Heidi Cullinan and Laura Kaye talk about gay romance

Heidi Cullinan, author of Carry the Ocean, and Laura Kaye, author of Hard to Be Good, get frank about writing gay romance and tell us about their new releases.

First, Laura Kaye interviews Heidi Cullinan …

Laura: I'm super excited to chat with Heidi Cullinan today. Heidi, tell us a little about your new release, Carry the Ocean.

Heidi: Carry the Ocean is the first in a three-book series called The Roosevelt. It's the story of Emmet and Jeremey, two young men who meet and fall in love. However, it's also the story of Emmet's struggle as a young gay man who is autistic, and Jeremey's challenges as someone with undiagnosed severe depression and anxiety.

The name of the series comes from the assisted living facility in which they end up living by the end of the book and where all subsequent books will take place. While it's true the novel addresses some heavy and difficult themes, overall the tone of the novel is bright, hopeful and triumphant. And yes, sometimes sexy!

Laura: I agree! Carry the Ocean is so sweet and sexy. What inspired you to write Jeremey and Emmet's story and what was your biggest challenge?

Heidi: I've worked with special-needs teens and adults, particularly those with autism, and it was important to me not to misrepresent the demographic in any way, so I doubled down on my research and had people available to critique that aspect in particular. My husband and daughter have clinical anxiety, so I felt confident in writing about it and depression, but I still did a great deal of research and had a therapist beta read my work so I treated this sensitive subject with respect.

The thing I worried about the most, though, was preconceptions people had about the issues both young men faced. This ended up being part of the plot, addressing those assumptions and misconceptions, but it was always foremost in my mind as I worked.

Laura: Carry the Ocean is a really moving coming-of-age story. Are there other New Adult gay romance books you especially love?

Heidi: Yes! There are more every day. I recommend AJ Cousin's Off Campus, Megan Erickson's Trust the Focus and Sara Alva's Social Skills as college-age/set gay romances. KA Mitchell's Bad in Baltimore series features a number of young men out of college and getting started in life, and Bad Company is the first book of that series. For something quite different, Keira Andrews' A Forbidden Rumspringa is a gay Amish coming-of-age story I absolutely love.

Laura: What draws you to write LGBT characters and romance stories? What do you think draws readers to reading these stories?

Heidi: For years I wrote straight romance, but it wasn't until I let my secondary LGBT characters take center stage that my work began to shine and consequently began to sell. For me and for my readers, a lot of it is twisting the patriarchal concept of masculinity, of who gets to have emotional agency, and who can be vulnerable and still successful. On a less revolutionary note, it's always thrilling to hear new stories, and there are still less stories of LGBT HEA than there are of heterosexual happy endings.

Also, a number of my readers, like me, don't identify as straight and/or perceive themselves as outside the culture's idea of what sex and love should be. Many of my male readers are gay, though a significant number are bisexual. Many of my female readers identify as lesbian, bisexual, queer, or questioning. Still others are more on a gender spectrum, reluctant to choose a "side." Some are straight but polyamorous, or identify as part of the BDSM lifestyle. In short, my reader umbrella has a lot of Other. Gay romance in particular challenges the patriarchy that makes us Other, so that's where a lot of us meet up!

Laura: What kinds of LGBT characters or stories would you like to see more of? (Or do you have planned for us in the future?!)

Heidi: While I understand why the G in LGBT has had such prominence in the romance genre, I'd love to see the rest of the alphabet, particularly lesbian and transgender romance. I have plans for each of those representations in the next few years. In fact, book three of The Roosevelt series will feature an autistic transgender character who doesn't want to be identified as a specific gender.

Laura: What's next for the easy-to-love gang at The Roosevelt?

Heidi: Next up is David's story. David is a secondary character in Carry the Ocean. He has the honor of being the first character in a long, long time to get me to write a straight romance! He's also a C4 incomplete quadriplegic, so we're still firmly in the Other camp. I have the story notes for him and Carolyn started, and I'm itching to write their HEA!

Now, Heidi interviews Laura …

Heidi: Laura, tell us a little about the Hard Ink series, as well as Hard to Be Good.

Laura: Thanks, Heidi! Hard to Be Good is the fifth book in the Hard Ink romantic suspense series about the surviving members of an Army Special Forces unit investigating the black op that led to their discharge from the Army. The leads in this book, Jeremy and Charlie, were both secondary characters who absolutely had to have a story. Jeremy is the team leader's brother and owner of the tattoo shop from which the team is running their investigation, and Charlie is the shy computer geek and kidnapping victim recently rescued by the team. I knew from the first book that they would end up together, so this story has been a long time coming!

Heidi: You hinted in Hard to Be Good that Jeremy featured in other books. Can you tell us more about him and how he led to including a gay romance in your series? Has Charlie featured in other books as well?

Laura: Jeremy Rixey was the biggest surprise of the series in a number of ways. First, his personality was larger than life from the very first book, and I didn't at all expect the central role he came to play in the overall cast of characters. Second, readers adored him and started asking when he would get his book when the first in the series released, which I absolutely loved but didn't expect. Jeremy is outgoing, playful, sexy, known for wearing innuendo-filled T-shirts, and bisexual. That was how he came to me.

Charlie Merritt was a murkier character at first. But the moment I figured out that the conflict between him and his Army colonel father — also the SF team's commander — was over Charlie's homosexuality, I knew he and Jeremy would end up together. It's just how it was. And that was before I knew for sure they'd get their own book, and before their friendship had yet been developed to lay the groundwork for their romance.

Jeremy and Charlie meet in book one, and their relationship made organic sense within the series — as the two non-military men in the group, they often get paired together working operational tasks that don't take them out in the field, and they share both a frustration that they can't do more and concerns for their siblings (Jeremy's brother and Charlie's sister are the hero and heroine of Hard As It Gets, book one). Their opposites-attract personas also spoke to me as likely to drive a great story. So I didn't set out to write a gay romance so much as it was just the most natural course for these characters.

Heidi: I have to say, the tattoo scene blew me away. It was hot and sexy but tender, too, everything I love in a romance. Did you find writing gay sex scenes challenging, exciting, or not really any different at all, except for navigating all those dang pronouns?

Laura: OMG the pronouns! He, he, he! LOL Yes, that is definitely a writing challenge! My biggest concern in writing the sex scenes in Hard to Be Good was just in wanting to approach them exactly the same way I do heterosexual sex scenes. That is, I always try to layer in the physical, emotional and mental in every sex scene so that they're (hopefully!) as moving and emotional as they are hot and sexy. These scenes were definitely exciting to write, not just because these two guys are crazy hot together, but because their relationship had been building over so many books, and I wanted to do all that build-up justice!

Heidi: Do you plan to write other LGBT romances in the future? (Hint: I'd love to read a lesbian tattoo scene!)

Laura: I am absolutely open to writing any and every kind of pairing. Hard to Be Good isn't the first book where I've included characters who fall in those Other categories you were talking about, and I absolutely don't want it to be the last! Since I write a lot of military romance, I also really like the idea of exploring sexuality within the active-duty and veteran communities. I think those are important stories to tell, too.

Heidi: What's your favorite type of romance to read? Favorite tropes, types of hero or heroines, storylines?

Laura: Wow! This is not easy! LOL My favorite heroes boil down to the strong, dirty-talking, alpha types. I think that's part of why I'm drawn to military heroes (whether they're contemporary soldiers, medieval Highlander warriors, or Vikings!). For heroines, I like strong women who can stand up to these strong men and fight alongside them in one way or another. I really enjoy forbidden-relationship tropes, marriage-of-convenience tropes, and brother's-best-friend tropes, to name a few. But I'm a pretty equal-opportunity reader …

Heidi: Last but not least, I have to ask. Do you have any ink, hard or otherwise? ;)

Laura: I totally do! I have five tattoos — on my inner wrist, top of my foot, right shoulder, back of my neck, and just below my right collarbone. Getting tattoos is addictive, yo.

Find out more about Heidi and Laura and their books at www.heidicullinan.com and laurakayeauthor.com.