Sunday Funday with the BMBR's M/M Memories!!

We all started reading m/m romance at different points in our lives, so some of us unicorns are taking this Sunday Funday to take a trip down memory lane and reminisce on how it all began...


Ann: Ahhhhh, the sweet memory of discovering the world of M/M. I’m with Breann. I read Lorilei James Long Hard Ride and was more interested in the secondary characters of Trevor and Edgard. I KNEW something was going on there and damn if they didn’t get their own book that was one of my favorites in the series. I was hooked on Sophie Oak’s books but the boys weren’t touching and I felt cock blocked and quickly learned to search for M/M/F instead of M/F/M. That search led me to Cameron Dane’s Hawkins Ranch series and Katie Allen stories. From there I went on a historical bender and discovered Samantha Kane’s Brothers in Arms series and one really now hard to find regency romance, Three to Waltz by Chloe Hanson, I was a goner in the best way.

Plus, let’s face it, too often heroines are mousy doormats or shrieky she-beasts . I’m TOTALLY generalizing there I know it, there are some amazing heroines out there too, but those books have a distinct lack of multiple dicks that I have come to require in my reading. I soon discovered there are A TON of books out there in the M/M realm just begging me to read them and I dove right in and haven’t looked back. I was so lucky to find and read some seriously amazing authors right from the start. I fired up my original keyboard Kindle to jog my memory as to which authors I stumbled on first and damn, it’s an impressive list and it’s no wonder I was addicted from the start: Kaje Harper, Heidi Cullinan, JL Merrow, Sue Brown, KA Mitchell , Harper Fox and AM Arthur are the oldest ones there. It took me forever to join GoodReads and become part of what I like to call my very own online Deliciously Filthy Book Club but it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done and I consider myself a very lucky Unicorn to be part of this corner of the interwebz full of all these awesome peeps.

Audrey: My first M/M read came into my hands completely randomly. One of my Goodreads friends raved about a tiny little M/M story that was absolutely hilarious, and because it was (a) short and (b) free, I figured I didn't have anything to lose by giving it a try. I read Caged by Tam Ames, loved it, and sought out more M/M stories. The M/M Romance Group on Goodreads is a wonderful resource for free stories, and their Don't Read in the Closet event was releasing anthologies at that time. I happened to pick up Kaje Harper's Like the Taste of Summer and was completely blown away by the emotions and heart in the story and the characters. I loved it, I kept reading m/m, and the rest, so they say, was history.

Breann: My first M/M experience was when I read Long Hard Ride by Lorelei James. I wasn't much into contemporary at the time but it was a freebie so I picked it up. This is a M/F book with a few M/F/M scenes between the MC, so I wasn't expecting anything ...erhm ...extra. Not only was this my first M/M scene, but my first really erotic romance. If anyone knows how to write sex, it's Lorelei James. Anyway, I'm already tackling my husband every 5 minutes or so because of all the hotness. But then. THEN! Trevor and Edgard are alone. And they start doing stuff. With their dicks and butts and I'm like 'WHOA! O.O THIS HAPPENS IN BOOKS!?!? I can, like, read about boy sex? All the time?' *searches for more M/M* Which then led to Marie Sexton, Tere Michaels, and JL Langley and I was hooked.


Jenni Lea:  My first foray into the M/M genre came about as a bit of a surprise.  I started reading a series by Carrie Ann Ryan and when I got to the third book, Trinity Bound I at first thought it was going to be m/f/m of which I had read plenty.  Imagine my shock when the two male characters start kissing.  And then... and then they do more.  I found that I liked it - a LOT.  After that I scoured B&N for more.  I started off with the freebies and that is where I found Lies & Consequences by some person with a weird name (Kaje Harper?  Who the heck is Kaje Harper?) and I fell in love.  I mean, here were two men - MEN! - and they were strong and tough and not helpless damsels in distress.  It was refreshing.  And smoking hot!  So, Carrie Ann Ryan baited me but Kaje was the one who reeled me in.  I have been hooked since.


Lorix: Hmm, my first experience reading M/M was a couple of books by the author Anne Brooke - Pink Champagne and Apple Juice & The Bones of Summer. Then a while later I was browsing aRE for something a little, er, steamier, and in amongst the books I downloaded was GA Hauser's The Boy Next Door. I read the crap outta that book! But it wasn't until I was looking for slash fiction about Scott Lynch 's Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen that I really got into the genre. The Don't Read in the Closet Anthology where I loved Piper Vaughn's story, Amy Lane books followed, then Tj Klune, Kaje Harper and Eric Arvin and - cue meeting the rest of the unicorns. The rest, as they say, is history. I love a good old-fashioned romance, well written characters and a storyline that gets me in all the right places!

SheReadsALot:  Reflecting back, I've been reading M/M for just about half of my life! :-O I've been reading M/F romances (contemporary, historical) since junior high school. And I remember finding an anthology that featured two guys together having erotic PWP sex. Was it smutty? Hell yes! Do I remember the title? Nope. But I remember liking it a LOT. And I kept going back to the library to find that anthology to read there because I would never have checked it out back then. Cut to me in high school, being an avid fan fiction reader (NSYNC, in case you're wondering), also of the M/F variety but being bored. And OMG one day the heavens shined upon me with an author who wrote both M/F and slash fiction (M/M). Babes, I dropped that MF fan fic super quick. There were hundreds of authors to read and I devoured them all! The slash community was a great net of writers and readers. Of course, I got recs for published authors and newly published fan fic authors. It was very hard for to part with fan fic. One of the very first M/M purchases I made (I was in a M/F historical fiction love fest at the time as well) was "Discreet Young Gentlemen" by M.J. Pearson because M/M and historical romance together was everything to me back then.

Look at this cover, don't you just want to mount something? LOL cute story too.

Sunny:  I remember reading a M/F/M series and wanting the two guys to get busy with each other but they were very careful not to cross those lines :(
Then, in early 2005, I read Suzanne Brockmann's "Hot Target" where one of my favorite characters, Jules, actually got a side storyline with another man. It was pretty mild, but I loved it. I had to wait over 2 1/2 years for Jules' HEA in Force of Nature, but I was hooked. I started looking for other M/M books, but it wasn't until I got my kindle that I learned about authors like Jordan Castillo Price and Josh Lanyon. It was like winning the book lottery, all those back lists :)


And now we unicorns want to know....what brought all of you to the m/m romance reading world? :)