As Erin and I ramp up towards our first book coming out next week (so many blog tour posts to write! so little time!), we have one last guest post before we focus on our own content for a few weeks (don’t worry, the guests will be back soon!).

Moriah Gemel‘s, Load the Dice (serial release begins September 9 from Interlude Press), is the story of Eric, a man who’s left behind the world of BDSM in pursuit of romance, but finds he can have both when he attends a party and meets Jamie, a newcomer to the scene.

Unlike Erin’s experience of having to explain to her mother why writing about BDSM is and isn’t like being really into elves, Moriah didn’t really have much to explain.  Why? Because her mom writes in the romance genre too:

Before I tell you about how my mother reacted to me writing a heavy BDSM erotic gay romance novel, I should tell you about how I reacted to my mother’s light BDSM erotic straight romance novel. It tells you a lot about our relationship that she didn’t see any issue with me reading it, just handed it over and asked me to put post-its on every grammatical or spelling mistake. And I did, while reading about a woman who entered a relationship with a secretly nefarious televangelist who proceeded to order her life and hire a bunch of guys to have sex with her one after the other. Which wasn’t shocking to me, because sex education was something I was allowed to seek myself, and did. The internet is an amazing place for a curious thirteen year old, so by sixteen, this was old hat.

Cut to nine years later. I called my mother, asked her to put me on speakerphone so my stepdad could hear as well, and I laid the news on her. I said, in my halting, half-distracted way, “Okay. So. Um. I got an offer to publish with a new publishing press. And so I’m writing a book. To be published.”

Silence, and then my mom, with some pleased surprise (which is, from her, the equivalent of throwing an instant celebration party), “Oh. Okay. Congrats.”

My mother is a reserved person. She may as well have popped some champagne and done a victory dance. So in my own pleasurable shock at her positive reaction, I believe I said something like, “Yep. It’s about gay guys.”

“Cool.”

And that was it. She followed my blog, at which I have posted plenty on BDSM and sexuality and where I am open about writing explicit fanfiction, and has liked a few posts, and she knows that I dabble in BDSM myself, and it’s as simple as that. My mother’s reaction was one big congratulatory shrug, and most recently, a request that I then post about her latest on the blog, because what writer would pass up the opportunity to promote a little?

Load the Dice is currently available for pre-order as both a digital serial and a print book at the series’ conclusion now.