Originally appeared online in June 2009 at Mocha's Erotic Reviews
- I have read a great deal of your work. I am so happy you are here doing this interview with me to celebrate our first ever GLBT Pride month.
- I'm glad to see a lot of review sites expand to celebrate GLBT Pride. While M/M erotica is hot on the e-book shelves right now, I'm anxious to see the other flavors of the rainbow (lesbian, bisexual, and transgender) as easily embraced.
- Who is J.M.? I mean the real J.M.
- The real J.M. gets up at six o'clock every morning to write two hours before going to work. I have a full-time day job that pays the bills, but writing comes first in my life. I write in the mornings and in the evenings work on promotion, marketing, more writing ... and on weekends, I read, go to the movies, or play video games. I'm pretty boring, actually :) If it's not writing-related, I'm probably not interested in it.
- I reviewed Caught off Base and let me tell you it was a great story. Will you do a follow up story on Ange and T.C.?
- Probably not. Caught Off Base is actually a follow-up already; it stars a minor character from my novel, Stepping Up to the Plate. The main reason I wrote Caught Off Base was because I didn't feel Ange had a happy ending in my novel and I didn't want to end his story there. While I do have an idea for a story to revisit the characters at a later date, that would focus more on Ange and Stacy and their friendship (or what remains of it after the novel) than furthering Ange's new relationship with T.C.
- You have crossed all the genres from Contemporary to Interracial & Multicultral -- why?
- The main reason is simple -- I write what I like to read. And I like to read stories that range from contemporary to science fiction to historical. I like men of all shapes and sizes, all nationalities, all creeds and races; therefore, I write stories about a myriad of characters with differences I find appealing. I don't set out thinking, "This story will be interracial." Instead, I tell the story I want to share with my readers and only when it's finished do I realize the characters are of different racial backgrounds.
- Actually, it never occured to me that I wrote a lot of interracial stories until someone asked in an interview why I did so. My first response was, "I don't." But when I looked over my backlist and began to count the IR/MC stories I'd done, I surprised even myself. Now that I know some readers are particularly interested in stories with those types of characters, I have them listed separately on my website to make them easy to find.
- Any of your past characters represent you in anyway?
- There's a little bit of myself in every character I write. I think that's what makes my characters human ~ they aren't caricatures or stereotypes, but very real people whose traits ring true because I've culled them from real life. While there isn't one character I can pinpoint and say, "That's me to a T," there are small personality quirks in each which people who know me would readily recognize.
- For instance, I have a series of superhero stories starring to characters named Vic and Matt. Vic is very much not a morning person -- he's gruff and grumpy for the first hour or so after he wakes, whether in the morning or after an afternoon nap. I'm the same way; if you catch me immediately when I first get up, you're going to wish you hadn't. It takes me a good hour before I'm even approachable if you value your life. Another character in that series is a woman named Roxie. She works as the receptionist at the gym where Matt runs the indoor swimming pool. Her bitchy attitude and caustic comebacks are things I'd say or do while at my day job, though I don't dress as wildly outrageous as she does.
- As you see, each character has a little something I've put into their personalities to make them, in a word, me.
- How do you come up with the sexy men in your books?
- I find sexy men everywhere. I get a lot of inspiration for my stories just people-watching, to be honest. My latest story, Playing the Field: Play On, is about two college juniors who play on their school's soccer team. Sean was inspired by a guy I knew when I attended George Mason; Cordero came from a cute guy I saw at the movie theater once. I'm not one who only writes male characters who are all rippling pectorals and bulging muscles. I prefer average men who, when seen through the eyes of a lover, transcend the everyday to become someone special.
- Why gay erotica?... I am not complaining but your fans want to know.
- When I started writing, it was fantasy. In college, my focus moved toward more feminist-driven stories, specifically with an homoerotic bent. But I found that my heart wasn't completely in these stories, and they sat mostly unfinished on my computer. Then I stumbled upon the world of slash fan-fiction (slash, for the uninitiated, is fan-written fiction depicting homoerotic relationships between heterosexual characters). After writing boyband slash for two years, I felt confident enough to move back into original fiction. When I did so, naturally my gay characters followed. The rest, as they say, is history.
- Do you feel like there should be more male writers that are actually gay writing gay erotica?
- I personally don't feel the author's gender has much of an impact on the reader's enjoyment of a story. Some readers get hung up on semantics, but I've read and enjoyed fiction by both male and female authors, starring both male and female characters. I think if the author can get inside the characters and make them believable to the reader, then it matters little to me whether or not the author's genitalia matches the characters'.
- What is better -- self-publishing compared to being published through a e-publishing company?
- Both have their own pros and cons. Self-publishing is very much a hands-on, lonely business, but you retain much more control over your work. E-publishing is a different beast, and each publisher is different. I've enjoyed my experiences with the publishers I've worked with, but am still very much enamored with self-publishing, as well, since I've always dreamed of seeing my name in print. E-publishing sells more immediately, I think, but a print book, even if self-published, is something you can put on your bookshelf or sell at an author event, or even pimp to your family and friends. That is, if you're not shy about showing your mother the erotica you wrote!
- Which genre is your favorite?
- I'd have to say my favorite genre, both to read and to write, would be post-apocalyptic or futuristic dystopia fiction. I've always loved books that look at the future in less than flattering terms; think 1984 by George Orwell, or I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, or We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. I haven't written many stories set in this type of a future, but I have a few ideas and hope to venture into the genre more.
- For readers interested in my post-apocalyptic or dystopic stories, I do have a few: Persistence of Memory, Scarred, Trin, VR Palace, War Torn, and the short story "World Enough and Time," which appears in my collection, Other Worlds Than These.
- What does GLBT Pride mean to you?
- The past is riddled with hatred and homophobia, which continues to echo in some parts of the world. But living in America in today's society gives me a unique perspective ~ not only on the past but on our present and how it's evolving into something I hope one day will be a future where there is no need for a GLBT Pride month because being gay won't be ostracized or diminished. For now I understand the desire for a show of solidarity and pride, but I do hope one day that won't be necessary.
- To my characters, sexuality is simply one more facet of who they are as human beings, and I write what I do because I look forward to a world where who you love wonn't define you any more than being black or white or male or female should.