Editing M/M

I've been editing for a while now and I've enjoyed working with all sorts of authors in all sorts of romance sub-genres. Urban fantasy, paranormal, erotic, contemporary and even F/F. I've written in most of these genres myself and I'm an avid reader of them. From that perspective editing them has been, whilst not easy for me (it should be a challenge right?), it's been overall a pretty smooth experience. Maybe I'm lucky and just have super fab authors, either way I've enjoyed every single book I've worked on.

My last editing project was another thing entirely.

Lorenzo il Magnifico is M/M. For those of you who might be unsure what that is in a nutshell it's Gay romance, two men falling in love and doing the durty.

Now I didn't foresee a problem with editing this at first, romance is romance right, regardless of the gender? Until I got the MS that is. Then, I'll admit, I had to take a deep breath and wipe my fevered brow.

You see M/M romance (the kind Tristram writes at least) doesn't work in the same way as F/M. For one thing the heat level was off the chart! Evernight heat scales go from 1 to 4 and as soon as I read Lorenzo I thought, sheez, can we create a 10 for this? Don't get me wrong I've read heat level 4 F/M but it's not quite the same.

Next the sex was different to anything I've ever worked with before. Tristram created erotic scenes that I had to read and read to get my head round, and I was flailing a little. I'm not a guy, and I'm not a gay guy so more than once I had to email Tris and say, do gay guys really do this? I could shock a gigolo with some of the conversations we've had over the last few weeks, and I have a new appreciation for the whole mechanics behind gay lurve. Again I'm a very lucky editor because Tristram La Roche is gay. He has the inside scoop so to speak, and so in this situation the author was leading me. I had to take his advice on whether a or b worked and whilst that's not unusual in my relationships with my authors--we have lots of back and forth--I did feel a little lost. I kinda like to know what I'm talking about so my guys and gals can ask me questions, not the other way around!

We also had to decide on a direction to take this in. Tris wrote a gritty, realistic novella and my first impulse was to, well, feminise it I guess. I wanted to take out the shocking sexual scenes and replace them with gooey romance.

Tris gacked at the very thought!

Back and forth we went and in the end we agreed it was one or the other, all out either way. In the end we went for gritty. Let the chips fall where they may I said, and damn they've fallen.

Lorenzo il Magnifico is real. It's hot and it's durrrttty, and you know what, in the end, the experience was educating for me in many ways. So thanks to Tristram for bringing me up to speed in the M/M world and being another fab author to add to my ever growing list of fabness.

I love this book and you know what, I'm pretty sure you will too.

Emma x

Buy Lorenzo here.