So Ink & Flowers comes out with Less Than Three Press in less than a week, and I thought I’d write a short blog post to talk about the inspiration behind it. I try to constantly experiment and trying new things in my writing, and Ink & Flowers is basically an amalgamation of a bunch of different things that I thought were cool and wanted to try. So without further adieu, here’s a some the things that inspired me to write Ink & Flowers!
1. I love cute little flower shops and flowers (my favourite task at my grocery store job is wrapping flowers) and I wanted to write a character who worked in one. I also love tattoos, and wanted to write a character who has lots of them (I only have two so far because I’m poor, but I want tons eventually, and have researched a fair bit about them.)
2. I felt that in my earlier stories the character development tended to suffer because I spent too much time focusing on the supernatural elements. I wanted to write a story that was all about the characters, and to avoid getting caught up in anything else, I made it contemporary, and set it in a Canadian city similar to mine. I wanted to write a story that wasn’t about defeating an evil villain or saving the world. Just about characters: making mistakes, learning from them, making decisions and moving forward.
3. I wanted to try writing characters that were extremely flawed and unlikable a the beginning and see if I could turn it around to make them sympathetic by the end. I was also interested in the trope used a lot in erotica of someone being coerced into sex in exchange for money or a place to stay and ending up liking it. I wanted too see how that would play out if I wrote it completely realistically. What kind of person would be desperate enough to agree to that, I wondered. And what kind of person would make such an offer? Could they deal with the fallout of their actions, and redeem themselves by the end of the story?
4. Every story has a little bit of the author in it, but when I was writing Ink & Flowers, I found myself drawing from a lot of personal experience. Coming out, dealing with overbearing and insidiously controlling family, all while suffering from anxiety are all things I have direct experience with, and they coloured Luke’s experience as well. This isn’t to say that the characters are (more than loosely) based on anyone I actually know, but it made it into a very personal story for me. It also means that it’s a very queer narrative, and I hope that it will be most enjoyed and identified with by other people who have come out and faced homophobia in their families as well.
Also, there is mansex. Although it’s delayed a little from where one might have expected it to happen based on the blurb. A strange thing happens every time I start writing a book, I think “Wow, you know, I don’t think these characters are going to have on-page sex. This is going to be my first novel without sex in it!” And then the characters get to know each other a little bit, and that all goes out the window. But it’s okay, because I like writing sex scenes. 😉
Thanks for reading!
About to lose his apartment, and desperate to avoid having to move in with his horrendous relatives, shy art student Luke impulsively agrees to a deal from hell: sex with a man he doesn’t know in exchange for a couch to sleep on.
His new “roommate” Cooper is everything that Luke hates: crude, uncouth, and covered in tattoos, not to mention openly gay. Luke has all but resigned himself to a miserable fate when it turns out Cooper might want something a little different than he expected.
Ink & Flowers: Coming June 4th!
Wordcount: 40,000
Pairing: m/m
Ebook price: $4.99
Preorder at Less Than Three Press
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Also Enter Here for a chance to win a free copy on the LT3 Goodreads page! Draw ends June 19th.
J.K. Pendragon 