Guest Blogger: Tristram La Roche

Tristram's Website

Let's get to know Tristram...

1.) Why did you choose to write erotic m/m romance?

As a gay man who has been through the mill I felt I had stories to tell and messages to pass on. I'm not really one for getting up on a soap box and making speeches, so writing is a good way to do it. I love writing in any case. Once I began to look at it closely I realised that lots of MM is written by women and I felt a gay man's take on it might be interesting. I guess I'm redressing the balance, but in the nicest possible way - I have nothing against women writing MM; men write about women!


2.) How often do you write? How long does it take you to finish an average novella?

I write every day. Well, almost every day. Occasionally events take a turn and I'm kept from the computer but writing is my job now. A novella of about 25,000 words takes me roughly a month to get down on 'paper', then I like to leave it to rise for a bit before polishing it. I cannot write faster than that because I just can't leave a bad sentence sitting there, so I edit and polish as I go. At least the editing process is usually quite painless as a result. Novels take much longer as they are, by their nature, more complex.


3.) Are there any new genres you will try in the future?

That's a good question. I think gay characters will always make appearances in my books, but I do have a yearning to write a horror and comedy.


4.) What is the meaning behind the title, Lorenzo il Magnifico?

Lorenzo de' Medici was an Italian statesman and ruler of the Florentine Republic during the renaissance. He is known to us as Lorenzo il Magnfico (Lorenzo the Magnificent). Not surprisingly, there is a street named after him in Florence and I thought how much fun it would be to honour his name by tying this into a story. The rest will become clear when you read it.



5.) What are you working on now and what can we expect from you in the future?

My next novella has just been signed to Etopia Press and is called Fixed. That's due out next month. I'm about half way through an historical MM which I have set around 450AD. That may be it for 2011, I might manage one more, but I've plenty of other stories maturing to follow on. So, what you can expect are many more novellas and one or two full length novels.