Guest Post: Jamie Lake -- The ‘Bad Boy’ Of M/M Gay Romance Literature

Apologies to Jamie for posting this WAY late....it's been one of those months. But he's stopping by to talk about his Bad Boy series...

Jamie Lake’s newest book series Bad Boy was an instant hit, becoming the #1 book in its category. I had the chance to chat with Jamie about how he created the book series and his advice to those who are interested in writing in the genre.

For those who aren’t familiar with the Bad Boy series, tell us about it. It’s the story of a really hot teacher who becomes desperate for money when his hours are cut and the only choice he has is to moonlight as an erotic masseuse for men. The problem is, he has to keep is profession a secret from the school and it’s right when he meets the guy of his dreams, who happens to be not only one of his student’s dads but also a cop.

Why would you recommend m/m as a genre for other authors to write? It’s still very much undiscovered territory, even though there are tens of thousands of m/m titles out there. Compared to general romance which has probably hundreds of thousands of titles, maybe more. It’s not as easy as people say and people don’t always understand the audience. The men who write it, don’t realize the majority of the readers are straight women and they want something different and sometimes the females that write it, don’t sound authentic with the male dialogue to me. There are issues that gay men and bi men deal with, subtle things that women may not quite tap into as writers. You have to be able to write authentically and at the same time, give your readers what they’re looking for and that’s not always easy to do.

How did you create your characters in Bad Boy? Do you do a character bio? My characters are generally loosely based on people I know or in the case of Chip, people I’d like to know. I tried to give him qualities I’d love in a dream guy and that I hope the readers would like too. Sometimes I’ll do a character bio or even a passage from a journal to get into the voice and mindset of the character if needed and that’s always a lot of fun to do. I love to go into the point of view of different people.

Where can we get a copy of Bad Boy? You can get it exclusively on Amazon or email me.