As an author, it is important to figure out what readers want so that you not only come up with something beautiful that you can live with, but it’s something that other people will read.

By that same token, it’s also important to figure out what readers don’t want.

I was on Facebook today, and one of the pages dedicated to LGBT writing had posted this question: “What’s something you’re tired of seeing in LGBTQ+ fiction?”

It caught my attention, because when I’m in writing mode, I’m in a zone when I’m not noticing trends or anything like that. I know when I wrote my first novel, The Colors of Love and Autumn, one of my goals was to show two men falling in love without sex being the main plot point, basically Fifty Shades of Gray without the woman. Don’t get me wrong; there is sex. However, you need to make it through most of the book to find it, and I don’t go into great detail.

That was just my view. However, there were some others on the site that had a variety of pet peeves—or more appropriately, lit peeves. For example:

“Love triangles and the idea that gays (especially men) will sleep around all of the time.”

Love triangles tend to be a plot point with some non-LGBT literature, too, but I agree. It’s a depressing time, and literature serves as a form of escapism. Who wants to escape to see someone in tears because he potentially loves two people and has to choose? In a lot of LGBT literature, especially romance, readers want to read about something where there’s a happy ending, and with love triangles, someone’s left in a pool of misery.

Don’t get me wrong. Conflict is what drives good literature forward, but when you see it in book after book under the LGBT fiction tab on Amazon, it makes non-LGBT folks wonder if we’re all a bunch of hedonistic bed-hoppers swinging from the chandelier praising Lucifer and booking the one-way flight to hell. We’re much more diverse than that.

Part of that diversity includes folks who are in throuples (Look up the word, it’s fun). In the next book on my list of things to do, I plan to have three male protagonists who are all in a relationship. We always see two people in a relationship, but I think it should be interesting to see three people navigate their daily lives, take out the garbage and discover interesting secrets about each other.

“I’m not at all interested in gay romance/erotica. Give me some other stories.”

This is probably the reason that I started the Zachary Gagewood Mysteries. I didn’t want all of my books to be boy meets boy, boy falls in love with boy, boy rescues boy from a homophobe or the end of the world. While Zachary does fall in love over the course of the series (and is getting married in the latest mystery I’m working on), he’s living life, solving crime, occasionally irritating some village idiot, etc.

Romance was only a subplot in the A Cure For Hunger trilogy, too. The two main characters, Benjamin and Thomas, were already in the relationship, but it was their love for each other that made them perform amazing feats. It’s important that the relationship be key in good LGBT stories, not just the carnal side.

“White gay teenager coming of age stories. I didn’t relate to that stuff when I was a teenager, and I definitely don’t now.”

Admittedly, as I was undergoing my own coming out journey and trying to find stories that related to me and what I was feeling, this type of story is what I came across. It works for young people trying to come to grips with the reality that they don’t plan to marry someone of the opposite sex and have a litter/gaggle/herd of munchkins the old fashioned way, but at a certain point, you want to find stories where the protagonists are already out and proud—or at least not dealing with high school drama.

That’s probably why most of my protagonists have been in their 20s and 30s. It’s important to make people realize—especially in the gay men circles, where you’re considered ancient and irrelevant when there’s no longer a two in your age—that the road continues to wind and twist. There will still be some bumps, and there will be some breathtaking scenic vistas. Once you say the words “I’m gay/bisexual/insert-your-sexuality here,” the journey doesn’t end.

“Female writers projecting their value systems on gay male characters.”

About 10 or so years ago, I came across an article that pointed out that it wasn’t only gay men scooping up the works of Michael Thomas Ford or other gay authors. Apparently, like the notion of two women going at it is like ambrosia to straight guys, straight gals also drool at the idea of two men sans clothing and diving into passion.

Yes, apparently I, a gay man, was turning on hordes of women and didn’t even realize it. I really hope my sweetheart never finds out about this.

Ironically, a few years ago, when I was at a gay pride event in Green Bay, Wisconsin, selling my books, I had a lesbian come up and say that I should be writing lesbian fiction as that was the hip trend at the time, in her opinion. There’s a reason I don’t, and that’s because I usually find that type of literature is more genuine when it comes from someone who has experienced it. Once again, as a gay man, my primary goal is not to turn women on.

“POC (People of Color) being the fetish/forbidden love.”

I wholeheartedly agree with this. While this country still has issues with racism, there are plenty of folks who have loving relationships with someone of a different color or nationality. I mentioned before that my next book on the to-do list involves three guys, and I currently have one of them as a Native American. However, I’m also pondering having another member of the throuple as a Black man.

The trick in this is to make sure my own life story doesn’t seep into the character—in other words, a Black man seeming like a white man. I’ve felt comfortable in recent years incorporating Native American characters into my books because I’ve spent much of my life with Native American friends, but admittedly, I’ve never spent much time near Black meccas, so it’s something I’ll have to think long and hard about, as any author wants their work to seem genuine.

“Nothing but drama and I hate it. I want fantasy and sci-fi and cute love stories.”

Besides the trilogy, I’ve also written Bittersweet in the Shadows and Hex of the Dragon Fruit because, in addition to being gay, I’m a big geek when it comes to the science fiction and fantasy genres. Traditional drama requires certain rules to be followed, and there are some folks, myself included, who aren’t real keen on boundaries. We’ve established that men can fall in love with men and women with women. Why can’t a centaur fall for a god, or a vampire for a witch?

With Hex of the Dragon Fruit especially, I wanted to write something that portrayed love in a way that showed opposites can attract. In the beginning, Blue despises Austin because the two are from different worlds with different lifestyles, but they overcome it all to fall in love, and it’s that love that saves the world.

“The traumatized, dramatic lesbian story where the two women can’t be together because of the era, or their family, etc… I want happy lesbian stories where no one has to have a traumatic past or tread on people’s feelings for them to be together.”

Believe me, it’s a tired trope on the male side of the island, too. While it works in some instances, having hundreds of authors trying a variation of the theme can get old.

However, like I said, don’t expect the lesbian stories to come from me.

“The main or only LGBTQ+ characters in a work being villainous or vaguely immoral at best. All bi characters being promiscuous, especially the women. Lesbians or anyone else being ‘converted’ to straight. Things like that.”

I’m down with this. For the same reason many LGBT television watchers freak out when one of “their own” isn’t portrayed as only the best we have to offer, we don’t want to read a heterosexual viewpoint of an alternative lifestyle where we are abominations of Biblical proportions.

However…

We also need to come to terms that some of us are downright evil. Take Nephra, the villain in Hex of the Dragon Fruit, who shows she’ll deflower anyone regardless of their genitalia, male or female. I wasn’t being biphobic when I wrote the character, but I wanted to show a villain that exuded contradictions—having sex with a women while hating the two protagonists for the love they share.

Characters have to matter, no matter the sexuality. If you’re going to write about a saintly lesbian, there has to be a point. The same applies to the wicked gay man that sleeps with anyone he deems to be prey. If you write them just for shock value, you can lose readers. There must be a point.

“Seeing ripped hunks with six packs on the cover totally puts me off.”

Okay, I’m guilty of doing this with Bittersweet in the Shadows and Hex of the Dragon Fruit, but with almost 20 books under my belt, most of my covers have been sans people. Except for An Eagle River Christmas, though. That book had one guy in a black T-shirt and the other in a warm-looking sweater.

It seemed like a good idea having people on the cover for that story, but most of my covers have used objects to portray the point of the story. For example, Murder at the Teddy Bears Picnic had a teddy bear next to a bloody knife with a red gingham tablecloth on the cover. Having people on the cover works for some readers, others not so much. Like with characters, there has to be a point.

On that note, I’m going to bring this to a close and get back to work on something that will hopefully have a happy ending with no villainous lesbians and definitely no teenagers contemplating suicide because they might be gay. Happy reading.