*Blog Tour* Dark Souls Vol 5 by Aleksandr Voinov *Riptide Publishing*

Ladies and Gents of the Lair, please put a warm welcome to Mr. Aleksandr! He has braved the front and come to the Smutty Hussy Lair to discuss........

Dark Soul: “Girl bits” in m/m

I’ve just finished “Dark Soul”, my mafia series. To be honest, when I started it, it was for the kink. For a long time, I’ve been fascinated by criminal organizations, and especially the mafia/Cosa Nostra. It’s the macho culture and homophobia, which makes life for gay or bisexual men really dangerous. Danger means conflict, and conflict is story.

When I started, I wanted to explore a number of kinks. Silvio Spadaro, my oldest character of them all, has always been a kinky (and very sexy) bastard. He was kinky before I, the author, understood what kink was. From the outset, I knew he’d lead a “straight” man into temptation. Stefano Marino, the boss of that local crime family, is a good-looking man in his early thirties, and at that age, he’s been married for a few years. What I honestly did not expect was the amount of resistance Stefano put up when fighting his attraction to Silvio. Because that’s the rule of m/m romance, isn’t it? If the other man in the main relationship is married, the author best get rid of the woman. So didn’t spend too much time on Stefano’s wife Donata. For most the first three books, we see her mainly as sex kitten, a very good-looking wife whom Stefano loves. She doesn’t get much screen time, because I was driving the relationship between Silvio and Stefano.

However, when things start to go very wrong for Stefano, Donata is there and supports him. She holds herself with dignity and grace, even when she’s convinced Stefano is having an affair. That was the point when I sat back and realized that my original plans to get her out of the picture wouldn’t work. Many m/m writers turn the women in their protagonist’s lives into total bitches, or kill them in some way (ideally leaving a newborn baby that the two men can then take care of). In my mind’s eye, I looked at this strong, loyal, graceful woman and suddenly, utterly, understood why Stefano loves her. She’s worthy of his love. She’s a worthy wife, a worthy ally. Stefano kept calling her his first, best ally. I realized he was right. I did love her, too.

So, Stefano, torn between Silvio and Donata, has to admit he loves both of them, wants them both, and even though he would most likely have chosen Donata if absolutely forced (and hating her a little for forcing him), it’s Donata’s generosity that takes that choice off the table. She understands that Silvio is not just a plaything, that her husband is truly capable of loving two people at the same time. And she makes him a huge gift: total acceptance, as hard as it is. She stands by him against the law, against the antagonist who tries to break him with his “little dirty secret”, and tells those people to get lost.

While I was writing Dark Soul 5, I knew I’d be losing readers over this. I broke one of the Cardinal Rules of m/m. There’s even an explicit sex scene between the two men and the woman that cements the new understanding between the characters.

Donata confesses she almost fell in love with a girl and is up for girl-on-girl action too, so all these characters are bisexual to some degree or other (with Silvio leaning more towards gay, but not completely 100% adamantly gay), which enables them to love people, not genitals (much as this author falls in love with a person, regardless of their gender). I think that’s a very human, very generous, very natural thing to do; to not judge a person worthy of love based on their gender, but just see them as people. And if people are happy and everybody agrees (and the characters in Dark Soul do), in my mind they can find whatever solution works for them.

It’s sad that this will lose me many readers (I already got emails saying “WFT were you thinking?! Girl bits in my M/M!?”). What’s worse, Dark Soul will, for this reason, not get reviewed at some of the biggest blogs out there, but I do believe that bisexual characters (and authors, and all other people) have a right to solve their problems in a way that works for them, not what other people expect. That’s the only way I know how to tell a story; tell the truth of characters, and consequences pretty much damned.

Please see my older post to see my reviews of all these books!! This is a great series!!!
Thanks again Alek for stopping by my place!!! Many Hugs to you!!

And remember... Always keep it Dirty, Smutty & Hussy!