Sorry for the late post, but I’m DIYing like a goodun. Every two years or so I get this urge to redecorate. Anyway …
To Romance or not to Romance.
You might wonder now “what on earth is Marq on about”? Well, bear with me. How many of you think that anything erotic writing in the M/M genre is Romance?
How many think that what I write is Romance? (and if you put your hands up now I might just break your fingers 
)
To me, Romance feels formulaic, usually along the lines of boy meets boy, some angst ensues, then happy end. Am I wrong here?
And what is Romance anyway?
I don’t write Romance, this is what I always firmly state, because I write love and definitely lust stories. A love story is not automatically a Romance for me.
Now, what do you think? What’s your opinion, here? I’m really interested.
I think of “Romance” as being cheesy and full of cliches. Like wind-swept Scarlett O’Haras.
This impression may be wrong though, and unfair.
But it’s what comes to my mind. I’d say your writing is definitely not romance (fingers saved). Maybe erotic fiction? In any case, it’s very good!
blegh.. the “romance” is dull-dull-dull-formula which allways has the same pattern, man meets man – man fells in looove – something unwanted happens, – problems solved, fuck like bunnies & live happily ever after. Oh, and of course, the persons are allways perfect specimens of manhood
I’m in the midst of reading your book, very good & enjoyable.
I suppose it depends how you define romance. In my book romance is two people meeting and falling in love. So, I’m afraid your stories are romance to me *ducks*.
I’m not a great fan of overly sweet sentimental romance stories involving hearts and flowers and heartfelt declarations of undying affection which is the main reason why your stories appeal to me so much. I mean what’s not to love about men who spend most of their time physically attacking each other before sex and who never, ever talk about their feelings?!
I guess that depends somewhat in which sense you use the term romance. It has multiple definitions some of which fit your writing better than others. Publishers tend to use it as denoting love stories and often of the more rose watered sort. Here are the definitions as given by that holy of holies, the OED in order of proximity to the original sense:
1)A tale in verse, embodying the adventures of some hero of chivalry, esp. of those of the great cycles of mediæval legend, and belonging both in matter and form to the ages of knighthood; also, in later use, a prose tale of a similar character.
Orig. denoting a composition in the vernacular (French, etc.), as contrasted with works in Latin.
2)A fictitious narrative in prose of which the scene and incidents are very remote from those of ordinary life; esp. one of the class prevalent in the 16th and 17th centuries, in which the story is often overlaid with long disquisitions and digressions. Also occas., a long poem of a similar type.
Tolkien’s LOTR is a romance in the original sense and there is precious little lovey dovey going on in there.
3)A romantic novel or narrative
and they give Sir Walter Scott as an example so adventure is still as much part of it as the falling in love business
4)An extravagant fiction, invention, or story; a wild or wanton exaggeration; a picturesque falsehood. Also without article
And I have left out a few. The one thing the OED does NOT give as a definition is the restrictive one used by publishers and cited by Jenre above which reduces Romance to a love story. So if we take romance as a term of a literary category and in it’s full sense it includes , often a quest and a love interest that is not necessarily the central element. Given that I think many of your tales DO fall into the category. It’s just that the category denotes something far wider than many think.
P.S. Apologies for the lecture
I think that in every lovestory there is some romance involved. But I simply hate it when stories aren’t about anything else. That’s so great about your Military fiction. I want plot, I want real suspense and real stories, I want to read about people who are involved in stories, in a crime story, in something…
Reading on every page how much in love xyz is with abc, how they can’t stop thinking about each other – that I can’t stand. I want couples to interact with each other, to work together, not just swooning at each for 24/7.