Something that I always enjoy in romance series is when each book is a self-contained couple, and then subsequent books follow previously introduced characters as they find their own HEAs. When I decided I wanted Quantrin Nights to be such a series, there was something I didn’t anticipate.
Proll Delnul: my little problem child.
When Handsome Devil came back from the first round of beta readers, it was universally agreed that for the next book, they wanted to see Proll’s story. And why not? He’s a perfectly nice and normal dude who seems to have just enough emotional vulnerability to be interesting, but not so much as to be an unstable mess.
But as my fellow writers will know, sometimes you have to go where the story and characters are already speaking. This time, it was not with Proll—it was with his brother, Rakir.
But that’s fine, I said! At the time, I just had no idea what I wanted to do with Proll whereas I had a pretty defined story in my mind for Rakir. It meant that while Handsome Devil was with beta readers, I was able to finish an outline for Rotten Devil and then adjust my rewrites accordingly. If I had settled on Proll without any idea of direction for his book, I wouldn’t have been able to rewrite to steer the ship, so to speak.
Certainly, Proll will be next, I thought. Afterall, if I go through writing a whole book for his twin brother, surely by the end I will have a better feel for Proll’s character and the direction that his character arc will need to take.
Well, here I am. Nearly done the first draft of Rotten Devil and I still have no idea what to do with our dear, sweet boy. The worst part is that I do have an idea for a third book. About Vrix.
You remember him, right? Had like 4 lines in Handsome Devil and no real characterization set up at all? It’s the sort of thing that even has me going “. . . him?”
I feel like part of the problem as well is who to assign as Proll’s love interest. I’ve always imagined Proll as being pansexual and it feels like a cop-out to give him a female LI—always putting our queers in hetero relationships is how the straights win, after all. However, I am a cis woman and I feel . . . weird about writing MM romances, to say the least. Not the romance specifically—one of my pet project screenplays centres on an MM couple. But notably, it’s a screenplay and, as such, is closed door. Quantrin Nights is an open-door series and reading/writing MM love scenes makes me feel a little icky and voyeuristic, especially with the understanding that the vast majority of the romance reading audience is other cis women.
This is not to cast any shade at women who do read/write these kinds of romances. There are lots of reasons why women might feel more comfortable reading romance that doesn’t heavily feature women characters. This is a ‘me personally’ thing.
Or is this all just a spot of internalized biphobia popping out to say hello? Do other romance authors really lose sleep about having too many hetero pairings in their series? Even if a male LI is the best choice to serve the character, will it just be unpleasant to read something written by someone who was feeling a little skeevy the whole time?
How do you solve a problem like Proll Delnul?
At current estimate, I’m imagining I’ll be finished this draft by mid-late November, so I have until then to get my shit together and figure out this infuriating lad.
Until next time, travelers,
Gael Romer