I created a new piece this week! It’s called Cheat Day. I’m going to be talking about it in this blog so I recommend you read it before reading the rest of this.

So, this piece was commissioned to me a fair bit ago, and due to other obligations and such, I was only able to finish it now. (That is, sadly, the biggest drawback with commissions from me – they may take a while.) The upside to that was that I was able to finish it during pride month.

This was my first ever story involving two male gay characters, and my first story to include sex with a trans character. I am neither gay nor trans, and can’t speak to direct lived experiences of either perspective, but in turn I’m also not a lesbian or a woman or a stoner or a huge gamer or Asian-American or even American, so I don’t take too heavily the idea that I need to directly live a specific lifestyle in order to write something. My biggest priorities lie in two areas: am I being accurate, and am I being respectful? Ultimately, that’s not for me to decide, but I had some wonderful beta readers, some of which were gay and/or trans, and they helped tremendously with a few specifics. If a reader picks up on specifics where they go, “Yup, I’m a trans guy and that definitely happens,” you likely have my beta readers to thank more than me.

Pride month is an important time because it shines a light on the fact that, sadly, some people still refuse to accept others as their equal just because of their gender identity and/or sexuality. I feel it is very important during this month to not shy away from this notion. We should be writing stories with gay characters as unabashedly as straight characters; the only difference in consuming these stories should be in one’s personal preferences. Maybe you don’t like gay stories. Maybe you don’t like straight stories. Both are fine. It’s why I now include orientations on my stories pages.

As well, it’s the duty of allies of the world to demonstrate their allyship rather than just say it. If an author says they’re perfectly happy with gay people, but go “ew, gross” at the thought of writing a gay story… I mean, they seem to see being gay as inherently gross. Usually male gayness, as lesbian erotica seems to be in some magical league of its own (likely because it can be consumed by straight men, but that’s a conversation for another time). I once was talking with another erotica writer online, and they mentioned, as casually as anything, that “you can’t write a gay erotica story without being at least a little gay yourself.” This author, incidentally, wrote lesbian erotica as well as straight erotica from a woman’s POV, and was a male. He can write about a man loving a female vagina and be straight, he can write about two women loving each other and be straight, and he can write about women loving a male penis and still be straight, but as soon as it’s two men, according to him, the rules change. Fascinating.

Up until now I’ve pretty much exclusively written erotica that straight men can enjoy. This will be the first ever story that maybe will ruffle a few feathers. To be honest, I trust my audience completely – many will opt out of reading it, but I don’t anticipate any of my readers will get angry or anything – but this website is in a bit of a bubble. The people here are pretty open-minded and sweet.

But have you seen the greater Internet lately?

A lot of other websites are likely not going to take this change well, and no matter what you think of pride month, you already know this statement to be true. You already know for a fact that some straight readers will get weirdly angry that an erotica writer they know decided to start writing gay pieces, even if that writer still writes straight pieces alongside them. Again, this is why the exposure of pride month is important. By having strong committed allyship across our numbers, and by normalizing this kind of story as well as straight stories, we can make erotica a slightly better and more welcoming place for everyone regardless of their orientation.

The piece itself is a lot of fun. A lot sillier and less sensical than my usual pieces, but that’s part of why I like it. I like pieces with crushes in them, because crushes are so silly and intense. Such a wonderful combination. I had a lot of fun writing it, and I hope you have a lot of fun reading it. I’ll talk to you all next week.