I am writing a story in which the (female, cis) MC has several gay friends, both men and women. Although the main focus of the story is the MC's romance with a man, the plot does involve a gay marriage and characters discuss issues like homophobia. The MC's past also includes some flings with women. So many romance novels that I have seen seem to take place in some weird universe where smart phones exist but gay people don't. Can anyone recommend some romance publishers or imprints for my book?
Straight romance in a queer-aware universe
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I am also interested in this.
One of the historical romances I'm working on contains a pretty important secondary character who turns out to be gay (having successfully concealed this from most of the family for years), and part of the conflict between the MC and love interest is how to respond to the revelation. I'm wondering if this is somehow taboo, since I've never seen a hetero historical romance with gay characters, but obviously just because you couldn't be "out" in some societies doesn't mean everyone was straight back then.
One of the historical romances I'm working on contains a pretty important secondary character who turns out to be gay (having successfully concealed this from most of the family for years), and part of the conflict between the MC and love interest is how to respond to the revelation. I'm wondering if this is somehow taboo, since I've never seen a hetero historical romance with gay characters, but obviously just because you couldn't be "out" in some societies doesn't mean everyone was straight back then.
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So true. Yet with the exception of "gay/lesbian fiction", most novels ignore the whole issue of gay characters and gay issues. For some reason, genre fiction seems to do this even more than mainstream novels.
If I'm wrong about this and there's a whole category of books which defy this characterization, I'd love to hear about them.
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Well...3/8 m/f contemporary romances I read this year had gay characters in not-insignificant roles:
Love Irresistibly - Julies James. (Berkley) *This one deals with homophobia, too. Her first book in this series, Something About You also has a gay character.
The One That Got Away - Kelly Hunter (Harlequin KISS)
Planning for Love - Christi Barth (Carina)
...and those historicals I mentioned, which are by two pretty successful authors.
Thanks for the recommendations. I'll have to look for those titles. Would you say those publishing imprints are fairly friendly then to books containing gay characters? I have been wondering if my story was too much of an oddity in the genre publishing world.
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All I know is that I've come across it many times in my romance reading, in books by many different publishers. I have no idea if it is much of an issue--I'm not the person to ask for that--but I was surprised it was something you found quite rare.
Also:
Riveted - Meljean Brook (Berkley)
Not that Kind of Girl - Susan Donovan (St. Martin's) - though I didn't care for this book
Of the 7 books I mentioned, the Julie James, Meljean Brook, and Tessa Dare ones are my favorite.
In both the Susan Donovan and Kelly Hunter books, the gay character has his/her own romance subplot.
Thanks for the title recommendations, I'll check some if those out. I've heard of A Lady by Midnight but I didn't realize there was a gay character in it. I'm glad there are a few historicals out there who've done this!
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