I'm thrilled to welcome Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese to my blog today to talk about their new M/M BDSM release, Room 1024. Not only are they fellow Torquere Press authors, but you know I can't resist M/M or BDSM. Put them both together and...I'm totally there. I preordered this book as soon as it became available, and I can't wait to start reading it!
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Our working title for Room 1024 was, for a while, Conference, because it’s set at a men’s leather conference in San Francisco and we’re very clever with titles. My partner looked over my shoulder one day and said “Oh, you’re writing another story about academics?”
“Uh. No.”
“...What are you writing about?”
“BDSM.”
“Oh. Huh. Why? I mean like, is that something you want to try?”
No, it wasn’t, which I told him, and then we chatted for about half an hour about stuff I’d learned while doing research. Because, yes, I had to do research for this story. My cowriter, Racheline Maltese, has a long history and experience with the BDSM community. Saying that I’d jumped into the deep end of the pool would be an understatement. It was as if I’d decided to write a story about baseball but the only things I knew was that the game existed, people watched it sometimes, and it involved like pucks and rackets?
Which is to say, I basically zero familiarity with all the cultures, subcultures, history, or intra-community debates of the massive web of people and practices that fall under the category “BDSM.”
Racheline sent me links to articles, and videos -- which I watched on my phone at work, because while my dayjob is a pretty liberal place, streaming a video on flogging best-practices on the company computer seemed not really the way to go.
My favorite moment, though, came after Racheline and I put a post up on our blog talking about the story. The next day I got a very long, somewhat concerned email from my mother. She wanted to know what about BDSM appealed to me -- why I was writing it -- and was this like that time I was really into Elves?
(I was a HUGE Lord of the Rings nerd when I was a teenager.)
And like, as awkward as that email was to get -- because really -- it was also my mom just wanting to know what my interests were. She’s always been supportive, of my writing career especially, and to her this was just one more Thing Erin’s Writing About that she wanted to ask me my mind about.
I wrote her a really long email back, explaining basically the same things I’d told my partner. BDSM wasn’t just about sex and whips and chains and like, whatever else she thought. (Like sure, those things are there, and they seem like they could be fun, but I wasn’t going to say that to my mother). It is about relationship structures and communication and negotiating agreements in -- hopefully -- positive and constructive ways. So, like, no, it wasn’t like the time I was really into Elves. But it was pretty cool nonetheless.
When Cameron takes his submissive boyfriend Noah to a gay men's leather convention in San Francisco, Cam expects to spend the week exploring their relationship and experimenting with non-monogamy. What he doesn't expect is to run into his own former dom, Lou, in an embarrassingly public reunion.
While Noah is enthusiastic about the opportunity to play with the former international leather title-holder, Cam is more wary. He and Lou have unfinished business. A four-way encounter with Lou and his sub Stephen could be great fun—or it could show Noah that Cameron can never quite be the dom he wants and needs.
As Cameron and Noah work through the uncertainties in their relationship, Noah is offered everything he ever wanted, in a completely different way than he ever expected, leading all four men to discover that sometimes the only way forward is to revisit the past.
Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese are authors of the gay romance series Love in Los Angeles, set in the film and television industry -- Starling (September 10, 2014), Doves (January 21, 2015), and Phoenix (June 10, 2015) -- from Torquere Press. Their gay romance novella series Love’s Labours, set in the theater world -- Midsummer (May 2015), and Twelfth Night (Fall 2015), is from Dreamspinner Press. They also have a story in Best Gay Romance 2015 from Cleis Press and edited by Felice Picano.
Racheline is a NYC-based performer and storyteller; Erin is a writer and blogger based in Washington, D.C. They write stories and scripts about the intersection of private lives, fame, and desire. You can find them on the web at http://www.Avian30.com.
Social Media Links:
Joint Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Erin.
Erin’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/erincmcrae
Racheline’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/racheline_
Erin’s Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/
Racheline’s Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/
Erin’s Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Erin-
Racheline’s Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/
Buy Link:
Torquere Press: http://www.torquerebooks.com/
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