Taste of Cyn

Writing Ménages Versus Writing Love Triangles

By Cynthia Sax on June 4, 2014

Sinful Rewards, my 12 novella serial from Avon Impulse (the first story releasing in July), is a love triangle, NOT a ménage. The two possible heroes do NOT have sex with each other. They do not sleep in the same bed with the heroine. They are extremely possessive men and they do not share anything or anyone.

I’ve written both ménages and love triangles. They are very different kinds of stories.

How are they different?

A ménage is about having both men (or women or androids or whatever ménage structure I’m writing – grins). These stories normally revolve around acceptance and tolerance, needing all three (or more) beings to complete a relationship unit. Each being in the relationship is different yet they typically have the same values, the same view of their future. They have the same vision of a happy ending and when combined, they’re stronger, better, happier, more able to achieve this destiny.

A love triangle, in contrast, is about choice, about making a life-changing decision (or collection of decisions). This decision leads the heroine (in this case, Bee) down one of two paths. These paths don’t intersect. They go in different directions, never meeting.

There’s no shared view of the future in a love triangle. If Nicolas is happy in this future, Hawke will be unhappy. If Hawke is happy, Nicolas will be unhappy. When the men are together, they’re less than, not more. They’re diminished by each other’s company. One of them is always compromising, always unhappy.

This is why it’s not possible to include even one ménage scene in Sinful Rewards. Bee can’t have Nicolas AND Hawke. In SciFi terms, they don’t exist in the same universe.

This doesn’t mean we can’t fantasize about a Nicolas-Bee-Hawke sandwich. (grins) Goodness knows I have!

Sinful Rewards 1

Belinda “Bee” Carter is a good girl; at least, that’s what she tells herself. And a good girl deserves a nice guy—just like the gorgeous and moody billionaire Nicolas Rainer. He is everything she wants in a man.

Or so she thinks, until she takes a look through her telescope and sees a naked, tattooed man on the balcony across the courtyard. Hawke is mysterious, the bad boy she knows will bring only heartbreak. He has been watching her, and that makes him all the more enticing.

But when a mysterious and anonymous text message dares her to do something bad, she must decide if she is really the good girl she has always claimed to be, or if she’s willing to risk everything for her secret fantasy of being watched.

Is her mystery man the reclusive billionaire with a wild side or the darkly dangerous bad boy?

Buy Links:
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Sinful-Rewards-1-Cynthia-Sax-ebook/dp/B00I7V89H0

Barnes And Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sinful-rewards-1-cynthia-sax/1119055390

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