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I am so excited!! Touch Me Gently won the Best Gay Romance category in the 2011 TLA Gaybies website! I was soooo excited when I saw the results posted last night! I can hardly believe it!
I want to say thank you so much to everyone who voted for me. It is an extreme honor to be nominated and an even bigger honor to have won.
Touch Me Gently has had its fair share of reviews, positive and negative. I know there were a lot of negative reviews from people who absolutely hated it. They felt it sloppy, unrealistic, and Kaden was a woman written as a man. The majority of the people who read western m/m romance do not understand how Yaoi is written. The story I wrote followed that style. As did my next novel accepted by Silver Publishing. I do have to say in regards to the unrealistic comment... a romance story doesn't always have to be realistic. It's about romance and sometimes romance in real life can feel as unrealistic as it does in a novel. The point of reading a book is to immerse yourself in the dream of what we all want. A Logan to love us unconditionally and show us how beautiful we are despite the scars we carry. Maybe my story didn't touch the hearts of everyone, but I sure hope it touched the hearts of some. Kaden's story isn't far from what reality can be. The abuse, the rape, the fear. Those are extreme situations and maybe some of the readers who felt it over done doesn't know what it is like to live like that.
Scars don't go away. They stay with us forever. We just have to find a way to survive to pain and the heartache to grow stronger and be who we were meant to be despite the nightmares we suffer.
Touch Me Gently has a special place in my heart because it's the very first novel I ever wrote and it had a huge following the website I first posted it to. AarinFantasy - The BEST Yaoi website ever! The friends I made on there encouraged me to put my story out there and it was accepted despite my belief it wouldn't be. There are so many wonderful and talented writers on there and a lot of them will never have the courage to offer up their writing to be scrutinized. It's not easy reading the negative reviews. It hurts each time I see one. But I know you can't please everyone in this life, and yet it doesn't make it any easier to swallow when someone says my story was awful or unpolished or stupid. So if any of you like to read, check out Aarinfantasy because those writers can use the encouragement just like I did.
Anyway, thank you EVERYONE who voted for me. I am so happy to have been given such a wonderful gift. :) Nothing like seeing your book chosen over so many other great ones there.
*kisses*
~J.R.~
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