Get complicated with Mercy Celeste

I’ve read incest/pseudo-incest books. Some have creeped me out, I can’t lie … but some have been done so well that I could see exactly how their relationship could work if the characters suddenly came alive in real life. It’s certainly not a kink everyone can understand, but for an author I enjoy as much as Mercy Celeste, I have no doubt that she can make it all work.

Here is what she has to say about why she wrote her latest story, Beyond Complicated … a pseudo-incest menage.

In July 2011 I read three what we now call pseudo-incest books. At the time I’d never heard that term before and after the big Paypal fun time from earlier this year I’m guessing I wasn’t alone in that ignorance. Anyway, I’d just read quite by accident three consecutive step sibling books, not a single one of them of the M/M variety, all three heterosexual in nature, two by big name buy it in the bookstore or get it at the library authors. No names (mostly because I can’t remember them). And after the third one, which wasn’t labeled in anyway as a set of former step-siblings, my what dafug moment kicked in. All the way back to swapping Flowers in the Attic with the other fifth graders and snickering over the oh my god they’re brother and sister and they did it scene I’ve wondered why that was fascinating. I mean I have a brother, he’s younger, and to me he was about as attractive as an alligator. I mean yuck. And then as an adult reading straight romance and so many times the adult former step siblings met up and sparks flew and okay, yuck. I see my brother or a cousin or…ewww.

So there I was last July, a nobody writer with (at the time) three books out that no one was buying. I’d just finished writing Behind Iron Lace and was on a reading bender. I try not to read much in the genre I’m writing in at the time. I’ve since given up that idea with M/M. I was bored. Reading the same thing over and over. After the third pseudo-incesty book I decided I was going to write me a fun “daddy” story, and what if he’s the kid’s step-dad and yes I know there’s twincest all over the place, I’ve read some, this is about mainstream step-incest and how everyone gets away with it. Miss Big Name author got away with it. So why can’t I? I was kidding. Just playing around until a real idea for a new book came up.

Beyond Complicated might have started as a joke, and since I’d never once written anything in first person you can see how much actual thought I’d put into it. I even set the story in the area of Florida I grew up in. See, totally bullshitting my way through a subject that I was just playing with and then it stopped being play and became real. Somehow Liam McGuire became a real person to me. He didn’t tell me his story so much as take over my fingers and typed for me. I wrote as if I were possessed. For six weeks. Two of which I took long freak out breaks because Liam’s story freaked me out. What he’d been through in his life nearly killed me. So many secrets, so much pain, his demons, his lies, his loves.

Beyond Complicated is pseudo-incest ménage. I explored the daddy son issue that I played with in the beginning. Before Kel became a fully developed character with his own lies, secrets, and past. I threw in an old boyfriend to stir up trouble between the two. But even I was unprepared for where this story went. I mixed and swirled and threw in everything but the kitchen sink for this story. Some call it a soap opera. I call it the best thing I have ever written. If you decide to take a chance, please be warned it’s banned on Amazon for a reason. And no you won’t go to hell for reading it. But if you do, I’ll be sitting right beside you for writing it.

Mercy

Blurb
For former porn star Liam McGuire, life is pretty tame, except that his twenty-one-year-old son is now dating the love of Liam’s life. At the ripe old age of thirty-eight, Liam’s entire world is collapsing around him, his past catching up with him, his secrets and his lies are coming back to bite him. All because Kel had to go and fall in love with Seth.

Website
Beyond Complicated available from Silver.

Mercy is offering up a PDF copy of Beyond Complicated to one lucky reader. To enter, comment below on whether or not you have read an incest/pseudo-incest story before? If yes, do you have any favorites? If no, what about Beyond Complicated makes you interested enough to give it a try?

Open until Thursday, July 5th at 11:59 pm (PST). Winner will be selected and notified on Friday.