Gay books rock -- but who's reading them?

Mel Keegan

Recently, a reader asked me a question which -- for a moment! -- took me unawares. It's a good question and well worth some thought, and a thoughtful answer: "Who's reading your books -- is it gay guys, or women who like the Mel Keegan books?"

Damned good question, in fact! (And here's another up-side to the business of marketing yourself: I can actually give you an answer. Back in the days of finishing a manuscript, emailing the files to a "proper" publisher across the world, and then sitting back and waiting and praying for a decent royalty check/cheque, I'd have said, "I'm clueless." But since the last few thousand books have been shipped via DreamCraft, Lulu, Payloadz and so forth, I actually have access to the info.

The answer is: both, in almost equal numbers. I seem to have hit a happy medium. Half the readers who enjoy a Keegan novel are women who have a taste for the "exotic" and the "different" -- the other side of the sensual fence, as it were. The other half are gay guys who, like me, are looking to ESCAPE from the real world into a historical, fantasy or SF romp where we're not doodles in some political margin, and HIV isn't an issue ... and where the good guys can win for a change.

Did I expect so many women to enjoy a good gay romp? Frankly, yes. God knows, gay guys read straight books all the time, and nobody questions it. Why are people so surprised that straight readers might enjoy a gay book? A lot of straight men almost certainly feel "threatened" or "compromised" by certain aspects of the stories (not all straight men, though: straight guys read my books too ... just not a helluva lot of them). But there's no reason for women to feel challenged or compromised -- and, peripheral to this observation, check this out:

Running Press – which published only two gay male fiction titles in 2008, both inherited when Perseus Books (of which Running Press is a subsidiary) bought then closed queer-book-friendly Carroll & Graf - has announced two kind of gay titles for 2009. Why only “kind of”? Both are by straight women, and – according to the publisher – the new line of male/male historical romances is aimed not at gays, but at straight women. The books will feature plots “ripe with forbidden love, exotic locations, and sensual leading men.” Scheduled for April are Trangressions, by uni-named British writer Erastes, and False Colors, by ambiguously named female author Alex Beecroft, also British. In its statement announcing the venture, the publisher said: “Initially, the phenomenon of women reading gay male romances flourished in the anonymity of the Internet, where fans could have instant access to a spirited, diverse, and ever-growing community.” Running Press’s optimism is based, oddly, on non-book research: “The success of 2005’s Brokeback Mountain demonstrated the lure of the subject for a female audience. http://www.campkc.com/campkc-content.php?Page_ID=1170

So, there you have it: times, audiences, readerships, publishers -- they're all a-changing; and about bloody time, if you ask me. Ask the GLBTI community how many straight books they've had to read over the years because really good gay books can be rather thin on the ground! You might want something that isn't erotica, isn't about the angst of being gay in a homophobic world, isn't a coming out story or a tale of adolescent self discovery ...

This is the whole reason why I write what I write.

Writing "meaningful" gay novels set in the modern era, or in the agonized 19th and 20th centuries, would be -- for me -- an exercise in sheer depression. Sure, you can get deeply into social commentary, the poetry of rebellion, the mechanics of social revolution ... but it takes a looooong time to write a good book. You're looking at a minimum of three to four months of writing, editing, proofing, amending.

The truth is, there are writers who do this material better than I do -- and more power to them. I write for sheer escapism, which is the same thing my readers READ for. Adventure, excitement, sensuality, romance, a bit of scandal, a twist of realistic violence, enough politics to make it "go" and give our heroes a reason for running around doing their thing. Thereafter, we're all out for fun. This tendency in my writing goes way back to ICE, WIND AND FIRE, which was written over 20 years ago now. Various critics and readers picked up on it then, and the same is sill true. Keegan writes for escapism, and those are the readers who enjoy what I do.

The truth? I'm content to leave the social comment and the poetry of revolution to those writers who are inspired to get their teeth into it. I'll be their cheering squad -- I'll even buy their book, if it's a good one, with an upbeat or at least optimistic ending.

And it seems that gay guys, straight women and gay women like what I do. All the old titles sell on a regular basis, and if we ever manage to get the advertising started (I know, I've been talking about this for three years, and we haven't started yet!), I'm fairly sure we'll be selling about 5x to 10x the number of copies that are being shipped right now (which is already by no means an insignificant number), and I can at last give up the day job and write full time.

That's the plan for 2009. Advertise. Finally.