Thoughts On Writing Romance:
(From an author who does NOT write the Romance genre, but has a heavy Romance subplot running through her Dark Fantasy novels)

How long does it take for your characters to fall in love with each other?

With a note that, I do not write the Romance genre. I write Dark Fantasy (a subgenre of Horror NOT a subgenre of Fantasy) that happens to have couples in romantic relationships over the course of the novel. Thus there are no "happily ever after" (HEA) endings for the couples and striving for typical Romance genre HEA tropes are not applied or used in the romantic relationships of my couples.

Thus I don't write my romance couples with the typical Romance formulas and tropes and have more leeway to let my couples do less standard things in their relationship.

Also, my novels focus heavily on abuse, toxic relationships, drug addiction, suicide, and depression and how these things effect the couples, so again... you are NOT in the right place if you are looking for advice on writing the classic Harlequin/Signet/Avon style Romance genre.

Also the series I write is often classified by readers as "Monster Porn", "Monster Erotica", and/or "BDSM"... though I don't know why as there is nothing remotely erotica, Erotica, or BDSM in my novels... it baffles me why readers call it these things. Go read Virginia Wade's 16 volume Erotica series Cum 4 Bigfoot and than come back here and tell me you think the Quaraun series is Erotica... honey, if you think the Quaraun series is Erotica, than you ain't never read Erotica and are in for a big surprise when you DO read some ACTUAL Erotica novels.

But anyways... if you are someone looking for advice in writing the Romance Genre, my answer may not apply well to what you are writing, so keep that in mind with my answer.

My answer is geared more towards people looking to put a romance sub-plot in genres such as Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi, etc.


By EelKat Wendy C Allen

How long does it take for your characters to fall in love with each other?

How long does it take for your characters to fall in love with each other? from writing

You seem of the assumption that whirlwind romances or short term relationships and love at first sight are impossible and do not happen in real life. This is a limited way of thinking which implies that only YOUR way of seeing a relationship is capable of working.

As in everything in life, what works for one may not work for another. What works for you, may not work for me. What works for me, may not work for you.

The same cane be said of love, romance, relationships, and marriage. What works for one couple may not work for another.

It is never safe to assume. When you assume, you make and ASS out of U and ME. Assumptions lead to judgements. Judgments lead to hurt feelings. Hurt feelings lead to heartache and divorce.

When you make assumptions about the validity of another person's relationship, it is a tell-tale sign that you have trouble in your own relationship - trouble that you brought on yourself, by making assumptions about your partner, leading to you being judgmental of your partner.

Think about it and you'll see what I mean.

But let's move past that and take a look at some real life couples I have personally known.

There is a couple at my church (Cape Elizabeth Ward of the Augusta  Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, aka we are Mormons) who got married the same day they meet - they will be celebrating their 60th anniversary soon.

Bob and Gale Devilline. Natives of Quebec who each (separately) moved to Maine in the 1930s and became US Citizens. Ended up meeting in Portland, during the War and got married the same day. Lived on Allen's Avenue in Portland for decades. Now living in Parsonsfield, Maine, moving there in the late 1990s after the death of their wheelchair bound son, Benjamin (who was born with cerebral palsy).

What happened was this:

WWII she got the news that her boyfriend was killed overseas. She refused to believe he was dead so went to the docks and wait every day for the soldiers to come home in hopes he'd be one of them. After several months of this a group of Navy sailors came home from the war. One of them saw her and asked who she was looking for, then helped her look. Couldn't find him After a while she told the sailor, she had already been told he was dead. The sailor said to her: "Will marry me and I'll take care of you." They got married an hour later.

They didn't even know each other, had no clue if they'd ever love each other. They just decided they needed each other and that was it.

It's funny when I think of all the couples I've known over the years - there's a woman (my aunt) who has been divorced 12+ times and keeps saying she can't find love. I've known several couples who lived together 3 or 4 years before decided to get married only to get divorced in less than a year. They always say something about "love dying".

So many couples put their sights on love and romance and are divorced within 3 years... yet the couple that never considered either love or romance, and only decided that they needed to be devoted to taking care of the other, they are the couple that lassted.

Myself? An arranged relationship. I was 12, he was 37. We celebrated our 30th anniversary last August. We are Gypsies. Our culture is dramatically different than Americans. We do not marry for love. We do not believe in divorce. We believe a relationship is formed when 2 people agree to work together and share the responsibilities of building a family. Any 2 people, together long enough, grow to love one another. We see love as a result of a commitment, not a reason to become committed. Love is not a firm foundation on which to build. Relationships built on love never last. This is because few people can tell the difference between lust and love. When most people say they married for love, usually they actually married for lust/infatuation without really, truly, deeply loving thee person.

Our culture looks at the American method of marrying for love and sees it as flawed, sees it as being a perversion, with people simple running around like dogs with their noses up each others asses instead focusing on looks and sex instead of building a relationship on trust and commitment. I know many Americans see our culture and ways as strange, but you must understand, that you are just as bizarre to us. We see the American obsession with love, lust, and sex to be outlandish, barbaric, and animalistic, and not becoming of someone who claims to be civilized and more intelligent then cavemen. Of course, we Gypsies also have strict moral codes about sex and promiscuity - there is no such thing as sex outside of marriage in our culture, and we look at the Americans with their rampant obsessions with sex outside of marriage and see them as wild dogs with not only no morals, but also with no self control.

There was a scientific study done a few years ago, which compared marriages (types, how long they lasted, ve how the marriage had come about, stuff like that) and in the end the scientists who did the study, had concluded that what most people call love, was actually lust, and that lust lasts for about 3 years. If a person marries for "love" (lust" but does not learn to ACTUALLY love their partner within 3 years, the marriage is doomed to fail, because lust wears off. If however the couple learned to love each other within 3 years, their marriage would last 50 or more years.

I think that says love and romance are overrated and that devotion and commitment to a goal are what really make or break a couple. Love is just a fickle, fleeting emotion. Commitment is an active decision.

And so on to your question:

Too many books have people develop feelings for each other only after a few days of meeting, even hours. While infatuation is a thing in real life, relationships built solely on it tend not to last very long. To build a stable and healthy relationship, People need to spend time getting to know one another and see if they are actually compatible in terms of hobbies, values and personalities. Writers often just skip this bit and jump straight into the juicy part of love, resulting in "deep" relationships between people who barely know each other. So, folks of /r/writing, in your works, how long does it takes before your characters get together meaningfully?


And so, with all of what I already said, you should now be able to understand how I come to write my characters' relationships as I do.

I write a long running series, so the same couple appears in each novel, thus in many novels you see them already together. But going back to the first few novels, where they first meet...

Did they do the things on your list?

Did they....

  • develop feelings for each other only after a few days of meeting, even hours

Yes. But the feelings were not love.

One (Unicorn) was a scam artist trying to trick the other (Quaraun) into doing a criminal act so that he would take the blame for what the other (Unicorn) had done. Quaraun realized he was being taken advantage of, but had a deviant little plot of his own. So both were using the other to get what they wanted. Within a few hours of meeting, each immediately had strong feelings for the other, but as I said, it was not love. Both were aware they were being used and both became intrigued with the idea of seeing how long the other would hide their motives and what lengths each would go to to hide their true goals from the other.

And so it became sort of a game for each of them to go out of the way to try to trip the other one up. This in turn resulted in them becoming addicted to the thrill of trying to not get caught, and the sense of danger that came with the fear of getting caught.

So yes, they do develope feelings for each other after only a few hours, but those feelings are not yet love.

The thing I wonder about your question is this...

If someone does not develope feelings of somesort with the first few MINUTES of meeting a person, why then would that person decide to spend an hour with this new person they have meet? If in those first few SECONDS they did not feel SOMETHING, why then, would they seek to spend time with the person and get to know them.

The initial feeling does not have to be love, but there does have to be something felt in those first few seconds, to inspire these two people to want to get to know each other, other wise WHY would they agreee to spend time together a second or third time?

Some spark of feeling, no matter how small, ignites in the first seconds of meeting, to cause two strangers to eventually become a couple, otherwise no couples would EVER be formed and the Human race would have died out centuries ago.

In the case of Quaraun and Unicorn, it is not love at first sight, but the first time encounter does have a powerful effect on both of them emotionally. Each of them is intrigued by how the other makes them feel.

Quaraun feels a sense of danger and mystery around Unicorn. This is a feeling he's not felt around others and one that he finds exhilarating and desires to feel again. This sense of danger, the thrill of the fear of being close to a predator, is what initially draws Quaraun to Unicorn. 

Quaraun's lover Unicorn, is an actual unicorn. Here's a picture of him.

  • build a stable and healthy relationship

No. Their relationship is both unstable and unhealthy. Very much so.

Their relationship is shaky throughout the entire series (all 130+ novels).

While Unicorn remains faithful and never has a relationship with anyone else, he frequently becomes frustrated with Quaraun and often just leaves. There are times when he wants to leave and doesn't, and in those cases, his frustration builds up resulting in violent outbursts. Unicorn has a short temper and frequently beats up Quaraun, then afterwards regrets it and ends up staying in the relationship out of guilt and the fear of doing even more damage.

Quaraun, though he deeply loves Unicorn, he is also scared of him. Quaraun is nervous and flighty and when Unicorn goes into one of his violent temperamental outbursts, Quaraun is often quick to run away and hide... usually in the arms of an "understanding lover". Enter GhoulSpawn who then gets beaten up by Unicorn as well.

Over the course of his life, Quaraun has 4 wives, and 2 male lovers, and multiple short-lived affairs with both men and women. While Quaraun does deeply love Unicorn, he was raised in a polygamous culture and has difficulty grasping the concept of monogamy.

Unicorn tends to overlook Quaraun's relationships with females, but become extremely jealous whenever Quaraun adds an additional male lover. Unicorn himself feels no attraction to females, so he does not become jealous of Quaraun's attraction to them.

Quaraun's habit of spending time with prostitutes, also is overlooked by Unicorn, who doesn't pay attention to the fact that Quaraun focuses a lot of his attention on only one prostitute at this particular tavern, and dotes on her half-Elf children. The girl is in fact not a prostitute. She is Quaraun's 2nd wife, and the father of her children.

BoomFuzzy the Unicorn CosPlay for PortCon 2017

  • spend time getting to know one another

No. They became lovers, as in sex partners, almost immediately after meeting, without knowing each other at all.

Quaraun is described by everyone who meets him as being "the most beautiful creature they ever saw". EVERYONE is trying to get in bed with him. However, Quaraun is demisexual and refuses the sexual advances of almost everyone. Unlike GhoulSpawn, Quaraun is not prone to having sex with random strangers. It takes quite a bit of coaxing and getting to know someone and forming an emotional bond with them, before Quaraun will have sex with someone.

With Unicorn, Quaraun submits to having sex with him, the first night they meet, but this is because Quaraun is wounded, has lost a lot of blood, is weak and light headed, and then was drugged by Unicorn. The scene is dub-con (dubious consent) very much crossing lines into rape. Quaraun is not fully in control of his senses and passes out from blood loss soon after sex starts. Quaraun's being unconscious, does not stop Unicorn from finishing what he started.

Quaraun has suffered from a sword wound to the belly, his injuries being quite severe and remains in a semi-comatose state after that. It is many days before Quaraun fully wakes up again, at which point he finds Unicorn asleep in bed with him, and immediately pulls a knife on the sleeping Faerie intended to slit his throat, but Unicorn wakes up and stops him. Quaraun, as is his nature backs down from a fight, and so immediately releases the knife.

Quaraun remains confused as to what exactly happened that night, unable to remember most of the events due to his injuries. He is uncertain if Unicorn raped him or not, uncertain if he actually did agree to bedding with the Phooka that night. The two part ways, but in the next novel, you see Quaraun spending a lot of time thinking back to that night with Unicorn and wishing to be with the Phooka again. His lust for the Phooka and burning desire to spend another night with him, leads Quaraun to seeking out Unicorn and them now spending time getting to know each other.

Quaraun's friends BeaLuna and Bullgaar are quick to point out that Quaraun's attitude towards sexual activities has changed drastically. Prior to meeting Unicorn, Quaraun is a Wizard-Priest who took a vow of celibacy and had shunned sex for many decades. His suddenly being addicted to frequent, daily, sex with Unicorn is a change in his personality that shocks his closest friends. 

It is later discovered that this dramatic change in Quaraun's attitude towards sex, was a result of a drug called Yoruba, which Unicorn had been putting in the Elf's eggnog. Yoruba is a powerful (real world) afrodisiace that clouds a person's judgment, heightens their sexual desire, and causes a tingling/burning sensation in the genitals resulting in the person's intense desire to have their genitals rubbed to relieve the burning pain.

Unicorn is daily putting Yoruba in Quaraun's drinks, and over time conditions the Elf to submitting to Unicorn's daily sexual advances. Over time Unicorn no longer needs to drug the Elf, as Quaraun has an obsessive personality and once in a routine of doing a thing daily, will continue to do so.

Quaraun has a small, micro penis, something that he frequently bemoans. However, like most men with small penises, Quaraun has unusually large testicles, which he also complains about. Upon meeting Quaraun, Unicorn at first assumes him to be a female, because of the way his is dressed. Quaraun however has a deep, distinctively male voice, and when asked about his gender, says he is male. He also uses male pronouns. This intrigued Unicorn, who has at first assumed the Elf was transgender and was trying to be female. Upon discovering the Elf was not transgender, and was instead a transvestite, he asked Quaraun why it was he wore dresses. To which Quaraun explained that his balls were to big and wearing pants was incredibly uncomfortable for him, due to the constricting of his testicles and chafing of his ball sac.

Quaraun's blunt openness in explaining this, led to Unicorn's becoming obsessed with wanting to see Quaraun's balls to see how big they actually were, but when invited to bed with the Phooka, Quaraun immediately declined, stating that he was a virgin priest devoted to his sect and would never have sex with anyone. Thus why Unicorn drugged the Elf's drink to begin with.

Once Unicorn realized that Quaraun indeed had a very large pair of balls and that Quaraun enjoyed having them played with, Unicorn became obsessed with getting Quaraun naked as often as possible. Thus why Unicorn continued to drug Quaraun after their first encounter.

Thus is how Quaraun and Unicorn become sexual partners, living together and daily have sex, without first getting to know one another.

Quaraun CosPlay PortCon 2017

Quaraun CosPlay PortCon 2016

Each of the three of them has had multiple lovers, but each of them in different manners.

Unicorn tends to be semi-monogamous, having many partners, but only one at a time. He will not cheat on the partner he is with. He becomes very devoted, faithful, and loyal to his current partner and does not seek out a new partner while his current partner is alive. Unicorn is the oldest of the three. Being a Faerie he has the longest lifespan and is more then 2,000 years old at the time he meets Quaraun. Because he avoids other Fae and takes Elves as lovers, he has thus outlived many partners. Quaraun is the last partner he takes, and is the one he is with the longest, with then remaining together around 300 years, until Quaraun's death. Unicorn dies the same day as Quaraun. 

While they are all males, Unicorn is actually the only character in the Quaraun series who is gay. Unicorn in his youth had multiple female wives and fathered several children. He however had no interest in females and only had wives because of pressure from his social ranking. (He was at the time the King of the Realm of Fae and was expected to have a Queen.) His being attracted to males and not females, was the primary reason for his renouncing his role as King and escaping from Fae to live in the same dimension as Humans and Elves instead. After escaping Fae he never again has a female partner, from that point onward only having male lovers.

The Quaraun series classifies as what is known as "Seme-Uke Yaoi". Unicorn is the Seme. A Seme is a very dominate, often excessively violent, gay man who refuses to bottom for any other male. Seme's are generally seen as villains, because they are prone to not only be dominate, but also tend to be lustful predators who stalk younger, weaker beta males intended to rape them. Unicorn is what is known as "a Classic Seme". Unicorn finds very young, very beautiful, very feminine men and stalks them, kidnaps them, and forces them into sexual submission. 

Unicorn will not allow another male to fuck him. If another male tries to have sexual intercourse with him, however, he will quickly bares his fangs, and lash the man's head of with his sharp eagle-talon-like claws then eat them.

Quaraun, though readers have dubbed him "the gay Elf wizard", is in fact not gay. Quaraun is a bi-sexual demi-sexual. Like a true demisexual, Quaraun is not sexually aroused by either males or females. Being demisexual, means he is asexual and does not feel sexual arousal towards either gender, but unlike a truly asexual person who adamantly refuses to have sex, even with their spouse, a demi-sexual will submit to sexual intercourse to satisfy his partner's needs. Because Quaraun feels not sexual attraction to either males or females, he is able to form strong emotional bonds with both males and females. Once he has formed an emotional bond with someone, male or female, if that person desires sexual intercourse with him, he will agree to it to satisfy them, making him bisexual, not gay, as he has sex with both genders equally.

Quaraun is polygamous, meaning he has multiple spouses all at the same time. When asked he acknowledges having 6 spouses: 4 females and 2 males. While he classifies the 4 females as his wives, he in turn considers himself to be the "wife" of the 2 males. 

GhoulSpawn is polyamorous and prone to promiscuity. (And as the word is often used incorrectly, I'll tell you what the definition of promiscuity is: Promiscuity is the practice of having casual sex frequently with different partners or being indiscriminate in the choice of sexual partners. In other words a person who has frequent one night stands with total strangers and someone who uses prostitutes.) GhoulSpawn just plain likes sex a lot. His is the single most sexually active character of the series, engaging in sexual with multiple partners, multiple times a day. GhoulSpawn with fall into bed with any pair of legs willing to spread for him, regardless of gender, race, species, or age. He has intercourse with Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Demons, and if you know the series well, you know all about GhoulSpawn being a farmer with a lot of female sheep.

The trio of wizards is frequently being chased out of villages by mobs of angry husbands, fathers, and sheep farmers.

Yes, sheep farmers. It's a thing.

GhoulSpawn. He's a bit of a handful to write. Possibly one of the most challenging characters I've written since The Dazzling Razzbury. ... he's also...uhm...a sheep? He's a Demon of sorts, something akin to a Fawn, only he has the legs of a Cotswold sheep, not a goat.

GhoulSpawn is a Ursiug, a type of Chaos Demon, similar to a Centaur (Horseman) or Satyr (a Goatman) or Fawn (Deerman)... the lower half of his body is that of a sheep, with long fluffy ivory Cotswold sheep locks, that get fetishized to some point.

I got a thing for fur. Fur coats. Fur blankets. Fur bed. Furry men. BoomFuzzy and GhoulSpawn both classify as that.

GhoulSpawn is challenge to write though. His character is based off actual Welsh mythology, so I included things creatures like him do according to folklore. Like... When sexually aroused, he gives off a musky scent that acts as an overpowering aphrodisiac. This results in his being able to convince everyone to bed with him, even loyal wife who would never think of cheating on their husband, and little girls not old enough to know what sex is. GhoulSpawn is prone to targeting married women, prostitutes, and prepubescent girls. He boldly states his reason for doing this as well. He simply does not want to be bogged down with the responsibility of a family. e chooses married women because their husbands will assume the child is theirs, young girls because they are not yet fertile, and prostitutes because getting pregnant comes with their career. 

GhoulSpawn takes a very distant stance on sex and does not see any need for emotional attachments. Interestingly, GhoulSpawn never chooses male sex partners, and states of several occasions that he detests the very thought of a male on male relationship. This is interesting because of his relationship with Quaraun.

Quaraun is older then GhoulSpawn by 400 years. When they meet, GhoulSpawn is a teenager. Despite his already having had sex with hundreds of girls, wives, and prostitutes, and being chased out of several dozen towns by the angry fathers and husbands of said towns, GhoulSpawn is only 15 years old.

Orphaned at a young age, and supporting himself by becoming a very adapt pick-pocket, scam artist, thief, and con-man, GhoulSpawn is in essence a very wild, feral child with no morals, no social skills, and no manners at all. He was never taught right from wrong, never taught how to interact with others, and growing up on his own, never learned how to form healthy emotional bonds with others.

When they first meet, Quaraun is serious wounded by a spell GhoulSpawn was attempting to cast. Quaraun was passing through and inadvertently walked into the young sorcerer thief's path.  Feeling guilty about having nearly killed Quaraun, GhoulSpawn takes the old Elf back to his hideout out and tends his wounds... while also stealing everything Quaraun had been carrying on him. Quaraun wakes up in GhoulSpawn's care, and quickly realizes the young Demon has stolen his things but overlooks it as he also realizes GhoulSpawn is only a child.

Quaraun has a weakness for children, especially orphans, and is often quick to befriend them and care for them, something he attempts to do with GhoulSpawn. GhoulSpawn however, though extremely young, is also a highly intelligent con artist, and is able to outwit the smartest adults. While he lacks social skills, his street smarts are above and beyond average and he is far better at taking care of himself then most adults. GhoulSpawn thus does not see any need to be coddled by an adult and he and Quaraun, quickly part ways once Quaraun's wounds are healed.

Both being wandering vagabonds, the two meet up on the road again multiple times, and GhoulSpawn joined Quaraun's caravan on multiple occasions when they camp for the night.

A year after their initial meeting (with GhoulSpawn now aged 16) the two arrive at the same village, and GhoulSpawn, now seeing Quaraun as a friend, joins Quaraun and Unicorn in their nightly tavern hangouts. While in this village, GhoulSpawn because critically wounded by a Thullid attack, and runs off terrified. Knowing the high mortality rate of a Thullid infestation, Quaraun spends 3 years looking for the wounded youth, then gives up assuming him dead.

Quaraun and Unicorn settle down in an abandoned lighthouse, at the edge of an abandoned town and live peacefully for a few months, until, GhoulSpawn (now 19 years old) arrives on their doorstep, suffering from the late stage side effects of Thullid infestation. Quaraun quickly takes the dying youth in and attempts to help him, but GhoulSpawn dies a few months later from the Thullid infestation.

Normally, one would immediately destroy the body to prevent the Thullid for reanimating it, but on his deathbed, GhoulSpawn makes Quaraun promise not to kill the Thullid, but instead treat it as though it was still him. With GhoulSpawn dead and his body now the host of the alien that killed him, Quaraun reluctantly continues to call him GhoulSpawn and treats the alien that stole GhoulSpawn's body as though it was GhoulSpawn. Eventually the alien submits to this agreement and pretends to be the young man it killed.

Over time everyone, including the Thullid itself, forgets that GhoulSpawn died and the "new" GhoulSpawn becomes very emotionally attached to Quaraun, the two of them becoming lovers.

While the three of them bed together, Unicorn and GhoulSpawn never have intercourse with each other, each of them only ever having intercourse with Quaraun, often at the same time. While Quaraun submits to other men fucking him, he only ever fucks females.

In the end... Quaraun becomes sexually active with Unicorn a few hours after they meet, them having sex the same night they meet, while Quaraun does not become sexually active with GhoulSpawn until 9 years after they meet.

Quaraun... the world's most powerful wizard, the evil Pink Necromancer, seen here in one of his many pink dresses.

  • see if they are actually compatible in terms of personalities

Quaraun is an extreme beta male. Nervous, flighty, and terrified of everything and every one. Frail, sick, and very short (5'6"), his life has been endless bullying that resulted in his fear of everyone bigger than himself, which is almost everyone. While he is very short tempered and quick to have outbursts of screaming hissy fits, he's also a coward and quick to back down if a physical confrontation is presented. Normally quiet and docile, most people are so startled by his sudden outbursts that they back down without a fight, not realizing that he would quickly run off had they stood up to him. He's thus prone to rely on bluffing is way out of things.

Unicorn is a very dominant, very possessive, very aggressive, and very violent alpha male. He always has to have his way and quickly loses his temper when challenged. While he does truly love Quaraun, he lacks the mental or emotional understanding of how to express love. He dislikes being pushed around, and if someone tried hit him, he'll quickly tackle them to the ground and pummel their face in. He acts before thinking and can be very vicious, vindictive, and uses excessive violence as his answer to everything. Being a Lich, he takes almost no damage, delvers damage much harder then it appears he could, and when killed, simply gets right back up and attacks more viciously then before. Pretty much everyone is terrified shitless of him.

GhoulSpawn is a beta male who tries to be an alpha male to protect Quaraun, but does not have the physical strength to stand up to a powerful alpha male in an actual fight. One of the few people bold enough to stand up to Unicorn, he often takes a beaten that was intended for Quaraun, as he is quick to get in the middle of their frequent fights and try to break them up. The voice of reason who believes there is a peaceful solution to everything, he is rarely listened to and often ignored by both Quaraun and Unicorn when they are fighting.

Quaraun, having killed a dragon and now possessing it's vast hoard, which fills an entire volcano, is extremely obscenely wealthy. He makes Scrooge McDuck and Richie Rich combined together both look poor.

He is likely the wealthiest person in the universe, let alone on the planet, but he can not count, and because of his Autism has no concept of how to use money, nor any ability to grasp the concept of wealth, so is blissfully unaware of the true wealth he is in possession of. He really has no need to work, but he also doesn't realize that.

Unfortunately, because of his mental handicap, many people he encounters quickly realize that he is both very wealthy and also too retarded to know he is wealthy, making it easy for people to take advantage of him. He frequently encounters Humans who find ways to scam him out of his money and is constantly in need of Unicorn and/or GhoulSpawn to usher him away from unscrupulous people.

Both Unicorn and GhoulSpawn are aware that Quaraun suffers from a serious mental handicap, but neither draw attention to it and both tend to let him "do his thing" while they keep a look out for people who would hurt him or take advantage of him. Because Humans are greedy, money hungry bastards with no moral decency, it is usually Humans who go after Quaraun's money.

Because Quaraun thinks nothing of handing people an entire handful of gold coins when they asked for only a penny, along with the aloof 'not-caring-about-money' manner in which he does it, this often leads people to believe he is arrogant, elitist, or stuck up. This in turn results in him frequently being bullied and not understanding why. He remains baffled over why he is accused of being arrogant and does not understand the Humans' insatiable lust for money combined with their insatiable hatred for everything that is not Human.

Quaraun is in fact the least arrogant, most caring, most compassionate character of the series and is seen as arrogant by people who are in fact themselves arrogant and see him through the tainted glasses of arrogance in which they view others.

While Quaraun is a working wizard for hire and goes on quests for people needing magical assistance and makes magic items for people, charging deeply overpriced fees for both services, he actually has no need to work and could if he wanted to, easily do absolutely nothing, just living off the vast hoard of gold he keeps in Fire Mountain.

Quaraun is obscenely wealthy. Quaraun is a craftsman and makes magic items for other wizards and is making and selling these items at standard D&D guidebook prices, meaning even wealthy noblemen have to save for many years to afford to hire him.This also means that Quaraun only has to make 1 magic item to earn more money in one week then the average king will see in his lifetime.

Because his skill at making magic items is so rare, he has virtually no competition and can charge whatever the hell he wants.

Interestingly, while Quaraun charges HUMANS the insane prices, he will often make those same items for non-Humans at a fraction of the cost he spends on materials. For example, while he'll charge a Human 3,125,000 gp for a Flying Carpet, he may decide to charge a Gnome only 350 gp for that same carpet. And for his friends, especially GhoulSpawn, he'll give them the item for free. 

While it is Unicorn whom Quaraun is in love with and emotionally dependant upon, Quaraun makes no secret of the fact that GhoulSpawn is his favourite lover. GhoulSpawn has an obscene amount of magic items, dozens and dozens of them - all gifts from Quaraun.

Quaraun frequently makes magic items to give as gifts to his favorite prostitutes, the mothers of his illegitimate children, and as gifts to said children. He like wise does the same to his wives and their children.

Marriage in Moon Elf society is dramatically different than what we Humans think of as being marriage.

That being said, Quaraun acknowledges having 6 spouses: 2 males and 4 females, as follows:

  • * a female Moon Elf (died same day as her 4 children)
  • * King Gwallmaiic/BoomFuzzy the Unicorn; a male Faerie (Phooka)
  • * GhoulSpawn, a half Elf (half Demon)
  • * a female Human
  • * Pippiatta, a female half-Elf (half Human) (who is also his daughter by his 2nd wife)
  • * Empress Glacious, a female Frost Elf/Crystal Elf/Chrystonite

He has 8 children that he generally acknowledges publicly as being his. These 8 being born to his wives. His first wife had 2 sets of twins. His third wife had a pair of twins as well.

Three of his children go on to become extremely famous and are primary characters of The Twighlight Manor series:

  • twin bothers King Vielder & Melaca Swanzen
  • their "baby brother" Dr. Gwaneesh Vangoneese Swanzen

He has an additional 37 half-Elf children by non-Elf prostitutes that he pays support for and frequently visits. There are multiple times when these are twins.

As mentioned, he does occasional use prostitutes and has many children of various mixes races from this as well. An exact number is never given, though one novel does state that he "fathered 37 illegitimate children with prostitutes" and there is frequent mention of the fact that he returns to certain whorehouses multiple times a year to check in on his children by the various prostitutes to see if they are in need of anything. While rarely in their lives, he does pay the mothers very large sums of money/gold coins so they can provide for the children he fathered.

In the case of the prostitutes, when/if he learns they've had his child/ren he offers to marry them and bring them into his family, but these women tend to be very independant and not seeking a husband or married life and thus decline his offer. 

In Zebulon's Captive he is taken into slavery and used as a breeder. When Zebulon buys him, the seller tells Zebulon that Quaraun had fathered 14 children in their facility, including multiple sets of twins, but that he was a difficult Elf to work with, was refusing to bred with the females, and had to be forced to do so, by mated to females willing to forcibly bred him. Later in the same novel, Zebulon tells another slave owner that Quaraun had fertilized "more then a dozen females" and that most had given birth to twins or triplets.

  1. Quaraun deeply loves his children, 
  2. but he is seriously mentally unstable 
  3. and, is also a serial killer, 
  4. and did kill 4 of his children, 
  5. along with their mother 
  6. during a fit of mental breakdown. 
  7. He is constantly tormented with guilt 
  8. and night terrors over what he did to his children, 
  9. though he does not regret killing his wife.
  10. Quaraun has strange morals
  11. Quaraun does not like Humans
  12. the Human Zebulon was Quaraun's breaking point
  13. after escaping from Zebulon, Quaraun begins killing Humans on a regular basis
  14. Vielder & Melaca are his favorite sons
  15. at age 10 Vielder beheads his first Human and brings the head to his father as a gift
  16. as teenagers Vielder & Melaca go on Human hunting excursions
  17. the twin boys amass a huge collection of Human heads 
  18. When his daughter/3rd wife (pregnant) and her 2 sons Vielder & Melaca (aged 19) are murdered, 
  19. Quaraun lashes out at the entire planet in an event that would later be known as "The Battle on Ongadada" 
  20. where he murdered 3 billion people in a massive Lich making spell to resurrect his beloved twin sons
  21. the only survivor of Ongadada is Empress Glacious
  22. whom Quaraun kidnaps and rapes
  23. resulting in his youngest son, Dr. Gwaneesh Vangoneese Swanzen
  24. Quaraun is murdered to stop him from killing again
  25. His twin sons, now Liches, go on a interplanetary killing spree, 
  26. murdering 28 Billion people across the galaxy in response to their father's murder
  27. The Twighlight Manor is built as a monument to Quaraun the Insane
  28. The mansion, possessed by the soul of BoomFuzzy The Unicorn 
  29. and comes to life and eats every one who sets foot inside of it.

Quaraun, obviously is the main character. He is a complicated and difficult person to get along with. Few people can tolerate being around him for very long, due to his whiny, bitchy, sharp-tongued, hissy fits, his constant complaining about everything, and his assumption that everyone exists solely to serve his every whim.

Unicorn and GhoulSpawn, likewise are each as difficult to get along with in their own ways. All 3 of them are generally looked down upon by society, not well liked, usually excluded from social gatherings, and generally get along with other because each of them is a hard headed egomaniac that gets off on the challenge of pushing each other around. The 3 of them are each well aware of the fact that they are annoying as hell, but none of them is willing to change, and each of them is willing to accepting each of the other 2 with all of their flaws.

All 3 of them are hot headed, each has strong personalities, each has strong (and often fanatical) belief systems, and each are often in stark disagreement with the others. They often break out into fist fights. Quaraun is daily bitch-slapping Unicorn only to end up on the ground with a bloody nose after Unicorn punches him.

They are often in taverns drinking and once drunk, lunge at each other's' throats. They near daily start barroom brawls. Their fighting goes far beyond just yelling at each other, with their fights often getting bloody. Multiple occasions Quaraun has pulled a knife on Unicorn and stabbed him. Several times both Quaraun and GhoulSpawn have suffered broken bones from being beaten by Unicorn. 

Unicorn is a predatory monster, who eats Elves, and when angry enough, will bite Quaraun, pinning the Elf to the ground, then drinking the blood from his wound until the Elf passes out from blood loss.

Their 3 way relationship is brutal and violent. They do hurt each other. And yet, each one loves the other two. When they are not fighting, they are prone to cuddling and coddling each other. When one is sick, injured, or hurt, the other two are quick to care for him and hover over him like a mother hen. While they fight with each other, they will quickly band together and gang up on any one who tries to harm one of them. They are fiercely protective of each other.

Thus the 3 of them form a strong bond with each other, bound together more by their differences then by their similarities. Their bond goes beyond love, to something far deeper. Their soul bound nature defies logic.

  • jump straight into the juicy part of love

Does love even have juicy bits? Are you sure don't mean lust and sex?

Sex DOES NOT = love. I find myself so very annoyed by authors who use the term "making love". Sex and love are not the same things and should not be used interchangeable.

Yes, their relationships do jump right into being sexual before any of them really knows each other. All 3 of them are very sexually and have no trouble admitting that they each are strongly driven by their sexual attraction to the other. While they do all eventually come to love each other in time, in the early stages of their relationship, lust, passion, and strong sexual attraction is the driving force that keeps them together.

All three of these men are highly emotional and very driven by their lusts for each other. Eah has a strong emotional need for the companionship of the other two. There are several times throughout the series where they become separated, and they each become frantic in their search to be reunited.

The 3 of them have been together for decades, and by the time they are old, they are each emotionally distraught if out of the sight of the other two for even only a few minutes. They become inseparable companions who thrive of each other's company.

  • resulting in "deep" relationships between people who barely know each other

Quaraun, Unicorn, and GhoulSpawn all love each other in their own way. Their 3-way relationship is complicated. They thrive more on the thrill they get from their bickering and fighting, more then they do on their gentle cuddle times. While to an onlooker it may seem that they hate each other, especially when their fights get physical and they are punching each other out, but the reality is, each of them is the type of male who enjoys that sort of relationship and they do in fact gain some level of satisfaction from their confrontations with each other.

Each of the 3 of them is highly sexually attracted to the other 2 and each of them has some levels of jealousy, when 2 are enamoured with the 3rd not included, which is often the source of their fights. And in most cases, their fights go from bickering, to violently abusing, to ending up in bed together.

While the series is not Erotica and rarely shows the sex scenes on page, there is a highly erotic nature to their relationship, which far outweighs any love or romance.

In short, they are 3 very horny men who enjoy aggressive relationships. While their relationship style may not "work" with other couples, for them and their personalities, it works. In the end, they thrive on their rocky, highly sexual relationship and yes, it does draw them together on a deep emotional level.

The series follows them from their young age into their senior years. You see them much more sexual early in the series, and decades later when they are much older, you see them evolve into a much more stable relationship. Unicorn is much older than the other two, and eventually goes blind and develops health issues that prevent him from getting around well, becoming an invalid, resulting in Quaraun & GhoulSpawn needing to take care of him. It's at this point when you see the much more emotional, non-sexual, deeper love between them.

  • how long does it takes before your characters get together meaningfully

They begin living together a few weeks after meeting. They meet GhoulSpawn a few years into their relationship and he begins living with them the same day he meets them.

When does it become "meaningful"? Do you mean, stable? In multiple stories it references the fact that Quaraun and Unicorn were living together for 30 years before either of them acknowledged being in love with each other. It was Quaraun who first acknowledges being in love with Unicorn. Unicorn laughs at this notion and it is not for a few years after that before Unicorn himself mentions that he loves Quaraun.

GhoulSpawn never admits to loving either of them, something he deeply regrets after they die. Quaraun is informed of this when future GhoulSpawn, after Quaraun's death, returns to the past to tell Quaraun he regretted never saying he loved him.

GhoulSpawn lives with them for "about a decade" before his relationship with Quaraun reached the point of pushing the jealous Unicorn into trying to kill both Quaraun and GhoulSpawn.

While their relationship is unstable, unhealthy and often results in their own physical harm... the 3 of them remain together their entire lives. Quaraun and Unicorn are both executed the same day, and GhoulSpawn goes off by himself after, becoming a sheep farming hermit and is unable to go back to living in normal society.

After Quaraun's death the series continues on, with his grandson Roderic has the new MC of the series.

  • see if they are actually compatible in terms of values

Quaraun is the nephew of the King, raised in the royal family, he is smug, arrogant, and vain. He cares more about his clothes then his people. He will not think twice about beheading someone who accidently splashed mud on his dress. Thinks he can get his own way with everything and everyone. Has no morals at all when it comes to the lives of others. As a pure blooded Elf, he tends to see himself as superior to everyone, his ego reaching insane levels to the point of believing himself to be a god. He views Humans as parasites destroying the planet and believes the only good Human is a dead Human. While he seemingly has no morals in terms of value on life, he is also a vegan, animal rights activist and over the top protector of nature. He'll viciously kill to protect a flower from harm. There is one scene where he murders an entire Human village, just to give a turtle a safe way to get across the street.

Unicorn is the King of Fae turned drug dealer and pastry chef. As a trickster Fae (Phooka) he delights in gruesome bloody pranks, the gorier the better. He thinks nothing of putting poison in someone's food then laughing hysterically while watching them vomit up their bloody dissolved organs and dying in agony. A wild feral Fea, he is quick to eat everything and everyone that moves. Nicknamed 'The Elf Eater" for his habit of hunting down, torturing to death, then eating raw every Elf he encounters. That his lover (Quaraun) is an Elf, baffles everyone.

GhoulSpawn is the polar opposite of his two villainous, serial killing lovers. A peace loving, tree hugging, pro-life, vegan, animal rights activist, LSD addicted hippie from the 1970s, he is constantly at odds with his 2 lovers, both of who put little value on life and see nothing wrong with killing on a whim.

  • see if they are actually compatible in terms of hobbies

Yes and no.

Quaraun is a wizard for hire, specializes in making magic items for other wizards. When left to himself he spends his days sewing, embroidering, and beadworking elaborate robes, capes, gloves, hats, etc for his wizard-clients. His free time is spent cultivating roses, gardening, and reading grimoires/studying magic to advance his skills. Credited as "The World's Most Powerful Wizard" he is known as "The Pink Necromancer" for the outlandish bubblegum pink sequin ballgowns he wears. He murdered his wife and 4 children, then killed his father, then his uncle the king, crowned himself king, then killed everyone in his kingdom and now wanders the world a vagabond wizard for hire. Though the main character of the series, he is also the "evil super villain" on the universe he dwells in.

Unicorn is the King of the Realm of Fae. A warrior general. These things out of birth and necessity. When able to do so, he and his cousin fled the Realm of Fae, cast aside his past, and took up residence at the North Pole as Santa's head chef. He perfected a denser gingerbread and built Santa gingerbread village. He left Santa's village, his cousin Krumpas stayed behind. He set up shop in an Elf village, living in a gingerbread house out of which he sold drugged candy to the Elves, so he could eat said drugged Elves. He chose said Elf village because he knew it was the home of the world's most feared necromancer (Quaraun) and he wanted to trick said wizard into turning him into a Lich. Unicorn uses Quaraun, playing with his emotions, gets Quaraun to fall in love with him, them commits suicide, resulting in Quaraun having the mental breakdown which results in his killing his wife and children as part of a Lich making ritual to resurrect Unicorn as a vicious, undefeatable Lich.

GhoulSpawn is a teenaged sheep farming dungeon master from the 1970s, who encounters a time traveling AMC Gremlin (car) that takes him to the 1400s of an alternate earth, where Elves and Fae are fighting to survive against the ever increasing Human population, while squid headed Lovcraftian aliens from Neptune's moon attempt to take over the planet; where GhoulSpawn becomes a self-taught/unschooled bumbling wizard/sorcerer/alchemist/magical jack of all trades but master to none... and uses Dungeons and Dragons manuals to teach himself magic, in a world where he is able to actually cast the ridiculous over the top 4th ed D&D spells, resulting in his eventually becoming the most powerful wizard of all time, and ultimately destroying the planet.

So, there you go. That's how I did it in my novels.

After several years with no updates, it's now 2021, and I'm adding an update to this page and here it is...

Normally for these question and answer pages, I start a new page for each one, but when the theme is similar to a page I already have, I add it as an update, to expand my answer for that topic and, that is the case with this question here.

This page talks about characters falling in love and writing Romance subplots in non-Romance genres. And this new question asks about adding seduction scenes into a Fantasy novel.

Well, your characters can't fall in love with out some level of seduction and I already touched on that topic a bit before on this page, so let's expand the answer now.

How to write a seduction scene?

>>>How to write a seduction scene? I'm here trying to write a scene where the King seduce his vassal's daughter but have no idea how to proceed and what should the characters say to make them, you know, into it. So far, the scene goes that the daughter lost her clothes after bathing in the garden with the King appearing and returning the garment to her.


Uhm... do you know what seduction means?

This scene you are describing is so many levels of creepy times ten.

I'm reading what you wrote here and I'm left wondering how what you wrote implies seduction?

Yes, it is very clear to me that you most definitely need help to write a seduction scene. That is most certain.

I'm just wondering what exactly does the word seduction mean to you? Because what you wrote here, screams paedophile, stalker, pervert, and child rape.

Here's a tip on writing seduction scenes:


   *   #1:   There is nothing seductive about a paedophile.

   *   #2:   There is nothing seductive about a stalker.

   *   #3:   There is nothing seductive about a pervert.

   *   #4:   There is nothing seductive about a rape.

   *   #5:   There is nothing seductive about a man watching a girl bathe.


The scene you wrote contains all of the above.

Here's another tip about seduction:


   *   #1:   Paedophiles send women running for the police, not running into your arms/bed.

   *   #2:   Stalkers send women running for the police, not running into your arms/bed.

   *   #3:   Perverts send women running for the police, not running into your arms/bed.

   *   #4:   Rapes send women running for the police, not running into your arms/bed.

   *   #5:   A man watching a girl bathe send women running for the police, not running into your arms/bed.


The girl in the scene you wrote, is going to run screaming from the King in search of whatever your world's equivalate of the police are.

Need some more tips on writing seduction?

Here:


   *   #1:   You need a hell of a lot more than a single scene to seduce a girl. You should be peppering at least the first 100 pages with hints and scenes of the King trying to get her attention, trying to get up the courage to talk to her, giving her flowers, inviting her to promenade around the garden with him, etc.


      *    #1-a:   After 2 or 3 chapters of subtleness, kindness, gifts, and getting her to trust him, then he can start getting closer to her, holding her hand, brushing her hair, massaging her shoulders, putting his hand on her knee while they sit and talk... nothing sexual, just friendly, "I'm here for you when you are sad" type of caring touching.


   *   #2:   Men often are only interested in sex, women know this and usually just want to kick the son of a bitch in the balls and run screaming for the police. As such, if a man wants to seduce a woman... WOMAN, not a girl who's mother is going to castrate his child raping ass... than he's got his work cut out for him as he need to convince her that he is safe and not just another run of the mill degenerate male looking for sex.


   *   #3:   Seduction is a tool of romance and has nothing to do with sex, but your scene implies the King is just out for sex and has no interest in either seduction of romance. Side tip: learn to use words correctly if you plan to make a career out of using words to convey your meaning. You can't very well tell your readers what is going on, when you don't even know how to use words by their correct and proper meanings. Go look up what seduction means.


   *   #4:   If a man wants to seduce a woman, he needs to convince her that he is NOT a pervert and that he is a moral, upstanding gentleman whom she can trust with her virtue. If a woman can not trust a man to let her sleep in his bed WITHOUT him trying to have sex with her, than he has not won her over and if he has not won her over than he has not seduced her.


   *   #5:   Any idiot can fuck any other idiot. If the King is horney, throw a prostitute at him. You don't need seduction for sex. And again, everything about your scene implies the King just wants to have sex with the girl. Nothing about your scene implies he loves her and wants her to love him in return, which is what the meaning of seduction is (convincing someone to fall in love with you).


   *   #6:   Stealing a girl's clothes while she is swimming/bathing is a childish prank that ONLY WORKS IN MOVIES DIRECTED BY CLUELESS MEN... do that in real life and the man will be lucking if the girl doesn't castrate him; she most certainly will never speak to him again, and in America, he's looking at 15 years in prison for being a peeping tom.


   *   #7:   If you are aiming at perverted male readers looking for Erotica, stealing a bathing girl's clothes will work if you just want the shitheads reading your book to jerk off. It'll turn off all your female readers, and every male reader with any amount of morals, decency, or self respect. 


>>> the scene goes that the daughter lost her clothes after bathing in the garden with the King appearing and returning the garment to her.


Also grammar.

Please.

Learn some grammar

Why do I say this?

Here read what you wrote without the clauses:


>>>the scene goes that the daughter lost her clothes after bathing in the garden with the King


Do you see it now?

Shitty ass bad grammar will kill your sales. Please learn to use grammar properly. You'll never get published if you don't.

What you should have written was this:

The scene goes like this: 

The daughter lost her clothes, after bathing in the garden. The King arrives and returns her garments to her.

You may think your words posted online don't matter, but they do. EVERYTHING you write online is available for public viewing by editors and publishers. Do you want them reading your Tweets? Be careful what you say online. I've seen a lot of writer's kill their careers that way.

And places like THIS subreddit are riff with industry professionals looking at new writers. Especially if you've recently sent in a manuscript. They ARE going to look for you and your posts about your work online. 

If you can't be trusted to use correct meanings of words, and correct grammar in a forum post, why should they expect you took such measures in your manuscript? They won't. They'll find your bad grammar online and not even bother to look at your manuscript submission.

Just a pointer to help you out in your publishing career.

Now, back to the question at hand. Let's look at what you wrote, what you should have written, why it matters, and how to make it actually seduction.

Here is what you wrote...

the scene goes that the daughter lost her clothes after bathing in the garden with the King appearing and returning the garment to her.

VS what you should have written...

The scene goes like this: 

The daughter lost her clothes, while bathing in the garden. The King arrives and returns her garments to her.

And why it matters...

If the King is trying to seduce her, than WHY is he in the bath tub WITH her? That sounds to me like he has already seduced her.

What you wrote, puts the King in the bathtub with the girl.

Plus if she lost her clothes AFTER she got done bathing, so what? She'd already be dressed by that point.

Plus what portal did the King appear through? Is there a wizard casting spells and causing the King to appear in the bathtub with her?

I have the context of you saying THIS first:

>>>I'm here trying to write a scene where the King seduce his vassal's daughter but have no idea how to proceed and what should the characters say to make them, you know, into it.

So I can understand what you meant here, but your readers won't have that pre-explanation so they aren't gonna know what the heck is going on.

Okay, I know you want help writing seduction, or what you think seduction is, but, there are so many words you clearly do not know the meaning of and so many flagrantly ignoring grammar that I'm questioning if English may be not your first language, and would suggest you seriously get a native speaker of English to translate you entire manuscript into the correct words you meant to say, before you even send it off to an editor.

>>>So far, the scene goes that the daughter lost her clothes after bathing in the garden with the King appearing and returning the garment to her.


What exactly is the seductive feature here?

It like saying the bath scene in GhoulSpawn and the Lich Lord's Lover is seductive.

It's a scene when BoomFuzzy tries to kill Quaraun in a drunken fit of rage.

Here's have a scene that I don't find in any way seductive, but that readers call Erotica:

Unicorn watched as the Elf's happy, contented emotional state disappeared and was replaced by fear and terror. Quaraun began trembling as he remembered the day his father had tried to drown him. 

The feel of the water rushing into his lungs. 

The pain in his chest as he struggled to breath. 

The water level of this stream was about the same height as the water level of the village's water fountain. 

Quaraun remembered his father's hands on his throat, squeezing, strangling him, holding him down while he thrashed and screamed. 

Each scream drawing more water into his lungs. 

Quaraun's heart was racing as the images of events long past, played in his mind as though they had happened yesterday.

“I have to get out of the water,” Quaraun gasped as he pushed past Unicorn.

“Why?” 

Unicorn took the Elf's arm and stopped him.

“Let go of me!”

Quaraun sounded hysterical. His sudden fear puzzled Unicorn.

“What is wrong?”

“Let me go!”

“Why?”

“I gotta get out of the water. Let me go. Please let me go. I can't be in the water. I gotta get out of the water.”

“Why?”

“It's too deep. Please let me go. Please.”

Tears were streaming down the Elf's face as he started clawing at Unicorn's hand to pry his arm free of the Phooka's grasp.

“Is ya afraid I'll drown ya?” Unicorn asked.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“You're very rough with me,” Quaraun said.

“Quaraun, I will no hurt ya. Yes?”

“I know you, Unicorn. You like scaring me, so you can make fun of my fears. You like hurting me so you can laugh at my reaction.” 

“Ya used to let BoomFuzzy bathe ya. Yes?”

“BoomFuzzy was gentle. You're not. BoomFuzzy wouldn't have been tempted to hold me under the water to see how much he could scare me, and you would. You'd hold me under the water until I stopped breathing.”

“I will no do that.”

“My father did that. He tried to drown me. He held me under the water. I couldn't breath.”

“I know what ya faddah did to ya. Him were evil.”

“Please. I can't have you in the water with me. Please.”

“Quaraun, I will no hurt ya.”

“I don't trust you, Unicorn. I like you, but you scare me. You get way too much pleasure out of hurting me, and you do hurt me. You like hearing me scream, you like watching me bleed, it excites you to strangle me and watch me suffocate.”

“Ya likes rough sex.”

“Yes, but, not all the time. You get carried away and you really do hurt me and you won't stop when I ask you too. I don't know how to get you to stop. BoomFuzzy was gentle with me and he stopped when I asked him too.”

“Ya liked being bathed by BoomFuzzy.”

“I did.”

“Then let me bathes ya.”

“That was before.”

“Before what?”

“My father, The hanging tree. Please. I have to get out of this water. Please, let me go.”

Quaraun knew Unicorn had been drinking. He enjoyed Unicorn's touch and would have loved to let Unicorn bath him, except that Unicorn was intoxicated just than and that scared Quaraun. He didn't know what to say. He didn't want to hurt his lover's feelings, but he also didn't want the Phooka to drown him.

“I...I don't want... to be in the water with you, not... not right now. You're drunk. Please. I don't trust you. I'm sorry. You're too rough with me. You’re too strong. I can’t fight you. You scare me when you've been drinking.”

Readers called this book BDSM Erotica, and that is something which I, the author of it, find truly disturbing, because this novel features violent rape scenes, abuse scenes, and a scene where BoomFuzzy nearly beats Quaraun to death.

While this is one of the rare few Quaraun novels to contain sex scenes, they are VERY abusive, not anything close to something a reader SHOULD classify as Erotica.

The Quaraun series is Horror, not Erotica, and this volume in particular is about abuse and suffering and pain and being terrified of the person you love, being conflicted with wanting to flee for your safety and staying with him even though you know he's dangerous and might kill you if you don't get out of there right now.  And there is something wrong with you if you can read this book and find ANYTHING Erotica about it.

If you consider the scenes in this novel Erotica: it is my belief that you need to get psychiatric help, and you need it badly. And don't ever be in a relationship. An abuse lusting person like you has no business being in a relationship with another person.

Quaraun is bisexual and polygamist. He has 2 male lovers: BoomFuzzy and GhoulSpawn, both of whom are gay, and he also has 3 female lovers, all 3 of whom are straight. Quaraun is married to all 5 of his lovers and they all live together.

And guess what?

Quaraun is also, not only asexual, he's a castrated eunuch. Sex doesn't run Quaraun's life. He loves his partners very much - no sex required for that. They have a strong emotional bond. It's unbreakable, and when one of them dies, one of the others driven to suicide by it, which is a primary plot point for the entire series.

BoomFuzzy's suicide takes over Quaraun's entire life. He becomes obsessed with. BoomFuzzy commits suicide right in the beginning of the series. It's one of the first things that happens. And the whole rest of the series after that, is older Quaraun, retelling his life with BoomFuzzy. 

The series shifts back and forth. Chapter A is a flashback to the past when BoomFuzzy was still alive, chapter B shifts to the present where we see Quaraun slowly going insane, suffering suicidal guilt driven depression blaming himself for BoomFuzzy's suicide.

THAT is the ENTIRE story... all 138 novels and 2,000+ short stories.

It's not sex, it's not Erotica. It's a man torn apart and trying to find a reason to live after his lover commits suicide.

There ARE sensual scenes, that involve a lot of touching and groping, kissing and hugging, but sex itself occurs in only 21 scenes out of the entire series.

Quaraun has a raging phobia of both sex and humans. Being a small, feminine looking Elf, he is often mistaken by Humans for being aa female and over the years several men have raped or attempted to rape Quaraun.

Because Quaraun's father did not want Quaraun to be the next king, he gathered together several women hell bent on being the next King mother, and held Quaraun down while the women raped him. The even repeats itself, until one of the women finally gives birth to a male baby. This event happened shortly before Quaraun is castrated by his father. His intent was to ensure that Quaraun did not father another child which could lay claim to the throne.

Needless to say the very thought of sex traumatizes Quaraun on horrifying levels. This results in the strange relationships he has with his lovers.

The story follows their life and has no theme of sex or gay-rights or anything, even though haters have made such claims. In fact, the fact that the characters are gay, bi, and polygamous is not even mentioned at all. AND, back in 1978 when I first started writing the series, I had never heard the word gay... in fact, the first time I ever heard the word gay was on September 12, 2015 when a mob of gay haters arrived in my driveway. Even though I had written a GAY couple for over 40 years, I had to Google the word GAY in 2016 to find out what GAY was, because I had never heard the term before. That's how big of a non-issue GAY is in the novels.

I had known a gay couple in Saco, Maine when I was a small child. They were friends of my grandmother and she often visited them and several times I had been with her. I was about 12 years old when one of them was murdered at Saco Shaw's - it was the first of 5 Saco Shaw's Transgender Murders that would happen at that store over the next 30 years. About a year later the other one commit suicide. While not my first encounter with death, his was my first encounter with suicide.

I think because I was so young, about 4 years old, when I met them, and they were married before I meet them, and this was back in the 1970s, that it never occurred to me, that men were "not supposed" to be a couple.

One was a transvestite. He did not try to be a woman, he just liked wearing prom dresses, and the other looked like Billy Idol, spiky white hair, always dressed in spiked black leather. They owned Maine's first Dollar store, which was in the Saco Shaw's parking lot. Both of them died in the store a year apart. One was murdered by gay haters in the store, the other hung him self in the store on the one anniversary of his partner's murder.

This couple HEAVILY influenced Quaraun and BoomFuzzy's characters and the theme of suicide that is in the Quaraun novels.

When I created Quaraun and BoomFuzzy, I even designed them to look and dress and talk like this real world gay couple whom had owned the Saco Shaw's Dollar Store.

They were a married couple. I never noticed until almost 40 years later, that they were the ONLY male couple in town. I didn't see them as different. I didn't see them a unusual. They were just a married couple, like my parents and other kids parents, it never occurred to me that they were the ONLY couple who were 2 men.

So, I grew up, just thinking sometimes families had 2 dads. 

When the transvestite was murdered, it was the 1970s and I was so young, it never occurred to me that it was because he was married to another man. I didn't realize that was what happened until many years later.

When the "Billy Idol" one hung himself, we were at the store, so we saw him like that. Me and my grandmother. I was around 12 at the time. I understood why he did it. He was so sad after his partner was murdered. 

I never forgot what happened to them and it just stuck with me my whole life, that these men really loved each other a lot, so much that they couldn't live without each other and I just started writing stories about them and over time it evolved and became the Quaraun series.

The series spans 138 novels, 2,000+ short stories, more 8 million words total, and has exactly 21 sex scenes, which are there only because they were important to the plot, and they fade to black.

The story is Quaraun murdered someone and is on the run, at first alone, but he meets people alone the way, who, like him are outcasts of society for one reason or another and they form a sort of DnD/Pathfinder type adventuring group that travels together.

Quaraun started out as a character I played in Dungeons & Dragons, decades ago. And the earliest stories about him, were nothing more than me writing down the game story as my game group played the game. The character was created because the Dungeon Master wanted to hide the game's end boss villain (a Necromancer) in the adventure party, for the 2edAD&D Temple of Elemental Evil and needed a player he could trust to play a Chaotic Evil character and not let the rest of the players know the character was evil. The DM gave me the stats and I created a Moon Elf.  With the release of SpellJammer a few years later, I kept the character going in the SpellJammer Champaign, and than in a RavenLoft one as well. Quaraun, BoomFuzzy, BeLuna, ZooLock, and Bullgaar were all characters I played in various campaigns with this game group. It was a large group with 15 players and 3 DMs (myself being one of the DMs) and 9 of us were published authors who were writing our novels based off the game nights. Because of this most of the Quaraun novels are heavily influenced by Temple of Elemental Evil, Raveloft, and SpellJammer. Because 9 of us were authors, we all retained the characters we personally played as our main characters in our novels, and changed the names and races of other players' characters, that way ONLY my novels contained Quaraun, BoomFuzzy, BeLuna, ZooLock, and Bullgaar, but never contained any characters played by other players. Each author did the same, and all of us published 50+ novels each over the course of running this D&D game group.

Quaraun was not originally written as a gay/bi character, as can be seen by the early stories when he had multiple wives and 8 children. This changed when an affair started between him and another Elf wizard as a result of a gay player wanting to play his own character gay and there being no one else willing to declare their character gay and his (the player's) boyfriend not wanting to join the game group. He designed his character as a half-elf wizard, with a pocket full of parrots. In the Quaraun novel's his character was changed to a Demon named GhoulSpawn and the pockets full of parrots became pockets full of sheep.

Also, Quaraun's a serial killer. Remember, I said he was designed to be the final boss villain of 2edAD&D's Temple of Elemental Evil, and part of what the DM's plan was, was for my character to one by one kill off the entire adventuring party, then resurrect them as Liches. This required players, to be killed in the game, without knowing my character had killed them, and than, being contacted that night, after the game, by the DM, to inform them: "DO NOT roll out a new character! Here's what's happening. You are now one of the Necromancer's minions. The Moon Elf will resurrect you and you are now Lawful Evil, and a Lich, but you have to pretend to be Lawful Good and don't let anyone know you are evil or a lich now." 

In the novels, like in the game, the murders are grizzly rituals, with scenes drawn out in medically accurate gory detail. Thus why the series is rate M18 or M21 in countries which have book ratings, and banned from being sold in some countries. Why would you call something like that Erotica? If you are so sick and so twisted that you would call something like THAT Erotica, than you probably belong in prison yourself.

Quaraun IS the villain. That's why he never fights any villains in the series. It's WHY the series goes on with Quaraun able to enter any village, any town, and country, any planet, with no one challenging him, and people running away in terror at the sight of him. He's the ultimate super villain, completely undefeatable. Unlike most story arches in typical fiction, the heroes NEVER win in the Quaraun series. Every hero who ever enters Quaraun's life to try to stop him, winds up dead and eaten. Every adventuring party that arrives to stop him is obliterated.

Quaraun is the most powerful wizard of the known universe. He's invincible. He's The Pink Necromancer. And any D&D style adventure party that tries to stop him, he just unleashes Pocket Lich - his pet DracoLich - on them, or BoomFuzzy - his Undead purple lich unicorn. Quaraun is more powerful than the Lich Lords, he made the Lich Lords, he controls the Liches.

Quaraun's world is dark and bloody. You're very in the wrong place if you came here looking for sex and Erotica, because you will not find that here.

The characters I played in Dungeons and Dragons (2ed AD&D, 3rd ed, 3.5 ed, 4th ed, 4.5 ed... I've never played 5th ed - I have more than 10,000 DnD, Pathfinder, Warhammer, d20, MTG, EverQuest, Iron Kingdoms, and other such games splat books/game guides, etc). 


The characters I played in Dungeons and Dragons are:


   *   Quaraun: Moon Elf Prince - Necromancer; infected with Mind Flayer Larva in his brain and will eventually evolve into a Mind flayer; primary attack is resurrecting dead flowers/plants/trees as armies of undead.


   *   BoomFuzzy aka King Gwallmaiic The Elf Eater of Pepper Valley: Phooka/Kelpie/Evil Unicorn - Candy Chef Illusionist; makes marshmallow bunnies that transform into Holy Hand Grenades when thrown at enemies; delights in skewering Humans on his horn


   *   GhoulSpawn: Half Sun Elf, Half Cotswold Sheep Demon - Portal Master, Beast lord, and Chaos Sorceror - a coward who flees from fights, but throws glittering sheep into the path of enemies when doing so, causing confusion in the enemies, allowing the entire party to escape through a portal he made


   *   BeaLuna: Flower Gnome - Assassin/Rouge, Alchemist, Pixie Hunter; has a pair of ruby encrusted magic daggers and keeps pixies in glass jars


   *   Bullgaar: Half Dwarf Half Mountain Troll - Barbarian Warrior - a very big and very stupid Dwarf with rock-like skin


   *   FarDaariig: A Farrdariig (Welsh Vampire Leprechaun); wears a coat made of Human skin, dyed red with human blood; Mind Control -semi-psion, makes drugged food that he gives to travellers, causes them to sleepwalk off cliffs allow him to defeat enemies without actually confronting them in battle


   *   AlKeeme aka The Lansquin: Moon Elf - Quaraun's great-grandson; Cult Leader, Alchemist. Used alchemy to transform into a Gorgon/Snake-shifter beast. Uses mind control to turn enemies on each other.


   *   ZooLock: Illithid/Mind Flayer - Psion Priest with a pet Jelly Cube; A coward who flees fights, but leaves behind bloodthirsty flying pink goldfish and giant green jelly cubes, both of which massacre the attackers; worships the Sacred Pink JellyFish a female god wo is bored with being a god and has taken refuge in the brain of an Elf (the parasite that has burrowed into Quaraun's brain)

As Illithids/Mind Flayers are copyrighted character races and can not be used in published works not published by Wizards of the Coast, ZooLock underwent a race/species change in the published Quaraun novels, but in the original game play, he was a Mind flayer. 


...and they all appear in the Quaraun novels and do the same things they did your game group's game nights.

Does ANY of ^THAT^ sound like BDSM Erotica to YOU?

Let me tell you more about these novels they are calling BDSM and Erotica.

BoomFuzzy aka Unicorn is NOT a good person.

Let me repeat that:

BoomFuzzy is evil.

He's a serial killer known as The Elf Eater of Pepper Valley.

People call him this because he eats Elves.

He is in the habit of befriending an Elf, getting it to trust him, seducing it, making it his lover, than viciously attacking, killing, and eating it.

Quaraun is fully aware of this. But Quaraun, as a young child, had an emo-like crush on this villain whom all Elf children were taught to be on the look out for. When as a young adult Quaraun meets The Elf Eater, he is attacked, beaten, taken prisoner, and raped. Quaraun escapes and flees. Years later, they meet again and this time The Elf Eater is now very old, elderly, crippled, almost blind, and nearly starved to death. 

Initially Quaraun plans to kill the evil creature that has murdered thousands of Elves. But when BoomFuzzy does not fight back and simply let's Quaraun kill him, saying it would be a mercy for his life to end, Quaraun can't bring himself to kill the beast and ends up taking care of BoomFuzzy, nursing him back to health. They live together for about 30 years, but Quaraun is a very young Elf, he'll live another 500 years or more, and BoomFuzzy is an ancient Phooka somewhere around 2,000 years old. Old age, arthritis, dementia, Alzheimer's, blindness, and manic depression are all things the Phooka is suffering from. 

One day a village of Elves finds out Quaraun is living with The Elf Eater as his lover, and they attack the couple. Quaraun is seriously injured. BoomFuzzy rescues him, but gets stabbed in the belly when doing so. While nursing Quaraun back to health, BoomFuzzy neglects his own injury and it becomes infected. Knowing he will not live more than a few weeks and not wanting to suffer in agony just to die, BoomFuzzy kills himself and Quaraun is devastated and feels responsible for BoomFuzzy's suicide. 

Quaraun uses magic to preserve BoomFuzzy's body and spends 100 years studying Necromancy in search of a way to restore BoomFuzzy's life. Quaraun eventual raises BoomFuzzy from the dead as a Lich and does the spell wrong, also resurrecting dead trees, dead rose bushes, dead wildlife (deer, rabbits, etc.), and all the dead in several local graveyards  all as liches too. 

Quaraun is horrified by what he has done and goes into hiding for 300 years, terrified to face the world, now that he's unwittingly unleashed a massive hoard of assorted undead on society. Ghosts of his long dead old friends start to follow him around, and he spends time talking with them, but no one but Quaraun can see BeaLuna or Bullgaar so everyone thinks Quaraun's insane.

The world believes Quaraun is an evil super villain who created the Liches to take over the planet. BoomFuzzy thinks it's hilarious because he WAS trying to take over the planet and Quaraun gave him a way to do so, while also making BoomFuzzy immortal. BoomFuzzy will stop at nothing to destroy everything and everyone, and now Quaraun is suicidal over the guilt of having unleashed this madman on the world. Blinded by love, Quaraun didn't want to believe BoomFuzzy was evil, but now he sees BoomFuzzy for what he is. But, BoomFuzzy actually does love Quaraun and wants to keep Quaraun from committing suicide. Quaraun attempts suicide in almost every novel, and the plot is often around BoomFuzzy's attempt to keep Quaraun alive. Quaraun, realizing that he can keep BoomFuzzy from hurting others by keeping the Phooka's focus on him, uses this to try to keep BoomFuzzy from hurting others.

Quaraun knew that BoomFuzzy was dangerous. He loved the thrill of the danger. It was a fantasy of his that he never thought would come true. He never expected to meet The Elf Eater.

It is also well established that Quaraun is not mentally competent. For lack of a better word, Quaraun is borderline retarded in many respects. He was born "slow". He's not very smart, most consider him stupid. We see scenes of him in early childhood and it is apparent from as early as 3 years old, that Quaraun is not right in the head. Quaraun's father is abusive of him for this very reason. 

The King believes his son to have been infected by a type of Demon (called a Thullid) that starts out as a maggot like larvae, crawls up your nostril, burrows into your brain, slowly eats your brain, and as it's body grows it fills your skull, replacing your brain, while sending long tentacles into your spine to attach to your nerves. You eventually die and it takes over your body, and no one ever knows you die because it fuses to you and it effectively becomes you, taking over your identity and living as you. This is the process of "Demon Possession" in Quaraun's world, where Demon Possession is not a spiritual possession but rather an actual alien creature possessing your body.

And, the King is not wrong. When Quaraun was 3 years old, he and his mother were attacked by Thullids. Both were implanted. Quaraun's father noticed a change in his wife's habits and killed her by smashing her head in with a rock, to break open her skull and pull the JellyFish-like creature out of her brain. He than stomped the Thullid to death. Quaraun witnessed this. Only 3 years old, he was deeply traumatized by what he had seen, and no one believed him when he told other adults that his father had killed his mother. Quaraun was sent away to a wizarding school on the other side of the planet and it was there that he was raised and heard stories of the Elf Eater and eventually came to meet the Elf Eater.

Young and foolish, born not quite "right" mentally, and suffering from a Thullid infestation in his brain, Quaraun was not prone to thinking clearly or rationally, and when he realized who BoomFuzzy was, he foolishly thought he could change the Elf Eater's ways, buy casting a soul binding spell. Quaraun literally cut his soul in half, and cut BoomFuzzy's soul in half, and switched souls. Taking half of The Elf Eater's soul and putting half of his soul in BoomFuzzy.

And while the soul binding ritual worked to somewhat tame the Elf Eater, by making him more like the timid Elf Quaraun was, the soul binding also made Quaraun more violent by making him more like the vicious Phooka BoomFuzzy was.

The two became as one being, knowing each others' thoughts, feeling every pain the other feels. If one became drunk, they both got intoxicated. If one took drugs, they both got high. When one was stabbed, they both felt the pain. When one was wounded, they both started bleeding. When one caught the flue, they both got a fever. Quaraun had underestimated the full effects of the hive mind of soul binding and never even thought about the fact that he would become like BoomFuzzy.

When BoomFuzzy died, Quaraun felt it happen inside of him, as though he himself were dying. And after BoomFuzzy was gone, Quaraun couldn't function, because half of his soul died with BoomFuzzy and was now gone, while half of BoomFuzzy's dead soul was still inside him, slowly turning Quaraun into an undead creature.

When Quaraun resurrects BoomFuzzy as a Lich, the spell goes wrong because of the soul binding spell, and Quaraun partly becomes a Lich himself.

This all happens with in the first few chapters and is how the series starts.

The end result is they have a very hostile and toxic relationship. BoomFuzzy is violent, a drug dealer, and is often drunk. He's prone to drug Quaraun's food and drink, keeping the Elf constantly high. BoomFuzzy beats Quaraun up frequently and is not uncommon for Quaraun to be seen with a black eye, a bloody nose, or a split lip.

GhoulSpawn sees this and is actively trying to break them up out of fear that BoomFuzzy with beat Quaraun to death. GhoulSpawn and Quaraun become lovers and that sends BoomFuzzy on a violent rampage with Quaraun, and starts beating on him worse than before.

The whole thing is a big mess.

And while this quick bit of info may seem to imply Quaraun is a misunderstood hero, nothing could be further from the truth. Quaraun, in order to resurrect BoomFuzzy, murdered his wife and four children, than killed and ate his father, and than poisoned all the food in his village and sat on the king's throne and laughed while watching everyone frothing blood and coughing up their acid dissolved organs. He later murdered his 2 best friends BeaLuna and BullGaar. He makes and sells magic items to other wizards, but if you piss him off, he'll put a curse on the item before selling it to you, so that it turns into a mimic and eats you. He routinely hunts down Wood Elves, imprisons them, tortures them, then gives them to BoomFuzzy who cooks and eats them. A total male slut, Quaraun is prone to having affairs with anyone and everyone every time he angry at BoomFuzzy.

They are both, very bad people.

Does ANY of THIS sound like BDSM or Erotica to YOU?

Their relationship is not "cute" or "BDSM" even though it has been called both, by readers.

While they do both love each other and they are generally happy together, they are two very violent, high strung, temperamental, spiteful men. And their relationship is very violent and abusive.

And it seems that a lot of people can't tell the difference between an abusive relationship and BDSM. Likewise a lot of people can't seem to tell the difference between the horrors of rape and the pleasures of Erotica.

I feel that there is a rather disturbing trend the past 4 or 5 years, of authors writing weird abuse-based fetish sex and selling it as Erotica or Erotic Romance, which has lead to the trend in young readers, reading books like the Quaraun series and calling it's extreme levels of abuse "BDSM Erotica" without actually knowing what BDSM even is.

BDSM is consensual.

Abuse is not.

If a character is being taken advantage of by another character, that is NOT seduction, that is abuse.


I shouldn't need to say this as it should be plain and simple common sense, but...


ABUSE IS NOT BDSM!


AND


RAPE IS NOT EROTICA!

And if you think it is,

please get psychiatric help.

You NEED it!

Why have I said all this here?

Because, I feel that there is a rather disturbing trend the past 4 or 5 years, of authors writing weird abuse-based fetish sex and sell it as Erotica or Erotic Romance, which has lead to the trend in young readers, reading books like the Quaraun series and calling it's extreme levels of abuse "BDSM Erotica" without actually knowing what BDSM even is.

BDSM is consensual.

Abuse is not.

Is a character is being taken advantage of by another character, that is NOT seduction, that is abuse.

Which brings us back to this question:

>>>So far, the scene goes that the daughter lost her clothes after bathing in the garden with the King appearing and returning the garment to her.

To me, this sounds more lie abuse, than seduction.

It's bordering on rape. And if you write it to include a sex scene, you are walking in Dubious Consent realms, which is just a fancy way for a rapist to say: "It wasn't rape, I seduced them first." 

Which means, this stolen clothes bath scene is dangerously walking in the realms of rape.

The King in this scene is coming off as a would be rapist NOT a would be seductive future lover. And I find it deeply troubling and very disturbing, that an author would even consider the scene of an adult male, stalking a girl child, stealing her clothes, watching her bath, and retuning her clothes in an attempt to seduce her, I'm horrified that this is even being considered even remotely close to being seduction at all!

It's one thing to write a pedophile rapist in a Horror story and show it as a bad thing, it's another thing entirely to write a pedophile rapist and try to pass it off as erotica, romance, or seduction!

>>>So far, the scene goes that the daughter lost her clothes after bathing in the garden with the King appearing and returning the garment to her.

This is NOT seductive!

Seduction involves consent.

Where was the consent when he stole her clothes?

Where was the consent when he watched her bathe?

If you want to make this seductive, you have a LOT of work ahead of you.

>>>So far, the scene goes that the daughter lost her clothes after bathing in the garden with the King appearing and returning the garment to her.


So, what exactly is the seductive feature here?

A girl is bathing and a peeping tom thought it would be funny to steal her clothes than try to get on her good side by giving them back.

That's not seductive.

If I was her, I'd grab the first brick I saw and used it to smash out that perverted bastard's teeth for.

There is nothing sexy or seductive about a man watching a woman bath.

It's creep factor times ten.

Your Character Creation
Questions Answered:

  1. When naming your characters, do you give any thought to the actual meaning?
  2. I need help Writing Mixed Race Asian Characters
  3. What would happen if an Elf adopted a Human baby?
  4. I need to write a rape scene, but I don't think I've made the character evil enough. How do you write a sleazy man?
  5. Is the main character a reflection of you, if yes, how?
  6. How to deal with writing racist characters?
  7. How can a non-Human villain who hates Humans learn to love a Human character?
  8. I'm creating my own character and does it matter what I call her, even if it sounds slightly odd?
  9. How do you write a demisexual?
  10. My main character is going to murder his children. How do I handle writing him?
  11. What inspired you to use a mentally ill person as your main character? 
  12. Creating mute characters.
  13. Is a 20 year age difference between my main couple weird?
  14. How to write a bi-sexual character?
  15. Any help with writing a cannibal chef?
  16. What is the difference between transgender, transsexual, transvestite, and intersex?
  17. My character is too much like myself, how do I change her?
  18. How do you pick what mental illness to write about? 
  19. What jobs did Medieval servants have?
  20. What can you tell me about writing a polygamous character?
  21. Should I write incest in my stories?
  22. How do you make sure you get your character accurate or true to life when dealing with mental illnesses?
  23. Any advice for writing a romantic relationship between an adult and a child?
  24. How to Develop Your Characters When Writing a Fiction Novel
  25. Why Character Development is Different for Short Stories
  26. Are In-Laws Family? (Writing Gypsy Culture Accurately)
  27. I'm writing an Autistic character. Can you tell me what it is like to live with Autism?
  28. I heard you write transvestites but it's not Erotica? How can you write a gay transvestite character and the book not be Erotica? It's not possible for transvestites to be in anything but Erotica.
  29. My characters keep being cookie cutter Mary Sues and Stevie Steus. How do you creature such highly detailed complex characters?

Even More Pages Which Talk About Character Creation:

Since people often ask which books I recommend to writers, here is a section of books I use when writing my novels.

Books I use when writing novels:

Note, some of these are writing books, but most of them are NOT. These are the references books that I use when writing almost every novel I write. These books are always on my desk and I reference them constantly, daily, over and over again.

And when you see what books I use to write The Quaraun novels with, than you can understand why they are like they are.

As you can see I rarely consult writing books when I want to figure out how to write something. Which is why I'm continually baffled by so many newbie writers who rush to ask other writers how to write.

You think of a thing, then write what you see in your head. It really is that simple. You just write down everything you see.

You do not need writing how to books or advice from authors to figure out how to write the story you want to tell.

Note too that I bought these books new and for cover price and many of them are self published short run books with only 100 to 1,000 copies printed (if you didn't know DnD books were self published and often had only 100 to 1,000 copies published than, you don't your DnD very well) and as such have been out of print for 20+ years and often sell for $500 to $3k+ now today, so, I don't expect you to be able to amass this same collection of 10,000+ DnD books I have, but, you wanted to know which books I use when I write my novels and here they are:

Wondering how authors find publishers?

Writer's Market -  it's a giant 1,000+ page book, costs around $40, is like a yellow pages style phone book directory of every publishing house, magazine, anthology, newspaper, and literary agent currently seeking submissions. There are around 20,000 publishers listed in it.

They come out with a new edition every year, so get the 2018 edition which comes out in a few weeks.

It's not easy to get listed in the Writer's Market. They do a major amount of rigorous filtering, to make sure no scams get in.

The Writer's Market has been the #1 way authors find publishers since the 1940s.

Here's their website: http://www.writersmarket.com/

They have an online directory that is the same as the print book, but it costs around $70 a year to access it.

More Pages Helpful To New Writers:

FAQs: What books do you use to look up English Grammar rules?

You probably won't like this, but I am constantly practicing English Grammar, by daily doing High School Grammar lessons. I diagram 100 sentence a day and have done so since 1996. 

Yes. While you all want the instant quick answer to writing rules, so you skip school and take the easy way out, I go through an entire High School manual in a couple of weeks, and when I get to the end I start over again.

I didn't have the luxury of going to school like you did, so I had no choice but to teach myself. I did the entire ABeka Grammar series starting from Grade 4 to Grade 12, then repeated it starting at Grade 7 to 12, and repeat it from Grade 7 to Grade 12, continually ever since. It takes me about 8 months to complete all 5 years' worth of textbooks. And when I reach the end, I start over again, and when I reach the end again, I start over again.

When I say I constantly practice English Grammar, I mean what I say and I actually practice English Grammar and I find it quiet annoying when school-skipping idiots respond to that by saying: "But I write every day and I never improve."

Did I tell you to write every day? No. I most certainly did not. I told you to practice English Grammar. There's a hell of a big difference.

Practice makes perfect. If you want to perfect your writing skills, you must first perfect your Grammar skills. If you continually write without knowing your errors, you only practice the art of writing errors and perfect the art of writing errors perfectly incorrect.

You will never be a skilled writer if you are not first skilled at Grammar.

Before you can practice writing, you must first practice Grammar.

I've not listed all the books below as there are so many. Each grade consists of a set of books:

   *   The Student Textbook

   *   The Teacher's Manual

   *   A Student WorkBook

   *    A Teacher's WorkBook Answer Key 

   *   A Student Tests and Quizzes Book

   *   A Spelling, Vocabulary, and Poetry Manual

   *   A Teacher's Answer Key For The Spelling Book

   *   A Reading/Literature Student TextBook

   *   The Reading/Literature Teacher's Manual

   *   A Student WorkBook For Reading/Literature

   *    A Teacher's WorkBook Answer Key  For Reading/Literature

   *   A Student Tests and Quizzes Book For Reading/Literature

Each book costs between $40 to $70, average that to $50 x 12 books per grade = around $600 per grade, times 5 grades (Grade 7 to Grade 12) = around $7,200 to buy the entire set of books and complete all 5 years from Grade 7 to Grade 12... so, you'll need to dish out quite a bit of money if you seek to gain the same writing skill I have using the same method I use to practice Grammar.

Do note that ABeka books are considered to be 4 grades ahead of the grade listed. For example, what ABeka book teaches in 4th Grade is what is taught in 8th Grade in Public Schools, while the12th Grade books is a college level. ABeka books are not used in standard public schools, they are used by private schools that specialize in teaching gifted/child prodigies that are too far ahead of their age group to be taught at a normal grade range.



FAQs: When you say to read in order to learn what good writing looks like, but than you say don't read anything self published or written in the past 50 years, what than do you suggest I read to learn what good writing looks like?

I recommend 3 things.

   *   1: I recommend the Reading/Literature TextBooks of the ABeka Grammar series that I previously mentioned above. I also recommend reading EVERY PAGE IN ORDER of EVERY volume of the series starting with Grade 4 and ending with Grade 12. (Those books are listed below).

   *   2: WELL WRITTEN classic literature. (Listed in the second column below)

   *   3: American and World History TextBooks. (Listed in the third column below)

   *   4: Science TextBooks. (Listed in the 4th column below)

These are the books I personally read to see/examine how good quality writing looks on the published page and teach myself to improve my own writing by mimicking the writing style seen in the books listed below.

These books are how I taught myself to read and write. I was not allowed to go to school and spent 27 years of my life, since I was 8 years old, locked in a cage, tortured, beaten, and starved.

As an adult I used these books to teach myself as I had no other way to gain an education.

Again, not every book is listed, as there are too many to list them all, but enough are listed to get you started.

   *   1: I recommend the Reading/Literature TextBooks of the ABeka Grammar series



   *   2: WELL WRITTEN classic literature.

A note here... I make it a point to read no fewer than 100 books a year - 2 books a week. Some years I have as many as 300 books by reading a book almost every day. I own more than 300,000 books and have read more then 10,000 of them with a goal to attempt to read them all. As such, I can't even begin to list anything close to all of the books I read. Though I will point out 90% of them were written before 1950 and all of them are hardcover or paperback, not one of my 300k books is an ebook or an audio book. I don't read ebooks nor do I listen to audio books.



   *   3: American and World History TextBooks.

Yes, I DO classify reading History and Geography books as good, quality recommended daily light  reading that should be done in between regular novel and short story reading.

It is my belief that when one ONLY reads fiction, ones view of what is goof writing becomes warped. Thus I recommend reading historical documents, including to go to your local museums to read important documents about your town/state/region. This is especially important if you, like me, write local tales, stories set in your home town/state/region.

This is also why I have such a strong grasp on describing the places Quaraun travels to in the novels I write, without my ever having set foot outside of Maine.



    *   4: Science TextBooks.

Yes. Once again, like with History and Geography, I DO classify reading Science books as good, quality recommended daily light  reading that should be done in between regular novel and short story reading.

I firmly believe that if one does not have a working knowledge of the world around you, not just it's history and geography, but also it's plants, animals, rocks, functions, ad place in the universe, that one will not be able to successfully write descriptions of the world character in your novels live in, because without knowing how your own world exists, how can you even begin to know how to create a fictional world?

As such, I put reading science books as highly important for anyone seeking to write novels.

And again, as I was not allowed to go to school and was locked in a cage from the time I was 8 until I was 31, I did not start studying science until I was an adult, and as such, I started with Grade K5 and went all the way through to Grade 12, doing so in 3 years, so that I could apply for a GED which I got when I was 37. The Science books listed below are the ones I used to do that with, and again mostly by ABeka as I absolutely refuse to use books with frutie tuttie Evolution or Big Bang hocus pocus mumbo jumbo. 

Also, I quickly discovered that as young as 4th grade, vile degradations of sex perversion and utterly disgusting lessons about sex are in Science books published by perverse public school textbook publishers, so I burned them all in the wood stove I will NOT recommend any of the horrifically horrendous, disgustedly perverted sex fill Science books published by non-Christian companies.

It's no wonder the American population has children so perverse and degraded, when they stoop so low as to spend more than 75% of their science textbooks being devoted to the vile disgusting top of sex education. It's utterly deplorable. Sex has no business being in schools. With that kind of filth being taught to children it's no wonder American's gone to shit.



Writing Disabled Characters