On Mantasy and Possession

Book Trailers

The audio clips from A Soldier's Choice were causing bandwidth bedlam on the website. Thus, I pulled them, made them into booktrailers and put them on Youtube, where they have plenty of bandwidth. I only kept the ones that were spicy. Here are the links:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=uETejx10OT8

and

http://youtube.com/watch?v=NYj67zQL6_E

Possession

This is an early blog. Our weekend plans are completely in the air, so I thought I'd post tonight. The subject this time are what certain words mean in the realm of romantic ficiton and in real life. The term possession and possessiveness has been coming up a lot, because of the Soldier's sequel, A Soldier's Fate and the Surrender Three-quel, Legacy of Surrender (yes, it is a title change - we thought we could keep the blank of Surrender theme going). The description of this blog even uses the term possession.

Possession is a tricky business. In fiction, especially the romances that I write, a possesive lover is a wonderful thing. My men are never overbearing or jealous (they have absolute confidence in their lover's fidelity and devotion), but they are focused in their attention on their beloved. And they don't like their beloved touched unduly by others. Their gazes are intent. They are ever ready to claim what is theirs. In A Soldier's Choice and the upcoming sequel, Rik and Vincent are loathed to be separated from one another. They are happiest within arms length of each other. And woe is he (or in the case of the sequel, she) who has the foolish notion of coming between them. The key to writing these characters as romantically possessive and not psychotically so is a matter of degrees of intensity. It helps that the lover is willing to be so intensely possessed (that's part of the whole surrender notion in all of my erotica). Then, there is the degree of fierceness. Nikulainen may not want Sarianna's servant bathing her, but he would never try to skewer his Grandfather for embracing her. During The Price of Surrender, Nikulainen's realtionship with older brother, Armas is such that he allows him to protect Sarianna in his absence. Yet, he still quietly bristles at all the attention she receives during daily royal audiences. Vincent and Rik are very possessive of each other after going through so much to have their relationship, but each has many people they are close to. There are even more that are attracted to them for various reasons. Rik came up with the notion of reclaiming one another from outside touches as a way to cope without getting violent. It's a fun way for them to cope.

Now mind, gentle readers, that this is possession in the fantasy world where the owning is mutual and benign. I could never stand a smothering boyfriend, and I always thought the song 'I'll Be Watching You' was creepy and scary. I do not advocate possessiveness other than in between the covers of a book.

Mantasy

No, dear ones, I'm not misspelling again. It's a term Stephen Colbert used this week to describe the life of Matthew McConaughey. I also thought it was a whimsical term for m/m fiction. It's also the name of a gay porn movie (Mantasy Island). If that doesn't make you smile, I don't know what will. We like Mr. Colbert so much that Sybaritic Press offered him a contract for his erotic sci-fi novel, Stephen Colbert’s Alpha Squad 7: Lady Nocturne: A Tek Jansen Adventure. It would have been our longest title. As yet, he has not accepted.