The pro and cons, to be or not to be...

[reviews_and_ramblings]

When wondering why and if I have to continue with this blog, I received an email like this one:

"Greetings and respect from a gay leatherman who finds your reviews truly excellent

Dear Signora Rolle,

I wish to express my sincere thank you and my profound respect for your wonderful and discerning reviews. I use your reviews to select what M/M fiction I will like best and you never, ever let me down.

You provide a wonderful service, taking your passion for M/M fiction and sharing it primarily wih female readers but also with gay men.

I also love the beautiful male images which you have collected.

You are a wonderful person, a wonderful and expressive writer. I both admire and respect you. Thank you so very much."

I received this email weeks ago, and also in a moment when I was a bit down. Then I read it and decided there was a reason for doing what I'm doing. Then again yesterday I wondered again; maybe I should let other people doing that, other reviewers with more experience... why a straight woman should read and review gay romances? but now, when I will wonder again, I have the above letter to give me a reason to continue.

My response to Victoria Brownworth: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/1108364.html

Comments

[belindamcbride.livejournal.com]

I went, I read, I shrugged and I left.

That sounds overly simplistic, but what she said in that post was excruciatingly narrow and largely incorrect. My experience in reading m/m romance is so far removed from hers that its like a completely different topic.

Recently I took a long trip by train and loaded up my e reader with books that had been sitting on my TBR list. When I sat down to start reading, I realized that among the authors I'd chosen were Josh Lanyon, Sarah Black, ZA Maxfield and Tere Michaels. Hmm... Now I read pretty much everything, and that list led me to realize that many of the truly quality authors out there are in the genre of m/m. Oddly enough, many are women.

I occasionally write m/m. I don't think of myself as a m/m author because I write outside the genre as well. I'm a writer, I write romance, and I write the characters that suit the story. Sometimes its fantasy, sometimes its sci fi. Sometimes its m/m and other times its not.

I write for women. I am a woman. I have always had male readers, even when my book is het or bi.

This whole angst isn't mine, and it isn't yours, Elisa. Its hers. She owns it, we don't. It sure as heck doesn't keep me awake at night.

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

Yes, that is probably the best attitude, and then everyone has the right to its opinion, it's only that those words were so hurting that I really wondered if there was something I need to considered. But as I commented there, and here you, some assumptions she used were so wrong, without basis and research, that basically all the rest she said didn't matter.