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Manga and Romance Blog Hop Contest Winner(s)!

The blog hop was a wonderful success in my opinion! I think everyone had a great time reading on a subject they love or were just learning about! Maybe even turned a few more readers to a genre loved by a lot of people the world over. :D Thank you to Hayley B James for hosting and working like mad to promote the hop as well as bringing in so many wonderful companies to assist in directing new readers to our blogs. ^.^ She deserves a huge round of applause and lots of hugs from everyone!

Congratulations to Amilyn for winning the overall Grand Prize! Enjoy all of the wonderful prizes! :) As for the winner of my small contest on the blog, I wish I could offer a prize to everyone who commented. I enjoyed reading all of your comments and replied to as many as I could. Alas, only one prize is available. I've already emailed her off list but the winner of the cell phone/purse charm is Erica (eripike at gmail dot com). Congratulations, Erica! Please email me when you have a chance with your choice of charms, the color and your mailing address. Let's keep spreading the  Yaoi love!


Posted by JR Loveless at 12:27 AM 10 comments: 

Manga and Romance Blog Hop: Yaoi & Where did J.R. Loveless come from?

Manga and Romance: Yaoi

"What is Yaoi?"

Yaoi, also known as Boys' Love, is a Japanese popular term for female-oriented fictional media that focuses on homoerotic or homoromantic male relationships, usually created by female authors. Source: Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaoi My m/m romance influence actually came from yaoi anime and manga. I started out with a slightly less 'risque' branch of it called shounen-ai in the form of the cat-eared anime Loveless. After I finished the series, I became voracious for more of the boys' love anime and started hunting through websites looking for others, eventually stumbling on a forum dedicated to everything yaoi, Aarinfantasy.com/forum. Aarinfantasy is actually where I started writing my own original yaoi fiction (screen name LovelessSoubi). I started posting stories on their forum and receiving feedback, motivating me to keep going. Eventually I submitted Touch Me Gently, originally posted on their original fictions section, to Dreamspinner Press and from there you know what happened! :-)
Yaoi also is distributed in the form of manga. Popular yaoi manga distributers include DMP (Digital Manga Publishing), June (Digital Manga's imprint for yaoi manga), and DMG (Digital Manga Guild). Of course there are many others, but these are the biggest distributors. Western m/m romance differs from Yaoi in a significant manner, at least from my own personal perception. Yaoi usually has an older, more masculine seme or top with a younger, slightly more feminine uke or bottom. There are exceptions to that fact, but in most cases it tends to be masculine/feminine characters. Western m/m romance novels lean more toward masculine characters and plot lines. My first novel Touch Me Gently was written along the lines of yaoi as that was the major influence of my writing at the time. Yet my latest WIP His Salvation, which is still pending acceptance, is written more in the western m/m influence. Most readers of western m/m romance tend to be overly critical of novels written with a yaoi influence as the uke/bottom tends to be more feminine. One of the reviews I read for Touch Me Gently basically said I should stick with heterosexual romances because of how feminine Kaden appeared in the novel. It was obvious that person had never read yaoi manga or watched a yaoi anime. When I subbed Swift's Temptation to Silver, I had to explain to the editor I worked with at the time what yaoi was and why Xavier was such a prick toward Fagan, and why it was okay! LOL. I have an e-book of Touch Me Gently in the Hop's grand prize package,
but I also am offering up my own blog prize of one of my cell phone/purse/whatever you want to use it for swag charms. Your choice of charm and color. I have a cowboy hat for Touch Me Gently (not pictured), a unicorn for Fragments of a Unicorn's Soul, a snowflake for White Rain, and a feather for Chasing Seth. I will be randomly choosing a winner from the comments on my blog so please leave your email address for me to contact you!

I hope this was an informative post for those who have never heard of yaoi, heard of it but didn't really know what it is, and might even start reading the mangas or books related to yaoi!

Be sure to stop by the other blogs and read what others had to say about Manga and romance. :D


Posted by JR Loveless at 12:00 AM 27 comments: 

Blog Hop Opportunity: Manga and Romance - Hayley B. James' Bee-Hive If you're a brand new author or a veteran of m/m romance, you'll find a great opportunity to share your novels, novellas and short stories to a whole new readership when you join in on Hayley B. James' Manga and Romance blog hop. The focus lies in the YAOI side of manga, which for some who may not know is the eastern equivalent of m/m romance.

I, myself, received my introduction to the world of m/m romance through YAOI and shounen-ai. There is quite a large following of YAOI and YAOI eventually will lead to the western style of m/m romance as it did for me.

Hayley's blog hop is a wonderful chance to broaden your horizons along with those of the YAOI manga readers. Her rules for the blog hop are simple and easy to follow. She's going to have at least two YAOI manga publishers promoting the hop and possibly participating!!! That is a great opportunity in itself for everyone who writes m/m romance to potentially gain more readers!

And of course for the readers, it's a great chance to learn more about western m/m romance and find authors who may tickle your fancy! So be sure to join us all for the upcoming hop June 22 thru June 24th!

Link to join the blog hop and find the other participants: Hayley B. James' Blog Hop - Manga and Romance

Head on over today to sign up and join in on the fun! :)

Posted by JR Loveless at 9:08 PM 4 comments: