elemental creature, tied to the land, and the elves of his kingdom revere him like a spoiled but rightful ruler. A spell cast by a rival fey locks him and his little corner of Alfheim into a perpetual Winter that seems connected to the one afflicting Erik’s home. If Erik fails to defeat the enemy, both realms will remain trapped forever.
Excerpt:
Erik had been a fool, and as he lay in the mountain snow—pulled down by exhaustion, his extremities numb, his mind succumbing to the alluring phantom warmth that presaged death from hypothermia—he understood that his own mistakes were going to kill him. He hadn’t realized he’d be so accepting of his own death, lost to the frozen
mountain peaks while the Unending Winter still embraced his home, killing others as it had killed his Rowan. The legends he’d uncovered in the writings of the village elders said the barrier between worlds was thin here, and if one came at the right time, one could find a way into Alfheim. The home of the Ljósálfar was supposed to be an emerald oasis in these white peaks, a refuge stumbled upon by lost travelers dying from the cold. He had studied the stories, the generations of tales of those who had found the place and returned to tell of it, which the scholars of his village had written down. He had expected a warm oasis. Instead he found only an angry, bitter cold where a beautiful elven castle was supposed to appear, a cold his meager human magic couldn’t hope to drive back.
As Erik lay on his back, vision framed by the fur trim of his leather hood, it seemed night had fallen early. The days had never grown long again after the last solstice, but he was sure it was only just after midday. Was he losing track of time? Had he passed out, lost a few hours without even realizing it? The sky had been a hard steel gray before, but now when he looked up he saw the clear, starlight-pierced black of the sky on a biting winter’s night when the air was too cold for snow or even clouds. Something about those stars looked wrong. The constellations were unfamiliar. Erik struggled to make himself care through the exhaustion, to make the analytical mind that had gotten him here consider how such a thing could be, but the urge to give in to the warmth and the sheer pleasure of closing his eyes and settling into the soft snow after climbing so far was too strong. It would be a painless death.
Perhaps he’d see Rowan again….
As he let go, a shadow blotted out the stars. “You poor thing,” whispered a voice like the winter wind. Fingers as cold as the snow brushed his cheek, and Erik fell into darkness.
Bio:
Jaye Edgerton lives in Columbus, OH, with three ferrets and a long-suffering best friend-slash-roommate. “Eccentric” is a nice way to put it. In addition to fiction, she writes about geek culture for her local alt-weekly. She likes her fluffy happy romance to be about men and her serious dark fantasy to be about women—she’s contrary that way. Before deciding to take her writing seriously, Jaye spent a cumulative five-and-a-half years working in bookstores, used and otherwise. After that she spent seven years in tech support where she mostly wanted to cry a lot, but the experience encouraged her to chase her dream of being a professional writer instead of just writing dirty vignettes about her Dungeons & Dragons and World of Warcraft characters that she showed to all of two people. She’s much too fond of office supplies, out-of-print sci-fi/fantasy authors, and Transformers.
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Thank you for having me, Christopher! This is my first big publication and I’m thrilled to death to be a part of this big community of readers and writers! Yesterday I was over at M. A. Church’s Decadent Delights, and tomorrow I’ll be back home at JayeEdgerton.com for my release day! I’m also running a giveaway that you can enter on my blog.
How did you get started writing m/m romance? Did you always want to be a writer?
I was definitely a born writer. When I was in high school the last subject of every notebook was devoted to writing elaborate space operas instead of taking notes. But I never imagined I’d end up with something like The Winter Lord as my first published fiction.
Writing M/M Romance grew out of writing gay characters in general. I’ve always been a very emotion-focused writer, very into the angst, and I’m also the sort who writes sex scenes for her characters whether they actually happen or not! I have some bigger, more mainstream projects I’m working on, and (probably because I’m a lesbian myself) the gay relationships just clicked better for me than the straight ones. So I spun that feeling off into some new characters and new settings, and surprise! That’s getting published before any of my non-romance work! Because, being a novella, it was a small enough project to actually finish.
Tell us a little about your story. Did you something specific inspire you to write it?
The Winter Lord is about a man named Erik who travels to the realm of the elves and the fey looking for a way to bring spring back to his home. He’s rescued from freezing to death by a mercurial winter fey who decides to keep him.
I hate to be that person in M/M who says, “I wrote this as fanfic but then I changed all the names!” but it did start out as the backstory for a Dungeons & Dragons character. I took the original idea and went back to the roots, since so much in D&D comes from actual folklore, and gave it a much more Norse flavor. And then I gave it an actual ending, since the entire point of a D&D backstory is to be open-ended.
What’s next on your plate? What are you working on?
Apart from my generally not very romantic, more mainstream fantasy, I’m gearing up another M/M novella called His Dark Knight. It’s about a prince whose longtime best friend-slash-secret crush-slash personal guard escapes from a horrible magical experiment being carried out by the king’s wizard to create a force of knights powered by dark magic. The pair of them join up with a rebellion trying to depose the war-mongering monarch and set the prince on the throne in his place. His friend has to master his new magical powers as they finally face their long-denied feelings for each other.
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 think generalizations are terrible. There may be a few women out there who write insensitively, but it’s like saying no men should ever be able to write about women. Some do it well, some do it less well. And it sure seems like a lot of men get away with writing women badly without repercussions! I’ve tossed away my share of male-penned mainstream fantasy novels when I discovered a rape-as-romance subplot or noticed the author’s Madonna-whore complex was showing. Part of why I find M/M so comfortable is because of all the bad writing of women that’s out there, some even by other women. Believe me, women know what it’s like to be objectified! We understand!
The funny thing for me is, as I said, I’m a lesbian. I’m not even interested in those bits! But I’m attracted to romance, and I’m attracted to people enjoying each other’s company physically without the disturbing baggage of misogyny and patriarch. It’s about the characters for me, and I have the imagination to empathize with them. It should be able the characters for any good writer, male, female, or otherwise. If you have an issue with an individual writer, take it up on Goodreads. Don’t generalize.
Blurb:
When Erik, a human scholar and amateur mage, sets out to find Alfheim, the legendary home of the light-elves, he has nothing to lose. His village suffers under a mysterious Unending Winter, and his lover died in a hunting accident while trying to find food. Erik wants to find a way to end the cold, but he doesn’t expect a beautiful but Winter-cursed fey lord who wants him for his champion—and his bedmate.
Lord Therial is an elemental creature, tied to the land, and the elves of his kingdom revere him like a spoiled but rightful ruler. A spell cast by a rival fey locks him and his little corner of Alfheim into a perpetual Winter that seems connected to the one afflicting Erik’s home. If Erik fails to defeat the enemy, both realms will remain trapped forever.
Excerpt:
Erik had been a fool, and as he lay in the mountain snow—pulled down by exhaustion, his extremities numb, his mind succumbing to the alluring phantom warmth that presaged death from hypothermia—he understood that his own mistakes were going to kill him. He hadn’t realized he’d be so accepting of his own death, lost to the frozen
mountain peaks while the Unending Winter still embraced his home, killing others as it had killed his Rowan. The legends he’d uncovered in the writings of the village elders said the barrier between worlds was thin here, and if one came at the right time, one could find a way into Alfheim. The home of the Ljósálfar was supposed to be an emerald oasis in these white peaks, a refuge stumbled upon by lost travelers dying from the cold. He had studied the stories, the generations of tales of those who had found the place and returned to tell of it, which the scholars of his village had written down. He had expected a warm oasis. Instead he found only an angry, bitter cold where a beautiful elven castle was supposed to appear, a cold his meager human magic couldn’t hope to drive back.As Erik lay on his back, vision framed by the fur trim of his leather hood, it seemed night had fallen early. The days had never grown long again after the last solstice, but he was sure it was only just after midday. Was he losing track of time? Had he passed out, lost a few hours without even realizing it? The sky had been a hard steel gray before, but now when he looked up he saw the clear, starlight-pierced black of the sky on a biting winter’s night when the air was too cold for snow or even clouds. Something about those stars looked wrong. The constellations were unfamiliar. Erik struggled to make himself care through the exhaustion, to make the analytical mind that had gotten him here consider how such a thing could be, but the urge to give in to the warmth and the sheer pleasure of closing his eyes and settling into the soft snow after climbing so far was too strong. It would be a painless death.
Perhaps he’d see Rowan again….
As he let go, a shadow blotted out the stars. “You poor thing,” whispered a voice like the winter wind. Fingers as cold as the snow brushed his cheek, and Erik fell into darkness.
Bio:
Jaye Edgerton lives in Columbus, OH, with three ferrets and a long-suffering best friend-slash-roommate. “Eccentric” is a nice way to put it. In addition to fiction, she writes about geek culture for her local alt-weekly. She likes her fluffy happy romance to be about men and her serious dark fantasy to be about women—she’s contrary that way. Before deciding to take her writing seriously, Jaye spent a cumulative five-and-a-half years working in bookstores, used and otherwise. After that she spent seven years in tech support where she mostly wanted to cry a lot, but the experience encouraged her to chase her dream of being a professional writer instead of just writing dirty vignettes about her Dungeons & Dragons and World of Warcraft characters that she showed to all of two people. She’s much too fond of office supplies, out-of-print sci-fi/fantasy authors, and Transformers.
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