Monday, December 23, 2013

Writing What You Know: Menage a’Trois

Welcome Siobhan Muir to my blog!

There’s an old adage that says: write what you know.

Adages become something repeated in the vernacular because there is truth in them. What better subjects to write on than things that you know? But knowing things only takes you so far. If we wrote what we knew all the time, there’d be no fantasy or science fiction because who knows what will show up in the future. Or what dragons lie beyond the mountains of Mordor? LOL

For a long time I honed my storytelling skills and writing on science fiction and fantasy, preferring exotic and magical beings to humans and human issues. They just weren’t interesting to me. But at the heart of all my sci-fi stories was human interaction. How would this character react if I put them in that situation? How would you react if thrown into an alien world where dragons were allies rather than something to slay? I’d be saying, “Where can I get one?” :D

Adding romance into the mix suddenly made me interested in what humans would be doing. Particularly if they were doing it with vampires, werewolves, dragons, goblins, and demons. :D Old habits die hard. But again, it was human interaction and human issues at the core. I’ve written several M/F romances and I loved getting my characters into trouble in weird situations just to see what they’d do.

But I’d never written a ménage.

I don’t have the benefit of personal experience of a ménage to write from that place of knowledge. But I read a lot and learning doesn’t just come from experience. Why else do we have books and libraries? We learn from others’ experiences. I’ve read a lot of ménage romance and some of it I’ve believed and some I haven’t. But one thing is very clear when writing multiple partner romance: you have to get the human interaction right.

You have to know people. How they’d react, what they fear, what they desire, and what they’d do. Times three. Or four. Or more. In the end, romance with multiple partners is just like romance with only two partners, except you have that many more conflicts, emotional responses, and physical responses. Writing a convincing ménage means knowing people and knowing how they’d react in whatever is going on.

So, write what you know, and I know people.

Taking that knowledge and putting it into the ménage romance of The Navy’s Ghost was both intriguing and frustrating for me. I had to figure out three people and understand how they’d react. But it was exciting and fun, and so emotionally satisfying. Especially when one of them wants the ménage, but has been told it’s wrong and fights it with every fiber of his being.

THE NAVY’S GHOST
 
 

A SEAL is strongest with her Team…
Ensign Christiana "Ghost" Brickman is the only female SEAL to survive BUD/S training, a real Navy Jane. But when an ambush ends her career as an active SEAL, she’s free to pursue other interests. Like her two best friends Lt. Jim "Retro" Waters and Chief Warrant Officer Todd "Magic" Hunter. She's wanted them for over a year, but never dared to approach them while in the squad.

Retro has fought his dark desires since high school, certain the need to share a woman unnatural. Magic had never considered sharing before Ghost mentions it, but it solves his dilemma of choosing between his best friend and his woman. But Retro balks at Ghost’s offer to share and retreats from both when she marries Magic.
Everyone feels Retro’s loss, but he ignores the ache of their broken connection in favor of living ‘normal.’ When Ghost and the other wives of Beta Squad are kidnapped, Retro must reevaluate how much both Ghost and Magic mean to him. And he must decide how far he's willing to go to save the woman he loves, before she becomes the Navy's ghost.
 
BUY LINKS
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Navys-Ghost-Boys-Beta-Squad-ebook/dp/B00H22W8TU/
 
My tagline is Kick-ass Adventure with Hot Sex and The Navy’s Ghost lives up to the line. It was a wild ride and a new experience for me. I enjoyed writing it and discovering that special place where three people could find their Happily-Ever-After. I hope you’ll grab a copy and see how Retro, Ghost, and Magic make the magic work for them.

Siobhan Muir lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, with her husband, two daughters, and a vegetarian cat she swears is a shape-shifter, though he's never shifted when she can see him. When not writing, she can be found looking down a microscope at fossil fox teeth, pursuing her other love, paleontology. An avid reader of science fiction/fantasy, her husband gave her a paranormal romance for Christmas one year, and she was hooked for good.

 

3 comments:

  1. Thanks so much for having me today, Marla. :)

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  2. You're welcome, but something isn't working right and I can't get it to fix. I'm sorry. There is all that white space. Grrrrrr

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    1. If you go into the HTML side of blogger, it shows "background color = white" and you can delete it on each line. PITA, but that's how I futz with it. :)

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