That is an excellent question.
To answer it, I should say a bit about how I go about writing stories. Tolkien once said of The Lord of the Rings that “the tale grew in the telling”, in other words, when he began it, he had no idea where the idea would take him, let alone it would grow into three epic books. And I know the feeling, each story starts with an idea or a concept, which I begin to elaborate, and slowly the story begins to unfold on the page.
For instance, in Throne of Shame the seed idea was a headstrong princess being shocked by her encounter with the eponymous chair. Then came her backstory, the other characters she would encounter, and the delicious torment she’d experience. In Cosmopolitan the seed was the idea of erotic role-playing holidays, which got me thinking about how would they might work, and then how someone with a secret fascination might react to discovering them.
Given the idea tends to come before characters, I could equally have written Throne of Shame with two princes. Or I could have written Cosmopolitan with an all male cast – the story of professional men who like to dress up as schoolboys for a weekend of hijinks and whackings from the headmaster’s cane. Although such a story would obviously need a new name, Esquire or GQ perhaps.
So, why haven’t I written any stories involving just men? Perhaps it’s due to the way I write, the way I elaborate and develop each story. I tend to write what arouses me, and draw on my own personal experiences – and being a straight male, this tends to involve at least one lady.
But perhaps one day I will expand my horizons, and write stories purely from my imagination. After all, fantasy authors have never seen a dragon, nor sci-fi authors a spaceship. If I had a suitably compelling idea for a story that I felt would work best with male characters, I might be tempted to write it.
What about you dear readers?
What sort of stories would you like to see?
Why not tell me?
