Jaime came to lyd as part of the Immortal Fire project. She contributed two very lovely stories – Windblown, and Black Roses to the collection. Since then she’s also released the erotic, seasonal story Muse’s Vacation.
Bryn: Jaime, you write m/m, pretty much exclusively. What made you decide to focus on this?
Jaime: When I first started writing, I naively set out to write a novel. (never did finish it). It had various familial relationships in it, a Prince, his cousin and best friend, and his sister, and their various love interests. In the beginning, the Prince’s love interest was a spy, who at first was mysterious enough to avoid being very gender specific. As the story progressed, it was revealed to me that he was a guy, and really, that relationship, rocky though it was, always rang the most true to me of the others on the story.
that was pre-Internet…
When I found Live journal, and the plethora of m/m slash and fan fiction, I found my home and my calling. It didn’t take long, less than a year, for me to branch away from fan fiction to writing about my own characters and their stories. They all, or mostly, seemed to be male. I suspect I have a strong affinity for the male mindset in some ways. I do find men easier to write than women, and I enjoy exploring relationships that explore power dynamics when those dynamics start out from equal, man to man, or, occasionally, woman to woman, and change because of influences other than gender.
Bryn: I find m/m relationships a lot more comfortable for power aggressive exchange. I know ‘Muse’s Vacation’ explores dominance and submission. Is that a theme we’re likely to see more of then?
Jaime: I would venture to say, yes, there will be more of that. While my men don’t tend to be very aggressive, in general, they do take on decidedly dominant or submissive roles lately. I tend to write blind, a pantser, some people call it. This lets stories and characters evolve very organically, and right now, the evolution of my writing seems to be leaning toward D/s relationships. I follow these trends in my writing, rather than lead them, taking things where the spirit moves me to go. that all sounds very esoteric and all, but really, it just means the characters write themselves and I listen. Right now, this dynamic intrigues me, and I’m willing to keep exploring it.
Bryn: Have you ever been really surprised by the direction a story has gone in?
Jaime: Usually, the surprise comes when I’m stuck, I get worked up and frustrated, and the surprise is how simple the solution turns out to be. I will say, though, that in the first novel I wrote, which I recently went back to re haul there was a great surprise in that one of the characters, who I blithely killed off near the end, turned out to be the love interest of the main character. I only figured this out after I decided he had to die, though. Now I’m troubled as to what to do. I could substitute in a red shirt for the death, and leave happy alone. Or I could reflect that in real life, sometimes, perfect couples are torn apart too soon. They are guards, and there is a war. Stands to reason…
In another story, the mc had sex with the wrong man. Out of spite. Not spite for his boyfriend, but spite for the man he fucked. Not pretty, but then broken characters rarely are. Fixing him is proving to be a challenge.
Come to think on it, a nice surprise would be fantastic… lol!
Bryn: I like dark and realistic, and the uncertainty as to what sort of an ending is likely. Do you have a clear sense of what your characters look like before you start?
Jaime: You’ll like the project I’m working on next for LYD, then. Dark, gritty, set in an alternate universe from our own, a very broken character, and uncertain love are all features of this next story. If the sun shines at the end, it will be through a crack in the overcast, I think. But it will shine. I require it to shine down on them, however uncertain it is to last.
Goodness. No. In some cases, I never get a really clear picture of what they look like. In one story on my website, Long Road Home (http://www.jaime-samms.net/), the characters don’t even have names. I don’t know what their names are, don’t really know what they look like. I just know they are meant to be together, however long it took them to get there.
Bryn: Ooh, this I very much like the sound of! Anywhere else online people can follow you?
Jaime: My Live Journal: http://dontkickmycane.livejournal.com/ has promo for fellow authors, book reviews, and sometimes, a personal rant or two. I also blog: http://jaimesamms.blogspot.com/?zx=767433e8e8796b26 though intermittently…
I’m a reviewer for Dark Diva Reviews, where we review romance nad erotica, and I tend to focus on gay romance, and at Kuriousity, where I review Yoai light novels.
http://ddrreviews.blogspot.com/
http://www.kuri-ousity.com/about/
I do love to spout my opinion about the books I read, which I read a lot of. I can’t get enough of the written word.
Bryn: Me too! I’m a total blog junky. Thanks for chatting Jaime.
I love gothic, erotic horror, sensual nightmares and weirdness. I’m also fascinated by monsters.
