What’s funny (read: endlessly frustrating) is that I think my fiction could be very popular if it weren’t for one stupid fixation.

I find virile, prolific men hot.

Virile and prolific, as in they have a lot of casual sex and a lot of offspring—more as a matter of power than because they’re the caddish player type. I guess it’s a breeding kink mixed with a harem type kink? There’s something primal and otherworldly about it, which I’m drawn to in general.

It probably started with this deviantART artist who had this very serious, cruel alpha male naga character who was an emperor or something. And he had a lot of offspring. I swear, that shit was formative.

Seriously, if not for that stupid kink, I’d be churning out the dark romance novels and probably doing fairly well. But for all the wonderful tropes, kinks, niches, and subgenres of romance, the genre has a fairly strict “one pussy policy” no matter how many partners are involved. By the time you get to the very small polyamory niche outside of reverse harem, you’re looking at an audience that wants healthy, realistic relationships—not dark romance.

Thankfully, my kink is at least tolerated in erotica and other non-romance genres. Someone in an online group even admitted she could find the kink hot as erotica, but it ruined any concept of romance for her. Which, fair. The appeal for me is decidedly erotic.

I was thinking about this little conundrum because I’m currently working on the second draft of my vampire x werewolf gothic fiction novel, which would make for a lovely dark romance if not for the fact that the antagonist/love interest fits this hyper-sexual male type. He’s very much the king of his castle and his subjects are eager to serve him in all kinds of ways… A central part of the appeal of vampires for me is their unbridled sexuality. They’re not hemmed in by monogamy or heterosexuality. When I tried to erase that part of my villain, it took the life out of his character.

So I’m marketing this one as erotic gothic fiction. But as I mentioned in my post, To the Writers of Non-Commercial Fiction, there’s something freeing in writing a novel with little commercial appeal. And who knows? Dark erotic gothic fiction featuring an insatiable sexy vampire antagonist can’t be *that* unappealing to the masses.