Guest blogger - Jennifer Denys

Please welcome author Jennifer Denys here today, take it away Jennifer...

An author who is new to writing recently asked me about writing ménage as my next story due to be released on 21 June (Wife for Three) is a ménage a quatre—in this case one heroine with three men who are brothers. I posted an article some weeks ago on my blog and got some terrific responses from other authors so I am going to revise my post and incorporate them for this article:

One of the difficult things when writing ménage is to make sure that the personality of each of the heroes is sufficiently different because when I first finished my book and read it back to myself I became aware that two of them seemed to merge into each other. Hopefully I have fixed this issue – one is the brooding, silent type, the next is hot headed and cocky, the youngest is the sweetest – a peacemaker, often with a joke (and all of them have different coloured hair!).

Another problem I have come across is when I have read other writers’ stories where at least two of the main characters have similar names – or names starting with the same capital letter - and as a reader you can easily get them confused in your mind so my heroes are Adam, Curt and Eric; hopefully all different enough not to confuse anyone. Similarly, it helps if they use different terms of endearment for the heroine. A third issue is if you now have more than one main character of the same gender (even more so if you have three or more) you have to read it REALLY carefully (or get a critical reader to do it for you) to make sure that it is clear which ‘he’ you are referring to – or put in the first names of the characters more often.

Of course, when writing erotic romance, a major thing you need to check (and particularly if you have more than two people making love) is to make sure all the arms and legs are in the right place, and you have written the right number of limbs! It is almost like choreographing a dance. Using a ‘cheat sheet’ can be very helpful was a useful suggestion from one of my fellow authors.

I know articles on sex say that ‘size doesn’t matter, it’s what you do with it’ but in ménage stories size (width or length of the male member) can make a great difference in helping you distinguish one character from another!!

Something I have often found difficult to accept when reading other ménage stories is why don’t they become jealous, won’t the girl prefer one to another and if the guys are straight, just sharing a woman, how come they don’t find it icky if they inadvertently touch each other? It worked that my heroes are all brothers for the jealousy angle and there is a great scene (even if I say so myself!) where one of the brothers jealously watches (from outside) the other two having sex with the heroine in the lounge. And since this was about brothers I made sure to include a comment here and there about them being concerned about touching each other. Hopefully that makes it feel more real – although something to consider in future is that writing MMF stories instead of MFM stories you can probably overcome the ‘ick’ factor since the men are all bi-sexual in the first place.

Many of the comments I had from fellow writers focussed on the issue of jealousy, stating that how the characters handle the jealousy helps build the story. Questions to ask oneself include ‘what do the guys get out of it?’, ‘why are they sharing?’, ‘does it help to have another man or two to help share the emotional burdens?’ However, by including issues of this sort makes the story and characters more relatable for the reader.

Thanks to Becca Simone, Lynn Tyler, Mellanie Szereto, Rose Leigh, Lara Valentine and Siobhan Muir/Meg Palevich for their comments to my original blog post – some of which I have included in this post.

Jennifer Denys

Wife for Three is due out in various e-book formats on 21 June from www.bookstrand.com/jennifer-denys/ – available for pre-order now.

Blurb

Wife wanted to share between three brothers. Could Brianna answer the advert of the Hollis brothers on this planet of Duoterra, colonized for sixty years? Due to a lack of women, all single females have to sign marriage contracts with one or more men. Not liking anyone in her town, and her uncle making a deal to sell her, Brianna runs away to find the Hollis brothers.

Rescuing her from a nasty encounter, her meeting with brooding elder brother, Adam, is not good. When her first night with Adam is a disaster, it takes the efforts of the other two - impatient, cocky Curt and sweet, fun-loving Eric, to make her stay. In the following weeks she gets to know them better, but Adam stays aloof.

When her uncle arrives claiming breach of contract with the man he had promised her to, is this the opportunity for Brianna to leave?

Extract

Wife wanted. Three brothers aged twenty-six to thirty-five are looking for a young woman to be shared jointly between them in all aspects of their life including looking after their home. Healthiness is a must as we have a farm in the wild region, a long way from the nearest town. Good looks and a decent figure would be nice, but not essential, however, you must be able to cook. Contact Curt Hollis via the General Store, Frontier.

Brianna suddenly sat up in her seat as she read the small advertisement, her heart thudding. Wife wanted!

She looked around surreptitiously to see if anyone had noticed her abrupt movement. Her uncle, who had the countertops in the kitchen of their home covered with the various tools of his trade, glanced over at her frowning. Marcus was the town blacksmith. His small, wiry frame was not typical of a man of his profession, but Goldtown had need of the various implements he made in order to mine the abundant minerals and metals that existed in the area to aid the colonists. Ignoring his look, and with a pounding heart, she folded the newspaper, her hand shaking slightly, trying to pretend nonchalance. Tucking the newspaper under her arm, she casually strolled over to the counter to pour herself another drink of hot moss bark which was a favorite of hers and sauntered toward her bedroom sniffing the woody aroma, pretending to ignore the paper and its intriguing advert.

“Hey, missy, don’t take the newspaper away. It might only be a single sheet, but you know how expensive paper is despite having an abundance of trees on the planet. I’ll want to read it later.” His stern voice rasped. Marcus was the head of her household and her guardian, her parents having died when she was young.

There was only one state-owned industry on the planet they had named Duoterra that had only been colonized sixty years ago. It had been set up to make paper from trees when they became aware that they were running out of the few precious supplies they had brought with them. Goldtown had been the fourth town to be settled, about fifteen years into the establishment of the colony at a time when the population was growing exponentially. Her grandfather, Joshua, had moved his family to each of the towns in search of a place he could happily raise his family. Goldtown was his last move, although not the last town to be founded.

“Sure thing, Uncle Marcus. I just wanted to give you some more room in the kitchen. I’ll bring it back shortly when I’ve finished reading.”

“Don’t forget you’ve got the bread to bake yet,” he shouted after her.

Escaping to the safety of her bedroom, Brianna jumped onto the bed pushing her old teddy bear to one side to read the captivating and slightly scandalous advertisement again. As she wrapped a lock of her long, dark-blonde hair around a finger, she was aware of an anticipation throbbing through her body, reaching down to her nether parts. Her nipples started to harden as she thought about what it would be like to make love to three brothers, and she felt a flush rise up her face. Would they take turns or would they do it at the same time? She had to fan herself with the newspaper as she suddenly felt very hot!

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Author bio

Jennifer Denys became an author for the first time last September, and she is still astonished that her stories keep being accepted! She has two series with Siren Publishing: the ‘Friends & Acquaintances’ series – which are romantic comedies with light BDSM – and the ‘Doms & Acquaintances’ series which follow the experiences of a person new to BDSM in each book. This is her first sci-fi and first ménage relationship.

She is English writing for an American publisher (she says she often finds it hard to get her head around Americanisms – for instance having to change ‘take-away’ to ‘take-out’), and lives in a beautiful historical city in the UK with her pet rabbit who is the dominant one in her household and is thoroughly spoilt.

Fans can find her on her blog/website which she posts to three times a week www.Jennifer-Denys.blogspot.com on Facebook www.facebook.com/JenniferDenys  or on Twitter www.twitter.com/JenniferDenys